UNCLE NICK’S BOOMERANG
Published in Wetmore Spectator
March 5, 1943
By John T. Bristow
The hunt was staged in Uncle Nick Bristow’s timber — way back in the 70’s. It was on the home place over on the Rose branch, the farm now owned by Bill Mast. The trail of the hunters would range down stream, overlapping into the Jim Hyde and Bill Rose woods, and on down to the junction with Wolfley creek. Ostensibly, it was to have been a coon-hunt, but it soon developed into something bigger and better. ‘
There was a good moon—but to attract the hunters, a big bonfire was built in the woods, and the men flocked in from all directions. The interesting part of it was that three of them were from the old English Colony, two miles west of my uncle’s farm — ”Green Englishmen,” the Wolfley creekers said they were. Couldn’t name them now—and be sure. One of them was a stocky little man, very talkative, very agreeable.
Then there were the Porters, the Pickets, the Piatts, the Snows, the Mayers, the Barnes boys, and others—not aiming to overlook my Uncle Nick and his son, Burrel. The elder Mayers, Gus and Noah, were Pennsylvania Dutch, with Holland ancestry. Gus liked his fun while Noah liked to stay at home and mind his own business. But some of Noah’s boys were in the gathering, as was also Peter Metzdorf, who had a while back married Gus Mayer’s daughter, Anna. Peter was German—the real thing. He lived in Wetmore.
Of the five Porter brothers, Ambrose was the only one that I can now positively say was present. But John and Tom and their brothers-in-law, Bill Evans and Ben Summers, were probably around somewhere. Bill Porter had just married my Aunt Nancy, late of Tennessee, and he couldn’t come. And Ben Porter—well, they said he was too contrary to appreciate a good thing like this. Ambrose wore his red hair—it was really red—at shoulder length. He wore gold earrings, too, and three gutta-percha rings on one finger, rings he himself had made from old coat buttons.
It was good to have Roland Van Amburg with us. Roland was a grand old sport. Moreover, Roland Van Amburg had much in common with my Uncle Nick Bristow. They had both suffered, or were due to suffer, heavy losses in large herds of Texas cattle they had bought from Dr. W. L. Challis, of Atchison. It is barely possible that those cattle might have been milling about on the western part of Uncle Nick’s farm that night.
The bonfire was built on the edge of a small clearing, with a large tree backed up by a clump of small growth on the right. In the distance—not too distant—was a big log lying on the edge of a ravine, with a 10-foot bank at this point. A small tree with good height stood at the top end of the log on the left side of the clearing. One approaching from the north would see the log only after advancing so far, and even then only if not otherwise attracted. Had it been a plant for a modern movie scene it could not have been a more perfect setting for the thing that actually happened.
While yet around the bonfire the talk turned to panthers. One had reportedly been seen, or heard, in the woods a couple of miles away—up in the Rube Wolfley neighborhood. The men would be careful not to hunt that timber because they didn’t want their dogs to be torn to pieces. Uncle Nick owned a timber lot over in the panther country.
The natives saw in this hunt a chance to have some fun at the expense of the Englishmen. Also, they wanted to impress those Colonists in a way that might be the means of keeping them on their own reservation, so to speak. A lot of timber-stealing had been going on and the Colonists were suspicioned. As a matter of fact, timber-stealing in those days was widespread. But in that business the Colonists were no worse than the natives, but the Colonists were always sure to get the blame.
While people generally scoffed at the idea of panthers roaming the woods, there were some who said it was not altogether improbable—that one might have escaped from a menagerie. You must understand that practically all the older men here at that time had come from panther states back East—and, I might say, the rising generation had more or less been steeped in panther talk.
It is written in the family records, and was generally known here then, that the grandmother of Bill and Ben Porter was killed and partly devoured by a panther back in Indiana. She would have been the great-grandmother of Jim and Bill Porter, and Zada Shumaker and Harry Porter.
Also, there is one man now living in Wetmore—G. C. Swecker—who would tell you how one of those ferocious beasts hopped upon the roof of his father’s hunting lodge, while occupied, back in Virginia and ripped the clapboards off. He also declares that panthers do scream like a woman. And, as one old fellow around the fire had said, they do sometimes migrate. I myself recall that during a severe winter in the Rocky mountains nearly a half century ago, that those killers actually came right down into Colorado Springs.
At that time panthers were quite numerous in the Missouri hills across the river from Atchison—and with the Missouri river frozen in the severe winters of the old days, it would have been an easy matter for them to cross on the ice to this side; and then only a distance of forty miles to get out here. And supposing—just supposing—that, perchance, they might have come over in pairs, and carried on in the usual cat tradition, there was the bare possibility of our coon-hunters even running into a “family” of them. The panther’s young stay with the mother until grown.
Let’s say, then, that there was just enough to it to keep timid people on edge. I doubt if there ever was a night coon-hunt in those days when some of the hunters didn’t give some thought to that killer. The thought seemed to hit one the moment he was in the deep woods. And on moonlight nights that thought was simply unshakeable. A shadow in the wood—a shadow that was somehow alive—could be highly disquieting.
Uncle Nick and the men, with the dogs on leash, took a turn about the woods while waiting for my father and the inevitable Thuse Peters to arrive. They would be coming out from town. I had gone out earlier that evening with my cousin, Burrel.
Uncle Nick bade me remain at the fire so as to direct Dad and Thuse when, and if, they should come while the hunters were away. Ambrose Porter said, “Nick, you’re not going to leave that boy all alone out here. I’ll- stay with him.” Uncle Nick said, quietly, “Oh no, you won’t.” Uncle knew that Ambrose never liked to exert himself needlessly.
If not inclined to discount my statements — and you really should not—you are now maybe thinking what I thought that night—that it was a darned shame to leave a boy all alone out there in the woods like that.
The hunters were now coming in from the north. Uncle Nick and the Englishmen well in front. Uncle Nick called out, “Johnny my boy, where are you?”
I had climbed the small tree at the end of the log—as far up as I could go. I called back, “Up here in this tree, Uncle Nick. Look on the log—quick!”
The hunters had now advanced a couple of steps, bringing the log into view. I glanced back in time to see them shift their gaze from my tree-perch to the log—and I took one more look at the log myself, just as Uncle Nick fired his rifle. In that split second I could see two eyes shining brightly in the glare of the bonfire—and I saw the yellowish form of the ugly thing fall off the log.
Uncle Nick was a sure shot with a rifle. And quick too. As told in one of my former articles, he had killed a mountain lion in the Rockies while placer mining in Colorado in 1858. The great beast was shot in the nick of time—in midair, after that 200 pounds of destruction had made the spring for my uncle from an overhanging limb of a great pine.
Addressing Uncle Nick, the little Englishman said, “I say, my good man, let’s ‘ave another one soon. Over in the big woods. Beard the lion in ‘is den, so to speak.” In high good humor, he shook a pudgy fist at my uncle, saying, “Hand mind you, if I am h ignored I shall be disappointed.”
The one mistake of the whole evening—if one can be sure there was a mistake—was when the hunters, after they had “impressed” the Englishmen with the danger of the panther to their dogs, turned the dogs loose on the trail of the pet coon they had brought into the woods at the right movement to make a “hot trail.”
It had taken four yoke of oxen to plant the log—and my Aunt Hulda gave the men a spirited tongue-lashing for making use of one of her hens to bloody the trail.
Now, imagine if you can, my uncle’s surprise when the next time he went over to his cherished timber lot he discovered that someone had robbed him of valuable post and rail trees. Not being present at the time, I have no way of knowing what his immediate reactions were. But had it been my Dad instead of my uncle, who never swore, I’m darned sure I could name more’n half of the irreverent words he would have employed in taking the epidermis off that stocky little Englishman.