THE Deer is the most beautiful of all animals, very timid and harmless, has no disposition to fight any thing, unless it is wounded or hemmed in, it aims to save itself by flight; but hunters say it kills every snake that it finds, by jumping on the reptile with all its feet placed close together, thus cutting it to pieces with its sharp hoofs.
It was, maybe, in the winter of 1844, it had been very cold for a long time, my elder brother would go to the spring for water every evening near sunset, and there was a large buck drinking in the spring, as the water was frozen up other places; my Father said “wait and I will see if I can kill him,” and he loaded up his big rifle and went down to the big locust tree South of the house, in plain view of the spring, and we saw him draw up against the tree and take aim, and “bang” went the rifle, and he ran to the spring, directly we heard him hollering, and the two big boys ran with all their might; the bullet had struck him on the horn, just where it joined his head, and stunned him, and he lay there until my Father caught him by the hind leg, when he sprang to his feet; there was a solid sheet of smooth ice, about fifteen feet across, and the deer could not hold very good on the ice; my Father said he had him down a dozen times, but could not keep him down; he got his front feet to the dry land once or twice, and my Father would jerk him back, but when my brothers got there they got hold of his horns and threw him down and they all piled on him and held him down until they cut his throat. My Father was a large, stout man, and he said that was the hardest scuffle he ever had. Such was pioneer life in Illinois.
[Ben Overton.]
IN early days, Ben Overton kept a little grocery store in the woods, and when James Mitchell quit making whiskey, Ben went to St. Louis and bought a barrel of whiskey and put out the word that he would not sell it in any other way but by the drink, a picayune a drink. The men did not like him very well, they said he was mean. When Ben got home, on the Saturday after, the men gathered there from ten miles around, and now Ben thought he would have a big day. The men had their jugs hid in the bushes, and soon one of my uncle’s and Bill Doyle got into a fight, just out under some trees, then while Ben’s attention was diverted, the men run in at the back door and filled up their jugs, also one for each of the combatants, and when the last jug was full some one hollered: “Part ’em.” They did not hardly leave Ben whiskey enough to “drown his trouble.”