Father always threw himself into our plays and romps when we were small as if he were no older than ourselves, and with all that he had seen and done and gone through, there was never any one with so fresh and enthusiastic an attitude. His wonderful versatility and his enormous power of concentration and absorption were unequalled. He could turn from the consideration of the most grave problems of state to romp with us children as if there were not a worry in the world. Equally could he bury himself in an exhaustive treatise on the History of the Mongols or in the Hound of the Baskervilles.
Until father sold his ranches in North Dakota he used to go out West each year for a month or so. Unfortunately, we were none of us old enough to be taken along, but we would wait eagerly for his letters, and the recipient of what we called a picture letter gloried in the envy of the rest until another mail placed a substitute upon the pedestal. In these picture letters father would sketch scenes and incidents about the ranch or on his short hunting trips. We read most of them to pieces, unluckily, but the other day I came across one of the non-picture letters that father wrote me:
August 30, ’96.
Out on the prairie.
I must send my little son a letter too, for his father loves him very much. I have just ridden into camp on Muley,[1] with a prongbuck strapped behind the saddle; I was out six hours before shooting it. Then we all sat down on the ground in the shade of the wagon and had dinner, and now I shall clean my gun, and then go and take a bath in a big pool nearby, where there is a large flat stone on the edge, so I don’t have to get my feet muddy. I sleep in the buffalo hide bag and I never take my clothes off when I go to bed!
By the time we were twelve or thirteen we were encouraged to plan hunting trips in the West. Father never had time to go with us, but we would be sent out to some friend of his, like Captain Seth Bullock, to spend two or three weeks in the Black Hills, or perhaps we would go after duck and prairie-chicken with Marvin Hewitt. Father would enter into all the plans and go down with us to the range to practise with rifle or shotgun, and when we came back we would go over every detail of the trip with him, revelling in his praise when he felt that we had acquitted ourselves well.
Father was ever careful to correct statements to the effect that he was a crack shot. He would explain how little being one had to do with success and achievement as a hunter. Perseverance, skill in tracking, quick vision, endurance, stamina, and a cool head, coupled with average ability as a marksman, produced far greater results than mere skill with a rifle—unaccompanied to any marked extent by the other attributes. It was the sum of all these qualities, each above the average, but none emphasized to an extraordinary degree, that accounted for father’s great success in the hunting-field. He would point out many an excellent shot at a target who was of no use against game. Sometimes this would be due to lack of nerve. Father himself was equally cool and unconcerned whether his quarry was a charging lion or a jack-rabbit; with, when it came to the question of scoring a hit, the resultant advantage in the size of the former as a target. In other instances a good man at the range was not so good in the field because he was accustomed to shooting under conventional and regulated conditions, and fell down when it came to shooting under disadvantageous circumstances—if he had been running and were winded, if he were hungry or wet, or tired, or feeling the sun, if he were uncertain of the wind or the range. Sometimes, of course, a crack shot possesses all the other qualities; such is the case with Stewart Edward White, whom Cuninghame classified as the best shot with whom he had hunted in all his twenty-five years in the wilds. Father shot on a par with Cuninghame, and a good deal better than I, though not as well as Tarleton.
I have often heard father regret the fact that he did not care for shooting with the shotgun. He pointed out that it was naturally the most accessible and least expensive form of hunting. His eyesight made it almost impossible for him to attain much skill with a shotgun, and although as a boy and young man he went off after duck for sport, in later years he never used a shotgun except for collecting specimens or shooting for the pot. He continually encouraged us to learn to shoot with the gun. In a letter he wrote me to Europe when I was off after chamois he said: “I have played tennis a little with both Archie and Quentin, and have shot with the rifle with Archie and seen that he has practised shotgun shooting with Seaman.”
When my brother and myself were ten and eight, respectively, father took us and four of our cousins of approximately the same ages to the Great South Bay for a cruise, with some fishing and bird-shooting thrown in, as the guest of Regis Post. It was a genuine sacrifice on father’s part, for he loathed sailing, detested fishing, and was, to say the least, lukewarm about bird-shooting. Rowing was the only method of progression by water for which he cared. The trip was a great success, however, and father enjoyed it more than he anticipated, for with the help of our host he instructed us in caring for ourselves and our firearms. I had a venerable 12-bore pin-fire gun which was the first weapon my father ever owned. It was usually known in the family as the “rust bore” because in the course of its eventful career it had become so pitted and scarred with rust that you could put in as much time as you wished cleaning and oiling without the slightest effect. I stood in no little awe of the pin-fire because of its recoil when fired, and as I was in addition a miserably poor shot, my bag on the Great South Bay trip was not large. It consisted of one reedbird, which father with infinite pains and determination at length succeeded in enabling me to shoot. I am sure he never spent more time and effort on the most difficult stalk after some coveted trophy in the West or in Africa.
Father’s hunting experiences had been confined to the United States, but he had taken especial interest in reading about Africa, the sportsman’s paradise. When we were small he would read us incidents from the hunting books of Roualeyn Gordon Cumming, or Samuel Baker, or Drummond, or Baldwin. These we always referred to as “I stories,” because they were told in the first person, and when we were sent to bed we would clamor for just one more, a petition that was seldom denied. Before we were old enough to appreciate the adventures we were shown the pictures, and through Cornwallis Harris’s beautiful colored prints in the Portraits of Game and Wild Animals of Southern Africa we soon learned to distinguish the great beasts of Africa. The younger Gordon Cumming came to stay with us at Sagamore, and when father would get him to tell us hunting incidents from his own varied career, we listened enthralled to a really living “I story.” To us he was known as the “Elephant Man,” from his prowess in the pursuit of the giant pachyderm.
Then there was also the “Shark Man.” He was an Australian who told us most thrilling tales of encounters with sharks witnessed when among the pearl-divers. I remember vividly his description of seeing a shark attack one of the natives working for him. The man was pulled aboard only after the shark had bitten a great chunk from his side and exposed his heart, which they could see still beating. He said, “Master, master, big fish,” before he died.