Father and R. H. Munro Ferguson at the Elkhorn Ranch, after the return from a successful hunting trip
Any man who had hunted with father was ready to follow him to the ends of the earth, and no passage of time could diminish his loyalty. With father the personal equation counted for so much. He was so whole-heartedly interested in his companions—in their aspirations and achievements. In every detail he was keenly interested, and he would select from his library those volumes which he thought would most interest each companion, and, perhaps, develop in him the love of the wonderful avocation which he himself found in reading. His efforts were not always crowned with success. Father felt that our African companion, R. J. Cuninghame, the “Bearded Master,” as the natives called him, being Scotch should be interested in Scott’s novels, so he selected from the “Pigskin Library” a copy of one of them—Waverley, I think it was. For some weeks Cuninghame made progress, not rapid, it is true, for he confessed to finding the notes the most interesting part of the book, then one day when they were sitting under a tree together in a rest during the noonday heat, and father in accordance with his invariable custom took out a book from his saddle-pocket, R. J. produced Waverley and started industriously to work on it. Father looked over his shoulder to see where he had got to, and to his amused delight found that Cuninghame had been losing ground—he was three chapters farther back than he had been two weeks before!
We more than once had occasion to realize how largely the setting is responsible for much that we enjoy in the wilds. Father had told me of how he used to describe the bellowing of the bull elk as he would hear it ring out in the frozen stillness of the forests of Wyoming. He thought of it, and talked of it, as a weird, romantic call—until one day when he was walking through the zoological gardens accompanied by the very person to whom he had so often given the description. As they passed the wapitis’ enclosure, a bull bellowed, and father’s illusions and credit were simultaneously shattered, for the romantic call he had so often dwelt upon was, in a zoological park, nothing more than a loud and discordant sort of bray.
In spite of this lesson we would see something among the natives that was interesting or unusual and get it to bring home, only to find that it was the exotic surroundings that had been responsible for a totally fictitious charm. A wild hill tribe in Africa use anklets made from the skin of the colobus, a graceful, long-haired monkey colored black and white. When father produced the anklets at home, the only thing really noticeable about them was the fact that they smelt!
Another equally unfortunate case was the affair of the beehives. The same hill tribe was very partial to honey. An individual’s wealth was computed in the number of beehives that he possessed. They were made out of hollowed logs three or four feet long and eight or ten inches in diameter. A wife or a cow was bought for an agreed upon number of beehives, and when we were hunting, no matter how hot the trail might be, the native tracker would, if we came to a clearing and saw some bees hovering about the forest flowers, halt and offer up a prayer that the bees should deposit the honey in one of his hives. It seemed natural to bring a hive home, but viewed in the uncompromising light of the North Shore of Long Island it was merely a characterless, uninteresting log.
Not the least of the many delights of being a hunting companion of father’s was his humor. No one could tell a better story, whether it was what he used to call one of his “old grouse in the gunroom” stories, or an account, with sidelights, of a contemporaneous adventure. The former had to do with incidents in his early career in the cow-camps of the Dakotas, or later on with the regiment in Cuba—and phrases and incidents of them soon became coin-current in the expedition. Father’s humor was never under any circumstances ill-natured, or of such a sort as might make its object feel uncomfortable. If anything amusing occurred to a member of the expedition, father would embroider the happening in inimitable fashion, but always in such a way that the victim himself was the person most amused. The accompanying drawing will serve as illustration. Father and I had gone out to get some buck to eke out the food-supply for the porters. We separated, but some time later I caught sight of father and thought I would join him and return to camp. I didn’t pay particular attention to what he was doing, and as he was some way off I failed to notice that he was walking stooped to keep concealed by a rise of ground from some buck he was stalking. The result was the picture.
