“Remember, you have but one good arm and part of another one—so, having so lately got you back, let me not lose you now.”
“I promise to take all care,” Gaston answered. The look they exchanged, full of genuine affection, made yesterday’s interview seem dreamlike to me.
There were not more than a dozen of us in this party, including Count Saxe and Gaston Cheverny. It was not for me to warn Gaston against what we were about to engage in. Count Saxe gave him a gently civil intimation of the danger ahead, but Gaston took no note of it, and was as eager as any one to find the “solitary.” We put off into another part of the forest. I rode by Gaston Cheverny’s side, and privately resolved to remain there. We talked together and I found him more like the old Gaston than I had yet seen him.
This foolhardy expedition was exactly like Gaston; but when I saw the quickness of his eye, and the alertness of his movements, I concluded he could take care of himself better than any of us supposed. It was about three o’clock when we got to the circle in which the beaters had surrounded the old boar. He had been hunted twice that season and had escaped both times. Huntsmen are very superstitious, and they had got the notion that if this boar were not killed in the third chase, there was something unearthly about him. This was fostered by some laughing remark of Count Saxe 400 about the hunt of Thibaut of Champagne, and the “solitary” being the ghost of a boar. His ghostship, however, was soon disproved, by finding his huge tracks in the soft brown earth.
Soon the dogs gave tongue, and the chase was on. We could get occasional glimpses of the boar’s vast bulk, as he made prodigious speed for so heavy an animal through the thickets. There was a small ravine through which a brook flowed, and for this the boar made. We could hear him crashing through the underwood, and he got across the brook. The dogs and huntsmen followed quickly after him. The dogs found the scent again immediately after crossing the water, but on reaching a large, open plateau above the ravine, they suddenly and inexplicably lost it. There were no tracks to be seen, and the boar must have turned off either to the right or the left, in a fringe of thick underwood that bordered the ravine. The dogs ran aimlessly about, keeping up a dismal yelping of despair. The huntsmen encouraged them by horn and voice, but were evidently chagrined by this singular disappearance. My master twitted them with stories of the ghostly hunt of Thibaut, but it was plain the huntsmen thought it no joking matter. They succeeded in putting the hounds into the thicket on the right, but, although there was an infinity of barking and yelping and whining, it was plain that the scent had not yet been found.
Meanwhile, as we were standing about this open space, in the clear December afternoon, listening to the dogs and men, Gaston Cheverny dismounted, and ran a short distance toward the thicket on the left. Count Saxe called out to him to keep a firm hold on his spear, 401 which he held in his left hand. He turned to answer, when we saw, breaking from the cover directly behind Gaston, the boar, his horrible mouth wide open, his tusks grinding and churning blood and foam, his eyeballs like coals of fire, and his bristles rising like a mane.
We all involuntarily shouted “Take care! Take care!” but no one of us was closer than thirty yards to Gaston or the boar either. As the creature raised himself to bury his tusks in his enemy, I saw Gaston, with the quickness of thought, drop the spear from his left hand, and drawing his hunting knife with his right hand, plunge it once, twice, thrice in the boar’s throat. These powerful thrusts were the beast’s deathblow, but he was still capable of killing Gaston Cheverny, had there been the least remission in those tremendous strokes with the hunting knife. By that time we were on the ground close to him, and I was about to use my spear when Count Saxe motioned me away. The boar, although still fighting savagely, was clearly overmastered; a dozen dogs were tearing at him from behind.