Toward the end of July, when he deemed the antlers just ripe for plucking, he slipped into the forest during the night and climbed the mountain. After two days he killed the elk. But the lamas who patrol "God's Mountain" had heard the shot and drove him into a great rock-strewn gorge where they lost his trail. Believing that he was still within hearing distance, they shouted to one another that it was useless to hunt longer and that they had best return. Then they concealed themselves and awaited results. An hour later Tserin Dorchy crawled out from under a bowlder directly into their hands.
He had been well-nigh killed before the lamas brought him down to Urga and was still unconscious when they dumped him unceremoniously into one of the prison coffins. He was sentenced to remain a year; but the old man would not have lived a month if Duke Loobitsan Yangsen, with whom he had often hunted, had not obtained his release. His independent spirit is by no means chastened, however, and I feel sure that he will shoot another deer on the Bogdo-ol before he dies!
Three days after his return home, my wife and I left with him and three other Mongols on our first real hunt. Our equipment consisted only of sleeping bags and such food as could be carried on our horses; it was a time when living "close to nature" was really necessary. Eight miles away we stopped at the entrance to a tiny valley. By arranging a bit of canvas over the low branches of a larch tree we prepared a shelter for ourselves and another for the hunters.
In fifteen minutes camp was ready and a fire blazing. When a huge iron basin of water had begun to warm one of the Mongols threw in a handful of brick tea, which resembled nothing so much as powdered tobacco. After the black fluid had boiled vigorously for ten minutes each one filled his wooden eating bowl, put in a great chunk of rancid butter, and then a quantity of finely-ground meal. This is what the Tibetans call tsamba, and the buttered tea was prepared exactly as we had seen the Tibetans make it. The tsamba, however, was only to enable them to "carry on" until we killed some game; for meat is the Mongols' "staff of life," and they care little for anything except animal food.
The evening hunt yielded no results. Two of the Mongols had missed a bear, I had seen a roebuck, and the old man had lost a wounded musk deer on the mountain ridge above the camp. But the game was there and we knew where to find it on the morrow. In the gray light of early morning Tserin Dorchy and I rode up the valley through the dew-soaked grass. Once the old man stopped to examine the rootings of a ga-hai (wild boar), then he continued steadily along the stream bed. In the half-gloom of the forest the bushes and trees seemed flat and colorless but suddenly the sun burned through an horizon cloud, flooding the woods with golden light. The whole forest seemed instantly to awaken. It was as though we had come into a dimly lighted room and touched an electric switch. The trees and bushes assumed a dozen subtle shades of green, and the flowers blazed like jewels in the gorgeous wood-land carpet.
I should have liked to spend the morning in the forest but we knew the deer were feeding in the open. On foot we climbed upward through knee-high grass to the summit of a hill. There seemed nothing living in the meadow but as we walked along the ridge a pair of grouse shot into the air followed by half a dozen chicks which buzzed away like brown bullets to the shelter of the trees. We crossed a flat depression and rested for a moment on a rounded hilltop. Below us a new valley sloped downward, bathed in sunshine. Tserin Dorchy wandered slowly to the right while I studied the edge of a marsh with my glasses.
Suddenly I heard the muffled beat of hoofs. Jerking the glasses from my eyes I saw a huge roebuck, crowned with a splendid pair of antlers, bound into view not thirty feet away. For the fraction of a second he stopped, with his head thrown back, then dashed along the hillside. That instant of hesitation gave me just time to seize my rifle, catch a glimpse of the yellow-red body through the rear sight, and fire as he disappeared. Leaping to my feet, I saw four slender legs waving in the air. The bullet had struck him in the shoulder and he was down for good.
My heart pounded with exultation as I lifted his magnificent head. He was the finest buck I had ever seen and I gloated over his body as a miser handles his gold. And gold, shining in the sunlight, was never more beautiful than his spotless summer coat.
Right where he lay upon the hillside, amid a veritable garden of bluebells, daisies, and yellow roses, was the setting for the group we wished to prepare in the American Museum of Natural History. He would be its central figure for his peer could not be found in all Mongolia.
As I stood there in the brilliant sunlight, mentally planning the group, I thought how fortunate I was to have been born a naturalist. A sportsman shoots a deer and takes its head; later, it hangs above his fireplace or in the trophy room. If he be one of imagination, in years to come it will bring back to him the feel of the morning air, the fragrance of the pine trees, and the wild thrill of exultation as the buck went down. But it is a memory picture only and limited to himself. The mounted head can never bring to others the smallest part of the joy he felt and the scene he saw.