“What season of the year do your hunts take place?” inquired a gentlemanly foreigner, who, from some peculiarities of his baggage, I suspected to be an Englishman, on some hunting expedition, probably at the foot of the Rocky mountains.
“The season for bar-hunting, stranger,” said the man of Arkansaw, “is generally all the year round, and the hunts take place about as regular. I read in history that varmints have their fat season, and their lean season. That is not the case in Arkansaw: feeding as they do upon the spontenacious productions of the sile, they have one continued fat season the year round: though in winter, things in this way is rather more greasy than in summer, I must admit. For that reason, bar with us run in warm weather, but in winter they only waddle. Fat, fat! it’s an enemy to speed; it tames everything that has plenty of it. I have seen wild turkeys, from its influence, as gentle as chickens. Run a bar in this fat condition, and the way it improves the critter for eating is amazing; it sort of mixes the ile up with the meat, until you can’t tell t’other from which. I’ve done this often. I recollect one perty morning in particular, of putting an old he fellow on the stretch, and considering the weight he carried, he run well. But the dogs soon tired him down, and when I came up with him, wasn’t he in a beautiful sweat—I might say fever; and then to see his tongue sticking out of his mouth a feet, and his sides sinking and opening like a bellows, and his cheeks so fat he couldn’t look cross. In this fix I blazed at him, and pitch me naked into a briar patch if the steam didn’t come out of the bullet-hole ten foot in a straight line. The fellow, I reckon, was made on the high-pressure system, and the lead sort of bust his biler.”
“That column of steam was rather curious, or else the bear must have been warm,” observed the foreigner, with a laugh.
“Stranger, as you observe, that bar was warm, and the blowing off of the steam show’d it, and also how hard the varmint had been run. I have no doubt if he had kept on two miles farther, his insides would have been stewed; and I expect to meet with a varmint yet of extra bottom, who will run himself into a skinful of bar’s grease: it is possible; much onlikelier things have happened.”
“Whereabouts are these bears so abundant?” inquired the foreigner, with increasing interest.
“Why, stranger, they inhabit the neighbourhood of my settlement, one of the prettiest places on old Mississipi—a perfect location, and no mistake; a place that had some defects, until the river made the ‘cut-off’ at ‘Shirt-tail Bend;’ and that remedied the evil, as it brought my cabin on the edge of the river—a great advantage in wet weather, I assure you, as you can now roll a barrel of whiskey into my yard in high water from a boat, as easy as falling off a log. It’s a great improvement, as toting it by land in a jug, as I used to do, evaporated it too fast, and it became expensive. Just stop with me, stranger, a month or two, or a year, if you like, and you will appreciate my place. I can give you plenty to eat; for, beside hog and hominy, you can have bar-ham and bar-sausages, and a mattrass of bar-skins to sleep on, and a wildcat-skin, pulled off hull, stuffed with corn-shucks, for a pillow. That bed would put you to sleep, if you had the rheumatics in every joint in your body. I call that ar bed a quietus. Then look at my land—the government ain’t got another such a piece to dispose of. Such timber, and such bottom land! why, you can’t preserve anything natural you plant in it, unless you pick it young; things thar will grow out of shape so quick. I once planted in those diggins a few potatoes and beets: they took a fine start, and after that an ox-team couldn’t have kept them from growing. About that time, I went off to old Kentuck on bisiness, and did not hear from them things in three months, when I accidentally stumbled on a fellow who had stopped at my place, with an idea of buying me out. ‘How did you like things?’ said I. ‘Pretty well,’ said he: ‘the cabin is convenient, and the timber land is good; but that bottom land ain’t worth the first red cent.’ ‘Why?’ said I. ‘’Cause,’ said he. ‘’Cause what?’ said I. ‘’Cause it’s full of cedar stumps and Indian mounds,’ said he, ‘and it can’t be cleared.’ ‘Lord!’ said I, ‘them ar “cedar stumps” is beets, and them ar “Indian mounds” ar tater hills.’
“As I expected, the crop was overgrown and useless: the sile is too rich, and planting in Arkansaw is dangerous. I had a good-sized sow killed in that same bottom land. The old thief stole an ear of corn, and took it down where she slept at night to eat. Well she left a grain or two on the ground, and lay down on them: before morning, the corn shot up, and the percussion killed her dead. I don’t plant any more: natur intended Arkansaw for a hunting-ground, and I go according to natur.”
The questioner who thus elicited the description of our hero’s settlement, seemed to be perfectly satisfied, and said no more; but the “Big Bar of Arkansaw” rambled on from one thing to another with a volubility perfectly astonishing, occasionally disputing with those around him, particularly with a “live Sucker” from Illinois, who had the daring to say that our Arkansaw friend’s stories “smelt rather tall.”
In this manner the evening was spent; but, conscious that my own association with so singular a personage would probably end before morning, I asked him if he would not give me a description of some particular bear-hunt; adding, that I took great interest in such things, though I was no sportsman. The desire seemed to please him, and he squared himself round towards me, saying that he could give me an idea of a bar-hunt, that was never beat in this world, or in any other. His manner was so singular, that half of his story consisted in his excellent way of telling it, the great peculiarity of which was, the happy manner he had of emphasizing the prominent parts of his conversation. As near as I can recollect, I have italicized them, and given the story in his own words.
“Stranger,” said he, “in bar-hunts I am numerous; and which particular one, as you say, I shall tell, puzzles me. There was the old she-devil I shot at the Hurricane last fall—then there was the old hog thief I popped over at the Bloody Crossing, and then—Yes, I have it! I will give you an idea of a hunt, in which the greatest bar was killed that ever lived, none excepted; about an old fellow that I hunted, more or less, for two or three years; and if that ain’t a particular bar-hunt, I ain’t got one to tell.