Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight
In the long way that I must tread alone
Will lead my steps aright.
For several weeks I had seen the wild geese flying over us. I knew where they were going—to the wheat fields—and I knew where they roosted at night—under the shadow of the bluff of the river, sitting like swans on the dark waters. I hold it of guns as I do of sulkies and road carts—any good make is good enough. It all depends on whom you happen to start in with. If built by honest men, out of honest stuff, there is but little difference in the rest of it. I happen to fancy the Ithaca and had just got me a new one, and for hard, clean, honest shooting, wear and tear, I’ll put it against any of them.
There is only one way to hunt wild geese successfully, and I had prepared all of that; or rather my friend Jno. W. Jackson, assistant postmaster, and the best all-round hunter and fisherman in Tennessee, had—in fact it is part of our stable and belongs in our barn on the rafters, along with the saddle and harness: a strong, light canoe that will hold three people, two big reflecting headlight lanterns that will light up the river from bank to bank, and for very cold weather a good Clark or Lehman heater to drop in the bottom of the canoe and put your feet on if they get cold. Then, with a laprobe over your knees, good gloves and overcoat, and Jimmy Caldwell, who knows every crook and turn of the river for a hundred miles, to paddle it, you are ready for the finest sport on this side the globe. It was just noon when my man, Frank, hooked up the blue roan Chestnut Hal mare to the buckboard. In the rear were my blankets and gun, and oil-cloth to sleep on; also a saddle and bridle. There is something about a blue roan that I always have liked. It reminds me of steel. I have never seen a quitter that was that color. It is remarkable how often the roan horse figures in the living romance of our literature. Who that has ever read it has forgotten the strawberry roan mare of the big-hearted robber in “Lorna Doone”—to my mind as fine a novel as was ever written—a kind of Shakespeare in prose in the wild woods. Do you remember Browning’s “How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix,” and the roan that dropped dead but never gave up the race? By the way, there are, in that poem, two of as fine descriptive verses of horses in motion as I ever read:
“At Aerschot, up leaped of a sudden the sun
And against him the cattle stood black every one,
To stare through the mist at us galloping past
And I saw my stout galloper, Roland, at last,
With resolute shoulders, each butting away