“Then I up an’ sez to the old man: ‘Pap, do you mean that?’
“‘I do,’ sez he, most emphatically.
“‘Then,’ sez I, ‘that dollar is mine.’
“Now, in them days colts wan’t broke till they was fo’ years old, an’ this particular colt had been raised with the mules in the cane bottoms. I got Bill to hold him with a twister till I got on, an’ they turned him loose. He give three buckjumps, one right after the other, but I had locked my long legs around him, and he might as well have tried to throw off the saddle. When he saw he couldn’t fling me he bolted an’ took up the pike like wild. He run under trees an’ through bushes, he jumped rock fences, he scraped trees and jumped ditches, an’ I let him go. He run up the road five miles to Blivens’ mill, then he got skeered at a goat in the road, bolted ag’in and run back home. I calk’lated he run jes’ ten miles back to the barn lot he started frum, an’ when he cleared the last fence I turned loose my grip an’ turned a summerset over his head in ten yards of whar we started. I was sorter dazed at first, but when I came to the old man was standin’ over me sorter smilin’ an’ he sed: ‘Hiram, my son, here’s yo’ dollar; you’ve been on just a minnit!’”
It was nearly midnight when the big lamps were lighted. They were placed on the prow of the canoe, so that their rays crossed in the river, each lamp lighting its opposite side. I knew that the old hunter knew every shoal and log in the river and that no man could guide a boat or shoot quicker or more accurately than John Jackson. So I had no fears of capsizing, and when I took my Ithaca and sat down behind the lights, I was in such a glow of excitement that I did not need my overcoat. And that excitement never left me. The boat glided out and a weird and yet fascinating scene presented itself. We sat in midnight darkness, but for fifty yards ahead of us the river was bright with the glare of the big reflectors. It penetrated the woods on either side and I felt something awesome in the feeling that we were uncovering the hidden secrets of nature, peering into the midnight heart, laying bare her shrouded woods and dark waters and stabbing her silence and her solitude with a knife of light.
Not a word was to be spoken. Everything went by a code of signals. If Jackson put out his right hand, the boat moved to the right—his left hand, to the left. One’s heart beats fast and the blood runs hot, for as he peers into the midnight darkness and sees the white light creeping over the woods and the waters, he expects every minute to see the graceful necks and white outspread banners of a flock of geese fall into its penetrating circle.
There was a splash in the water to the left. It was a beaver. A swift object moved across the prow of the canoe, cutting the water into ripples as it hurried to the shore. It was a muskrat. A half mile farther I almost laughed out at the queer antics of Br’er Coon when the big lights caught him square in the eyes as he sat fishing for earth worms on the bank. He blinked, and winked, and turned his head in a quizzical way as if wondering what that animal with the sun-eyes was floating down the stream. We left him standing on the bank winking, and blinking, and too worthless for us to startle our game with an unnecessary report.
It is the unexpected, of course, that happens, and it came a half-mile farther down and out the top of a dead tree lying in the river. They arose with a whirr and whistle of wings and clatter, almost under our prow, that I scarcely had time to prepare. Besides, in the light they appeared pure white and of great size. Instead of flying away they flew straight at our lights, for they were blinded, and the Old Hunter said I dodged to keep from being hit. Anyway, I managed to fire once as they passed over me. Then I heard the old man’s gun roar in my ears and two big mallards fell almost in our boat.
“Did I hit anything?” I asked him.