“Well, make right for it, and stand there.”
He disappeared with his hounds, leaving me alone in a wooded, level expanse. It was then full morning, and the ground was well checkered with light and shadow. My seat was a mossy rock at the base of a beech tree, and with breech-loading shot-gun, cocked, and lying across my knees, I kept my eyes fixed on the depths of forest, and waited for the bark which would announce the opening of the chase.
Soon it came,—a loud, deep baying, floating, as it seemed, from a long distance, across steeps, over the trees, and gathering in volume. One of the deep-mouthed hounds had evidently snuffed something satisfactory in the dewy grasses or on the undergrowth. His baying had been reinforced by several pairs of lungs, and the drive was under full head-way. Now it would be faint, telling of a ravine, rhododendrons, and trees with low umbrageous branches; then would come a full burst of melody, as the noses of the pack gained the summit of a ridge, or swept through an open forest. But, all in all, it grew louder. It was still far above me, on the spurs of the Smokies, and seemed bearing across the long ridge on which I rested. Then again it turned, and, in all its glorious strength, swept below me, through the deep hollow. My excitement reached its climax just then, for suddenly there was a discord in the music, and every hound was yelping like mad.
“Yip, yip, yip!” they rang out.
The quick barks told a new story,—the hounds had sighted the game, and, for the moment, were close on its haunches. It was manifest that the drive-way I was on was not to be taken. The guide’s instructions for seeking the river were now to be followed. Starting on a quick pace through the woods, I traveled as directed, and was soon on the leading ridge. One rifle shot startled the forest as I ran; and, in the evening, at Daniel Lester’s pleasant fireside, by the Little Tennessee, Kenswick told the following story:
Jake Rose had selected for him an excellent stand; admonished him to keep his eyes peeled, his gun cocked, and not take the “buck-ague” if a deer shot by him. He heard the chorus, and watched and panted. Suddenly, under the branches of the wood, appeared a big, blue buck, making long leaps toward him. Just as he was about to pass within 20 steps, Kenswick jumped out from behind his tree, and yelled like a Cherokee. The buck stopped, as though turned to stone, in his tracks, and gazed in amazement at the noisy Kenswick, who already had his gun at his shoulder. He tried to draw a bead, but his hands shook so, that he could not cover the animal by a foot. The buck snuffed the air, made a leap, and was away as Kenswick, in utter despair, pulled the trigger, and sent a ball from his Remington whistling through the oak leaves.
“Why!” he exclaimed, in the excitement of telling it, “look at my arm.” He held it out as steady as a man taking sight in a duel. “Isn’t that steady? Now why the devil couldn’t I hold it that way then?”
“Buck ague,” answered Ben Lester, quietly; and then the old and young hunters, around that fireside, laughed uproariously.
The barking of the hounds, like my pace, stopped for a moment at the report of Kenswick’s gun. Ten minutes after, I was on the Long rock on the bank of the Little Tennessee. This stand merits a description, for from it probably more deer have been killed than at any other single point in the mountains of Western North Carolina. It is at the Narrows. Here, in the narrowest channel of its course, from below where it begins to merit the name of a river, this stream, of an average width of 150 yards, pours the whole drainage of the counties of Swain, Jackson, Macon, one-half of Graham and a small portion of Northern Georgia, between banks eighty-five feet apart. The waters are those of the rivers Tuckasege, Cullasaja, Nantihala, Ocona Lufta, and the large creeks Soco, Scott’s, Caney Fork, Stecoah, Forney, and Hazel, heading in the cross-chains of the Balsam, Cowee, Nantihala, and Valley River mountains, and on the southern slope of the Great Smoky.
For 100 yards the stream shoots along like a mill-race. Brown boulders, the size of horses, coaches and cabins, are piled at the edges of the current. At the entrance to the Narrows, a line of rocks forms a broken fall of several feet. Over it the waters are white, and the trees wet with spray. Above its roar, no rifle shot, or hound’s bay can be heard a few feet away. Long rock is a dark boulder projecting into the river, at its very narrowest point, 100 yards below, and in full sight of the white rapids. The hunter leaves the road, jumps and clambers over a succession of immense boulders, and at length seats himself on Long rock. The water, close at its edge, is forty feet deep. A steep mountain, following the river round every bend, showing square, mossed rocks under the heavy autumn-tinted forests on its front, rises close along the river’s opposite edge. A few sand-bars, below the stand, reach out from the mountain’s foot. There is one narrow band of sandy bank directly opposite the stand. Projecting boulders shield it from the rush of waters. On this sandy bank the deer, if frightened when swimming down mid-stream, will climb out, affording just the shot desired by the hunter. If not frightened, they will pass on to the smooth-water sand-bars below, and then, leaving the water, disappear up the mountain.