Billy Baxter's Letters

by William J. Kountz

We have reproduced only such of the prefaces and advertisements as have been widely discussed for their humorous quality, and which the author's friends insisted should no be omitted.

The two heretofore unmentioned letters were discovered after the author's death, and are published in the rough, as they were found. "Out Hunting" is based on a trip which actually took place, and from personal knowledge contains a good deal of fact. It was doubtless written before "One Night," and for that reason is given priority in the arrangement.

"Johnny Black's Girl" is merely a scrap, and is inserted as such. It shows, however, that the author had a "tear for pity" as well as an eye for the ridiculous.

Geo. McC. Kountz.

OUT HUNTING

Pittsburg, September 1, 1898.

Dear Jim:

I am just back from St. Paul, where I spent a couple of days with Teddy Worthington. Teddy and Bud Hathaway of Chicago were going on a shooting trip in the Big Woods of Minnesota, and they asked me to go with them. It was new deal for me, so of course I was for it. I hired a hammerless breech-loader for seven a week, borrowed a lot of fishing-tackle, and bought a hunting-knife with a nickel-plated handle. It was a beaut, and stood me three fifty. A fellow can never be too careful. Up there you are likely any minute to come face to face with an Apache or some old left-over Aztec rubbering around among the trees.

At the last minute Bud Hathaway's father had to die, so just Teddy and myself went. After we left the train we rode twenty miles in a wagon to Freshwater Lake, which was our destination. The house where we stayed was kept by a half-breed guide named Sarpo, and with him lived his two sons and his second wife, who was a young white girl, and not a bad looker at that.

The next morning we started out after ducks. I made a horrible bluff that I was one of the old boys at the business, and that I was on to everything—till it came to loading my hammerless, and there's where I went to the bad. I couldn't get the blamed thing open. Teddy handed me a few of his kind little remarks, and I got back at him with something personal. He got sore. No thoroughbred kidder would have grown personal, but I couldn't think of anything else at the time. There was nothing stirring in the duck line, and for two hours we sat all hunched up in a little boat among a lot of weeds. It was getting to be a sad affair for me, and I was thinking of Atlantic City, and the bands of music, and the swell dances, and trying to figure where these hunters have the fun they are always coming home and talking about, when suddenly along came a drove of ducks. On the square, there must have been a million. The other members of the party began picking them off, but your Uncle Bill is one of those wise shooters. I waited till they were right over my head. Say! they were so thick I couldn't see the sky. I let go with the first barrel, right into the center of the bunch. Nit duck. Then the second barrel went off of its own accord. I'll swear, Jim, I had nothing whatever to do with it. Anyway, nit duck. I think if I'd had three barrels on that gun I would have nailed a duck, a duck and a half, or two ducks, as I was just getting good. I loaded up, and I must have been flustered a bit, as I blew one of the decoys clear into the next block.