Wild Hunt

“ The fragrant forest is silent, and the white blue light is just tinging the treetops. A shot rings upon the air: it is the warning-gun of the picket-sentinel, who comes galloping in upon the guard. The enemy approaches! ‘To horse!’ the bugle thrills in clear loud notes. The slumberers spring to their feet—they seize their rifles, pistols, and sabres, and dash through the smouldering fires till ashes cloud the air. The steeds snort and neigh; in a trice they are saddled, bridled, and mounted; and away sweeps the troop along the forest road. ”

“ Without delay, we proceeded to effect the “surround.”
The chapparal aided us by concealing our movements; and in half-an-hour we had deployed around the prairie.
The drove still browsed and played. They had no suspicion that a cordon of hunters was being formed around them, else they would have long since galloped away.
Of all wild creatures, the shyest is the wild-horse; the deer, the antelope, and buffalo, are far less fearful of the approach of man. The mustang seems to understand the doom that awaits him in captivity. ”

“ He might deposit the carcass in his lair, and come back to look after me. It is a habit of these animals, when not pressed by immediate hunger, to bury their food or store it in their caves. Even the devouring of the little antelope would have been an affair of only a few minutes’ time, and the bear might still return, more ravenous that he had tasted blood.
I was filled with irresolution. Should I run off across the plain beyond the reach of pursuit? I should have to return again for my horse and rifle. To take to the prairie on foot would be like going to sea without a boat. ”

“ At their heels came a pack of prairie-wolves, but not in pursuit of them: these also stopped near. A black bear and a cougar arrived next; and fierce beasts of prey and gentle ruminants stood side by side, both terrified out of their natural habits. Birds shrieked among the branches, eagles screamed in the air, and black vultures could be seen hovering through the smoke, with no thought of stooping upon a quarry!
The hunter man alone preserved his instincts. My followers were hungry. Rifles were levelled—and the bear and one of the antelopes fell victims to the deadly aim. ”

“ Several of the old hunters, without dismounting, pronounced the tracks to be those of wild mares, which they easily distinguished from horse tracks. Their judgment proved correct; for following the trail but a short distance farther, we came full in sight of the drove, which the vaquero confidently pronounced was the manada we were in search of!
So far our success equalled our expectations; but to get sight of a caballada of wild-horses, and to capture its swiftest steed, are two things of very unequal difficulty. ”

“ But the gods did not always remain in their dwellings. The Wild Hunt, a tradition of a furious host riding abroad with a terrific noise of shouts and horns and the braying of hounds, common to Germany and England, has been identified beyond doubt by Grimm with Woden and his host. ”

“ The rangers, lost in the mazes of the chapparal, have long since fallen off; the mustangs have gone back; on all that wide plain, but two objects appear—the snow-white form of the flying steed, and the dark horseman that follows!
It is a long wild ride, a cruel gallop for my matchless Moro. Ten miles of the prairie have we passed—more than that—and as yet I have neither used whip nor spur. The brave steed needs no such prompting; he, too, has his interest in the chase—the ambition not to be outrun. My motive is different: I think only of the smiles of a woman ”

“ Indeed, standing as they were, with their heads high in air, it was easy to fancy them mounted men in the array of battle; and often have wild-horses been mistaken for such by the prairie traveller!
Concealment or stratagem could no longer avail; the chase was fairly up. Speed and the lazo must now decide the result; and, with this conviction, I gave Moro the spur, and bounded into the open plain.
The neighing of the steed had signalled my companions who shot almost simultaneously out of the timber, and spurred towards the drove, yelling as they came. ”

“ There were men on horseback, who had ridden into the patio—the iron hoofs causing the court to ring. They were rangers, but not those who had left camp in my company. Some had arrived since, and others were still galloping up. The girls had reached the ranger camp, and told their tale. The men had not waited for orders, or even for one another, but rushing to their horses, took the road in twos and threes. Every moment, a horseman, or several together, came riding forward in hot haste, carrying their rifles, as if ready for action, and uttering loud cries of indignation. ”

“ Both common wolf and coyote possess all the astuteness of the fox, and know, as if by instinct, the animal that is wounded to death. They will follow the stricken deer that has escaped from the hunter; but if it prove to be but slightly harmed, instinctively they abandon the chase.
Their instinct had told them that the steed was not ridden by a free hand; they had seen that there was something amiss; and in the hope of running down both horse and rider, they had followed with hungry howl.
Another fact lent probability to this painful conjecture; we knew that by the mesa were many wolves. ”

“ Man himself shuns such an encounter, unless mounted upon the friendly horse; and even then, where the ground is not clear and open, the prudent trapper always gives “old Ephraim”—the prairie sobriquet of the grizzly—a wide berth, and rides on without molesting him. The white hunter reckons a grizzly bear equal in prowess to two Indians; while the Indian himself accounts the destruction of one of these animals a great feat in his life’s history. ”

“ Even to my eyes it was readable, and just as Garey had interpreted it. There were other tracks of wolves on the damp soil, but one had certainly launched himself forward, in a long leap, as though in an effort to fasten himself upon the flanks of some animal. The hoof-mark plainly showed that the steed had slipped as he sprang over the wet grass; and this had tempted the spring of the watchful pursuer.
We hurried on. Our excited feelings hindered us from causing longer than a moment. Both rangers and trappers snared my eagerness, as well as my apprehensions. ”

“ But they are all hunters and their game is the deadly chase in the open or the wild. There are hunters who hate action, who hate to walk and climb and toil and wear themselves out to get a shot. Such men are hunters still, but still not men! There are hunters who have game driven up to them. I heard a story told by an officer whom I believe. In the early days of the war he found himself somewhere on the border between Austria and Germany. He was invited to a hunt by personages of high degree. They motored to a sequestered palace in the forest, and next day motored to a shooting-lodge. ”

“ In silence I continued to scrutinise the camp, but could discover no mode of approaching it secretly or in safety.
As I have said, the adjacent plain, for nearly a thousand yards’ radius, was a smooth grass-covered prairie. Even the grass was short: it would scarcely have sheltered the smallest game—much less afford cover for the body of a man—much less for that of a horse. ”

“ We all read with our eyes an explanation of the renewed gallop.
Directly in front of us, the sward was cut and scored by numerous tracks. Not four, but four hundred hoof-prints were indented in the turf—all of them fresh as the trail we were following—and amidst these the tracks of the steed, becoming intermingled, were lost to our view.
“A drove of wild horses,” pronounced the guides at a glance.
They were the tracks of unshod hoofs, though that would scarcely have proved them wild. An Indian troop might have ridden past without leaving any other sign ”

“ On the top of this crag the Wild Huntsman is said to be frequently seen along with his fire-breathing Wish-hounds, and his horn is heard ringing afar over the moors, and as he chases the yelping of his hounds may be heard. He hunts human souls. Two old ladies who lived at Shaw, near by, assured me they had often heard his horn and the yelping of the pack. A farmer was riding at night over Dartmoor when there came up alongside of him a mysterious hunter with his hounds running before him. ”

“ It was a startling sight on a December day, when the snow was lying many inches deep, to come suddenly on Mercy walking in the middle of the road, her hands filled with green ferns and mosses and vines. There were three different species of ground-pine in these woods, and hepatica and pyrola and wintergreen, and thickets of laurel. What wealth for a lover of wild, out-door things! Each day Mercy bore home new treasures, until the house was almost as green and fragrant as a summer wood. ”

“ They had ravened upon the blood of men and the flesh of horses, and they hungered for more.
That they might succeed in running down the steed, cumbered as he was, was probable enough. Sooner or later, they would overtake him. It might be after a long, long gallop over hill and dale, through swamp and chapparal; but still it was probable those tough, tireless pursuers would overtake him. They would launch themselves upon his flanks ”

“ If it had been my birthday of my eightieth year in Ahwahne, I could not have clung to the valley more fondly. As I looked up to the dark line of firs on either side of the Great Fall, I pictured to myself the form of that six-year-old boy of the Ahwahnechee, who, when the white men entered the valley, was seen climbing, naked, like a wild chamois, on the glistening granite face of the rock-wall, midway between heaven and earth, to escape the enemy. ”

“ The enchanter raised his voice and gave utterance to some wild words in an unknown tongue, at which even his terrible mare trembled. A whirlwind arose, and the devil was in the midst of it. He took the coffin in which lay the terrified witch high into the air, and the crock followed them. The derisive laughter of Pengerswick, and the savage neighing of the horse, were heard above the roar of the winds. ”

“ The wild mustard in Southern California is like that spoken of in the New Testament, in the branches of which the birds of the air may rest. Coming up out of the earth, so slender a stem that dozens can find starting-point in an inch, it darts up, a slender straight shoot, five, ten, twenty feet, with hundreds of fine feathery branches locking and interlocking with all the other hundreds around it, till it is an inextricable network like lace. ”

“ Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind!
But as for me, alas, I may no more;
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,
I am of them that furthest come behind.
Yet may I by no means my wearied mind
Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore
Fainting I follow; I leave off therefore,
Since in a net I seek to hold the wind.
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,
As well as I, may spend his time in vain.
And graven with diamonds in letters plain,
There is written her fair neck round about,
"Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame." ”

“ In all this I entirely agree with the systematist, for I do not think such a group of types differing by one character each, is comparable to most wild groups of species because the difference between wild species is due to a large number of such single differences. The characters that have been accumulated in wild species are of significance in the maintenance of the species, or at least we are led to infer that even though the visible character that we attend to may not itself be important, one at least of the other effects of the factors that represent these characters is significant. ”

“ One may venture the guess that some of the specific and varietal differences that are characteristic of wild types and which at the same time appear to have no survival value, are only by-products of factors whose most important effect is on another part of the organism where their influence is of vital importance. ”

“ A fine field of hunters in their scarlet coats, rushing over forest, heath, fence or stream, on noble steeds, and with a pack of beautiful dogs in full cry, is a very picturesque and animating spectacle.
Through the winter, then, up to the very approach of spring, hunting offers whatever charms it possesses; pheasant, woodcock and snipe shooting, in the woods and by the streams, are in all their glory. It is the time for pursuing all manner of wild fowl, in fens and along the sea-coast ”

“ The Brothers were on the death-trail of Gulo at last; the terrible, dreaded Brothers, who could overtake a full-grown wolf in under thirty minutes on ski, and whose single bullet spelt certain death. Now for it; now for the fight. Now for the great test of the "star" wild outlaw against the "star" human hunters—at last. The reindeer were to be avenged. ”

“ As I have said before, hunting, especially in our eastern states, is not what it was years ago. Almost all of the big game has disappeared, and the fellow who can get a deer or a moose without going a good many weary miles for the game is lucky. Yet in some sections small game is still fairly plentiful, and a bag full of rabbits or wild ducks is much better than nothing. ”