Part 18 (2/2)
One of our men carried my shotgun and we killed half a dozen pheasants on the way back to camp. The birds had come into the open to feed, and small flocks were scattered along the valley every few hundred yards. We saw about one hundred and fifty in less than an hour, besides a few chuckars.
I have never visited any part of China where pheasants were so plentiful as in this region. Had we been hunting birds we could have killed a hundred or more without the slightest difficulty during the time we were looking for pigs. We could not shoot, however, without the certainty of disturbing big game and, consequently, we only killed pheasants when on the way back to camp. During the day the birds kept well up toward the summits of the ridges and only left the cover in the morning and evening.
Our second hunt was very amusing, as well as successful. We met the same party of Chinese hunters early in the morning, and agreed to divide the meat of all the pigs we killed during the day if they would join forces with us. Among them was a tall, fine-looking young fellow, evidently the leader, who was a real hunter--the only one we found in the entire region. He knew instinctively where the pigs were, what they would do, and how to get them.
He led us without a halt along the summit of the mountain into a ravine and up a long slope to the crest of a knifelike ridge. Then he suddenly dropped in the gra.s.s and pointed across a canon to a bare hillside. Two pigs were there in plain sight--one a very large sow. They were fully three hundred yards away and on the edge of a bushy patch toward which they were feeding slowly. Smith left me to hurry to the bottom of the canon where he could have a shot at close range if either one went down the hill, while I waited behind a stone. Before he was halfway down the slope the sow moved toward the patch of cover into which the smaller pig had already disappeared.
It must be then, if I was to have a shot at all. I fired rather hurriedly and registered a clean miss. Both pigs, instead of staying in the cover where they would have been safe, dashed down the open slope toward the bottom of the canon. At my first shot all eight of the Chinese had leaped for the empty rifle sh.e.l.l and were rolling about like a pack of dogs after a bone. One of them struck my leg just as I fired the second time and the bullet went into the air; I delivered a broadside of my choicest Chinese oaths and the man drew off. I sent three shots after the fleeing sow, but she disappeared unhurt.
One sh.e.l.l remained in my rifle, and I saw the other pig running like a scared rabbit in the very bottom of the canon. It was so far away that I could barely see the animal through my sights, but when I fired it turned a complete somersault and lay still; the bullet had caught it squarely in the head.
Meanwhile, Smith was having a lively time with the old sow. He had swung around a corner of rock just in time to meet the pig coming at full speed from the other side not six yards away. He tried to check himself, slipped, and sat down suddenly but managed to fire once, breaking the animal's left foreleg. It disappeared into the brush with Smith after it.
He began an intermittent bombardment which lasted half an hour.
_Bang_, _bang_, _bang_--then silence. _Bang_, _bang_, _bang_--silence again. I wondered what it all meant and finally ran down the bottom of the valley until I saw Smith opposite to me just under the rim of the ravine. He was tearing madly through the brush not far behind the sow. As the animal appeared for an instant on the summit of a rise he dropped on one knee and fired twice. Then, I saw him race over the hill, leaping the bushes like a roebuck. Once he rolled ten feet into a ma.s.s of thorn scrub, but he was up again in an instant, hurdling the brush and fallen logs, his eye on the pig.
It was screamingly funny and I was helpless with laughter. ”Go it, Smith,” I yelled. ”Run him down. Catch him in your hands.” He had no breath to waste in a reply, for just then he leaped a fallen log and I saw the sow charge him viciously. The animal had been lying under a tree, almost done, but still had life enough to damage Smith badly if it had reached him. As the man landed on his feet, he fired again at the pig which was almost on him. The bullet caught the brute in the shoulder at the base of the neck and rolled it over, but it struggled to its feet and ran uncertainly a few steps; then it dropped in a little gully.
By the time I had begun to climb the bill Smith shouted that the pig might charge again, and I kept my rifle ready, but the animal was ”all in.” I circled warily and, creeping up from behind, drove my hunting knife into its heart; even then it struggled to get at me before it rolled over dead.
Smith was streaming blood from a score of scratches, and his clothes were in ribbons, but his face was radiant. ”I'd have chased the blasted pig clear to Peking,” he said. ”All my sh.e.l.ls are gone, but I wasn't going to let him get away. If I hadn't kept that last cartridge he'd have caught me, surely.”
It was fine enthusiasm and, if ever a man deserved his game, Smith deserved that sow. The animal had been shot in half a dozen places; two legs were broken, and at least three of the bullets had reached vital spots.
Still the brute kept on. Any one who thinks pigs are easy to kill ought to try the ones in Shansi! The sow weighed well over three hundred pounds, and it required six men to carry the two pigs into camp. We got no more, although we saw two others, but still we felt that the day had not been ill spent. As long as I live I shall never forget Smith's hurdle race after that old sow.
Although I killed two roebuck, the next day I returned to camp with rage in my heart. Smith and I had separated late in the afternoon, and I was hunting with an old Chinese when we discovered three pigs--a huge boar, a sow, and a shote--crossing an open hill. Crawling on my face, I reached a rock not seventy yards from the animals. At the first shot the boar pitched over the bluff into a tangle of thorns, squealing wildly. My second bullet broke the shoulder of the sow, and I had a mad chase through a patch of scrub, but finally lost her.
When I returned to get the big boar I discovered my Chinese squatted on his haunches in the ravine. He blandly informed me that the pig could not be found. I spent the half hour of remaining daylight burrowing in the thorn scrub without success. I learned later that the native had concealed the dead pig under a ma.s.s of stones and that during the night he and his _confreres_ had carried it away.
Moreover, after we left, they also got the sow which I had wounded.
Although at the time I did not suspect the man's perfidy, nevertheless it was apparent that he had not kept his eyes on the boar as I had told him to do; otherwise the pig could not possibly have escaped.
We had one more day of hunting because Smith had obtained two weeks'
leave. The next morning dawned dark and cloudy with spurts of hail--just the sort of weather in which animals prefer to stay comfortably snuggled under a bush in the thickest cover. Consequently we saw nothing all day except one roebuck, which I killed. It was running at full speed when I fired, and it disappeared over the crest of a hill without a sign of injury. Smith was waiting on the other side, and I wondered why he did not shoot, until we reached the summit and discovered the deer lying dead in the gra.s.s. Smith had seen the buck plunge over the ridge, and just as he was about to fire, it collapsed.
We found that my bullet had completely smashed the heart, yet the animal had run more than one hundred yards. As it fell, one of its antlers had been knocked off and the other was so loose that it dropped in my hand when I lifted the head. This was on December 11.
The other bucks which I had killed still wore their antlers, but probably they would all have been shed before Christmas. The growth takes place during the winter, and the velvet is all off the new antlers by the following May.
On the way back to camp we saw a huge boar standing on an open hillside. Smith and I fired hurriedly and both missed a perfectly easy shot. With one of the Chinese I circled the ridge, while Smith took up the animal's trail. We arrived on the edge of a deep ravine just as the boar appeared in the very bottom. I fired as it rushed through the bushes, and the pig squealed but never hesitated. The second shot struck behind it, but at the third it squealed again and dived into a patch of cover. When we reached the spot we found a great pool of blood and bits of entrails--but no pig. A broad red patch led through the snow, and we followed, expecting at every step to find the animal dead. Instead, the track carried us down the hill, up the bottom of a ravine, and onto a hill bare of snow but thickly covered with oak scrub.
While Smith and I circled ahead to intercept the pig, the Chinese followed the trail. It was almost dark when we went back to the men, who announced that the blood had ceased and that they had lost the track. It seemed incredible; but they had so trampled the trail where it left the snow that we could not find it again in the gloom.
Then Smith and I suspected what we eventually found to be true, viz., that the men had discovered the dead pig and had purposely led us astray. We had no proof, however, and they denied the charge so violently that we began to think our suspicions were unfounded.
We had to leave at daylight next morning in order to reach Peking before Smith's leave expired. Two days after we left, one of my friends arrived at Kao-chia-chuang, where we had first hunted, and reported that the Chinese had brought in all four of the pigs which we had wounded. One of them, probably the boar we lost on the last night, was an enormous animal which the natives said weighed more than five hundred pounds. Of course, this could not have been true, but it probably did reach nearly four hundred pounds.
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