Part 15 (2/2)
”Hampered although he was, he battled it out fiercely--ay, heroically-- as six of our best hounds maimed for life, and one slain outright, testified.
”Heavens! how the fat man scrambled across the fence! he reached the spot, and, far too much excited to reload his piece and quietly blow out the fierce brute's brains, fell to belaboring him about the head with his gun-stock, shouting the while and yelling; so that the din of his tongue, mixed with the snarls and long howls of the mangled savage, and the fierce baying of the dogs, fairly alarmed me, as I said before, at a mile's distance.
”As it chanced, Timothy was on the road close by, with Peac.o.c.k; I caught sight of him, mounted, and spurred on fiercely to the rescue; but when I reached the hill's brow, all was over. Tom, puffing and panting like a grampus in shoal water, covered--garments and face and hands--with lupine gore, had finished his huge enemy, after he had destroyed his gun, with what he called a stick, but what you and I, Frank, should term a fair-sized tree; and with his foot upon the brindled monster's neck was quaffing copious rapture from the neck of a quart bottle--once full, but now well nigh exhausted--of his appropriate and cherished beverage.*
[*The facts and incidents of the lame wolf's death are strictly true, although they were not witnessed by the writer.] Thus fell the last wolf on the Hills of Warwick!
”There, I have finished my yarn, and in good time,” cried Harry, ”for here we are at the bridge, and in five minutes more we shall be at old Tom's door.”
”A right good yarn!” said Forester; ”and right well spun, upon my word.”
”But is it a yarn?” asked A---, ”or is it intended to be the truth?”
”Oh! the truth,” laughed Frank, ”the truth, as much as Archer can tell the truth; embellished, you understand, embellished!”
”The truth, strictly,” answered Harry, quietly--”the truth not embellished. When I tell personal adventures, I am not in the habit of decorating them with falsehood.”
”I had no idea,” responded the Commodore, ”that there had been any wolves here so recently.”
”There are wolves here now,” said Archer, ”though they are scarce and wary. It was but last year that I rode down over the back-bone of the mountain, on the Pompton road, in the nighttime, and that on the third of July, and one fellow followed me along the road till I got quite down into the cultivated country.”
”The devil he did!”
”How did you know he was following you?” exclaimed Frank and the Commodore, almost in a breath.
”Did you see him?”
”Not I--but I heard him howl half a dozen times, and each time nearer than before. When I got out of the hills he was not six hundred yards behind me.”
”Pleasant, that! Were you armed? What did you do?”
”It was not really so unpleasant, after all--for I knew that he would not attack me at that season of the year. I had my pistols in my holsters; and for the rest, I jogged steadily along, taking care to keep my nag in good wind for a spirt, if it should be needed. I knew that for three or four miles I could outrun him, if it should come to the worst, though in the end a wolf can run down the fastest horse; and, as every mile brought me nearer to the settlement, I did not care much about it.
Had it been winter, when the brutes are hard pressed for food, and the deep snows are against a horse's speed, it would be a very different thing. Hurrah! here we are! Hurrah! fat Tom! ahoy! a-ho-oy!”
THE SUPPER PARTY
Blithe, loud and hearty was the welcome of fat Tom, when by the clear view halloa with which Harry drove up to the door at a spanking trot, the horses stopping willingly at the high well-known stoop, he learned who were these his nocturnal visitors. There was a slight tinge of frostiness in the evening air, and a bright blazing fire filled the whole bar-room with a cheerful merry light, and cast a long stream of red l.u.s.tre from the tall windows, and half-open doorway, but in an instant all that escaped from the last mentioned aperture was totally obstructed, as if the door had been pushed to, by the huge body of mine host.
”Why, darn it,” he exclaimed, ”if that beant Archer! and a hull grist of boys he's brought along with him, too, any how. How are you, Harry, who've you got along? It's so etarnal thunderin' dark as I carnt see 'em no how!”
”Frank and the Commodore, that's all,” Archer replied, ”and how are you, old Corporation?”
”Oh! oh! I'm most darned glad as you've brought A---; you might have left that other critter to home, though, jest as well--we doosn't want him blowin' out his little hide here; lazin' about, and doin' nothin'
day nor night but eat and grumble; and drink, and drink, as if he'd got a meal-sack in his little guts. Why, Timothy, how be you?” he concluded, smiting him on the back a downright blow, that would have almost felled an ox, as he was getting out the baggage.
”Doant thee noo, Measter Draa,” expostulated Tim, ”behaave thyself, man, or Ay'se give thee soomat thou woant loike, I'm thinking. Noo! send oot yan o' t' nagers, joost to stand till t' nags till Ay lift oot t'
boxes!”
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