Читать книгу Memory's Storehouse Unlocked, True Stories. Pioneer Days In Wetmore and Northeast Kansas онлайн

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It was, therefore, in considerable blitheness of spirit that on one fine October day my father and I “hoofed it” five miles up Spring creek to the Wolfley timber. We were going to a choice and restricted hunting grounds, on invitation of the owner—a favor granted no one else.

My father shot a squirrel. The report of his gun, heard by the owner of the place who was in the timber gathering down-wood—sometimes in the old days called squaw wood — brought a vigorous protest from a half-hidden spot across the creek.

“Get out!” the angry voice shouted.

My father was not disturbed. Not then. He even laughed a little. And I fear his voice was charged with rather too much mirth when he called back across the stream, “Why, John, don’t you know me?”

Like a flash of lightning came back the ultimatum, “I don’t care if you are General Grant, you can’t hunt in my timber!” So that was that—a sorry situation for two old friends to impose upon themselves.

My father told me we would leave the Wolfley timber by the shortest route. Leaving the dead squirrel on the ground where it had fallen, he started off at once with the stride of one bent upon urgent enterprise, muttering incoherent but indubitably uncomplimentary things about his late friend. It is such breaches of friendship, as this seemed to be, that cause men to talk to themselves.