JACK MASON'S WAGER

JACK MASON'S WAGER

HE WON IT IN GREAT STYLE WITHOUT "TURNING A HAIR."

Unique Haunting Escapade of a Famous Old Time Virginia Sportsman. Bird Shooting That Opened a Grim Old Scotchman's Eyes.

From all accounts Jack Mason in his youth was the wildest rattling young blade in the country. One of his sporting escapades is a household tradition down in old Quantico to this day, says Alexander Hunter in Outing.

There was a large plantation in the section owned and worked  by a Scotchman, an elderly man, who employed no overseer, but filled the place himself. He was the typical stern, bigoted Scotch Covenanter as drawn by the immortal pen of the Wizard of the North. He was a fanatic in all things and was utterly out of place among the pleasure loving Virginia gentry. It was the irrepressible antipathy of the Cavalier and Puritan - the rising of the bristles of the boar at the approach of the staghounds. He herded by himself, and they left him severely alone. The canny Scot was himself no sportsman, nor would he allow any of the neighbors to fire a gun on his place.

Now it happened there was a large ball near by, with Jack Mason in attendance, of course, and during the night the young planters discussed the chances of autumn shooting and deplored the failure of all their efforts to be allowed to hunt on the Scotchman's preserves. Jack Mason offered to bet his favorite horse against any of equal value that he would shoot over that preserve on the morrow and with the full and free consent of the owner. He was asked if he knew him personally or had unknown means of winning his favor.

He answered in the negative and added he had never even met the Scot in his life. The wager was closed there and then.

The next morning as the old Covenanter was walking up and down the porch enjoying his after breakfast pipe a strange apparition advanced up the gravel walk and took off his three cornered hat and made him a sweeping bow, The Scot winked his eyes and looked again. He saw a slender, effeminate looking fellow some twenty-five years old who seemed literally to have stepped from the ballroom. His ruffled shirt front was adorned with a diamond, mother of pearl buttons gleamed on his sky blue coat, and his satin small clothes glistened in the sunshine. A pair of silk stockings were gartered by a love knot bow of blue ribbon, and his dancing pumps were decorated by a jeweled buckle. He carried a gun in one hand, and two pointer dogs trooped at his heels.

"Well, what do you want?" asked the planter.

In a mincing voice the intruder asked his gracious permission to shoot a few birds, saying he had been dancing all night at Warwick hall and needed a little morning exercise.

The Scot gazed at him with the same feeling perhaps his stalwart mountain bred ancestor had at the perfumed dainty fops of Charles II.'s court. He was about to utter a curt and positive refusal when his grim Scotch humor got the better of him. He came near hilarious laughter as he saw the delicately clothed creature standing so clean, jaunty and nice and then pictured him returning from the hunt, his costly attire in rags, his tender limbs scratched, his morning glory all gone. So he smiled in his beard and asked him if he intended to hunt just as he was dressed. He was answered in the affirmative. So he gave his assent that his unknown guest for that one day might shoot all he pleased, and then he started off for the low grounds to attend to the cornshucking.

A short time after his negro manager came running up to him and said:

"Marster, there won't be a bird left on dis here place. De man's a debbil, and the dogs is the debbil, and the gun is a debbil."

Dropping his work, the owner hurried to the scene, and he opened his eyes very wie indeed at what he saw. In the front of the house was a stubble field of several hundred acres that had been harvested in wheat the same year. It was as level as a table and an ideal feeding place for the quail. For many years they had whistled, mated and fed around the place all undisturbed until they became almost as tame as barnyard fowls. The owner saw the dogs stand motionless, saw the dandy sportsman pick his way gently where they were, saw a few birds rise and two puffs of smoke, followed by a nearly simultaneous report. Two birds dropped, then the dogs retrieved, and the game was handed to a nondescript negro lad whom the sportsman had picked up somewhere, who had tied the birds to a string and wrapped them around his body until he was half hidden from view.

The gun was loaded and capped inside of a minute. The performance was repeated. The man never hurried, the dogs, beautifully trained, never bungled, the gun never missed, and the dandy had, in sporting parlance, never "turned a hair." The stockings were a little colored by the chickweed, but he was ready to lead the minuet that moment.

The Scotchman at first was furiously angry, bit as he saw the matchless work of the trinity of destructive agents - man, gun, dog - so prefectly blened into one, and beheld in the affected coxcomb the same metal which under Rupert had again and again broken the steel fronted squares of Cromwell's Ironsides, he advanced and asked his name, and when it was give he answered, "I might have known it."

And that's how Jack Mason won his bet.