The Stag Rider

== THE STAG RIDER ==
=== By Steen Steensen Blicher ===
Translated from the Danish by Hanna Astrup Larsen and Published in Twelve stories as Røverstuen, 1827]
 The islands of Denmark wear such a charming, friendly, peaceful aspect that when we try to imagine their origin, our thoughts are never carried back to any violent convulsion of nature; they do not seem to have been cast up by earthquakes or furrowed by mighty floods, but rather to have risen gently from the falling waters of the sea. The plains are level and wide; the hills are few, small, and gently rounded. No steep bluffs, no deep hollows remind us of the labor pangs of the earth. The forests do not cling wildly to sky-high mountains, but range themselves as hedgerows around the fruitful fields. The brooks do not dash down as frothing waterfalls through deep, dark clefts, but glide along, clear and tranquil, between reeds and bushes.
When we leave the lovely island of Fyn and sail to Jutland, we feel at first as if we had only crossed a river and can hardly convince ourselves that we are now on the mainland, so nearly related to the islands is the countenance of the peninsula. But the farther inland we get the more the landscape changes: the valleys become deeper, the hills more precipitous; the forests look older and more decrepit; many a rush-grown bog, many a bit of ground covered with low heather, great rocks on the high backs of the fields--all testify to a lower state of culture and a smaller population. Narrow roads with deep ruts separated by high ridges indicate less travel and less intercourse between the inhabitants. The houses of the people become poorer and poorer, lower and lower, the farther we go, as if they were ducking before the violent onslaught of the west wind. As the moors become larger and more frequent, the churches and villages are fewer and farther apart. On the farms the light frames for drying hay give way to stacks of black peat and the orchards to cabbage plots. Great bogs covered with heather, carelessly and wastefully used, proclaim: here are plenty of them. No hedges, no rows of willows make division between man and man; one might think that all was held in common.
When at last we reach the backbone of Jutland, immense flat plains are spread out before our eyes; at first they are strewn with grave-mounds, but gradually the number is lessened, which would indicate that this region was never cultivated in olden times. Not without reason we imagine that this high back of land was the first part of the peninsula to appear--lifting itself up from the ocean, tumbling the waters down on either side--and that waves rolling down have washed up hills and hollowed out valleys. In the eastern part of this heather-grown plain we occasionally encounter groups of low, shrubby oaks, which serve the wayfarer as a compass, for the crowns of the trees are all bent toward the east. Otherwise we see but few touches of green on the great heather-clad slopes; an occasional patch of green grass or a young aspen with its quivering leaves surprises us into asking: how did you come here? If a brook or a river runs through the heath, no strip of meadow or bushy growth proclaims its presence; deep down between hollowed banks it winds secretly and with speed, as if it were hurrying to get out of the desert.
Across such a brook a young, well-dressed man was riding one fine autumn day. He was headed for a small rye field which had been cultivated by turning the crust and burning it to ashes. The owner and his family were just engaged in reaping it, when the rider approached and asked the way to the manor of Aunsbjerg. After the peasant had answered the question with another, as to where the traveller came from, and had told him what he already knew, namely that he had lost his way, he called a boy who was stacking the sheaves and told him to show the traveller the road. But before the boy could obey the order, an apparition appeared that for the moment held both rider and harvesters spellbound. From the top of the nearest heather-clad hill there dashed down toward them, with the velocity of a storm, a stag with a man on its back. The man--who was tall and burly and dressed in brown from top to toe--was caught between the antlers of the royal stag, which were thrown far back after the manner of these animals when they are running at full speed. The strange rider had probably lost his hat during the ride, for his long black hair flew out from the back of his head like the mane of a galloping horse. His hand was in constant motion trying to stick a knife into the neck of the stag, but the mad pace prevented him from taking aim. When the stag rider came near enough to the amazed beholders--which did not take long--he was recognized by the peasant, who called out,
"Hey, Mads, where are you going?"
"The deer and the devil know!" replied Mads, but before the answer was out of his mouth he was so far away that the last word hardly reached the ears of the questioner. In a few minutes both stag and man were gone.
"Who was that?" asked the stranger without turning his eyes from the spot where the centaur had disappeared.
"Oh," said the peasant, "he's a poor fellow who's called Mads Hansen, or Black Mads; he has a little house on the other side of the river. I guess food is pretty scarce there--he has a lot of kids--so he gets along as best he can. He comes over on this side once in a while and takes a deer--but today it looks as if the deer had taken him--if it was a real deer," he added thoughtfully. "God deliver us from evil! Mads is a reckless chap--but still I don't know anything but what's honest and decent about him. He shoots a bit of a deer once in a while, but what of it? There are plenty of them--too many, if one might say so. You can see for yourself how they've nibbled the ears off my rye. But, halloo! There's Niels Gamekeeper. See if you can catch Black Mads! Today he's better mounted than you."
As he spoke, a hunter came riding at a long, rapid trot from the same direction where they had first caught sight of the stag rider.
"Have you seen Black Mads?" he cried out to them from a distance.
"We saw someone riding a deer, but we couldn't make out whether he was black or white, for he went so fast it was all we could do to keep our eyes on him," replied the peasant.
"Devil take him!" said the hunter, as he reined in his horse to allow it to breathe a moment. "I saw him up in Haverdale, where he was sneaking 'round after a stag. I kept behind a hill so's not to disturb him. He fired, the stag fell down, and Mads jumped on the back of him to kill him. But when the stag felt the knife, he got up, caught Mads between his antlers, and halloo! I got his gun, but I'd rather have had himself."
With these words he started his horse at a trot and hurried after the poacher, one gun on his pommel and the other slung over his back in a strap.
The traveller was going in about the same direction and started off with his guide as fast as the boy could run after divesting himself of his wooden shoes. When they had gone a good mile, and had gained the top of a hill that sloped down to the stream, they caught sight of both riders. The first had come to the end of his mad ride. The stag had fallen dead in the river at a place where the water was very low. Its slayer was still standing astride it, trying to free himself from the branches of the animal's horns which had pierced his clothes. Just as he had gotten loose and sprung ashore, the gamekeeper--who had lost sight of him--came dashing past our traveller, holding the reins with one hand and the gun with the other. A few yards from the unlucky stag rider he stopped his horse and with the comforting words, "I'll be the death of you, you son of a bitch!" lifted his gun to his cheek.
"Wait, wait!" cried the culprit. "Hold on a bit, Niels! What's your hurry? Let's talk it over."
"No more talking," said the enraged hunter. "Now I've caught you red-handed."
"Oh, just wait a little bit!" repeated the other. "Just let me say an Our Father!"
"So you're going to pray, are you?" said Niels, as he lowered his gun slightly from his cheek. "You won't get to heaven anyway."
"Then it'll be your fault, Niels," said the other, "when you want to kill me right in the midst of my sins."
"Serves you right, you stag thief," cried Niels, once more laying his cheek against the butt end of the gun.
"Hey, hey!" cried Mads again, "wait just a wee bit! If you shoot me now, then--oh, do take that gun from your eye! I can't stand to have anybody pointin' at me with a loaded gun." Niels lifted his head once more. "If you shoot me, you'll be broken on the wheel yourself."
"The devil I will!" replied the gamekeeper with a forced laugh.
"Niels, Niels!" cried the other. "Here are witnesses. But, listen, I'm goin to give you another piece of advice. Now you've got me sure enough; I can't get away from you. Why don't you take me up to the house? Then the squire can do what he pleases with me. That way we'll both keep our lives and you'll get a good big reward besides."
At that moment the traveller rode up, and called to the gamekeeper, "For God's sake, my friend, don't do anything rash, but hearken to what the man says."
"The man's a scoundrel," said the gamekeeper, but nevertheless uncocked his gun and laid it down on the pommel. "But since the strange gentleman begs for him, I'll spare his life. But you're crazy, Mads," he said turning to the poacher, "for now you'll be pushing the wheelbarrow all your life. If you'd let me shoot you, there would have been an end of it. Well, come along then, you scoundrel, and keep next to me. Shake your legs now!" With that they started out, and the traveller, who was also going to Aunsbjerg, joined them.
They went on for a while without speaking a word, except that the gamekeeper now and then broke the silence with a grunt or an oath or a word of abuse. At last the poacher began talking along a new and less passionate tack.
"Don't you think it's rather hard on me to have to wade in this tall heather?" he said.
"You're used to it, you dog," replied Niels.
"You might let me sit up behind you," said the poacher with a sly glance, but in a tone which showed that he did not expect his appeal to be favorably received.
"Ho, ho!" replied the gamekeeper with a guffaw. "You've ridden enough for today. Now you can stir your long stumps."
"Now then, Niels Gamekeeper," murmured the other. "Don't take on so. You're so darn contrairy today."
Niels Gamekeeper made no reply to this, but whistled a tune while he took his tobacco pouch and pipe from his game-bag. When he had filled his pipe, he was going to light it, but the tinder wouldn't catch fire.
"I'll have to help you," said Mads, and without waiting for an answer, he struck fire with his own tinder, blew on it, and handed it to the gamekeeper, but while Niels received it, Mads caught the butt end of the gun which was lying across the pommel, tore it out of the strap with a mighty pull, and leaped three paces backward in the heather. It was all done with a swiftness which one would hardly have believed the heavy and rather elderly poacher to be capable of.
"Now it's my turn," he said. "Don't you think I might smash you like a toadstool, my dear Niels? But you were reasonable before, and that's your good luck now."
The poor gamekeeper, pale and trembling with rage, looked at his enemy without being able to say a single word.
"A little while ago," said Mads, "you were raging so that anybody else couldn't get in a word, but if I hadn't heard then how you used your mouth, I might be thinking you'd left it home at Aunsbjerg. Light your pipe, or the tinder will go out--you're looking at my tinder box--I guess you don't think it was a good exchange you made. Sure, this is better"--he patted the butt end of the gun--"but I'll give it back to you if you'll let me have mine." Niels reached over his head, took the poacher's gun and gave it to him with one hand, at the same time as he held out the other to receive his own.
"Wait a bit," said Mads. "First you must promise me--but never mind, you won't keep any promise anyway; but if some day you should hear something pop out on the heath, then don't get mad, but think of today and Renard Foxtail."
He turned to the traveller. "Is your horse used to shootin'?"
"Shoot away!" said the stranger.
Mads held the gamekeeper's gun like a pistol with one hand and fired up in the air.
"It sounds just like hitting a door with a clay pot," he said.
Then he took out the flint and gave the gun to his opponent, saying, "Here's your shooter. It won't hurt anybody now. Good-bye, and thanks for today!" So saying, he slung his own gun over his back and walked off in the direction where he had left the stag.
The gamekeeper, whose tongue seemed to have been bound by some magic power, now let loose his pent up rage in a stream of oaths and curses, beginning, "Now may the devil," etc., etc.
It is unfortunate for you as for me, dear reader, that my Muse is not genuinely humorous, for if she had been, I should have had the best opportunity here to embellish my story with the most forceful oaths, compared to which those that enliven our comedy stage would sound like the yapping of a lap dog against the roaring of a lion. But my Muse has never been able to understand the inner meaning of conversation at Gammel Strand; therefore you will have to fill out _ad libitum_ the numerous lapses in the conversation of Niels Gamekeeper and other geniuses of his kind. I will simply relate--though with all proper reservations regarding the said Niels Gamekeeper's legal right to the devil and his kingdom--the further conversation between him and the stranger on their way to Aunsbjerg.
The latter, whose sympathy had turned from the escaped poacher to the almost despairing gamekeeper, tried to console him as best he could.
But you have really lost nothing," he said at last, "except the miserable pleasure of ruining a man and his whole family--"
"Lost nothing!" exclaimed the gamekeeper. "That's all you know about it. Lost nothing! As sure as I'm a sinner, that dog has spoiled my good gun."
"How so?" said the traveller. "Spoiled your gun? Load it and put in another flint."
"Shucks!" said Niels with an angry laugh. "It'll shoot neither hare nor deer after this. It's bewitched, I tell you, and only one thing can help--ah, there's one sunning itself in the wheel rut--he won't eat any more young larks today."
With these words he stopped his horse, put a flint in the gun, cocked it, and jumped down. The stranger, who was quite uninitiated in the science of hunting and knew neither its terminology nor its magic, also stopped in order to see what the green-coat would do. Dragging his horse along, he advanced a few steps, and with the barrel of his gun poked at something lying in the road. The stranger now saw that it was a viper.
"In with you!" said the gamekeeper, prodding it with his gun. At last he got its head into the barrel, held the gun up and shook it until the snake was entirely inside the barrel. Thereupon he fired off the gun with its strange wadding, not a single particle of which remained. "If that doesn't help," he said, "then no one can cure it except Mads or Renard Foxtail."
The stranger smiled a bit skeptically both at the witchcraft and the curious way in which the spell was broken, but having already made the acquaintance of one practitioner of the black art, he wished to learn something about the other, who bore such an unusual and meaningful name. In reply to his questions, the gamekeeper, as he loaded his gun, told the following:
"Renard Foxtail--as they call him, because he can lure all the foxes in the country to come to him--he's ten times worse than Black Mads. He can make himself proof against both lead and silver buttons--the son of a bitch. Once I and the squire came upon him down in the valley there standing over a deer he'd just shot and was skinning. We rode right up to him, and he didn't see us till we were within twenty paces of him. But do you s'pose Renard was scared? He just looked 'round at us and went right on with the deer. 'Now we've got you,' said the squire. 'Niels, let him have it!  I'll answer for everything.' I gave him a load of slug right in his broad back, but he didn't mind it any more than if it had been a popgun.  The fellow just turned his face to us for a minute and went right on with his skinning. Then the squire himself fired--and it was just the same. He was just cutting the skin from the head of the deer, and not till he had rolled it up did he pick up his little rifle, which was lying on the ground, looked at us, and said, 'Now I guess it's my turn, and if you don't get away from here, I'll try if I can't shoot a hole in one of you.' That's the kind of fellow Renard Foxtail is."
After this tale, which is just as strange but more true than many which we import from abroad, the travellers continued on their way to Aunsbjerg.
Category:Blicher
Category:Published