Buck Canon’s marksmanship was heralded, but Rabe was his equal at age sixteen. Hunts for dove and quail elevated the young man’s snap shot to deadly accuracy.
Their favorite hunt was for wild turkey, an elusive and crafty bird. Alabama enjoyed one of the largest concentrations of the bird Ben Franklin wanted for America’s national symbol.
The domestic turkey is so stupid it will tilt back its head during a rainstorm, open its beak and drown. A wild turkey is its opposite, so cunning that an accomplished outdoorsman might never see one in a state with a wild turkey population of two hundred fifty thousand.
Every turkey hunter has at least one story of a “character turkey” that tricked him, using what seems like supernatural intelligence. These stories are for the most part true. Eagle likened turkey hunting to a game of chess. There are moves and countermoves, thrusts and parries. Stalking a wild turkey is more than just hunting a prey outdoors.
The expert hunter must be able to move through dawn’s half-light without snapping a twig. His patience must be such that he can sit immobile for hours. He must be a dead shot, for one shot is all anyone gets. To be an expert turkey hunter, one must be expert at many things.
All this Mountain Eagle explained to Canon. One of the initiation rites into the Eagle’s band of Cherokees was to catch a wild turkey with bare hands. It took Canon two months to accomplish the feat. By the time he was nineteen, Canon enjoyed a statewide reputation among turkey hunters. At twenty-three, his fame had reached regional status. And it was that fame that brought about Canon’s meeting with Professor Tom Jackson.
A letter for Canon arrived on a bleak Monday afternoon in the winter of 1860. The weather, which had been low and threatening for several days, unleashed itself the previous night. Winds lashed and moaned, filling the gutters with debris and terrifying the house servants. Finally the storm passed, but the skies were still gray and black, and occasional showers of sleet pelted down.
Canon’s mood, as he received the letter, matched the weather. He puzzled over the return address: Major Tom Jackson, Virginia Military Institute, Lexington. The name rang no bells, yet Canon felt somehow hesitant to open the letter. It felt heavy to him, much heavier than it was possible for so thin an envelope to be. There is portent here, he thought.
Seconds later, Canon was laughing at his own timidity. It was as straightforward and innocuous a note as he had ever received.
Dear Mr. Canon:
I make so bold as to write to ask you, whom I have yet to meet, a favor. My sole justification in doing so is that I have it on good authority that you and I are afflicted by the same pernicious disease, namely, the American Wild Turkey.
We also share a mutual friend, whose name I shall not divulge for fear of getting him in trouble with you. It is from him I learned your address.
He tells me you are the perfect turkey stalker and often succeed where others fail. That is why I am inviting you to visit me in Virginia. There is a veritable demon of a gobbler here that has proved totally beyond me. I enjoyed a reputation similar to yours until I ran across Old Scratch. Both my reputation and mind are now largely gone.
If you have any plans to be in Virginia in the near future, please plan to spend a few days with me and we shall pursue this demon. All I can promise you is a good hunt, a decent larder and an excellent cook.
Our friend also told me you are a student of military history. If this is so, we have more common ground as I am a professor here at Virginia Military Institute. We can talk turkey and also discuss the noble profession of making war.
Please come if you can.
Sincerely,
Major Tom Jackson (retired)
Canon smiled again at his misapprehension. He looked at the gray day outside and was suddenly bored with the sameness of his life. Though pleasant, the distractions he normally enjoyed were beginning to pale. Even the finest of routines, he decided, can become jaded.
The second reading of the letter decided him. A turkey that roamed in winter, while not rare, was unusual. And Canon for some time had wanted to visit the South’s new war college. War both fascinated and repelled him. He was sick of hearing about the Confederacy, sick of hearing about the Union. But mostly he was sick of being trapped indoors. He rang for pen and paper. A week later he was on a train to Virginia.
The train ride from Montgomery to Virginia was grand. Flat from Montgomery to Atlanta, the dirt rich and red, the land begins to give way to the loamy soil of the Appalachian chain.
Gentle hills roll higher and higher until, near the North Carolina border, peaks loom in the distance. Past that point, the skyline is dominated by the beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Canon had made the run before, in spring and in the fall. Each trip seemed to overshadow the previous. Spring brought myriad shades of green from mountain glades, offset by high meadows with varicolored wildflowers. In autumn, the slopes fairly shouted with a cacophony of color, flaming and bursting within the brilliance of dying leaves.
But Canon had never seen the Blue Ridge in winter. He realized that spring’s beauty and autumn’s majesty had hidden, or at least disguised, the mighty grandeur of forbidding mountain peaks. Now, denuded, as if a prize fighter had thrown off his velvet cape, the mountains were barren, stark and awesome. They awaited their covering of snow.
Canon drowsed. But he finally gave up the notion of real, restful slumber. The pullman chamber beds were not adequate for his frame, and the hard passenger car benches were almost as cramping.
The bit of thin sleep Canon managed was interspersed with nightmare images and alarms, staccato glimpses of gray men mingling wildly with blue men, of shouting and the screams of dying horses.
Shortly before dawn, the conductor announced the Lexington stop. Canon gathered his gear and made arrangements for the unloading of his luggage, then returned to his seat.
Through the window, as the train slowed, he could see a few blurred lights twinkling through night and mist. The train stopped. Canon stepped out into the dark and fog.
3
A phantom awaited Canon on the depot platform. At least it seemed a phantom, tall and shadowy in the cold December mist. Canon’s sense of foreboding increased as the shadow moved toward him.
“Hello, Mr. Canon,” said the man, extending a welcoming hand, “welcome to the halls of war.”
Canon thought the remark unusual but appropriate. The man taught at a military college and, after all, they were meeting to make war, if only on a turkey. They made polite conversation as they walked toward a line of carriages for hire.
The professor was average size, average complexion, and had thinning dark brown hair. His booted feet were huge, but his hands small, almost girlish. Canon’s hand enclosed the other man’s like a cocoon. Jackson’s broad, full face carried a brush beard. Above the beard projected a Roman nose, above the nose a high domed forehead, between them a pair of pale blue eyes.
The voice was a teacher’s voice, rather high pitched but not loud, and firm in tone and timbre. Modulated. They climbed into the closed gig as a porterloaded Canon’s bags and hunting gear. The driver spoke up his horse. Gauzy outlines of Lexington buildings were visible through the thinning fog as they rolled toward the VMI campus. The professor, for Canon could think of him in no other terms, gave a brief background of town and college as they bumped along.
Canon’s apprehensions vanished with the fog. There appeared nothing unusual about this man. He was the epitome of a scholarly Southern gentleman and most likely a very ordinary fellow.
Canon was beginning to silently chide himself for his wild imaginings when the professor