run, but Valentin cut it with his knife as it went by just the same. Francine went after it, yelping now and then to let us know where she was, and we listened for her and tried to follow the blood trail the pig had left.
Pretty soon Valentin stopped me and pointed. "In there." It was thick cane, but I listened for a minute and he was right. I could hear Francine growling and a
click-click
noise I did not understand back then. When I had reloaded, priming the pan and all that, I went in with the safety catch off, trying to keep the muzzle down all the time and reminding myself that if I shot his dog, Valentin would probably go for me with his knife.
Francine was keeping the pig busy, dodging the pig's short rushes and trying to get behind it. When I fired, I was so close I could almost touch the pig with the end of the barrel.
I do not think I have ever been more aware of the delay between the time I pulled the trigger and the shot than I was right then. It is only a little pieceof a second, but that was when I began to understand that little piece of time is the key to good shooting. A man who thinks his gun is going to fire when he pulls the trigger is going to miss. Pretty soon I learned to wait for the hammer to fall, for the powder in the pan to flash, and for the gun to fire. It is fast, sure. But it is during that quarter second or so that the man who pulls the trigger has to have his sights right where he wants the bullet to go. When I had trained myself to do that every time I was a good shot.
So I was not, but I was lucky with the pig. I was trying to hit its shoulder. My idea was that if I could break something in there, the pig could not run. I missed the shoulder but I just about hit the heart, and the pig went down. It did not die, but lay there shaking until Valentin stabbed its throat.
We pulled it out of the canebrake then and butchered it. I had my dagger, but I did not know how to butcher. Valentin did and worked five times faster. We gutted it, and gave Francine the heart and the liver, plus whatever else we threw away that she wanted. We cut off the head, too, cut off all four feet and skinned what was left. Then we used strips of pigskin to tie the rest to a sapling we could carry on our shoulders. I got my bullet back, and while we were drying the meat, I held it on a rock and tapped it with the little flintknapping hammer in my pouch until it was round again.
Before I did that, we built a fire. Valentin told me that making fire was the hardest part of living in the rain forest like he did. He had to make a fire by scraping the back of his knife with the right kind of a rock to make sparks. He tried to save fire when he had one, but usually it did not work—it was just ashes and charcoal by the time he needed it again. Since I was there, we made ours by putting a little priming powder on a piece of tinder and snapping the lock of my musket.
We roasted meat and ate, and Valentin showed me how to rub pig fat on the places the mosquitoes like best to keep them off. It was messy and got to smelling bad, but you had to do it or they would eat you alive. Even with a lot of pig fat on I still got bitten, but nowhere near as much.
After that, he taught me how to build a rack of green sticks so we could smoke the rest of the meat. Boucaner is what the French say. After that, we had to keep the fire going without getting it too high. That was pretty tough, because pig fat kept running down and burning, which meant that the hotter the fire was already, the hotter it got. We had to keep pulling it apart with sticks and pushing it back together.
We had time to talk just the same. It was in French and I do not remember Valentin's exact words, but I asked him how he got where we were.
"I was a servant on a big farm in Languedoc. I signed a paper, so the company would take me across the ocean. I was to serve three years, then I would be free. I meant to claim land and farm it for myself.
"When I
Pretty soon Valentin stopped me and pointed. "In there." It was thick cane, but I listened for a minute and he was right. I could hear Francine growling and a
click-click
noise I did not understand back then. When I had reloaded, priming the pan and all that, I went in with the safety catch off, trying to keep the muzzle down all the time and reminding myself that if I shot his dog, Valentin would probably go for me with his knife.
Francine was keeping the pig busy, dodging the pig's short rushes and trying to get behind it. When I fired, I was so close I could almost touch the pig with the end of the barrel.
I do not think I have ever been more aware of the delay between the time I pulled the trigger and the shot than I was right then. It is only a little pieceof a second, but that was when I began to understand that little piece of time is the key to good shooting. A man who thinks his gun is going to fire when he pulls the trigger is going to miss. Pretty soon I learned to wait for the hammer to fall, for the powder in the pan to flash, and for the gun to fire. It is fast, sure. But it is during that quarter second or so that the man who pulls the trigger has to have his sights right where he wants the bullet to go. When I had trained myself to do that every time I was a good shot.
So I was not, but I was lucky with the pig. I was trying to hit its shoulder. My idea was that if I could break something in there, the pig could not run. I missed the shoulder but I just about hit the heart, and the pig went down. It did not die, but lay there shaking until Valentin stabbed its throat.
We pulled it out of the canebrake then and butchered it. I had my dagger, but I did not know how to butcher. Valentin did and worked five times faster. We gutted it, and gave Francine the heart and the liver, plus whatever else we threw away that she wanted. We cut off the head, too, cut off all four feet and skinned what was left. Then we used strips of pigskin to tie the rest to a sapling we could carry on our shoulders. I got my bullet back, and while we were drying the meat, I held it on a rock and tapped it with the little flintknapping hammer in my pouch until it was round again.
Before I did that, we built a fire. Valentin told me that making fire was the hardest part of living in the rain forest like he did. He had to make a fire by scraping the back of his knife with the right kind of a rock to make sparks. He tried to save fire when he had one, but usually it did not work—it was just ashes and charcoal by the time he needed it again. Since I was there, we made ours by putting a little priming powder on a piece of tinder and snapping the lock of my musket.
We roasted meat and ate, and Valentin showed me how to rub pig fat on the places the mosquitoes like best to keep them off. It was messy and got to smelling bad, but you had to do it or they would eat you alive. Even with a lot of pig fat on I still got bitten, but nowhere near as much.
After that, he taught me how to build a rack of green sticks so we could smoke the rest of the meat. Boucaner is what the French say. After that, we had to keep the fire going without getting it too high. That was pretty tough, because pig fat kept running down and burning, which meant that the hotter the fire was already, the hotter it got. We had to keep pulling it apart with sticks and pushing it back together.
We had time to talk just the same. It was in French and I do not remember Valentin's exact words, but I asked him how he got where we were.
"I was a servant on a big farm in Languedoc. I signed a paper, so the company would take me across the ocean. I was to serve three years, then I would be free. I meant to claim land and farm it for myself.
"When I
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