Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967)

silence then “well, I’ve been all over the world & seen lots of things, but I never say anything like this before, this beats them all, and they drove on. Late in the afternoon I heard a shot from the woods to the north. Two deer were zigzagging madly across the field in my direction. One more shot but they came up. As they neared me, I saw they were a doe & a fawn. The doe, leading, had a bright red stain on her side & she was obviously in an agony of physical pain & fear. They passed about 20 feet from me. She managed to leap the barbed wire fence altho one leg swiped the wire, & they crossed the road & disappeared over a knoll into a ravine. I was sick with horror & rage; I felt I would like to beat the hunter with a club; but when he came up & asked what direction they took, I told him & merely said “You’d better find that doe & finish her.” After about five (!) minutes he returned saying he had lost track. “The foxes will get her I guess”—He bragged that he had already gotten 6 deer (two is the legal limit). The day was getting spoiled. A beautiful day of wind and sunlight and great sweeping clouds—the poetry was gone. I drove eastward in the dusk to Pike then returned & parking by the road on a rise of land, I ate my supper. Fine twilight effects in the western sky.Homeward by 362 &79 to E. Aurora. Below E.A. stopped a moment to look at the sky—great jagged openings in the clouds, star—studded—; ; ; ; ________Home, the sketch had good points but did not seem quite right all over. H & M in for awhile [sic].