First, find a good, flat stone, about a span high, and wide enough to cover half a sheet of newspaper. You can’t do it on a windy day, mind, because the wind will blow away the little pile of pepper that, among the tangle of headlines and the tiny italic and roman type, will form the trigger of this particular rifle. Now the hare, as everyone knows, is a curious creature, What, you mean even more than the cat, Oh, there’s no comparison, the cat isn’t interested in what’s going on in the world, he simply doesn’t care, whereas if a hare sees a newspaper lying on a path, he’ll immediately go over to find out the latest news, so much so that some hunters have come up with a game plan, they stand behind a hedge and, when the hare approaches to read the news, bang, they shoot him, the trouble is that the newspaper gets completely shredded by the lead shot and you have to buy yourself another one, some hunters have been seen with their cartridge belts stuffed with newspapers, it’s not right, But why the pepper, Ah, yes, the pepper, that’s the secret ingredient, but it’s essential to choose a windless day, because if you were to leave a newspaper on the path, the wind would catch it and send it flying, and the hare wouldn’t be interested, because he likes to read the news in peace, You don’t say, Oh, I could say much more on the subject if you have the time, anyway, once you’ve laid the trap, stone, newspaper and pepper, all you have to do is wait, and if you have to wait a long time, that’s because it’s not a good place for hares, it can happen, but don’t go complaining that you didn’t kill any hares, that’s entirely your fault, because when you know the area, it never fails, anyway, in a little while, up will hop the first hare, a nibble here, another nibble there, and suddenly its ears go up because it’s seen the newspaper, And what does he do then, Poor creature, he never learns, he’s so keen to get the latest news that he runs over to the newspaper and starts reading, he’s a really happy, contented hare, he doesn’t miss a line, but then he sniffs the pepper and sneezes, And what happens next, Exactly what would happen to you if you were him, he sneezes, hits his head on the stone and dies, And then, You just have to go and find him, or, if you like, go a few hours later and you’ll find a whole line of hares, one after the other, they’re so curious that they can’t see a newspaper without wanting to read it, Is that true, Ask anyone, even a babe in arms knows about these things.
António Mau-Tempo had no rifle at the time, which was just as well. If he’d had one, he would have been just another ordinary hunter with a ready-made weapon, rather than the inventor of Saint Hubert’s pepper, but this doesn’t mean that he scorned the art of marksmanship, the proof is the muzzle-loading rifle he bought one day for twenty escudos from a spendthrift tenant farmer and with which he performed miracles. City dwellers are brought up to be suspicious of miracles, they always want proofs and oaths, which is quite wrong, for example, there was the time when António Mau-Tempo, by then the proud owner of said muzzle-loading rifle, found himself with plenty of gunpowder but no lead shot. We should perhaps mention that it was rabbit-hunting season, in case someone should come along and ask why he didn’t use the same stone-newspaper-pepper method as he did with hares. Only someone ignorant of the art of hunting could fail to be aware that rabbits have no curiosity at all, seeing a newspaper lying on the ground or a cloud in the sky is all the same to them, except that rain falls from clouds and not from newspapers, which is why the rabbit hunter still needs a rifle, trap or stick, but in this case we’re talking rifles.
There is no greater misfortune for a hunter than to be in possession of a good weapon, even if it’s only a flintlock, plenty of gunpowder but no lead shot, Why didn’t you buy some, No money, that was the problem, So what did you do, At first I didn’t do anything, I just thought, And did you come up with an idea, Of course, that’s what thinking is for, So tell me how you solved the problem, because I still don’t see how you did it, Well, I had a box of tacks for my boots and I loaded them into the rifle, What, you loaded your rifle with tacks, You may not believe me, but I did, Oh, I believe you, it’s just that I’ve never heard of such a thing, At some point, you’ll have to start believing in things you’ve never heard of, Tell me the rest of the story, then, All right, I was heading out into the countryside when I had a thought that almost made me turn back, What was that, It occurred to me that any
