It was not yet broad daylight when Harry Archer, who had, as was usual
with him on his sporting tour, arisen with the lark, was sitting in the
little parlor I have before described, close to the chimney corner,
where a bright lively fire was already burning, and spreading a warm
cheerful glow through the apartment. The large round table, drawn up
close to the hearth, was covered with a clean though coarse white cloth,
and laid for breakfast, with two cups and saucers, flanked by as many
plates and egg-cups, although as yet no further preparations for the
morning meal, except the presence of a huge home-made loaf and a large
roll of rich golden-hued butter, had been made by the neat-handed
Phillis of the country inn. Two candles were lighted, for though the day
had broken, the sun was not yet high enough to cast his rays into that
deep and rock-walled valley, and by their light Archer was busy with the
game-bag, the front of which he had finished netting on the previous
night.
Frank Forester had not as yet made his appearance; and still, while the
gigantic copper kettle bubbled and steamed away upon the hearth,
discoursing eloquent music, and servant after servant bustled in, one
with a cold quail-pie, another with a quart jug of cream, and fresh eggs
ready to be boiled by the fastidious epicures in person, he steadily
worked on, housewife and saddler's silk, and wax and scissors ready to
his hand; and when at last the door flew open, and the delinquent
comrade entered, he flung his finished job upon the chair, and gathered
up his implements, with:
"Now, Frank, let's lose no time, but get our breakfasts. Halloa! Tim,
bring the rockingham and the tea-chest; do you hear?"
"Well, Harry, so you've done the game-bag," exclaimed the other, as he
lifted it up and eyed it somewhat superciliously--"Well, it is a good
one certainly; but you are the queerest fellow I ever met, to give
yourself unnecessary trouble. Here you have been three days about this
bag, hard all; and when it's done, it is not half as good a one as you
can buy at Cooper's for a dollar, with all this new-fangled machinery of
loops and buttons, and I don't know what."
"And you, Master Frank," retorted Harry, nothing daunted, "to be a good
shot and a good sportsman--which, with some few exceptions, I must
confess you are--are the most culpably and wilfully careless about your
appointments I ever met. I don't call a man half a sportsman, who has
not every thing he wants at hand for an emergency, at half a minute's
notice. Now it so happens that you cannot get, in New York at all,
anything like a decent game-bag--a little fancy-worked French or German
jigmaree machine you can get anywhere, I grant, that will do well enough
for a fellow to carry on his shoulders, who goes out robin-gunning, but
nothing for your man to carry, wherein to keep your birds cool, fresh,
and unmutilated. Now, these loops and buttons, at which you laugh, will
make the difference of a week at least in the bird's keeping, if every
hour or so you empty your pockets--wherein I take it for granted you put
your birds as fast as you bag them--smooth down their plumage gently,
stretch their legs out, and hang them by the heads, running the button
down close to the neck of each. In this way this bag, which is, as you
see, half a yard long, by a quarter and a half a quarter deep, made
double, one hag of fustian, with a net front, which makes two pockets--
will carry fifty-one quail or woodcock, no one of them pressing upon, or
interfering with, another, and it would carry sixty-eight if I had put
another row of loops in the inner bag; which I did not, that I might
have the bottom vacant to carry a few spare articles, such as a bag of
Westley Richards' caps, and a couple of dozen of Ely's cartridges."
"Oh! that's all very well," said Frank, "but who the deuce can be at the
bore of it?"
"Why be at the bore of shooting at all, for that matter?" replied Harry
--"I, for one, think that if a thing is worth doing at all, it is worth
doing well--and I can't bear to kill a hundred or a hundred and fifty
birds, as our party almost always do out here, and then be obliged to
throw them away, just for want of a little care. Why, I was shooting
summer cock one July day two years ago--there had been heavy rain in the
early morning, and the grass and bushes were very wet--Jem Blake was
with me, and we had great sport, and he laughed at me like the deuce for
taking my birds out of my pocket at the end of every hour's sport, and
making Timothy smooth them down carefully, and bag them all after my
fashion. Egad I had the laugh though, when we got home at night!"
"How so," asked Frank, "in what way had you the laugh?"
"Simply in this--a good many of the birds were very hard shot, as is
always the case in summer shooting, and all of them got more or less
wet, as did the pockets of Jem's shooting jacket, wherein he persisted
in carrying his birds all day--the end was, that when we got home at
night, it having been a close, hot, steamy day, he had not one bird
which was not more or less tainted--and, as you know of course, when
taint has once begun, nothing can check it."
"Ay! ay! well that indeed's a reason; if you can't buy such a bag,
especially!"
"Well, you cannot then, I can tell you! and I'm glad you're convinced
for once; and here comes breakfast--so now let us to work, that we may
get on our ground as early as may be. For quail you cannot be too early;
for if you don't find them while they are rambling on their feeding
ground, it is a great chance if you find them at all."
"But, after all, you can only use up one or two bevies or so; and, that
done, you must hunt for them in the basking time of day, after all's
done and said," replied Frank, who seemed to have got up somewhat
paradoxically given that morning.
"Not at all, Frank, not at all," answered Harry--"that is if you know
your ground; and know it to be well stocked; and have a good marker with
you."
"Oh! this is something new of yours--some strange device fantastical--
let's have it, pray."
"Certainly you shall; you shall have it now in precept, and in an hour
or two in practice. You see those stubbles on the hill--in those seven
or eight fields there are, or at least should be, some five bevies;
there is good covert, good easy covert all about, and we can mark our
birds down easily; now, when I find one bevy, I shall get as many
barrels into it as I can, mark it down as correctly as possible, and
then go and look for another."
"What! and not follow it up? Now, Harry, that's mere stuff; wait till
the scent's gone cold, and till the dogs can't find them? 'Gad, that's
clever, any way!"
"Exactly the reverse, friend Frank; exactly the reverse. If you follow
up a bevy, of quail mark you, on the instant, it's ten to one almost
that you don't spring them. If, on the contrary, you wait for half an
hour, you are sure of them. How it is, I cannot precisely tell you. I
have sometimes thought that quail have the power of holding in their
scent, whether purposely or naturally--from the effect of fear perhaps
contracting the pores, and hindering the escape of the effluvia--I know
not, but I am far from being convinced even now that it is not so. A
very good sportsman, and true friend of mine, insists upon it that birds
give out no scent except from the feet, and that, consequently, if they
squat without running they cannot be found. I do not, however, believe
the theory, and hold it to be disproved by the fact that dead birds do
give out scent. I have generally observed that there is no difficulty in
retrieving dead quail, but that, wounded, they are constantly lost. But,
be that as it may, the birds pitch down, each into the best bit of
covert he can find, and squat there like so many stones, leaving no
trail or taint upon the grass or bushes, and being of course
proportionally hard to find; in half an hour they will begin, if not
disturbed, to call and travel, and you can hunt them up, without the
slightest trouble. If you have a very large tract of country to beat,
and birds are very scarce, of course it would not answer to pass on; nor
ever, even if they are plentiful, in wild or windy weather, or in large
open woods; but where you have a fair ground, lots of birds, and fine
weather, I would always beat on in a circuit, for the reason I have
given you. In the first place, every bevy you flush flies from its
feeding to its basking ground, so that you get over all the first early,
and know where to look afterward; instead of killing off one bevy, and
then going blundering on, at blind guess work, and finding nothing. In
the second place, you have a chance of driving two or three bevies into
one brake, and of getting sport proportionate; and in the third place,
as I have told you, you are much surer of finding marked birds after an
hour's lapse, than on the moment."
"I will do you the justice to say," Forester replied, "that you always
make a tolerably good fight in support of your opinions; and so you have
done now, but I want to hear something more about this matter of holding
scent--facts! facts! and let me judge for myself."
"Well, Frank, give me a bit more of that pie in the mean time, and I
will tell you the strongest case in point I ever witnessed. I was
shooting near Stamford, in Connecticut, three years ago, with C--- K---,
and another friend; we had three as good dogs out, as ever had a trigger
drawn over them. My little imported yellow and white setter, Chase,
after which this old rascal is called--which Mike Sandford considered
the best-nosed dog he had ever broken--a capital young pointer dog of
K---'s, which has since turned out, as I hear, superlative, and P---'s old
and stanch setter Count. It was the middle of a fine autumn day, and the
scenting was very uncommonly good. One of our beaters flushed a bevy of
quail very wide of us, and they came over our heads down a steep
hillside, and all lighted in a small circular hollow, without a bit of
underbrush or even grass, full of tall thrifty oak trees, of perhaps
twenty-five years' growth. They were not much out of gun-shot, and we
all three distinctly saw them light; and I observed them flap and fold
their wings as they settled. We walked straight to the spot, and beat it
five or six times over, not one of our dogs ever drawing, and not one
bird rising. We could not make it out; my friends thought they had
treed, and laughed at me when I expressed my belief that they were still
before us, under our very noses. The ground was covered only by a deep
bed of sere decaying oak leaves. Well, we went on, and beat all round
the neighborhood within a quarter of a mile, and did not find a bird,
when lo! at the end of perhaps half an hour, we heard them calling--
followed the cry back to that very hollow; the instant we entered it,
all the three dogs made game, drawing upon three several birds, roaded
them up, and pointed steady, and we had half an hour's good sport, and
we were all convinced that the birds had been there all the time. I have
seen many instances of the same kind, and more particularly with
wing-tipped birds, but none I think so tangible as this!"
"Well, I am not a convert, Harry; but, as the Chancellor said, I doubt."
"And that I consider not a little, from such a positive wretch as you
are; but come, we have done breakfast, and it's broad daylight. Come,
Timothy, on with the bag and belts; he breakfasted before we had got up,
and gave the dogs a bite."
"Which dogs do you take, Harry; and do you use cartridge?"
"Oh! the setters for the morning; they are the only fellows for the
stubble; we should be all day with the cockers; even setters, as we must
break them here for wood shooting, have not enough of speed or dash for
the open. Cartridges? yes! I shall use a loose charge in my right, and a
blue cartridge in my left; later in the season I use a blue in my right
and a red in my left. It just makes the difference between killing with
both, or with one barrel. The blue kills all of twenty, and the red all
of thirty-five yards further than loose shot; and they kill clean!"
"Yet many good sportsmen dislike them," Frank replied; "they say they
ball!"
"They do not now, if you load with them properly; formerly they would do
so at times, but that defect is now rectified--with the blue and red
cartridges at least--the green, which are only fit for wild-fowl, or
deer-shooting, will do so sometimes, but very rarely; and they will
execute surprisingly. For a bad or uncertain rifle-shot, the green
cartridge, with SG shot is the thing--twelve good-sized slugs, propelled
with force enough to go through an inch plank, at eighty yards, within a
compass of three feet--but no wad must be used, either upon the
cartridge or between that and the powder; the small end must be inserted
downward, and the cartridge must be chosen so that the wad at the top
shall fit the gun, the case being two sizes less than the caliber. With
these directions no man need make a mistake; and, if he can cover a bird
fairly, and is cool enough not to fire within twenty yards, he will
never complain of cartridges, after a single trial. Remember, too, that
vice versa to the rule of a loose charge, the heavier you load with
powder, the closer will your cartridge carry. The men who do not like
cartridges are--you may rely upon it--of the class which prefers
scattering guns. I always use them, except in July shooting, and I shall
even put a few red in my pockets, in case the wind should get up in the
afternoon. Besides which, I always take along two buckshot cartridges,
in case of happening, as Timothy would say, on some big varmint. I have
four pockets in my shooting waistcoat, each stitched off into four
compartments--each of which holds, erect, one cartridge--you cannot
carry them loose in your pocket, as they are very apt to break. Another
advantage of this is, that in no way can you carry shot with so little
inconvenience, as to weight; besides which, you load one-third quicker,
and your gun never leads!"
"Well! I believe I will take some to-day--but don't you wait for the
Commodore?"
"No! He drives up, as I told you, from Nyack, where he lands from his
yacht, and will be here at twelve o'clock to luncheon; if he had been
coming for the morning shooting, he would have been here ere this. By
that time we shall have bagged twenty-five or thirty quail, and a ruffed
grouse or two; besides driving two or three bevies down into the meadows
and the alder bushes by the stream, which are quite full of woodcock.
After luncheon, with the Commodore's aid, we will pick up these
stragglers, and all the timber-doodles!"
In another moment the setters were unchained, and came careering, at the
top of their speed, into the breakfast room, where Harry stood before
the fire, loading his double gun, while Timothy was buttoning on his
left leggin. Frank, meanwhile, had taken up his gun, and quietly sneaked
out of the door, two flat irregular reports explaining, half a moment
after, the purport of his absence.
"Well, now, Frank, that is"--expostulated Harry--"that is just the most
snobbish thing I ever saw you do; aint you ashamed of yourself now, you
genuine cockney!"
"Not a bit--my gun has not been used these three months, and something
might have got into the chamber!"
"Something might not, if when you cleaned it last you had laid a wad in
the centre of a bit of greased rag three inches square and rammed it
about an inch down the barrel, leaving the ends of the linen hanging
out. And by running your rod down you could have ascertained the fact,
without unnecessarily fouling your piece. A gun has no right ever to
miss fire now; and never does, if you use Westley Richards' caps, and
diamond gunpowder--putting the caps on the last thing--which has the
further advantage of being much the safer plan, and seeing that the
powder is up to the cones before you do so. If it is not so, let your
hammer down, and give a smart tap to the under side of the breech,
holding it uppermost, and you will never need a picker; or at least
almost never. Remember, too, that the best picker in the world is a
strong needle headed with sealing wax. And now that you have finished
loading, and I lecturing, just jump over the fence to your right; and
that footpath will bring us to the stepping-stones across the Ramapo. By
Jove, but we shall have a lovely morning."
He did so, and away they went, with the dogs following steadily at the
heel, crossed the small river dry-shod, climbed up the wooded bank by
dint of hand and foot, and reached the broad brown corn stubble. Harry,
however, did not wave his dogs to the right-hand and left, but calling
them in, quietly plodded along the headland, and climbed another fence,
and crossed a buckwheat stubble, still without beating or disturbing any
ground, and then another field full of long bents and ragwort, an old
deserted pasture, and Frank began to grumble, but just then a pair of
bars gave access to a wide fifty acre lot, which had been wheat, the
stubble standing still knee deep, and yielding a rare covert.
"Now we are at the far end of our beat, and we have got the wind too in
the dogs' noses, Master Frank--and so hold up good lads," said Harry.
And off the setters shot like lightning, crossing and quartering their
ground superbly.
"There! there! well done, old Chase--a dead stiff point already, and
Shot backing him as steady as a rail. Step up, Frank, step up quietly,
and let us keep the hill of them."
They came up close, quite close to the stanch dog, and then, but not
till then, he feathered and drew on, and Shot came crawling up till his
nose was but a few inches in the rear of Chase's, whose point he never
thought of taking from him. Now they are both upon the game. See how
they frown and slaver, the birds are close below their noses.
Whirr--r--r! "There they go--a glorious bevy!" exclaimed Harry, as he
cocked his right barrel and cut down the old cock bird, which had risen
rather to his right hand, with his loose charge--"blaze away, Frank!"
Bang--bang!--and two more birds came fluttering down, and then he
pitched his gun up to his eye again, and sent the cartridge after the
now distant bevy, and to Frank's admiration a fourth bird was keeled
over most beautifully, and clean killed, while crossing to the right, at
forty-six yards, as they paced it afterward.
"Now mark! mark, Timothy--mark, Frank!" And shading their eyes from the
level sunbeams, the three stood gazing steadily after the rapid bevy.
They cross the pasture, skim very low over the brush fence of the
cornfield--they disappear behind it they are down! no! no! not yet--they
are just skirting the summit of the topped maize stalks--now they are
down indeed, just by that old ruined hovel, where the cat-briers and
sumac have overspread its cellar and foundation with thick underwood.
And all the while the sturdy dogs are crouching at their feet unmoving.
"Will you not follow those, Harry?" Forester inquired--"there are at
least sixteen of them!"
"Not I," said Archer, "not I, indeed, till I have beat this field--I
expect to put up another bevy among those little crags there in the
corner, where the red cedars grow--and if we do, they will strike down
the fence of the buckwheat stubble--that stubble we must make good, and
the rye beside it, and drive, if possible, all that we find before us to
the corn field. Don't be impatient, and you'll see in time that I am in
the right."
No more words were now wasted; the four birds were bagged without
trouble, and the sportsmen being in the open, were handed over on the
spot to Tim; who stroked their freckled breasts, and beautifully mottled
wing-coverts and backs, with a caressing touch, as though he loved them;
and finally, in true Jack Ketch style, tucked them up severally by the
neck. Archer was not mistaken in his prognostics--another bevy had run
into the dwarf cedars from the stubble at the sound of the firing, and
were roaded up in right good style, first one dog, and then the other,
leading; but without any jealousy or haste.
They had, however, run so far, that they had got wild, and as there was
no bottom covert on the crags, had traversed them quite over to the
open, on the far side--and, just as Archer was in the act of warning
Forester to hurry softly round and head them, they flushed at thirty
yards, and had flown some five more before they were in sight, the
feathery evergreens for a while cutting off the view--the dogs stood
dead at the sound of their wings. Then, as they came in sight, Harry
discharged both barrels very quickly--the loose shot first, which
evidently took effect, for one bird cowered and seemed about to fall,
but gathered wing again, and went on for the present--the cartridge,
which went next, although the bevy had flown ten yards further, did its
work clean, and stopped its bird. Frank fired but once, and killed,
using his cartridge first, and thinking it in vain to fire the loose
shot. The remaining birds skimmed down the hill, and lighted in the
thick bushy hedge-row, as Archer had foreseen.
"So much for Ely!" exclaimed Harry--"had we both used two of them, we
should have bagged four then. As it is, I have killed one which we shall
not get; a thing that I most particularly hate."
"That bird will rise again," said Frank.
"Never!" replied the other, "he has one, if not two, shot in him, well
forward--if I am not much mistaken, before the wing--he is dead now! but
let us on. These we must follow, for they are on our line; you keep this
side the fence, and I will cross it with the dogs--come with me,
Timothy."
In a few minutes more there was a dead point at the hedge-row. "Look to,
Frank!" "Ay! ay! Poke them out, Tim;" then followed sundry bumps and
threshings of the briers, and out with a noisy flutter burst two birds
under Forester's nose. Bang! bang!
"The first shot too quick, altogether," muttered Archer; "Ay, he has
missed one; mark it, Tim--there he goes down in the corn, by jingo--
you've got that bird, Frank! That's well! Hold up, Shot"--another point
within five yards. "Look out again, Frank."
But this time vainly did Tim poke, and thrash, and peer into the bushes
--yet still Shot stood, stiff as a marble statue--then Chase drew up and
snuffed about, and pushed his head and forelegs into the matted briers,
and thereupon a muzzling noise ensued, and forthwith out he came,
mouthing a dead bird, warm still, and bleeding from the neck and breast.
"Frank, he has got my bird--and shot, just as I told you, through the
neck and near the great wing joint--good dog! good dog!"
"The devil!"
"Yes, the devil! but look out man, here is yet one more point;" and this
time ten or twelve birds flushed upon Archer's side; he slew, as usual,
his brace, and as they crossed, at long distance, Frank knocked down one
more--the rest flew to the corn-field.
In the middle of the buckwheat they flushed another, and, in the rye,
another bevy, both of which crossed the stream, and settled down among
the alders. They reached the corn-field, and picked up their birds
there, quite as fast as Frank himself desired--three ruffed grouse they
had bagged, and four rabbits, in a small dingle full of thorns, before
they reached the corn; and just as the tin horns were sounding for noon
and dinner from many a neighboring farm, they bagged their thirty-fourth
quail. At the same moment, the rattle of a distant wagon on the hard
road, and a loud cheer replying to the last shot, announced the
Commodore; who pulled up at the tavern door just as they crossed the
stepping-stones, having made a right good morning's work, with a dead
certainty of better sport in the afternoon, since they had marked two
untouched bevies, thirty-five birds at least, beside some ten or twelve
more stragglers into the alder brakes, which Harry knew to hold--
moreover, thirty woodcock, as he said, at the fewest.
"Well! Harry," exclaimed Frank, as he set down his gun, and sat down to
the table, "I must for once knock under--your practice has borne out
your precepts."