"Certainly this is a very lovely country," exclaimed the Commodore
suddenly, as he gazed with a quiet eye, puffing his cigar the while,
over the beautiful vale, with the clear expanse of Wickham's Pond in the
middle foreground, and the wild hoary mountains framing the rich
landscape in the distance.
"Truly, you may say that," replied Harry; "I have traveled over a large
part of the world, and for its own peculiar style of loveliness, I must
say that I never have seen any thing to match with the vale of Warwick.
I would give much, very much, to own a few acres, and a snug cottage
here, in which I might pass the rest of my days, far aloof from the
Fumum et opes strepitumque Romae."
"Then, why the h--l don't you own a few acres?" put in ancient Tom; "I'd
be right glad to know, and gladder yit to have you up here, Archer."
"I would indeed, Tom," answered Harry; "I'm not joking at all; but there
are never any small places to be bought hereabout; and, as for large
ones, your land is so confounded good, that a fellow must be a nabob to
think of buying."
"Well, how would Jem Burt's place suit you, Archer?" asked the fat man.
"You knows it--just a mile and a half 'tother side Warwick, by the crick
side? I guess it will have to be sold anyhow next April; leastways the
old man's dead, and the heirs want the estate settled up like."
"Suit me!" cried Harry, "by George! it's just the thing, if I recollect
it rightly. But how much land is there?"
"Twenty acres, I guess--not over twenty-five, no how."
"And the house?" "Well, that wants fixin' some; and the bridge over the
crick's putty bad, too, it will want putty nigh a new one. Why, the
house is a story and a half like; and it's jist an entry stret through
the middle, and a parlor on one side on't, and a kitchen on the t'other;
and a chamber behind both on 'em."
"What can it be bought for, Tom?"
"I guess three thousand dollars; twenty-five hundred, maybe. It will go
cheap, I reckon; I don't hear tell o' no one lookin' at it.
"What will it cost me more to fix it, think you?"
"Well, you see, Archer, the land's ben most darned badly done by, this
last three years, since old 'squire's ben so low; and the bridge,
that'll take a smart sum; and the fences is putty much gone to rack; I
guess it'll take hard on to a thousand more to fix it up right, like
you'd like to have it, without doin' nothin' at the house."
"And fifteen hundred more for that and the stables. I wish to heaven I
had known this yesterday; or rather before I came up hither," said
Harry.
"Why so?" asked the Commodore.
"Why, as the deuce would have it, I told my broker to invest six
thousand, that I have got loose, in a good mortgage, if he could find
one, for five years; and I have got no stocks that I can sell out; all
that I have but this, is on good bond and mortgage, in Boston, and
little enough of it, too."
"Well, if that's all," said Forester, "we can run down tomorrow, and you
will be in time to stop him."
"That's true, too," answered Harry, pondering. "Are you sure it can be
bought, Tom?"
"I guess so," was the response.
"That means, I suppose, that you're perfectly certain of it. Why the
devil can't you speak English?"
"English!" exclaimed Frank; "Good Lord! why don't you ask him why he
can't speak Greek? English! Lord! Lord! Lord! Tom Draw and English!"
"I'll jist tell Archer what he warnts to know, and then see you, my dear
little critter, if I doosn't English you some!" replied the old man,
waxing wroth. "Well, Archer, to tell heaven's truth, now, I doos know
it; but it's an etarnal all-fired shame of me to be tellin' it, bein' as
how I knows it in the way of business like. It's got to be selled by
vandoo in April*. [*Vendue. Why the French word for a public auction has
been adopted throughout the Northern and Eastern States, as applied to a
Sheriff's sale, deponent saith not.]
"Then, by Jove! I will buy it," said Harry; "and down I'll go to-morrow.
But that need not take you away, boys; you can stay and finish out the
week here, and go home in the Ianthe; Tom will send you down to Nyack."
"Sartain," responded Tom; "but now I'm most darned glad I told you that,
Archer. I meant to a told you on't afore, but it clean slipped out of my
head; but all's right, now. Hark! hark! don't you hear, boys? The quails
hasn't all got together yit--better luck! Hush, A--- and you'll hear
them callin'--whew-wheet! whew-wheet! whe-whe-whe;" and the old Turk
began to call most scientifically; and in ten minutes the birds were
answering him from all quarters, through the circular space of
Bog-meadow, and through the thorny brake beyond it, and some from a large
ragwort field further yet.
"How is this, Frank--did they scatter so much when they dropped?" asked
Harry.
"Yes; part of them 'lighted in the little bank on this edge, by the
spring, you know; and some, a dozen or so, right in the middle of the
bog, by the single hickory; and five or six went into the swamp, and a
few over it."
"That's it! that's it! and they've been running to try to get together,"
said the Commodore.
"But was too skeart to call, till we'd quit shootin'!" said Tom. "But
come, boys, let's be stirrin', else they'll git together like; they
keeps drawin', drawin', into one place now, I can hear."
No sooner said than done; we were all on foot in an instant, and ten
minutes brought us to the edge of the first thicket; and here was the
truth of Harry's precepts tested by practice in a moment; for they had
not yet entered the thin bushes, on which now the red leaves hung few
and sere, before old Shot threw his nose high into the air, straightened
his neck and his stern, and struck out at a high trot; the other setter
evidently knowing what he meant, though as yet he had not caught the
wind of them. In a moment they both stood steady; and, almost at the
same instant, Tom Draw's Dash, and A---'s Grouse come to the point, all
on different birds, in a bit of very open ground, covered with
wintergreen about knee deep, and interspersed with only a few scattered
bushes.
Whir-r-r-r--up they got all at once! what a jostle--what a hubbub! Bang!
bang! crack! bang! crack! bang! Four barrels exploded in an instant,
almost simultaneously; and two sharp unmeaning cracks announced that, by
some means or other, Frank Forester's gun had missed fire with both
barrels.
"What the deuce is the matter, boys" cried Harry, laughing, as he threw
up his gun, after the hubbub had subsided, and dropped two birds--the
only two that fell, for all that waste of shot and powder.
"What the deuce ails you?" he repeated, no one replying, and all hands
looking bashful and crest-fallen. "Are you all drunk? or what is the
matter? I asked merely for information."
"Upon my life! I believe I am!" said Frank Forester. "For I have not
loaded my gun at all, since I killed those two last snipe. And, when we
got up from luncheon, I put on the caps just as if all was right--but
all is right now," he added, for he had repaired his fault, and loaded,
before A--- or fat Tom had done staring, each in the other's face, in
blank astonishment.
"Step up to Grouse, then," said Archer, who had never taken his eye off
the old brown pointer, while he was loading as fast as he could. "He has
got a bird, close under his nose; and it will get up, and steal away
directly. That's a trick they will play very often."
"He haint got no bird," said Tom, sulkily. And Frank paused doubtful.
"Step up, I tell you, Frank," said Harry, "the old Turk's savage;
that's all."
And Frank did step up, close to the dog's nose; and sent his foot
through the grass close under it. Still the dog stood perfectly stiff;
but no bird rose.
"I telled you there warn't no quails there;" growled Tom.
"And I tell you there are!" answered Archer, more sharply than he often
spoke to his old ally; for, in truth, he was annoyed at his obstinate
pertinacity.
"What do you say, Commodore? Is Grouse lying? Kick that tussock--kick it
hard, Frank."
"Not he," replied A---; "I'll bet fifty to one, there's a bird there."
"It's devilish odd, then, that he won't get up!" said Frank.
Whack! whack! and he gave the hard tussock two kicks with his heavy
boot, that fairly made it shake. Nothing stirred. Grouse still kept his
point, but seemed half inclined to dash in. Whack! a third kick that
absolutely loosened the tough hassock from the ground, and then,
whirr-r, from within six inches of the spot where all three blows had
been delivered, up got the bird, in a desperate hurry; and in quite as
desperate a hurry Forester covered it--covered it before it was six
yards off! His finger was on the trigger, when Harry quietly said,
"Steady, Frank!" and the word acted like magic.
He took the gun quite down from his shoulder, nodded to his friend,
brought it up again, and turned the bird over very handsomely, at twenty
yards, or a little further.
"Beautifully done, indeed, Frank," said Harry. "So much for coolness!"
"What do you say to that, Tom?" said the Commodore, laughing.
But there was no laugh in Tom; he only muttered a savage growl, and an
awful imprecation; and Harry's quick glance warned A--- not to plague
the old Trojan further.
All this passed in a moment; and then was seen one of those singular
things that will at times happen; but with regard to quail only, so far
as I have ever seen or heard tell. For as Forester was putting down the
card upon the powder in the barrel which he had just fired, a second
bird rose, almost from the identical spot whence the first had been so
difficultly flushed, and went off in the same direction. But not in the
least was Frank flurried now. He dropped his ramrod quietly upon the
grass, brought up his piece deliberately to his eye, and killed his bird
again.
"Excellent--excellent! Frank," said Harry again. "I never saw two
prettier shots in all my life. Nor did I ever see birds lie harder."
During all this time, amidst all the kicking of tussocks, threshing of
bog-grass, and banging of guns, and, worst of all, bouncing up of fresh
birds, from the instant when they dropped at the first shot, neither one
of Harry's dogs, nor Tom's little Dash, had budged from their down
charge. Now, however, they got up quickly, and soon retrieved all the
dead birds. "Now, then, we will divide into two parties," said Harry.
"Frank, you go with Tom; and you come with me, Commodore. It will never
do to have you two jealous fellows together, you wont kill a bird all
day," he added, in a lower voice. "That is the worst of old Tom, when he
gets jealous he's the very devil. Frank is the only fellow that can get
along with him at all. He puts me out of temper, and if we both got
angry, it would be very disagreeable. For, though he is the very best
fellow in the world, when he is in a rage he is untamable. I cannot
think what has put him out, now; for he has shot very well to-day. It is
only when he gets behindhand, that he is usually jealous in his
shooting; but he has got the deuce into him now."
By this time the two parties were perhaps forty yards apart, when Dash
came to a point again. Up got a single bird, the old cock, and flew
directly away from Tom, across Frank's face; but not for that did the
old chap pause. Up went his cannon to his shoulder, there was a flash
and a roar, and the quail, which was literally not twelve feet from him,
disappeared as if it had been resolved into thin air. The whole of Tom's
concentrated charge had struck the bird endwise, as it flew from him;
and except the extreme tips of his wings and one foot, no part of him
could be found.
"The devil!" cried Harry, "that is too bad!"
"Never mind," said the Commodore, "Frank will manage him."
As he spoke a second bird got up, and crossed Forester in the same
manner, Draw doing precisely as he had done before; but, this time,
missing the quail clear, which Forester turned over.
"Load quick! and step up to that fellow. He will run, I think!" said
Archer.
"Ay! ay!" responded Frank, and, having rammed down his charge like
lightning, moved forward, before he had put the cap on the barrel he had
fired.
Just as he took the cap out of his pocket between his finger and thumb,
a second quail rose. As cool and self-possessed as it is possible to
conceive, Frank cocked the left hand barrel with his little finger,
still holding the cap between his forefinger and thumb, and actually
contrived to bring up the gun, some how or other, and to kill the bird,
pulling the trigger with his middle finger.
At the report a third quail sprang, close under his feet; and, still
unshaken, he capped the right hand barrel, fired, and the bird towered!
"Mark! mark! Tom--ma-ark Timothy!" shouted Harry and A--- in a breath.
"That bird is as dead as Hannibal now!" added Archer, as, having spun up
three hundred feet into the air, and flown twice as many hundred yards,
it turned over, and fell plumb, like a stone, through the clear
atmosphere.
"Ayse gotten that chap marked doon roight, ayse warrant un!" shouted
Timothy from the hill side, where with some trouble, he was holding in
the obstreperous spaniels. "He's doon in a roight laine atwixt 't gray
stean and yon hoigh ashen tree."
"Did you ever see such admirable shooting, though?" asked A---, in a low
voice. "I did not know Forester shot like that."
"Some times he does. When he's cool. He is not certain; that is his only
fault. One day he is the coolest man I ever saw in a field, and the next
the most impetuous; but when he is cool, he shoots splendidly. As you
say, A---, I never saw anything better done in my life. It was the
perfection of coolness and quickness combined."
"I cannot conceive how it was done at all. How he brought up and fired
that first barrel with a cap between his thumb and forefinger! Why, I
could not fire a gun so, in cold blood!"
"Nor could he, probably. Deliberate promptitude is the thing! Well, Tom,
what do you think of that? Wasn't that pretty shooting?"
"It was so, pretty shootin'," responded the fat man, quite delighted out
of his crusty mood. "I guess the darned little critter's got three
barrels to his gun somehow; leastwise it seems to me, I swon, 'at he
fired her off three times without loadin' I guess I'll quit tryin' to
shoot agin Frank, to-day."
"I told you so!" said Harry to the Commodore, with a low laugh, and then
added aloud--"I think you may as well, Tom--for I don't believe the
fellow will miss another bird to-day."
And in truth, strange to say, it fell out, in reality, nearly as Archer
had spoken in jest. The whole party shot exceedingly well. The four
birds, which Tom and the Commodore had missed at the first start, were
found again in an old ragwort field, and brought to bag; and of the
twenty-three quail which Forester had marked down into the bog meadow,
not one bird escaped, and of that bevy not one bird did Frank miss,
killing twelve, all of them double shots, to his own share, and beating
Archer in a canter.
But that sterling sportsman cared not a stiver; too many times by far
had he had the field, too sure was he of doing the same many a time
again, to dislike being beaten once. Besides this, he was always the
least jealous shot in the world, for a very quick one; and, in this
instance, he was perhaps better pleased to see his friend "go in and
win," than he would have been to do the like himself.
Exactly at two o'clock, by A---'s repeater, the last bird was bagged;
making twenty-seven quail, forty-nine snipe, two ruffed grouse, and one
woodcock, bagged in about five hours.
"So far, this is the very best day's sport I ever saw," said Archer;
"and two things I have seen which I never saw before; a whole bevy of
quail killed without the escape of one bird, and a whole bevy killed
entirely by double shots, except the odd bird. You, A---, have killed
three double shots--I have killed three--Tom Draw one double shot, and
the odd bird; and Master Frank there, confound him, six double shots
running--the cleverest thing I ever heard of, and, in Forester's case,
the best shooting possible. I have missed one bird, you two, and Tom
three."
"But Tom beant a goin' to miss no more birds, I can tell you, boy. Tom's
drinked agin, and feels kind o' righter than he did--kind o' first best!
You'd best all drink, boys--the spring's handy, close by here; and after
we gits down acrost the road into the big swamp, and Hell-Hole, there
arn't a drop o' water fit to drink, till we gits way down to Aunt
Sally's big spring-hole, jest to home."
"I second the motion," said Harry; "and then let us be quick, for the
day is wearing away, and we have got a long beat yet before us. I wish
it were a sure one. But it is not. Once in three or four years we get a
grand day's sport in the big swamp; but for one good day we have ten bad
ones. However, we are sure to find a dozen birds or so in Hell-Hole; and
a bevy of quail in the Captain's swamp, shan't we, Tom?"
"Yes, if we gits so far; but somehow or other I rather guess we'll find
quite a smart chance o' cock. Captain Reed was down there a' Satterday,
and he saw heaps on 'em."
"That's no sure sign. They move very quickly now. Here today and there
to-morrow," said Archer. "In the large woods especially. In the small
places there are plenty of sure finds."
"There harn't been nothing of frosts yet keen enough to stir them," said
Tom. "I guess we'll find them. And there harn't been a gun shot off this
three weeks there. Hoel's wife's ben down sick all the fall, and
Halbert's gun busted in the critter's hand."
"Ah! did it hurt him?"
"Hurt him some--skeart him considerable, though. I guess he's quit
shootin' pretty much. But come--here we be, boys. I'll keep along the
outside, where the walkin's good. You git next me, and Archer next with
the dogs, and A--- inside of all. Keep right close to the cedars, A---;
all the birds 'at you flushes will come stret out this aways. They never
flies into the cedar swamp. Archer, how does the ground look?"
"I never saw it look so well, Tom. There is not near so much water as
usual, and yet the bottom is all quite moist and soft."
"Then we'll get cock for sartain."
"By George!" cried A--- "the ground is like a honey-comb, with their
borings; and as white in places with their droppings, as if there had
been a snow fall!"
"Are they fresh droppings, A---?"
"Mark! Ah! Grouse! Grouse! for shame. There he is down. Do you see him,
Harry?"
"Ay! ay! Did Grouse flush him?"
"Deliberately, at fifty yards off. I must lick him."
"Pray do; and that mercifully."
"And that soundly," suggested Frank, as an improvement.
"Soundly is mercifully," said Harry, "because one good flogging settles
the business; whereas twenty slight ones only harass a dog, and do
nothing in the way of correction or prevention."
"True, oh king" said Frank, laughing. "Now let us go on; for, as the
bellowing of that brute is over, I suppose 'chastisement has hidden her
head.'"
And on they did go; and sweet shooting they had of it; all the way down
to the thick deep spot, known by the pleasing sobriquet of Hell-Hole.
The birds were scattered everywhere throughout the swamp, so excellent
was the condition of the ground; scattered so much, that, in no instance
did two rise at once; but one kept flapping up after another, large and
lazy, at every few paces; and the sportsmen scored them fast, although
scarcely aware how fast they were killing them. At length, when they
reached the old creek-side, and the deep black mud-holes, and the
tangled vines and leafy alders, dogs were thrown into it, Frank was sent
forward to the extreme point, and the Commodore out into the open field,
on the opposite side from that occupied by fat Tom.
On the signal of a whistle, from each of the party, Harry drove into the
brake with the spaniels, the setters being now consigned to the care of
Timothy; and in a moment, his loud "Hie cock! Hie cock! Pur-r-r--Hie
cock! good dogs!" was succeeded by the shrill yelping of the cockers,
the flap of the fast rising birds, and the continuous rattling of shots.
In twenty minutes the work was done; and it was well that it was done;
for, within a quarter of an hour afterwards, it was too dark to shoot at
all.
In that last twenty minutes twenty-two cock were actually brought to
bag, by the eight barrels; twenty-eight had been picked up, one by one,
as they came down the long swamp, and one Harry had killed in the
morning. When Timothy met them, with the horses, at the big oak tree,
half an hour afterward--for he had gone off across the fields, as hard
as he could foot it to the farm, as soon as he had received the setters
--it was quite dark; and the friends had counted their game out
regularly, and hung it up secundum artem in the loops of the new game
bag.
It was a huge day's sport--a day's sport to talk about for years
afterward--Tom Draw does talk about it now!
Fifty-one woodcock, forty-nine English snipe, twenty-seven quail, and a
brace of ruffed grouse. A hundred and twenty-nine head in all, on
unpreserved ground, and in very wild walking. It is to be feared it will
never be done any more in the vale of Warwick. For this, alas! was ten
years ago.
When they reached Tom's it was decided that they should all return home
on the morrow; that Harry should attend to the procuring his purchase
money; and Tom to the cheapening of the purchase.
In addition to this, the old boy swore, by all his patron saints, that
he would come down in spring, and have a touch at the snipe he had heerd
Archer tell on at Pine Brook.
A capital supper followed; and of course lots of good liquor, and the
toast, to which the last cup was quaffed, was LONG LIFE TO HARRY ARCHER,
AND LUCK TO HIS SHOOTING BOX, to which Frank Forester added: "I wish he
may get it."
And so that party ended; all of its members hoping to enjoy many more
like it, and that very speedily.