“ABOUT A BUSHEL.” A QUAIL STORY 141 
Red brings in the four birds one after the other. Then 
I light a cigarette. In five minutes the rest of the covey 
will start calling in the apple orchard and Betty, Red, 
and I will start after them. 
Both dogs pointed almost at once after crossing the 
fence. I put up Red’s bird and downed it. At the 
report of the gun Betty’s bird flew and darting behind 
the trunk of an apple tree got away without my getting 
a shot. I put up nine birds in the orchard and five of 
them tried the same dodge. The covey had never been 
fired at, probably had never heard the noise of a gun 
before, and yet they were as keen as New England quail 
to put a tree between themselves and the gun. I was 
shooting over two of the finest trained bird dogs in 
America, shot way ahead of my average, and bagged 
seven quail out of the covey. That was my medal 
score when shooting alone on any single covey during 
the trip. We had two bushels of birds that night. 
We shot one day over the farm of an old Indian, who 
in younger days had been a real chief. These Indians 
received so many acres of land for each member of the 
family. The old chief had a large family and owned a 
fine farm of many splendid level acres. He took his 
cigar and a dollar with evident pleasure. We were 
shooting over Ted and Box that morning. As I walked 
down towards a few acres of Kaffir corn I saw a tremen- 
dous covey, probably a double covey, running along in 
the path ahead. I stopped and walked backwards a 
few yards and called for the dogs. Both were still in 
the wagon. In an instant they came running down the 
path and immediately ran into a point. 
The birds were well scattered. One of the leading 
quail, forty yards ahead of the dogs, got up without any 
great noise of wings and flew towards the small corn- 
