364 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 
Bang-whang go two barrels of the guns almost to- 
gether, a feather parts from the long, outspread fan 
behind the booming wings, and in a second more the 
brown streak fades among the distant trees. 
B-b-b-b-b goes another from almost the same place, 
almost before the first one is out of sight, and bang 
goes one barrel of each gun exactly together, and a 
cloud of feathers floats from the downward whirling 
bird, while with boisterous b-b-b-b-b seven or eight 
more birds rise, curling, flashing, darting and whizzing 
from the ferns in all directions. 
But Jack seems to have no anxiety about the birds 
that have fallen, and after going cautiously a few steps 
forward, stops again, with slowly waving tail. Care- 
fully he moves along, sniffing daintily at the air on 
high, and swinging off occasionally to one side so as 
to catch the full breeze, then, as he advances a few 
paces beyond where the other birds had risen, his limbs 
and tail gradually stiffen, until he again becomes quite 
rigid, with Frank, on the other side of the ravine, imi- 
tating all his motions almost as accurately as if the 
two were connected by an electric wire. 
As we come up to him he suddenly relaxes, moves 
off a few yards to one side again, and then, with nose 
high upraised and body sunk low in the grass, he 
crawls forward a few feet, in shape more like an alli- 
gator than a dog, and then comes again to a standstill. 
As we advance a little in front of the dog three grouse 
burst roaring from the ferns some twenty feet ahead 
of us and dart away in different directions. One 
