28o Life and Sport on the Pacific Slope 



bevy at the head of a canon situated between our 

 ranch and the ocean. There were three of us, the 



right number, A and I and our guest, a famous 



shot in the old country, hard to beat upon the 

 moors or at a hot corner, but a heavy-weight, not 

 quite at his ease beneath a Californian sun. To 

 our left lay a fine stretch of sage-brush, intersected 

 with small gulches ; above this some open ground, 

 and yet higher some steep sandstone cliffs. We 

 decided to drive our birds into the sage, if Diana 

 permitted ; and by spreading out, by shouting, and 

 with furious tapping of brush and branches, suc- 

 ceeded in scattering the quail over the delectable 

 slope. Then, in a straight line, our friend in the 

 centre, we breasted the brush. Suddenly a single 

 bird whirled into the air, turned sharply to the 

 right, and whizzed at a double angle behind us 



and downhill. A dropped him stone dead 



with his second barrel, and then asked our guest, 

 at whose feet the bird rose, why he had not fired. 

 Bruno trotted up with the quail, and the stranger 

 examined it with interest. " By Gad ! " he ex- 

 claimed, with a jolly laugh, " it 's not eight inches 

 long, and it frightened me out of my wits 1 " Five 

 minutes later we are in the thick of what may be 

 called the hardest and finest wing-shooting in the 

 world. The birds, with a strong trade wind behind 

 them, twist and turn like snipe, dodging in and out 

 of the taller bushes, flying upward, downward, to 

 the right and left, skimming the ground, facing the 

 guns sometimes, in a plucky attempt to regain the 

 thick woodland behind us, and presenting in short 

 every conceivable kind of shot. Fortunately we 



