Grouse. 7? 



I could not penetrate. Then for some time I saw nothing, 

 although beating carefully through every likely-looking 

 place. One patch of grass, but a few feet across, I walked 

 directly through without rousing any thing ; happening to 

 look back when I had gone some fifty yards, I was sur- 

 prised to see a dozen heads and necks stretched up, and 

 eying me most inquisitively ; their owners were sharp-tails, 

 a covey of which I had almost walked over without their 

 making a sign. I strode back ; but at my first step they 

 all stood up straight, with their absurd little tails held up 

 in the air, and at the next step away they went, flying off 

 a quarter of a mile and then scattering in the brushy hol- 

 lows where a coulie headed up into the buttes. (Grouse 

 at this season hardly ever light in a tree.) I marked them 

 down carefully and tramped all through the place, yet I 

 only succeeded in putting up two, of which I got one and 

 missed the other with both barrels. After that I walked 

 across the heads of the coulies, but saw nothing except in 

 a small swale of high grass, where there was a little covey 

 of five, of which I got two with a right and left. It was 

 now very hot, and I made for a spring which I knew ran 

 out of a cliff a mile or two off. There I stayed till long 

 after the shadows began to lengthen, when I started home- 

 ward. For some miles I saw nothing, but as the evening 

 came on the grouse began to stir. A small party flew 

 over my head, and though I missed them with both bar- 

 rels, either because I miscalculated the distance or for 

 some other reason, yet I marked them down very well, 

 and when I put them up again got two. Three times 

 afterward I came across coveys, either flying or walking 



