86 Grouse. 



stoutly built as to have successfully withstood the assaults 

 of time. We were travelling in a light covered wagon, in 

 which we could drive anywhere over the prairie. Our 

 dogs would have made an Eastern sportsman blush, for 

 when roughing it' in the West we have to put up with any 

 kind of mongrel makeshift, and the best dog gets pretty 

 well battered after a season or two. I never had a better 

 duck retriever than a little yellow cur, with hardly a trace 

 of hunting blood in his veins. On this occasion we had a 

 stiff-jointed old pointer with a stub tail, and a wild young 

 setter pup, tireless and ranging very free (a Western dog 

 on the prairies should cover five times the ground neces- 

 sary for an Eastern one to get over), but very imperfectly 

 trained. 



Half of the secret of success on a shooting trip lies in 

 getting up early and working all day ; and this at least we 

 had learned, for we we were off" as soon as there was light 

 enough by which to drive. The ground, of course, was 

 absolutely fenceless, houses being many miles apart. 

 Through the prairie, with its tall grass, in which the sharp- 

 tails lay at night and during the day, were scattered great 

 grain fields, their feeding-grounds in the morning and 

 evening. Our plan was to drive from one field to another, 

 getting out at each and letting the dogs hunt it over. 

 The birds were in small coveys and lay fairly well to the 

 dogs, though they rose much farther off from us in the 

 grain fields than they did later in the day when we flushed 

 them from the tall grass of the prairie (I call it tall grass 

 in contradistinction to the short bunch grass of the cattle 

 plains to the westward). Old stub-tail, though slow, was 



