88 Grouse. 



the afternoon's sport was simply a repetition of the morn- 

 ing's, except that we had but one dog to work with ; 

 for shortly after mid-day the stub-tail pointer, for his sins, 

 encountered a skunk, with which he waged prompt and 

 valiant battle thereby rendering himself, for the balance 

 of the time, wholly useless as a servant and highly 

 offensive as a companion. 



The setter pup did well, ranging very* freely, but 

 naturally got tired and careless, flushing his birds half the 

 time ; and we had to stop when we still had a good hour 

 of daylight left. Nevertheless we had in our wagon, 

 when we came in at night, a hundred and five grouse, 

 of which sixty-two had fallen to my brother's gun, and 

 forty-three to mine. We would have done much better 

 with more serviceable dogs ; besides, I was suffering 

 all day long from a most acute colic, which was any 

 thing but a help to good shooting. 



Besides the sharp-tail there is but one kind of grouse 

 found in the northern cattle plains. This is the sage 

 cock, a bird the size of a young turkey, and, next to 

 the Old World capercailzie or cock of the woods, the 

 largest of the grouse family. It is a handsome bird 

 with a long pointed tail and black belly, and is a very 

 characteristic form of the regions which it inhabits. 



It is peculiarly a desert grouse, for though sometimes 

 found in the grassy prairies and on the open river 

 bottoms, it seems really to prefer the dry arid wastes 

 where the withered-looking sage-brush and the spiney 

 cactus are almost the only plants to be found, and where 

 the few pools of water are so bitterly alkaline as to be 



