Small Game Shooting 283 



quail whizzing between scrub-oaks and grease- wood. 

 Soon the brush becomes impassable, so we sit down 

 and wait. Presently a cock calls, and our ears 

 catch an answering note from a distant gorge. 



A glances at me and shrugs his shoulders. 



We know that a monstrous bevy rises in this 

 gorge, but it is a labour of Hercules to dislodge 

 it. Fired, however, by the presence of our friend, 

 we agree to make an attempt after luncheon. So 

 we retreat to a spring, water the setters, eat our 

 sandwiches, smoke our pipes, and then plunge 

 doggedly into a wilderness of manzanita. The 

 stiff, red branches scourge us pitilessly as we 

 struggle through, and before many minutes have 

 passed the three of us are on hands and knees, 

 crawling at snail's pace up a steep hill. After 

 twenty minutes' climbing, when hope deserts us, 

 when hearts beat furiously against ribs, and every 

 bone and sinew protests against a further advance, 

 we hear a soft cluck, cluck, cluck — as of feeding 

 chicks, then silence, and then a vibrant whir-r-r, 

 the frenzied fluttering of a thousand wings, a thrill- 

 ing sound, sweeter in our ears than the hel canto of 

 a Trilby, a sound that begins fortissimo and melts 

 in an enchanting diminuendo into silence. We 

 know where the birds have gone, and a laugh 



breaks from A 's lips. The choir invisible has 



flown straight up-hill to a potrero, a piece of table- 

 land covered with low brush, an ideal spot for 

 quail-shooting. The October sun is blazing hot, 

 and the perspiration streams from our faces as we 

 crawl up and onwards, but the heat will anchor 

 the birds as surely as if strings were tied to them ; 



