254 What Birds Have Done With Me 



a cocked double-barreled shot gun into my hands 

 and said in a tense whisper: "Give 'em one bar- 

 rel on the ground and the next, when they get up." 

 I am surprised that I heard him, for, in some un- 

 accountable way, I was back in that Wisconsin 

 swamp where I had helped round up the oxen on 

 that far way June morning, and these tiny feath- 

 ered things did not look much larger than "Mrs. 

 Stumpy's chicks" and not nearly as wild. For 

 some reason this covey had not been hunted and 

 were unafraid. If very hungry, I might have 

 done it, or if wife or children needed meat, but 

 kill a Bob White, a thing in a wide sense related 

 to "Mrs. Stumpy," for fun; that I could not do. 

 I scarcely remember how I tried to square myself, 

 I know it was no use to try to make him under- 

 stand, and I was quite willing to have him think 

 me "bug-house." 



Only last winter a County official in a South- 

 ern City, with an auto, and dogs, and guns, and 

 another mighty hunter, and two women Dianas, 

 pulled up in front of a Drug Store and the host 

 called his father out to see the spoil of a two days' 

 hunt, eighty Bob Whites. The white haired old 

 gentleman, and he was a gentleman, congratulated 

 the party with beaming face, so sorry that he 

 could not have had a hand in the splendid sport. 

 Honestly, I did not understand their feeling any 

 more than they could understand mine while we 



