174 The Grouse Family 



go a mile, if need require, from his handler, and 

 sufficiently stanch to hold his point without a 

 waver, although many minutes should elapse 

 before reinforcements arrive. A dog of fine 

 nose and intelligence, if possessed of the other 

 qualifications, is a treasure beyond price. The 

 trouble with eastern-broken dogs when they first 

 attempt prairie work is that the ground is too 

 vast for them. Unaccustomed as they are to 

 an apparently limitless scope of novel cover with 

 never a fence or bit of brush to catch their eye 

 and draw them on, they are apt to at first feel 

 somewhat dazed by the seemingly hopeless pros- 

 pect before them. Nor is this to be wondered at, 

 for not seldom the man, too, feels how small is the 

 chance of striking the right spot in all that sea 

 of space. But a good dog is good anywhere, and 

 presently, after he has enjoyed his initial whiff of 

 the rich new scent, he will go striding away at 

 that regular, determined, all-day-got-to-find-'em-at- 

 last gait which is the hall-mark of a good one 

 broken on the plains. 



The deadliest foes of the prairie-hen, ranked 

 in order of destructiveness, are: man, as sports- 

 man, lighter of fires, farmer, and as trapper ; the 

 weather, as snow, cold, and rain ; the beasts and 

 birds of prey wolves, foxes, skunks, and hawks 

 and snakes. Dismissing the ravages by weather, 

 of which excessive rain, by reason of its flooding 



