CHAPTER XXXIII 
ON SMALL-GAME SHOOTING IN SPAIN 
Harpy will one enter a village posada or a peasant’s lonely 
cot without observing one inevitable sign. Among the simple 
adornments of the whitewashed wall and as an integral item 
thereof hangs a caged redleg. And from the rafters above will 
be slung an antediluvian fowling-piece, probably a converted 
“flinter,” bearing upon its rusty single barrel some such 
inscription—inset in gold characters—as,. ‘‘ Antequera, 1843.” 
These two articles, along with a cork-stoppered powder-horn and 
battered leathern shot-belt, constitute the stock-in-trade and most 
cherished treasures of our rustic friend, the Spanish cazador. 
Possibly he also possesses a pachdn, or heavily built native 
pointer; but the dog is chiefly used to find ground-game or 
quail, since the redleg, ever alert and swift of foot, defies all 
pottering pursuit. Hence the reclamo, or call-bird, is almost 
universally preferred for that purpose. 
Red-legged partridges abound throughout the length and 
breadth of wilder Spain—not, as at home, on the open corn-lands, 
but amidst the interminable scrub and brushwood of the hills and 
dales, on the moory wastes, and palmetto-clad prairie. On the 
latter hares, quail, and lesser bustard vary the game. 
Thither have ever resorted sportsmen of every degree—the 
lord of the land and the peasant, the farmer, the Padre Cura of 
the parish, or the local medico—all free to shoot, and each carrying 
the traitor reclamo in its narrow cage. The central idea is, of 
course, that the reclamo, by its siren song, shall call up to the 
gun any partridge within hearing, when its owner, concealed in 
the bush hard by, has every opportunity of potting the unconscious 
game as it runs towards the decoy—two at a shot preferred, or 
more if possible. “were unjust to reproach the peasant-gunner 
for the deed; flying shots with his old “ flinter” would merely 
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