74 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Jan. 17, 1914. 
The Guardians of the Covies 
I T was the first of September in the prairie 
chicken country. 
Ring! R-i-n-g!! Ring! R-i-n-g! A short, 
a long, another short and long. The telephone 
jingled imperatively. 
Nate got up from the supper table and took 
down the receiver. He had a hunch who was 
on the party line, and answered accordingly. 
“Hello, Pete,” Nate cried into the transmitter. 
“Hello, Nate,” came the response as Pete recog¬ 
nized the voice. “Are you ready to go in the 
morning?” 
“Sure,” Nate yelled, and then, giving Pete a 
jolly, he asked, "Did you saw off the choked 
end of your pump-gun so it’ll scatter better? 
You know they are pretty tame this year, and 
if you’re close up you’ll miss ’em with a full 
choke gun!” 
Pete laughed good naturedly. He was a good 
shot, and took all the kidding with plumes erect. 
We at table in the big kitchen-dining-room-of- 
all-work could hear him plainly as the sound 
snapped out of the receiver. Then Nate and 
Pete planned the festivities for the following 
day: whose team we would drive, where we 
would get a big three-seat spring wagon, where 
we would start, when we should be in the field, 
and sundry items all relating to the hunt for 
the morrow. 
“Say, Pete,” shouted Nate, his Adam’s apple 
jerking up and down like a pile-driver, “Say, I 
heard Swan Nilson was going to order us off 
his stubbles if we went over that way this year. 
How about it?” 
The information had come from one of us 
three shooters who made Nate’s place our head¬ 
quarters. We had been indulging in the favorite 
pastime of the countryside: hanging on the tele¬ 
phone line listening to other peoples’ business. 
That one of our party was a Norwegian! And 
we were in the greatest of Norwegian settle¬ 
ments. 
“That’s a mistake, Nate,” assured Pete. “It’s 
Nils Swanson who said that, but we ain’t going 
within five miles of his place.” 
“Well,” said Nate finally, “we’ll leave here 
before daylight and walk over.” 
By AMOS BURHANS 
“Alright,” said Pete, “I’ll have Nils ready 
with the team and he’ll meet us at the lower 
corner of my oat stubbles. There’s been a little 
covey over there all summer near the hay-land 
where they hatched, and we’ll see if them city 
fellers’ dogs can find ’em.” 
Nate tied the alarm, as usual, to the head of 
his bed. It seemed that we had no more than 
laid down on the mattresses than the infernal 
tattoo of that repeating clock began to serenade 
the dark hours of morning. We slept right over 
Nate’s room and plainly heard him choke the 
fifth encore of that buzzing and jangling time¬ 
piece. At the first volley Bert flopped out of 
bed and into his clothes. He snatched the covers 
off Rock; and I, rather than be disgraced, tumbled 
out, went down stairs and headed for the squeal¬ 
ing swine, that demanded food and drink at 
the first slam of the kitchen door. Two city 
men, and one first class American farmer “pailed” 
a dozen head of cows in a jiffy. Nate turned 
the horses into pasture and after a few odds 
and ends the chores were finished. Before we 
started for the house Mrs. Nate called “break¬ 
fast.” We gathered up the pails of milk and 
went toward the milk-house where the separator 
stood yawning for the foamy milk, and pro¬ 
ceeded to complete this chore of but a few 
minutes. 
“The wolf-tail swept the paling East” and the 
morning star rode out, the last to leave the clear 
but inky heavens as we sat down to that break¬ 
fast of oatmeal, cream, coffee, bacon and yester- 
laid eggs. How Mrs. Nate contrived to bring 
forth such an appetizing club breakfast in so 
short a time only those who fitly dwell in kitchens 
can understand. We could not. And while 
we ate she was busy putting up a fourteen-quart- 
pail of lunch, for she said it would be a sin 
to impose on Pete’s wife, bless her generous 
heart. 
Then the phone clingled and we learned that 
George, a friend of former years, had found 
we were in the country and was driving break¬ 
neck to catch us before we left the farm. He 
had five and a half miles to come, and had left 
just twenty minutes before his mother tele¬ 
phoned. 
"When he gets here, tell him to meet us in 
Pete's stubble,” Nate said to Mrs. Nate. “We’ll 
be at the lower end of it.” 
And gathering up our shooting coats, assort¬ 
ing a box or two of shells in our empty ammu¬ 
nition pockets, giving the boots a final tug at 
their laces, we made ready to be on the way. 
It was just getting light. We went out on the 
porch and George came up the path! We stared 
at him in amazement. It had been just thirty- 
one minutes since he started, and he had arrived 
and unhitched. 
“1 pity that cayuse,” said Rock. 
“There’ll be horses in the country when I’m 
dead,” replied George. 
Into a patch of dewy corn back of the house 
we went, for it was by this route that we were 
to meet Pete. 
“The covey has been roosting in that corner 
of the field next the corn,” Pete pointingly con¬ 
veyed after we had shaken hands all ’round and 
exchanged greetings. “We better spread out in 
a line and work up that way. There might be 
a single chicken or two lying about the field.” 
It was fair daylight now. Eighty acres of 
oat stubble lay before us, a half-mile long, and 
a quarter mile wide. By all the theories of 
chicken hunting the birds should be in the wheat 
instead of oat stubble. Down the field we start¬ 
ed, and cast the dogs off ahead. Here and there 
they came upon cold trails where birds had been 
feeding the day before, and their tails whipped 
the air in circular fashion. 
We were within a hundred and fifty yards of 
the corn when the setter lifted his head into 
the bit of a breeze, and his lips and nostrils 
quivered. But before he had time to make a 
point, the covey went into the air a hundred 
yards ahead, and sailed over the corn into which 
they droppped near its far end. One charge of 
sixes chilled was sent after a lone straggler, but 
rattled off his sides like rifle-bullets off the 
armor of a man o’war. And at the shot the 
pointer bolted, breaking his stand without reckon¬ 
ing on the spike collar that encircled his neck, 
and the sixty feet of braided cotton cord attached 
thereto. Bert gave the line a severe tug at the 
psychological moment, and Mr. Pointer turned 
a back sommerset in the air and dropped to the 
ground, whining. 
“That was a dandy trick,” Pete called to Bert. 
“Once I had a setter,” Pete continued, “and 
every time he broke shot or wing, I did that 
very same flip-flopping trick for him. I thought 
I had him broken. Then when I turned him 
loose to see what he would do, he pointed a 
covey and held staunch as a first mortgage on 
a quarter section. I fired when the birds rose, 
and the dog turned a back sommerset of his 
own accord and chased the birds three miles.” 
Pete winked at me. He was a shrewd Norwegian 
and a great josher. 
It was of no use to try to get the covey up 
again once they were ensconced in the corn and 
the grass that covered the corn ground. It would 
be a game of hide and seek for the rest of the 
day with all the odds in favor of the birds. The 
rig came up and we clambered in, Nils clucking 
the bays into a trot as we settled for the ride 
of four miles across the low divide and into 
the valley along Quail Creek. 
The best of the settled chicken country these 
days lies along the watered valleys of the Dakotas* 
Minnesota, Kansas, Eastern Montana and West¬ 
ern Wisconsin. One stretch of it is not dis- 
JOHN NAILED ANOTHER SINGLE BUT WE WERE TOO LATE. 
