FOREST AND STREAM 
73' 
> May ii, 1907.] 
I -;- 
Ij move until she saw a chance. Then of a sudden 
1 [her muscles sprang like the catch of a trap, her 
jjlong steel jaws closed on the throat of the wolf 
,and the fight was over. Paff was on the brute's 
' back in a second and as it fell Toto thrust his 
. bayonet through it. 
Cerchiari had accounted for another of the 
brutes meanwhile and the dogs had finished the 
wounded, so only one wolf remained, and seeing 
its plight it promptly turned tail. Cerchiari 
missed and it disappeared in the woods. Toto, 
beside himself with rage, rushed to where poor 
Roma sat licking an ugly wound, and lifting her 
bodily, carried her to the trail and urged her 
on. She was_ bevond scent, but she followed 
the tracks instinctively and in a few minutes we 
heard her calling. She had the wolf at bay. 
Paff was off like a shot and I ran after him, 
hoping to save little Roma. Beneath a wall of 
stone the fight was raginn and Paff was getting 
the worst of it, but again Roma came to the 
rescue, and as the wolf shook her off I was able 
to blow its head to atoms. 
When I returned the hunt was over, the 
wolves were being skinned, while Airoldi and 
Sindici cared for the wounded dogs. Bruschi, 
looking angry and morose, paced up and down 
impatiently. He stonned as he saw me and 
turned to the coachman. 
“Harness the horses at once,” he said. “The 
work is done and I want to get away from this 
; accursed spot.” Herbert Reeder. 
A Tennessee Ou<ing.—II. 
We slept the sleep of the just the first part of 
the night, but the latter half was devoted to forag- 
f ing trips for extra cover, and closing windows, 
; as the cold wave materialized. I coughed and 
j{ yawned audibly as day began to break, and the 
servants began stirring about, hoping that my 
friend was as tired of lying curled up in bed— 
!i illustrating the “cold contracts” theory—as I, and 
I that he would turn out and build the fire, but 
* the ruse failed to work. After waiting and 
! shivering a little longer I hustled out and built 
j it myself, as I should have done at first. 
I Charlie waked up as I crept back into bed, and 
j called across to know why I had not wakened 
him to make the fire. Like the average poor 
weak mortal I said nothing about the coughing 
I anc l yawning, but pretended that out of pure, un¬ 
selfish regard for him I had cheerfully done the 
[ f l ee d and accepted with complacency his sincere 
| expressions of gratitude. 
This is not bird shooting—just a bit of human 
j nature. An old friend of mine says “There is 
1 just as much difference in folks as anybody, and 
| I am glad of it.” Quite true, and I am glad of 
j it too-—sometimes. 
W hen we dropped off the fence back of the or¬ 
chard and started across a broad stretch of wheat 
stubble the prospect was one to delight the soul 
of man. The air was still, cold and bracing. 
1 he sun shone from a cloudless sky, and a goodly 
land stretched away before us to the very slopes 
of the distant mountains, whose purple tops lay 
clean cut against the blue horizon. The little 
dog shared the general enthusiasm and seemed 
only to touch the ground occasionally as she 
swung back and forth well out to the front. 
At the far side of the field, near a thicket of 
small pines, we found the birds, and Lady fumbled 
them. There was some excuse for her in the 
fact that they had not moved from the roost, and 
were a little hard to locate. The shooting was 
long, but nay companion got down one fine bird 
and mussed up another. I was so busy scolding 
the little dog that the only bird I shot at went 
off untouched. 
We followed and found a few of them again. 
I he first flush was a single, and anybody’s bird, 
but my considerate friend refused to count it 
such, and left me the shot. 
The little dog came down on a staunch point 
a moment later and it was three birds. The first 
one went straight away on which we doubled. 
The others flew right and left giving us each a 
bird. “That’s a fair divide,” said Charlie, as we 
gathered them in. The next bird flushed wild 
out of range. 
Lady found another near my unselfish friend 
and he almost quarreled with me because I would 
not take the shot. I was glad I did not when 
it proved to be a hard flying old cock that came 
near getting away with both loads of chilled 
eights. The next bird up slid gently through 
my first load, untouched, and put a tree between 
us before I could try him with the left. One more, 
which flushed wild, was all of the fairly large 
covey we could find again, although the little dog 
worked hard. “Well, it is no water haul, if it 
did rain yesterday,” said Charlie as we headed 
for another cover. 
The next game was a rabbit and Lady set it 
fast and true. It is a much mooted question 
among sportsmen as to whether or not a dog 
can distinguish between the warm scent of the 
rabbit and quail. On this question I take the 
affirmative. Many a dog, good, bad and indif¬ 
ferent, have I shot over, not one of which could 
ever point the same on birds and rabbits. A 
rabbit may—as some sportsmen insist—fool a 
dog’s nose, but it never will fool his tail. The 
tail will tell on the dog every time he finds fur, 
no matter how hard he tries to control it. With 
some dogs it is a pronounced wag, with others 
only a faint tremble, but with none is it rigid 
with fur, as is invariably the case with feathers; 
hence I hold that what the tail knows the dog 
knows. Lady being in the primary department 
got the benefit of the doubt, although her caudal 
appendage said fur. 
Walking past her graceful body—rigid as 
though carved from stone—I kicked a lusty 
rabbit out of the grass, and while she stood on 
tip toe looking anxiously after it, explained to 
her that Bre’r Rabbit was a plebian and a pre¬ 
tender, one of the fellows that we did not care 
to be on even speaking terms with. 
A fence or two further along brought us to 
a pea patch, where my companion said birds 
used. Lady said so too, after investigating a 
little. She found them on the sunny side of a 
slope and they lay well to her point, giving us 
time to get the lay of the land. By coming in 
behind her the birds would be headed toward 
some very heavy cover, so- we determined to go 
round and walk right down facing her. It was 
really more a test of the little dog’s staunchness 
than an effort to turn the birds, for we knew 
how seldom such a plan succeeded. Rarely will 
a covey of quail flush otherwise than straight¬ 
away from the dog, and this covey proved itself 
no exception. They were big, strong flying birds 
and hurtled by us like a charge of grape shot. 
Rightabout and fast shooting was the order of 
the day, and, like the celebrated martial heroes, 
“we seen our duty and done it.” We might have 
done worse, and been excused; we could not 
have done better. 
“A pair.” 
“Same here.” 
And the little dog lay where she had dropped 
to shot as steady as a veteran. That little in¬ 
cident was just one of the high lights on the 
picture of that day; one of the things remem¬ 
bered after the bad shots, poor work of the dog, 
briar in your trigger finger, and blister on your 
heel are all forgotten. How kindly discriminat¬ 
ing is the memory of a sportsman; it retains only 
what is pleasant, discarding all else. 
Fred Mather, of blessed memory, in his charm¬ 
ing book, “In the Louisiana Lowlands,” puts it 
this way: 
“A blessed thing is a good memory; it retains 
only the best part of our lives, or so tints and 
gilds the other portions, seen through the haze 
of distance, that they seem to belong with our 
most enjoyable experiences. A note-book is like 
a photograph; it records disagreeable things as 
well as pleasant ones; things which memory does 
not retain.” 
While he does not make the express qualifi¬ 
cation I feel sure he wrote of the good memory 
of a sportsman in that happy thought. 
Gathering up our two brace of birds—fine 
heavy fellows—we went after the survivors. They 
had gone over the hill and out of sight on the 
o,ther side, and we did not know whether they 
had stopped in the hollow along the creek or 
gone on to the slope beyond. We covered much 
ground, including both sides of the creek and 
well out on the hillside beyond, and had given 
up and started out to try to find another covey, 
when the little dog, in the act of turning, froze 
into a point with head and tail almost touch¬ 
ing. It was a single and would have been my 
bird if 1 had shot better. 
We now concluded that the birds had turned 
after getting out of sight over the hill, and gone 
up the creek in the direction we were taking, 
which proved to be the case. Lady was down 
on another before the one missed by me was out 
of sight. Charlie allowed himself to be per¬ 
suaded to attend to this one, and did it in a nice 
way, dropping it, clean killed, at fifty yards. 
Three birds got up next, two of which went 
through a bunch of thick pines, the other in the 
open. My friend unselfishly left me the latter, 
and when the smoke cleared away he had down 
a lot of fine-cut pine needles and I a bird. But 
one more materialized and it flew right round 
my friend into the open and was in his game 
pocket before it really knew what had happened. 
A small boy described conscience as “that what 
tells me when I am hungry,” and by that token 
we were reminded that we might let the birds 
rest while we returned to the house for dinner. 
We found another rabbit on the way back, and 
the little dog almost broke a leg trying to hold 
her feet on the ground when it dashed by her. 
One of the scattered birds was in the line of 
our return, of which fact we were not aware 
until my companion walked it up, the dog being 
some distance away. Nearly anyone can miss a 
bird, roaring right out from under his feet, as 
this one did, with the first barrel, but few men 
could kill one the distance he did that one, with 
the second. 
Without further incident we reached the house, 
and were warmly welcomed by the big red dog, 
who evidently bore no malice. He ran over 
Lady and nearly knocked Charlie down, in spite 
of protests vigorous and violent. We had not 
made good the threat to chain Bob at home. The 
little daughter of the house had saved us the 
trouble and him the humiliation, by exercising 
over him the necessary restraining influence to 
prevent his accompanying us. 
We dined, rested and by 2 o’clock were afield 
again, with the intention of taking a short tramp 
so as not to overwork either ourselves or the 
dog on the start. Our immediate destination 
was a small field of grass-grown corn, about a 
Quarter of a mile from the house, where my 
friend said we would find what he called the 
disappearing covey of birds. His story of these 
birds had aroused my curiosity no little. Again 
and again had he flushed them, but never could 
find so much as a single bird again after the 
first flush. They invariably flew in the same 
direction, low—over a rise in the ground—and 
although he had hunted every bit of the cover 
in the direction they took, both far and near, and 
even with the help of the omnipresent Bob dog, 
he declared that never one of the whole covey 
had he raised after the first flush. 
I knew this statement to be literally true, and 
it was indeed strange and unusual. I had worked 
out many such problems and felt that I would 
soon throw light on this one if we found the 
birds. Find them we did, a fine covey, rattling 
about in a little thicket of briars, and got three 
of them on the flush. I marked the point with 
care, where they disappeared over the rise, and 
noted the exact direction they took. 
“Is that the way they always go?” I inquired. 
“Exactly,” was the reply. 
We were near the fence, and crossing it in 
line with the direction taken by the birds, we 
came into a meadow from which the hay had 
been close cut and soon reached the rise over 
which they had flown. 
A good view was had from this point and I 
proceeded to give mv solution of the puzzle. The 
fence on the far side of the meadow had much 
small growth along it, and I unhesitatingly 
located the birds there. 
“Let’s go get them then,” was the prompt reply. 
After hunting the entire length of the fence, 
both sides, and finding no birds, I saw my error 
