CHAPTER V
QUAIL
The family assembled took my statement with extraordinary calm,contenting themselves with a general inquiry as to the species. I wasjust a trifle crestfallen at this indifference. You see at this time Iwas not accustomed to the casual duck. My shooting heretofore had been avery strenuous matter. It had involved arising many hours before sun-up,and venturing forth miles into wild marshes; and much endurance of coldand discomfort. To make a bag of any sort we were in the field beforethe folk knew the night had passed. Upland shooting meant driving longdistances, and walking through the heavy hardwood swamps and slashesfrom dusk to dusk. Therefore I had considered myself in great luck tohave blundered upon my ducks so casually; and, furthermore, from thefamily's general air of leisure and unpreparedness, jumped to theconclusion that no field sport was projected for that day.
Mrs. Kitty presided beside a copper coffee pot with a bell-shaped glasstop. As this was also an institution, it merits attention. A smallalcohol lamp beneath was lighted. For a long time nothing happened. Thenall at once the glass dome clouded, was filled with frantic brown andracing bubbling. Thereupon the hostess turned over a sand glass. Whenthe last grains had run through, the alcohol lamp was turned off.Immediately the glass dome was empty again. From a spigot one drew offcoffee.
But if perchance the Captain and I wished to get up before anybody elsecould be hired to get up, the Dingbat could be so loaded as to give downan automatic breakfast. The evening before the maid charged the affairas usual, and at the last popped four eggs into the glass dome. Afterthe mysterious alchemical perturbations had ceased, we fished out thoseeggs soft boiled to the second! One day the maid mistook the gasolinebottle for the alcohol bottle. That is a sad tale having to do withrunning flames, and burned table pieces, not to speak of a melted-downconnection or so on the Dingbat. We did not know what was the matter;and our attitude was not so much that of alarm, as of grief andindignation that our good old tried and trained Dingbat should in hisold age cut up any such didoes. Especially as there were new guestspresent.
After breakfast we wandered out on the verandah. Nobody seemed to be inany hurry to start anything. The hostess made remarks toPollymckittrick; the General read a newspaper; the Captain saunteredabout enjoying the sun. After fifteen minutes, as though the notion hadjust occurred, somebody suggested that we go shooting.
"How about it?" the Captain asked me.
"Surely," I agreed, and added with some surprise out of my otherexperience, "Isn't it a little late?"
But the Captain misunderstood me.
"I don't mean blind shooting," said he, "just ram around."
He seized a megaphone and bellowed through it at the stables.
"Better get on your war paint," he suggested to me.
I changed hastily into my shooting clothes, and returned to theverandah. After some few moments the Captain joined me. After some fewmoments more a tremendous rattling came from the stable. A fine bay teamswung into the driveway, rounded the circle, and halted. It drew thesource of the tremendous rattling.
Thus I became acquainted with the Liver Invigorator. The Invigorator wasa buckboard high, wide, and long. It had one wide seat. Aft of that seatwas a cage with bars, in which old Ben rode. Astern was a deep boxwherein one carried rubber boots, shells, decoys, lunch, game, and thelike. The Invigorator was very old, very noisy, and very able. With itwe drove cheerfully anywhere we pleased--over plowed land, irrigationchecks, through brush thick enough to lift our wheels right off theground, and down into and out of water ditches so steep that wealternately stood the affair on its head and its tail, and so deep thatwe had to hold all our belongings in our arms, while old Ben stuck hisnose out the top bars of his cage for a breath of air. It could not betipped over; at least we never upset it. To offset these virtues itrattled like a runaway milk wagon; and it certainly hit the high spotsand hit them _hard_. Nevertheless, in a long and strenuous sportingcareer the Invigorator became endeared through association to manyfriends. When the Captain proposed a new vehicle with easier springs andless noise, a wail of protest arose from many and distant places. TheInvigorator still fulfills its function.
Now there are three major topics on the Ranch: namely, ducks, quail, andponies. In addition to these are five of minor interest: the mail,cattle, jackrabbits, coons, and wildcats.
I was already familiar with the valley quail, for I had hunted him sinceI was a small boy with the first sixteen-gauge gun ever brought to thecoast. I knew him for a very speedy bird, much faster than our bobwhite, dwelling in the rounded sagebrush hills, travelling in flocks offrom twenty to several thousand, exceedingly given to rapid leg work. Wehad to climb hard after him, and shoot like lightning from insecurefooting. His idiosyncrasies were as strongly impressed on me as the factthat human beings walk upright. Here, however, I had to revise my ideas.
We drove down the avenue of palms, pursued by four or five yappingdachshunds, and so out into a long, narrow lane between pasture fences.Herds of ponies, fuzzy in their long winter coats, came gently to lookat us. The sun was high now, so the fur of their backs lay flat. Later,in the chill of evening, the hair would stand out like the nap ofvelvet, thus providing for additional warmth by the extra air spacebetween the outside of the coat and the skin. It must be very handy tocarry this invisible overcoat, ready for the moment's need. Here, too,were cattle standing about. On many of them I recognized the familiarJ-I brand of many of my Arizona experiences. Arizona bred and raisedthem; California fattened them for market. We met a cowboy jingling byat his fox trot; then came to the country road.
Along this we drove for some miles. The country was perfectly flat, butvariegated by patches of greasewood, of sagebrush, of Egyptian-cornfields, and occasionally by a long, narrow fringe of trees. Here, too,were many examples of that phenomenon so vigorously doubted by mostEasterners: the long rows of trees grown from original cotton wood orpoplar fence posts. In the distance always were the mountains. Overheadthe sky was very blue. A number of buzzards circled.
After a time we turned off the road and into a country covered over withtumbleweed, a fine umber red growth six or eight inches high, andscattered sagebrush. Inlets, bays, and estuaries of bare ground raneverywhere. The Captain stood up to drive, watching for the game tocross these bare places.
I stood up, too. It is no idle feat to ride the Invigorator thus overhummocky ground. It lurched and bumped and dropped into and out oftrouble; and in correspondence I alternately rose up and sat down again,hard. The Captain rode the storm without difficulty. He was accustomedto the Invigorator; and, too, he had the reins to hang on by.
"There they go!" said he, suddenly, bringing the team to a halt.
I looked ahead. Across a ten-foot barren ran the quail, their crestscocked forward, their trim figures held close as a sprinter goes, rankafter rank, their heads high in the alert manner of quail.
The Captain sat down, jerked off the brake, and spoke to his horses. Isat down, too; mainly because I had to. The Invigorator leaped from humpto hump. Before those quail knew it we were among them. Right, left, allaround us they roared into the air. Some doubled back; some buzzed lowto right or left; others rose straight ahead to fly a quarter mile, andthen, wings set, to sail another quarter until finally they pitched downinto some bit of inviting cover.
The Captain brought his horses to a stand with great satisfaction. Wecongratulated each other gleefully; and even old Ben, somewhat shaken upin his cage astern, wagged his tail in appreciation of the situation.
For, you see, we had scattered the covey, and now they would lie. If theband had flushed, flown, and lighted as one body, immediately on hittingthe ground they would have put their exceedingly competent little legsinto action, and would have run so well and so far that, by the time wehad arrived on the spot, they would have been a good half mile away. Butnow that the covey was broken, the individuals and small bands wouldstay put. If they ran at all, it would be for but a short distance. Onthis preliminary scattering de
pends the success of a chase afterCalifornia quail. I have seen six or eight men empty both barrels oftheir guns at a range of more than a hundred yards. They were not insaneenough to think they would get anything. Merely they hoped that theracket and the dropping of the spent shot would break the distant covey.
We hitched the horses to a tree, released old Ben, and started forth.
For a half hour we had the most glorious sport, beating back and forthover the ground again and again. The birds lay well in the low cover,and the shooting was clean and open. I soon found that the edges of thebare ground were the most likely places. Apparently the birds workedslowly through the cover ahead of us, but hesitated to cross the openspots, and so bunched at the edge. By walking in a zigzag along some ofthese borders, we gathered in many scattered birds and small bunches.Why the zigzag? Naturally it covers a trifle more ground than a straightcourse, but principally it seems to confuse the game. If you walk in astraight line, so the quail can foretell your course, it is very apteither to flush wild or to hide so close that you pass it by. The zigzagfools it.
Thus, with varying luck, we made a slow circle back to the wagon. Herewe found Mrs. Kitty and Carrie and the lunch awaiting us with theponies.
These robust little animals were not miniature horses, but genuineponies, with all the deviltry, endurance, and speed of their kind. Theywere jet-black, about waist high, and of great intelligence. They drew aneat little rig, capable of accommodating two, at a persistent rapidpatter that somehow got over the road at a great gait. And they couldkeep it up all day. Although perfectly gentle, they were as alert asgamins for mischief, and delighted hugely in adding to the general rowand confusion if anything happened to go wrong. Mrs. Kitty drove themeverywhere. One day she attempted to cross an irrigation ditch thatproved to be deeper than she had thought it. The ponies disappearedutterly, leaving Mrs. Kitty very much astonished. Horses would havedrowned in like circumstances, but the ponies, nothing daunted, dug intheir hoofs and scrambled out like a pair of dogs, incidentally dippingtheir mistress on the way.
In the shade of a high greasewood we unpacked the pony carriage. Thiswas before the days of thermos bottles, so we had a most elaboratewicker basket whose sides let down to form a wind shield protecting analcohol burner and a kettle. When the water boiled, we made hot tea, andso came to lunch.
Strangely enough this was my first experience at having lunch broughtout to the field. Ordinarily we had been accustomed to carry a sandwichor so in the side pockets of our shooting coats, which same we ate atany odd moment that offered. Now was disclosed an astonishing variety.There were sandwiches, of course, and a salad, and the tea, butwonderful to contemplate was a deep dish of potted quail, row after rowof them, with delicious white sauce. In place of the frugal bite or sothat would have left us alert and fit for an afternoon's work, we ateuntil nothing remained. Then we lit pipes and lay on our backs, andcontemplated a cloudless sky. It was the warm time of day. The horsessnoozed, a hind leg tucked up; old Ben lay outstretched in doggycontent; Mrs. Kitty knit or crocheted or something of that sort; andCarrie and the Captain and I took cat naps. At length, the sun's rays nolonger striking warm from overhead, the Captain aroused us sternly.
"You're a nice, energetic, able lot of sportsmen!" he cried withindignation. "Have I got to wait until sunset for you lazy chumps to geta full night's rest?"
"Don't mind him," Mrs. Kitty told me, placidly; "he was sound asleephimself; and the only reason he waked is because he snored and I_punched_ him."
She folded up her fancy work, shook out her skirts, and turned to theponies.
It was now late in the afternoon. We had disgracefully wasted our time,and enjoyed doing it. The Captain decided it to be too late to hunt up anew covey, so we reversed to pick up some of those that had originallydoubled back. We flushed forty or fifty of them at the edge of the road.They scattered ahead of us in a forty-acre plowed field.
Until twilight, then, we walked leisurely back and forth, which is theonly way to walk in a plowed field, after all. The birds had pitcheddown into the old furrows, and whenever a tuft of grass, a piece oftumbleweed, or a shallow grassy ditch offered a handful of cover, therethe game was to be found. Mrs. Kitty followed at the Captain's elbow,and Carrie at mine. Carrie made a first-rate dog, marking down the birdsunerringly. The quail flew low and hard, offering in the gatheringtwilight and against the neutral-coloured earth marks worthy of goodshooting. At last we turned back to our waiting team. The dusk wascoming over the land, and the "shadow of the earth" was marking itsstrange blue arc in the east. As usual the covey was now securelyscattered. Of a thousand or so birds we had bagged forty-odd; and yet ofthe remainder we would have had difficulty in flushing another dozen. Itis the mystery of the quail, and one that the sportsman can nevercompletely comprehend. As we clambered into the Invigorator we couldhear from all directions the birds signalling each other. Near, far, toright, to left, the call sounded, repeating over and over again aparting, defiant denial that the victory was ours.
"You _can't_ shoot! You _can't_ shoot! You _can't_ shoot!"
And nearer at hand the contented chirping twitter as the covey founditself.