“It's no stray bird!” I mentally ejaculated. “Perhaps it's a regular Kansas covey!” Heavens, what luck! The boys—the Judge—quail on toast—the laugh—the amazement—the consternation—I conjured all these things up in my excited brain in less time than it takes to tell it.
I started forward with every fibre a-tension. I was wild to get even a glimpse of the little strangers.
Suddenly—enough almost to puzzle me—the pipe was answered from the mouth of the old potato pit, and the next instant “whir-r-r-r!” rose the birds, and “bang! bang!” I gave them right and left at a range and with a calculation that left three only to join and tell the tale to the whistler in the meadow. Seven was the drop, and the birds were as plump and pretty as ever I had set eyes on. I fairly chuckled aloud in glee at the surprise I had in store for my club mates. I sat down, took a congratulatory nip, and actually toyed with the quail as a boy would with the first fruits of his initial day's outing with his own boughten gun!
My faithful dog Charlie had during this time stuck to his birds. I could hear his angry bark growing angrier, and I could detect, as I fancied, a shade of impatience and disappointment therein. A crack at a partridge will be a change, I thought, and so I hurried in Charlie's direction.
There he sat on a rotten stump, with eyes fixed on the brushy top of a dead pine.
I looked that top over, limb by limb, but not a sign of a feather could I detect. I made a circuit, and skinned every twig aloft in a vain endeavor to discover a roosting bird. I began to think the pup was daft, but I dismissed the reflection promptly as ungenerous and unfair to my trusty cocker. I make solemn affidavit that, though I could not note the suggestion of a partridge up that pine, my spaniel could see it as plain as a pike staff.
“I'll climb the stump!” said I. Mirabile dictu! There, on lower limbs, one above the other and hugging the bark so close that they seemed part of it, were my missed brace!