Presently a superb covey of willow-grouse (who are the parents of our own red variety of the family) rise with a whirr and a loud laugh from the old cock, leave their tribute of four upon the heather—and vanish. We see them flit like a white cloud over the open moorland, rise like one being to top the bushes, flash their wings in the sun as they wheel round in the traditional manner of their tribe before settling, and then we suddenly lose sight of them and see them no more.
"They are down among the aspens," said Jemmie. Hermann dissented.
"They wheeled right round the spinney," he says, "and settled well beyond it."
Ivan takes the side of Jemmie, and Stepan sides with his chief. I am neutral. I saw them up to a point but not beyond it; I saw the sun tip their white feathers with fire as they wheeled and then lost them; but I know how many there were—there were nineteen, no less, that journeyed over the heather and into the spinney—a gigantic covey indeed!
"Two coveys," says Jemmie; "the willow-grouse have a passion for massing even in the chicken stage," which is perfectly true, while in the autumn you may find a community of a hundred of them living together.
Now were these birds little white ghosts, or real flesh and blood and feathers? If not spectres, then where are they? This was the question we asked of one another as, for a full hour, we paced and repaced, as we believed, every inch of a square half mile of ground within which the little wizards must inevitably be somewhere hidden. Hermann explained the matter by declaring that they had settled altogether in a huddled mass, and had not moved a muscle since; knowing, perhaps instinctively, that by preserving absolute immobility they would give no scent. We may, and so may the dogs, have passed within a yard of the hole or tuft in which the beady-eyed little creatures lay crouched, watching us, scarcely breathing for terror, their poor hearts and pulses going very fast as we come near and pass by and see no sign of them.
But Carlow has the luck to stumble upon them. I am watching the dog, and I see him stop suddenly in his mad career (Carlow's career is always mad!), and bend over in an extraordinary position. There is the covey, under his very nose. Alarmed, indeed, they are now, and their necks are held straight and high; they attempt no further concealment; their only anxiety is how to take wing without falling into the jaws of this ogre—fox or whatever he may be. Carlow would sooner perish than touch one of them; but they do not know this, poor things, and peer helplessly and timidly this way and that in the extremity of terror and uncertainty. I can examine them now at leisure for a moment or two, and oh! what beautiful creatures they are. Where was ever so soft a brown as this of theirs, or so pure a white? What bird ever matched the graceful poise of their heads? What—there! they are off, and I have missed them with both barrels; this comes of moralising. Jemmie did not moralise, and he has dropped two of the beauties; but there is a chance for me yet, for the covey has settled in the open, no doubt about the exact spot this time, and not more than one hundred and fifty yards away.
So we take in all the dogs excepting old Kaplya, who is as safe and steady as the Rock of Gibraltar, and head straight for the place in which we believe the birds to be lying. Old Kaplya raises her nose, half turns towards us, smiles and winks (she positively does both), as though she would say, "All right, keep your eye upon Kaplya; I'm on these birds already—follow me!" and away she goes straight as a line, first cantering easily, then trotting a few yards, then cautiously walking as many more, then slowly stopping, stiffening, turning her nose now slightly to this side, now to that, then finally fixing herself into the very perfect picture of a sure point.
Up they go, and off go my two barrels, rather too rapidly and excitedly; off go Jemmie's also, but with more deliberation. To my first shot a bird falls in tatters; to my second two succumb. I have shot three of them, and Jemmie his usual brace. But, alas! my first bird is but a mangled mass of feathers and broken bones, and there must be a burial. Hide him deep beneath the moss and heather, Hermann, and for pity's sake say no more about the circumstance; for in truth my heart is like wax within me by reason of this wasted life. It is pardonable and right, though perhaps regrettable, to take these lives when we intend to use the shot-riddled carcases for our food, but to blow a beautiful creature to pieces and to be obliged to bury its remains is unpardonable.
We decide to leave the rest of this covey; we have levied sufficient tribute upon it. And now the day is growing into middle age, and Jemmie says that we will find one more family of willow-grouse or blackgame and then take our mid-day meal and our siesta. We will diverge into the thick belt of forest on the right, he says, and see if we can find a covey of capercailzies.