“Who done it?” demanded Barr, as he assisted his partner to haul his canoe aboard the sloop.
“Who do you ’spose?” growled Pete, in reply. “It was nobody but that oneasy Gus Egan and the fellers what’s stopping at his house. They tried to make me believe that they didn’t go for to skeer the ducks, but that they was after some swans they had seen a little furder up the bay.”
Barr was furious when he learned that Egan had been prowling around again just at the wrong time, and without knowing what he was going to do when he got there, he filled away for the creek, declaring, with much flourishing of his fists, that he would square yards with Egan before he saw the sun rise again.
About the time Barr left his cabin, Egan and his party were running into trouble without knowing it. They were going to spend a week in camp, as we have said, their first object, of course, being to see all the sport they could; and the second, to shoot swans enough so that each one of Egan’s guests could take a specimen or two home with him. The cutter had not been under way more than half an hour, when Egan, whose eyes were everywhere, suddenly called out:
“There’s a whiteness!”
“What’s a whiteness?” inquired Curtis, after he had looked all around without seeing anything.
“I should think you ought to know,” replied Hopkins, as he reached for the binoculars, which lay on the cushions near him. “Have you forgotten that once upon a time you told me that I was not much of a sportsman, because I spoke of a ‘flock’ of quails, when I should have said ‘covey’? I have since learned that you were wrong, as well as I. The word ‘covey’ is applied only to partridges; and as there are no partridges in this country, it cannot properly be used.”
“What is the word, then?” asked Curtis.
“Bevy,” answered Hopkins.
“Now, what’s the use of splitting hairs?” exclaimed Egan. “You seldom hear those terms used, even by our best educated sportsmen.”