The ground seemed to burst with a tiny drumming eruption of up-surging feathery shapes, and Spurrier’s gun spoke rapidly from both barrels. Save for the two he had downed, the covey crossed a little rise beyond a thicket of blackberry brier where he marked them by the tips of a few gnarled trees, and the man nodded his head in satisfaction as the dog he had libeled neatly retrieved his dead birds and cast off again toward the hummock’s ridge.
Spurrier, following more slowly, lost sight of his setter and, before he had caught up, he heard a whimpering of fright and pain. Puzzled, he hastened forward until from a slight elevation, which commanded a burial ground, choked with a tangle of brambles and twisted fox grapes, he found himself looking on a picture for which he was entirely unprepared.
His dog was crouching and crawling in supplication, while above him, with eyes that snapped lightning jets of fury, stood a slender girl with a hickory switch tightly clenched in a small but merciless hand.
As the gunner came into sight she stood her ground, a little startled but obdurately determined, and her 77 expression appeared to transfer her anger from the animal she had whipped to the master, until he almost wondered whether she might not likewise use the hickory upon him.
He tried not to let the vivid and unexpected beauty of the apparition cloud his just indignation, and his voice was stern with offended dignity as he demanded:
“Would you mind telling me why you’re mistreating my dog? He’s the gentlest beast I ever knew.”
The girl was straight and slim and as colorful as the landscape which the autumn had painted with crimson and violet, but in her eyes flamed a war fire.
“What’s that a-bulgin’ out yore coat pocket, thar?” she demanded breathlessly. “You an’ yore dog air both murderers! Ye’ve been shootin’ into my gang of pet pa’tridges.”
“Pet—partridges?” He repeated the words in a mystified manner, as under the compulsion of her gaze he drew out the incriminating bodies of the lifeless victims.
The girl snatched the dead birds from him and laid their soft breasts against her cheek, crooning sorrowfully over them.