At the homestead, as it was not yet time for lunch, we deposited our game, and examined the vegetable-garden. It is surprising how often during the noisiest hours of the days rabbits may be flushed from harbours where they must lie in daylong peril from the small host of sheepdogs ranging all over the place. But to-day Rough pushes through tufts of raspberry-canes and beds of cabbage without a sign of success. Next to the field behind the farm, marching across the tangled tussocks and examining the hedges without raising a flutter. Then down to the barn, where we sat on the hay-seeded floor (for furniture there was none), with the fragrant ‘mow’ for back-rest, and lunched off an enormous pie.
While this duty was being attended to, the next move was also discussed: the principal, Rough and I were to take another turn at the beckside coppices, while the other gun would try up the glen to the marshy field, our opening place. At the gate out of the fold we separated, but, instead of keeping below the bluff, struck upwards, to where it fell away abruptly. As we stood there, partly hidden by a thick veil of full-leaved sycamore, we had an almost bird’s-view of the little feeding-ground W—— had so completely raked from the beckside two hours agone. Beyond the hedge, betwixt wood and field, was a little reddish-brown patch—almost out of range. If, as to my eye seemed most probable, this was merely an upturned sod, to fire would be to startle the outliers to the burrows. If the patch was really a rabbit, so near to the coyer of the hedge was it that its slightest leap therewards would cause it to be lost to us. I was thus undecided; but the principal, more accustomed than I to the vagaries of furred creatures, raised his gun. There was a very slight movement of the reddish-brown spot—it was a rabbit; the high-pitched crack of smokeless powder echoed along the hillside, and the patch had disappeared. Hit or miss? The fence at the top of the brae was a stout one; its top being wattled into an unbreakable bullfinch to capering heifers and young horses. I handed the gun over, then followed suit. Four long, sliding strides carried us down the worst pitch, and in a few seconds we were by the watercourse. My companion lay his gun down and climbed over the hedge to seek his rabbit, a search I prosecuted among the rank nettles and long tangled grass on my side, but for some little time neither of us succeeded. The principal, finishing his side, began at the opposite end of my more difficult beat. At that moment a rabbit, its eyes glazing in death, rolled out from among the evil-smelling garlic into the beck course not two yards from where I stood. The long shot had therefore gone home.
While we were thus employed, the beagle was enjoying a very lively time on the coppiceside; twice I saw him scurrying in hot pursuit in a thin scrub of oaks. Our rabbit found, my companion again took up his gun and posted himself on a tiny rise in the path along the beckside, watching where Rough was working. It was, perhaps, three minutes before, with a rush, a rabbit broke cover from a tangle of grass right about our heads; veiled with bushes as the hillside was, the shot seemed almost an impossible one, but it was essayed. The dull sheen of a clouded sun dwelt upon the slender uplifted double tube of steel; the muscles of the lean face bending towards the stock of polished wood stiffened; his keen eye seemed to flash from trigger-lock to sight, and, passing through the thin air, lighted upon the little animal—gray, with white underparts showing as with strenuous haste it trod, perchance for the last time, the well remembered smoot among the tussocks. The glance seemed scarce to have reached the rabbit ere, with a sharp explosion, a tongue of flame spurted from the bright steel chamber. The dead gray stems of grass crushed and broke as the quivering body stumbled, checked, then rolled over and over down the slope. The next rabbit stole softly down the hedgeside when we had moved to the limit of the brae. Rough, ranging beyond the fence, was having our keenest attention as he hunted and whimpered round a dense clump of alders. I was standing some yards back, when I heard and located the stealthy rustle. My call, ‘Mark, this side the fence!’ brought the gun round promptly; but the rabbit cast all attempts at stealth to the wind, and scampered straight in our direction. In a moment it was so near the gun that a shot would have blown it to pieces. But when it came within a couple of yards, the furred one whisked sharply into a smoot through the hedge, and, without again showing itself, found harbour. Its escape was deserved for the sharpness of its manœuvre.
After this Rough’s chases began to take him further afield, and sometimes he ran quite out of our sight: we could hear his grand voice going away along the hidden fields. But his journeyings were fruitless. If the scents he was following were fresh, the rabbits merely ran a circle over the tussocky grass before taking to the depths of the warrens. Yet his courage never faltered, and he returned to search new brakes of bramble and hazel with never-failing patience. Sundry calls and whistles brought him within reach, and, as no other way of getting him away from the coppice offered success, the leash was put on, and away he trotted quietly by my side. But on the outskirts of the woods he was set at liberty again, and marked the period by immediately rousing a somnolent rabbit in the hedgerow across the brook. With glee he chased it up and down, but Bunny did not intend to seek the open. We could hear the crackling of dead twigs as it dashed about the dense tangle, and Rough’s quivering body showed us where approximately it was; but though up and down the hedge it ran, the sharpest eye could not sight it. Rough never despaired till the rabbit got into some burrow and scent failed. In answer to our call, he then left the hedgeside, and was trotting across the stony bed of the rivulet towards us when several wide-mouthed burrows attracted his attention. In a flash he was struggling into the dark depths, his voice coming back in strange muffled tones as he, scarce a yard within, came to passes so narrow that even his small white body could not advance. In and out, every time with more red soil adhering to his fine coat, right and left, he visited each hole in turn, settling down at last to scratch a way into the wider tunnel. His voice seemed to be constantly ringing the entreaty, ‘Why, why don’t you come out?’ but the rabbits, shivering in their furthest recesses, did not respond to the urgent cry.
Finding anything short of violence useless to remove the beagle, we ‘left him alone in his glory’ and returned to the farm.
‘I wish Rough would be coming,’ said my companion a few minutes later, after settling the routes for himself and the other gun for the rest of the day, and even as he spoke the beagle scrambled through the lower bars of the fold gate. Oh, where was the pretty coat of this morning! It was damp, and the sandy soil was smeared over every hair, while muzzle and paws were clotted with light red mud. But Rough’s work had been so good that nothing could be alleged for a few such minor indiscretions as this.
The leash was put on, and we left the farmyard. We struck in a different direction this time, following the course of the little stream. Here and there alders spring from the water’s edge, and beneath their shade rabbits are fairly sure to be found. My companion approached with caution, and, before I had time to get up, fired. I saw the rabbit roll over, but, acting on instructions, did not cross the stream to pick it up. Two score yards lower down, just where the beck ripples from its shady pools down a long shelving shale, a party of rabbits were feeding in fancied security. The gun was levelled, and, as the released Rough gave tongue in wilful glee, two short flashes and reports heralded two more successful shots. Not a miss yet to this gun. The long flats were unproductive of sport, but after a while we came to where the bluffs, standing some yards back from the water, were adorned with a sprinkling of gorse.
‘We’re sure to have some fun here,’ said my gun, ‘when Rough begins to rustle the whins.’
When my companion had taken up a position oil the brink of the rise commanding its whole breast, I let the beagle go. For a few minutes he ravaged fruitlessly about—‘not at home’ at every seat and smoot. Suddenly Rough, in a ranging rush, balked. There was something alive in a whin in front of it. One moment its eyes scanned the tangle, and located the rabbit more closely; next it turned its head, to assure itself that its master was in position; then, with head lowered, it rushed into the bush. Of course Bunny bolted instantly, laced in and out among the remaining bushes, then broke into the open. A few yards with Rough chasing pell-mell in the rear, then the fugitive seemed to curl up in its mad career, and the dog had gripped it in a moment. It was quite dead by the time I got up. As Rough seemed to be unwilling to work the whins further, we turned aside, crossing the stream and climbing the steep bank beyond.
We crossed the crest and took the lee of the hedge for some way, till a gap where another fence struck at right angles presented a chance for another shot. Turning to the left, we approached the best series of whins on the whole shooting. But here luck deserted us. Rough, hunting among the long storm-broken grass, roused a ‘sitter’ to flight, and pursued. He was a beagle: calls and whistles did not check him in full chase, and his quarry leapt up quite out of range. Rough’s alarming notes had their expected effect. When we came to the edge of the whins, we could hear him ‘towrowing’ at an unseen distance among the bushes, and there was not a rabbit to be seen. Nor did the partridge, of which for years a covey had inhabited a corner of the next field, appear. We called at several likely places on our return journey to the farm, but every animal was secure in its burrow, and Rough’s most agonized searches of hedge-bottoms and becksides was of no avail.