Page:A La California.djvu/192

154 line was ordered. Lloyd, having the biggest gun, was ordered to dismount and deploy as skirmisher. With trailed shotgun he crept through an acre or two of dusty chaparral, and came to a halt at last on the flank and within twenty yards of the unsuspecting enemy. We saw him rise slowly and deliberately, bring his murderous weapon to bear, take deadly aim—it seemed to us, waiting there in breathless expectation, that it took him an hour at least to do it—then discharge both barrels at once. There was a shock and concussion like the explosion of a mine, a deep reverberation rolling away and dying in a thousand echoes in the gorges of the mountain. But the gunner, where was he? Lying prone upon his back in the bushes, kicking up as much dust as is raised by an ordinary threshing machine in full operation, as he kicked right and left in his agony. When he arose at last his upper lip was of the thickness of a fifty-cent sirloin steak, and his nose was bleeding profusely. He ventured the opinion that he must have been .stung by hornets while he was down. If such was the case, it was a very unmanly and cowardly thing for the hornets to do; that is all I have to say on the subject. When the shot from his gun struck the dust in the road and raised it in a cloud, I looked to see at least a dozen quail lying in the agonies of death in the road, as it subsided. In place thereof I saw the entire covey on the wing for the chaparral higher up on the mountainside. There were plenty of feathers in the road, however, which showed that he must have startled them considerably.