Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/182

170 him Kenneth heard near at hand subdued clucks, whispered calls; and from farther away, now here, now there, now half voiced, now full strength came the jaunty clear gathering call over and over repeated.

"You can't shoot! You can't shoot!"

"Now we will go back over the same ground and get our shooting," instructed Corbell. "You will have to pick up your own birds, and to do that you will have to mark them very closely. This brush all looks pretty much alike. Until you get used to it I'd advise you not to kill a second bird until you have picked up the first. And another thing: if you fall behind the line looking for a down bird, you don't shoot again until you have caught up, even if you do flush something. That's for safety. Everybody ready? All right: we're off!"

In the retracing of his steps Kenneth had many bitter truths borne in on him. The valley quail in his full growth and strength is one of the speediest of upland game. He is very strong in flight, and he launches himself from the advantage of iron-hard ground. He is like a blue bullet; and is a hard bird to hit when flushed on level ground. But here Kenneth was midway up a steep hill. Rarely did a quail flush exactly on his level, and rarely did it fly on the same level. It darted quartering up the hill from below, or swooped curving down the hill from above, or deceived all calculation by rocketing up, over and back. He shot over, he shot behind; and at his first shattering report, a bewildering, buzzing half dozen of these blue devils darted into the air on all sides of him to confuse his second barrel. Then he had to keep his footing and make his way through brush. Above and below him the guns were speaking regularly; and several times the remnants of his bewildered attention saw the quick puff of feathers and the long slanting fall that means a clean kill. But he became more and more flustered and angry until at a point where the low growth of sage came to an end, he was thoroughly rattled.

"Nice shoot: they lay nicely!" observed Corbell, as they gathered together. He began to pull quail from the game pockets of his canvas coat. "How did you make out, Boyd?" "Very badly."