“Here, Dandy! Here Punch! To heel,” said Bert, as he and his four companions started down the shore of the lake in search of their supper.
“Why do you make the dogs go behind?” demanded Hopkins. “Why don’t you hie them on, and perhaps they will stand something for us. I should think this ought to be good quail ground.”
“So it is,” answered Bert. “And if you want a chance at some, we’ll——”
“No we won’t,” interrupted Egan. “If little birds are the height of Hop’s ambition, let him take the pointers some day and go off by himself. We are after ducks now, and we want the dogs to stay with us, and bring our game ashore when we kill it.”
Hopkins made no reply. Like all enthusiastic sportsmen, he had his own ideas of shooting, and 308he was much more successful with some kinds of game than he was with others. There was no boy who could beat him in getting over a rough country on horseback, when the hounds were in pursuit of a deer or fox; he was almost certain to kill every snipe, quail, or grouse that got up before him; but a wild duck, going down wind with the speed of a lightning express train, bothered him. With all his practice, he had never been able to make a respectable bag of water-fowl; so he stood around, holding his gun in the hollow of his arm, and watched Egan, who cut down every duck that passed anywhere within seventy-five yards of him. The pointers brought them out as fast as they fell into the lake, and it was not long before Bert and Fred Packard, who were polite enough to allow their guests to do all the shooting, had about as many ducks slung over their shoulders as they wanted to carry.
“This is like the handle of a jug—all on one side,” said Hopkins, at length. “I must find something to shoot at, for I can’t carry these loads back home with me.”
He gradually drew away from his companions as he spoke, but he had no intention of going 309off alone. He kept his eyes on the dogs, and when he saw them looking at him, he waved his hand toward the bushes. The intelligent and well-trained animals understood him, and, believing no doubt that hunting upland birds was easier and pleasanter work than retrieving ducks from the cold waters of the lake, they were prompt to obey the order thus silently conveyed to them. Egan and the rest did not see the dogs when they went away, for their attention was fully occupied with a fine flock of mallards, some of which were coming across the lake, holding a course which promised to bring them within easy range of Egan’s double-barrel. The latter, who was snugly hidden in a thicket of bushes, had cocked both barrels of his gun, and was waiting for the ducks to come a little nearer to his place of concealment, when all on a sudden they took wing and disappeared up the lake. Egan and his companions looked all around to see what had frightened them, and discovered Hopkins and the pointers in the act of crossing a fence that ran between the woods and a brier-patch.
“Now, Hop, that will never do,” cried Egan. 310“How are we going to get our ducks ashore if you take the dogs away?”
“Throw chunks on the other side of them and let the waves wash them ashore,” was the reply. “I saw a flock of quails over here, and as soon as I get some of them, I will bring the dogs back.”
“You’re not much of a sportsman, Hop,” said Curtis. “There is no such thing as a flock of quails. Covey is the proper word.”
“Aw!” said Hopkins. “Well, I don’t care what you call them, so long as you will let me have the dogs long enough to shoot some of them. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
The duck hunters were obliged to be satisfied with this promise, and when Hopkins made it he fully intended to keep it; but in the ardor of the chase he forgot all about it. The pointers very soon found the covey, which Hopkins had marked down very accurately, and when it took wing at his approach, he brought down five members of it very handsomely. Punch and Dandy dropped to shot—that is, when the gun was fired, they laid down and waited for the hunter to reload—and when they were ordered to seek dead, they executed a manœuvre which some of our best artists, who 311love a dog and gun, have often reproduced on canvas.
The reason why dogs are taught to drop to shot is this: The members of the covey do not all fly away at the same time, but some generally remain behind, preferring to trust to concealment rather than to flight. If the dogs were permitted to rush in at once to secure the dead birds, they would flush these laggards, which would get off scot free; for of course the sportsman could not shoot at them while he held an empty gun in his hands.
“Seek dead,” commanded Hopkins, as soon as he had reloaded his gun; whereupon the dogs jumped up, and, after running about among the bushes for a few minutes, stopped and came to a point.
“Fetch!” said the hunter; and in obedience to the order each dog seized a bird. They were coming in with them, when Dandy stopped as if he had suddenly been deprived of all power of action, and came to another point. He was standing a live bird while he held a dead one in his mouth. Punch backed him splendidly—that is, he stopped and pointed also, although he did 312not see or smell the bird—and the two presented a picture that Hopkins, had he been handy with the brush or pencil, would have been glad to preserve. He stood and looked at it for at least five minutes, the dogs holding their point stanchly all the while, and then he flushed the bird and brought it down.
“Well done, boys,” said Hopkins, after he had reloaded his gun, and placed the two quails carefully away in the capacious pockets of his shooting-coat; “you have been educated by somebody who understands his business. Seek dead.”
Hopkins had kept his eyes on the surviving members of the covey, and marked them down (by that we mean that he had noted the exact spot on which they alighted); but he did not intend to pay any further attention to them just then. He knew that every minute he spent in hunting them up would be just so much time wasted. He had learned by experience that after a covey has once been flushed, it is almost impossible for the best dogs to find it again. A large number of quails have been seen to settle down in a clump of bushes not more than ten feet in circumference, 313and the dogs have run through their place of concealment in every direction without seeing or scenting a single bird. Every sportsman has noticed this, and some of the best of them affirm that the birds are endowed with the power of retaining their scent; but whether that is so or not—and nobody has ever been able to refute it—the fact that they are hard to find when once they have become scattered, remains the same.
“I will attend to you in half an hour,” soliloquized Hopkins, when all the dead birds had been brought in. “By that time you will begin to run around, and the dogs will be able to scent you. Hie on, boys! Hunt up another flock.”
Hopkins had never seen so many quails as he saw that afternoon, not even in Maryland, where they are found in such numbers that they attract sportsmen from distant States. He found so many fresh coveys that he forgot all about the one he had left in the brier-patch. The pointers led him on and on, and Hopkins never stopped to take his bearings, until he had filled the pockets of his shooting-coat so full of birds that they would not hold another one. Then he sat down on a log to rest, and to listen for the roar of 314Egan’s gun. But he did not hear it, for Egan and his party were on their way to the shooting-box, having secured all the birds they wanted.
“I declare, it is growing dark,” said Hopkins; “and if I don’t reach the cabin pretty soon, I shall have to stay in the woods all night. That would not be pleasant, for the fellows never would leave off poking fun at me. Come on, boys. I think the lake lies in this direction.”
But Hopkins was not the only hunter who has been “completely turned around” in the woods, and instead of going toward the lake, he followed a course that lay parallel with the shore, and about a mile and a half from it. He walked rapidly, passing through Godfrey Evans’s old cotton field—now grown up to briers—and within less than two hundred yards of his cabin, and finally found himself sitting on the top rail of a fence which ran along by the side of a smooth, well-beaten road. He did not remember that he had ever seen that road before. He believed that it ran from the river back into the country; but which was the river-end of it and which the country-end, he could not tell. The pointers did not seem disposed to help him out of his quandary, 315for when he stopped on the top rail of the fence to rest, they laid themselves contentedly down by the side of the road to wait until he was ready to go on.
“I am out of my reckoning as sure as the world,” said Hopkins to himself, “and there’s no house in sight. Ah! Here comes somebody. I’ll ask him if he will tell me which way I must go to find the river—that is, if I can stop him.”
Just then Hopkins heard the clatter of a horse’s hoofs on the hard road. He knew that the animal was approaching at the top of his speed, but he could not see him, for the thick bushes shut out his view. He jumped off the fence and hurried to the road to intercept the horseman, and just then a riderless nag dashed by, running with the speed of the wind. Hopkins knew him the moment he caught sight of him, for he had seen him before.
“There, sir!” he exclaimed, “I knew that colt would do some damage if he ever got the chance. When you see a horse with a narrow forehead and peaked ears that almost touch at the tips, you want to look out for him. He’s gone and tumbled Dave Evans and his mail bag off into the 316ditch, and who knows but he may have broken his neck?”
As this thought passed through the boy’s mind he shouldered his gun, and set off up the road in the direction from which the horse came. He moved along at a rapid trot, looking everywhere for the dismounted mail-carrier, but he would certainly have passed him if he had been alone. The dogs were the first to discover him. After Hopkins had run about half a mile, Dandy and Punch, who were fifty yards in advance of him, suddenly stopped and began barking at something in the fence-corner—the boy could not see what it was, for the bushes concealed it from his view. Believing from the actions of the dogs that they had found a wild animal of some kind, Hopkins cocked both barrels of his gun and walked slowly along the road until he came opposite the fence corner, but still he could see nothing. He tried to send the dogs into the bushes, but they positively refused to go. They barked loudly and looked very savage, but kept close to Hopkins for protection.
“I don’t much like the idea of going in there myself,” thought the young hunter, “for there 317are such, things as bears, panthers and wild-cats in this country; and neither do I like to go on without having a shot at that varmint, whatever it may be. I won’t, either. I am going to see what it is.”
His gun was loaded with heavy shot, and Hopkins had the utmost confidence in his skill as a marksman. Having fully made up his mind that he would not be driven from the field by an invisible enemy, he walked cautiously toward the bushes, stooping down now and then to peer into them. The pointers kept pace with him, and finally Dandy, who must have discovered something that set his fears at rest, made a sudden bound and disappeared in the thicket. No sooner was he out of sight than his barking ceased, and when Hopkins parted the bushes with one hand, holding his gun in the other in readiness for a shot, he saw the pointer licking the face of the mail-carrier, who was lying on the ground so effectually gagged with a stick that he could not speak, and so tightly wrapped up in ropes that he could move neither hand nor foot. Hopkins was horrified, as almost any boy would have been under the same circumstances. Although the 318thicket was pretty dark the hunter recognized David as readily as he had recognized his horse, and he thought at first that he was dead; but when his optics became somewhat accustomed to the obscurity, he saw that David’s eyes were wide open, and that they were turned toward him with a most appealing expression.
“Well, this is a little ahead of any thing I ever heard of,” said Hopkins, who was profoundly astonished. “What are............