of the people who live off in the bottoms and rarely meet people other than the neighbors they have known all their lives.
“Been a little over two years, I reckon,” he went on, feeling under some compulsion to be saying something. “You recollect the syrup-makin’ down at Sully’s an’ we all went possum huntin’ afterward? That was two years ago about the first of the month.”
“I guess you’re right,” I agreed, looking about for the dog and wishing he would come in. Pointers are a weakness of mine. Then I saw him, coming back down the slope.
“Is that old Buck?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he replied. “Belle’s dead. Died last spring. She was awful old.”
“Two of your birds went down in that clump over there. I marked them down just after you shot. In there, Buck!”
I waved the dog in toward the vines, which were about sixty or seventy yards away, up the hill and near the road. He wheeled and started in and then froze, beautifully, in the sunlight, with his tail straight and rigid, one foot off the ground and his head swung around to the right.
I grinned at Sam and there was a happy pride in his eyes as he smiled back at me. We both laughed then, and I said, with grave understatement, “That’s a pretty good dog, Sam. I’ll give you twenty-five dollars for him.”
He pretended to consider the offer seriously, pulling off his old greenish-black hat and scratching his head slowly, and then replied, “Well, Bob, I don’t rightly see how I could let him go for that. Him bein’ so well trained and all.”
I shook my head in affected disbelief that this generous offer had been refused. I knew, of course, that he wouldn’t have taken five hundred for the dog, even though the sum probably represented as much as he made off the Eilers place in a year. You love hunting dogs, or you don’t.
“You’d better get in there.” I waved toward Buck. “He’s not going to hold it all day.”
“Now, Bob, you know him better’n that.” He smiled, trying to keep some of the pride out of his voice because of an ingrained reluctance to appear boastful before someone outside his immediate circle. After all, I lived in town.
“Here.” He handed me the gun. Perhaps he had seen me eying it hungrily.
I started to protest, but then I had it in my hand and I was going toward Buck. I made a lot of noise as I kicked in through the old sandburs and vines and high grass, and then one of the birds rocketed out right from under my feet, twisting around toward the right and downhill, and I swung around toward him and the gun caught him and passed slightly and I shot and missed. I never could hit a bird going to the right. I don’t know why.
When I shot, the other one got up, fifteen yards ahead of me, the roar of his beating wings seeming almost a continuation of the noise of the gun, and I swung back and he was going away and climbing, a shot I very seldom miss, and I let go with the left barrel and he seemed to stop in the air as though there had been a string on him and I had pulled it back. And there was that old sharp thrill in it, that feeling that is part fierce exultation and part a sudden pang of remorse or something like it. A bob-white quail is a gallant little bundle of dynamite and no one should want to kill one, but you do, and in that frozen second when he stops in the air and you feel the pride of a clean kill there is also that sharp stab that is almost regret and then it is gone and there is only pride.
For the first time since they had helped me up off the canvas there in Jersey City, some of the bitterness and the galling taste of defeat had begun to wear off. This was home and I was glad I was back.
I broke the gun and took out the two empties and before I threw them down I held them up to my nose and smelled the burned powder. I took the bird from Buck and patted him on the head and he seemed to feel all right then about giving it to me instead of going all the way back to Sam with it.
I gave it to Sam