ps of sandy soil, like streams and bays and estuaries in
shape. We knew that the quail would lie well here, for they hate to
cross bare openings.

Therefore, we threw out our skirmish line, and the real advance in force
began.

Every man retrieved his own birds, a matter of some difficulty in the
tumbleweed. While one was searching, the rest would get ahead of him.
The line became disorganized, broke into groups, finally disintegrated
entirely. Each man hunted for himself, circling the tumbleweed patches,
combing carefully their edges for the quail that sometimes burst into
the air fairly at his feet. When he had killed one, he walked directly
to the spot. On the way he would flush two or three more. They were
tempting; but we were old hands at the sport, and we knew only too well
that if we yielded so far as to shoot a second before we had picked up
the first, the probabilities were strong that the first would never be
found. In this respect such shooting requires good judgment. It is
generally useless to try to shoot a double, even though a dozen easy
shots are in the air at once; and yet, occasionally, on a day when
Koos-ey-oonek is busy elsewhere, it may happen that the birds flush
across a wide, bare space. It is well to keep a weather eye open for
such chances.

With a green crowd and in different cover such shooting might have been
dangerous; but with an abundance of birds, in this wide, open prairie,
cool heads knew enough to keep wide apart and to look before they shot.
The fun grew fast and furious; and the guns popped away like
firecrackers. In fact, the fun grew a little too fast and furious to
suit Dodge.

Dodge had beautiful and well-trained dogs. Ordinarily any one of us
would have esteemed it a high privilege to shoot over them. In fact, I
have often declared myself to the effect that of the three elements of
pleasure comprehended in field shooting that of working the dogs was the
chief. Just as it is better to catch one yellowtail on a nine-ounce rod
than twenty on a hand line, so it is better to kill one quail over a
well-trained dog than a half dozen "Walking 'em up." But this particular
case was different. We were out for a high old time; and part of a high
old time was a wild and reckless disregard of inhibitive sporting
conventions. The birds were here literally in thousands. Not a third had
left the slough for this open country; we could not shoot at a tenth of
those flushed, yet the guns wer