l the moves in
the game, but never did his heart fail to leap in response. In later
years, when he too owned a shotgun, this sudden shock of the nerves
seemed to be the required stimulant to key him instantly to his best
work. A sneaker--that is to say, a bird that flushed without the
customary whirr--he was quite apt to miss.

Little by little, as he followed Mr. Kincaid, he learned the habits of
his game: where it was to be found according to time of day and season
of year. Strangely enough this he never analyzed. He did not consciously
say to himself; "It is early in the day, and cold for the time of year,
_therefore_ we'll find them in the brush points just off the swamps,
_because_ they will be working out to the hillsides for the sun after
roosting in the swamps." His processes of judgment were more
instinctive. By dint of repeated experience of finding birds in certain
cover, that kind of cover meant birds to him. "A good place for 'pats,'"
said he to himself, and confidently expected to find them. That is the
way good hunters are made.

All day long thus they would tramp, forcing their way through the
blackthorn thickets; clambering over and under the dead-falls and debris
of the slashings; climbing the side hills with the straight, silvery
shafts of the poplars; wandering down the narrow aisles of the old
logging roads; plodding doggedly across the unproductive fields that lay
between patches of cover; always lured on in the hope of more game
farther on, picking up a bird here, a bird there, each an adventure in
itself. And occasionally, once in a great while, they ran against a
glorious piece of luck, when the grouse rose in twos and threes, this
way, that, and the other, until the air seemed full of them. Mr.
Kincaid, very intent, shot and loaded as fast as he was able. Sometimes
things went right, and the bag was richer by two or three birds. Again
they went wrong. The first grouse to rise might be the farthest away.
Mr. Kincaid would snap-shoot at it, only to be overwhelmed, after his
gun was empty, by a half dozen flushing under his very feet. Or a miss
at an easy first would spell humiliation all along the line. Then Bobby
and Duke would be much cast down.

"Thing to do," said Mr. Kincaid, "is to shoot one bird at a time. If you
get to thinking of the second before you've killed the first, you won't
get either. It's a hard thing to learn. I haven't got it down pat yet."

* * *