to be had. But now both he and his comrade are busy about a dyke only a yard or two in front of you, and they show by the usual signals that you are to look out. Crusoe makes a sudden pounce, and a henbird flusters up through the ash and willow branches, and sails away back towards the common, doubtless to take refuge in one of the gravelpits behind us. But this is her last flight upon earth: whatever place may be allotted her in the nigra nemus ilice frondens, reserved, according to Ovid, as a paradise for good birds. Both spaniels watch her as she mounts into the air, and both rush forward together as she falls crumpled up by a shot in the back of her neck, and another which broke her backbone. A few words pass between the two dogs with regard to the privilege of retrieving her, which of course is claimed by the senior, and, after an ineffectual protest, allowed by the junior. we And now we must be getting homewards. Before leave the osier-bed Crusoe exultingly turns back a hare towards the two guns, and drives her between them. Notwithstanding the obstruction offered by twigs, stems, and stumps she cannot escape four barrels, and the young dog brings her back with great joy. She is his very own. He found her, turned her, and gave her to the guns all by himself. Carlo was not in it; and Crusoe is patted and petted as he deserves, and will probably dream of that bit of sport in his warm VOL. CLXXVI.-NO. MLXIX. bed. Crossing the farther stubbles on our way home, the spaniels soon get wind of the pheasants who have just been feeding there; and by beating the hedgerows we add three or four more to our bag, making up a total of six brace, again having occasion to admire not only the sagacity of the spaniel, but also his evident sympathy with his master, and his earnest desire to show him sport. Spaniels are remarkable for this quality. They will sometimes go on working zealously after they are quite tired out, if they think it is expected of them. A singular instance of this was witnessed by the present writer. Coming home in the late afternoon of an October day, he had the misfortune to wound a hare, which, though badly hurt, had strength enough to run pretty well. Marquis, an old favourite, dead, alas! many years ago, had spent a long and laborious day with the gun, and was plodding rather weariedly by my side. He got up a run, however, when he saw the hare, which, had he been fresh, he would soon have caught. As it was, she led him a long round and through one or two hedges, and when at last he approached her on a piece of uphill stubble, the hare was so beat she was obliged to squat, and the dog so far gone that when he overtook her he was powerless to do more than sit down upon her and this he did, waiting till I came up to give her the coup de de grâce. Unhappily, however, this ingenious device proved useless. The hare made 2 U a last expiring effort, and, extricating herself from the grasp of the panting Marquis, succeeded in reaching a small plantation close by, where we sought her sorrowing for half an hour, and were then obliged to give her up. Spaniels, indeed, prefer fur to feather; and when the rabbits are lying out no better fun can be desired than working the hedgerows with a spaniel and a gun on each side. The rabbits then will sit either on the hedge-bank, if sufficiently covered, or oftener underneath any brambles or rubbish that may be lying in the ditch. As they almost invariably bolt on the hedge side, the two friends must take it by turns; though if two spaniels are employed, there is a better chance for the man by the ditch. After rabbits have been ferretted, and the holes stopped, you may, where rabbits are abundant, get a shot every twenty yards, taking care that Carlo does not get too far ahead. He thinks this is better sport than pheasant-hunting, because there is so much more of it, and because, as already said, fur is his favourite. He can now stick to the ditch, and have no occasion to cast about for scent. And his nose is down among the thorns, or pointing upwards at the bank, and his tail giving warning at the same moment, every five minutes. Another talent which we believe is not confined to spaniels, but which we have never seen exhibited by any other dog, is what keepers call "crowning" rabbit that is, announcing the presence of a rabbit underground, by sitting down above him and pointing fixedly at the ground. When the keeper is in doubt whether any given hole is worth ferretting or not, the dog will tell him if it is. This will save him a lot of trouble if the hole is empty; and it is wonderful how few mistakes the spaniel ever makes. We had one formerly who was an adept at this kind of work; and the keeper from whom we had him said that in a day's ferretting he almost always made one mistake and no more, of which he was so heartily ashamed that when the hole was drawn blank, he would slink away crestfallen, and not recover himself for some time. For wild-fowl shooting on rivers, lakes, or broads, retrievers are perhaps better than spaniels, who cannot always stand so much cold and wet. Dogs differ as much as human beings in the strength of their constitutions; and in the case of a delicate dog the cold may settle on his lungs and bring him to an early grave. The best spaniel and the best setter that we ever had died of consumption caused or accelerated by exposure. But for brooks or marshes the dog that makes the least noise is the best. And this of course is equally true whether your object is snipe or duck. The difficulty with spaniels is, what we have already mentioned, that they will not always retrieve snipe or fowl. But these are exceptional cases, and we always like a spaniel best when in pursuit of snipe. A good strong spaniel, too, is very useful for flight shooting, though not better than a retriever. He, too, hears the fowl, and snuffs the battle from afar, long before anything is visible or audible to his master. But he tells him to make ready, watches the approach of the birds, and if one is killed marks it down to an inch at almost any distance and in spite of the darkness. But as other dogs will do the same, the spaniel cannot claim any special notice on this score. The scenes above described are not imaginary. The rough pheasant-shooting we have enjoyed was mostly in Wales, and in parts of the western counties abounding in shaws, copses, and dingles, where pheasants were to be found scattered about all through a mild winter. A hard winter, of course does not deserve to rank very high in the estimation of all true sportsmen ? It embraces the search, the find, the rise, and the critical moment when the quarry hangs between life and death. It demands a knowledge of "woodcraft" in almost all its branches, as the word "woodcraft" in its turn includes all knowledge of either birds or beasts which come under the denomination of game. It brings into play more fully perhaps than any other kind of sport the innate sagacity of the dog, his courage, his loyalty, and his sympathy. If Dr Johnson-the idea is too ludicrous-had ever gone out shooting with a spaniel, he would never have made that witty but wholly misdirected retort to the gentleman who spoke to him of a very sensible dog." Indeed, no one can have lived for many years on terms of intimacy, perhaps one might say with any dogs, but above all with spaniels, without thanking Bishop Butler for what he has said on their behalf. It is not, indeed, enough to console us in any degree for the loss of them. We mourn for such a friend as one who hath no hope, and more than we do for many relatives, whom we feel, perhaps, are not wholly lost to us. the bishop's words help us to feel that we have lavished our affection on no unworthy objects. And with these words, more serious than we had thought of when we sat down And now he would ask to write, we close what we have whether such shooting over to say about shooting "over spaniels as is here described spaniels.' "Quum jam glandes atque arbuta sacræ Deficerent silvæ, et victum Dodona negaret" drove them into the preserves, in quest of the maize and buckwheat carefully provided by their guardians. Snipe also we have shot, principally in Wales, where they abound not only in the marshes, but along the many small streams and dykes which intersect that delightful country. Rabbit-shooting can, of course, be had anywhere; but no picture of it is here given which the writer has not witnessed with his own eyes. But THE RAWHIDE. BY STEWART EDWARD WHITE. CHAPTER I.-THE PASSING OF THE COLT'S 45. THE man of whom I am now to tell you came to Arizona in the early days of Cochise. He settled in the Soda Springs Valley, and there persisted in spite of the devastating forays of that Apache. After a time he owned all the wells and springs in the valley; and so, naturally, controlled the grazing on that extensive free range. Once a-day the cattle, in twos and threes, in bands, in strings, could be seen winding leisurely down the deep - trodden and converging trails to the watertroughs at the home ranch, there leisurely to drink, and then leisurely to drift away into the saffron and violet and amethyst distances of the desert. At ten other outlying ranches this daily scene was repeated. All these cattle belonged to the man, great by reason of his priority in the country, the balance of his even character, and the grim determination of his spirit. When he had first entered Soda Springs Valley his companions had called him Buck Johnson. Since then his form had squared, his eyes had steadied to the serenity of a great authority, his mouth, shadowed by the moustache and beard, had closed straight in the line of power and taciturnity. There was about him something of the Spanish; so now he was known as Señor Johnson, although in reality he was straight American enough. Señor Johnson lived at the home ranch with a Chinese cook and Parker, his foreman. The home ranch was of adobe, built with loopholes like a fort. In the obsolescence of this necessity other buildings had sprung up, unfortified. An adobe bunkhouse for the cow-punchers, an adobe blacksmith shop, a long low stable, a shed, a windmill and pondlike reservoir, a whole system of corrals of different sizes, a walled - in vegetablegarden, these gathered to themselves cotton-woods from the moisture of their being, and so added each a little to the green spot in the desert. In the smallest corral between the stable and the shed stood a buckboard and a heavy waggon, the only wheeled vehicles about the place. Under the shed were rows of saddles, riatas, spurs mounted with silver, bits ornamented with the same metal, curved short irons for the range branding, long heavy "stamps for the corral branding. Behind the stable lay the "pasture," a thousand acres of desert fenced in with wire. There the hardy cow-ponies sought out the sparse but nutritious bunch - grass, sixty of them, beautiful as antelope, for they were the pick of Señor Johnson's herds. And all about lay the desert, shimmering, changing, many tinted, wonderful, hemmed in by the mountains, that seemed tenuous and thin like beautiful mists, and by the sky, that seemed hard and polished like a turquoise. Each morning at six o'clock the ten cow-punchers of the home ranch drove the horses to the corral, neatly roped the dozen to be "kept up for that day, rewarded the rest with a feed of grain. Then they rode away at a little fox-trot two by two. All day long they travelled thus, conducting the business of the range, and then at night, having completed the circle, they jingled again into the corral. At the ten other ranches this programme had been duplicated. The half hundred men of Señor Johnson's outfit had covered the area of a European principality. And all of it—every acre, every spear of grass, every cactus prickle, every creature on it-practically belonged to Señor Johnson, because Señor Johnson owned the water, and without water one cannot exist on the desert. This result had not been gained without struggle. The fact could be read in the settled lines of Señor Johnson's face and the great calm of his grey eye. Indian days drove him often to the shelter of the loopholed adobe ranch-house, there to wait the soldiers from the fort, in plain sight thirty miles away on the slope that led to the foot of the Chiracuahas. He lost cattle and some men; but the profits were great, and in time Cochise, Geronimo, and the lesser lights had flickered out in the winds of destiny. The sheep terror merely threatened; for it was soon discovered that with the feed of Soda Springs Valley grew a bur that annoyed the flocks beyond reason, so the bleating scourge swept by forty miles away. Cattle-rustling so near the Mexican line was an easy matter. For a time Señor Johnson commanded an armed band. He was lord of the The country high, the low, and the middle justice. He violated international ethics, and for the laws of nations he substituted his own. One by one he annihilated the thieves of cattlesometimes in open fight, but oftener by surprise and deliberate massacre. was delivered. And then with indefatigable energy Señor Johnson became a skilled detective. Alone or with Parker, his foreman, he rode the country through, gathering evidence. When the evidence was unassailable he brought offenders to book. The rebranding through a wet blanket he knew and could prove; the ear-marking of an unbranded calf until it could be weaned he understood; the paring of hoofs to prevent travelling he could tell as far as he could see; the crafty alteration of similar brands— as when a Mexican changed Johnson's Lazy Y () to a Dumb-bell Bar (0-0)-he saw through at a glance. In short, the hundred and one petty tricks of the sneak - thief he ferreted out, in danger of his life. Then he sent to Phoenix for a Ranger-and that was the last of the Dumb-bell Bar brand, or the (oo) Three |