Robert Chambers - The Fighting Chance

Sagamore came galloping back with a soft, unsoiled mass of chestnut and brown feathers in his mouth. Siward took the dead cock, passed it back to the keeper who followed them, patted the beautiful eager dog and signalled him forward once more.

“You should have fired that time,” he said to Sylvia—“that is, if you care to kill anything.”

“But I don’t seem to be able to,” she said. “It isn’t a bit like shooting at clay targets. The twittering whirr takes me by surprise—it’s all so charmingly sudden—and my heart seems to stop in one beat, and I look and look and then—whisk! the woodcock is gone, leaving me breathless—”

Her voice ceased; the white setter, cutting up his ground ahead, had stopped, rigid, one leg raised, jaws quivering and locking alternately.

“Isn’t that a stunning picture!” said Siward in a low voice. “What a beauty he is—like a statue in white and blue-veined marble. You may talk, Miss Landis; woodcock don’t flush at the sound of the human voice as grouse do.”

“See his brown eyes roll back at us! He wonders why we don’t do something!” whispered the girl. “Look, Mr. Siward! Now his head is moving—oh so gradually to the left!”

“The bird is moving on the ground,” nodded Siward; “now the bird has stopped.”

“I do wish I could see a woodcock on the ground,” she breathed. “Do you think we might by any chance?”

Siward noiselessly sank to his knees and crouched, keen eyes minutely busy among the shadowy browns and greys of wet earth and withered leaf. And after a while, cautiously, he signalled the girl to kneel beside him, and stretched out one arm, forefinger extended.

“Sight straight along my arm,” he said, “as though it were a rifle barrel.”

Her soft cheek rested against his shoulder; a stray strand of shining hair brushing his face.

“Under that bunch of fern,” he whispered; “just the colour of the dead leaves. Do you see?… Don’t you see that big woodcock squatted flat, bill pointed straight out and resting on the leaves?”

After a long while she saw, suddenly, and an exquisite little shock tightened her fingers on Siward’s extended arm.

“Oh, the feathered miracle!” she whispered; “the wonder of its cleverness to hide like that! You look and look and stare, seeing it all the while and not knowing that you see it. Then in a flash it is there, motionless, a brown-shaped shadow among shadows.... The dear little thing!… Mr. Siward, do you think—are you going to—”

“No, I won’t shoot it.”

“Thank you.... Might I sit here a moment to watch it?”

She seated herself soundlessly among the dead leaves; he sank into place beside her, laying his gun aside.

“Rather rough on the dog,” he said with a grimace.

“I know. It is very good of you, Mr. Siward to do this for my pleasure. Oh—h! Do you see! Oh, the little beauty!”

The woodcock had risen, plumage puffed out, strutting with wings bowed and tail spread, facing the dog. The sudden pigmy defiance thrilled her. “Brave! Brave!” she exclaimed, enraptured; but at the sound of her voice the bird crouched like a flash, large dark liquid eyes shining, long bill pointed straight toward them.

“He’ll fly the way his bill points,” said Siward. “Watch!”

He rose; she sprang lightly to her feet; there came a whirring flutter, a twittering shower of sweet notes, soft wings beating almost in their very faces, a distant shadow against the sky, and the woodcock was gone.

Quieting the astounded dog, gun cradled in the hollow of his left arm, he turned to the girl beside him: “That sort of thing wins no cups,” he said.

“It wins something else, Mr. Siward,—my very warm regard for you.”

“There is no choice between that and the Shotover Cup,” he admitted, considering her.

“I—do you mean it?”

“Of course I do, vigorously!”

“Then you are much nicer than I thought you.... And after all, if the price of a cup is the life of that brave little bird, I had rather shoot clay pigeons. Now you will scorn me I suppose. Begin!”

“My ideal woman has never been a life-taker,” he said coolly. “Once, when I was a boy, there was a girl—very lovely—my first sweetheart. I saw her at the traps once, just after she had killed her seventh pigeon straight, ‘pulling it down’ from overhead, you know—very clever—the little thing was breathing on the grass, and it made sounds—” He shrugged and walked on. “She killed her twenty-first bird straight; it was a handsome cup, too.”

And after a silence, “So you didn’t love her any more, Mr. Siward?”—mockingly sweet.

They laughed, and at the sound of laughter the tall-stemmed alders echoed with the rushing roar of a cock-grouse thundering skyward. Crack! Crack! Whirling over and over through a cloud of floating feathers, a heavy weight struck the springy earth. There lay the big mottled bird, splendid silky ruffs spread, dead eyes closing, a single tiny crimson bead twinkling like a ruby on the gaping beak.

“Dead!” said Siward to the dog who had dropped to shot; “Fetch!” And, signalling the boy behind, he relieved the dog of his burden and tossed the dead weight of ruffled plumage toward him. Then he broke his gun, and, as the empty shells flew rattling backward, slipped in fresh cartridges, locked the barrels, and walked forward, the flush of excitement still staining his sunburnt face.

“You deal death mercifully,” said the girl in a low voice. “I wonder what your ci-devant sweetheart would think of you.”

“A bungler had better stick to the traps,” he assented, ignoring the badinage.

“I am wondering,” she said thoughtfully, “what I think of men who kill.”

He turned sharply, hesitated, shrugged. “Wild things’ lives are brief at best—fox or flying-tick, wet nests or mink, owl, hawk, weasel or man. But the death man deals is the most merciful. Besides,” he added, laughing, “ours is not a case of sweethearts.”

“My argument is purely in the abstract, Mr. Siward. I am asking you whether the death men deal is more justifiable than a woman’s gift of death?”

“Oh, well, life-taking, the giving of life—there can be only one answer to the mystery; and I don’t know it,” he replied smiling.

“I do.”

“Tell me then,” he said, still amused.

They had passed swale after swale of silver birches waist deep in perfumed fern and brake; the big timber lay before them. She moved forward, light gun swung easily across her leather-padded shoulder; and on the wood’s sunny edge she seated herself, straight young back against a giant pine, gun balanced across her flattened knees.

“You are feeling the pace a little,” he said, coming up and standing in front of her.

“The pace? No, Mr. Siward.”

“Are you a trifle—bored?” She considered him in silence, then leaned back luxuriously, rounded arms raised, wrists crossed to pillow her head.

“This is charmingly new to me,” she said simply.

“What? Not the open?”

“No; I have camped and done the usual roughing it with only three guides apiece and the champagne inadequately chilled. I have endured that sort of hardship several times, Mr. Siward.... What is that furry hunch up there in that tall thin tree?”

“A raccoon,” he said presently. “Can you see the foxy head peeping so slyly down at us? Look at Sagamore nosing the air in that droll blind mole-like way. He knows there’s something furry up aloft somewhere; and he knows it’s none of his business.”

They watched the motionless ball of fur in the crotch of a slim forest elm. Presently it uncurled, cautiously; a fluffy ringed tail unfolded; the rounded furry back humped up, and the animal, moving slowly into the tangent foliage of an enormous oak, vanished amid bronzing leafy depths.