Burton L. Spiller - Grouse Feathers

GROUSE FEATHERS

BY BURTON L. SPILLER

ILLUSTRATED BY LYNN BOGUE HUNT

THE DERRYDALE PRESS

Published in the United States of America
by The Derrydale Press
4720 Boston Way, Lanham, Maryland 20706

Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK, INC.

1989, The Derrydale Press, Inc.

Original Derrydale printing 1935
First paperback printing with french folds 2000

ISBN 978-1-56833-144-7

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America.

TO THAT VAST MULTITUDE
OF SCATTER-GUN ENTHUSIASTS
TO WHOM
THE THUNDER OF RISING GROUSE
IS A LORELEI
AND THE WHISTLE OF WOODCOCK
A SIREN SONG
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED

GROUSE FEATHERS

I BELIEVE I had reached the rather impressive age of six when I bagged my first really big game. As I recall it now, I think it was Sitting Bull who was my first victim. He had been raising Hades among the chaparral far too long to suit my youthful fancy and, when I saw him peering around the corner of the shed at me, with that sinister eye of his, I let him have itbingbingbing! like that. No fuss, no bother, nothing even to wax lyric about. Just bingbingbing! and he was the proverbial good Indian.

It is with a faint glow of pride that I recall I was fast on the trigger even then. The fact that the gun was of wood, with no visible mechanism, seemed to be no disadvantage. It worked as smoothly as a present-day sub-machine gun, never varying a grain in powder charge, excepting on those rare occasions when it was necessary to administer the coup de grace to a supposedly dead victim. Then it said BANG! viciously, venomously, in a childish treble. One BANG! was usually sufficient for the most aggravating case.

But Indians were too ridiculously easy to bag and I sought a less vulnerable target. My Chatterbox, an English publication for children and imported for what reason I have never been able to determine, aroused in me the impression that bears were our only really dangerous game. Strange it is how those childish impressions still linger. Even now I hesitate to place a pop bottle between the paws of a bear I know to be perfectly tame and feel a tickling up and down my spine when his capable tongue extracts a peanut from between my fingers.

So I started in to rid our community of bears, with all the enthusiasm of a vice squad embarking on a campaign to clean up a city. I believe, however, that of the two, my undertaking was crowned with the greater success, for I am informed, on good authority, that no wild bears have roamed the streets of that suburban village since those days of slaughter and carnage in the latter part of the last century.

It must have been in my seventh year that the consciousness dawned upon me that grouse were a factor to be considered. Dad was a grouse hunterwhen he could play truant from businessand I recall certain savory stews which may have helped to mould my childish opinion. Here was something tangible, a separate entity emerging from the phantasmagoria of my childish imagination. A thing that lived, that moved, that was possessedaccording to Dadwith uncanny cunning, with lightning swiftness awing, with the power of becoming invisible at will or of shaping its mobile body to the perfect image of a stick or stone. A thing to be desired above all things else.

In my imagination, I placed him upon a jeweled pedestal and crowned him King. There, after nearly forty years, he still sits, his throne unchallenged, his glory undimmed by the passage of time.

Then, in the fall of my eighth year, Dad took me with him, for a glorious month, into the wilds of Maine. We explored the Dead River country and there I made associations which call me back periodically. Stately old Mount Bigelow, so closely allied with Arnolds ill-fated expedition, Saddleback, Kennebago, the Rangeleys. Today that country is still a sportsmans paradise and I, O lucky little me, fished and hunted there with Dad almost forty years ago.

Looking backward, from the vantage point of years, I am led to believe that this excursion had much to do with the shaping of my destiny. For a long time I wondered why Dad burdened himself with me. I must have been an incumbrance, for I was very young. But in my later years I have come to believe I know the answer. Good, kindly old Dad must have sensed, even then, he would have little of worldly wealth to bestow upon his children and was farseeing enough to teach us to love the better things of lifethe great, God-given out-of-doors, good literature, good music and good sportsmanship.

Thank you, Dad.

Much of that wonderful month has gone from my memory but other things stand out as clearly as though they happened yesterday. I believe we had our headquarters at a farmhouse, for I have a hazy recollection of eating at a long table at which other people sat, but vividly clear is the remembrance of those times we sat before the campfire, with the friendly night closing down and the first stars peeping out at us. There were trout sizzling in the frying pan and sweet corn roasting in the coals. One could hardly expect a kid of eight to forget that, could they?

I remember, also, a great concourse of people assembled before a large old house around which spread a vast expanse of velvety turf. Whether it was a picnic, a town holiday or some calamity, like a wedding, which drew the people together, I have not the faintest idea but I do remember the sudden cessation of laughter and movement in the group as all eyes turned toward the woods, some distance away.

Two men had entered the clearing and were coming toward us. They were carrying axes in their hands and rifles on their shoulders. They entered our group and we gathered about them. They had been setting bear traps and had seen the tracks of a truly enormous bear. They would have him in less than a week, they assured us. Someone in the crowd displayed interest in one of the rifles and inquired the make.

Thats a Colt, 44, slide action, said the guide.

Is it loaded?

No. Theres some in the magazine, though.

May I look at it?

Sure.

I remember the man taking it, turning it over, admiringly in his hands, placing it carefully against his shoulder and looking long and earnestly through the sights. Then, while those who should have known stood speechless, he slid the action open and shut and, with the gun pointing directly through the crowd, pulled the trigger.

Distinctly I recall that bellowing POW! and the belching powder smoke, the startled cries, the shaking hands of the man with the gun. Memory fails to record the next few minutes but I remember, after that, a man walking about among the group, displaying a coat which had a ragged cut, about ten inches long, across the back.

It never touched me, he explained, but look what it did to my coat.