you want to go first?” Price asked Ross.
“Nope, let Joe lead off.”
Danny relaxed. He had been wondering just what a handler did, and how he acted, in a trial such as this. Ross had solved that neatly by accepting second place; he could watch Joe Williams and do whatever he did.
“I’ll plant your bird, Joe,” John Price said.
He walked down to the crate, cautiously opened the trap door, reached in, brought out a struggling hen pheasant, and folded his hands about both wings. He whirled the pheasant around a few times, tucked its head under one wing, and put it down in a bunch of tall grass.
Danny approved; evidently John Price knew a lot about both dogs and birds. A pheasant, treated in such a manner, was hypnotized and would remain quiet for a considerable time.
“All right, Joe,” Price called.
Joe Williams moved away with the English setter beside him. He spoke some command, some word that Danny could not hear, and the dog started to hunt. Danny kept his eyes on her.
A beautiful creature, she seemed to acquire added beauty and grace now that she was hunting. All fire and flesh, she raced so swiftly that her trainer began to run to keep up. But at another command the dog slowed slightly. Danny narrowed his eyes.
There still seemed to be an invisible leash stretching from Belle to her trainer. They worked together in almost perfect coordination, and that was good. There was still something about it that he didn’t like.
Certainly Belle was a superb hunter, and she was enjoying the hunt, but not to the same extent that Red would. He threw himself heart and soul into the game, and worked as perfectly with Danny as Belle was working with Joe Williams, from sheer love of hunting and for Danny. Belle seemed a little strained, a little mechanical, as though she could never forget there was a man behind her. She was a wonderful hunter. Red was an artistic one.
Danny’s eyes were attracted by motion at the far end of the field. He saw two grouse come out of the beech woods into the open meadow, and disappear in tall grass. Probably they were looking for seeds, or had a dust bath in the grass. Danny’s eyes returned to the dog.
She was almost at the far end of the field, turning to come back toward her planted game. When they neared the pheasant, Joe Williams dropped a little behind his dog. He was not going to make the mistake of pointing it out to her.
Nor did he have to. Getting bird scent, Belle stopped instantly. She froze in a point, plumed tail stiff and one fore paw lifted. Joe Williams edged up to flush the pheasant.
It flew so close to the grass tops that its beating wings sent little air currents ruffling through them. Joe Williams called his dog to heel and came in.
Danny gulped. It had been a wonderful performance, almost a perfect one. Before he was hurt Red could have done as well or better, but Danny looked doubtfully at Sheilah.
John Price planted another bird and called, “All right, Ross.”
Sheilah crowded close beside Ross as he started off, following the path laid out by Joe Williams. Danny crossed his fingers and breathed hard; this was exactly what he had feared. Sheilah, upset by close contact with too many strangers, had no intention of leaving Ross’s side. Besides Danny, only Joe Williams seemed to know that.
“That’s a good dog,” the trainer said, “but she’s strictly one-man. Right now she’s nervous as a hurt cat.”
“Yes, darn it,” Danny agreed.
They were in the far corner of the field before Sheilah would hunt at all. Then she trotted forward, casting as a hunting dog will, and Danny’s heart sang. Sheilah lacked Belle’s ability to impress an audience. But she was hunting almost as well and there was something present here that had been absent from Belle’s performance—something free and easy.
Never since Danny and Ross had had her had Sheilah known a whipping or even a slap. Never had she been forced to do anything which love for Danny and Ross would not have made her do anyway. It showed in the way she hunted. Danny’s eyes glowed. This was the way a dog should hunt. An Irish setter with Belle’s speed, hunting the way Sheilah hunted, would be perfection itself.
They swung to come up, following almost exactly the path laid out by Joe Williams and Belle. Sheilah stopped suddenly.
Danny’s heart leaped. The English setter passed within a few feet of where Sheilah was standing, but Belle had missed entirely the two grouse in the field. Sheilah was on them! She edged up and snapped into a perfect point.
Ross walked in ahead of her, and Danny felt suddenly cold. No birds flushed. Nothing at all happened. The two grouse had come into the meadow because they thought themselves perfectly safe. Finding a dog upon them, and too wise to fly, they must have run through the grass and back into the woods.
Danny remembered too late that nobody except himself had seen them come there.
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