While eating our lunch that day, a covey of half-grown quail came out from between the rows at the end of a cornfield. Myrtle said they were so cute that it was a shame to kill them. “And if you shoot any more of them,” she declared, “I will not cook them for you.” I said that I guessed I could cook them myself—that I had roasted them suspended on a stick over a fire in the woods.
“Well,” she said, “I’ll cook them, of course—but I promise you that I will never eat any more of them.” I tried her out on six birds. She cooked them, of course—and kept her promise. And then, in due time, I also thought they were too cute to be killed. But I continued carrying feed to the quail, in snowy times.
While Wolfley said I was a good squirrel hunter, quail was really my game. I trapped them in my younger days, and shot them when old enough to be trusted with a gun. I “potted” them. In the old days quail sold for 5-cents each and no one would think of wasting a charge of ammunition on a single bird, especially while on the wing; though I did once shoot a lone quail sitting on top my figure-four cornstalk trap, under which were twenty live birds. We made our traps then with any old thing we could pick up and bind together. The twenty trapped quail had followed a tramped out path in deep snow, baited with a thin scattering of shelled corn, with a more generous supply of kernels under the trap—thus to engage the lead birds while the others were coming up, lest an impatient bird might go after the nubbin on the treadle and spring the trap too soon. I think trapping and “potting” were legal then. I winged them in later years, same as other sportsmen were wont to do.
One time while coming home from the farm on a Sunday morning about eleven o’clock, three teen-age boys caught up with me. They said they were from Fresno, California. I questioned them a little about Fresno, and decided they were telling me the truth. Also, I knew they were not professional tramps—and that they were hungry. I took them to the Wetmore hotel, and told Bill Cordon to give them their dinners, fill them up with double orders. One of the boys had about worn out his shoes—the sole of the left shoe was dragging, making it hard for the boy to keep up with his pals. While they were waiting in the hotel for the dinner call, I went to my home and hunted up a pair of shoes—almost new shoes, which pinched my feet—and took them, with a pair of clean socks, to the little fellow, and started them on their way back to Fresno, walking of course. On parting, the boy wearing my shoes, asked me why had I taken so much interest in them? I told them that I might be tramping myself someday, maybe even get as far away from home as Fresno, and in that event I hoped to meet them all again. This is what I told the boys. For the correct answer—it is enough to know that my people live in Fresno. One of the older boys said, “Never doubt, we’ll be there—if we ever do get back home.” And though I have been in Fresno a number of times since, I never had the pleasure of meeting any of them. I lost their names.