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We are living high, with several barrels of frozen game geese, duck and prairie-chicken and also an old tin trunk stuffed full of beef-roasts, cut the right size. I bring them in and thaw them out overnight, as I need them. The freezing makes them very tender. But they must be completely thawed before they go into the oven, or the outside will be overdone and the inside still raw.
The wild chicken whom Darwin credits as the parent of the modern gallinaceous menagerie, is smaller than modern fowls and is colored in a manner similar to the Black-breasted Game. The habits of this bird are like those of the quail and prairie-chicken, both of which belong to the same zoological family. From its natural home in India the chicken spread east and west.
And, on the whole, I expected a cross between a shooting-box and a Swiss chalet, a little nest of a home that was so small it was sure to be lovable, with a rambler-rose draping the front and a crystal spring bubbling at the back door, a little flowery island on the prairie where we could play Swiss-Family-Robinson and sally forth to shoot prairie-chicken and ruffed grouse to our hearts' content.
However, I never dreamed that I would one day visit those vast regions, the former home of the buffalo, the haunt of the prairie-chicken and the prairie-wolf.
The common game were deer and elk. At that time none of the hunters of Kentucky would waste a shot on anything so small as a prairie-chicken or wild duck; but they sometimes killed geese and swans when they came south in winter and lit on the rivers. But whenever Boone went into the woods after game, he had perpetually to keep watch lest he himself might be hunted in turn.
But Percival seemed to accept it with the stoicism of the well-born Britisher. He'd have a try at the place, although there was no game. "But there is game," I told him, "slathers of it, oodles of it!" He mildly inquired where and what? I told him: Wild duck, prairie-chicken, wild geese, jack-rabbits, now and then a fox, and loads of coyotes.
All its live-stock is familiar to him. His sheep are of the big-horn breed; his black cattle, the two varieties of buffalo, mountain and lowland; and his poultry, the prairie-chicken and its relatives. He is both interesting and instructive. The puma and the panther he avers to be distinct species.
"We can leave it with a clear conscience to the gophers. However, we might earn a little with the teams to feed us through the winter, and strike out next spring for British Columbia. The new railroad people are open to let track-grading contracts, you know. Lend me your double-barrel; I'm in no mood for talking, and an all-day tramp after prairie-chicken may help to steady me."
They were famous hunters, and could shoot a deer upon the run, or bring down a prairie-chicken upon the wing. They were tough, hearty, jolly, courageous, daring fellows. They were in good spirits, for the rebels had fled in dismay from Fort Henry when the gunboats sent their shells into the fort.
We are plowing and grain-hauling while you shoot prairie-chicken or follow the coyote hounds. We work late and early, eat supper in dusty garments, and then go on again; while you take your hand at nap after a formal dinner, and excuse me you look on farming as an amusement, while the land demands the best that any man can give it brain and body.
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