Foreword
In the days of my youth I was happy. I had no money, hence no responsibilities. All I had was a job with wages that never developed into a position with salary. However, out of my stipend I managed to buy a good shotgun and, each fall thereafter, a case of shells with my own special load for quail—one ounce of No. 9 chilled shot with twenty-four grains of Laflin & Rand powder. In “those old days of the lost sunshine” I possessed also two additional treasures—the most wonderful and lovable shooting crony a man ever had and the finest little English setter any man ever killed a quail over. My pal presented me with this dog because he loved me; moreover, he had a weakness for pointers and owned a bitch named Lou.
Lee Clark and his good dog Lou! What memories they evoke! As I write the years fall away and Lee and Lou and Dick and I are quail-hunting in the hills of California. I see a little swale covered with stunted sage, blackberry bushes and dried nettles, and the dogs are questing through it. Lee Clark is on one side of this swale and I am on the other, and for a moment the dogs are invisible to me. Then, borne to me on the crisp October air, comes Lee’s voice:
“Point!”
I move fifteen or twenty feet. I am in no hurry, for I know those dogs. It is a matter of personal honor with them not to break point. Presently I see them. Little lemon-and-white Lou has found the bird, and Dicky thorough little gentleman that he was, is honoring her point! Lee walks down to his dog; the quail lies close. “Good old Lou,” Lee says, and stoops to give her the caress she craves. Then he kicks out the bird—for me! (Lee was like that. He would never kill a bird over his own dog’s point while his field companion stood by, nor could any protest move him from this exhibition of his inherent graciousness and courtesy.) So I fire—and miss—and then at forty yards Lee gets the bird, and Lou trots sedately down and picks the little feathered martyr up very gently, scarcely disturbing a feather, and carries the trophy uphill to Lee. As I write, with twenty years behind me, I tan see her yet, her tail and rear end swishing pridefully and her beautiful eyes abeam with love; she is even trying to smile with the bird in her mouth!
Lee takes the bird from her and tucks it in his hunting-coat pocket. Then he strokes Lou’s head and says: “Good girl,” and Lou licks his hand and scurries away to find another bird. And this time she points so close to me that Lee calls cheerily to me to kick the bird out and kill it. I do—and again Lou retrieves the bird. But she does not bring it to her master this time. Ah, no! Lou is wiser than that. She brings it to me, for she knows it is my bird!
Meanwhile Dick is frozen on another bird! And so it goes. At noon we rest under an oak beside a creek, and over a barbecued steak and a bottle of good wine, discuss the morning shoot and the prospects of as good shooting in the afternoon. And late that night we drive home in the moonlight in an old side-bar buggy, with Dick curled up in back and Lou in her master’s lap, with her muzzle in his hand...
Well, there will never be another Dick or another Lou or another gallant, kindly, unselfish, understanding friend and shooting crony like Lee Clark. A fiend stole Dick from me and Lou died in puppy-birth; when Lee told me about it he wept, and I honored him for his tears. And then the pressure of life commenced to be felt. After twelve years of Lou, Lee Clark could not accustom himself to other dogs—and the hopelessness of finding another Lou was quite apparent, for Lou had been one of those rare dogs that do not require training! And I could never find another Dicky and had no place to keep him if I had. I became an author and married, and a multitude of interests claimed us, and we gave up quail-shooting, although every few years we meet and talk bravely about the necessity for renewing our youth afield.
A man who has trained field dogs for me has much of Lee Clark in him, and that man’s wife is a rare good sport. One day I went to his kennels, and he showed me a five-year-old setter that had been the unbeautiful runt of his litter. He called this dog Jeff, and Jeff was a failure. His litter mates had made field trial history but Jeff was so little and homely, nobody had ever wanted him, and he had never been trained. He was a stud dog.
He was the reincarnation of my lost Dick! I bought him for a hundred and twenty-five dollars, and ignoring the theory that you cannot teach an old dog new tricks, I had Jeff trained. He was such a bright, cunning, fast little old man of a dog that the trainer, who names my dogs after the heroes and heroines of my stories, renamed him Cappy Ricks and registered him by that name. Cappy Ricks did not win in the field trials that year, but he lost on a hair-line decision and after an exhibition of bird work that made him great, even in defeat, and brought me offers of far more than I had spent on him from men who knew a real dog when they saw one. Well, I have bought many dogs, but I have never sold one, and I never shall... too much like selling old Uncle Tom down the river! So Cappy is rounding out his years questing through the alfalfa field at my ranch for quail that aren’t there. However, I gave him his chance, for dead Dick’s sake, and he made good, and I hope he enjoyed it.
So I wrote a story about Cappy and a fictitious trainer and his wife, because field dog trainers and the field dog “fancy” are different from all other sportsmen. And when my little story had been written and my editor, Ray Long, asked me what I was going to call it, I had a swift and poignant vision of a lovely October morning in the hills of California. There was a little swale grown over with stunted sage, blackberry vines and dried nettles, and in the cover Lou was standing at point, with Dick honoring her; from across the swale I heard again the voice of the best friend and the best field companion any man ever had. And he was calling warningly:
“Point!”
Yes, this story is dedicated to Lee Clark and his good dog, Lou!