IN MY MIND, it shall always be remembered as “The Valley Where Our Footsteps Cannot Be Numbered,” as I recall those long lost days when it was just my little Brittany and me—and especially that one unforgettable Thanksgiving morning when Betsy and I hunted from the bottom of the hollow, all the way up past the hanging rock ledge where I always kept her water bottle hidden in a deep cleft next to the little waterfall.
It was a soft, cold, soul-beckoning morning, and Betsy had been looking at me longingly ever since I had gone out to feed her at first light. The womenfolk of the family had been preparing the homemade chestnut dressing and fruitcakes and pumpkin pies and Mom’s classic potato salad for days, and now they were working on the wild turkey and quail and pheasants and woodcock that my brothers and I had taken earlier that fall.
But we still had no grouse.
Then Betsy spoke from deep in her throat and heart, in her soft little Spaniel voice that I alone was meant to hear.
And I alone heard it.
Her eyes widened, her body tensed, and her ears perked up as she caught my responding, affirmative glance, and a few minutes later we were in the truck with our shotgun on the way up Bluff Mountain.
Betsy began weeping with anticipation, as she always did when we turned off the hard pavement and onto the narrow, laurel-lined dirt track that snaked a mile up the mountain along the little creek. We parked beneath a big hemlock, next to the ancient two-story white clapboard house where Mrs. G often had a leftover biscuit waiting for Betsy and me at day’s end when we’d return from the high country.
Sometimes we’d give Mrs. G a grouse.
Wood smoke from her burnished brick chimney was wafting through the woods as I stepped from the truck. Betsy watched and whined eagerly as I slipped into my old canvas shell vest and pulled our shotgun from its sheepskin case, and when I whispered “Okay” she charged across the sloping cut cornrows that pressed up close to the foot of the mountain and its bedrock.
We crossed into the wooded hollow where the brook began to widen as it spilled into the flat, then worked our way upstream before easing back to the base of the ridge. Betsy climbed the steep slope into the thick rhododendrons that hovered twenty feet above the trail, where I could follow her only by the soft tinkling of her wee brass bell. And then her bell went silent.
I had taken no more than three steps in the dry, crackling leaves when the drumming thunder of a rising grouse filled the woods from somewhere high above me. I tracked the sound with my ears, and the gun came up to my right shoulder all on its own as the bird rocketed up the hollow. But I still could not see him.
Instinctively I shifted my finger from the front trigger to the back, the one that fires the more tightly choked left barrel, and took the shot as the bird appeared in the treetops high against the overcast sky. The dull brown leaves clinging to a big box elder rustled violently as the shot pattern tore through them, and the grouse flinched, then dipped downward at what seemed to be an extremely sharp angle before setting its wings and disappearing into the heavy cover across the hollow.
Betsy was off the ridge and tearing into the dense creek bottom before I could open my gun and extract the single spent shell. I tore after her, my gun broken open with the unfired shell still waiting in the right chamber as I fished a fresh load from my vest.
I had watched the grouse as it angled downward into the creek bottom, and so had Betsy. I wasn’t sure how hard he was hit, only that I had not killed him cleanly. Betsy was already sweeping the thicket as I made my way toward her, but I could see only bits and pieces of her silky orange-and-white coat as she diligently worked the fresh hot scent. My heart leapt as I spotted a single downy breast feather drifting through the air at eye level, and I dropped a fresh shell into the empty chamber, closed the gun, checked the safety, and fell in behind her as closely as I dared, giving her room to work and myself room to maneuver should the bird come up again.
The grouse had obviously set down somewhere nearby, and I expected either for him to flush once more or for Betsy to find him. So I simply stood in place, shifting my feet only enough to stay squared up to her, my gun angled outward and upward with my thumb resting atop the time-polished tang safety and my forefinger poised lightly aside the trigger guard.
But the bird refused to show his hand, and as Betsy weaved back and forth through the thicket she gradually widened her coverage to both sides of the creek, until she abandoned the location entirely and turned back up the hollow.
It wasn’t at all like her to give up on a wounded bird. But now her little bobtail was no longer quivering as intensely as it had been, and her carriage was no longer so focused and low to the ground. Instead, she was again in full hunting mode, making broad sweeps up the hollow as she headed away from where the grouse had gone down.
“Betsy!” I called.
But she had vanished, and I could detect her only by the irregular sound of the little brass bell that hung from her collar.
“Betsy,” I called once more. “Right here!”
Dear reader, I need to pause here and explain something to you . . .
It was rare indeed for Betsy and me to become impatient with one another, much less exasperated.
Over the years, she had become as tolerant of my increasingly frequent pauses for rest as I had of her admittedly infrequent frolics up some draw or hollow, or her errant interruptions of a hunt to roll in something so old and rotten that it would have made a buzzard rethink his profession.
But she had never, ever, given up on a wounded bird.
Not like this.
“Betsy!” I called again. “ Right heeere!!” And I turned to follow her.
Where is she? I thought, as I tried to figure out what was happening, where she might be, what she might be thinking. But the rhododendron quickly became too dense for me to penetrate, and the interwoven greenbrier tearing at my vest and face and bleeding hands soon forced me out of the thicket and into more open woods.
I called for her again, then stood silently, my senses straining for the sound of her steps, the rustle of leaves, even the time-proven extra-sensory discernment of her spirit—anything that could possibly tell me where she might have gone.
“Betsy . . . ” I pled, almost in a whisper.
Then, the essence of a breeze suddenly stirred the withered leaves of a low-hanging hawthorn next to me and wisped horizontally out across the hollow. The branches of the trees above sighed softly as the little zephyr weaved through them, before dissolving into a silence so resolute and intense as to be almost palpable—all except for the percussive murmur of the narrow brook below and the subtle tinkle of a little brass bell.
“Betsy . . . ” I whispered.
“ . . . peeeeeep!!! . . . ” came a rising, perplexing note of reply.
I spotted my little Brittany thirty yards out, still mostly obscured by the thick understory and moving more or less in my direction, somewhat awkwardly it seemed, stumbling, stopping, then turning back and disappearing for an instant before reappearing, still tracking clumsily toward me with her head turned inelegantly to one side as the big russet grouse she was carrying flapped its one good wing across her eyes and repeatedly pecked at the side of her face.
And I just stood there in awe and opened my gun, then moved to meet her as she made her way to me and hopped up onto my legs with her front paws to deliver her gift into my trembling hands as I knelt before her. I swear, she was grinning a sly little fox grin, with feathers clinging to her mouth and tongue as she presented her prize. I killed that old grouse as quickly and gently as I could with a twist of my thumb and fingers, then laid him in the leaves next to our gun and shot a quick photo of my little friend and her treasure.
Clearly the wounded bird had hit the ground running, unable to fly but still very much alive, turning and legging it up the hollow, with his scent hugging the ground, leaving as clear a trail for the little dog’s keen nose as its long downward glide had been for her gunner’s eyes.
Oh, we kept right on climbing that morning, stopping a half-mile up the mountain beside the waterfall, where I retrieved and filled her old water bottle from the creek and stashed it in my game pouch with her grouse. But we only hunted up to the gap where the narrowing creek disappeared altogether into a muddle of perpetually damp leaves.
We never found another grouse that day. We didn’t need one.
We stopped at Mrs. G’s when we got back to the truck and delivered the fresh pumpkin pie we’d brought her. But we kept our grouse.
And a few hours later, that lovely, luscious bird took its place, all hot and golden and butter-roasted, alongside the quail and pheasant and woodcock and wild turkey, while Betsy pressed up hard against my brush pants beneath the dining room table, discreetly pretending not to be noticed by the rest of the family as I shared with her the finest Thanksgiving dinner I’ll ever know.
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© MICHAEL ALTIZER
