Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/769056
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S • 71 days the bag limit was two. So I was desperately anxious to polish up my quail technique. Gloomily, I went to my job the morning of opening day while more fortunate human beings headed for the desert and the merry Gambel's quail. At 3:30 p.m., when I could slip away, I gathered up the wife and a couple of guns and went out aimlessly, wistful but planless. We passed the suburban homes of wealthy Easterners and of not so wealthy natives, tourist hotels, beer joints, and filling stations. Surely there were no quail around here. About three miles from home I saw a little-used road turning off into a patch of cholla and greasewood toward Rillito Creek. Still aimless, I took it. "Where are we going?" my wife asked politely. "I don't know," I told her. After a quarter of a mile a barbed-wire fence stopped us. I got out to open a gate, and there, fresh and sharp in the soft dust, were quail tracks—unmistakably quail tracks, the sign of a good-sized covey. So we took our guns and moved cautiously into the mesquite thicket on the other side of the fence. More tracks crisscrossing the soft earth, feathers, dust baths. In the distance I heard the sweet, fluty call of a cock Gambel's quail. So we mooched along, straining our ears, guns ready. Presently we came to a little irrigation ditch bordered by a high, thick pomegranate hedge full of red and orange fruit. Then, B-b-b-b-b-, the unmistakable sound of a flushing quail. There he was, a beautiful cock bird, towering up out of the pomegranates. I shot and watched him collapse. It was then I heard a yell with distinctly Mexican overtones. Astonished, I pushed through the hedge and saw something the presence of which I hadn't expected—an adobe house. And standing in front of it, beside a washtub, was the angriest Mexican woman I have ever seen. She gripped a soapy quail in one hand and waved it furiously as she sputtered at me. The Mexican people, I am convinced, are the fastest-talking people on this globe, and when angry, they talk at least nine times as fast as when they are calm. She told me what she thought of gringos in general, of hunters as a race, and of me in particular. She also remarked about the morals of people who went about shooting quail so that they fell into washtubs and frightened good Christian women half out of their wits. She even brought my grandmother, my great-grandmother, and my great-great-grandmother into the discussion. My wife, fortunately, didn't understand much Spanish, or perhaps I should never have regained face with her. We both just stood there and took it. Then a tall, solemn Mexican appeared, hoe in hand. He listened impassively, now and then stroking his handlebar mustache. But after a few minutes of it he caught my eye and slowly winked. I grinned, and he grinned. La Madama turned then, saw her spouse, and landed on him. Would he stand there like a big rat, she demanded, and simper when a gringo had just shot her with an escopeta (gun)? Ah, if she had only married a man instead of a spineless hundido that could be trodden upon like a worm! Out of breath, she paused then as he shrugged. She was resigned to her fate, helpless with indignation. It was my turn now. I assured her, in my best Spanish, that if I had known so lovely and gracious a lady was working on the other side of that beautiful hedge, I should never have shot, that I was the most humble and remorseful of men, with a head that must remain forever bowed in contriteness and shame. She favored me with a smile then, the first rift in the clouds, and my wife completed the peace treaty by making friends with a shy 4-year-old girl who came peeking out of the adobe hut. So we met Juan and Mercedes, and we also met the quail—the "muchos codornices" which Juan told me about. "Don't shoot the cow or the children," he said to me, "and you are welcome." A little exploring gave us the explanation of why the quail were there. Although we were hunting only a few miles from the center of Arizona's second largest city, we were for all practical purposes in Sonora, Mexico. A dozen Mexican families lived along the creek there, farming little milpas of corn and beans and chile, raising scrubby chickens, tending gnarled little orchards, and now and then butchering one of the steers that fed in the mesquite pasture. They were poor, hard- working people and, like their relatives in Sonora, almost never GAMBLING for GAMBEL'S