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again. The dead birds in hand looked vaguely like quail, but there was something odd about their feet. Then I noticed that they lacked the hind toes of true quail. It certainly didn't seem to hinder their speed on the ground. For three hours we zigzagged through that wild, thorn-fanged riverside bush, a gamebird heaven, the trackers working like clever gundogs, spotting each possible hiding place, circling beyond it, then pushing through to put the birds out toward the gun. On some I shot nicely, on others I might as well have thrown the shotgun at them. But it was a Time Machine—no, a Time-and-Place Machine. At one moment I was back in a southern Wisconsin pheasant field, swinging on a fast-moving rooster with the corn tassels crunching underfoot; in the next I was kicking the soybean stubble for Georgia quail. Then I was up in Minnesota working the shortgrass prairie for sharptails, and in the next step jumping a partridge out of alder edges in Maine. Yet at the same time I was aware that this was Africa: There could be a surly old bull buffalo just under the bank to my left, very angry at having his midday snooze disrupted; or a lion behind the next bush, sleeping off his midnight gluttony but not too lazy to get up and chomp a clumsy mzungu. And above all, there was Abdul & Company, with automatic rifles, plastique land mines, and a total lack of compunction when it came to killing unwary travelers. By the time we swung back into camp, Lambat and Otiego each had ten birds dangling from their hands and I a few brace more slapping my hip, their heads forced through my belt loops, their shot- loosened feathers sticking to my legs with a glue of dried blood, both theirs and mine, thanks to the thorns. The three of us were laughing as we came out of the nyika. Bill was sitting outside the mess tent, having his afternoon tea. He looked up with a quizzical smile. "Did you have a decent shoot, Bwana?" "It was everything my heart desired." n Note: This article is from A Roaring in the Blood—Remembering Robert F. Jones, published by Sporting Classics in 2006. Copies of the 205-page book are still available. Call (800) 849-1004 or visit www.sportingclassicsstore.com. 90 • S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S