At the jog of twenty miles an hour, even the sparrow could pass us on a
short stretch, and the dawdling crow soon left us in the rear. Our gain
upon their time is so recent that the birds have not yet fully realized
it. Unaccustomed to being beaten by anything _on earth_, they will skim
along abreast of a train till, to their unspeakable, or at least
unspoken, wonderment, they find that what they are fleeing from is
fleeing from them. One morning last winter I was speeding eastward to
the Crescent City, the freshest of my memories a struggle at Houston
with one of those breakfasts which so atrociously distinguish the reign
of the magnate who is said to supply under contract all the meals of the
Southern railway-restaurants, and who, "if ever fondest prayer for
others' woe avail on high," will certainly be booked, with the vote of
some of his victims, for a post-mundane berth a good deal warmer than
his coffee and more sulphurous than his eggs. Afar off to the right the
sun was rounding up from the Gulf and clearing the haze from his broad,
red face, the better to look abroad over the glistening prairie and see
if the silhouetted pines and cattle were where he had left them the day
before. Glancing to the left, which was my side of the car, I became
aware of a large bird suspended in the air, not motionless, for his
wings were doing their best, but to all appearance as stationary as the
scattered trees and cattle, and about fifteen yards distant. Every
feature and marking of the "chicken," or pinnated grouse, was as
distinct to the eye as though, instead of making thirty-two miles an
hour, he were posing for his photograph. For full two hundred yards he
sustained the race, until, finding that his competitor had the better
wind, he gave it up and shot suddenly into the sedge. How much longer
the match had lasted I could not say. He must have got up near the
engine--of course losing some time in the act of rising--and fallen back
gradually to my place, which was in a rear car. But when a schedule for
birds comes to be framed, it is safe to set down _Tetrao cupido_ at