“Every dog has at least one hole,” old Field Trial truism.
It was culling time on the prairie. Ed Moore and his helper Booty Blevins were conferring after a long day in the saddle. The list on the table was written in pencil in Ed’s nearly illegible hand on the back of an envelope that had held their last pay checks from Harley Keen, postmarked Winston Salem, North Carolina.
They were down to the derby Ed had saved for last. Her name was Alice, after Harley Keen’s little daughter, just turned five. Alice (the derby) had won every puppy stake she’d run in. But here on the prairie she had disappointed. She’d shown the best ground pattern of any of the prospects, perhaps the best Ed had ever seen on a derby her age. But she never pointed birds, chickens or sharp tails or Huns, on her casts. Only when she’d been brought up in harness to back and afterwards released to work flushed birds in a bluff would she point them. But oh would she point them then!
“She look like a Million Dolla’s on ‘em now, Mr. Ed, like that Seaview Rex dog,” Booty said. (Rex was setting a new fashion in tail attitude, the “twelve o’clock tail”).
“But why won’t she point them on a cast, Booty, she’s not blinking them, is she?“
“She seem to always pass ‘em on the exhale,” Booty had said in her defense.
Pretty soon Ed was calling her “Exhale Alice,” said sarcastically in disgust and disappointment.
“Booty, I think we should cull her” Ed said.
Booty squirmed in his seat on the bench across the crude table from Mr. Ed. He loved Alice, in spite of her hole, and he knew it was a large one. There was no way to fix the hole, Booty figured. But he was not ready yet to give up on her. So he suggested a compromise.
“S’pose we take her home, put her in the shootin’ string, see what that does for her?”
Ed was willing to go along, largely because he was reluctant to leave a dog named for his bosses’ daughter buried on the prairie. If Alice did not make it in the shooting string she might end up a house pet on Knotty Pine Plantation, that would be Mr. Keen’s call.
So when at the end of September Ed Moore and Booty Blevins loaded the dogs in crates in the Railway Express car for the ride back to Georgia, Alice was among them. She was broke, steady to wing and shot, but she still never pointed a bird on one of her beautiful casts.
Alice adjusted quickly to life in Georgia on the shooting wagon at Knotty Pine Plantation. Booty coached the plantation’s hunt team on how to handle her to get finds. “Just call her in and sweet talk her around KCL’s and she’ll point birds for you.” She did, and soon became a favorite of Harley Keen when entertaining fellow tycoons.
The fall passed into winter as Ed and Booty plied the circuit. Mary Muldoon, winner of the National and Free-For-All last season, and their hope for more wins in the big quail trials, was coming seven. She had come close this season, but no cigar. Then at a trial in Ohio, she’d been killed by a train as she followed the scent of a running covey that drew her onto the track as Ed and Booty, judges and gallery, watched in horror. Just as the covey lifted from across the tracks, Mary cast into the path of the fast freight.
As Christmas came and passed, and the Continental, National Free-For-All and National Championship loomed, Ed Moore was despondent. With Mary Muldoon dead and buried at Knotty Pine with an engraved granite marker, the Keen-Moore string held no candidate to contest in the big three quail trials. Then Booty, never one to be discouraged, proposed to Ed an audacious plan.
“Mr. Ed, let’s enter Alice in the Free-For-All.”
“But Booty, we have not worked her for trials since summer, she has not run in a trial since the Dixie Puppy Classic,” Ed responded.
“Yes Sir, but she won that!” Booty answered with a grin.
Ed conferred with Harley Keen who had become a devoted fan of Alice in the Knotty Pine Plantation shooting string. “Why not,” Harley said.
So, when the names went into the bingo machine for the Free-For-All drawing, Alice’s name was among them. She drew the last brace as a bye dog in the qualifying series.
Ed and Booty rode every brace before Alice’s. Every night they updated a map of covey locations. Ed carried the map in his saddle bag. Booty carried a duplicate in his brain. Once he’d ridden a trial ground a couple of times he needed no map. Harley Keen had secretly nick-named him “Magellan,” but never used it outside a small group of close friends, for fear of offending Ed Moore.
Then the day finally came, and Booty released Alice on the senior judge’s nod. She shot away and began a marvelous ground race to the Free-For-All standard. When the hour ended she’d been found pointed at the front three times by Ed Moore. Booty was no where in sight. In each case he had slipped though woods to the front, called her to him, and put her on a covey, then slipped back into the woods before the judges and gallery arrived. Alice was called back for the three-hour finals along with nine others.
For the finals Alice was braced with Richard Bain’s pointer Billy Bones, which had won the Free-For-All two years before as a three year old. Two rivals but old friends and hunting buddies would be able to see their favorite dogs go head to head for the three hours. Unfortunately Harley Keen would be unable to attend.
Ed Moore had no hope for Alice in the finals. So he had resigned himself to defeat. Not so Booty. His twin brother Ikey was still a kennel man at Knotty Pine. While the twin scout ruse had been detected at the National, forcing Harley Keen to withdraw Alice, the twin scouts(Booty and Ikey) had not been publicly announced.
When Alice and Billy Bones were released for their finals bid, Ikey rode in the back of the gallery posing as Booty. Booty was in the woods on his black horse, clad in just-released military camouflage coveralls.
Alice cast forward in her usual way, glad to be under Booty’s care and out of the confines of the Knotty Pine Plantation mule-drawn shooting wagon. Ed Moore was ostensibly handling her but once she’d traveled two hundred yards she heard Booty’s slap of his reign on chaps and swung to him. For three hours she handled for him, riding to her side in the woods, making giant forward casts when asked, coming to him to hunt close when Booty asked.
She scored nine finds in her three hours, each on coveys Booty had marked in woods adjoining the course path. On each Ed Moore signaled her find by the lift of his hat. Not once had Booty’s involvement been detected. Indeed all riding thought Booty had never left the gallery, and Ikey on his scout horse proved it.
At the same time Billy Bones had run a similar race and also scored nine finds. Few were surprised when the secretary announced a callback between Alice and Billy Bones. At the breakaway the secretary announced for the judges that the dogs would be down an indefinite time and that other dogs might be called back if the judges decided one of these two was not worthy.
Harley Keen had not been riding before the callback but had ridden a Pullman through the night to be present for the callback. Ten minutes into the callback Harley drifted back to talk with Booty. In seconds he realized Booty was Ikey. Then he rode to Ed Moore and told him to pick up Alice. The judges, confused for a moment, recovered and declared Billy Bones Free-For-All Champion.
Back at Knotty Pine Plantation, Harley called Ed and Booty into the Gun Room and told them, “Alice will not again leave this plantation, and Ikey will not again ride at a field trial.” Alice would not again compete in a field trial. When World War II broke out with Pearl Harbor, Harley Keen withdrew his team from trials.