Billy Bowles arrived at the Ames Plantation Saturday at noon and took his lone entry to the Trapp Memorial Kennels where he had reserved a run and two stalls nearby for his mounts. He heeled the pointer Rip from his truck to the run after hanging his own water bucket inside the door and putting fresh hay in the plastic barrel. (Rip as always had traveled from Georgia in the truck’s front seat beside Billy).
Then Billy settled his mounts in their stalls with fresh water in his own buckets and Timothy hay he’d brought for them hung from his rope baskets. He parked and unhitched the trailer where instructed and drove to the Manor House to inspect it. He’d never been here before and figured he would not be here again so he wanted to satisfy his curiosity.
After walking around the lawn surrounding the Manor House he walked to the horse-stable Hobart Ames had built in 1913 and inspected it. He found it more interesting than the Manor House. Massive and U-shaped with brick floor center isles and brick walls to the top of the ground floor level, and a framed hay loft above and a square brick extension at the front containing a large carriage and tack room, its ground floor was divided into fifty stalls, plank walled with steel bars set vertically from shoulder to ceiling and stall doors that slid in tracks and plentiful windows. The woodwork of the stalls looked almost new.
A few stalls held walking horses, he assumed officials’ mounts. No humans were present, giving him privacy for his inspection. Next he entered the carriage and tack room where old buggies and other odd rigs and wall-hung stiff harness gathered dust, sad to Billy who was a student of harness and horse-and-mule drawn conveyances.
Rip was the only dog he had qualified for the National in his ten years as a for-the-public pro handler. He’d started with shooting dogs, switched to all-age three years ago. Three customers from his shooting dog days had agreed to sponsor two all-age dogs each with him before he made the switch. Only one sponsor, Mason Clements, and one dog, Rip, a five year old pointer, were with him now.
He was broke, owed $30,000 on his rig which he could not pay. He had only $20,000 cash left from his bequest from his grandmother that had induced him to try handling as a trade. When this National was over he’d sell his rig (it would not bring what he owed on it) and horses and look for a job. He felt defeated, but Rip was a hell of a dog and he was proud of having developed and qualified him.
Rip’s owner, Mason Clements, had been loyal and understanding. He’d been a sponsor of trial dogs for twenty years and knew the game. Billy had not told Mason of his predicament or plan but he figured Mason had to know about where he stood and of his limited options.
Billy had a bedroom at a farmhouse in Moscow, ten miles away, thanks to the generosity of a fellow handler whose patron owned it. Mason was staying with a friend who owned a small farm outside Grand Junction. Mason and Billy planned to attend the drawing together this evening and afterward go to a steak house in Holly Springs for a late supper. Billy looked forward to that, he genuinely liked and admired Mason and enjoyed his company.
Mason was wealthy, though not spectacularly so. He had owned several auto dealerships in the suburbs of Atlanta and sold them to a mega-dealer four years ago, good timing. He was sixty-three and a widower with two successful grown sons, one a lawyer, one a banker. Unknown to Billy, Mason had just received a grim diagnosis and prognosis from his doctors: he had pancreatic cancer and likely less than a year to live.
At the drawing Billy and Mason sat together through the pledge of allegiance following a Scouts honor guard presentation of the Stars and Stripes, and announcements about the week’s social events and the trial’s running rules. Finally they watched the numbered ping pong ball’s pulled from the machine and heard the brace names announced. Rip drew the final brace as a bye. There were but twenty three entries this year so Rip would go as a bye next Saturday, absent a scratch to move him up or weather delay.
Both Billy and Mason wished Rip had drawn an earlier brace. Cooling their heels here for a week would be frustrating. At dinner, Mason asked Billy why he didn’t enter Rip in the West Tennessee All-Age, to run concurrently with the National and to be drawn tomorrow. Billy called in Rip’s entry on his cell phone while they waited for their steaks.
Billy told Mason of his plan to quit trials and asked what handler Mason wanted to move Rip to.
“I figured as much, Billy, and I am sorry. Let’s wait until the trial ends to talk about Rip’s future. You have done a great job with Rip,” Mason said. Mason had already given a lot of thought to Rip’s and Billy’s futures.
Mason and Billy met at the breakaway to ride Monday’s morning’s National brace. Both dogs were picked up at 1:30 after unproductives; birds were not moving.
Rip had drawn the second Tuesday brace in the West Tennessee All-Age, and Billy and Mason would travel there together in Billy’s rig. They met at the Trapp Kennels at 5:00 Tuesday morning to leave for the West Tennessee’s grounds.
Rip suffered two unproductives early and Billy and Mason were driving back to Grand Junction at noon when Mason said, “I want you to meet my friend Henry Cole. He was my college roommate and I am staying at his farm. Come over tonight if you can and we will have steaks on the grill.” Billy accepted.
Henry was a very wealthy man. He had conceived and developed a company using the internet and digital technology via social media, the new every man’s journalism, combined with advertising dollars, to print money. Then he had sold the company for $4 billion. But he was plain as an Old Shoe, and meeting him no one would suspect him of being super rich.
He and Mason had been best friends since childhood and hunted upland birds together on foot as youths with their own bird dogs in the mountains of Virginia and West Virginia and in Virginia’s piedmont, south side and tidewater, where sadly wild game birds other than migrating woodcock were now close to extinct. Henry was quietly devoting most of his time now to charitable pursuits including charter schools. He had never attended a field trial but Mason had induced him to come watch Rip in his bid for the National Bird Dog Championship.
Mason’s motives for the invitation were mixed. First, he wanted to spend a little time with his old friend to reminisce. Second, he hoped to induce Henry to give some money to support one of his favorite charities. But third and most important to Mason, he wanted Henry to offer employment to Billy Bowles.
Henry did the grilling and the steaks and sides, avocado-topped salad and baked sweet potatoes, were the best Billy had ever had (avocado were new to Billy). Henry asked Billy a hundred questions about field trials and Rip, but the fact he had been a wild-bird hunter from adolescence made it easy for Billy to answer, unlike when such questions came from non-bird hunters. Mason could tell Henry and Billy instinctively like one another.
On Thursday Billy took Rip to a nearby farm for a final workout before his bid in the National and invited Mason and Henry to come watch. The farm, owned by a customer of a handler-friend of Billy, held an adequate population of August-released and fed quail. Billy put Rip in a harness and roaded him in after he scored six finds in thirdly minutes. By then, Henry had fallen in love with Rip, and Mason was encouraged.
Finally Saturday and Rip’s time to go in the National as a bye arrived. The best performance so far had been a seven-find race with a less-than-spectacular finish. Rip began with a good find at 20 at the end of a rim-clutching cast with great style and manners. He continued hunting at the front with good range and pace and birds were moving and available on the course. With five minutes left he had carded nine clean finds when Billy called on him for a finish and he sped out of sight to the front.
Tension built as the judges, followed by a seventy-horse gallery, rode the course behind Billy. At 2:58 Billy’s cap was lifted and Rip stood dead ahead. Birds lifted six feet ahead when Billy walked past him to flush and he moved not a muscle. All watching knew Rip would be declared National Champion of 2023 and an hour later it happened from the front porch of the Ames Manor House. Congratulations were uttered to Billy and Mason by all present, Rip was brought up for the photos by his scout, a fellow handler who had done nothing but drag the edge and find Rip pointed near the edge twice, and another National Championship was over.
Nothing is over so quick and completely as a field trial. The crowd drifted away and drove off as if on command. Only Billy, Rip, Mason and Henry remained standing on the front lawn of the Manor House. Mason said, “ Billy, Rip is yours. Thank you for the fun you have given me. Henry has a proposition for you.”
Before Billy could thank Mason, Henry began. “Billy, I am buying the Red Ridge Plantation outside Thomasville adjoining Mason’s place and I would like you to manage it and be my dog man. I will buy Rip from you for what Mason says he is worth and give you an option to buy him back if you ever leave my employ on your motion or mine. I want him to lead my shooting string, not to trial. I will pay you the going wage and provide you a pickup truck and family health insurance and a 401(k) plan and a house to live in. “
“I accept your offer,” Billy said.