Oliver Bain sold his AI (artificial intelligence) Unicorn (billion-dollar start-up) to Microsoft instead of taking it public. He was 58, and unknown to any around him, had a secret ambition he would now satisfy. As a boy growing up on a farm in Virginia, he had walked with his father, a dirt farmer, behind home grown pointers and setters after quail.
Oliver’s secret ambition was to own and live on a Southwest Georgia quail plantation. A month after closing on the sale of his Unicorn he closed on the purchase of Leaning Pine Plantation, a twelve-thousand-acre quail plantation on the Georgia-Florida line between Thomasville and Tallahassee, owned by a Robber Barron of the Gilded Age and his descendants from 1890 until the curse of generations of unearned wealth caused its inevitable sale to Oliver.
Ben Reach represented the selling family and worked through amicably the inevitable unanticipated closing problems with Oliver’s lawyer, whom he had known for decades. After the closing Oliver asked his closing lawyer, “Where should I turn for advice on staffing Leaning Pine now that I own it?” (All the staff had been enticed away as the sale process lagged).
“Ben Reach knows every quail plantation hand in South Georgia and North Florida and is the unofficial unpaid employment broker of the Spring Shuffle. I suggest you talk to him.”
“What’s the Spring Shuffle?” Oliver asked.
“Every spring when the quail hunting season ends a certain number of quail plantation owners get unsatisfied with their manager or dog man or vice versa and there is a firing or quitting. Usually, one or the other of the firing or quitting parties calls on Ben Reach for advice on a replacement or a new job, and Ben unobtrusively facilitates a solution, sometimes by telling a hand he should work in another field but often facilitating a hiring by another plantation.
Oliver Bain’s purchase of Leaning Pine closed in late July, well after the Spring Shuffle, and Oliver was now owner of a quail plantation with no staff, no dogs, and no stock. When Oliver consulted Ben Reach with this seemingly unsolvable problem, Ben asked, “You ever heard of a bird dog field trial?”
“Of course. My father used to follow them in Virginia but he never participated, too busy farming. But we attended a few trials when I was a boy, and my father loved class trial dogs and bought pups from trialers which he broke himself for foot hunting.”
Ben knew Oliver had a Gulf Stream jet parked at the Albany Airport. “Let’s fly to Minot, North Dakota, and visit some bird dog trainers’ camps and the North Dakota Classics field trials starting Labor Day,” Ben said. He did not say, but he knew of a possible opportunity there for Oliver to staff his new quail plantation and acquire enough dogs and stock for his first shooting season on Leaning Pine Plantation, set to commence Thanksgiving week.
They arrived the Monday before Labor Day at Minot, rented a Chevy Surburban, drove the 123 miles to Crosby and checked in at the Crosby Lodge. With them was Ben’s pal, Sam Nixon, M. D. (the two were known locally by friends as the curmudgeons).
Within a fifty-mile radius of Crosby, twenty professional bird dog trainers from the Lower 48 were camped with strings of young dogs in training, some trial prospects, some plantation wagon dog prospects from shooting plantations like Leaning Pine. They had been here since early July and would train here on sharp-tailed grouse, pheasant, and Hungarian Partridge until mid or late October, or in the case of those with trial strings leave after the Classics to attend other trials on prairie venues south.
Among those training near Lignite, 36 miles east of Crosby, were two brothers, ages twenty and sixteen, Joe and Bob Cain, who had come up July first with their father, Carl Cain, an All-Age, for-the-public field trial trainer-handler based in Lee County, Georgia. Carl had died July 4 from a heart attack brought on by a three-pack a day cigarette smoking habit. Carl had been a widower; his wife and the sons’ mother had died of breast cancer a year earlier.
Carl’s trial string, except one derby Carl had owned, had been delivered by Joe to other handlers selected by their owners, most also summer training nearby. Still with the brothers were a dozen wagon string and foot hunting prospects placed with Carl by owners for summer training. In addition, the brothers had in training a dozen derbies Carl had owned and had hoped to sell by summers end to field trialers or quail plantations for their hunting wagon strings. Joe and Bob were depending on these sales to pay their travel expenses back to Lee County.
In addition to these dogs, they had six field trial mounts, three green when trucked up but now well trained. The sons were counting on selling these three at the North Dakota Classics trials starting Monday. It was by no means certain that the boys would have sufficient funds to cover their travel expenses back to Georgia where a single wide house trailer parked on rented ground was all of Carl’s worldly goods that awaited them.
Carl had been Ben’s client and Sam’s patient and both men’s friend. Unbeknown to Oliver Bain, the curmudgeons were hoping for Joe and Bob to return home employees of Leaning Pine Plantation.
The drawing of the Classics was held at the Crosby Lodge Tuesday night. There Ben introduced Oliver to a dozen trainer-handlers camped nearby. All had heard of Oliver’s purchase of Leaning Pine and hoped to sell him one or more dogs, wagon or trial, before the Classics ended. The curmudgeons had spent the day Tuesday driving Oliver around, showing him the vast table-flat wheat lands west of Crosby and the less flat prairie crop and grass lands to the east where the trainers worked. All had been homesteaded by mostly Scandinavian emigrants around 1900, enticed here by the newly built railroad, and much of the land was still owned by their descendants, absentee owners or snowbirds to Arizona.
At the drawing Tuesday night, Carl’s derby, now owned by his sons, was drawn to run in the opening brace of the first derby stake and the last brace of the second. Ben had discussed this derby with Carl before his death. Carl had thought it special.
Labor Day morning found Oliver, Ben and Sam mounted at the breakaway on the Koppelsloen homestead just east of Columbus. Their mounts were the three older dog horses of the Cain brothers who were mounted on two of the green horses they and their now dead father had brought north.
Bob Cain led their mostly white pointer derby, call name Mike, to the line by a rein, knelt and stroked him, and waited for the two judges to ride up to the line and the senior to utter the ritual, “Ready, gentlemen? Let ‘em go,” which they did precisely at 7 AM. Joe Cain blew a short blast on his pea whistle and the pointer bracemates broke for the front. Bob swung into the saddle and rode just behind the judges as Mike’s scout.
What followed would long be remembered by all the thirty horsemen following that morning. Mike stretched for the front with extraordinary speed and cast a quarter mile, then stopped and turned to look back to catch sight of Joe Cain’s mounts’ direction. Then Mike cast forward again, hunting for birds every lick. At the end of that cast he had reached the Prairie View burial ground, where tombstones of the nine Koppelsloen children and of their parents, homesteaders Mathilda and John, reflected the morning sunlight. Here Mike pointed, head high and his perfectly straight tail at 12 o’clock. Joe arrived at a canter, dismounted and awaited the judges’ arrival, then walked forward past Mike and put a half dozen sharp-tails to flight. Mike stood watching them.
Three more times the scene was repeated, then a judge yelled, “ pick ‘em up.” Mike was in front out of sight. Bob lit out to gather him and five minutes later appeared at the front with Mike on a check cord. The other handlers riding all had the same thought, we are now running for second place.
Oliver whispered to Ben, “I’ve got to have that dog.” Ben nodded. Sam grinned.
Before the derby stake ended, these deals had been made. Joe Cain was hired as head dog trainer and hunt manager of Leaning Pine Plantation. He and Bob would move to a cottage there. Bob would work there part time after high school and weekends and on graduation attend community college.
Oliver bought Mike and registered him as Leaning Pine Lightning. He also bought the other dogs in training that Carl had owned, to be the nucleus of Leaning Pine’s wagon string. Likewise, he bought the Cain’s mounts for Leaning Pine.
Mike aka Lightning would head Leaning Pine’s kennel and be handled in piney woods trials by Joe with Bob scouting. He would also work on the hunting wagon at Leaning Pine, to be put down at prime times for special guests and Oliver to shoot over.
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Author’s note: This fictional story is dedicated to the memories of Chinquapin Andy and his owner Ted Baker and to Joe Hicks, his trainer. Andy, like Lightning, was a great trial dog who also worked on the hunting truck at Chinquapin.