The _arrozales_ are run dry (and of course the shooting stopped) by the middle of January. The water, in fact, is only kept up so long solely for the sake of the shooting. So soon as its level has fallen a couple of inches the fowl all leave directly. CHAPTER XXXIII ON SMALL-GAME SHOOTING IN SPAIN Hardly will one enter a village _posada_ or a peasant's lonely cot without observing one inevitable sign. Among the simple adornments of the whitewashed wall and as an integral item thereof hangs a caged redleg. And from the rafters above will be slung an antediluvian fowling-piece, probably a converted "flinter," bearing upon its rusty single barrel some such inscription--inset in gold characters--as, "Antequera, 1843." These two articles, along with a cork-stoppered powder-horn and battered leathern shot-belt, constitute the stock-in-trade and most cherished treasures of our rustic friend, the Spanish cazador. Possibly he also possesses a _pachón_, or heavily built native pointer; but the dog is chiefly used to find ground-game or quail, since the redleg, ever alert and swift of foot, defies all pottering pursuit. Hence the _reclamo_, or call-bird, is almost universally preferred for that purpose. Red-legged partridges abound throughout the length and breadth of wilder Spain--not, as at home, on the open corn-lands, but amidst the interminable scrub and brushwood of the hills and dales, on the moory wastes, and palmetto-clad prairie. On the latter hares, quail, and lesser bustard vary the game. Thither have ever resorted sportsmen of every degree--the lord of the land and the peasant, the farmer, the Padre Cura of the parish, or the local medico--all free to shoot, and each carrying the traitor _reclamo_ in its narrow cage. The central idea is, of course, that the _reclamo_, by its siren song, shall call up to the gun any partridge within hearing, when its owner, concealed in the bush hard by, has every opportunity of potting the unconscious game as it runs towards the decoy--two at a shot preferred, or more if possible. 'Twere unjust to reproach the peasant-gunner for the deed; flying shots with his old "flinter" would merely mean wasted ammunition and an empty pot--misfortunes both in his _res angustae domi_. We have ourselves, on African veld, where dinner depends on the gun, meted out similar measure to strings of cackling guinea-fowl without compunction; but in Spain we have never tried the _reclamo_, nor wish to. That the race of redlegs should have survived it all--year in and year out--bespeaks a wondrous fecundity, and has inspired new-born ideas of "preservation," which have been initiated in Spain with marked success. To this subject we refer later.