"From Arrival to Errant Shot, a Timeline of Cheney's Hunting Accident"
"Harry M. Whittington had just made two great shots -- ''a double, two birds with two shots'' -- recalled Pamela Pitzer Willeford. He had dropped back to retrieve the quail and, she said, ''the vice president and I started walking forward.''
''We did not know it, but Harry came up on us to the right.''
Moments later, Mr. Whittington was down, felled by a blast of birdshot fired by Vice President Dick Cheney that has hospitalized him with a pellet in his heart and sent reverberations around the country and into the White House.
It was a shattering ending last Saturday to what had begun less than 24 hours before as a happy reunion and tradition -- a hunting party of old friends, some in high places, at a legendary ranch of the old West.
Mr. Cheney took full responsibility for the accident on Wednesday, telling Fox News, ''I'm the guy who pulled the trigger and shot my friend, and that's something I'll never forget.'' Others who were there provided the following account of events that weekend.
They had gathered from far afield, recalled the hostess, Katharine Armstrong, a Washington and Austin lobbyist and descendant of a Texas Ranger who migrated to South Texas in the 1880's. The ranger settled on land his family had bought in 1852 and founded a ranching empire that has feted presidents and princes.
This time the celebrity at the 50,000-acre Armstrong Ranch was Mr. Cheney, a regular visitor in quail season and a longtime friend, particularly to Ms. Armstrong's 78-year-old mother, Anne, a former counselor to President Gerald R. Ford and the first woman to serve as United States ambassador to Britain.
The other guests were Ms. Willeford, the ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein, and her husband, George, a physician in Austin; Ben Love, a West Texas rancher whom Ms. Armstrong called her ''beau''; her sister, Sarita Hixon, a Houston museum chairwoman, and her husband, Bob, an insurance executive; Nancy Negley, an art philanthropist whose family once controlled Brown & Root, now a part of Halliburton; and Mr. Whittington, a 78-year-old Austin lawyer, Republican stalwart and presiding officer of the Texas Funeral Service Commission, and his wife, Mercedes.
At first Ms. Armstrong declined to say who besides Mr. Cheney and her sister had been her guests, but she provided the names after The Austin American-Statesman learned of Ms. Willeford's presence. Ms. Willeford spoke Monday by phone but declined to be interviewed again Wednesday. Mrs. Hixon and Ms. Negley did not respond to several messages.
All the guests were there by 6 p.m. Friday, Ms. Armstrong said. The others drove, but Mr. Cheney flew in with his Secret Service entourage; his wife, Lynne, had also been expected but could not come at the last minute, Ms. Armstrong said. Quartered in adjoining ranch houses, the group dined together Friday night and retired by about 10.
They were up before 8 Saturday and headed out in two groups, with outriders on horseback to flush the birds and about a dozen American pointers and Labrador retrievers.
They broke at 1 p.m. for a picnic lunch -- Mr. Cheney said he had had one beer but ''nobody was drinking, nobody was under the influence'' -- then returned to the house to freshen up before heading out again with different partners. Ms. Armstrong drove an old Jeep with Mr. Cheney, Mrs. Hixon, Ms. Willeford and Mr. Whittington.
By close to 5:30 p.m., she said, each group had bagged perhaps 40 quail for the day, well below the limit of 15 per person, and they were following their last covey, or flock.
At that point, Ms. Armstrong said, they figured they had 10 to 15 minutes of good light, and it would have taken 40 minutes or so to find another covey, so this was to be their last shooting of the day.
They had taken turns shooting, and now Ms. Armstrong was in the Jeep with her sister. About 100 yards away, Mr. Cheney, Mr. Whittington and Ms. Willeford were walking in a line in a low spot on gently sloping ground.
After Mr. Whittington bagged his birds he dropped out of sight along with one of Ms. Armstrong's bird dogs, Gertie, Ms. Willeford recalled.
Then, suddenly, he was in a dip about 30 yards away against the sun just as Mr. Cheney fired a blast from his Italian-made 28-gauge Perazzi shotgun. Mr. Whittington caught the spray of birdshot on the right side of his face, neck and chest. ''I said, 'Harry, I had no idea you were there,' '' Mr. Cheney recalled, adding: ''He didn't respond.''
Ms. Armstrong initially faulted Mr. Whittington. ''You tell your companions you're there, and he failed to do that,'' she said.
Ms. Willeford described her reaction as ''stunned'' and said, ''The vice president immediately started moving over to check on him.''
Ms. Armstrong used her cellphone to call Mr. Love, who was in the other hunting party, with Mrs. Whittington. ''Until we know how Harry is, it's best not to say anything to Merce,'' Mr. Love said she had told him.
An ambulance -- one always accompanies Mr. Cheney -- arrived in about 30 minutes.
Ms. Armstrong called Mr. Love back. ''He looks O.K.,'' she said. ''He's responsive, he's talking.'' Mr. Love agreed to tell Mrs. Whittington. ''She sat upright and asked, 'How bad?' '' Mr. Love recalled.
They saw the ambulance, bearing Mr. Whittington, speeding toward them and tried to flag it down for his wife, but it sped away, Mr. Love said. He and Mrs. Whittington, Dr. Willeford and Mr. Hixon then made their own way about an hour and 20 minutes north to the Christus Spohn hospital in Kingsville.
Mr. Whittington's injuries were deemed serious enough to require treatment at Christus Spohn Memorial Hospital in Corpus Christi, at least another hour's drive away, and he was flown there by helicopter.
When they reached the hospital in Corpus Christi, Dr. Willeford and Mr. Hixon called the others at the ranch to report on Mr. Whittington's condition, which Ms. Armstrong described as non-life-threatening. ''He was O.K., he checked out fine,'' she said.
The Secret Service, which put the time of the shooting at 5:50 p.m., said it had notified Sheriff Ramon Salinas III of Kenedy County by 7 p.m.
Sheriff Salinas said he had dispatched a deputy, and he later issued a news release suggesting that the officer had been turned away at the ranch. The Washington Post on Wednesday quoted Sheriff Salinas as saying that he first learned of the shooting from one of his captains, who had been summoned to escort the ambulance, but that he arrived after the ambulance left and that the Border Patrol agent guarding the gate during Mr. Cheney's visit knew nothing of any shooting.
Sheriff Salinas did not return repeated calls, and a reporter seeking to resolve the discrepancies was turned away Wednesday by the sheriff's office in Sarita, which said he was ''unavailable.''
Ms. Armstrong said she knew nothing of any attempted visit by a deputy on Saturday night.
The Secret Service appears also to have gotten word to the White House.
Between 8 and 9 p.m., Ms. Armstrong recalled, Karl Rove, the president's deputy chief of staff, called her ''to check on Harry,'' who she said was ''an old friend of Karl's.'' She said there was no discussion of what President Bush had been told of the shooting and whether he knew that Mr. Cheney had fired the shots.
Ms. Armstrong and her guests insisted that the focus Saturday was solely on Mr. Whittington and that no one talked about whether or how to put out the news of the incident. ''I'm telling you, there was no discussion at all, there wasn't,'' shesaid.
Mr. Love agreed. ''We were all quite shaken,'' he said, adding that Mr. Cheney was ''just crushed.''
That night, Ms. Armstrong said, Mr. Cheney and the others ate a somber roast beef dinner, overshadowed by concern for Mr. Whittington. Dr. Willeford and Mr. Hixon returned from the hospital in Corpus Christi to brief them further. They went to bed around 10, she said.
She said she was up Sunday by 6 a.m. and the other guests drifted in to breakfast around 7:30. It was then, she said, that they first started discussing how the news of the shooting was to be released.
''Mother and I decided we had to get that out of the way,'' Ms. Armstrong said, adding that she then proposed calling a reporter she knew at The Corpus Christi Caller-Times. Mr. Cheney, she said, agreed. ''What the vice president was doing was so respectful,'' she said, suggesting he was concerned that a news report might reach Mr. Whittington's daughters before the family could notify them.
Ms. Armstrong also said Mr. Cheney deferred to his hosts as the ones to handle any announcement.
Sheriff Salinas and a deputy came by around 8 a.m. to take a statement from Mr. Cheney, she said.
Ms. Armstrong said she began calling the reporter, Jaime Powell -- who had covered the death of her father, Tobin Armstrong, last October -- about 8:30 a.m. Sunday but failed to reach her. Ms. Armstrong then started calling the Caller-Times newsroom and reached another reporter, Kathryn Garcia, about 9 a.m.
The Caller-Times, after confirming the story with Mr. Cheney's office, posted an article on its Web site at 1:48 p.m. Sunday.
The guests stayed around the ranch house until lunch Sunday, Ms. Armstrong said. Mr. Cheney and Anne Armstrong drove to Corpus Christi to visit Mr. Whittington in the hospital.
Katharine Armstrong said she talked to Mr. Whittington by phone for 20 minutes Monday. ''He was in very high spirits and funny,'' she said.
But on Tuesday Mr. Whittington was back in the intensive care unit. He had suffered what doctors called a minor heart attack with a pellet of birdshot lodged in his heart."