up the next one before you get this one out of the water."
Bobby went at it grimly, trying to keep in mind Mr. Kincaid's advice.
The task was as disagreeable, and apparently as interminable as ever,
but Bobby had gained this: he had not now, even in the subconscious
background of his mind, any desire to quit; and there no longer pressed
upon the weight and cold of the decoy he was at the moment handling, the
useless and imaginary, but real, cold and weight of all the decoys yet
to be lifted.
Nevertheless he was very glad when the last had found its place on the
pile amidship.
"Good boy!" said Mr. Kincaid. "Now it's all over."
It was somewhat after twilight; although objects about were still to be
made out in the unearthly half-illumination that precedes starlight. Mr.
Kincaid lifted his punt-pole and allowed the duck-boat to be carried
down wind to the other side of the pond. Here floated the dead ducks.
They were lying all along the edges of the reeds, their white bellies
plainly to be seen. After all those in sight had been picked up, Curly
was allowed a short search on his own account. It made Bobby shiver to
see him plunge into the icy water; but Curly did not mind. He found two
more inside the reeds; then was hauled over the gunwale and settled
himself happily, wet fur and all, in the bottom of the boat.
The homeward trip seemed to Bobby interminable. He was very cold; his
fingers ached; the anticipations of the day had all been used. The
sudden rise of waterfowl near at hand aroused in him no excitement;
their presence was just now useless from the shooting standpoint.
"We might try the big slough to-morrow," said Mr. Kincaid, more as an
audible thought than as a remark to Bobby.
"I don't want to go to-morrow," said Bobby.
In spite of Mr. Kincaid's advice, he could not prevent himself from
anticipating the arrival at the cabin-float. A dozen little bends he
mentally designated as the last before the lagoon; and each
disappointment came to him as a personal affront.
But finally, when he had fallen into the indifference of misery, the two
elms loomed in silhouette against the skyline.
Mr. Kincaid held the boat while Bobby stepped ashore; then made it fast,
and, without bothering with the game, opened the hut and lit the candle.
Bobby sat down dully. He had no further interest in life. Mr. Kincaid
glanced at his disconsolate little figure humped over on the stool, and
smiled grimly beneath his moustache. But he made no comment; and set
about immediate construction of a fire.
Bobby relapsed into a dull lethargy which took absolutely no account of
space or time. The shadows danced and flickered against the wall. He saw
them, but as something outside the real centre of his consciousness. The
wind howled by in gusts that shook the structure; Bobby did not care if
it blew the whole thing over!
"Come, Bobby! Supper!" Mr. Kincaid broke in on his black mood.
"I don't believe I want any supper," mumbled Bobby.
Mr. Kincaid took two long steps across to him, picked him and the stool
up bodily, and set him against the table.
"Now get at it," said he.
Bobby languidly tasted a piece of bread and butter.
In five minutes he was at his fifth slice, and had had four eggs and
three pieces of bacon. In ten the world had brightened marvellously. In
fifteen Bobby was chattering eagerly between mouthfuls, rehearsing with
some excitement the different events of the day.
"To-morrow," said he, "I'm going to shoot a lot."
"Thought you weren't going to-morrow," suggested Mr. Kincaid.
Bobby smiled shamefacedly.
"That's all right, Bobby," said Mr. Kincaid kindly. "Supper makes a big
difference to any of us, especially after a long day."
Curly received with gratitude the few scraps and three dog biscuits. The
guns were cleaned and oiled. All the ducks were tied in bunches by their
necks and hung from hooks on the north side of the hut. Bobby held the
heads together while Mr. Kincaid slipped the loops over them. Both
counted. Bobby made it eighty-four; while Mr. Kincaid's tally was only
eighty-three.
"Enough, anyway," said the latter.
Then Bobby suddenly found himself so extraordinarily drowsy that he
actually fell asleep while taking off his shoes. Mr. Kincaid put him to
bed. Outside, the wind howled, the water lapped against the float.
Inside, the shadows leaped and fell. But Bobby did not even dream of
ducks.
XII
THE TRESPASSERS
One day as Bobby and Mr. Kincaid were walking along looking for
squirrels in the high open woods, Duke, who was always required to trail
at heel for fear of alarming the game, became very uneasy. He dropped
back a few steps, and attempted to escape from control on either side;
he tried to get ahead--with always a deprecating side-glance at his
masters; he begged in his best dog fashion.
"He acts like birds," said Mr. Kincaid. "Hie on, Duke!"
Immediately Duke sprang away, the impulse of his suddenly released
energy projecting him ten feet at a bound. But at once he slowed down.
Step by step he drew ahead, his beautiful feathered tail sweeping slowly
from side to side, his delicate nostrils expanding and contracting, his
fine intelligent eye roving here and there. He stopped. His head dropped
to the level of his back and stretched straight out ahead. His tail
stiffened. Gently he raised one hind leg just off the ground. His eye
glazed with an inner concentration, and the trace of slaver moistened
the edges of his black and shining lips.
Mr. Kincaid cocked his gun and stepped forward.
"He's just beyond that dead log, Bobby," he said quietly.
Bobby watched with all his eyes. One, two, three steps Mr. Kincaid
advanced. Now he was abreast of Duke. The setter merely stiffened a
trifle more. Bobby's heart was beating rapidly. The whole sunlit autumn
world of woodland seemed waiting in a breathless suspense. The little
boy found space for a fleeting resentment against a nuthatch on a
tree-trunk near at hand for the calm, indifferent and noisy manner in
which he went about his everyday business.
Suddenly a mighty roar shattered the stillness. Beyond Duke something
swift and noisy and brown and explosive seemed to fill the air. So
startling was the irruption that Bobby was powerless to gather his
scattered senses sufficiently to see clearly what was happening. Mr.
Kincaid's gun bellowed; a cloud of white powder smoke hung in the
mottled sunshine. And down through the trees a swift, brown,
bullet-like flight crumpled and fell, whirling and twisting in a long
slanting line until it hit the earth with a thump! Bobby heard Mr.
Kincaid berating Duke.
"Down, you villain! Don't you try to break shot on me!"
And Duke, his hindquarters trembling with eagerness, his head turned
beseechingly toward the man, crouched awaiting the signal.
Quite deliberately Mr. Kincaid reloaded.
"Fetch dead!" he then commanded.
Duke sprang away in long elastic leaps. After a moment of casting back
and forth, he returned. His head was held high, for in his mouth he
carried the limp brown bird. Straight to Mr. Kincaid he marched. The man
stooped and laid hands on the game. At once the dog released it, not a
feather ruffled by his delicate mouthing.
"Good dog, Duke," Mr. Kincaid commended him. "Old cock bird," he told
Bobby.
Bobby spread out the broad brown fan of a tail; he inserted his finger
under the glossy ruffs; he stroked the smooth, brown, mottled back.
"This is more fun than squirrels," said he with conviction.
Mr. Kincaid glanced at him in surprise.
"But you can't hunt these fellows," said he, "It takes a shotgun to get
'pats.' You wouldn't have much fun at this game."
"I'd rather watch you--and Duke," replied Bobby, "than to shoot
squirrels. Are there many of them?"
"Not up on the ridges," said Mr. Kincaid. "This fellow's rather a
straggler. But there's plenty in the swamps and popples. Want to go
after them?"
"Yes," said Bobby.
After that the two used often to follow the edges of the hardwood
swamps, the creek bottoms, the hillsides of popples, and--later in the
season--the sumac and berry-vine tangles of the old burnings, looking
for that king of game-birds, the ruffed grouse.
Bobby became accustomed to the roar as the birds leaped into the air, so
that he was able to follow with intelligent interest all the moves in
the game, but never did his heart fail to leap in response. In later
years, when he too owned a shotgun, this sudden shock of the nerves
seemed to be the required stimulant to key him instantly to his best
work. A sneaker--that is to say, a bird that flushed without the
customary whirr--he was quite apt to miss.
Little by little, as he followed Mr. Kincaid, he learned the habits of
his game: where it was to be found according to time of day and season
of year. Strangely enough this he never analyzed. He did not consciously
say to himself; "It is early in the day, and cold for the time of year,
_therefore_ we'll find them in the brush points just off the swamps,
_because_ they will be working out to the hillsides for the sun after
roosting in the swamps." His processes of judgment were more
instinctive. By dint of repeated experience of finding birds in certain
cover, that kind of cover meant birds to him. "A good place for 'pats,'"
said he to himself, and confidently expected to find them. That is the
way good hunters are made.
All day long thus they would tramp, forcing their way through the
blackthorn thickets; clambering over and under the dead-falls and débris
of the slashings; climbing the side hills with the straight, silvery
shafts of the poplars; wandering down the narrow aisles of the old
logging roads; plodding doggedly across the unproductive fields that lay
between patches of cover; always lured on in the hope of more game
farther on, picking up a bird here, a bird there, each an adventure in
itself. And occasionally, once in a great while, they ran against a
glorious piece of luck, when the grouse rose in twos and threes, this
way, that, and the other, until the air seemed full of them. Mr.
Kincaid, very intent, shot and loaded as fast as he was able. Sometimes
things went right, and the bag was richer by two or three birds. Again
they went wrong. The first grouse to rise might be the farthest away.
Mr. Kincaid would snap-shoot at it, only to be overwhelmed, after his
gun was empty, by a half dozen flushing under his very feet. Or a miss
at an easy first would spell humiliation all along the line. Then Bobby
and Duke would be much cast down.
"Thing to do," said Mr. Kincaid, "is to shoot one bird at a time. If you
get to thinking of the second before you've killed the first, you won't
get either. It's a hard thing to learn. I haven't got it down pat yet."
* * * * *
The short autumn days went fast. Before they knew it the pale sun had
touched the horizon and the world was turning cold and gray. Then came
the long laden tramp back to old Bucephalus, or perhaps to town, if they
had started out afoot. They were always very tired; but, as to Bobby, at
least, very happy.
Generally speaking they wandered through the country at will. Shooting
was not then as popular as it is now, nor the farms as close together.
Sometimes, however, they came across signs warning against trespass or
hunting. Then, if the cover seemed especially desirable, Mr. Kincaid
used sometimes to try to obtain permission of the owner of the land.
Once or twice, having overlooked the sign, they were ordered off. The
farmers were good-natured, even though firm.
But some four miles to the eastward lay a deep long swamp following the
windings between hills where Mr. Kincaid and Bobby had a very
disagreeable experience. It was late in the afternoon, so Bobby had
become tired. Duke made game on the outskirts of a dense thicket,
hesitated, then led the way cautiously into the tangle.
"It's pretty thick," Mr. Kincaid advised Bobby; "you'd better sit on the
stump there until I come out."
Bobby did so. A moment or so after Mr. Kincaid had disappeared, the
little boy became aware of a man approaching across the stump-dotted
field. He was a short, thickset man, with a broad face almost entirely
covered with a beard, a thick nose, and little, inflamed snapping eyes.
He was clad in faded and dingy overalls, and carried a pitchfork.
"Who's that shooting in here?" he shouted at Bobby as soon as he was
within hearing. "What do you mean by hunting here? You must have passed
right by the sign."
"Don't you want shooting here? No; we didn't see the sign," replied
Bobby.
By this time the man had approached, and Bobby could see his bloodshot
little eyes flickering with anger.
"You lying little snipe," he roared. "You must have seen the sign. You
couldn't help it. I've a mind to tan your hide good."
"What's this?" asked Mr. Kincaid's quiet voice.
The man whirled about.
"Oh, it's you, is it?" he snarled. "Well, what do you mean by
trespassing on my farm?"
"I didn't know it was your farm, in the first place; and I didn't know
shooting was prohibited in the second place."
"That's too thin. You came right by that sign at the corner. Now just
make tracks off this farm about as fast as you can go."
"Certainly," agreed Mr. Kincaid, quite unruffled. "I never shoot on a
man's land when he doesn't want me to."
He turned, and at once the man became abusive, just as a dog gains
courage as his enemy passes. Bobby listened, his eyes wide with dismay
and shock. Never had he heard quite that sort of language. Finally Mr.
Kincaid happened to glance down at his small companion. He slipped the
shells from his gun and leaned it against a stump.
"About face!" he said sharply to the man. "You can't talk that way
before this baby. We are going off your place as straight and as fast as
we can. You shoulder your pitchfork and go back to your house."
The man started again on a string of objurgation.
"I mean what I say," said Mr. Kincaid with deadly emphasis. "About face.
If you open your mouth again I shall certainly kill you."
The old man's bent shoulders had straightened, his mild blue eye flashed
fire. So he must have looked to his soldiers before the storming of
Molino del Rey. His hands were quite empty of a weapon, and his age was
hardly a match for the other's brute strength. Nevertheless the farmer
at once turned back, after a parting, but milder, admonition.
Mr. Kincaid picked up his gun, tucked it under his arm and trudged
forward. Bobby was trembling violently with excitement and anger.
"Why--why--" he gasped, as yet unable to cast his thoughts into speech.
Mr. Kincaid glanced down. A faint and amused smile flickered under his
moustache.
"You aren't going to do that sort of a crank the honour of keeping
stirred up, are you?" "That's Pritchard--the worst crank in Michigan.
He's quarrelled with every one. I never did know where his farm was, or
I should have taken pains to keep off."
They climbed into the cart and drove away toward town.
"I believe I'll make a hunter of you, Bobby," pursued Mr. Kincaid after
they were going. "It's a good thing to be. Of course there's the fun of
it--the 'pats,' the quail, the jacksnipe, the 'cock. But then there's
the other part, too."
[Illustration: "I MEAN WHAT I SAY," SAID MR. KINCAID WITH DEADLY
EMPHASIS]
They had come out on the sandhills over the town. Mr. Kincaid drew up
Bucephalus and contemplated it as it lay below them, its roofs half
hidden in the mauve and lilac of bared branches, its columns of smoke
rising straight up in the frosty air.
"Of course, I don't know, Bobby, whether you'll ever be a hunter or not.
It all depends on where you live and how--the chance to get out, I mean.
But, sonny, you can always be a sportsman, whatever you do. A sportsman
does things because he likes them, Bobby, for no other reason--not for
money, nor to become famous, nor even to win--although all these things
may come to him and it is quite right that he take them and enjoy them.
Only he does not do the things for them, but for the pleasure of doing.
And a right man does not get pleasure in doing a thing if in any way he
takes an unfair advantage. That's being a sportsman. And, after all,
that's all I can teach you if we hunt together ten years. Do you think
you can remember that?"
"Yes, sir," replied Bobby soberly.
"There's only one other thing," went on Mr. Kincaid, "that is really
important, and it isn't necessary if you remember the other things I've
told you. It's pretty easy sometimes to do a thing because you see
everybody else doing it. Always remember that a true sportsman in every
way is about the scarcest thing they make--and the finest. So naturally
the common run of people don't live up to it. If _you_--not the thinking
you, nor even the conscience you, but the way-down-deep-in-your-heart
_you_ that you can't fool nor trick nor lie to--if that _you_ is
satisfied, it's all right." He turned and grinned humorously at his
small companion. "I've nothing but a little income and an old horse and
two dogs and a few friends, Bobby; I've lived thirty years in that
little place there; and a great many excellent people call me a
good-for-nothing old loafer, but I've learned the things I'm telling you
now, and I'm just conceited and stuck-up enough to think I've made a
howling success of it."
"_I_ don't think that," said Bobby, laying his cheek against the man's
threadbare sleeve.
"Of course you don't, Bobby," said Mr. Kincaid cheerfully, "and I'll
tell you why. It's because you and I speak the same language, although
you're a little boy and I'm a big man."
XIII
THE PLAYMATES
Early that autumn it became expedient that Mrs. Orde and Bobby should
visit Grandfather and Grandmother Orde at Redding, while Mr. Orde pushed
through certain heavy cutting in the woods. Bobby took with him his two
fonts of "real" type--one a parting present from Mr. Daggett--and his
Flobert Rifle.
The old Orde homestead covered about three acres of ground. The city had
grown up around it. The house was a three-storied stone structure, built
fifty years before, steep of roof, gabled, low-ceilinged, old-fashioned
and delightful. Bobby loved it and its explorations, from the cellar
with its bins of vegetables and fruit and its barrels of molasses, cider
and vinegar, to its attic with its black, mysterious, "behind the tank."
And the three acres were a joy. Outside the picket fence were the shade
trees, their trunks nearly two feet in diameter. Then stretched the
wide deep lawn, now turning dull with the approach of winter and strewn
with dead leaves. It supported the fir which Bobby always called the
"Christmas Tree," and under whose wide low branches he could crawl as
into a dusty, cobwebby house; and the little birch tree with its silver
bark; and the big round lilac bush, now bare, but in summer the fragrant
haunt of birds and butterflies innumerable; and the round flower bed;
and the horse-chestnut tree whose inedible brown-and-yellow nuts were
just right to throw or to string into necklaces; and close by the front
gate the Big Tree. Bobby firmly believed this the largest tree in the
world. It was a silver maple so great about the trunk that Bobby could
trot about it as around a race-track. At twelve feet it branched in two,
each division bigger than any shade tree in town. The branches were held
together by a logging chain. Above them were more divisions and more and
yet more, ever rising higher and finer, until at last, far over the tops
of the maples, of the elms, even of the hickory at the side of the
house, above the highest point of the highest gable of the house itself,
it feathered out in a delicate, wide lacework that seemed fairly to
brush the sky. Bobby's realization of height ceased short of the
reality. Beyond that he was breathless, as one is breathless at too
great speed. The big tree was full of orioles' and vireos' nests, old
and recent, representing the building of many summers. Out behind was
the orchard, a dozen sturdy old apple trees, now passing the meridian of
their powers.
Here Bobby laboured hard with hammers and a few old boards until he had
constructed a shield on which to tack his target. He leaned the affair
against the thickest and tallest woodpile, placed a saw-horse for a rest
at fifteen yards from his mark and brought out his Flobert Rifle.
At the third snap of the little weapon, he looked up to discover a row
of interested heads lined up along the top of the high board fence that
constituted the Ordes' eastern boundary. He pretended not to see but
shot again, very deliberately.
"Say," shouted a voice, "I'm coming over!"
Bobby looked up once more. One of the heads had given place to a very
sturdy back and legs suspended on the Orde side of the fence. The legs
wriggled frantically, the toes scratched at the boards.
"Aw, drop!" said another voice, and the second head produced a hand and
arm which proceeded calmly to rap the knuckles of the one who dangled.
The latter let go. Finding himself uninjured by the three-foot fall, he
looked up wrathfully at his late assailant. That youth was in the act of
swinging his own legs over. The first-comer, with a gurgle of joy,
seized the other by both feet and tugged with all his strength. His
victim kicked frantically, tried to hang on, had to let go and came down
all in a heap on top of his tormentor. Immediately they clinched and
began to roll over and over. Bobby stared, vastly astonished.
Before he could collect his thoughts a third figure was dangling down
the boards. This one was feminine. It displayed a good deal of long
black leg, of short dull plaid skirt, a reefer jacket, two pigtails and
a knit blue tam-o'-shanter. Further observation was impossible, for it
dropped without hesitation and the moment it struck ground pounced on
the two combatants. Bobby saw those gentlemen seized, shaken and slapped
with hurricane vigour. The next he knew, three flushed visitors were
descending on him with ingratiating grins.
The first, he of the pounded knuckles, was a short, sturdy, very
fair-haired youth with a wide red-lipped mouth, wide and winning blue
eyes and a bit of a swagger in his walk. He was about Bobby's age. The
second, he of the pulled feet, was brown-haired, slightly stooped,
rather nervous-faced, but with the drollest twinkle to his brown eyes
and the quaintest quirk to his sensitive lips. He was about twelve years
old. The third, the girl, was tawny-haired, gray-eyed. Her face was
almost the exact shape of the hearts on valentines; her nose turned up
just enough to be impudent; her freckles, for she was indubitably
freckled, were just wide enough apart to emphasize the inquiring,
unabashed self-reliance of her eyes. Her figure was long and lank but
moved with a freedom and a confidence that indicated her full control of
it. She was probably just short of her 'teens.
"Gorry!" said the first boy, "is that gun yours?"
"Let's see it," said the second.
"It's a beauty, isn't it? Look at the gold mounting," said the girl.
"Look out how you handle it!" warned Bobby.
"Why, is it loaded?" asked Number One.
"It doesn't matter whether it's loaded or not!" insisted Bobby stoutly.
"It ought never to be pointed toward anybody."
"Oh, shucks!" said Number One, reaching for the rifle.
But Bobby interposed.
"You mustn't touch it unless you handle it right," said he.
"Shucks," repeated the light-haired boy, still reaching.
Bobby, his heart beating a little more rapidly than usual, thrust
himself in front of the other.
"Ho!" cried the other, the joy of battle lighting up his dancing blue
eyes. "Want to fight? I can lick you with one hand tied behind me."
"This is my yard," said Bobby, "and that is my gun! And besides I didn't
ask you to come in here, anyway."
"Well, I can lick you, anyway," replied the other with unanswerable
logic.
The girl had been watching them narrowly, her hands on her hips, her
head on one side. Now she interfered.
"Johnnie, come off!" said she sharply. "No fighting! You're bigger than
he is, and it _is_ his yard and his gun, and, anyway, he isn't afraid of
you."
Johnnie looked at her doubtfully, then turned to Bobby as to a
companion under tyranny.
"That's just like her," he complained. "She always spoils things! You
ain't smaller than I am, anyhow. Never mind, we'll try it sometime when
she ain't around. Let's see your old gun. I won't point it at anybody.
Show me how she works."