"You miserable hounds!" he roared.

With a wise premonition they decamped.

"I'm going to clean out the whole bandylegged tribe!" threatened the

Captain for the fiftieth time in the month. "I won't have them on the

ranch!"

That was seven years ago. They are still there--they and numerous

descendants.[G]

CHAPTER VII

DINNER

We washed up and came down stairs. All at once it proved to be drowsy

time. The dark had fallen and the lamps were lit. A new fire crackled in

the fireplace, anticipating the chill that was already descending.

Carrie played the piano in the other room. The General snorted over

something in his city paper. Mrs. Kitty had disappeared on household

business. Pete and Pup, having been mistaken one for the other by some

innocent bystander, gloomed and glowered under chairs.

Both the Captain and myself made some sort of a pretence of reading the

papers. It was only a pretence. The grateful warmth, the soothing

crackling of the fire, the distant music--and, possibly, our state of

starvation--lulled us to a half doze. From this we were aroused by an

announcement of dinner.

We had soup and various affairs of that sort; and there was brought on a

huge and baronial roast, from which the Captain promptly proceeded to

slice generous allowances. With it came vegetables. They were all cooked

in cream; not milk, but rich top cream thick enough to cut with a knife.

I began to see why all the house servants were plump. Also there were

jellies, and little fat hot rolls, and strange pickled products of the

soil. I was good and hungry; and I ate thereof.

The plates were removed. I settled back with a sigh of repletion----

The door opened to admit the waitress bearing a huge platter on which

reposed, side by side, five ducks. That meant a whole one apiece! To my

feeble protest the family turned indignantly.

"Of course you must eat your duck!" Mrs. Kitty settled the whole

question at last.

So I ate my duck. It was a very good duck; as indeed it should have

been, for it was fattened on Egyptian corn, hung the exact number of

days, and cooked by Charley. It had a little spout of celery down which

I could pour the abundant juice from its inside; and it was flanked

right and left respectively by a piece of lemon liberally sprinkled with

red pepper and sundry crisp slabs of fried hominy. Every night of the

shooting season each member of the household had "his duck." Later I was

shown the screened room wherein hung the game, each dated by a little

tag.

After I had made way with most of my duck, and other things, and had had

my coffee, and had lighted a cigar, I was entirely willing to sink back

to disgraceful ease. But the Captain suddenly developed an inexcusable

and fiendish energy.

"No, you don't," said he. "You come with me and Redmond and get out the

decoys."

"What for?" I temporized, feebly.

"To keep the moths out of them, of course," replied the Captain with

fine sarcasm. "Do you mean to tell me that you can sit still and do

nothing after seeing all those ducks this afternoon? You're a fine

sportsman! Brace up!"

"Let me finish this excellent cigar," I pleaded. "You gave it to me."

To this he assented. Carrie went back to the piano. The lights were dim.

Mrs. Kitty went on finishing her crochet work or whatever it was. Nobody

said anything for a long time. The Captain was busy in the gun room with

one of the ranch foremen.

But this could not last, and at length I was haled forth to work.

The crisp, sharp air beneath the frosty stars, after the tepid air

within, awakened me like the shock of cold water. Redmond was awaiting

us with a lantern. By the horse block lay the mass of something

indeterminate which I presently saw to be sacks full of something

knobby.

"I have six sacks of wooden decoys," said Redmond, "with weights all on

them."

The Captain nodded and passed on. We made our way down past the grape

arbour, opened the high door leading into chickenville, and stopped at

the border of the little pond. On its surface floated a hundred or so

tame ducks of all descriptions. By means of clods of earth we woke them

up. They came ashore and waddled without objection to a little

inclosure. We followed them and shut the gate.

One after another the Captain indicated those he wished to take with him

on the morrow. Redmond caught them, inserted them in gunny sacks, two to

the sack. They made no great objection to being caught. One or two

youngsters flopped and flapped about, and had to be chased into a

corner. In general, however, they accepted the situation

philosophically, and snuggled down contentedly in their sacks.

"They are used to it," the Captain explained. "Most of these Rouen ducks

are old hands at the business; they know what to expect."

He was very particular as to the colouring of the individuals he

selected. A single white feather was sufficient to cause the rejection

of a female; and even when the colour scheme was otherwise perfect, too

light a shade proved undesired.

"I don't know just why it is," said he, "but the wild ducks are a lot

more particular about the live decoys than about the wooden. A wooden

decoy can be all knocked to pieces, faded and generally disreputable,

but it does well enough; but a live decoy must look the part absolutely.

That gives us six apiece; I think it will be enough."

Redmond took charge of our capture. We left him with the lantern,

stowing away the decoys, live and inanimate, in the Invigorator. Within

fifteen minutes thereafter I was sleeping the sleep of the moderately

tired and the fully fed.

CHAPTER VIII

DUCKS

The Captain rapped on my door. It was pitch dark, and the wind, which

had arisen during the night, was sweeping through the open windows,

blowing the light curtains about. Also it was very cold.

"All right," I answered, took my resolution in my hands, and stepped

forth.

Ten minutes later, by the light of a single candle, we were manipulating

the coffee-and-egg machine, and devouring the tall pile of

bread-and-butter sandwiches that had been left for us over night. Then,

stepping as softly as we could in our clumping rubber boots, our arms

burdened with guns and wraps, we stole into the outer darkness.

It was almost black, but we could dimly make out the treetops whipped

about by the wind. Over by the stable we caught the intermittent flashes

of many lanterns where the teamsters were feeding their stock. Presently

a merry and vigorous _rattle_--_rattle_--_rattle_ arose and came nearer.

The Invigorator was ready and under way.

We put on all the coats and sweaters, and climbed aboard. The Captain

spoke to his horses, and we were off.

That morning I had my first experience of a phenomenon I have never

ceased admiring--and wondering at. I refer to the Captain's driving in

the dark.

The night was absolutely black, so that I could hardly make out the

horses. In all the world were only two elements, the sky full of stars

and the mass of the earth. The value of this latter, as a means of

showing us where we were, was nullified by the fact that the skyline

consisted, not of recognizable and serviceable landmarks, but of the

distant mountains. We went a certain length of time, and bumped over a

certain number of things. Then the Captain pulled his team sharp around

to the left. Why he did so I could not tell you. We drove an hour over a

meandering course.

"Hang tight," remarked the Captain.

I did so. The front end of the Invigorator immediately fell away from

under me, so that if I had not been obeying orders by hanging tight I

should most certainly have plunged forward against the horses. We seemed

to slide and slither down a steep declivity, then hit water with a

splash, and began to flounder forward. The water rose high enough to

cover the floor of the Invigorator, causing the Captain to speculate on

whether Redmond had packed in the shells properly. Then the bow rose

with a mighty jerk and we scrambled out the other side.

"That's the upper ford on the Slough," observed the Captain, calmly.

Everywhere else along the Slough, as I subsequently discovered, the

banks fell off perpendicular, the water was deep, and the bottom soft.

The approach was down no fenced lane, but across the open, with no other

landmarks even in daylight than the break of low willows and

cottonwoods exactly like a hundred others. Ten minutes later the

Captain drew rein.

"Here you are," said he, cautiously. "You can dump your stuff off right

here. I can't get through the fence with the team; but it's only a short

distance to carry."

Accordingly, in entire faith, I descended and unloaded my three sacks of

wooden decoys and my three sacks of live ducks and my gun and shells.

"I'll drive on to another hole," said the Captain. "Good luck!"

"Would you mind," I suggested, meekly, "telling me in which direction

this mythical fence is situated; what kind of a fence it is; and where I

carry to when I get through it?"

The Captain chuckled.

"Why," he explained, "the fence is straight ahead of you; and it's

barbed wire; and as for where you're headed, you'll find the pond where

we saw all those ducks last night about a hundred yards or so west."

Where we saw all those ducks! My blood increased its pace through my

veins. Now that I was afoot, I could begin to make out things in the

starlight--the silhouettes of bushes or brush, and even three or four

posts of the fence.

The Invigorator rattled into the distance. I got my stuff the other side

of the wires, and, shouldering a sack, plodded away due west.

But now I made out the pond gleaming; and by this and by the dim

grayness of the earth immediately about me knew that dawn was at last

under way. The night had not yet begun to withdraw, but its first

strength was going. Objects in the world about became, not visible, but

existent. By the time I had carried my last load the rather liberal

hundred yards to the shores of the pond the eastern sky had banished its

stars.

My movements had, of course, alarmed the ducks. There were not many of

them, as I could judge by the whistling of their departing wings and by

the silvery furrows where they had left the water. It is curious how

strong the daylight must become before the eye can distinguish a duck in

flight. The comparative paucity of numbers, I reflected, was probably

due to the fact that the ducks used this pond merely as a loafing place

during the day. Therefore I should anticipate a good flight as soon as

feeding time should be over; especially as one end of the pond proved to

be fairly well sheltered from the high wind.

At once I set to work to build me a blind. This I constructed of

tumbleweed and willow shoots, with a lucky sagebrush as a good basis. I

made it thick below and thin on top, so I could crouch hidden, and rise

easily to shoot. Also I made it hastily, working away with a

concentration that would prove very valuable could it be brought to a

useful line of work. There can nothing equal the busyness of a man

hastening to perfect his arrangements before a flight of ducks is due to

start. Every few moments I would look anxiously up to see how things

were going with the morning. The light was indubitably increasing. That

is to say, I could make out the whole width of the pond, for example,

although the farther banks were still in silhouette, and the sky was

almost free of stars. Also the perpendicular plane of the mountains to

the west, in some subtle manner, was beginning to break. It was not yet

daylight; but the dawn was here.

I reached cautiously into one of the sacks and brought forth one of the

decoy ducks. Around his neck I buckled a little leather collar to a ring

in which had been attached a cord and weight. Then I cautiously waded

out and anchored him.

He was delighted, and proceeded immediately to take a bath, ducking his

head under and out again, ruffling his wings, and wagging his absurd

little tail. Apparently the whole experience was a matter of course to

him; but he was willing to show pleasure that this phase of it was over.

I anchored out his five companions, and then proceeded to arrange the

wooden decoys artistically around the outskirts. By now it was quite

genuinely early daylight. Three times the overhead whistle of wings had

warned me to hurry; and twice small flocks of ducks had actually swung

down within range only to discover me at the last moment and tower away

again. When younger, I used, at such junctures, to rush for my gun. That

is a puppy stage, for by the time you get your gun those ducks are gone;

and by the time you have regained your abandoned task more ducks are in.

Therefore one early learns that when he goes out from his blind to pick

up ducks, or catch cripples, or arrange decoys, he would better do so,

paying no attention whatever to the game that will immediately appear.

So now the whistle of wings merely caused me to work the faster. At

length I was able to wade ashore and sink into my blind.

Immediately, as usual, the flights ceased for the time being. I had

nothing to do but sit tight and wait.

This was no unpleasant task. The mountains to the west had become

lucent, and glowed pink in the dawn; those to the east looked like

silhouettes of very thin slate-coloured cardboard stuck up on edge,

across which a pearl wash had been laid. The flatter world of the plains

all about me lay half revealed in an unearthly gray light. The wind

swooped and tore away at the brush, sending its fan-shaped cat's-paws

across the surface of the pond. My ducks, having finished their

ablutions, now gave a leisurely attention to smoothing out their plumes

ruffled by the night in the gunnysack. They ran each feather separately

through their bills, preening and smoothing. All the time they conversed

together in low tones of voice. Whenever one made a rather clever

remark, or smoothed to glossiness a particularly rumpled feather, he

wagged his short tail vigorously from side to side in satisfaction.

Suddenly the one farthest out in the pond stilled to attention and

craned forward his neck.

"_Mark_!" quoth he, loudly, and then again: "_Mark_!

_quok_--_quok_--_quok_!"

The other five looked in the same direction, and then they, too, lifted

up their voices. Cautiously I turned my head. Low against the growing

splendour of the sunrise, wings rigidly set, came a flock of mallards.

My ducks fairly stood up on their tails the better to hurl invitations

and inducements at their wild brethren. The chorus praising this

particular spot was vociferous and unanimous, I wonder what the mallards

thought of the other fifty or sixty in my flock, the wooden ones, that

sat placidly aloof. Did they consider these remarkably exclusive; or did

they perhaps look upon the live ones as the "boosters" committee for

this particular piece of duck real estate? At any rate, they dropped in

without the slightest hesitation, which shows the value of live decoys.

The mallard is ordinarily a wily bird and circles your pond a number of

times before deciding to come in to wooden decoys. At the proper moment

I got to my feet, and, by good fortune, knocked down two fat

green-heads.

They fell with a splash right among my ducks. Did the latter exhibit

alarm over either the double concussion of the gun or this fall of

defunct game from above? Not at all! they were tickled to death. Each

swam vigorously around and around at the limit of his tether, ruffling

his plumage and waggling his tail with the utmost vigour.

"Well, I rather think we fooled that bunch!" said they, one to another.

"Did you ever see an easier lot? Came right down without a look! If the

Captain had been here he'd have killed a half dozen of the chumps before

they got out of range!" and so on. For your experienced decoy always

seems to enjoy the game hugely, and to enter into it with much

enthusiasm and intelligence. And all the while the flock of wooden

decoys headed unanimously up wind, and bobbed in the wavelets; and the

sun went on gilding the mountains to the west.

Next a flock of teal whirled down wind, stooped, and were gone like a

flash. I got in both barrels; and missed both. The dissatisfaction of

this was almost immediately mitigated by a fine smash at a flock of

sprig that went by overhead at extreme long range, but from which I

managed to bring down a fine drake. When the shot hit him he faltered,

then, still flying, left the ranks at an acute angle, sloping ever the

quicker downward, until he fell on a long slant, his wings set, his neck

still outstretched. I marked the direction as well as I could, and

immediately went in search of him. Fortunately he lay in the open, quite

dead. Looking back, I could see another good flock fairly hovering over

the decoys.

The sun came up, and grew warm. The wind died. I took off my sweater.

Between flights I basked deliciously. The affair was outside of all

precedent and reason. A duck shooter ought to be out in a storm, a good

cold storm. He ought to break the scum ice when he puts out his decoys.

He ought to sit half frozen in a wintry blast, his fingers numb, his

nose blue, his body shivering. That sort of discomfort goes with duck

shooting. Yet here I was sitting out in a warm, summerlike day in my

shirt sleeves, waiting comfortably--and the ducks were coming in, too!

After a time I heard the mighty rattle of the Invigorator, and the

Captain's voice shouting. Reluctantly I disentangled myself from my

blind and went over to see what all the row was about.

"Had enough?" he demanded, cheerily.

I saw that I was supposed to say yes; so I said it. The ducks were still

coming in fast. You see, I was not yet free from the traditions to which

I had been brought up. Back in Michigan, when a man went for a day's

shoot, he stayed with it all day. It was serious business. I was not

yet accustomed to being so close to the game that the casual expedition

was after all the most fun.

So I pulled up my rubber boots, and waded out, gathering in the game. To

my immense surprise I found that I had thirty-seven ducks down. It had

not occurred to me that I had shot half that number, which is perhaps

commentary on how fast ducks had been coming in. It was then only about

eight o'clock. After gathering them in, next we performed the slow and

very moist task of lifting the wooden decoys and winding their anchor

cords around their placid necks. Lastly we gathered in the live ducks.

They came, towed at the end of their tethers, with manifest reluctance;

hanging back at their strings, flapping their wings, and hissing at us

indignantly. I do not think they were frightened, for once we had our

hands on them, they resumed their dignified calm. Only they enjoyed the

fun outside; and they did not fancy the bags inside; a choice eminently

creditable to their sense.

So back we drove to the ranch. The Captain, too, had had good shooting.

Redmond appeared with an immense open hamper into which he dumped the

birds two by two, keeping tally in a loud voice. Redmond thoroughly

enjoyed all the small details.

CHAPTER IX

UNCLE JIM

Each morning, while we still sat at breakfast, Uncle Jim drove up from

the General's in his two-wheeled cart to see if there might be anything

doing. Uncle Jim was a solidly built elderly man, with the brown

complexion and the quizzical, good-humoured eye of the habitual

sportsman. He wore invariably an old shooting coat and a cap that had

seen younger, but perhaps not better, days. His vehicle was a battered

but serviceable two-wheeled cart drawn by a placid though adequate

horse. His weapon for all purposes was a rather ponderous twelve-gauge.

If we projected some sporting expedition Uncle Jim was our man; but if

there proved to be nothing in the wind, he disappeared promptly. He

conducted various trapping ventures for "varmints," at which he seemed

to have moderate success, for he often brought in a wildcat or coyote.

In fact, he maintained one of the former in a cage, to what end nobody

knew, for it was a harsh and unsociable character. Uncle Jim began to

show signs of life about July fifteenth when the dove season opened; he

came into his own from the middle of October until the first of

February, during which period one can shoot both ducks and quail; he

died down to the bare earth when the game season was over, and only sent

up a few green shoots of interest in the matter of supplying his

wildcat with that innumerable agricultural pest, the blackbird.

Sometimes I accompanied Uncle Jim, occupying the other side of the

two-wheeled cart. We never had any definite object in view; we just went

forth for adventure. The old horse jogged along very steadily,

considering the fact that he was as likely to be put at cross country as

a road. We humped up side by side in sociable silence, spying keenly for

what we could see. A covey of quail disappearing in the brush caused us

to pull up. We hunted them leisurely for a half hour and gathered in a

dozen birds. Always we tried to sneak ducks, no matter how hopeless the

situation might seem. Once I went on one hand and my knees through three

inches of water for three hundred yards, stalking a flock of sprig

loafing in an irrigation puddle. There was absolutely no cover; I was in

plain sight; from a serious hunting standpoint the affair was quixotic,

not to say imbecile. If I had been out with the Captain we should

probably not have looked twice at those sprig. Nevertheless, as the

general atmosphere of Uncle Jim's expeditions was always one of

adventure and forlorn hopes and try-it-anyway, I tried it on. Uncle Jim

sat in the cart and chuckled. Every moment I expected the flock to take

wing, but they lingered. Finally, when still sixty yards distant, the

leaders rose. I cut loose with both barrels for general results. To my

vast surprise three came down, one dead, the other two wing-tipped. The

two latter led me a merry chase, wherein I managed to splatter the rest

of myself. Then I returned in triumph to the cart. The forlorn hope had

planted its banner on the walls of achievement. Uncle Jim laughed at me

for my idiocy in crawling through water after such a fool chance. I

laughed at Uncle Jim because I had three ducks. We drove on, and the

warm sun dried me off.

In this manner we made some astonishing bags; astonishing not by their

size, but by the manner of their accomplishment.

We were entirely open minded. Anything that came along interested us. We

investigated all the holes in all the trees, in hopes of 'coons or honey

or something or other. We drove gloriously through every patch of brush.

Sometimes an unseen hummock would all but upset us; so we had to

scramble hastily to windward to restore our equilibrium.

The country was gridironed with irrigation ditches. They were eight to

ten feet deep, twenty or thirty feet wide, and with elevated,

precipitous banks. One could cross them almost anywhere--except when

they were brimful, of course. The banks were so steep that, once

started, the vehicle had to go, but so short that it must soon reach

bottom. On the other side the horse could attain the top by a rush;

after which, having gained at least a front footing over the bank, he

could draw the light vehicle by dead weight the rest of the distance.

Naturally, the driver had to take the course at exactly right angles, or

he capsized ingloriously.

One day Uncle Jim and I started to cross one of these ditches that had

long been permitted to remain dry. Its bottom was covered by weeds six

inches high, and looked to be about six feet down. We committed

ourselves to the slope. Then, when too late to reconsider, we discovered

that the apparent six-inch growth of weeds was in reality one of four

or five feet. The horse discovered it at the same time. With true

presence of mind, he immediately determined that it was up to him to

leap that ditch. Only the fact that he was hitched to the cart prevented

him from doing so; but he made a praiseworthy effort.

The jerk threw me backward, and had I not grabbed Uncle Jim I would most

certainly have fallen out behind. As for Uncle Jim, he would most

certainly have fallen out behind, too, if he had not clung like grim

death to the reins. And as for the horse, alarmed by the check and

consequent scramble, he just plain bolted, fortunately straight ahead.

We hit the opposite bank with a crash, sailed over it, and headed across

country.

Consider us as we went. Feet in air, I was poised on the end of my

backbone in a state of exact equilibrium. A touch would tumble me out

behind; an extra ounce would tip me safely into the cart; my only

salvation was my hold on Uncle Jim. I could not apply that extra ounce

for the simple reason that Uncle Jim also, feet in air, was poised

exactly on the end of his backbone. If the reins slackened an inch, over

he went; if he could manage to pull up the least bit in the world, in he

came! So we tore across country for several hundred yards, unable to

recover and most decidedly unwilling to fall off on the back of our

heads. It must have been a grand sight; and it seemed to endure an hour.

Finally, imperceptibly we overcame the opposing forces. We were saved!

Uncle Jim cursed out "Henry" with great vigour. Henry was the mare we

drove. Uncle Jim, in his naming of animals, always showed a stern

disregard for the female sex. Then, as usual, we looked about to see

what we could see.

Over to the left grew a small white oak. About ten or twelve feet from

the ground was a hole. That was enough; we drove over to investigate

that hole. It was not an easy matter, for we were too lazy to climb the

tree unless we had to. Finally we drove close enough so that, by

standing on extreme tip-toe atop the seat of the cart, I could get a

sort of sidewise, one-eyed squint at that hole.

"If," I warned Uncle Jim, "Henry leaves me suspended in mid-air I'll

bash her fool head in!"

"No, you won't," chuckled Uncle Jim, "it's too far home."

It was a very dark hole, and for a moment I could see nothing. Then, all

at once, I made out two dull balls of fire glowing steadily out of the

blackness. That was as long as I could stand stretching out my entire

anatomy to look down any hole.

On hearing my report, Uncle Jim phlegmatically thrust the flexible whip

down the hole.

"'Coon," he pronounced, after listening to the resultant remarks from

within.

And then the same bright idea struck us both.

"Mrs. Kitty here makes good with those angleworms," Uncle Jim voiced the

inspiration.

We blocked up the hole securely; and made rapid time back to the ranch.

CHAPTER X

THE MEDIUM-SIZE GAME

Against many attacks and accusations of uselessness cast at her

dachshunds, Mrs. Kitty had always stoutly opposed the legend of

"medium-size game." The dachshunds may look like bologna sausages on

legs, ran the gist of her argument; and they may progress like rather

lively measuring worms; and the usefulness of their structure may seem

to limit itself to a facility for getting under furniture without

stooping, _but_--Mrs. Kitty's eloquence always ended by convincing

herself, and she became very serious--but that is not the dogs' fault.

Rather it is the fault of their environment to which they have been

transplanted. Back in their own native vaterland they were always used

for medium-sized game. And what is more they are _good_ at it! Come

here, Pete, they shan't abuse you!

Coyotes and bobcats are medium-size game, someone ventured to point out.

Not at all, medium-size game should live in holes, like badgers.

Dachshunds are evidently built for holes. They are long and low, and

they have spatulate feet for digging, and their bandy legs enable them

to throw the dirt out behind them. Their long, sharp noses are like

tweezers to seize upon the medium-size game. In short, by much

repetition, a legend had grown up around the dachshunds, a legend of

fierceness inhibited only by circumstances, of pathetic deprivation of

the sports of their native land. If only we could have a badger, we

could almost hear them say to each other in dog language, a strong,

morose, savage badger! Alas! we are wasting our days in idleness, our

talents rust from disuse! Finally, Uncle Jim remained the only frankly

skeptical member.

At this time there visited the ranch two keen sportsmen whom we shall

call Charley and Tommy; as also several girls. We burst on the assembled

multitude with our news. Immediately a council of war was called. After

the praetors and tribunes of the people had uttered their opinions,

Uncle Jim arose and spoke as follows:

"Here is your chance to make good," said he, addressing Mrs. Kitty.

"Those badger hounds of yours, according to you, have just been fretting

for medium-size game. Well, here's some. Bring out the whole flock, and

let's see them get busy."

The proposition was received with a shout of rapture Uncle Jim smiled

grimly.

"Well, they'll do it!" cried Mrs. Kitty, with spirit.

Preparations were immediately under way. In half an hour the army

debouched from the ranch and strung out single file across the plain.

First came Uncle Jim and myself in the two-wheeled cart as scouts and

guides.

Followed the General in his surrey. The surrey had originally been

intended for idle dalliance along country lanes. In the days of its

glory it had been upholstered right merrily, and around its flat top had

dangled a blithesome fringe. Both the upholstery and fringe were still

somewhat there. Of the glory that was past no other reminder had

persisted. The General sat squarely in the middle of the front seat,

very large, erect, and imposing, driving with a fine military disregard

of hummocks or the laws of equilibrium. In or near the back seat hovered

a tiny Japanese boy to whom the General occasionally issued short,

sharp, military comments or commands.

Then came Mrs. Kitty and the ponies with Carrie beside her. Immediately

astern of the pony cart followed a three-seated carry-all with assorted

guests. This was flanked by the Captain and Charley as outriders. The

rear was closed by the Invigorator rilled with dachshunds. Their pointed

noses poked busily through the slats of the cage, and sniffed up over

the edge of the wagon box.

The rear, did I say? I had forgotten Mithradates Antikamia Briggs. The

latter polysyllabic person was a despised, apologetic, rangy,

black-and-white mongrel hound said to have belonged somewhere to a man

named Briggs. I think the rest of his name was intended as an insult.

Ordinarily Mithradates hung around the men's quarters where he was

liked. Never had he dared seek either solace or sympathy at the doors of

the great house; and never, never had he remotely dreamed of following

any of the numerous hunting expeditions. That would have been

lese-majesty, high treason, sublime impudence, and intolerable nuisance

to be punished by banishment or death. Mithradates realized this

perfectly; and never did he presume to raise his eyes to such high and

shining affairs.

But to-day he followed. Nobody was subsequently able to explain why

Mithradates Antikamia should on this one occasion so have plucked up

heart. My private opinion is that he saw the dachshunds being taken,

and, in his uncultivated manner, communed with himself as follows:

"Well, will you gaze on that! I don't pretend to be in the same class

with Old Ben or Young Ben, or even of the fox terriers; but if I'm not

more of a dog than that lot of splay-footed freaks, I'll go bite myself!

If they're _that_ hard up for dogs, I'll be cornswizzled if I don't go

myself!"

Which he did. We did not want him; this was distinctly the dachshunds'

party, and we did not care to have any one messing in. The Captain tried

to drive him back. Mithradates Antikamia would not go. The Captain

dismounted and tried force. Mithradates shut both eyes, crouched to the

ground, and immediately weighed a half ton. When punished he rolled over

and held all four paws in the air. The minute the Captain turned his

back, after stern admonitions to "go home!" and "down, charge!" and the

like, Mithradates crawled slowly forward to the waiting line, ducking

his head, wrinkling his upper lips ingratiatingly, and sneezing in the

most apologetic tones. Finally we gave it up.

"But," we "saved our face," "you'll have to behave when we get there!"

So, as has been said, Mithradates Antikamia Briggs brought up the rear.

Arrived at the tree the whole procession drew into a half circle. We

unblocked the opening, and the Invigorator was driven to a spot beneath

it so each person could take his turn at standing on the seat and

peering down the hole. The eyes still glowed like balls of fire.

Next the dachshunds were lifted up one by one and given a chance to

smell at the game. This was to make them keen. Held up by means of a

hand held either side their chests, they curled up their hind legs and

tails and seemed to endure. Mrs. Kitty explained that they had never

been so far off the ground in their lives, and so were naturally

preoccupied by the new sensation. This sounded reasonable, so we placed

them on the ground. There they sat in a circle looking up at our

performances, a solemn and mild interest expressing itself in their

lugubrious countenances. A dachshund has absolutely no sense of humour

or lightness of spirits. He never cavorts.

By sounding carefully with a carriage whip we determined the depth of

the hole, and proceeded to cut through to the bottom. This was quite a

job, for the oak was tough, and the position difficult. Tommy had

ascended the tree, and proclaimed loudly the first signs of daylight as

the axe bit through. Mine happened to be the axe work; so when I had

finished a neat little orifice, I swung up beside Tommy, and the

Invigorator drove out of the way.

My elevated position was a good one; and as Tommy was peering eagerly

down the hole, I had nothing to do but survey the scene.

The rigs were drawn up in a semi-circle twenty yards away. Next the

horses' heads stood the drivers of the various vehicles, anxious to miss

none of the fun. The dachshunds sat on their haunches, looking up, and

probably wondering why their friend, Tommy, insisted on roosting up a

tree. The Captain and Charley were immediately below, engaged in an

earnest effort to poke the 'coon into ascending the hole. Tommy was

reporting the result of these efforts from above. The General, his feet

firmly planted, had unlimbered a huge ten-bore shotgun, so as to be

ready for anything. Uncle Jim stood by, smoking his pipe. Mithradates

Antikamia Briggs sat sadly apart.

The poking efforts accomplished little. Occasionally the 'coon made a

little dash or scramble, but never went far. There was a great deal of

talking, shouting, and advice.

At last Uncle Jim, knocking the ashes from his pipe, moved into action.

He plucked a double handful of the tall, dry grass, touched a match to

it, and thrust it in the nick.

Without the slightest hesitation the 'coon shot out at the top!

Now just at that moment Tommy happened to be leaning over for a right

_good_ look down the hole. He received thirty pounds or so of agitated

'coon square in the chest. Thereupon he fell out of the tree

incontinently, with the 'coon on top of him.

We caught our breath in horror. Although we could plainly see that Tommy

was in no degree injured by his short fall, yet we all realized that it

was going to be serious to be mixed up with a raging, snarling beast

fight of twenty-two members. When the dachshunds should pounce on their

natural prey, the medium-size game, poor Tommy would be at the bottom of

the heap. Several even started forward to restrain the dogs, but stopped

as they realized the impossibilities.

Tommy and the 'coon hit with a thump. The dachshunds took one horrified

look; then with the precision of a drilled man[oe]uvre they unanimously

turned tail and plunged into the tall grass. From my elevated perch I

could see it waving agitatedly as they made their way through it in the

direction of the distant ranch.

For a moment there was astounded silence. Then there arose a shriek of

delight. The Captain rolled over and over and clutched handfuls of turf

in his joy. The General roared great salvos of laughter. Tommy, still

seated where he had fallen, leaned weakly against the tree, the tears

coursing down his cheeks. The rest of the populace lifted up their

voices and howled. Even Uncle Jim, who rarely laughed aloud, although

his eyes always smiled, emitted great Ho! ho!'s. Only Mrs. Kitty, dumb

with indignation, stared speechless after that wriggling mess of

fugitives.

The occasion was too marvellous. We enjoyed it to the full. Whenever the

rapture sank somewhat, someone would gasp out a half-remembered bit of

Mrs. Kitty's former defences.

"Their long, sharp noses are like tweezers to seize the game!" declaimed

Charley, weakly. [Spasm by the audience.]

"Their spatulate feet are meant for digging," the Captain took up the

tale. [Another spasm.]

"Their bandy legs enabled them to throw the dirt out behind them--as

they ran," suggested Tommy.

"If _only_ they could have had a badger they'd have beaten all records!"

we chorused.

And then finally we wiped our eyes and remembered that there used to be

a 'coon. At the same time we became conscious of a most unholy row in

the offing: the voice of Mithradates Antikamia.

"If you people want your 'coon," he was remarking in a staccato and

exasperated voice, "you'd better come and lend a hand. _I_ can't manage

him alone! The blame thing has bitten me in three places already. Of

course, I like to see people have a good time, and I hope you won't

curtail your enjoyment on my account; but if you've had _quite_ enough

of those made-in-Germany imitations, perhaps you'll just stroll over and

see what one good American-built DOG can do!"

CHAPTER XI

IN SEARCH OF ADVENTURE

Uncle Jim had friends everywhere. Continually we were pulling up by one

of the tiny two-roomed shacks wherein dwelt the small settlers. The

houses were always of new boards, unpainted, perched on four-by-fours,

in the middle of bare ground, perhaps surrounded by young poplars or

cottonwoods, but more likely fully exposed to the sun. A trifling open

shed protected a battered buggy on the thills and wheels of which

perched numerous chickens. A rough corral and windmill completed the

arrangements. Near the house was usually a small patch of alfalfa.

Farther out the owner was engaged in the strenuous occupation of

brushing and breaking a virgin country.

To greet us rushed forth a half-dozen mongrel dogs, and appeared a swarm

of children, followed by the woman of the place. Uncle Jim knew them all

by name, including even the dogs. He carefully wound the reins around

the whip, leaned forward comfortably, and talked. Henry dozed; and I

listened with interest. Uncle Jim had the natural gift of popularity. By

either instinct or a wide experience he knew just what problems and

triumphs, disappointments and perplexities these people were

encountering; and he plunged promptly into the discussion of them. Also,

I was never able to make out whether Uncle Jim was a conscious or

unconscious diplomat; but certainly he knew how judiciously to make use

of the subtle principle, so well illustrated by Molière, that it pleases

people to confer small favours. Thus occasionally he gravely "borrowed"

a trifle of axle grease, which we immediately applied, or a cup of milk,

or a piece of string to mend something. When finally our leisurely

roadside call was at an end, we rolled away from unanimously hearty

signals of farewell.

In accordance with our settled feeling of taking things as they came,

and trying for everything, we blundered into varied experiences, none of

which arrange themselves in recollection with any pretence of logical

order. Perhaps it might not be a bad idea to copy our method, to set

forth and see where we land.

One of the most amusing happened when we were out with my younger, but

not smaller, brother. This youth was at that time about eighteen years

old, and six feet two in height. His age _plus_ his stature _equalled_ a

certain lankiness. As we drove peacefully along the highway we observed

in the adjacent field a coyote. The animal was some three or four

hundred yards away, lying down, his head between his paws, for all the

world like a collie dog. Immediately the lad was all excitement. We

pointed out the well-known facts that the coyote is no fool and is

difficult to stalk at best; that while he is apparently tame as long as

the wagon keeps moving, he decamps when convinced that his existence is

receiving undue attention; that in the present instance the short grass

would not conceal a snake; and that, finally, a 16-gauge gun loaded with

number-six shot was not an encouraging coyote weapon. He brushed them

aside as mere details. So we let him out.

He dropped into the grass and commenced his stalk. This he accomplished

on his elbows and knees. A short review of the possibilities will

convince you that the sight was unique. Although the boy's head and

shoulders were thus admirably close to the ground, there followed an

extremely abrupt apex. Add the fact that the canvas shooting coat soon

fell forward over his shoulders.

The coyote at first paid no attention. As this strange object worked

nearer, he raised his head to take a look. Then he sat up on his

haunches to take a better look. At this point we expected him to lope

away instead of which he trotted forward a few feet and stopped, his

ears pricked forward. There he sat, his shrewd brain alive with

conjecture until, at thirty-five yards, the kid emptied both barrels.

Thereupon he died, his curiosity as to what a movable brown pyramid

might be still unsatisfied.

Uncle Jim, the kid, and I had great fun cruising for jackrabbits. Uncle

Jim sat in the middle and drove while the kid and I hung our feet over

the sides and constituted ourselves the port and starboard batteries.

Bumping and banging along at full speed over the uneven country, we

jumped the rabbits, and opened fire as they made off. Each had to stick

to his own side of the ship, of course. Uncle Jim's bird dog, his head

between our feet, his body under the seat, watched the proceedings,

whining. It looked like good fun to him, but it was forbidden. A

jackrabbit arrested in full flight by a charge of shot turns a very

spectacular somersault. The dog would stand about five rabbits. As the

sixth turned over, he executed a mad struggle, accomplished a flying

leap over the front wheel, was rolled over and over by the forward

momentum of the moving vehicle, scrambled to his feet, pounced on that

rabbit, and most everlastingly and savagely shook it up! Then Uncle Jim

descended and methodically and dispassionately licked the dog.

Jackrabbits were good small-rifle game. They started away on a slow

lope, but generally stopped and sat up if not too seriously alarmed. A

whistle sometimes helped bring them to a stand. After a moment's

inspection they went away, rapidly. With a .22 automatic one could turn

loose at all sorts of ranges at all speeds. It was a good deal of fun,

too, sneaking about afoot through the low brush, making believe that the

sage was a jungle, the tiny pellets express bullets, the rabbits

magnified--I am sorry for the fellow who cannot have fun sometimes

"pretending!" In the brush, too, dwelt little cottontails, very good to

eat. The jackrabbit was a pest, but the cottontail was worth getting. We

caught sight of him first in the bare open spaces between the bushes,

whereupon he proceeded rapidly to cover. It was necessary to shoot

rather quickly. The inexperienced would be apt to run forward eagerly,

hoping to catch a glimpse of the cottontail on the other side; but

always it would be in vain. That would be owing to the fact that the

little rabbit has a trick of apparently running through a brush at full

speed, but in reality of stopping abruptly and squatting at the roots.

Often it is possible to get a shot by scrutinizing carefully the last

place he was seen. He can stop as suddenly as a cow pony.

Often and often, like good strategic generals, we were induced by

circumstances to change our plans or our method of attack at the last

moment. On several occasions, while shooting in the fields of Egyptian

corn, I have killed a quail with my right barrel and a duck with my

left! Continually one was crouching in hopes, when some unexpected flock

stooped toward him as he walked across country. These hasty concealments

were in general quite futile, for it is a fairly accurate generalization

that, in the open, game will see you before you see it. This is not

always true. I have on several occasions stood stock still in the open

plain until a low-flying mallard came within easy range. Invariably the

bird was flying toward the setting sun, so I do not doubt his vision was

more or less blinded.

The most ridiculous effort of this sort was put into execution by the

Captain and myself.

Be it premised that while, in the season, the wildfowl myriads were

always present, it by no means followed that the sportsman was always

sure of a bag. The ducks followed the irrigation water. One week they

might be here in countless hordes; the next week might see only a few

coots and hell divers left, while the game was reported twenty miles

away. Furthermore, although fair shooting--of the pleasantest sort, in

my opinion--was always to be had by jumping small bands and singles from

the "holes" and ditches, the big flocks were quite apt to feed and loaf

in the wide spaces discouragingly free of cover. Irrigation was done on

a large scale. A section of land might be submerged from three inches to

a foot in depth. In the middle of this temporary pond and a half dozen

others like it fed the huge bands of ducks. What could you do? There

was no cover by which to sneak them. You might build a blind, but before

the ducks could get used to its strange presence in a flat and

featureless landscape the water would be withdrawn from that piece of

land. Only occasionally, when a high wind drove them from the open, or

when the irrigation water happened to be turned in to a brushy country,

did the sportsman get a chance at the great swarms. Since a man could

get all the ducks he could reasonably require, there was no real reason

why he should look with longing on these inaccessible packs, but we all

did. It was not that we wanted more ducks; for we held strictly within

limits, but we wanted to get in the thick of it.

On the occasion of which I started to tell, the Captain and I were

returning from somewhere. Near the Lakeside ranch we came across a big

tract of land overflowed by not deeper than two or three inches of

water. The ducks were everywhere on it. They sat around fat and solemn

in flocks; they swirled and stooped and lit and rose again; they fed

busily; they streamed in from all points of the compass, cleaving the

air with a whistling of wings.

Cover there was none. It was exactly like a big, flat cow pasture

without any fences. We pulled up the Invigorator and eyed the scene with

speculative eyes. Finally, we did as follows:

Into the middle of that field waded we. The ducks, of course, arose with

a roar, circled once out of range, and departed. We knew that in less

than a minute the boldest would return to see if, perchance, we might

have been mere passers-by. Finding us still there, they would, in the

natural course of events, circle once or twice and then depart for

good.

Now we had noticed this: ducks will approach to within two or three

hundred yards of a man standing upright, but they will come within one

hundred--or almost in range--if he squats and holds quite still. This,

we figured, is because he is that much more difficult to recognize as a

man, even though he is in plain sight. We had to remain in plain sight;

but could we not make ourselves more difficult to recognize?

After pulling up our rubber boots carefully, we knelt in the two inches

of water, placed our chests across two wooden shell boxes we had brought

for the purpose, ducked our heads, and waited. After a few moments

overhead came the peculiar swift whistle of wings. We waited, rigid.

When that whistle sounded very loud indeed, we jerked ourselves upright

and looked up. Immediately above us, already towering frantically, was a

flock of sprig. They were out of range, but we were convinced that this

was only because we had mistakenly looked up too soon.

It was fascinating work, for we had to depend entirely on the sense of

hearing. The moment we stirred in the slightest degree away went the

ducks. As it took an appreciable time to rise to our feet, locate the

flock, and get into action, we had to guess very accurately. We fired a

great many times, and killed a very few; but each duck was an

achievement.

Though the bag could not be guaranteed, the sight of ducks could. When

my brother went with me to the ranch, the duck shooting was very poor.

This was owing to the fact that sudden melting of the snows in the

Sierras had overflowed an immense tract of country to form a lake eight

or nine miles across. On this lake the ducks were safe, and thither they

resorted in vast numbers. As a consequence, the customary resorts were

deserted. We could see the ducks, and that was about all. Realizing the

hopelessness of the situation we had been confining ourselves so

strictly to quail that my brother had begun to be a little sceptical of

our wildfowl tales. Therefore, one day, I took him out and showed him

ducks.

They were loafing in an angle of the lake formed by the banks of two

submerged irrigating ditches, so we were enabled to measure them

accurately. After they had flown we paced off their bulk. They had

occupied a space on the bank and in the water three hundred yards long

by fifty yards wide; and they were packed in there just about as thick

as ducks could crowd together. An able statistician might figure out how

many there were. At any rate, my brother agreed that he had seen some

ducks.

There was one thing about Uncle Jim's expeditions: they were cast in no

rigid lines. Their direction, scope, or purpose could be changed at the

last moment should circumstances warrant.

One day Uncle Jim came after me afoot, with the quiet assurance that he

knew where there were "some ducks."

"Tommy is down there now," said he, "in a blind. We'll make a couple

more blinds across the pond, and in that way one or the other of us is

sure to get a shot at everything that comes in. And the way they're

coming in is scand'lous!"

Therefore I filled my pockets with duck shells, seized my close-choked

12-bore, and followed Uncle Jim. We walked across three fields.

"Those ducks are acting mighty queer," proffered Uncle Jim in puzzled

tones.

We stopped a moment to watch. Flock after flock stooped toward the

little pond, setting their wings and dropping with the extraordinary

confidence wildfowl sometimes exhibit. At a certain point, however, and

while still at a good elevation, they towered swiftly and excitedly.

"Doesn't seem like they'd act so scared even if Tommy wasn't well hid,"

puzzled Uncle Jim.

We proceeded cautiously, keeping out of sight behind some greasewood,

until we could see the surface of the pond. There were Tommy's decoys,

and there was Tommy's blind. We could not see but that it was a

well-made blind. Even as we looked another flock of sprig sailed down

wind, stopped short at a good two hundred yards, towered with every

appearance of lively dismay, and departed. Tommy's head came above the

blind, gazing after them.

"They couldn't act worse if Tommy was out waving his hat at 'em," said

Uncle Jim.

We climbed a fence. This brought us to a slight elevation, but

sufficient to enable us to see abroad over the flat landscape.

Immediately beyond Tommy was a long, low irrigation check grown with

soft green sod. On the farther slope thereof were the girls. They had

brought magazines and fancy work, and evidently intended to spend the

afternoon in the open, enjoying the fresh air and the glad sunshine and

the cheerful voices of God's creatures. They were, of course, quite

unconscious of Tommy's sporting venture not a hundred feet away. Their

parasols were green, red, blue, and other explosive tints.

Uncle Jim and I sat for a few moments on the top of that fence enjoying

the view. Then we climbed softly down and went away. We decided tacitly

not to shoot ducks. The nature of the expedition immediately changed. We

spent the rest of the afternoon on quail. To be sure number-five shot in

a close-choked twelve is not an ideal load for the purpose; but by care

in letting our birds get far enough away we managed to have a very good

afternoon's sport. And whenever we would make a bad miss we had ready

consolation: the thought of Tommy waiting and wondering and puzzling in

his blind.

CHAPTER XII

THE GRAND TOUR

Almost always our sporting expeditions were of this casual character,

sandwiched in among other occupations. Guns were handy, as was the game.

To seize the one and pursue the other on the whim of the moment was the

normal and usual thing. Thus one day Mrs. Kitty drove me over to look at

a horse I was thinking of buying. On the way home, in a corner of brush,

I hopped out and bagged twelve quail; and a little farther on, by a

lucky sneak, I managed to gather in five ducks from an irrigation pond.

On another occasion, having a spare hour before lunch, I started out

afoot from the ranch house at five minutes past eleven, found my quail

within a quarter mile, had luck in scattering them, secured my limit of

twenty-five, and was back at the house at twelve twenty-five! Before

this I had been to drive with Mrs. Kitty; and after lunch we drove

twelve miles to call on a neighbour. Although I had enjoyed a full day's

quail shoot, it had been, as it were, merely an interpolation.

Occasionally, however, it was elected to make a grand and formal raid on

the game. This could be either a get-up-early-in-the-morning session in

the blinds, a formal quail hunt, or the Grand Tour.

To take the Grand Tour we got out the Liver Invigorator and as many

saddle horses as might be needed to accommodate the shooters. On

reaching the hog field it was proper to disembark, and to line up for an

advance on the corner of the irrigation ditch where I had so

unexpectedly jumped the ducks my first morning on the ranch. In extended

order we approached. If ducks were there, they got a great hammering.

Everybody shot joyously--whether in sure range or not, it must be

confessed. The birds went into a common bag, for it would be impossible

to say who had killed what. After congratulations and reproaches, both

of which might be looked upon as sacrifices to the great god Josh, we

swung to the left and tramped a half mile to the artesian well. The

Invigorator and saddle horses followed at a respectful distance. When we

had investigated the chances at the well, we climbed aboard again and

rattlety-banged across country to the Slough.

The Slough comprised a wide and varied country. In proper application it

was a little winding ravine sunk eight or ten feet below the flat plain,

and filled with water. This water had been grown thick with trees, but

occasionally, for some reason to me unknown, the growth gave space for

tiny open ponds or channels. These were further screened by occasional

willows or greasewood growing on the banks. They were famous loafing

places for mallards.

It was great fun to slip from bend to bend of the Slough, peering

keenly, moving softly, trying to spy through the thick growth to a

glimpse of the clear water. The ducks were very wary. It was necessary

to know the exact location of each piece of open water, its

surroundings, and how best it was to be approached. Only too often, peer

as cautiously as we might, the wily old mallards would catch a glimpse

of some slight motion. At once they would begin to swim back and forth

uneasily. Always then we would withdraw cautiously, hoping against hope

that suspicion would die. It never did. Our stalk would disclose to us

only a troubled surface of water on which floated lightly a half dozen

feathers.

But when things went right we had a beautiful shot. The ducks towered

straight up, trying to get above the level of the brush, affording a

shot at twenty-five or thirty yards' range. We always tried to avoid

shooting at the same bird, but did not always succeed. Old Ben delighted

in this work, for now he had a chance to plunge in after the fallen. As

a matter of fact, it would have been quite useless to shoot ducks in

these circumstances had we not possessed a good retriever like Old Ben.

The Slough proper was about two miles long, and had probably eight or

ten "holes" in which ducks might be expected. The region of the Slough

was, however, a different matter.

It was a fascinating stretch of country, partly marshy, partly dry, but

all of it overgrown with tall and rustling tules. These reeds were

sometimes so dense that one could not force his way through them; at

others so low and thin that they barely made good quail cover. Almost

everywhere a team could be driven; and yet there were soft places and

water channels and pond holes in which a horse would bog down

hopelessly. From a point on the main north-and-south ditch a man afoot

left the bank to plunge directly into a jungle of reeds ten feet tall.

Through them narrow passages led him winding and twisting and doubting

in a labyrinth. He waded in knee-deep water, but confidently, for he

knew the bottom to be solid beneath his feet. On either side, fairly

touching his elbows, the reeds stood tall and dense, so that it seemed

to him that he walked down a narrow and winding hallway. And every once

in a while the hallway debouched into a secret shallow pond lying in the

middle of the tule jungle in which might or might not be ducks. If there

were ducks, it behooved him to shoot very, very quickly, for those that

fell in the tules were probably not to be recovered. Then more narrow

passages led to other ponds.

Always the footing was good, so that a man could strike forward

confidently. But again there are other places in the Slough region where

one has to walk for half a mile to pass a miserable little trickle only

just too wide to step across. The watercress grows thick against either

oozy bank, leaving a clear of only a foot. Yet it is bottomless.

The Captain knew this region thoroughly, and drove in it by landmarks of

his own. After many visits I myself got to know the leading "points of

interest" and how to get to them by a set route; but their relations one

to another have always remained a little vague.

For instance, there was an earthen reservoir comprising two circular

connecting ponds, elevated slightly above the surrounding flats, so that

a man ascended an incline to stand on its banks. One half of this

reservoir is bordered thickly by tules; but the other half is without

growth. We left the Invigorator at some hundreds of yards distance; and,

single file, followed the Captain. We stopped when he did, crawled when

he did, watched to see what dry and rustling footing he avoided, every

sense alert to play accurately this unique game of "follow my leader."

He alone kept watch of the cover, the game, and the plan of attack. We

were like the tail of a snake, merely following where the head directed.

This was not because the Captain was so much more expert than ourselves,

but so as to concentrate the chances of remaining undiscovered. If each

of us had worked out his own stalk we should have multiplied the chances

of alarming the game; we should have created the necessity for signals;

and we should have had the greatest difficulty in synchronizing our

arrival at the shooting point. We moved a step at a time, feeling

circumspectly before resting our weight. At the last moment the Captain

motioned with his hand. Wriggling forward, we came into line. Then, very

cautiously, we crawled up the bank of the reservoir and peered over!

That was the supreme moment! The wildfowl might arise in countless

numbers; in which case we shot as carefully and as quickly as possible,

reloading and squatting motionless in the almost certain hope of a

long-range shot or so at a straggler as the main body swung back over

us. Or, again, our eager eyes were quite likely to rest upon nothing but

a family party of mud-hens gossiping sociably.

Just beyond the reservoir on the other side was an overflowed small

flat. It was simply hummocky solid ground with a little green grass and

some water. Behind the hummocks, even after a cannonade at the

reservoir, we were almost certain to jump two or three single spoonbills

or teal. Why they stayed there, I could not tell you; but stay they

did. We walked them up one at a time, as we would quail. The range was

long. Sometimes we got them; and sometimes we did not.

From the reservoir we drove out into the illimitable tules. The horses

went forward steadily, breasting the rustling growth. Behind them the

Invigorator rocked and swayed like a small boat in a tide rip. We stayed

in as best we could, our guns bristling up in all directions. The

Captain drove from a knowledge of his own. After some time, across the

yellow, waving expanse of the rushes, we made out a small dead willow

stub slanted rakishly. At sight of this we came to a halt. Just beyond

that stub lay a denser thicket of tules, and in the middle of them was

known to be a patch of open water about twenty feet across. There was

not much to it; but invariably a small bunch of fat old greenheads were

loafing in the sun.

It now became, not a question of game, for it was always there, but a

question of getting near enough to shoot. To be sure, the tiny pond was

so well covered that a stranger to the country would actually be unaware

of its existence until he broke through the last barrier of tules; but,

by the same token, that cover was the noisiest cover invented for the

protection of ducks. Often and often, when still sixty or seventy yards

distant, we heard the derisive _quack_, _quack_, _quack_, with which a

mallard always takes wing, and, a moment later, would see those wily

birds rising above the horizon. A false step meant a crackle; a stumble

meant a crash. We fairly wormed our way in by inches. Each yard gained

was a triumph. When, finally, after a half hour of Indian work, we had

managed to line up ready for the shot, we felt that we had really a few

congratulations coming. We knew that within fifteen or twenty feet

floated the wariest of feathered game; and _absolutely unconscious of

our presence_.

"Now!" the Captain remarked, aloud, in conversational tones.

We stood up, guns at present. The Captain's command was answered by the

instant beat of wings and the confused quicker calling of alarm. In the

briefest fraction of a second the ducks appeared above the tules. They

had to tower straight up, for the pond was too small and the reeds too

high to permit of any sneaking away. So close were they that we could

see the markings of every feather--the iridescence of the heads, the

delicate, wave-marked cinnamons and grays and browns, even the absurd

little curled plumes over the tails. The guns cracked merrily, the

shooters aiming at the up-stretched necks. Down came the quarry with

mighty splashes that threw the water high. The remnant of the flock

swung away. We stood upright and laughed and joked and exulted after the

long strain of our stalk. Ben plunged in again and again, bringing out

the game.

Of these tule holes there were three. When we had visited them each in

turn we swung back toward the west. There, after much driving, we came

to the land of irrigation ditches again. At each new angle one of us

would descend, sneak cautiously to the bank and, bending low, peer down

the length of the ditch. If ducks were in sight, he located them

carefully and then we made our sneak. If not, we drove on to the next

bend. Once we all lay behind an embankment like a lot of soldiers

behind a breastwork while one of us made a long détour around a big

flock resting in an overflow across the ditch. The ruse was successful.

The ducks, rising at sight of the scout, flew high directly over the

ambuscade. A battery of six or eight guns thereupon opened up. I believe

we killed three or four ducks among us; but if we had not brought down a

feather we should have been satisfied with the fact that our stratagem

succeeded.

So at the last, just as the sun was setting, we completed the circle and

landed at the ranch. We had been out all day in the warm California sun

and the breezes that blow from the great mountains across the plains; we

had worked hard enough to deserve an appetite; we had in a dozen

instances exercised our wit or our skill against the keen senses of wild

game; we had used our ingenuity in meeting unexpected conditions; we had

had a heap of companionship and good-natured fun one with another; we

had seen a lot of country. This was much better than sitting solitary

anchored in a blind. To be sure a man could kill more ducks from a

blind; but what of that?

CHAPTER XIII

RANCH ACTIVITIES

Big as it was, the ranch was only a feeder for the open range. Way down

in southeastern Arizona its cattle had their birth and grew to their

half-wild maturity. They won their living where they could, fiercely

from the fierce desert. On the broad plains they grazed during the fat

season; and as the feed shortened and withered, they retired slowly to

the barren mountains. In long lines they plodded to the watering places;

and in long, patient lines they plodded their way back again, until deep

and indelible troughs had been worn in the face of the earth. Other

living creatures they saw few, save the coyotes that hung on their

flanks, the jackrabbits, the prairie dogs, the birds strangely cheerful

in the face of the mysterious and solemn desert. Once in a while a pair

of mounted men jog-trotted slowly here and there among them. They gave

way to right and left, swinging in the free trot of untamed creatures,

their heads high, their eyes wild. Probably they remembered the terror

and ignominy and temporary pain of the branding. The men examined them

with critical eye, and commented technically and passed on.

This was when the animals were alive with the fat grasses. But as the

drought lengthened, they pushed farther into the hills until the boldest

or hardiest of them stood on the summits, and the weakest merely stared

dully as the mounted men jingled by. The desert, kind in her bounty, was

terrible in her wrath. She took her toll freely and the dried bones of

her victims rattled in the wind. The fittest survived. Durham died,

Hereford lived through, and turned up after the first rains wiry, lean,

and active.

Then came the round-up. From the hidden defiles, the buttes and ranges,

the hills and plains, the cowboys drew their net to the centre. Each

"drive" brought together on some alkali flat thousands of the restless,

milling, bawling cattle. The white dust rose in a cloud against the very

blue sky. Then, while some of the cowboys sat their horses as sentinels,

turning the herd back on itself, others threaded a way through the

multitude, edging always toward the border of the herd some animal

uneasy in the consciousness that it was being followed. Surrounding the

main herd, and at some distance from it, other smaller herds rapidly

formed from the "cut." Thus there was one composed entirely of cows and

unbranded calves; another of strays from neighbouring ranges; and a

third of the steers considered worthy of being made into beef cattle.

In due time the main herd was turned back on the range; the strays had

been cut out and driven home by the cowboys of their several owners; the

calves had been duly branded and sent out on the desert to grow up. But

there remained still compact the beef herd. When all the excitement of

the round-up had died, it showed as the tangible profit of the year.

Its troubles began. Driven to the railroad and into the corrals, it next

had to be urged to its first experience of sidedoor Pullmans. There the

powerful beasts went frantic. Pike poles urged them up the chute into

the cars. They rushed, and hesitated, and stopped and turned back in a

panic. At times it seemed impossible to get them started into the narrow

chute. On the occasion of one after-dark loading old J.B., the foreman,

discovered that the excited steers would charge a lantern light.

Therefore he posted himself, with a lantern, in the middle of the chute.

Promply the maddened animals rushed at him. He skipped nimbly one side,

scaled the fence of the chute. "Now keep 'em coming, boys!" he urged.

The boys did their best, and half filled the car. Then some other

impulse seized the bewildered rudimentary brains; the cattle balked.

J.B. did it again, and yet again, until the cars were filled.

You have seen the cattle trains, rumbling slowly along, the crowded

animals staring stupidly through the bars. They are not having a

particularly hard time, considering the fact that they are undergoing

their first experience in travelling. Nowadays they are not allowed to

become thirsty; and they are too car sick to care about eating. Car

sick? Certainly; just as you or I are car sick, no worse; only we do not

need to travel unless we want to. At the end of the journey, often, they

are too wobbly to stand up. This is not weakness, but dizziness from the

unwonted motion. Once a fool S.P.C.A. officer ordered a number of the

Captain's steers shot on the ground that they were too weak to live.

That greenhorn got into fifty-seven varieties of trouble.

Arrived at their journey's end the steers were permitted to get their

sea legs off; and then were driven slowly to a cattle paradise--the

ranch.

For there was flowing water always near to the thirsty nose; and rich

grazing; and wonderful wagons from which the fodder was thrown

abundantly; and pleasant shade from a mild and beneficent sun. The thin,

wiry beasts of the desert lost their angles; they became fat, and curly

of hair, and sleek of coat, and much inclined to kink up their tails and

cavort off in clumsy buck jumps just from the sheer joy of living. For

now they were, in good truth, beef cattle, the aristocracy of fifty

thousand, the pick of wide ranges, the total tangible wealth of a great

principality. To see them would come red-faced men with broad hats and

linen dusters; and their transfer meant dollars and dollars.

I have told you these things lest you might have concluded that the

Captain did nothing but shoot ducks and quail and ride the polo ponies

around the enclosure. As a matter of fact, the Captain was always going

to Arizona, or coming back, or riding here or driving there. When we

went to the ranch, he looked upon our visit as a vacation, but even then

he could not shoot with us as often as we all would have liked. On the

Arizona range were the [JH] ranch, and the Circle I, and the Bar O, and

the Double R, and the Box Springs, and others whose picturesque names I

have forgotten. To manage them were cowpunchers; and appertaining

thereunto were Chinese cooks, and horses, and pump mules, and grub

lists, and many other things. The ranch itself was even more complicated

an affair; for, as I have indicated, it meant many activities besides

cattle. And then there was the buying and selling and shipping. The

Captain was a busy man.

And the ranch was a busy place. Its population swung through the

nations. Always the aristocracy was the cowboy. There were not many of

him, for the cattle here were fenced and fattened; but a few were

necessary to ride abroad in order that none of the precious beef be

mired down or tangled in barbed wire; and that all of it be moved hither

and yon as the pasture varied. And of course the driving, the loading

and unloading of fresh shipments in and out demanded expert handling.

Some of them came from the desert, lean, bronzed, steady-eyed men

addicted to "double-barrelled" (two cinch) saddles, ox-bow stirrups,

straight-shanked spurs, tall-crowned hats, and grass ropes. They were

plain "cowpunchers." Between them and the California "vaqueros," or

"buckeroos", was always much slow and drawling argument. For the latter

had been "raised different" in about every particular. They used the

single-cinch saddle; long _tapaderos_; or stirrup hoods; curve-shanked

spurs with jingling chains; low, wide-brimmed sombreros and rawhide

ropes. And you who have gauged the earnestness of what might be called

"equipment arguments" among those of a gentler calling, can well

appreciate that never did bunk-house conversation lack.

Next to these cow riders and horse riders came probably the mule

drivers. There were many teams of mules, and they were used for many

things: such as plowing, cultivating, harvesting, haying, the building

of irrigation checks and ditches, freighting, and the like. A team

comprised from six to twelve individuals. The man in charge had to know

mules--which is no slight degree of special wisdom; had to know loads;

had to understand conditioning. His lantern was the first to twinkle in

the morning as he doled out corn to his charges.

Then came the ruck of field hands of all types. The average field hand

in California is a cross between a hobo and a labourer. He works

probably about half the year. The other half he spends on the road,

tramping it from place to place. Like the common hobo, he begs his way

when he can; catches freight train rides; consorts in thickets with his

kind. Unlike the common hobo, however, he generally has money in his

pocket and always carries a bed-roll. The latter consists of a blanket

or so, or quilt, and a canvas strapped around the whole. You can see him

at any time plodding along the highways and railroads, the roll slung

across his back. He much appreciates a lift in your rig; and sometimes

proves worth the trouble. His labour raises him above the level

degradation of the ordinary tramp; the independence of his spirit gives

his point of view an originality; the nomadic stirring of his blood

keeps him going. In the course of years he has crossed the length and

breadth of the state a half dozen times. He has harvested apples in

Siskiyou and oranges in Riverside; he has chopped sugar pine in the

snows of the Sierras and manzanita on the blazing hillsides of San

Bernardino; he has garnered the wheat of the great Santa Clara Valley

and the alfalfa of San Fernando. And whenever the need for change or the

desire for a drink has struck him, he has drawn his pay, strapped his

bed roll, and cheerfully hiked away down the long and dusty trail.

That is his chief defect as a field hand--his unreliability. He seems

to have no great pride in finishing out a job, although he is a good

worker while he is at it. The Captain used to send in the wagon to bring

men out, but refused absolutely to let any man ride in anything going

the other way. Nevertheless the hand, when the wanderlust hit him,

trudged cheerfully the long distance to town. I am not sure that a new

type is not thus developing, a type as distinct in its way as the

riverman or the cowboy. It is not as high a type, of course, for it has

not the strength either of sustained and earnest purpose nor of class

loyalty; but still it makes for new species. The California field hand

has mother-wit, independence, a certain reckless, you-be-damned courage,

a wandering instinct. He quits work not because he wants to loaf, but

because he wants to go somewhere else. He is always on the road

travelling, travelling, travelling. It is not hope of gain that takes

him, for in the scarcity of labour wages are as high here as there. It

is not desire for dissipation that lures him from labour; he drinks hard

enough, but the liquor is as potent here as two hundred miles away. He

looks you steadily enough in the eye; and he begs his bread and commits

his depredations half humorously, as though all this were fooling that

both you and he understood. What his impelling motive is, I cannot say;

nor whether he himself understands it, this restlessness that turns his

feet ever to the pleasant California highways, an Ishmael of the road.

But this very unreliability forces the ranchman to the next element in

our consideration of the ranch's people--the Orientals. They are good

workers, these little brown and yellow men, and unobtrusive and

skilled. They do not quit until the job is done; they live frugally;

they are efficient. The only thing we have against them is that we are

afraid of them. They crowd our people out. Into a community they edge

themselves little by little. At the end of two years they have saved

enough capital to begin to buy land. At the end of ten years they have

taken up all the small farms from the whites who cannot or will not live

in competition with Oriental frugality. The valley, or cove, or flat has

become Japanese. They do not amalgamate. Their progeny are Japanese

unchanged; and their progeny born here are American citizens. In the

face of public sentiment, restriction, savage resentment they have made

head. They are continuing to make head. The effects are as yet small in

relation to the whole of the body politic; but more and more of the

fertile, beautiful little farm centres of California are becoming the

breeding grounds of Japanese colonies. As the pressure of population on

the other side increases, it is not difficult to foresee a result. We

are afraid of them.

The ranchmen know this. "We would use white labour," say they, "if we

could get it, and rely on it. But we cannot; and we _must_ have labour!"

The debt of California to the Orientals can hardly be computed. The

citrus crop is almost entirely moved by them; and all other produce

depends so largely on them that it would hardly be an exaggeration to

say that without them a large part of the state's produce would rot in

fields. We do not want the Oriental; and yet we must have him, must have

more of him if we are to reach our fullest development. It is a dilemma;

a paradox.

And yet, it seems to me, the paradox only exists because we will not

face facts in a commonsense manner. As I remember it, the original

anti-Oriental howl out here made much of the fact that the Chinaman and

Japanese saved his money and took it home with him. In the peculiar

circumstances we should not object to that. We cannot get our work done

by our own people; we are forced to hire in outsiders to do it; we

should expect, as a country, to pay a fair price for what we get. It is

undoubtedly more desirable to get our work done at home; but if we

cannot find the help, what more reasonable than that we should get it

outside, and pay for it? If we insist that the Oriental is a detriment

as a permanent resident, and if at the same time we need his labour,

what else is there to do but pay him and let him go when he has done his

job?

And he will go _if pay is all he gets_. Only when he is permitted to

settle down to his favourite agriculture in a fertile country does he

stay permanently. To be sure a certain number of him engages in various

other commercial callings, but that number bears always a very definite

proportion to the Oriental population in general. And it is harmless. It

is not absolute restriction of immigration we want--although I believe

immigration should be numerically restricted, but absolute prohibition

of the right to hold real estate. To many minds this may seem a denial

of the "equal rights of man." I doubt whether in some respects men have

equal rights. Certainly Brown has not an equal right with Jones to spank

Jones's small boy; nor do I believe the rights of any foreign nation

paramount to our own right to safeguard ourselves by proper legislation.

These economics have taken us a long distance from the ranch and its

Orientals. The Japanese contingent were mainly occupied with the fruit,

possessing a peculiar deftness in pruning and caring for the prunes and

apricots. The Chinese had to do with irrigation and with the vegetables.

Their broad, woven-straw hats and light denim clothes lent the

particular landscape they happened for the moment to adorn a peculiarly

foreign and picturesque air.

And outside of these were various special callings represented by one or

two men: such as the stable men, the bee keeper, the blacksmith and

wagon-wright, the various cooks and cookees, the gardeners, the "varmint

catcher," and the like.

Nor must be forgotten the animals, both wild and tame. Old Ben and Young

Ben and Linn, the bird dogs; the dachshunds; the mongrels of the men's

quarters; all the domestic fowls; the innumerable and blue-blooded hogs;

the polo ponies and brood mares, the stud horses and driving horses and

cow horses, colts, yearlings, the young and those enjoying a peaceful

and honourable old age; Pollymckittrick; Redmond's cat and fifty others,

half-wild creatures; vireos and orioles in the trees around the house;

thousands and thousands of blackbirds rising in huge swarms like gnats;

full-voiced meadowlarks on the fence posts; herons stalking solemnly, or

waiting like so many Japanese bronzes for a chance at a gopher;

red-tailed hawks circling slowly; pigeon hawks passing with their falcon

dart; little gaudy sparrow hawks on top the telephone poles; buzzards,

stately and wonderful in flight, repulsive when at rest; barn-owls

dwelling in the haystacks, and horned owls in the hollow trees; the

game in countless numbers; all the smaller animals and tiny birds in

species too numerous to catalogue, all these drew their full sustenance

of life from the ranch's smiling abundance.

And the mules; I must not forget them. I have the greatest respect for a

mule. He knows more than the horse; just as the goose or the duck knows

more than the chicken. Six days the mules on the ranch laboured; but on

the seventh they were turned out into the pastures to rest and roll and

stand around gossiping sociably, rubbing their long, ridiculous Roman

noses together, or switching the flies off one another with their

tasselled tails. Each evening at sunset all the various teams came in

from different directions, converging at the lane, and plodding dustily

up its length to the sheds and their night's rest. Five evenings thus

they come in silence. But on the sixth each and every mule lifted up his

voice in rejoicing over the morrow. The distant wayfarer--familiar with

ranch ways--hearing this strident, discordant, thankful chorus far

across the evening peace of the wide country, would thus have known this

was Saturday night, and that to-morrow was the Sabbath, the day of rest!

CHAPTER XIV

THE HEATHEN

This must be mainly discursive and anecdotal, for no one really knows

much more than externals concerning the Chinese. Some men there are,

generally reporters on the big dailies, who have been admitted to the

tongs; who can take you into the exclusive Chinese clubs; who are

everywhere in Chinatown greeted cordially, treated gratis to strange

food and drink, and patted on the back with every appearance of

affection. They can tell you of all sorts of queer, unknown customs and

facts, and can show you all sorts of strange and unusual things. Yet at

the last analysis these are also discursions and anecdotes. We gather

empirical knowledge: only rarely do we think we get a glimpse of how the

delicate machinery moves behind those twinkling eyes.

I am led to these remarks by the contemplation of Chinese Charley at the

ranch. He has been with Mrs. Kitty twenty-five years; he wears American

clothes; he speaks English with hardly a trace of either accent or

idiom; he has long since dropped the deceiving Oriental stolidity and

weeps out his violent Chinese rages unashamed. Yet even now Mrs. Kitty's

summing up is that Charley is a "queer old thing."

If you start out with a good Chinaman, you will always have good

Chinamen; if you draw a poor one, you will probably be cursed with a

succession of mediocrities. They pass you along from one to another of

the same "family"; and, short of the adoption of false whiskers and a

change of name, you can find no expedient to break the charm. When one

leaves of his own accord, he sends you another boy to take his place.

When he is discharged, he does identically that, although you may not

know it. Down through the list of Gins or Sings or Ungs you slide

comfortably or bump disagreeably according to your good fortune or

deserts.

Another feature to which you must become accustomed is that of the

Unexpected Departure. Everything is going smoothly, and you are engaged

in congratulating yourself. To you appears Ah Sing.

"I go San Flancisco two o'clock tlain," he remarks. And he does.

In vain do you point to the inconvenience of guests, the injustice thus

of leaving you in the lurch; in vain do you threaten detention of wages

due unless he gives you what your servant experience has taught you is a

customary "week's warning." He repeats his remark: and goes. At

two-fifteen another bland and smiling heathen appears at your door. He

may or may not tell you that Ah Sing sent him. Dinner is ready on time.

The household work goes on without a hitch or a tiniest jar.

"Ah Sing say you pay me his money," announces this new heathen.

If you are wise, you abandon your thoughts of fighting the outrage. You

pay over Ah Sing's arrears.

"By the way," you inquire of your new retainer, "what's your name?"

"My name Lum Sing," the newcomer replies.

That is about the way such changes happen. If by chance you are in the

good graces of heathendom, you will be given an involved and fancy

reason for the departure. These generally have to do with the mysterious

movements of relatives.

"My second-uncle, he come on ship to San Flancisco. I got to show him

what to do," explains Ah Sing.

If they like you very much, they tell you they will come back at the end

of a month. They never do, and by the end of the month the new man has

so endeared himself to you that Ah Sing is only a pleasant memory.

The reasons for these sudden departures are two-fold as near as I can

make out. Ah Sing may not entirely like the place; or he may have

received orders from his tong to move on--probably the latter. If both

Ah Sing and his tong approve of you and the situation, he will stay with

you for many years. Our present man once remained but two days at a

place. The situation is an easy one; Toy did his work well; the

relations were absolutely friendly. After we had become intimate with

Toy, he confided to us his reasons:

"I don' like stay at place where nobody laugh," said he.

As servants the Chinese are inconceivably quick, deft, and clean. One

good man will do the work of two white servants, and do it better. Toy

takes care of us absolutely. He cooks, serves, does the housework, and

with it all manages to get off the latter part of the afternoon and

nearly every evening. At first, with recollections of the rigidly

defined "days off" of the East, I was a little inclined to look into

this. I did look into it; but when I found all the work done, without

skimping, I concluded that if the man were clever enough to save his

time, he had certainly earned it for himself. Systematizing and no false

moves proved to be his method.

Since this is so, it follows, quite logically and justly, that the

Chinese servant resents the minute and detailed supervision some

housewives delight in. Show him what you want done; let him do it;

criticize the result--but do not stand around and make suggestions and

offer amendments. Some housekeepers, trained to make of housekeeping an

end rather than a means, can never keep Chinese. This does not mean that

you must let them go at their own sweet will: only that you must try as

far as possible to do your criticizing and suggesting before or after

the actual performance.

I remember once Billy came home from some afternoon tea where she had

been talking to a number of "conscientious" housekeepers of the old

school until she had been stricken with a guilty feeling that she had

been loafing on the job. To be sure the meals were good, and on time;

the house was clean; the beds were made; and the comforts of life seemed

to be always neatly on hand; but what of that? The fact remained that

Billy had time to go horseback riding, to go swimming, to see her

friends, and to shoot at a mark. Every other housekeeper was busy from

morning until night; and then complained that somehow or other she never

could get finished up! It was evident that somehow Billy was not doing

her full duty by the sphere to which woman was called, etc.

So home she came, resolved to do better. Toy was placidly finishing up

for the afternoon. Billy followed him around for a while, being a

housekeeper. Toy watched her with round, astonished eyes. Finally he

turned on her with vast indignation.

"Look here, Mis' White," said he. "What a matter with you? You talk just

like one old woman!"

Billy paused in her mad career and considered. That was just what she

was talking like. She laughed. Toy laughed. Billy went shooting.

After your Chinaman becomes well acquainted with you, he develops human

traits that are astonishing only in contrast to his former mask of

absolute stolidity. To the stranger the Oriental is as impassive and

inscrutable as a stone Buddha, so that at last we come to read his

attitude into his inner life, and to conclude him without emotion. This

is also largely true of the Indian. As a matter of fact, your heathen is

rather vividly alive inside. His enjoyment is keen, his curiosity

lively, his emotions near the surface. If you have or expect to have

visitors, you must tell Ah Sing all about them--their station in life,

their importance, and the like. He will listen, keenly interested,

gravely nodding his pig-tailed, shaven head. Then, if your visitors are

from the East, you inform them of what every Californian knows--that

each and every member of a household must say "good morning"

ceremoniously to Ah Sing. And Ah Sing will smile blandly and duck his

pig-tailed, shaven head, and wish each member "good morning" back

again. It is sometimes very funny to hear the matin chorus of a dozen

people crying out their volley of salute to ceremony; and to hear again

the Chinaman's conscientious reply to each in turn down the long

table--"_Good_ mo'ning, Mr. White; _good_ mo'ning, Mis' White; _good_

mo'ning, Mr. Lewis----" and so on, until each has been remembered. There

are some families that, either from ignorance or pride, omit this and

kindred little human ceremonials. The omission is accepted; but that

family is never "my family" to the servant within its gates.

For your Chinaman is absolutely faithful and loyal and trustworthy. He

can be allowed to handle any amount of money for you. We ourselves are

away from home a great deal. When we get ready to go, we simply pack our

trunks and depart. Toy then puts away the silver and valuables and

places them in the bank vaults, closes the house, and puts all in order.

A week or so before our return we write him. Thereupon he cleans things

up, reclaims the valuables, rearranges everything. His wonderful Chinese

memory enables him to replace every smallest item exactly as it was. If

I happen to have left seven cents and an empty .38 cartridge on the

southwestern corner of the bureau, there they will be. It is difficult

to believe that affairs have been at all disturbed. Yet probably, if our

stay away has been of any length, everything in the house has been moved

or laid away.

Furthermore, Toy reads and writes English, and enjoys greatly sending us

wonderful and involved reports. One of them ended as follows: "The

weather is doing nicely, the place is safely well, and the dogs are

happy all the while." It brings to mind a peculiarly cheerful picture.

One of the familiar and persistent beliefs as to Chinese traits is that

they are a race of automatons. "Tell your Chinaman exactly what you want

done, and how you want it done," say your advisors, "for you will never

be able to change them once they get started." And then they will adduce

a great many amusing and true incidents to illustrate the point.

The facts of the case are undoubted, but the conclusions as to the

invariability of the Chinese mind are, in my opinion, somewhat

exaggerated.

It must be remembered that almost all Chinese customs and manners of

thought are the direct inverse of our own. When announcing or receiving

a piece of bad news, for example, it is with them considered polite to

laugh; while intense enjoyment is apt to be expressed by tears. The

antithesis can be extended almost indefinitely by the student of

Oriental manners. Contemplate, now, the condition of the young Chinese

but recently arrived. He is engaged by some family to do its housework;

and, as he is well paid and conscientious, he desires to do his best.

But in this he is not permitted to follow his education. Each, move he

makes in initiative is stopped and corrected. To his mind there seems no

earthly sense or logic in nine tenths of what we want; but he is willing

to do his best.

"Oh, well," says he to himself, "these people do things crazily; and no

well-regulated Chinese mind could possibly either anticipate how they

desire things done, or figure out why they want them that way. I give

it up! I'll just follow things out exactly as I am told"--and he does

so!

This condition of affairs used to be more common than it is now. Under

the present exclusion law no fresh immigration is supposed to be

possible. Most of the Chinese servants are old timers, who have learned

white people's ways, and--what is more important--understand them. They

are quite capable of initiative; and much more intelligent than the

average white servant.

But a green Chinaman is certainly funny. He does things forever-after

just as you show him the first time; and a cataclysm of nature is

required to shake his purpose. Back in the middle 'eighties my father,

moving into a new house, dumped the ashes beside the kitchen steps

pending the completion of a suitable ash bin. When the latter had been

built, he had Gin Gwee move the ashes from the kitchen steps to the bin.

This happened to be of a Friday. Ever after Gin Gwee deposited the ashes

by the kitchen steps every day; and on Friday solemnly transferred them

to the ash bin! Nor could anything persuade him to desist.

Again he was given pail, soap, and brush, shown the front steps and walk

leading to the gate, and set to work. Gin Gwee disappeared. When we went

to hunt him up, we found him half way down the block, still scrubbing

away. I was in favour of letting him alone to see how far he would go,

but mother had other ideas as to his activities.

These stories could be multiplied indefinitely; and are detailed by the

dozen as proof of the "stupidity" of the Chinese. The Chinese are

anything but stupid; and, as I have said before, when once they have

grasped the logic of the situation, can figure out a case with the best

of them.

They are, however, great sticklers for formalism; and disapprove of any

short cuts in ceremony. As soon leave with the silver as without waiting

for the finger bowls. A friend of mine, training a new man by example,

as new men of this nationality are always trained, was showing him how

to receive a caller. Therefore she rang her own doorbell, presented a

card; in short, went through the whole performance. Tom understood

perfectly. That same afternoon Mrs. G----, a next-door neighbour and

intimate friend, ran over for a chat. She rang the bell. Tom appeared.

"Is Mrs. B---- at home?" inquired the friend.

Tom planted himself square in the doorway. He surveyed her with a cold

and glittering eye.

"You got ticket?" he demanded. "You no got ticket, you no come in!"

On another occasion two ladies came to call on Mrs. B---- but by mistake

blundered to the kitchen door. Mrs. B----'s house is a bungalow and on a

corner. Tom appeared.

"Is Mrs. B---- at home?" they asked.

"This kitchen door; you go front door," requested Tom, politely.

The callers walked around the house to the proper door, rang, and

waited. After a suitable interval Tom appeared again.

"Is Mrs. B---- at home?" repeated the visitors.

"No, Mrs. B---- she gone out," Tom informed them. The proper

ceremonials had been fulfilled.

To one who appreciates what he can do, and how well he does it; who can

value absolute faithfulness and honesty; who confesses a sneaking

fondness for the picturesque as nobly exemplified in a clean and

starched or brocaded heathen; who understands how to balance the

difficult poise, supervision, and interference, the Chinese servant is

the best on the continent. But to one who enjoys supervising every step

or who likes well-trained ceremony, "good form" in minutiæ, and the

deference of our kind of good training the heathen is likely to prove

disappointing. When you ring your friend's door-bell, you are quite apt

to be greeted by a cheerful and smiling "hullo!" I think most

Californians rather like the entirely respectful but freshly

unconventional relationship that exists between the master and his

Chinese servant. I do.[H]

CHAPTER XV

THE LAST HUNT

Of all ranch visits the last day neared. Always we forgot it until the

latest possible moment; for we did not like to think of it. Then, when

the realization could be no longer denied, we planned a grand day just

to finish up on. The telephone's tiny, thin voice returned acceptances

from distant neighbours; so bright and early we waited at the

cross-roads rendezvous.

And from the four directions they came, jogging along in carts or

spring-wagons, swaying swiftly in automobiles whose brass flashed back

the early sun. As each vehicle drew up, the greetings flew, charged

electrically with the dry, chaffing humour of the out of doors. When we

finally climbed the fence into the old cornfield we were almost a dozen.

There were the Captain, Uncle Jim, and myself from the ranch; and T and

his three sons and two guests from Stockdale ranch; the sporting parson

of the entire neighbourhood, and Dodge and his three beautiful dogs.

Spread out in a rough line we tramped away through the dried and

straggling ranks of the Egyptian corn. Quail buzzed all around us like

angry hornets. We did not fire a shot. Each had his limit of twenty-five

still before him, and each wanted to have all the fun he could out of

getting them. Shooting quail in Egyptian corn is, comparatively

speaking, not much fun. We joked each other, and whistled and sang, and

trudged manfully along, gun over shoulder. The pale sun was

strengthening; the mountains were turning darker as they threw aside the

filmy rose of early day; in treetops a row of buzzards sat, their wings

outspread like the heraldic devices of a foreign nation. Thousands of

doves whistled away; thousands of smaller birds rustled and darted

before our advancing lines; tens of thousands of blackbirds sprinkled

the bare branches of single trees, uttering the many-throated multitude

call; underneath all this light and joyous life the business-like little

quail darted away in their bullet flight.

Always they bore across our front to the left; for on that side,

paralleling our course, ran a long ravine or "dry slough." It was about

ten feet deep on the average, probably thirty feet wide, and was densely

grown with a tangle of willows, berry vines, creepers, wild grape, and

the like. Into this the quail pitched.

By the time we had covered the mile length of that cornfield we had

dumped an unguessable number of quail into that slough.

Then we walked back the entire distance--still with our guns over our

shoulders--but this time along the edge of the ravine. We shouted and

threw clods, and kicked on the trees, and rattled things, urging the

hidden quail once more to flight. The thicket seemed alive with them. We

caught glimpses as they ran before us, pacing away at a great rate,

their feathers sleek and trim; they buzzed away at bewildering pitches

and angles; they sprang into the tops of bushes, cocking their head

plumes forward. Their various clicking undercalls, chatterings, and

chirrings filled the thicket as full of sound as of motion. And in the

middle distance before and behind us they mocked us with their calls.

"You _can't_ shoot! You _can't_ shoot!"

Some of them flew ever ahead, some of them doubled-back and dropped into

the slough behind us; but a proportion broke through the thicket and

settled in the wide fields on the other side. After them we went, and

for the first time opened our guns and slipped the yellow shells into

the barrels.

For this field on the other side was the wide, open plain; and it was

grown over by tiny, half-knee high thickets of tumbleweed with here and

there a trifle of sagebrush. Between these miniature thickets wound

narrow strips of sandy soil, like streams and bays and estuaries in

shape. We knew that the quail would lie well here, for they hate to

cross bare openings.

Therefore, we threw out our skirmish line, and the real advance in force

began.

Every man retrieved his own birds, a matter of some difficulty in the

tumbleweed. While one was searching, the rest would get ahead of him.

The line became disorganized, broke into groups, finally disintegrated

entirely. Each man hunted for himself, circling the tumbleweed patches,

combing carefully their edges for the quail that sometimes burst into

the air fairly at his feet. When he had killed one, he walked directly

to the spot. On the way he would flush two or three more. They were

tempting; but we were old hands at the sport, and we knew only too well

that if we yielded so far as to shoot a second before we had picked up

the first, the probabilities were strong that the first would never be

found. In this respect such shooting requires good judgment. It is

generally useless to try to shoot a double, even though a dozen easy

shots are in the air at once; and yet, occasionally, on a day when

Koos-ey-oonek is busy elsewhere, it may happen that the birds flush

across a wide, bare space. It is well to keep a weather eye open for

such chances.

With a green crowd and in different cover such shooting might have been

dangerous; but with an abundance of birds, in this wide, open prairie,

cool heads knew enough to keep wide apart and to look before they shot.

The fun grew fast and furious; and the guns popped away like

firecrackers. In fact, the fun grew a little too fast and furious to

suit Dodge.

Dodge had beautiful and well-trained dogs. Ordinarily any one of us

would have esteemed it a high privilege to shoot over them. In fact, I

have often declared myself to the effect that of the three elements of

pleasure comprehended in field shooting that of working the dogs was the

chief. Just as it is better to catch one yellowtail on a nine-ounce rod

than twenty on a hand line, so it is better to kill one quail over a

well-trained dog than a half dozen "Walking 'em up." But this particular

case was different. We were out for a high old time; and part of a high

old time was a wild and reckless disregard of inhibitive sporting

conventions. The birds were here literally in thousands. Not a third had

left the slough for this open country; we could not shoot at a tenth of

those flushed, yet the guns were popping continuously. Everybody was

shooting and laughing and running about. The game was to pelt away,

retrieve your bird as quickly as you could, and pelt away again. The

dogs, working up to their points carefully and stylishly, as good dogs

should, were being constantly left in the rear. They drew down to their

points--and behold nobody but their devoted master would pay any

attention to their bird! Everybody else was engaged busily in popping

away at any one of the dozen-odd other birds to be had for the

selection!

Poor Dodge, being somewhat biased by the accident of ownership, looked

on us as a lot of barbarians--as, for the time being, we were; nice,

happy barbarians having a good time. He worked his dogs conscientiously,

and muttered in his beard. The climax came when, in the joyous

excitement of the occasion, someone threw out a chance remark on "those

---- dogs" being in the way. Then Dodge withdrew with dignity. Having a

fellow-feeling as a dog-handler I went over to console him. He was

inconsolable; and so remained until after lunch.

In this manner we made our way slowly down the length of the slough, and

then slowly back again. Of the birds originally flushed from the

Egyptian corn into the thicket but a small proportion had left that

thicket for the open country of the tumbleweed and sage; and of the

latter we had been able to shoot at a very, very small percentage.

Nevertheless, when we emptied our pockets, we found that each had made

his bag. We counted them out, throwing them into one pile.

"Twenty-four," counted the Captain.

"Twenty-four," Tom enumerated.

"Twenty-four," Uncle Jim followed him.

We each had twenty-four. And then it developed that every man had saved

just one bird of his limit until after lunch. No one wanted to be left

out of _all_ the shooting while the rest filled their bags; and no one

had believed that anybody but himself had come so close to the limit.

So we laughed, and shouldered our guns, and trudged across country to

the clump of cottonwood where already the girls had spread lunch.

That was a good lunch. We sat under shady trees, and the sunlit plains

stretched away and away to distant calm mountains. Near at hand the

sparse gray sagebrush reared its bonneted heads; far away it blurred

into a monochrome where the plains lifted and flowed molten into the

cañons and crevices of the foothills. Numberless crows, blackbirds, and

wildfowl crossed and recrossed the very blue sky. A gray jackrabbit,

thinking himself concealed by a very creditable imitation of a

_sacatone_ hummock, sat motionless not seventy yards away.

After lunch we moved out leisurely to get our one bird apiece. Some of

the girls followed us. We were now epicures of shooting, and each let

many birds pass before deciding to fire. Some waited for cross shots,

some for very easy shots, some for the most difficult shots possible.

Each suited his fancy.

"I'm all in," remarked each, as he pocketed his bird; and followed to

see the others finish.

* * * * *

Next day, our baggage piled in most anywhere, our farewells all said, we

bowled away toward town in the brand-new machine. Redmond sat in the

front seat with the chauffeur. It was his first experience in an

automobile, and he sat very rigidly upright, eyes front, his moustaches

bristling.

Now at a certain point on the road lived a large black dog--just plain

ranch dog--who was accustomed to come bounding out to the road to run

alongside and bark for an appropriate interval. This was an unvarying

ceremony. He was a large and prancing dog; and, I suppose from his

appearance, must have been named Carlo. In the course of our many visits

to the ranch we grew quite fond of the dog, and always looked as hard

for him to come out as he did for us to come along.

This day also the dog came forth; but now he had no steady-trotting

ranch team to greet. The road was smooth and straight, and the car was

hitting thirty-five miles an hour. The dog bounded confidently down the

front walk, leaping playfully in the air, opened his mouth to bark--and,

behold! the vehicle was not within range any more, but thirty yards away

and rapidly departing. So Carlo shut his mouth and got down to business.

For three hundred yards he managed to keep pace alongside; but the

effort required all his forces; not once did he manage to gather wind

for even a single bark.

Redmond in the front seat sat straighter than ever. From his lordly

elevation he waved a lordly hand at the poor dog.

"Useless! Useless!" said he, loftily.

And looking back at the dog seated panting in a rapidly disappearing

distance, we saw that he also knew that the Old Order had changed.

THE END

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote A: Oiler = Greaser = Mexican.]

[Footnote B: Saddle pockets that fit on the pommel.]

[Footnote C: 3,350, to be exact. We later measured it.]

[Footnote D: 3,350 feet--later measurement.]

[Footnote E: 355 paces.]

[Footnote F: Somewhere between 500 and 700 yards. I am very practised at pacing and guessing such distances.]

[Footnote G: Ten years later sentence of death was passed and

carried out after they had killed _one wheelbarrow_ load of

broilers!]

[Footnote H: This chapter was written in the--alas--vanished past!]