154 OUT WITH THE BIRDS 



dug from the beaten game-trail, warns that a 

 big black neighbor is near, still after it all, I can 

 turn to the sluggish, meandering streams of the 

 plainland and find there each season something 

 that wooes and wins me anew. 



For the woods of these mountain valleys seem 

 filled with a brooding hush, and to break it is an 

 intrusion. They seem weighted down by the 

 sacred silence of bygone centuries, which holds 

 over the stranger a warning hand, the sign of 

 which is " Violate not!" Scant wonder that the 

 mountaineer is a man of few words. But how 

 different is the reed-fringed prairie stream that 

 meanders through the marsh flat. It is a place 

 of teeming noisy life. In spring it is a musical 

 bedlam, but even in the autumn when most birds 

 are still, the marsh wren scolds and the rails and 

 blackbirds chatter from the rushes, the coots and 

 ducks set up their glad gabble, and the air is 

 never still. Such a meandering noisy stream is 

 the Pipestone, with which this chapter is con- 

 cerned. 



It was on a typically August morning, and 

 the 14th of the month, that we pushed off our 

 canoe from the tepee landing and set out for a 

 trip into the oozy places. Scout Henry was in 



