FOLLOWING THE REDHEADS TO THE GULF COAST 3 1 



more ducks in the morning. I asked the captain how 

 ducks were holding out in that country. Not well, hp 

 said. Year by year they decrease in number. Texas 

 permits one to kill fifteen in a day. Non-residents may 

 take out forty-five. Market hunting, so I was told, is 

 dead in that country. I was glad to hear that. Market 

 hunting is what we are all fighting. There will always 

 be ducks if we can stop that. The captain said a single 

 hunter often kills hundreds in a day, when there was 

 money in it. 



It was good to sleep on the yacht that night. A 

 norther had swooped down on us at sunset, filling the 

 north sky with a great mass of black cloud and dropping 

 the temperature until the wind cut to the bone. It blew 

 pretty much all night, but the yacht merely rolled at her 

 anchor, doing her best to lull us to sleep. I had never 

 experienced a norther before. It is all that Andy Adams 

 or any other historian of that far country has ever 

 claimed for it. 



The next morning was cool, with a cloud-shot and 

 duckless sky. Looking over to the flat where the ducks 

 had been the night before, I tliought of my own quatrain, 

 expressing what we have all experienced : 



It is to laugh. Someone has killed them all, 

 And nothing answers to my plaintive call; 

 Nor would respond, though I should blow a blast 

 The like of which (cost Jericho her wall. 



