14 “COME DUCK SHOOTING WITH ME” 
straight with any old gun,’’ I said, and Kleinman 
smiled. 
‘‘Do you know what they call a good duck shot down 
in Chesapeake Bay?” I asked. 
‘“‘Chesapeake Bay? that’s where they shoot out of 
those ‘coffin’ boats isn’t it?’’ said Kleinman. 
‘Yes, that’s the style down there. They call a man 
a good duck shot in Chesapeake Bay who can lie on his 
back in his ‘coffin’ boat, with one gun in his hands and 
two other double-barreled guns beside him, and when a 
bunch of redheads come to his decoys can kill a duck 
with each of his six shots.” 
Kleinman laughed. ‘‘They say a whole lot some- 
times about people and things that are a thousand miles 
away. I’ve heard of one chap down there who has done 
it a time or two, but I'll bet he can’t do it as a steady 
thing.’”’ 
‘‘What do you call first-rate shooting on ducks?” I 
asked. 
‘‘Well,’’ said Kleinman, ‘‘take ’em as they come and 
don’t pick shots, and seventy-five ducks for a hundred 
shells is pretty good work. Of course, I could do much 
better than that if I picked easy shots.” 
‘“What makes all this racket I hear, this Kak! Kak! 
Kak! noise, every time a gun is fired? It’s the funniest 
sound I ever heard on a marsh.”’ 
“‘Tt’s these birds they call rail,’’ answered Kleinman. 
‘“There are more of them on the marsh to-day than I 
ever saw before; they must have come in last night on 
their way south. They will stay around now until the 
first hard frost and then every last one will go south 
that night. Queer isn’t it, how those little birds that 
hardly seem able to fly fifty feet here in the marsh can 
fly twelve hundred miles to escape cold weather?”’ 
