102 “COME DUCK SHOOTING WITH ME” 
sending the mud and water in every direction, but he 
gained ten yards on the duck. Then he fired and I saw 
the mallard turn over and wave two yellow legs in the 
air, as though beckoning to Jimmy to come and get 
him. | 
“Too much chase for too little bird,”’ said Jimmy 
when he came back, “‘but I got mad with that old 
mallard and was just bound to have him. It hardly 
paid though as here I am all wet, with one of my rubber 
boots full of water. That’s forty-nine anyway. One 
more victim and we start for home.”’ 
We got settled in the blind again and Jimmy drank 
all the water we had left. He was warm after his chase. 
Not a duck appeared in sight for fifteen minutes. 
“‘Do you suppose,’’ asked Jimmy, ‘‘that that miser- 
able mallard passed the word round among the teal to 
boycott us?” 
“It looks a little that way,’’ I answered, ‘‘but I 
see three coming now.’”’ Three pair of wings were wav- 
ing far out over the water that gradually changed as 
they came nearer into the full rounded outline of living 
birds. They bunched up nicely as they came into the 
decoys and I dropped two with one barrel. 
‘“‘Well,”’ said Jimmy, ‘‘you’ve busted the law, we 
have fifty-one ducks.” 
‘““How could I help it? I only shot at one duck and 
the other flew into it, was that my fault? Then we also 
have that goose and that makes fifty-two.”’ 
“‘Oh, the goose don’t count, he just committed sui- 
cide,” replied Jimmy; ‘‘but I don’t believe you'll have 
to go to jail for one teal and that one killed by mistake. ”’ 
“‘T’m real glad to hear you say so,”’ said I with a 
smile, ‘‘you take an enormous weight off my mind. 
I’m going to have a smoke.”’ 
