The Wild Turkey 285 



comment was necessary. That a hard day was 

 to come was a certainty — just how hard would 

 depend upon the luck. When Joe got started he 

 kept on until night or turkey fell. He strode 

 straight ahead, and he had me glowing before his 

 first halt. 



" Thar's their range," he remarked, as his hand 

 described a sweeping semicircle. Before us 

 spread a huge opening — in summer a marsh with 

 stretches of open water and big clumps of tall 

 rushes, in winter a plain of white with a soft 

 mound here and there to indicate where the snow- 

 buried rushes stood. Wise people kept away 

 from those mounds for reasons good — elsewhere 

 the ice was strong and safe. Around it all stood 

 the silent, unbroken forest, huge halted billows of 

 bluish gray crowned with a songless surf of glis- 

 tening snow. 



" Let's ring it," said Joe, and away he went. 



Now "ringing" it sounded easy, but it wasn't. 

 It meant the chasing of an iron man who had no 

 soul through apparently limitless woods, in and 

 out of doubtful hollows, and over snow-burdened 

 logs, till you were snow from heels to fork, and 

 miles of this with no let-up. It meant raising the 

 leading foot very high over a big log and twisting 

 after it on the seat of one's corduroys, and mean- 

 while finding that certain muscles had not been 

 used that way for a long, long time. It also 



