CHAPTER II 



WATERFOWL 



ONE cool afternoon in the early fall, while sit 

 ting on the veranda of the ranch house, we 

 heard a long way off the ha-ha-honk, ha-honk, of a 

 gang of wild geese; and shortly afterward they 

 came in sight, in a V-shaped line, flying low and 

 heavily toward the south, along the course of the 

 stream. They went by within a hundred yards of 

 the house, and we watched them for some minutes 

 as they flew up the valley, for they were so low in 

 the air that it seemed certain that they would soon 

 alight; and light they did when they were less than 

 a mile past us. As the ground was flat and without 

 much cover where they had settled, I took the rifle 

 instead of a shotgun and hurried after them on foot. 

 Wild geese are very watchful and wary, and as I 

 came toward the place where I thought they were 

 I crept along with as much caution as if the game 

 had been a deer. At last, peering through a thick 

 clump of bulberry bushes, I saw them. They were 

 clustered on a high sandbar in the middle of the 

 river, which here ran in a very wide bed between 

 low banks. The only way to get at them was to 

 crawl along the river-bed, which was partly dry, 

 using the patches of rushes and the sand hillocks 

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