352 A HUNT. 



ambulance, behind my favourite mules, accompanied by 

 my retriever Brutus, as Mr Davis assured me we might 

 shoot our guns red-hot at geese, ducks, and every sort of 

 fowl. Alas ! I had then become too much used to the in 

 flamed minds of Americans to put implicit faith in any 

 story or asserted oracle in the shape of man, and for that 

 reason I encumbered myself not with an overweight of 

 ammunition. However, in case there should have been 

 a demand for it, in my ambulance I put some spare car 

 tridges for fowl ; but they were in no way needed. On 

 meeting in the morning for our start, in the hands of Mr 

 Shields was a handy double-shot gun, rather small and 

 not in good order, but on the shoulder of Mr Davis there 

 indeed was a powerful heavy double gun, beautifully kept, 

 and of a size which in England would have been exclu 

 sively set aside for geese and ducks, and which, so its 

 owner told me, was of English make. 



We had a rough drive, but at last came to a wide 

 stretch of grassy, and perhaps in winter of marshy land, 

 intersected with woods, and in the vicinity of the Flat 

 river. On this plain were a good many small ponds of 

 water full of reeds and rushes, and in the woods a cabin, at 

 which we halted the ambulance and fed the mules. For 

 a huntsman of the frontiers, famed in those parts for his 

 knowledge of woodcraft and water-fowl, I could not help 

 being surprised at Mr Davis' s dress. He, like the fellow 

 called my guide, was perpetually cumbered with a bright 

 sky-blue great-coat, so that when miles off on the plain 

 he was for ever visible, resembling the moving egg of an 

 English hedge-sparrow; and, more, three other sports 

 men whom I met, all riding about the plains in quest of 

 something, but without dogs, were every one of them at 

 tired after the same fashion. As I understood that these 



