BUFFALO AND DUCK SHOOTING 307 



seized with symptoms of starvation. Happily 

 dinner was ready when we entered the house, ex- 

 cepting for the redhead ducks which we brought 

 with us. Five minutes on the coals put these in 

 order and the repast began. 



I have since eaten buffalo hump, al fresco, 

 with Comanches, beaver tail with Shoshones, 

 musquash stew with Chippewas, moose-meat with 

 O jib ways, broiled pony with Navajos, roasted 

 rattlesnake with a Seminole, elk head baked in 

 the ground by a Menominee; the choicest game 

 of field, forest, and stream, lake and mountain, 

 all with the outdoor hunger sauce; but when 

 memory is called upon to name the choicest meal, 

 the most soul-and-body-satisfying feast of my 

 life, it brings to me the vision of that lightly 

 broiled red-head duck which I devoured to the 

 last clinging filament of flesh on its bones. 



When I rose from that table the crudest cold 

 of my life had been frozen or feasted out of my 

 body. 



It was years before I visited Good Ground 

 again and by a strange coincidence a change in 



