1234 
FOREST AND STREAM 
together with quacks and other signs of revelry 
told them that the place was seething with ducks. 
This time they turned upstream to work through 
a narrow gut that paralleled e main one. with 
about 200 feet between then. The small stream 
was seldom used. Thus the men hoped to sur¬ 
prise the feeding flocks. 
But long before they got within gunshot some 
sentinel quacked a warning to the others. Tens 
of thousands of wings were spread and the next 
moment a cloud of ducks was noisily winging 
its way to safety. The whistling sound of their 
wings died out and the normal night stillness of 
the miry desert returned to reign. The hunters 
nevertheless paddled on to spend the hours that 
were to intervene before breakfast in their favor¬ 
ite wild haunts, deserted though they were by 
almost every feathered creature. Within a 
hundred yards or more of where the ducks had 
made their bed for the night, in rounding a 
sharp curve, the men suddenly came upon a 
large bird. 
“Freak ” exclaimed Grupe. 
Spicer’s gun was at his shoulder and his finger 
seeking the trigger. At this rather startling dis¬ 
covery, coming as it did in the nick of time, 
Spicer lowered his gun. In great excitement the 
fowl dashed into the cover of the reeds. The 
men paddled on. Grupe was puzzled at this 
untoward meeting with the freak prowling around 
at that unseemly hour for a tamed bird. 
The next evening Freak was left at home 
again, free to roam as he listed. Grupe did not 
go into the house to dinner; he had taken a 
snack of grub with him. After darkness settled 
over the marsh he proceeded to the mouth of 
the gut in which Freak had been encountered 
that morning. Near where a tiny stream emptied 
into the main gut he pushed his punt into the 
reeds and set himself for an all-night vigil. He 
figured that if Freak visited his wild fellows 
again that night he would use the same round¬ 
about way to get there. A full moon shot its 
silvery light athwart the main gut. Through 
this the prowler must swim to get across to 
the main marsh. 
After all lights had been extinguished at Hill 
Top and the occupants had fallen asleep, a dark 
object that the watchman knew at once to be 
the mysterious Freak swam gracefully and noise¬ 
lessly into the moonlight. Grupe took out his 
watch and marked the time. It was about io : % t 0 
o’clock. His eye followed the fowl until it 
disappeared way up the main gut instead of 
crossing directly to the low ground. The place 
was again seething with ducks. The hours that 
were to pass before daybreak were as nothing 
to Grupe, who felt that the end of the mystery 
and the return of good luck were near. 
The man sat perfectly still for several more 
hours. Along toward daybreak he happened to 
be gazing at the house on the hill when he 
caught a dim light as it appeared at an upper 
window. By that lie knew that other members 
were astir preparing for the morning shooting, 
or another disappointment, and that they would 
start for the marsh as soon as they could get 
into their hunting togs. 
A few moments after the appearance of this 
light a mighty b-rrrrrrr! from the middle of 
the marsh told him that the wild flocks were 
lifting from their beds. Roar after roar came 
at short intervals as the birds turned and re¬ 
turned in getting their bearings for the bay. 
Presently Freak loomed into view homeward 
bcund. With a prowler’s cunning he was sneak¬ 
ing along the edge of the reeds. Grupe, sorely 
tempted to end the creature’s night prowling 
then and there, watched him until he disap¬ 
peared in the mouth of the small gut. 
Grupe’s word was not to be questioned, still 
there were not a few of the club members who 
found it hard to reconcile the significance of his 
discovery even with their own sorry experiences 
with the wily mallards. Spicer wanted to see 
for himself anyway. He went out with Grupe 
the next night and from the same spot in the 
reeds the pair of them watched the freak as 
he steered a straight course to join the revel 
with his wild kin as in the good old days. It 
was a trifle earlier than on the previous night— 
about io o’clock. Grupe looked toward the 
house. All was in darkness. But he kept an 
eye on the window watching for the first sign 
of a stir within. An hour or so before dawn 
the light appeared. Again, within a few min¬ 
utes, the flocks left the marsh, not a duck re¬ 
maining save the unfortunate freak leader, which 
a ruthless hand had snatched into a flightless 
captivity. After the lapse of a few more 
minutes this oracle and guardian angel of all 
the wild flocks in the marsh swam past again, 
saddened-like, to make the best of his mis¬ 
fortune among a few tame fellows who could 
make but poor soulmates for one of his wild 
habits. 
“What do you make out of it?” inquired 
Spicer after getting over his surprise. 
“Just this,” replied Grupe, “that old rascal 
knew what he was doing when he was calling 
with the other decoys. He didn’t call the birds 
to him. He told them what was what and they 
understood the language. The worst of it is 
that all our other decoys now understand it 
too, and if that’s the case they’ll never be any 
more good to us. We must get new ones. Both 
nights I noticed that the ducks left right after 
the light shone through the window at the 
house. Also that Freak did not leave shore 
until after all lights had been put out and 
everybody was in bed. You mind how he led 
and bossed the old ‘puddlers’ from the day we 
turned him out of the close to run with them ?” 
The captive was entirely too canny to be left 
at large at night, if the sport of shooting was 
to he preserved in that section. Consequently 
he was deprived of his liberty each day before 
dusk. That did not please his wild lordship 
and eventually he was missed. When no captor 
was looking he must have stolen off to the 
marshes. What befell him after that was left 
to conjecture. Certainly nobody around there 
ever laid eyes on him again, nor did any of 
them ever hear of him again. 
