m
under me, so that if I had not been obeying orders by hanging tight I
should most certainly have plunged forward against the horses. We seemed
to slide and slither down a steep declivity, then hit water with a
splash, and began to flounder forward. The water rose high enough to
cover the floor of the Invigorator, causing the Captain to speculate on
whether Redmond had packed in the shells properly. Then the bow rose
with a mighty jerk and we scrambled out the other side.

"That's the upper ford on the Slough," observed the Captain, calmly.

Everywhere else along the Slough, as I subsequently discovered, the
banks fell off perpendicular, the water was deep, and the bottom soft.
The approach was down no fenced lane, but across the open, with no other
landmarks even in daylight than the break of low willows and
cottonwoods exactly like a hundred others. Ten minutes later the
Captain drew rein.

"Here you are," said he, cautiously. "You can dump your stuff off right
here. I can't get through the fence with the team; but it's only a short
distance to carry."

Accordingly, in entire faith, I descended and unloaded my three sacks of
wooden decoys and my three sacks of live ducks and my gun and shells.

"I'll drive on to another hole," said the Captain. "Good luck!"

"Would you mind," I suggested, meekly, "telling me in which direction
this mythical fence is situated; what kind of a fence it is; and where I
carry to when I get through it?"

The Captain chuckled.

"Why," he explained, "the fence is straight ahead of you; and it's
barbed wire; and as for where you're headed, you'll find the pond where
we saw all those ducks last night about a hundred yards or so west."

Where we saw all those ducks! My blood increased its pace through my
veins. Now that I was afoot, I could begin to make out things in the
starlight--the silhouettes of bushes or brush, and even three or four
posts of the fence.

The Invigorator rattled into the distance. I got my stuff the other side
of the wires, and, shouldering a sack, plodded away due west.

But now I made out the pond gleaming; and by this and by the dim
grayness of the earth immediately about me knew that dawn was at last
under way. The night had not yet begun to withdraw, but its first
strength was going. Objects in the world about became, not visible, but
existent. By the time I had carried my last load the rather liberal
hundred yards to the shores of the pond the eastern s