again. When younger, I used, at such junctures, to rush for my gun. That
is a puppy stage, for by the time you get your gun those ducks are gone;
and by the time you have regained your abandoned task more ducks are in.
Therefore one early learns that when he goes out from his blind to pick
up ducks, or catch cripples, or arrange decoys, he would better do so,
paying no attention whatever to the game that will immediately appear.
So now the whistle of wings merely caused me to work the faster. At
length I was able to wade ashore and sink into my blind.

Immediately, as usual, the flights ceased for the time being. I had
nothing to do but sit tight and wait.

This was no unpleasant task. The mountains to the west had become
lucent, and glowed pink in the dawn; those to the east looked like
silhouettes of very thin slate-coloured cardboard stuck up on edge,
across which a pearl wash had been laid. The flatter world of the plains
all about me lay half revealed in an unearthly gray light. The wind
swooped and tore away at the brush, sending its fan-shaped cat's-paws
across the surface of the pond. My ducks, having finished their
ablutions, now gave a leisurely attention to smoothing out their plumes
ruffled by the night in the gunnysack. They ran each feather separately
through their bills, preening and smoothing. All the time they conversed
together in low tones of voice. Whenever one made a rather clever
remark, or smoothed to glossiness a particularly rumpled feather, he
wagged his short tail vigorously from side to side in satisfaction.

Suddenly the one farthest out in the pond stilled to attention and
craned forward his neck.

"_Mark_!" quoth he, loudly, and then again: "_Mark_!
_quok_--_quok_--_quok_!"

The other five looked in the same direction, and then they, too, lifted
up their voices. Cautiously I turned my head. Low against the growing
splendour of the sunrise, wings rigidly set, came a flock of mallards.
My ducks fairly stood up on their tails the better to hurl invitations
and inducements at their wild brethren. The chorus praising this
particular spot was vociferous and unanimous, I wonder what the mallards
thought of the other fifty or sixty in my flock, the wooden ones, that
sat placidly aloof. Did they consider these remarkably exclusive; or did
they perhaps look upon the live ones as the "boosters" committee for
this particular piece of duck real estate? At any rate, they dropped in
without the sli