time the listener moved. Deftly, swiftly, he unrolled the gaudy
blanket, spread it thin upon the ground, covered it completely with his
body. In lieu of a pillow his arms crossed under his head, and, leaning
back, the hat brim still shading his eyes, he lay gazing up into the
sky, motionless as a prairie boulder.

Again the sound was repeated; not a single note, but a medley, a chorus.
It was still faint, still immeasurable as to distance; but nearer than
before and approaching closer second by second. Not from the earth did
it come, but from the air. Not by any stretch of the imagination was it
an earthly sound, but aerial. It was an alien note and still it was not
alien. There upon the silent earth with its sunshine and its illimitable
distances, it seemed very much a part of the whole. Its keynote was the
keynote of the time and place, its message was their message, the thrill
it bore to the listener the thrill of the whole. It was not a musical
call, that steadily approaching sound. No human being has ever been able
to locate it in pitch or metre; yet to such as the listening man upon
the ground, to those who have heard it year by year, it is nevertheless
the sweetest, most insistent of music. Beside it there is no other note
which will compare, none other which even approaches its appeal. It is
the spirit of the wild, of magnificent distances, of freedom
impersonate. It is to-day, it was then; for the sound that the man heard
drawing nearer and nearer that October afternoon was the swelling,
diminishing note of the migrant on its way south, of the grey Canada
honker en route from the Arctic circle to the Gulf of Mexico.

"Honk! honk!" Sonorous, elusive, came the sound. It was within a half
mile now, and there was no mistaking the destination, the intent of its
makers. "Honk! honk! honk! honk!" from many throats, in many keys,
louder and louder, confused as children's voices at play; then in turn
diminishing, retreating. Very mystifying to one who did not understand
would have been that augmenting, lessening sound; but to that waiting
human boulder it was no mystery. As plainly as though he could see, he
knew every movement of that approaching triangle. As certainly as the
broncho near by and the herd in the distance had responded to the
sunshine and the time of day, he knew they were responding. To all wild
things it was the rest hour, and to those a half mile high in the air as
inevitably as to the beast on earth