they waited there rigid, motionless, their hearts
thrilling to the increasing music of the march of dawn across the
bottoms of the Mississippi.

False dawn flushed and faded almost like a deliberate lightning flash.
Then dawn appeared, marking down the gray lines of the wilderness trees
with one stroke, sweeping out all the stars with another brush,
revealing the flocks of birds glistening against the sky while yet the
earth was in shade. The watchers spied a score of birds, great geese far
to the northward, coming right in line with them. They waited for a few
seconds--ages long. Then one of the men cried:

"They're stoopin', boys! They're comin'!"

The wild geese, coming down a magnificent slant from a mile height,
headed straight for Yankee Bar. Will birds never learn? They ploughed
down with their wings folding, and poised. Their voices grew louder and
louder as they approached.

With a hissing roar of their wings they pounded down out of the great,
safe heights and circled around and inward. With a shout the three men
started up through their masks and with levelled guns opened fire.

Too late the old gander at the point of the "V" began to climb; too late
the older birds in the point screamed and gathered their strength. The
river men turned their black muzzles against the necks of the young tail
birds of the feathered procession and brought them tumbling down out of
the line to the ground, where on the hard sand two of them split their
breasts and exposed thick layers of fat dripping with oil.

The cries of the fleeing birds, the echoes of the barking guns, died
away. The men shouted their joy in their success, gathered up their
victims, scurried pack to cover, brushing over their tracks, and
crouched down again, to await another flock.

Hunger drove them to their cabin-boat within an hour. They had thought
they wanted to get some more birds, but in fact they knew they had
enough. They went over to their boat, cooked up a big breakfast, and sat
around the fire smoking and talking it over. They chattered like boys.
They were gleeful, innocent, harmless! But only for a time. Then the
hunted feeling returned to them. Once more they had a back track to
watch and ambushes to be wary of. They wanted to go to Mendova, but
again they didn't want to go there. They didn't know but what Mendova
might be watching for them, the same as Memphis was. Certainly, they
determined, they must go to Mendova after dark, and see