Chapter V: Part 5

Daylight was full and broad now; and the sun was rising. With it came the first signs of wind. Ducks filled the air in all directions, some circling about other ponds; others winging their way in long flights toward distant feeding grounds. Every few moments Mr. Kincaid had a shot as some of these dropped to the decoys. Sometimes they came down boldly in an attempt to alight; at others they merely stooped, and flew by. These offered difficult side shots at long range. Always the mallards made their wide circles of inspection; but always Mr. Kincaid waited patiently for them, ignoring absolutely other ducks that in the meantime lit among the decoys. Big flocks of teal manoeuvred back and forth erratically like blackbirds, wheeling, turning, rising and darting without apparent reason but as though at the word of command. The high buzz of their wings was quite different from the whistling flight of the larger ducks. One of these bands came within range, but without attempting to alight. Into the compact formation Mr. Kincaid emptied both barrels. Instantly the air seemed to Bobby full of ducks falling. They hit the water like huge rain drops. Bobby could not begin to keep count; but Mr. Kincaid said nine. Among them was a broken-winged cripple, which at once began to swim toward the rushes on the other side the pond.

"Fetch, Curly!" commanded Mr. Kincaid.

Curly, with a whimper of delight, plunged into the icy water, and with astonishing speed overtook and seized the wounded duck. He returned proudly carrying his prize; was handed in over the gunwale; shook himself like a lawn sprinkler; and resettled himself in the bottom of the boat. Curly was a quiet and reserved character. His specialty was lying still, and swimming after ducks. The rest of life did not interest him.

Now little by little the flight slackened. Longer intervals ensued between the visits to the decoys. The sky was occasionally quite clear of ducks, so that for a few moments Mr. Kincaid and Bobby would rise to stretch their legs. Always they kept a sharp lookout in all directions, and at the first sight of game, even so far away in the sky it looked like a flock of specks, they would drop down into concealment. This was something Bobby could do; and he was always overjoyed when he caught sight of the ducks first; and could say "mark east"--or west or whatever it was--as Mr. Kincaid taught him.

Sometimes the ducks passed far away; but again the direction of their flight brought them within hearing distance of the blind. Then Mr. Kincaid produced his duck-call, and uttered through it the most natural duck sounds.

"Quack!" it said sharply, and then after the briefest possible pause. "Quok-quok-quok-quok-quok!" in increasing rapidity. It was quite remarkable to observe how the flock, apparently with a fixed destination of its own, would hesitate, waver, finally swing down to investigate. At this, Mr. Kincaid's call became confidential and intimate. It uttered all sorts of clucks and half-notes, telling, probably, of the manifold advantages of feed and shelter offered by this particular pond. Then came the slow circles ending with the final breathless, level-winged rush.

But presently, as the sun mounted higher and higher, even these flights ceased. Mr. Kincaid lit his pipe. Curly made trip after trip, carrying in the game.

"Fun?" enquired Mr. Kincaid succinctly.

"I should think so!" breathed Bobby with rapture.

They sat opposite each other in the sociable silence that seemed to come so easily to them. The wind had risen again, until now it had once more attained the proportions of a respectable gale. Bobby liked to watch the brisk puffs as they hit, spread in a fan-shaped ruffle of dark water and skittered away. In the miniature wavelets possible under the lea, the decoys bobbed gravely, swinging to their anchor strings. The sun flashed from their backs, and from the little waves. All about were the tall stalks of reeds; and ahead, where the open water was, grew tufts of grasses that looked silvery-brown and somehow intimate when, as now, Bobby looked at them from their own plane of elevation. They waved and bent before the wind, and the reeds across the pond bowed and recovered; and over the low, flat landscape seemed to hover a brown, untamed spirit of wildness.

But, though the wind blew a gale, the duck-boat was so snugly hidden that hardly a breath reached its occupants. The warm rays of the sun shone full down upon them, first driving the early chill from Bobby's bones, then making him sleepy. He fell into a delicious lethargy, running over drowsily the small details of his immediate surroundings. In the course of a few hours this cosy nest which he had never seen before had become strangely familiar. He experienced a sense of personal acquaintanceship with many of the individual reeds; he recognized, as one recognizes an accustomed landscape, the angle at which certain clumps crossed one another; or the vistas allowed by the different interstices. A marsh wren had business among the galleries. Bobby watched it hop in and out of sight, sometimes right side up, sometimes upside down. A dozen times he thought it had gone; but always it came back, flirting its absurd short tail, one bright eye fixed on the occupants of the blind. When Bobby slipped still further into the warm bright land of laziness, he abandoned even the effort of observation, and amused himself by sifting rainbows through his eye-lashes.

"Bobby!" whispered Mr. Kincaid sharply.

He came to with a start, rapping his knee against the gunwale of the boat. Mr. Kincaid held his hand up warningly, then pointed toward the decoys. Bobby looked, and saw, preening its feathers calmly, a live duck rising to the wavelets. Mr. Kincaid handed over two 22-short cartridges.

Bobby's breath caught with a gasp. His fingers trembling, he opened the breach of the Flobert and loaded; then cautiously thrusting the muzzle through an opening in the reeds, tried to aim. But his heart was thumping like a hammer, and do his best he could not hold the wavering sights in alignment. In vain he recalled all the many principles of accurate shooting he had so laboriously acquired in his target practice. Finally in desperation he pulled the trigger. The duck, with a startled quack, sprang into the air.

"Got one!" chuckled Mr. Kincaid. "That furtherest decoy," he replied to Bobby's unspoken question. "Saw the splinters fly. Must have over-shot three feet."

Bobby, carrying with him the bitterest possible cud of failure, retired within himself and gloomed angrily at the situation from all points of view. He was completely out of conceit with himself. After he had finished his performance, he naturally took to reviewing it and recasting it in terms of success. If he'd only shot at first, before he lost his breath! If he'd only remembered to get his hand away around the grip of the rifle! If he'd only----

As though to test these theories, the Red Gods at this moment vouchsafed him a wonderful favour. As he frowned steadily between the reeds, his attention was dragged by a moving object from its abstractions to that which he gazed on so unseeingly. He came to alertness with a snap. A duck flying not a foot above the water swung in an awkward circle and lit with a long furrowing splash not forty feet away.

Bobby glanced toward Mr. Kincaid. The latter was gazing at the sky, his hands clasped behind his head. Cautiously Bobby reloaded with the other cartridge, and again thrust the rifle muzzle between the reeds. His entire mind was now occupied by a vengeful spirit against himself because of his first miss. Therefore he had no room for self-consciousness or nervousness. The sights aligned with precision, and held rigidly on the mark. His teeth set, Bobby pulled the trigger.

Instantly the duck fell on its side, and, beating the water frantically with its wings, began to kick around in a circle.

"I got him! I got him! Oh, he'll get away!" screeched Bobby in a breath.

At the crack of the rifle Mr. Kincaid had leaped to his feet with surprising agility.

"Well, good boy!" he exclaimed, "I should say you did get him! He won't get away; he's hit in the head."

"Is that the way they act when they're hit in the head?" asked Bobby, still doubtful.

"Yes. Fetch him, Curly."

Bobby took the duck from Curly's mouth and held him up by the bill to drain the water, just as he had seen Mr. Kincaid do. Then he laid his prize across the bow and gloated.

It was a very beautiful duck, with an erect topknot of white edged with black running over the top of its head like the plume of a Grecian helmet. The sides of its white breast were covered with feathers of a bright cinnamon tipped with gray; its back was black and gray with fine black edgings; and its wings were dark with a white and iridescent band on each. But what interested Bobby especially was its bill. This differed entirely from the bills of all the other ducks. It was very long and very slender and had teeth!

"What kind is it?" asked Bobby looking up to encounter Mr. Kincaid's amused gaze.

"Well--it's called a merganser in the books," said Mr. Kincaid.

"I'm going to have mama cook it," announced Bobby, and returned to his blissful contemplation.

Mr. Kincaid grinned quietly to himself. He would not spoil the little boy's pleasure by telling him that his first trophy was a fish-duck, and, beautiful as it was, utterly useless.

No more ducks came for a long time after that. The wind continued to increase, blowing from a clear sky, without scuds. By and by Mr. Kincaid produced a package of lunch, and they ate, drinking in turn from the demijohn that Bobby had filled the night before. The sun swung up overhead, and down the westward slope. With the advance of afternoon came more, but scattered, ducks rushing down the wind at railroad speed, to wheel sometimes into the teeth of it like yachts rounding to as they caught sight of the decoys. When the sun was low and red, thousands of blackbirds began to fly by in an unbroken succession, low to the reeds, uttering their chattering and liquid calls. So numerous were they that the entire outlook seemed filled with the crossing lines of their flight, until Bobby's eyes were bewildered, and he could not tell whether he saw blackbirds near at hand or ducks farther away. Whence they had come or whither they were going he could not guess; but that they had some definite objective he could not doubt. Out from the gray distances of the east they appeared; laboured by against the gale; and disappeared into the red distances of the west.

Now the evening flight of ducks was on in earnest, and the warm excitement of decoy-shooting again gripped hard all three occupants of the boat. Over the wide marshes spread the brief crimson of evening. The sun set and dusk came on. It was first indicated, even before a perceptible diminution of daylight, by the vivid flashes from the gun. Then the low western horizon turned to a dark band between sky and water, and the heavens immediately above took on a pale green lucence of infinite depth.

"More wind," said Mr. Kincaid, glancing at it.

Finally, although it was still possible plainly to see the incoming ducks against the sky, Mr. Kincaid laid aside his gun and picked up the punt-pole.

"Mustn't shoot much after sun-down," he told Bobby. "If we do, there won't be any here in the morning. Nothing drives the duck off the marshes quicker than evening shooting."

He pushed the duck-boat out into the open. Instantly the weight of the wind became evident. Although on the lea side of the pond, the light boat drifted forward rapidly; and Bobby had to snatch suddenly for his cap. Mr. Kincaid snubbed her at the edge of the flock of decoys.

"Pick 'em up, Bobby," said he. "You'll have to do it, while I hold the boat."

Bobby lifted the nearest decoy out of the water and, under direction, wound the anchor line around its neck and stowed it away. This was easy. Also the next and the next.

But by the time he had lifted the tenth he had discovered a number of things. That a wooden decoy is heavy to lift at arm's length over the gunwale; that it brings with it considerable water; that the anchor lines carry with them a surprisingly greater quantity of water; that the water is very cold; that said cold water causes the flesh to puff up, the hands to turn numb, and the fingers to ache. This was disagreeable; and Bobby had not been in the habit of continuing to do things after they had become disagreeable.

"My, but this is awful cold work!" said he.

Mr. Kincaid looked at him.

"You aren't going to quit, are you?" he asked.

Bobby had not thought of it with this definiteness.

When the issue was thus squarely presented to him, his reply of course, was in the negative. But the night got darker and darker; the decoys heavier and heavier; the water colder and colder. Little by little the glory of the day was draining away. Mr. Kincaid, leaning strongly against the punt-pole, watched him for some time in silence.

"Pretty hard work?" he enquired at last.

"Yes, sir," said Bobby miserably.

"Why is it hard?"

Bobby looked up in surprise.

"Because the water is so cold, and the decoys are hard to lift over the edge," he answered presently.

"No; it's not that," said Mr. Kincaid, "It's because you're thinking about how many more there are to do."

Bobby stopped work in the interest of this idea.

"If you're going to be a hunter--or anything else"--went on Mr. Kincaid after a moment, "you're going to have lots of cold work, and hard work and disagreeable work to do--things that you can't finish in a minute, either, but that may last all day--or all the week. And you'll have to do it. If you get to thinking of how long it's going to take, you'll find that you will have a tough time, and that probably it won't be done very well, either. Don't think of how much there is still to do; think of how much you have done. Then it'll surprise you how soon it will be finished."

"Yes, sir," said Bobby.

"Now pick 'em up," said Mr. Kincaid, "one at a time. Don't begin to pick up the next one before you get this one out of the water."

Bobby went at it grimly, trying to keep in mind Mr. Kincaid's advice. The task was as disagreeable, and apparently as interminable as ever, but Bobby had gained this: he had not now, even in the subconscious background of his mind, any desire to quit; and there no longer pressed upon the weight and cold of the decoy he was at the moment handling, the useless and imaginary, but real, cold and weight of all the decoys yet to be lifted.

Nevertheless he was very glad when the last had found its place on the pile amidship.

"Good boy!" said Mr. Kincaid. "Now it's all over."

It was somewhat after twilight; although objects about were still to be made out in the unearthly half-illumination that precedes starlight. Mr. Kincaid lifted his punt-pole and allowed the duck-boat to be carried down wind to the other side of the pond. Here floated the dead ducks. They were lying all along the edges of the reeds, their white bellies plainly to be seen. After all those in sight had been picked up, Curly was allowed a short search on his own account. It made Bobby shiver to see him plunge into the icy water; but Curly did not mind. He found two more inside the reeds; then was hauled over the gunwale and settled himself happily, wet fur and all, in the bottom of the boat.

The homeward trip seemed to Bobby interminable. He was very cold; his fingers ached; the anticipations of the day had all been used. The sudden rise of waterfowl near at hand aroused in him no excitement; their presence was just now useless from the shooting standpoint.

"We might try the big slough to-morrow," said Mr. Kincaid, more as an audible thought than as a remark to Bobby.

"I don't want to go to-morrow," said Bobby.

In spite of Mr. Kincaid's advice, he could not prevent himself from anticipating the arrival at the cabin-float. A dozen little bends he mentally designated as the last before the lagoon; and each disappointment came to him as a personal affront.

But finally, when he had fallen into the indifference of misery, the two elms loomed in silhouette against the skyline.

Mr. Kincaid held the boat while Bobby stepped ashore; then made it fast, and, without bothering with the game, opened the hut and lit the candle. Bobby sat down dully. He had no further interest in life. Mr. Kincaid glanced at his disconsolate little figure humped over on the stool, and smiled grimly beneath his moustache. But he made no comment; and set about immediate construction of a fire.

Bobby relapsed into a dull lethargy which took absolutely no account of space or time. The shadows danced and flickered against the wall. He saw them, but as something outside the real centre of his consciousness. The wind howled by in gusts that shook the structure; Bobby did not care if it blew the whole thing over!

"Come, Bobby! Supper!" Mr. Kincaid broke in on his black mood.

"I don't believe I want any supper," mumbled Bobby.

Mr. Kincaid took two long steps across to him, picked him and the stool up bodily, and set him against the table.

"Now get at it," said he.

Bobby languidly tasted a piece of bread and butter.

In five minutes he was at his fifth slice, and had had four eggs and three pieces of bacon. In ten the world had brightened marvellously. In fifteen Bobby was chattering eagerly between mouthfuls, rehearsing with some excitement the different events of the day.

"To-morrow," said he, "I'm going to shoot a lot."

"Thought you weren't going to-morrow," suggested Mr. Kincaid.

Bobby smiled shamefacedly.

"That's all right, Bobby," said Mr. Kincaid kindly. "Supper makes a big difference to any of us, especially after a long day."

Curly received with gratitude the few scraps and three dog biscuits. The guns were cleaned and oiled. All the ducks were tied in bunches by their necks and hung from hooks on the north side of the hut. Bobby held the heads together while Mr. Kincaid slipped the loops over them. Both counted. Bobby made it eighty-four; while Mr. Kincaid's tally was only eighty-three.

"Enough, anyway," said the latter.

Then Bobby suddenly found himself so extraordinarily drowsy that he actually fell asleep while taking off his shoes. Mr. Kincaid put him to bed. Outside, the wind howled, the water lapped against the float. Inside, the shadows leaped and fell. But Bobby did not even dream of ducks.

XII

THE TRESPASSERS

One day as Bobby and Mr. Kincaid were walking along looking for squirrels in the high open woods, Duke, who was always required to trail at heel for fear of alarming the game, became very uneasy. He dropped back a few steps, and attempted to escape from control on either side; he tried to get ahead--with always a deprecating side-glance at his masters; he begged in his best dog fashion.

"He acts like birds," said Mr. Kincaid. "Hie on, Duke!"

Immediately Duke sprang away, the impulse of his suddenly released energy projecting him ten feet at a bound. But at once he slowed down. Step by step he drew ahead, his beautiful feathered tail sweeping slowly from side to side, his delicate nostrils expanding and contracting, his fine intelligent eye roving here and there. He stopped. His head dropped to the level of his back and stretched straight out ahead. His tail stiffened. Gently he raised one hind leg just off the ground. His eye glazed with an inner concentration, and the trace of slaver moistened the edges of his black and shining lips.

Mr. Kincaid cocked his gun and stepped forward.

"He's just beyond that dead log, Bobby," he said quietly.

Bobby watched with all his eyes. One, two, three steps Mr. Kincaid advanced. Now he was abreast of Duke. The setter merely stiffened a trifle more. Bobby's heart was beating rapidly. The whole sunlit autumn world of woodland seemed waiting in a breathless suspense. The little boy found space for a fleeting resentment against a nuthatch on a tree-trunk near at hand for the calm, indifferent and noisy manner in which he went about his everyday business.

Suddenly a mighty roar shattered the stillness. Beyond Duke something swift and noisy and brown and explosive seemed to fill the air. So startling was the irruption that Bobby was powerless to gather his scattered senses sufficiently to see clearly what was happening. Mr. Kincaid's gun bellowed; a cloud of white powder smoke hung in the mottled sunshine. And down through the trees a swift, brown, bullet-like flight crumpled and fell, whirling and twisting in a long slanting line until it hit the earth with a thump! Bobby heard Mr. Kincaid berating Duke.

"Down, you villain! Don't you try to break shot on me!"

And Duke, his hindquarters trembling with eagerness, his head turned beseechingly toward the man, crouched awaiting the signal.

Quite deliberately Mr. Kincaid reloaded.

"Fetch dead!" he then commanded.

Duke sprang away in long elastic leaps. After a moment of casting back and forth, he returned. His head was held high, for in his mouth he carried the limp brown bird. Straight to Mr. Kincaid he marched. The man stooped and laid hands on the game. At once the dog released it, not a feather ruffled by his delicate mouthing.

"Good dog, Duke," Mr. Kincaid commended him. "Old cock bird," he told Bobby.

Bobby spread out the broad brown fan of a tail; he inserted his finger under the glossy ruffs; he stroked the smooth, brown, mottled back.

"This is more fun than squirrels," said he with conviction.

Mr. Kincaid glanced at him in surprise.

"But you can't hunt these fellows," said he, "It takes a shotgun to get 'pats.' You wouldn't have much fun at this game."

"I'd rather watch you--and Duke," replied Bobby, "than to shoot squirrels. Are there many of them?"

"Not up on the ridges," said Mr. Kincaid. "This fellow's rather a straggler. But there's plenty in the swamps and popples. Want to go after them?"

"Yes," said Bobby.

After that the two used often to follow the edges of the hardwood swamps, the creek bottoms, the hillsides of popples, and--later in the season--the sumac and berry-vine tangles of the old burnings, looking for that king of game-birds, the ruffed grouse.

Bobby became accustomed to the roar as the birds leaped into the air, so that he was able to follow with intelligent interest all the moves in the game, but never did his heart fail to leap in response. In later years, when he too owned a shotgun, this sudden shock of the nerves seemed to be the required stimulant to key him instantly to his best work. A sneaker--that is to say, a bird that flushed without the customary whirr--he was quite apt to miss.

Little by little, as he followed Mr. Kincaid, he learned the habits of his game: where it was to be found according to time of day and season of year. Strangely enough this he never analyzed. He did not consciously say to himself; "It is early in the day, and cold for the time of year, _therefore_ we'll find them in the brush points just off the swamps, _because_ they will be working out to the hillsides for the sun after roosting in the swamps." His processes of judgment were more instinctive. By dint of repeated experience of finding birds in certain cover, that kind of cover meant birds to him. "A good place for 'pats,'" said he to himself, and confidently expected to find them. That is the way good hunters are made.

All day long thus they would tramp, forcing their way through the blackthorn thickets; clambering over and under the dead-falls and débris of the slashings; climbing the side hills with the straight, silvery shafts of the poplars; wandering down the narrow aisles of the old logging roads; plodding doggedly across the unproductive fields that lay between patches of cover; always lured on in the hope of more game farther on, picking up a bird here, a bird there, each an adventure in itself. And occasionally, once in a great while, they ran against a glorious piece of luck, when the grouse rose in twos and threes, this way, that, and the other, until the air seemed full of them. Mr. Kincaid, very intent, shot and loaded as fast as he was able. Sometimes things went right, and the bag was richer by two or three birds. Again they went wrong. The first grouse to rise might be the farthest away. Mr. Kincaid would snap-shoot at it, only to be overwhelmed, after his gun was empty, by a half dozen flushing under his very feet. Or a miss at an easy first would spell humiliation all along the line. Then Bobby and Duke would be much cast down.

"Thing to do," said Mr. Kincaid, "is to shoot one bird at a time. If you get to thinking of the second before you've killed the first, you won't get either. It's a hard thing to learn. I haven't got it down pat yet."

* * * * *

The short autumn days went fast. Before they knew it the pale sun had touched the horizon and the world was turning cold and gray. Then came the long laden tramp back to old Bucephalus, or perhaps to town, if they had started out afoot. They were always very tired; but, as to Bobby, at least, very happy.

Generally speaking they wandered through the country at will. Shooting was not then as popular as it is now, nor the farms as close together. Sometimes, however, they came across signs warning against trespass or hunting. Then, if the cover seemed especially desirable, Mr. Kincaid used sometimes to try to obtain permission of the owner of the land. Once or twice, having overlooked the sign, they were ordered off. The farmers were good-natured, even though firm.

But some four miles to the eastward lay a deep long swamp following the windings between hills where Mr. Kincaid and Bobby had a very disagreeable experience. It was late in the afternoon, so Bobby had become tired. Duke made game on the outskirts of a dense thicket, hesitated, then led the way cautiously into the tangle.

"It's pretty thick," Mr. Kincaid advised Bobby; "you'd better sit on the stump there until I come out."

Bobby did so. A moment or so after Mr. Kincaid had disappeared, the little boy became aware of a man approaching across the stump-dotted field. He was a short, thickset man, with a broad face almost entirely covered with a beard, a thick nose, and little, inflamed snapping eyes. He was clad in faded and dingy overalls, and carried a pitchfork.

"Who's that shooting in here?" he shouted at Bobby as soon as he was within hearing. "What do you mean by hunting here? You must have passed right by the sign."

"Don't you want shooting here? No; we didn't see the sign," replied Bobby.

By this time the man had approached, and Bobby could see his bloodshot little eyes flickering with anger.

"You lying little snipe," he roared. "You must have seen the sign. You couldn't help it. I've a mind to tan your hide good."

"What's this?" asked Mr. Kincaid's quiet voice.

The man whirled about.

"Oh, it's you, is it?" he snarled. "Well, what do you mean by trespassing on my farm?"

"I didn't know it was your farm, in the first place; and I didn't know shooting was prohibited in the second place."

"That's too thin. You came right by that sign at the corner. Now just make tracks off this farm about as fast as you can go."

"Certainly," agreed Mr. Kincaid, quite unruffled. "I never shoot on a man's land when he doesn't want me to."

He turned, and at once the man became abusive, just as a dog gains courage as his enemy passes. Bobby listened, his eyes wide with dismay and shock. Never had he heard quite that sort of language. Finally Mr. Kincaid happened to glance down at his small companion. He slipped the shells from his gun and leaned it against a stump.

"About face!" he said sharply to the man. "You can't talk that way before this baby. We are going off your place as straight and as fast as we can. You shoulder your pitchfork and go back to your house."

The man started again on a string of objurgation.

"I mean what I say," said Mr. Kincaid with deadly emphasis. "About face. If you open your mouth again I shall certainly kill you."

The old man's bent shoulders had straightened, his mild blue eye flashed fire. So he must have looked to his soldiers before the storming of Molino del Rey. His hands were quite empty of a weapon, and his age was hardly a match for the other's brute strength. Nevertheless the farmer at once turned back, after a parting, but milder, admonition.

Mr. Kincaid picked up his gun, tucked it under his arm and trudged forward. Bobby was trembling violently with excitement and anger.

"Why--why--" he gasped, as yet unable to cast his thoughts into speech.

Mr. Kincaid glanced down. A faint and amused smile flickered under his moustache.

"You aren't going to do that sort of a crank the honour of keeping stirred up, are you?" "That's Pritchard--the worst crank in Michigan. He's quarrelled with every one. I never did know where his farm was, or I should have taken pains to keep off."

They climbed into the cart and drove away toward town.

"I believe I'll make a hunter of you, Bobby," pursued Mr. Kincaid after they were going. "It's a good thing to be. Of course there's the fun of it--the 'pats,' the quail, the jacksnipe, the 'cock. But then there's the other part, too."

They had come out on the sandhills over the town. Mr. Kincaid drew up Bucephalus and contemplated it as it lay below them, its roofs half hidden in the mauve and lilac of bared branches, its columns of smoke rising straight up in the frosty air.

"Of course, I don't know, Bobby, whether you'll ever be a hunter or not. It all depends on where you live and how--the chance to get out, I mean. But, sonny, you can always be a sportsman, whatever you do. A sportsman does things because he likes them, Bobby, for no other reason--not for money, nor to become famous, nor even to win--although all these things may come to him and it is quite right that he take them and enjoy them. Only he does not do the things for them, but for the pleasure of doing. And a right man does not get pleasure in doing a thing if in any way he takes an unfair advantage. That's being a sportsman. And, after all, that's all I can teach you if we hunt together ten years. Do you think you can remember that?"

"Yes, sir," replied Bobby soberly.

"There's only one other thing," went on Mr. Kincaid, "that is really important, and it isn't necessary if you remember the other things I've told you. It's pretty easy sometimes to do a thing because you see everybody else doing it. Always remember that a true sportsman in every way is about the scarcest thing they make--and the finest. So naturally the common run of people don't live up to it. If _you_--not the thinking you, nor even the conscience you, but the way-down-deep-in-your-heart _you_ that you can't fool nor trick nor lie to--if that _you_ is satisfied, it's all right." He turned and grinned humorously at his small companion. "I've nothing but a little income and an old horse and two dogs and a few friends, Bobby; I've lived thirty years in that little place there; and a great many excellent people call me a good-for-nothing old loafer, but I've learned the things I'm telling you now, and I'm just conceited and stuck-up enough to think I've made a howling success of it."

"_I_ don't think that," said Bobby, laying his cheek against the man's threadbare sleeve.

"Of course you don't, Bobby," said Mr. Kincaid cheerfully, "and I'll tell you why. It's because you and I speak the same language, although you're a little boy and I'm a big man."

XIII

THE PLAYMATES

Early that autumn it became expedient that Mrs. Orde and Bobby should visit Grandfather and Grandmother Orde at Redding, while Mr. Orde pushed through certain heavy cutting in the woods. Bobby took with him his two fonts of "real" type--one a parting present from Mr. Daggett--and his Flobert Rifle.

The old Orde homestead covered about three acres of ground. The city had grown up around it. The house was a three-storied stone structure, built fifty years before, steep of roof, gabled, low-ceilinged, old-fashioned and delightful. Bobby loved it and its explorations, from the cellar with its bins of vegetables and fruit and its barrels of molasses, cider and vinegar, to its attic with its black, mysterious, "behind the tank." And the three acres were a joy. Outside the picket fence were the shade trees, their trunks nearly two feet in diameter. Then stretched the wide deep lawn, now turning dull with the approach of winter and strewn with dead leaves. It supported the fir which Bobby always called the "Christmas Tree," and under whose wide low branches he could crawl as into a dusty, cobwebby house; and the little birch tree with its silver bark; and the big round lilac bush, now bare, but in summer the fragrant haunt of birds and butterflies innumerable; and the round flower bed; and the horse-chestnut tree whose inedible brown-and-yellow nuts were just right to throw or to string into necklaces; and close by the front gate the Big Tree. Bobby firmly believed this the largest tree in the world. It was a silver maple so great about the trunk that Bobby could trot about it as around a race-track. At twelve feet it branched in two, each division bigger than any shade tree in town. The branches were held together by a logging chain. Above them were more divisions and more and yet more, ever rising higher and finer, until at last, far over the tops of the maples, of the elms, even of the hickory at the side of the house, above the highest point of the highest gable of the house itself, it feathered out in a delicate, wide lacework that seemed fairly to brush the sky. Bobby's realization of height ceased short of the reality. Beyond that he was breathless, as one is breathless at too great speed. The big tree was full of orioles' and vireos' nests, old and recent, representing the building of many summers. Out behind was the orchard, a dozen sturdy old apple trees, now passing the meridian of their powers.

Here Bobby laboured hard with hammers and a few old boards until he had constructed a shield on which to tack his target. He leaned the affair against the thickest and tallest woodpile, placed a saw-horse for a rest at fifteen yards from his mark and brought out his Flobert Rifle.

At the third snap of the little weapon, he looked up to discover a row of interested heads lined up along the top of the high board fence that constituted the Ordes' eastern boundary. He pretended not to see but shot again, very deliberately.

"Say," shouted a voice, "I'm coming over!"

Bobby looked up once more. One of the heads had given place to a very sturdy back and legs suspended on the Orde side of the fence. The legs wriggled frantically, the toes scratched at the boards.

"Aw, drop!" said another voice, and the second head produced a hand and arm which proceeded calmly to rap the knuckles of the one who dangled. The latter let go. Finding himself uninjured by the three-foot fall, he looked up wrathfully at his late assailant. That youth was in the act of swinging his own legs over. The first-comer, with a gurgle of joy, seized the other by both feet and tugged with all his strength. His victim kicked frantically, tried to hang on, had to let go and came down all in a heap on top of his tormentor. Immediately they clinched and began to roll over and over. Bobby stared, vastly astonished.

Before he could collect his thoughts a third figure was dangling down the boards. This one was feminine. It displayed a good deal of long black leg, of short dull plaid skirt, a reefer jacket, two pigtails and a knit blue tam-o'-shanter. Further observation was impossible, for it dropped without hesitation and the moment it struck ground pounced on the two combatants. Bobby saw those gentlemen seized, shaken and slapped with hurricane vigour. The next he knew, three flushed visitors were descending on him with ingratiating grins.

The first, he of the pounded knuckles, was a short, sturdy, very fair-haired youth with a wide red-lipped mouth, wide and winning blue eyes and a bit of a swagger in his walk. He was about Bobby's age. The second, he of the pulled feet, was brown-haired, slightly stooped, rather nervous-faced, but with the drollest twinkle to his brown eyes and the quaintest quirk to his sensitive lips. He was about twelve years old. The third, the girl, was tawny-haired, gray-eyed. Her face was almost the exact shape of the hearts on valentines; her nose turned up just enough to be impudent; her freckles, for she was indubitably freckled, were just wide enough apart to emphasize the inquiring, unabashed self-reliance of her eyes. Her figure was long and lank but moved with a freedom and a confidence that indicated her full control of it. She was probably just short of her 'teens.

"Gorry!" said the first boy, "is that gun yours?"

"Let's see it," said the second.

"It's a beauty, isn't it? Look at the gold mounting," said the girl.

"Look out how you handle it!" warned Bobby.

"Why, is it loaded?" asked Number One.

"It doesn't matter whether it's loaded or not!" insisted Bobby stoutly. "It ought never to be pointed toward anybody."

"Oh, shucks!" said Number One, reaching for the rifle.

But Bobby interposed.

"You mustn't touch it unless you handle it right," said he.

"Shucks," repeated the light-haired boy, still reaching.

Bobby, his heart beating a little more rapidly than usual, thrust himself in front of the other.

"Ho!" cried the other, the joy of battle lighting up his dancing blue eyes. "Want to fight? I can lick you with one hand tied behind me."

"This is my yard," said Bobby, "and that is my gun! And besides I didn't ask you to come in here, anyway."

"Well, I can lick you, anyway," replied the other with unanswerable logic.

The girl had been watching them narrowly, her hands on her hips, her head on one side. Now she interfered.

"Johnnie, come off!" said she sharply. "No fighting! You're bigger than he is, and it _is_ his yard and his gun, and, anyway, he isn't afraid of you."

Johnnie looked at her doubtfully, then turned to Bobby as to a companion under tyranny.

"That's just like her," he complained. "She always spoils things! You ain't smaller than I am, anyhow. Never mind, we'll try it sometime when she ain't around. Let's see your old gun. I won't point it at anybody. Show me how she works."

Bobby, a little stiffly at first, for he could not understand fighting without animosity, showed them how it worked.

"Let me try her," urged Johnnie.

But Bobby would not until he had asked his mother, for permission to shoot had been obtained only at expense of a very solemn promise.

"Fraidy!" jeered Johnnie, "tied to his mammy's apron-strings!"

Bobby flushed deeply, but stood his ground.

"It's my gun," he pointed out again. "If you don't like my yard, you needn't come into it."

"Oh, all right, we don't want to stay in your old yard," replied Johnnie. "Come on, kids."

"Johnnie, come back here," commanded the girl sharply. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself! He's perfectly right! Suppose one of us should get shot!"

"I'll get papa to shoot with us, if he will," promised Bobby.

"Johnny, you come back here!" ordered the girl in more peremptory tones. "You come back or--or--_I'll sit on your head again!_"

Johnny came back, entirely good-natured, his attractive blue eyes glancing here and there in restless activity.

"Oh, all right," said he. "Let's play robbers and policemen."

"We've left Carrie over the fence," insisted the girl.

"Bother Carrie! Why don't she climb?"

"You come over with us," the girl suggested to Bobby. "You're Bobby Orde, of course, we know. I'm May Fowler. I live in the big square house over that way. The boy with the yellow hair is Johnny English. The other one is Morton Drake. Come on."

"Where is it?" asked Bobby.

"Just over the fence. That's where the Englishes live. Haven't you been there yet?"

"No," said Bobby.

He leaned his rifle in the barn and followed the disappearing trio. His doubt as to how the smooth board fence was to be surmounted was soon resolved. The new-comers evidently knew all the ins and outs. In the very end of the long woodshed stood a chicken-feed bin. By scrambling to the top of this, it was just possible to squeeze between the edge of the roof and the top of the fence. Once there, one had the choice of descending to the other side or climbing to the shed roof.

The expedition at present led to the other side. Here was no necessity of dangling, for the two-by-fours running between the posts offered a graduated descent. Bobby found himself in the back yard of a tall house that occupied nearly the entire width of the lot. It was a very impressive cream-brick house. A cement walk led around it from the front. There were no stables, no clothes-lines, no pumps, nothing to indicate the kitchen end of a residence. The swift curve of a grassed terrace dropped from the house-level to that on which Bobby stood. Four large apple trees, mathematically spaced, would furnish shade in summer. That the shade was utilized was proved by the presence of a number of settees, iron chairs and a rustic table or so.

"There's Carrie!" cried May Fowler. "Why didn't you come on over? This is Bobby Orde who lives over there. This is Caroline English."

"We're going to play robber and policeman," announced Johnny English, cheerfully.

"All right," said Carrie.

She sat down behind one of those rustic tables.

"She's police sergeant," confided Morton Drake to Bobby. "She's always police sergeant because she doesn't like to get her clothes dirty."

"Here come the rest! Goody!" cried the alert Johnny as four more children came racing around the corner of the house.

Robber and policemen was a game absurd in its simplicity. The policemen pursued the robbers who fled within the specified limits of the Englishes' yard. When an officer caught a malefactor, he attempted to bring his prize before the police sergeant. The robber was privileged to resist. Assistance from the other policemen and rescues by the other robbers were permitted. That was all there was to it. The beautiful result was a series of free fights.

Bobby, as a new-comer, was made a robber. So were Grace Jones, Morton and Walter. The nature of the game demanded that the oldest should be policeman, otherwise arrests might be disgracefully unavailing.

At a signal from Carrie the robbers scurried away. At another the sleuths set out on the trail. Each policeman elected a robber as his especial prey. Bobby ran rapidly around the front of the house, dodged past the front steps and paused. Behind him he heard stealthy footsteps approaching the corner of the house. Instantly he ducked forward around the other corner and ran plump into the arms of Johnny English.

That youngster immediately grappled him.

Johnny was no bigger than Bobby, but he was practised at scuffles and his body was harder and firmer knit. Bobby tugged manfully, but almost before he knew it he was upset and hit the ground with a disconcerting whack. Of course, he continued to struggle, and the two, fiercely locked, whirled over and over through the leaves, but in a humiliatingly brief period Johnny had twisted him on his back and was sitting on his chest.

"There, I told you I could lick you!" he cried triumphantly.

"Let me up! Let me up, I tell you!" roared Bobby, kicking his legs and threshing his arms in a vain effort to budge the weight across his body.

Johnny looked at him curiously.

"Why! You ain't _mad_, are you!" He shrieked with the joy of the discovery. "Oh, kids! Come here and see him! He's getting mad!"

Bobby's eyes filled with tears of rage. And then he saw quite plainly the top of a sand-hill and the village lying below and the blue of the River far distant. And he heard Mr. Kincaid's voice.

"But, sonny, you can always be a sportsman, whatever you do," the voice said, "and a sportsman does things because he likes them, Bobby, for no other reason--not for money, nor to become famous, nor even to win----"

He choked back his rage and forced a grin to his lips--very much the same sort that he had once accomplished when he "jumped up and laughed" at his mother's spanking, simply because he had been told to do that whenever he was hurt.

"I'm not mad," he disclaimed and heaved so mighty a heave that Johnny, being unprepared by reason of shouting to the others, was tumbled off one side. Instantly Bobby jumped to his feet and scudded away.

He was captured eventually--so were the others--but only after fierce struggles. Even did a policeman catch and hold a robber, to drag the latter to jail was no easy problem. For if he summoned the help of a brother officer that left at large an unattached robber who would create diversions and attempt rescues. At times all eight were piled in a breathless, tugging, rolling mass, while Carrie, behind her rustic table, looked on serenely lest some of the simple rules of the game be violated. In fact Carrie was just as severe in anticipation of possible infractions, as over the infractions themselves, which, perhaps, goes far to explain Carrie.

Bobby returned home at lunch time to be received with horror by Mrs. Orde.

"You're a sight!" she cried. "_Where_ have you been, and _what_ have you been doing? I never saw anything like you! And look at those holes in your stockings."

"I've been playing robber 'n policeman with Johnny English and Carter Irvine and all the kids," explained Bobby blissfully.

After lunch Mr. Orde kissed his son good-bye.

"Going up in the woods for a week, sonny," said he.

"Papa," asked Bobby holding tight to the man's hand, "can I have the kids shoot with my rifle?"

"Not any!" cried Mr. Orde emphatically. "Not until I get back. Then maybe we'll have a shooting-match and invite all hands."

He was slipping on his overcoat as he spoke.

"Which of the boys do you like best?" he asked casually.

"I don't know," replied Bobby after an instant's thought. "Carter Irvine's got an air-gun: I like him. And Johny English is all right, too. I wish I were as strong as Johnny English," he ended with a sigh.

Mr. Orde paused in reaching for his valise.

"Can he take you down?" he asked shrewdly.

"Yes, sir!" replied Bobby with a vivid flush.

"All right, you be a good boy, and when I get back I'll show you a few tricks to fool Mr. Johnny," Mr. Orde chuckled. "There's a lot in knowing how."

XIV

THE SHOOTING CLUB

When Bobby proposed again that his father oversee general shoots in the back yard, the latter demurred.

"Haven't any time," said he. "And you youngsters certainly can't be turned loose with two guns alone. I'll tell you: you organize your club, and have a regular time to shoot every week. I'll appoint Martin Chief Inspector; but it must be distinctly understood that there is to be no shooting unless he's here."

Martin was the "hired man" about Grandpa Orde's place.

The children fell on the idea with alacrity, and at once adjourned to Bobby's room. Carter Irvine suggested formal organization.

"Somebody's got to make targets; and somebody's got to buy cartridges and collect the money for them; and somebody's got to buy prizes--we got to have prizes--and somebody's got to keep the scores."

After much talk they elected officers to perform these duties; and formulated curious but practical by-laws. Bobby was elected secretary and treasurer; and he has to-day a copy of them written in his own boyish unformed hand. Among other things they provided that "any one pointing a gun, accidentally or otherwise, at anybody else or Duke, is fined one cent." The entire club went into a committee of the whole, marched down town in a body and pestered a number of store-keepers. Finally it purchased a silver bangle a little larger than a ten-cent piece, had it hung from a bar pin, and inscribed "First Prize." The second prize, following Mrs. Orde's practical suggestion, was a bright ribbon. Winners were privileged to wear these until defeated. The shoots were conducted with great ceremony. Each took a single chance in turn until five rounds apiece had been expended. In a loud voice the scorer announced the results, and the name of the next on the list. The shooting was done from a dead rest over the saw-horse, and at about fifteen yards. Martin sat by on the bridge-approach to the barn, smoking a very short and very black clay pipe upside down. He rarely said anything; but his twinkling eyes never for a moment left the excited group. Martin was reliable. Occasionally he was called upon to referee some particularly close decision--as to whether a certain bullet-hole could be said to have cut the edge of the black or not--and his decisions were never questioned.

The shoots were taken very seriously. He who won the first or second prize wore it proudly. Scores, individual shots, good or bad luck, distracting influences were all discussed with the greatest interest. Grandpa Orde, happening home early one day, watched the performance with great enjoyment, his hands behind him underneath the flapping linen duster, his eyes twinkling, his jaws working slowly. At the time he made no comments; but next shoot day he was punctually on hand, carrying a small paper parcel.

"Here's another prize," said he.

They opened it eagerly. It contained a large round leather disk to which a safety pin had been sewn.

"That's for the one who makes the worst score," explained Grandpa Orde chuckling.

Thenceforth the poor shots had an interest. If they could not hope to compete with Bobby and Carter Irvine, at least they could try not to stand at the bottom of the list. A new by-law was adopted, making compulsory the conspicuous wearing of the leather medal.

As has been hinted, the supremacy generally lay between Bobby and Carter. Johnny occasionally carried off all honours by a most brilliant score; but the week following he was likely to escape the leather medal only by the narrowest margin. The latter decoration was shared by his sister and Grace Jones. Caroline English disliked firearms; and took part in the contest only because she did not care to be left out. Both she and Grace held the weapon directly in front of them, the two hands clasped tight at the same point just behind the trigger-guard. May Fowler, Walter and Morton "furnished packing," as Morton said, between the leaders and the losers.

In this manner the children came to a thorough respect for the muzzle of a gun; and a deep pride in handling a weapon in a safe and sportsmanlike manner. By the time the snow and cold weather put a stop to the shooting, each child would have been mortified and ashamed beyond words to have been caught doing anything "like a greenhorn."

XV

THE UPPER ROOMS