quack, quack, quack, with which a mallard always takes wing, and, a moment later, would see those wily birds rising above the horizon.  A false step meant a crackle; a stumble meant a crash.  We fairly wormed our way in by inches.  Each yard gained was a triumph.  When, finally, after a half hour of Indian work, we had managed to line up ready for the shot, we felt that we had really a few congratulations coming.  We knew that within fifteen or twenty feet floated the wariest of feathered game; and absolutely unconscious of our presence.

“Now!” the Captain remarked, aloud, in conversational tones.

We stood up, guns at present.  The Captain’s command was answered by the instant beat of wings and the confused quicker calling of alarm.  In the briefest fraction of a second the ducks appeared above the tules.  They had to tower straight up, for the pond was too small and the reeds too high to permit of any sneaking away.  So close were they that we could see the markings of every feather—­the iridescence of the heads, the delicate, wave-marked cinnamons and grays and browns, even the absurd little curled plumes over the tails.  The guns cracked merrily, the shooters aiming at the up-stretched necks.  Down came the quarry with mighty splashes that threw the water high.  The remnant of the flock swung away.  We stood upright and laughed and joked and exulted after the long strain of our stalk.  Ben plunged in again and again, bringing out the game.

Of these tule holes there were three.  When we had visited them each in turn we swung back toward the west.  There, after much driving, we came to the land of irrigation ditches again.  At each new angle one of us would descend, sneak cautiously to the bank and, bending low, peer down the length of the ditch.  If ducks were in sight, he located them carefully and then we made our sneak.  If not, we drove on to the next bend.  Once we all lay behind an embankment like a lot of soldiers behind a breastwork while one of us made a long detour around a big flock resting in an overflow across the ditch.  The ruse was successful.  The ducks, rising at sight of the scout, flew high directly over the ambuscade.  A battery of six or eight guns thereupon opened up.  I believe we killed three or four ducks among us; but if we had not brought down a feather we should have been satisfied with the fact that our stratagem succeeded.

So at the last, just as the sun was setting, we completed the circle and landed at the ranch.  We had been out all day in the warm California sun and the breezes that blow from the great mountains across the plains; we had worked hard enough to deserve an appetite; we had in a dozen instances exercised our wit or our skill against the keen senses of wild game; we had used our ingenuity in meeting unexpected conditions; we had had a heap of companionship and good-natured fun one with another; we had seen a lot of country.  This was much better than sitting solitary anchored in a blind.  To be sure a man could kill more ducks from a blind; but what of that?