last lesson so well that it was almost our undoing. That was on an October day when we found ten green-heads feeding placidly in a slough a few rods from an apparently abandoned farm-house. Although they seemed a little larger than the ones we had fruitlessly pursued all through the season, we never dreamed that they had an owner who was also a deputy game warden; or that any man could have such an inflated idea of the value of his livestock. At that, we escaped lightly, for the owner would undoubtedly have charged us with exceeding the bag limits—if there had been such a limit on domestic ducks.
That first season conclusively demonstrated that we really needed the services of a bird dog—if not a pointer, then at least a good retriever. We lost a number of partridge that were only winged and that ran for cover. On one occasion we came close to losing Father when he waded out into a quicksand slough to retrieve what later was identified as a double-crested cormorant. The memory of the lost birds and, in particular, of the quicksand sat heavily on Father through the following year and gave new weight to Mother’s arguments as a new hunting season approached. She had a sublime faith in Mutt. Or perhaps she was just being stubborn.
My father’s retreat was slow, and defended by rearguard actions. “Mutt’s so obviously not a hunting dog!” he would insist as he retired a few more paces to the rear.
“Nonsense!” Mother would reply. “You know perfectly well that once Mutt makes up his mind, he can do anything. You’ll see.”
I do not think that Father ever publicly hoisted the surrender flag. Nothing was said in so many words, but as the next hunting season drew near, it seemed to be tacitly understood that Mutt would have his chance. Mutt suspected that something unusual was afoot, but he was uncertain as to its nature. He watched curiously as Father and I salvaged our precious hunting trousers from the pile of old clothing that Mother had set aside to give to the Salvation Army (this was an annual ritual); and he sat by, looking perplexed, as we cleaned our guns and repainted the wooden duck decoys. As opening day drew closer he began to show something approaching interest in our preparations, and he even began to forgo his nightly routine check on the neighborhood garbage cans. Mother was quick to point out that this behavior indicated the awakening of some inherited sporting instinct in him. “He’s started to make up his mind,” Mother told us. “You wait—you’ll see!”
We had not long to wait. Opening day was on a Saturday and the previous afternoon a farmer who had come to know my father through the library telephoned that immense flocks of mallards were in his stubble fields. The place was a hundred miles west of the city, so we decided to leave on Friday evening and sleep out at the farm.
We left Saskatoon at dusk. Mutt entered the car willingly enough and, having usurped the outside seat, relapsed into a dyspeptic slumber. It was too dark to see gophers, and it was too cold to press his bulbous nose into the slip stream in search of new and fascinating odors, so he slept, noisily, as Eardlie jounced over the dirt roads across the star-lit prairie. Father and I felt no need of sleep. Ahead of us we knew the great flocks were settling for the night, but we also knew that with the dawn they would lift from the wide fields for the morning flight to a nearby slough where they would quench their thirst and gossip for a while, before returning to the serious business of gleaning the wheat kernels left behind by the threshing crews.
Reaching our destination at midnight, we turned from the road and drove across the fields to a haystack that stood half a mile from the slough. The penetrating warning of an early winter had come with darkness, and we had long hours to wait until the dawn. I burrowed into the side of the stack, excavating a cave for the three of us, while Father assembled the guns by the dim yellow flare of Eardlie’s lights. When all was ready for the morrow Father joined me and we rolled ourselves in our blankets, there in the fragrant security of our straw cave.
I could look out through the low opening. There was a full moon—the hunter’s moon—and as I watched I could see the glitter of frost crystals forming on Eardlie’s hood. Somewhere far overhead—or perhaps it was only in my mind—I heard the quivering sibilance of wings. I reached out my hand and touched the cold, oily barrel of my gun lying in the straw beside me; and I knew a quality of happiness that has not been mine since that long-past hour.
Mutt did not share my happiness. He was never fond of sleeping out, and on this chill night there was no pleasure for him in the frosty fields or in that shining sky. He was suspicious of the dubious comforts of our cave, suspecting perhaps that it was some kind of trap, and he had refused to budge from the warm seat of the car.
An hour or so after I had dozed off I was abruptly awakened when, from somewhere near at hand, a coyote lifted his penetrating quaver into the chill air. Before the coyote’s song had reached the halfway mark, Mutt shot into the cave, ricocheted over Father, and came to a quivering halt upon my stomach. I grunted under the impact, and angrily heaved him off. There followed a good deal of confused shoving and pushing in the darkness, while Father muttered scathing words about “hunting dogs” that were frightened of a coyote’s wail. Mutt did not reply, but, having pulled down a large portion of the straw roof upon our heads, curled up across my chest and feigned sleep.
I was awakened again before dawn by a trickle of straw being dislodged upon me by exploring mice, and by the chatter of juncos in the stubble outside the cave. I nudged my father and sleepily we began the battle with greasy boots and moisture-laden clothing. Mutt was in the way. He steadfastly refused to rise at such an ungodly hour, and in the end had to be dragged out of the warm shelter. Whatever hunting instincts he had inherited seemed to have atrophied overnight. We were not sanguine about his potential value to us as we cooked our breakfast over the hissing blue flame of a little gasoline stove.
When at length we finished our coffee and set off across the frost-brittle stubble toward the slough, Mutt grudgingly agreed to accompany us only because he did not wish to be left behind with the coyotes.
It was still dark, but there was a faint suggestion of a gray luminosity in the east as we felt our way through the bordering poplar bluffs to the slough and to a reed duck-blind that the farmer had built for us. The silence seemed absolute and the cold had a rare intensity that knifed through my clothes and left me shivering at its touch. Wedged firmly between my knees, as we squatted behind the blind, Mutt also shivered, muttering gloomily the while about the foolishness of men and boys who would deliberately expose themselves and their dependents to such chill discomfort.
I paid little heed to his complaints, for I was watching for the dawn. Shaken by excitement as much as by the cold, I waited with straining eyes and ears while an aeon passed. Then, with the abruptness of summer lightning, the dawn was on us. Through the blurred screen of leafless trees I beheld the living silver of the slough, miraculously conjured out of the dark mists. The shimmering surface was rippled by the slow, waking movements of two green-winged teal, and at the sight of them my heart thudded with a wild beat. My gloved hand tightened on Mutt’s collar until he squirmed, and I glanced down at him and saw, to my surprise, that his attitude of sullen discontent had been replaced by one of acute, if somewhat puzzled, interest. Perhaps something of what I myself was feeling had been communicated to him, or perhaps Mother had been right about his inheritance. I had no time to think upon it, for the flight was coming in.
We heard it first—a low and distant vibration that was felt as much as heard, but that soon grew to a crescendo of deep-pitched sound, as if innumerable artillery shells were rushing upon us through the resisting air. I heard Father’s wordless exclamation and, peering over the lip of the blind, I saw the yellow sky go dark as a living cloud obscured it. And then the massed wings enveloped us and the sound was the roar of a great ocean beating into the caves of the sea.
As I turned my face up in wonderment to that incredible vision, I heard Father whisper urgently, “They’ll circle once at least. Hold your fire till they start pitching in.”
Now the whole sky was throbbing with their wings. Five—ten thousand
