CHAPTER XII
THE GRAND TOUR
Almost always our sporting expeditions were of this casual character,sandwiched in among other occupations. Guns were handy, as was the game.To seize the one and pursue the other on the whim of the moment was thenormal and usual thing. Thus one day Mrs. Kitty drove me over to look ata horse I was thinking of buying. On the way home, in a corner of brush,I hopped out and bagged twelve quail; and a little farther on, by alucky sneak, I managed to gather in five ducks from an irrigation pond.On another occasion, having a spare hour before lunch, I started outafoot from the ranch house at five minutes past eleven, found my quailwithin a quarter mile, had luck in scattering them, secured my limit oftwenty-five, and was back at the house at twelve twenty-five! Beforethis I had been to drive with Mrs. Kitty; and after lunch we drovetwelve miles to call on a neighbour. Although I had enjoyed a full day'squail shoot, it had been, as it were, merely an interpolation.
Occasionally, however, it was elected to make a grand and formal raid onthe game. This could be either a get-up-early-in-the-morning session inthe blinds, a formal quail hunt, or the Grand Tour.
To take the Grand Tour we got out the Liver Invigorator and as manysaddle horses as might be needed to accommodate the shooters. Onreaching the hog field it was proper to disembark, and to line up for anadvance on the corner of the irrigation ditch where I had sounexpectedly jumped the ducks my first morning on the ranch. In extendedorder we approached. If ducks were there, they got a great hammering.Everybody shot joyously--whether in sure range or not, it must beconfessed. The birds went into a common bag, for it would be impossibleto say who had killed what. After congratulations and reproaches, bothof which might be looked upon as sacrifices to the great god Josh, weswung to the left and tramped a half mile to the artesian well. TheInvigorator and saddle horses followed at a respectful distance. When wehad investigated the chances at the well, we climbed aboard again andrattlety-banged across country to the Slough.
The Slough comprised a wide and varied country. In proper application itwas a little winding ravine sunk eight or ten feet below the flat plain,and filled with water. This water had been grown thick with trees, butoccasionally, for some reason to me unknown, the growth gave space fortiny open ponds or channels. These were further screened by occasionalwillows or greasewood growing on the banks. They were famous loafingplaces for mallards.
It was great fun to slip from bend to bend of the Slough, peeringkeenly, moving softly, trying to spy through the thick growth to aglimpse of the clear water. The ducks were very wary. It was necessaryto know the exact location of each piece of open water, itssurroundings, and how best it was to be approached. Only too often, peeras cautiously as we might, the wily old mallards would catch a glimpseof some slight motion. At once they would begin to swim back and forthuneasily. Always then we would withdraw cautiously, hoping against hopethat suspicion would die. It never did. Our stalk would disclose to usonly a troubled surface of water on which floated lightly a half dozenfeathers.
But when things went right we had a beautiful shot. The ducks toweredstraight up, trying to get above the level of the brush, affording ashot at twenty-five or thirty yards' range. We always tried to avoidshooting at the same bird, but did not always succeed. Old Ben delightedin this work, for now he had a chance to plunge in after the fallen. Asa matter of fact, it would have been quite useless to shoot ducks inthese circumstances had we not possessed a good retriever like Old Ben.
The Slough proper was about two miles long, and had probably eight orten "holes" in which ducks might be expected. The region of the Sloughwas, however, a different matter.
It was a fascinating stretch of country, partly marshy, partly dry, butall of it overgrown with tall and rustling tules. These reeds weresometimes so dense that one could not force his way through them; atothers so low and thin that they barely made good quail cover. Almosteverywhere a team could be driven; and yet there were soft places andwater channels and pond holes in which a horse would bog downhopelessly. From a point on the main north-and-south ditch a man afootleft the bank to plunge directly into a jungle of reeds ten feet tall.Through them narrow passages led him winding and twisting and doubtingin a labyrinth. He waded in knee-deep water, but confidently, for heknew the bottom to be solid beneath his feet. On either side, fairlytouching his elbows, the reeds stood tall and dense, so that it seemedto him that he walked down a narrow and winding hallway. And every oncein a while the hallway debouched into a secret shallow pond lying in themiddle of the tule jungle in which might or might not be ducks. If therewere ducks, it behooved him to shoot very, very quickly, for those thatfell in the tules were probably not to be recovered. Then more narrowpassages led to other ponds.
Always the footing was good, so that a man could strike forwardconfidently. But again there are other places in the Slough region whereone has to walk for half a mile to pass a miserable little trickle onlyjust too wide to step across. The watercress grows thick against eitheroozy bank, leaving a clear of only a foot. Yet it is bottomless.
The Captain knew this region thoroughly, and drove in it by landmarks ofhis own. After many visits I myself got to know the leading "points ofinterest" and how to get to them by a set route; but their relations oneto another have always remained a little vague.
For instance, there was an earthen reservoir comprising two circularconnecting ponds, elevated slightly above the surrounding flats, so thata man ascended an incline to stand on its banks. One half of thisreservoir is bordered thickly by tules; but the other half is withoutgrowth. We left the Invigorator at some hundreds of yards distance; and,single file, followed the Captain. We stopped when he did, crawled whenhe did, watched to see what dry and rustling footing he avoided, everysense alert to play accurately this unique game of "follow my leader."He alone kept watch of the cover, the game, and the plan of attack. Wewere like the tail of a snake, merely following where the head directed.This was not because the Captain was so much more expert than ourselves,but so as to concentrate the chances of remaining undiscovered. If eachof us had worked out his own stalk we should have multiplied the chancesof alarming the game; we should have created the necessity for signals;and we should have had the greatest difficulty in synchronizing ourarrival at the shooting point. We moved a step at a time, feelingcircumspectly before resting our weight. At the last moment the Captainmotioned with his hand. Wriggling forward, we came into line. Then, verycautiously, we crawled up the bank of the reservoir and peered over!That was the supreme moment! The wildfowl might arise in countlessnumbers; in which case we shot as carefully and as quickly as possible,reloading and squatting motionless in the almost certain hope of along-range shot or so at a straggler as the main body swung back overus. Or, again, our eager eyes were quite likely to rest upon nothing buta family party of mud-hens gossiping sociably.
Just beyond the reservoir on the other side was an overflowed smallflat. It was simply hummocky solid ground with a little green grass andsome water. Behind the hummocks, even after a cannonade at thereservoir, we were almost certain to jump two or three single spoonbillsor teal. Why they stayed there, I could not tell you; but stay theydid. We walked them up one at a time, as we would quail. The range waslong. Sometimes we got them; and sometimes we did not.
From the reservoir we drove out into the illimitable tules. The horseswent forward steadily, breasting the rustling growth. Behind them theInvigorator rocked and swayed like a small boat in a tide rip. We stayedin as best we could, our guns bristling up in all directions. TheCaptain drove from a knowledge of his own. After some time, across theyellow, waving expanse of the rushes, we made out a small dead willowstub slanted rakishly. At sight of this we came to a halt. Just beyondthat stub lay a denser thicket of tules, and in the middle of them wasknown to be a patch of open water about twenty feet across. There wasnot much to it; but invariably a small bunch of fat old greenheads wereloafing in the sun.
It now became, not a question of game, for it was always there, b
ut aquestion of getting near enough to shoot. To be sure, the tiny pond wasso well covered that a stranger to the country would actually be unawareof its existence until he broke through the last barrier of tules; but,by the same token, that cover was the noisiest cover invented for theprotection of ducks. Often and often, when still sixty or seventy yardsdistant, we heard the derisive _quack_, _quack_, _quack_, with which amallard always takes wing, and, a moment later, would see those wilybirds rising above the horizon. A false step meant a crackle; a stumblemeant a crash. We fairly wormed our way in by inches. Each yard gainedwas a triumph. When, finally, after a half hour of Indian work, we hadmanaged to line up ready for the shot, we felt that we had really a fewcongratulations coming. We knew that within fifteen or twenty feetfloated the wariest of feathered game; and _absolutely unconscious ofour presence_.
"Now!" the Captain remarked, aloud, in conversational tones.
We stood up, guns at present. The Captain's command was answered by theinstant beat of wings and the confused quicker calling of alarm. In thebriefest fraction of a second the ducks appeared above the tules. Theyhad to tower straight up, for the pond was too small and the reeds toohigh to permit of any sneaking away. So close were they that we couldsee the markings of every feather--the iridescence of the heads, thedelicate, wave-marked cinnamons and grays and browns, even the absurdlittle curled plumes over the tails. The guns cracked merrily, theshooters aiming at the up-stretched necks. Down came the quarry withmighty splashes that threw the water high. The remnant of the flockswung away. We stood upright and laughed and joked and exulted after thelong strain of our stalk. Ben plunged in again and again, bringing outthe game.
Of these tule holes there were three. When we had visited them each inturn we swung back toward the west. There, after much driving, we cameto the land of irrigation ditches again. At each new angle one of uswould descend, sneak cautiously to the bank and, bending low, peer downthe length of the ditch. If ducks were in sight, he located themcarefully and then we made our sneak. If not, we drove on to the nextbend. Once we all lay behind an embankment like a lot of soldiersbehind a breastwork while one of us made a long detour around a bigflock resting in an overflow across the ditch. The ruse was successful.The ducks, rising at sight of the scout, flew high directly over theambuscade. A battery of six or eight guns thereupon opened up. I believewe killed three or four ducks among us; but if we had not brought down afeather we should have been satisfied with the fact that our stratagemsucceeded.
So at the last, just as the sun was setting, we completed the circle andlanded at the ranch. We had been out all day in the warm California sunand the breezes that blow from the great mountains across the plains; wehad worked hard enough to deserve an appetite; we had in a dozeninstances exercised our wit or our skill against the keen senses of wildgame; we had used our ingenuity in meeting unexpected conditions; we hadhad a heap of companionship and good-natured fun one with another; wehad seen a lot of country. This was much better than sitting solitaryanchored in a blind. To be sure a man could kill more ducks from ablind; but what of that?