"Got your blind all built, boys, and the decoys is out--four dozen of them," he admonishes, sympathetically. "Days are getting short, now, so you'd better move lively, if you get your limit before dark." CHAPTER X--UPON "WIPING THE EYE" "To poets and epicures, perhaps, the lordly canvas-back--though brown from the oven, I challenge the supercilious _gourmet_ to distinguish between his favorite, and a fat American coot. But for me the loud-voiced mallard, with his bottle-green head and audaciously curling tail; for he will decoy." I am quoting Sandford. Be that as it may, we are there, amid frost-browned rushes that rustle softly in the wind: a patch of shallow open water, perhaps an acre in extent, to the leeward of us, where the decoys, heading all to windward, bob gently with the slight swell. "Now this is something like sport," adds my companion, settling back comfortably in the slough-grass blind, built high to the north to cut out the wind, and low to the south to let in the sun. "On the point, there, this morning you scored on me, I admit it; but this is where I shine: real shooting; one, or a pair at most, at a time; no scratches; no excuses. Lead on, MacDuff, and if you miss, all's fair to the second gun." "All right, Sam." "No small birds, either, understand: no teal, or widgeon, or shovellers. This is a mallard hole. Nothing but mallards goes." "All right, Sam." "Now is your chance, then.... _Now!_" He's right. Now is my chance, indeed. Over the sea of rushes, straight toward us, is coming a pair, a single pair; and, yes, they are unmistakably mallards. It is feeding time, or resting time, and they are flying lazily, long necks extended, searching here and there for the promised lands. Our guns indubitably cover it; and though I freeze still and motionless, my nerves stretch tight in anticipation, until they tingle all but painfully. On the great birds come; on and still on, until in another second-- That instant they see the decoys, and, warned simultaneously by an ancestral suspicion, they swing outward in a great circle, without apparent effort on their part, to reconnoitre. Though I do not stir, I hear the _pat!_ _pat!_ of their wings, as they pass by at the side, just out of gunshot. Then, _pat!_ _pat!_ back of me, then, _pat!_ _pat!_ on the other side, until once again I see them, from the tail of my eye, merge into view ahead. All is well--very well--and, suspicions wholly allayed at last, they whirl for the second oncoming; just above the rushes, now; wings spread wide and motionless; sailing nearer, nearer-- "_Now!_" whispers Sandford, "_now!_" Out of our nest suddenly peeps my gun barrel; and, simultaneously, the wings, a second before motionless, begin to beat the air in frantic retreat. But it is too late. _Bang!_ What! not a feather drops?... _Bang!_ Quack! Quack! _Bang!_ _Bang!_... Splash!... Quack! Quack! Quack! That is the story--all except for Sandford's derisive laugh.