ontinually one was crouching in hopes, when some unexpected flock
stooped toward him as he walked across country. These hasty concealments
were in general quite futile, for it is a fairly accurate generalization
that, in the open, game will see you before you see it. This is not
always true. I have on several occasions stood stock still in the open
plain until a low-flying mallard came within easy range. Invariably the
bird was flying toward the setting sun, so I do not doubt his vision was
more or less blinded.

The most ridiculous effort of this sort was put into execution by the
Captain and myself.

Be it premised that while, in the season, the wildfowl myriads were
always present, it by no means followed that the sportsman was always
sure of a bag. The ducks followed the irrigation water. One week they
might be here in countless hordes; the next week might see only a few
coots and hell divers left, while the game was reported twenty miles
away. Furthermore, although fair shooting--of the pleasantest sort, in
my opinion--was always to be had by jumping small bands and singles from
the "holes" and ditches, the big flocks were quite apt to feed and loaf
in the wide spaces discouragingly free of cover. Irrigation was done on
a large scale. A section of land might be submerged from three inches to
a foot in depth. In the middle of this temporary pond and a half dozen
others like it fed the huge bands of ducks. What could you do? There
was no cover by which to sneak them. You might build a blind, but before
the ducks could get used to its strange presence in a flat and
featureless landscape the water would be withdrawn from that piece of
land. Only occasionally, when a high wind drove them from the open, or
when the irrigation water happened to be turned in to a brushy country,
did the sportsman get a chance at the great swarms. Since a man could
get all the ducks he could reasonably require, there was no real reason
why he should look with longing on these inaccessible packs, but we all
did. It was not that we wanted more ducks; for we held strictly within
limits, but we wanted to get in the thick of it.

On the occasion of which I started to tell, the Captain and I were
returning from somewhere. Near the Lakeside ranch we came across a big
tract of land overflowed by not deeper than two or three inches of
water. The ducks were everywhere on it. They sat around fat and solemn
in flocks; they swirled and stooped and lit