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?

CHAPTER XIII

RANCH ACTIVITIES

Big as it was, the ranch was only a feeder for the open range. Way down
in southeastern Arizona its cattle had their birth and grew to their
half-wild maturity. They won their living where they could, fiercely
from the fierce desert. On the broad plains they grazed during the fat
season; and as the feed shortened and withered, they retired slowly to
the barren mountains. In long lines they plodded to the watering places;
and in long, patient lines they plodded their way back again, until deep
and indelible troughs had been worn in the face of the earth. Other
living creatures they saw few, save the coyotes that hung on their
flanks, the jackrabbits, the prairie dogs, the birds strangely cheerful
in the face of the mysterious and solemn desert. Once in a while a pair
of mounted men jog-trotted slowly here and there among them. They gave
way to right and left, swinging in the free trot of untamed creatures,
their heads high, their eyes wild. Probably they remembered the terror
and ignominy and temporary pain of the branding. The men examined them
with critical eye, and commented technically and passed on.

This was when the animals were alive with the fat grasses. But as the
drought lengthened, they pushed farther into the hills until the boldest
or hardiest of them stood on the su