, erect and wary,
painted in black upon the golden water. Another would join it and another.
The cautious mallards, encouraged by this, would swing lower. The music of
their wings seemed incredibly close; he would grip his gun hard, holding
himself rigidly still, feeling clearly each beat of his heart.

Suddenly the ducks would come into view {~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} dark forms with ghostly blurs
for wings, shooting with a roar into the red flare of light. The flash of
his shotgun would leap out twice. The startled birds would bound into the
air like blasted rock from a quarry, and be lost in the purple mystery of
sky, except two or three that hurtled over and over and struck the water,
each with a loud spat, throwing up little jets of gold.

Sometimes there were long waits between shots, but at others the flight
was almost continuous, the air seemed full of darting birds, and the gun
barrels were hot in his hands. His excitement would be intense for a time;
yet after he had killed a dozen birds or so he would often lose interest
and lie on his back listening to the music of wings and of bird voices. He
had that aversion to excess which seems to be in all Latin peoples.
Besides, he did not want many ducks to dispose of.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} It was the rush and
colour, the dramatic quality of the thing that he loved.

Most of the others killed to the limit with a fine unflagging lust for
blood, giving a brilliant demonstration of the fact that civilized man is
the most destructive and bloodthirsty of all the predatory mammals.

The coming of spring was marked by a few heavy rains, followed by the
faint greening of the cottonwood trees and of the alfalfa fields. The grey
waste of the _mesa_ showed a greenish tinge, too, heralding its brief
springtime splendor when it would be rich with the purple of wild-peas,
pricked out in the morning with white blossoms of the prairie primrose.
Now and then a great flock of geese went over the town, following the Rio
Grande northward half a mile high, their faint wild call seeming the very
voice of this season of lust and wandering.

Ramon felt restless and lost interest in all his usual occupations. He
began to make plans and preparations for going to the mountains. He bought
a tent and a new rifle and overhauled all his camping gear. He thought he
was getting ready for a season of hard work, but in reality his strongest
motive was the springtime longing for the road and the ou