Just as the sun sank behind the hills beyond the Oxhide bluffs, Joe, Rob, and Mr. Tucker left Errolstrath for the turkey roost on Mud Creek. The old trapper rode Joe's buffalo pony, while Joe mounted the little roan which had brought his sister so safely from the Indian village; Rob rode Ginger, which Kate had kindly loaned him for the occasion.
They followed the trail up the creek for about a mile, then turned abruptly east over the hills toward Fort Sill military road, then over the open country for another mile, until they arrived at the head of Mud Creek.
The moon had risen in a cloudless sky, and it shines nowhere so brilliantly as in our mid-continent region. Every tree and bush cast a shadow, and the trail over the prairie was lighted up with a golden sheen, so soft and mellow that you could have seen a pin where the grass had been shorn away.
When they arrived at the edge of the woods in the centre of which was the resting-place of the birds, they tied their ponies to saplings, and then quietly walked on into the timber. As soon as they had come in the vicinity of the roost, they squatted on the ground behind the friendly shelter of a large elm, and waited for the coming of events.
They did not have long to wait. Before they had been there a half an hour, two large flocks came stealthily walking down the deep ravines leading into the sheltered bottom where great trees stood in thick clumps, under whose shadow were the unmistakable signs of an immense roost. At the head of each flock, as it unsuspiciously advanced, strutted a magnificent male bird in all the pride of his leadership. Upon his bronze plumage the moon's rays glinted like a calcium light, as its soft beams sifted through the interstices of the bare limbs of the winter-garbed forest.
When the leader of the flock had arrived at the spot where his charge had been accustomed to roost, he suddenly stopped, glanced cautiously around him for a few seconds, then apparently satisfied that all was right, he gave the signal—a sharp, quick, shrill whistle. At that instant, every bird, with one accord and a tremendous fluttering of wing, raised itself and alighted in the topmost branches of the tallest trees.
In a few moments more, numerous flocks having settled themselves for a peaceful slumber, the old trapper said to the boys: "Now is our time; let's begin!"
Joe had his little Ballard rifle, that had never yet played him false on his hunts with the chief of the Pawnees; Rob had a shot-gun, and Mr. Tucker his never-failing old-fashioned piece which he had carried for twenty-five years.
They fired at first almost simultaneously, but after the first discharge each fired on his own hook. The turkeys fell like the leaves in October. The birds not killed at the first fire did not seem to have sense enough, as Mr. Tucker had said, to escape from their doom. They flew from tree to tree at every shot, persistently remaining in the immediate vicinity of the roost, with all the characteristic idiocy of the sage hen.