Well, just about sunset found each of us with six wooden decoys, some in our hunting-coat pockets, others strung around our necks, and with each a pair of those old-fashioned cowhide boots on. We started by hand over those soft, sticky, newly-built clay roads, a great percentage of it running through the unfenced forest; and by the time we got there I can assure you those twelve decoys were heavier than they were when we started. It was a beautiful night; the moon which was only a few days old, lay on its back in the south-west, those two little, sharp, bright horns almost outlining the picture of a full moon. To think of it, even now, calls to my memory a sweet little song my older sister sang to me when I was but a lad:
“Oh, Mama, how pretty the moon is to-night;
’Twas never so lovely before,
With its two little horns, so sharp and so bright—
I hope they don’t grow any more!
If I were up there with you and my friends
We’d rock in it nicely, you see;
We’d sit in the middle and hang on to both ends,
And what a nice cradle ’twould be!
We’d call to the stars to get out of our way