Chapter Fourteen.
A Wild-Turkey Hunt.
“Come on!” cried Basil, putting the spur to his horse, and riding forward. “Come on! It isn’t so bad a case after all—a good fat turkey for dinner, eh? Come on!”
“Stay, brother,” said Lucien, “how are we to get near them? They are out on the open ground—there is no cover.”
“We don’t want cover. We can ‘run’ them as we were about to do had they been buffaloes.”
“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed François; “run a turkey! Why it will fly off at once. What nonsense you talk, brother!”
“I tell you, no,” replied Basil. “It is not nonsense—it can be done—I have often heard so from the trappers,—now let us try it ourselves.”
“Agreed, then,” said François and Lucien at once; and all three rode forward together.
When they had got near enough to distinguish the forms of the birds, they saw they were two old “gobblers” and a hen. The gobblers were strutting about with their tails spread like fans, and their wings trailing along the grass. Every now and then they uttered their loud “gobble—obble—obble,” and by their attitude and actions it was evidently an affair of rivalry likely to end in a battle. The female stalked over the grass, in a quiet but coquettish way—no doubt fully aware of the warm interest she was exciting in the breasts of the belligerent gobblers. She was much smaller than either of these, and far less brilliant in plumage. The males appeared very bright indeed—almost equal to a pair of peacocks—and as their glossy backs glanced in the sun with metallic lustre, our hunters thought they had never before seen such beautiful birds.