"Say, there's going to be no more shadows around, no more shadows to—spoil things. The car's waiting—ready."
CHAPTER V
IN THE SPRINGTIME
A gray twilight stealing across the sky heralded the coming of day. It was spring upon the flooded prairielands of Canada; a season which is little more than a mere break between an almost sub-tropical summer and the harshest winter the world knows.
In the shadows of dawn the country looked like one vast marshland, rather than the rich pastures and fertile wheat country, which, in days yet to come, will surely fill the stomach of the whole human world. Wide stretches of water filled the shallow hollows; those troughs between the mountainous rollers of grass, where the land rose like the swell of a wind-swept ocean.
These wide expanses of water were all that was left of snow to the depth of several feet; and in their turn would soon enough be licked up by a thirsty summer sun. This was the annual fertilizing process which left these hundreds of thousands of square miles capable of a harvest which might well set weeping with envy the toil-worn husbandman of older countries.
Just now it was the feed ground of migratory visitors from the feathered world. Also it had consequently become the happy hunting-ground of every man and boy in the neighborhood capable of carrying a gun. They were all there, waiting in perfect silence, waiting with a patience which nothing else could inspire, for the golden light of day, and the winging of the unsuspecting birds.
The dim, yellow streak on the eastern horizon widened, and the clacking of perhaps a hundred thousand tongues screamed out their joy of life. Doubtless the affairs of the day were being discussed, quarrels were being satisfactorily adjusted, courtships were in progress, hasty meals and fussy toilets were being attended to. Doubtless in such a vast colony as had settled in the long hay slough, which looked like a broad, sluggish river, the affairs of life were as important as they are among the human denizens of a city. The clatter and hubbub went on, and left the rest of the world indifferent, as such clatter generally does.
Old Sam Bernard and his pupil, Frank Burton, were among the waiting guns. The light was not yet sufficient, and the geese had not yet begun to rise. They were both armed with ten-bore, double-choke guns, the only weapons calculated to penetrate the heavy feathers of such magnificent game. Both were lying full-length upon the sodden highlands which lined the slough, thrilling with the inspiring tension of keen sportsmen. Their half-bred spaniels crouched between them, their silky bodies quivering with joyous excitement, but their well-trained minds permitting no other demonstration. It was a moment worth living for, both for men and dogs.