Page:Gray Eagle (1927).pdf/272

 ened adult birds rose from the nests with a mighty flapping of wide wings to circle about just above the tree-tops, croaking and squawking. Down from the pine log pitched the big bronze gobbler. For four or five steps he raced along the bank: then his great wings opened and with quick, powerful beats he swept out over the lagoon. Making a wide circle over the water, he nearly brushed the nest of the anhinga with a wing-tip as he shot past, heading at full speed for the big swamp a mile away to the south.

The anhinga, crouching close upon his nest, saw a man come running along the bank—a negro, with a single-barreled shotgun in his hand, peering eagerly across the lagoon in the direction which the turkey had taken.

The hunter saw no bronze-feathered carcass lying on the water, and presently he walked on towards the pine log and searched the ground near it. He found no feathers there either and he grinned disgustedly with a gleam of white teeth. For months he had been trying to get this gobbler, the biggest in those woods, hunting him in season and out. He had tried a long shot from far down the bank because experience had taught him the impossibility of stalking the wise old bird unless conditions were very favorable; and now he was cursing himself for not having made an effort to get closer to his quarry