Page:Oklahoma Arbor and Bird Day, Friday, March Twelfth, 1909.pdf/42

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Louise had persuaded her brother to take her out hunting with him. It was a beautiful spring day and they had had a fine time in spite of the fact that the ducks were all gone and snipe and curlew too wary to stay within reach of a gun.

The meadows and marches were full of blackbirds and bobolinks. The rich, joyful chee-e-e-e from the glossy blackbirds poised on the top of a dead weed or slender willow, where they spread their wings so as to show to the best advantage their brilliant patches of red and yellow, mingled with the clearer, sweeter call of Bob-o-link, Bob-o-link from the bright bits of color swaying and fluttering at the very tip of the canebreaks.

"See that bobolink that just lit on that sunflower stalk! Believe I'll see if I can hit him. Too bad to take nothing home," said Hal.

"Oh, but it's too pretty—don't kill it," objected Louise.

"That's always the way with girls," grumbled Hal. "Don't want a fellow to kill anything. Guess I'll leave you at home next time I go hunting."

"Well, if you want to, I s'pose you can," yielded Lou.

The bobolink tossed and swayed and called until it seemed as if its little heart must burst from excesses of joy.

The boy's gun was aimed.

"Too far away. Can't hit it if I try," said he as he lowered the gun.

Still the bird swayed and fluttered its wings and called.

"Seems 'most as if he was daring us to try to shoot him," said Lou.

"I can't hit him from here, anyway," said Hal, carelessly aiming and pulling the trigger.

Through the puff of white smoke the children saw the bird pause a moment in its fluttering, then fly swiftly.

"You didn't hit it," said Lou in a relieved voice.

"'Fraid I did," answered Hal, regretfully, and as he said it, the bird now flying close to the ground dropped into the grass.

The children picked the dead bird up. The shot had left no mark and not a glossy feather was disturbed, only those at the throat still ruffled as if the interrupted notes of its last call might yet be finished.

"What did you do it for?" asked Louise.

"Why did you let me do it?" returned Hal.

"What are you going to do with it?" questioned the girl.

"Don't know," replied her brother.

"Wish we hadn't done it," said Louise.

"Let's go home. I'm tired," said Hal.

Louise discovered that she, too, was tired. The bright sky seemed suddenly to have become clouded over and a raw chilly wind which they had not noticed before was now blowing. Somehow all the birds seemed to have stopped singing and gone away; at least to Hal and Louise there was but one bird left in the meadow and now that was the poor little bobolink in the pocket of Hal's hunting jacket.—Caroline E Stringer, Lincoln, Neb.