Page:The Way of the Wild (1930).pdf/186

 white as snow—a solid mass of big birds of various sizes, some of them almost as tall as a man; whooping cranes, wood ibises, white ibises and egrets of two kinds.

Where the deer paths entered the canebrake the tall rushes through which the hunter rode fell away. In one of these openings at the entrance of a path his horse stopped suddenly with a snort. A small black bear which had just emerged from the brake wheeled with ludicrous haste and vanished amid the canes. At the next opening, warned by an ominous sound, Burliegh scanned the ground ahead of him, tickled his horse's flanks with his heels and spoke two words. The pony, well trained and unafraid, bounded forward, then jumped. His small hoofs passed high over the obstacle—a sixfoot diamond rattlesnake, coiled at the threshold of the canebrake trail.

Presently the hunter found a spot suited to his purpose—the entrance of a wide path striking straight into the cane thicket and crossing another path thirty feet from the thicket's edge. Burleigh halted, sitting motionless in his saddle, his rifle ready, his eyes fixed on the place where the two trails crossed. Two raccoons, a whitetail doe and five swamp rabbits came and went before he saw and shot a rabbit big enough to suit him.

Securing his game, he rode on, still skirting the