Page:The Way of the Wild (1930).pdf/275

 webbed feet in water, a loon rose just around a bend of the creek, and Jen, reaching hastily for the gun, barked his knuckle against a tholepin. He was still sucking the bloody finger when a tall gray-blue bird, which had evidently taken alarm at the loon's hurried flight, flapped upward out of a small gully behind a peninsula of salt grass.

It was a long shot for one of Jen's cheap blackpowder shells, but the great blue heron, even larger than most of its kind, was a tempting target. The marshman jerked the gun to his shoulder, aimed carefully and fired. The heron collapsed in the air and, whirling round and round, fell into the marsh a hundred feet from the edge of the creek. Jen picked up his oars and continued his journey, his mood somewhat less savage than before. He would have been better pleased if he had killed the big bird outright; but there was satisfaction in the thought that he had smashed its wing and brought it down crippled and helpless to become prey for the marshland minks.

Jen's temper would have been still further improved if he could have seen at that moment the result of the shot which he had fired perhaps a half hour before—the shot fired at the bald eagle which had robbed him of his duck. He had not missed