it was his call sounded more like a real turkey.  They answered.  They were gathering in front of us, and I made sure were coming into the glade.  Edd stopped calling.  Then he whispered:  ’Ready now.  Look out!’...  Sure I was looking all right.  This was my first experience calling turkeys and I simply shook all over.  Suddenly I saw a turkey head stick up over the log.  Then!—­up hopped a beautiful gobbler.  He walked along the log, looked and peered, and stretched his neck.  Sure he was suspicious.  Edd gave me a hunch, which I took to be a warning to shoot quick.  That was a hard place for me.  I wanted to watch the gobbler.  I wanted to see the others.  We could hear them all over the glade.  But this was my chance.  Quickly I rose and took a peg at him.  A cloud of feathers puffed off him.  He gave a great bounce, flapping his wings.  I heard a roaring whirr of other turkeys.  With my eye on my gobbler I seemed to see the air full of big, black, flying things.  My gobbler came down, bounced up again, got going—­when with the second barrel I knocked him cold.  Then I stood there watching the flock whirring every way into the forest.  Must have been thirty-five or forty of them, all gobblers.  It was a great sight.  And right here I declared myself—­wild turkey is the game for me.”

Romer manifestly listened to this narrative with mingled feelings of delight and despair.  “Uncle Rome, wild turkey’s the game for me, too ... and by Gosh!  I’ll fix those boots of mine!”

That morning we were scheduled for another bear hunt, on which I had decided to go down under the rim with Edd and George.  Lee had his doubts about my horse, and desired me to take his, or at least one of the others.  Now his horse was too spirited for me to ride after hounds, and I did not want to take one of the others, so I was compelled to ride my own.  At the last moment Lee had been disappointed in getting a mustang he particularly wanted for me, and so it had fallen about that my horse was the poorest in the outfit, which to put it mildly was pretty poor.  I had made the best of the matter so far, and hoped to continue doing so.

We rode up the east slope of Beaver Dam Canyon, through the forest, and out along the rim for five or six miles, way on the other side of the promontory where I had gotten lost.  Here Haught left us, taking with him R.C. and Lee and Nielsen, all of whom were to have stands along the rim.  We hoped to start a bear and chase him round under the high points toward Horton Thicket.

The magnificent view from the head of a trail where Edd started down impressed me so powerfully that I lagged behind.  Below me heaved a split, tossed, dimpled, waving, rolling world of black-green forestland.  Far across it stood up a rugged, blue, waved range of mountains—­the Sierra Anchas.