They stared with an unrestrained and curious insolence. It was their business to clean up the ruin they had wrought. They were piling fallen bricks in rowsthousands of bricks-and shoveling mortar and digging at the mountain heaps of destruction.

WE

E passed out of the town in a heavy lorry, and there gradually unfolded before us that colossal graveyard or battlefield of Verdun.

It

stretched before us first as an empty

plain, and then it became as a great sea of lava, cooled off suddenly and gray and irregular. The look of it was leprous and unhealthy, full of extraordinary indentations and sudden craters. At first were trees, but withered to the roots and standing at preposterous angles, the dry gray splinters of them making sharp silhouettes against the sky. Then there were no trees at all.

Everything that was green had vanished, and there lay before us great stretches like the alkaline deserts of the Far West. Rude crosses appeared in the ditches by the roadside, in the hollows and sudden upheavals. Burst bombs and sleek heavy shells still unspent were in the fields where they had fallen. Hand grenades, round and black, lay together in the hollows like eggs in a nest. By degrees the setting of this colossal stage began to take shape. The amazing camouflaging-the roads that were not roads, the infinite labor of screens and curtains fashioned of boughs and branches that hid the endless trail of life flowing from the fortress to the distant trenches. The cunning and the tireless effort-rocks that were men, and men that were rocks. Cannon that were spattered and splashed to lie like fallow deer hidden in a network of green, as shrinking creatures of the forest might lie with beating hearts, till suddenly with breath of flame to bark out death. They sprawled there in their death throeswheels in air-their once smoking muzzles buried in the earth.

The screens of rushes that so long had sheltered the passage of the troops were torn and bleached by months of rain and sun. They swung back and forth on the long stretching wires as clothes on a line. It was like a colossal and diabolical workshop turning out toys for some atrocious game.

Here at last the secrets were laid bare-the make-believe, the trickery, the fiendish success. These things were an amazement and every moment in the front of one's mind.. This extraordinary race of beings bending of a sudden all their talent and ingenuity into the distorting and masquerading of nature into a game of death. A host of

men who but now had moved across that leprous plain, who had traveled into regions and experiences totally strange and incomprehensible and apart. Behind was left their playground and their workshop, the tools laid down. It was as if something paralyzing, some great elemental force, had swept across that blistered field, had caught and crystallized a great game in full swing, had petrified its action.

IT

T was an empty world for leagues about-not a bird's note, not the whimper of a beast. It was incomprehensible. One looked afar over the undulations of that vast plain-there was not a breath. And yet everywhere was the evidence of intense action, of energy and frenzied haste; all the marks of human and recent habitation. Never was an empty desert so teeming with lifethe passionate effort and the madness, the surging forward and the shouting, and the intolerable pushing back with the rage and the stumblings and desperate sobbing, the coughing sighs, and

death.

One's ear-drums were splitting with the burstings and the tumult and the roar, and the sibilant whistling past of death. One walked unsteadily up and down the gray craters, what with the rocking and the roar. And always was

foes. There was the element of something uncanny-of something to make one's flesh creep, to keep men's nerves perpetually on edge. Because within that emptiness upon which one gazed, where there was no motion and where no life appeared, there were, as a matter of fact, millions of men engaged terrifically in the most intensive warfare, working unceasingly as a great scientific machine with its directing force miles away over there in the shadow against the sky-line perhaps minds and maps which through the medium of wires underground and flashings overground directed the slightest movement of this invisible host. It was a huge and extraordinary and uncomfortable thought, something above and beyond the conception of every-day standards and thought. And the minds that directed. and the men who advanced, who slept like rats in the mud under the earth or crawled inch by inch upon their stomachs in the dark of the night, to be torn by barbed wire or bayoneted or bombed by the enemy, were creatures one and all lifted above all ordinary standards, who endured beyond the endurance meted out to men and who gave their lives finally as men infinitely exalted and of a higher mind.

above the plain--the extraordinary illu

sion of the presence of millions of men in the smoky blue fading off into the sky-line or slipping low upon the earth in khaki color-like mud. There were an uneasiness and a bewilderment of not seeing, but feeling very distinctly, the soft upheaval and movement of the earth, of the consciousness of men under one's feet terrifically digging with smothered and imperceptible noises, deceptive and to be confounded with the mysterious and underground stretchings of nature.

It had been thus for all those yearsan empty plain for leagues about, with far in the distance and hardly perceptible the shadow of Verdun when the sun shone down in the heat of the summer or when the snow fell white and silently all day long. There was always that motionless blank plain, lying in between the town and the belching horrors of the Forts of Vaux and Douaumont.

There was nothing to be seen but the emptiness and the long wide plains stretching away to the horizon on every side an extraordinary panorama. There was nothing at all for human eyes to detect-keen eyes with the vision strengthened by glasses of amazing power. This fight was between invisible

spread out upon that leprous plain, the wreckage of that awful game. The ugly craters full of muddy water and the drowned bodies of shells dipping nose-on into the mud. The torn shoes and ragged socks, the belts and bloody bandages, the buttons and the buckles, the faded rags of uniforms bleached by the snows and the rains a great smearing all over of human beings. And always the regiments and groups of little crosses, climbing the hills or buried in the hollows, and keeping march on either side the broad highways.

Because it was a holiday the widows had come in their long black veils, tirelessly scrutinizing the little crosses with their names and the numbers of the regiments, listening always with a great intensity for a whisper that should tell them-and sometimes finding him whom they sought. There were bare white coffins waiting along the roadside. By their weeping and drawing back and kneeling in the earth one knew they had found their men.

These were things not to be looked at. And yet as we turned to go down the steep way they were the last things we saw. The Boche with his spade-and those kneeling black figures-and innumerable poppies with petals of fine red silk blowing delicately in the wind.

TH

HIS particular patch of sweetbays and myrtles was not more than a half-acre in extent; the bushes in it were rather low; and it lay in the open flat pinewoods, at some distance from any heavy thicket. Such a bit of cover usually looks tempting to a buck. Especially toward the close of the hunting season, when he is wariest, he does not care about lying in á densely thick place. He may be well concealed in such cover, but from it he cannot conveniently reconnoiter; and the business of reconnoitering is the white-tail's life insurance.

I must have walked, I am sure, within ten feet of this buck, lying couched under a fragrant canopy of sweet-bay. I did not see him. He, of course, had seen me from afar; and he did not jump when I was nearest him because, all things considered, he concluded that it was wiser for him to skulk. But when I had passed him some thirty yards he nearly scared me to death by tearing open the bays in a wild rush for liberty. The only difference between a buck doing that kind of thing and a torpedo in full flight is that one has a white tail and the other has a white head. I brought this buck down. He fell just on the edge of the patch of bays, not more than about twenty-five yards from where I had jumped him.

Two hunting comrades with me, seeing the whole performance, came crashing through the little thicket, shouting, calling to each other and to me, and otherwise making much racket. We gathered about the fallen stag, admiring him, for he was a big one, and in his prime. As a chilly rain was falling, we made up a little fire of pine knots. Then, with considerable talking and much struggle, we managed to hang up the buck.

We then decided to resume our hunt. We had not taken five steps back toward the tiny thicket before I heard the bays part quietly, and I caught a glimpse of a second buck sneaking out of the cover! He was larger than the first. Instead of leaping over the bushes, as his fellow had done, he was stealing out, half crouched, under them. The old reconnoiterer had outmaneuvered us.

Despite the break made by his comrade buck with whom he had been lying, despite the sound of the gun, the shouts of the hunters, the breaking of the men through the brush quite near him, our talking the whole business over by a fire within easy gunshot of where he lay, this

ancient tactician of the wilds had decided that, all things considered, it might be wiser for him to stay where he was. However, when we moved back his way he stole out ahead of us. And his strategy saved him.

This little incident illustrates a principle followed by the wildest of our animals, and to some degree by all living creatures. They make constant use of the fine art of reconnoitering. And, if I may judge by the observations of many years, deer do a lot of their reconnoitering while they are lying down. Only a few weeks ago I noticed this thing happen.

I was on a deer stand in comparatively open woods, the wind blowing from the drive to me; and I had tiptoed to this stand with especial care, so as not to let my presence be known by any deer that might be lying on the fringes of the drive. While waiting I heard a Negro cutting wood behind me in the pine forest, perhaps three hundred yards away. In due time the drivers came toward me, and when two hundred yards directly in front of me they started a stag that looked as big as a respectable

OX.

He had huge horns-a twelvepointer, I judged and he was headed straight for me. I was so well hidden that he could not possibly have seen or winded me. Yet he took only about three or four leaps in my direction. Then he halted; a moment later he dashed back through the drivers and made a clean getaway. Later, as I thought over this escape of the crafty buck, I made up my mind that he had long been listening to the sound of the woodsman's ax beyond me, and even before being startled had done enough mental reconnoitering to decide that when he left his bed he wouldn't head toward the place where the chopper was working. It is often on so slight an incident as this that the life of a wild creature depends; and he makes it his business to pause, to consider, to weigh chances, to look the landscape over. To a wild thing "Look before you leap" isn't a gentle piece of advice; it's a stern law. Indeed, it may with truth be said. that most wild creatures reconnoiter their way through this world.

when they were being pursued. A fox acts as if one enemy were just behind him and another right in front of him, and several on each side. If he comes to a slight obstruction, such as a fallen log. he will set his fore feet upon it, pause, and, enjoying the advantage of a slight elevation, will scrutinize the surrounding woods. A wild thing generally pauses at an obstacle, at a road, at a pathway, at a turn. Both a deer and a fox will usually pause at a fence, less to get a stance for jumping than just to look about. Angels are by no means (though I claim a rather desultory acquaintance with them) the only ones to fear to tread where fools rush in.

While a fox is half afraid of crossing a road, he loves to travel one, the reason being, of course, the promised security of the open stretch before him, not to mention the matter of easier going. A fox is exceedingly partial to a path also, and the fact that he shares its use with human beings appears not to disturb him in the least.

D

EER have a small maneuver all their own upon coming to a road; this same performance I have seen, not once, but many times. It must be considered by them a kind of a fool's mate for a hunter, a standard trick move. To make the business concrete, I may say that early one morning I was in an old road bordered by dense thickets of young yellow pines. A hunting comrade was a half-mile off to my left. I was loitering a little at this spot, for I knew it to be a favorite place for deer to cross. Suddenly I heard the unmistakable sound of deer running. started them. ly, I waited.

My friend must have Concealing myself quickThe pines were dewy. A warm, damp breeze was stirring. I knew my scent would carry far. On came the deer. Within twenty yards of the road they stopped. I could manage to see their legs and breasts, but not their heads, and I was in quest of horns.. Mine was strictly a stag party. For two full minutes they thus stood. Then they separated parted company to cross the road-"split for the road," as some old hunters say. Almost at whirlwind speed they crossed the road, and almost a hundred yards apart. I got one of them; at least I shot him as he leaped the road, and followed his track, to find him three hundred yards farther on. But before I found him I discovered that the two bucks had come together again. And

that is what they generally do after parting company to cross a road. One may say to the other, "Do as you please, old man, but I'm going this way." Yet they have a date to meet a few hundred yards across the road. A doe and a buck will sometimes have this kind of an arrangement, but two old stags generally act better thus in concert. Repeatedly I have seen the same maneuver executed, always with the utmost felicity of precision. It is not the "magic hand of chance" that directs such stratagems. It is high intelligence, trained to act swiftly and deftly in moments of peril.

Т

IT appears to me that if any D. S. O.

decorations are to be given for reconnoitering, the wild turkey will get his. His whole existence is one long reconnoiter, just a continuous scouting party. Outrageous fortune has dowered him richly; his size, his splendor, and the ravishing flavor of his flesh have made man covet him with a mighty longing. He therefore, though he carries no big stick, walks very softly. The chances that he will see you before you will see him are about 1,000 to 1. And his hearing is probably keener than his sight.

I remember being in the wild woods. one day near the head of a big lake. As there was much pine-mast about, and scarlet swamp-brier berries, and the sweet seeds of the lotus on the shores of the lagoon, and as the place held much virgin timber, I was on the lookout for turkeys; it goes without saying that the turkeys were on the lookout for me and for the likes of me. A flock came within a hundred yards without my suspecting their presence. Then I saw a snakelike head lift itself out of a patch of gallberries. The head and neck were as stiff as a rod; they glittered in the sunlight. Those marvelous eyes had detected a slight movement that I had made. The gleaming head was withdrawn beneath the bushes; a few moments later it reappeared nearer the edge of the copse. He was periscoping me. Of course, I tried to pretend that I wasn't there at all. But the eyes of a wild turkey are subject to few optical illusions. One long, glittering gaze the old bird gave me, then he dodged under cover, and when next I saw him he was leading the whole flock at a handsome trot directly away from me across the open woods. I saw those birds no more.

On another occasion, early one warm November day, I was on the side of a big wooded gully in the mountains of southern Pennsylvania. It was good turkey country. The original timber had been cut away some thirty-five years

before, and the second growth had attained fine size. Many of the ancient trees that the lumberman had rejected offered ideal sites for turkeys to roost. Wild grapes were plentiful that year; there were some chestnuts; and the bottoms of all the gullies had growths of greenbrier, teaberries, and the like, bearing food in which turkeys delight. I was lying on the ground in the sunshine, basking in the warmth of it and marveling at the lingering beauty of the tattered woodland. The world was so still that I could hear the fall of a damp leaf on the far side of the gully. Stalking game is not always strenuous work; there's the kind of stalking here described: to loaf at ease and "invite your soul," and at the same time to feel that very likely you are doing the very best thing to afford you a chance at a bearded gobbler. gobbler. The real way to stalk a wild turkey is to let him stalk you.

After a half-hour or so I heard a step just over the brow of the ridge beyond the gully. It might be a man I knew, it might be a gray squirrel (yet the squirrel can soon be distinguished by the jumps he makes in the leaves), it might be a ruffed grouse, or it might be the visitor I was prepared to welcome. In a few moments more I saw the sun suddenly catch a shimmering object on the crest of the ridge. It was a wild turkey. He was coming over the top, headed straight for me. In the full sunlight, on a hillside comparatively bare, he would make his approach. It was an unusual opportunity to discover just how a wild turkey when alone behaves when he is without special apprehension.

The great bird's extraordinary deliberateness was incredible. He appeared as much at his ease as a wild turkey is capable of becoming. I noticed that his feathers were all fluffed out and his wings and tail were much relaxed. He came down the slope at an angle, so that he had visibly to foreshorten the leg that was up-hill. The down-hill leg was lifted and placed down with considerable gingerly care, as if he did not want to dislodge anything. Once or twice I saw him try one footing, withdraw his leg, and then set his Number 10 on a firmer place. All this was so much like the behavior of a somewhat timid human walker on a slope that it was very appealing and interesting. At the same time I had a large silver watch in my pocket that emitted a most stentorious tick. I timed the turkey's walking by the ticks of the watch. The slope was approximately seventy yards long, and, since he negotiated it at an angle, he covered probably eighty-five yards. As nearly as I could tell, it took him seven