Chapter 11. The Marshes

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_ CHAPTER XI. THE MARSHES

"Real fall weather," that season of 1879, seemed to delay long beyond the appointed time. During each night, to be sure, it grew cold. The leaves, after their blaze and riot of colour, turned crisp and crackly and brown. Some of the little still puddles were filmed with what was almost, but not quite, ice. A sheen of frost whitened the house-roofs and silvered each separate blade of grass on the lawns. But by noon the sun, rising red in the veil of smoke that hung low in the snappy air, had mellowed the atmosphere until it lay on the cheek like a caress. No breath of air stirred. Sounds came clearly from a distance. Long V-shaped flights of geese swept athwart the sky very high up, but their honking carried faintly to the ear. Time seemed to have run down. And yet when the sun, swollen to the great dimensions of the rising moon, dipped blood-red through the haze, the first faint premonitory tingle of cold warned one that the tepid, grateful warmth of the day had been but an illusion of a season that had gone. This was not summer; but, in the quaint old phrase, Indian summer. And its end would be as though the necromancer had waved his wand.

In the meantime the barges and schooners continued to take chances in order to market the last of the year's lumber crop; the small boys and squirrels made the most of the nut crop; the grouse remained scattered in noisy cover; and the ducks frequented the open stretches where they were quite out of reach.

But at last Bobby Orde, awakening early, heard the rising and falling moan of wind past the eaves' corner outside his windows. He hopped out of bed, thrust his feet into a pair of knit socks and ran to the window. The sun was not yet up; but the wild barbaric gold of it was flung abroad over flat, hard-looking clouds.

"'Bright sunrise at morning,
The sailor takes warning,'"

murmured Bobby.

In the yard below, the brown leaves were chasing themselves madly around and about, back and forth, like restless spirits. Others slanted down from the trees in continuous flocks. The maples tossed restlessly. In the air was a deep bitter chill which sent Bobby scurrying back to his warm nest in a hurry.

After breakfast he was glad of his heavier suit. The sun rose and shone, it is true; but its rays possessed no warmth. The light of it appeared to be a cold silver, like the sheen on stubble. All the landscape seemed to have paled. Gone were the rich glowing reds, the warm browns. A gray cast hung over the land.

From school Bobby hurried home to be in time for an early lunch as Mr. Orde wanted to go up river. He found Bucephalus in front; and Mr. Kincaid about to sit down to the lunch table. The latter had on his old gray suit and cardigan jacket.

"Hullo, youngster!" he greeted Bobby, "Looks like pretty good weather for ducks. Want to go for a shoot?"

That settled lunch for Bobby. He could hardly stay at table until the others had finished; and heard with enraptured joy his mother's voice, as she rose from the table, asking Mr. Kincaid about provisions.

"I have all that," replied Mr. Kincaid, "and there's lots of bedding and such things."

Nevertheless Mrs. Orde slipped away after a moment to wrap up a loaf of "salt-rising bread," and one of "dutch bread." The two-wheeled cart Bobby found, when finally he and Mr. Kincaid emerged from the house carrying his valise, to be well packed with the shell-box, gun, bag and a lunch basket. Mr. Kincaid's duck-dog, named Curly, lay crouched in the bottom like a soft warm mat. Bobby had met Curly before. He was a comical seal-brown dog, covered with compact tight curls all over his body. When Bobby petted him, they felt springy. His face, head and ears, however, were smooth and silky. He had yellow eyes, and an engaging disposition. To the touch his body, even through the tight curls, felt unusually warm. Though Curly's tail was a mere stump he wagged it energetically when his master appeared, but without raising his nose from between his forepaws.

Duke pranced out, eager to go, but was called back by Mrs. Orde and ignominiously held. Bucephalus got under way. Bobby hugged the cold barrel of his little rifle between his knees. He had on his "pull-down" cap, and his shortest and heaviest cloth over-jacket, and knit woollen mittens. The actual temperature was not as yet very low, but the wind from the Lake was abroad, and growing in strength every minute. From the flag-pole of the Ottawa they could see the square red storm-flag with the black centre standing out like a piece of tin.

Bucephalus made surprising time. His gait on the open road was a long awkward shamble, but it seemed to cover the ground. Mr. Kincaid humped his shoulders and drove in a sociable silence, his short pipe empty between his teeth. Curly retained his flattened attitude on the bottom of the cart; only occasionally rolling up his yellow eyes, but without moving his head. The wind tore by them madly.

About half a mile beyond the last mill Mr. Kincaid left the main road to turn sharp to the right directly across the broad marshes. Here a makeshift road had been constructed of poles laid in the corduroy fashion. The cart pitched and bounced along at a foot pace. Bobby had no chance to look about him, and could see only that on both sides stretched the wide cat-tails and rush flats; that near them was water. The sun was setting cold and black in hard greasy-looking clouds.

By and by the cart gave one last bump and rose to a little dry knoll like an island in the marshes. Bobby saw that on it grew two elm trees, beneath which stood a rough shed. Beyond a fringe of bushes he could make out the roof of another small structure. Mr. Kincaid stopped at the shed, and began to unharness Bucephalus. Bobby descended very stiffly. Curly hopped out and expressed delight over his arrival by wagging himself from the fifth rib back. You see he had not tail enough for the job, so he had to wag part of his body too. In a moment or so Bucephalus was tied in the shed and supplied with oats from a bag.

"Well, we're here," said Mr. Kincaid, picking up one of the valises and the lunch basket. "Bobby, you carry the guns."

He led the way through the bushes to the other structure.

It was a cabin of boards, long and narrow, about the size and shape of a freight car. The upper end of it rested on dry land, but the lower end gave out on a floating platform. A single window in the side and a stove pipe through the roof completed the external features.

"Door's around in front," explained Mr. Kincaid.

They descended to the float. The door was fastened by a padlock. When it was opened Bobby saw at first nothing but blackness and the flat board prow of a duck-boat that seemed to occupy all available space. Mr. Kincaid, however, lifted this bodily to the float, and, entering, drew aside the curtain to the little window.

Bobby stood in the middle of the floor and gazed about him with unbounded delight. The place contained two bunks, one over the other, a small round iron stove, a shelf table against one wall, and two folding stools. From nails hung a frying pan, a coffee pot, and two kettles. Shelves supported a number of cans, while two or three small bags depended from the ceiling. Those were its main furnishings. But beneath the bunks and piled in one corner were many painted wooden ducks. Around the neck of each was wound a long white cord to the end of which was attached a leaden iron weight; in the bunks themselves lay powder canisters, shotbags, wad-boxes. At one end of the table was fastened a crimper and a loading block. Several old pipes lay about. Burned matches strewed the floor.

"Well, here we are, Bobby," repeated Mr. Kincaid, dropping the valises in the corner, "and it's pretty near sunset; so I guess we'll organize our boat first, while it's daylight."

He descended to the float.

"Now, you hand me down the decoys," said he.

Bobby passed out the wooden ducks two by two, and Mr. Kincaid stowed them carefully amidships. They were of many sorts and sizes, and Mr. Kincaid named them to Bobby as he received them.

"These are the boys!" said he. "Good old green-heads, Worth all the other ducks put together. Their celery-fed canvasbacks may be better--never had a chance to try them--but the canvasback in this country can't touch the mallards. And here, these are blue-bill. They come to a decoy almost too easy. This is a teal--fly like thunder and are about as big as a grasshopper. We'll make our flock mostly of these. Those widgeon, there, wouldn't do us much good. Might put in a few sprig. They're a handsome duck, Bobby; but the most beautiful thing in feathers is the wood-duck. Probably won't get any of them to-morrow, though."

Bobby worked eagerly. Soon he was in a warm glow, the cold wind forgotten, his cheeks like snow-apples, his eyes like stars.

"That's just a hundred," counted Mr. Kincaid, "and its a humming good boat load. It'll do. Now you take this demijohn and fill it from the spring-hole you'll find back of the house, and I'll get the shell-box."

The equipment was finally completed by two wooden shell-boxes to sit on, a short broad paddle and a long punting pole.

By now the sun had dipped below the horizon leaving nothing of its glory in the low-hung, hard clouds. All the world seemed clad in velvet-gray, with dark soft shadows. A gleam of light reflected from water as it showed in patches here and there. It matched and continued the pale green light of the heavens, as though the sky had flowed down and through the blackness of the marshes. The wind came now in heavy gusts, succeeded by intervals of comparative calm. During these intervals could be heard the cries of innumerable wildfowl.

Bobby stood at the end of the float, absolutely motionless, taking it in. His intellectual faculties were as though non-existent. All the sensitiveness of his nature, like the sensitiveness of a photographic plate, was exposed to that which took place before him. No little detail of the scene would he ever forget; and nothing of what its vastness and mystery and turmoil signified in the world of further meanings would be lost to him, though for many years he would not understand them.

But now, as the darkness of the shadows deepened, and the light of water and sky took on a deeper lucence before being extinguished, for the first time the sense of pain and the incompleteness of beautiful things entered his heart. The thing was wonderful; but it hurt. The sight of it filled him to the lips with a passion of uplift; and yet something lacked. And the lack of that something was a pain.

Bobby had forgotten that he was cold, that he was alone, that he had come on an exciting and novel expedition. Mr. Kincaid had disappeared within the cabin.

A whistle of wings rushed in on the boy's consciousness with startling suddenness. Across the face of the evening indeterminate, dark bodies darted low. A prolonged swish of water sounded, and the placid faint light on the lagoon fifty yards away was broken and troubled. For a moment it shimmered, and was still. Absolute darkness seemed abruptly to descend on all the world. From the blackness Bobby heard the low conversational sounds of ducks newly alit.

"_Ca-chuck!_" said they "_ca-tu-kuk!_" and then an old drake lifted up his voice.

"_Mark!_" said he. "_Mark-quok, quok, quok!_"

"Oh, Mr. Kincaid!" whispered Bobby sneaking quietly through the door. "There's a great big flock of ducks lit just outside."

"That so?" queried Mr. Kincaid cheerfully in his natural voice, "Well, we'll get after 'em in the morning. Don't you want any supper?"

Mr. Kincaid had a fire going in the little round stove. The light that leaked from it wavered and flickered over the bunks and the table shelves, and the diminished pile of decoys. Curly was asleep in the corner. Every few moments Mr. Kincaid removed the frying pan from the top of the stove, and turned over its contents with a fork. At such times the light flared up brilliantly, illuminating the whole upper part of the cabin. A lively sizzling arose from the frying pan; and a delicious smell filled the air. Bobby made out a tea-kettle at the back, and the phantom of light steam issuing from its spout.

In a little while Mr. Kincaid straightened up and with a clatter slid an iron stove cover over the opening. He lit a candle, stuck it in the mouth of a bottle, and moved down on the table shelf carrying the frying pan. Bobby then saw that the table shelf had been set with two-heavy plates, cutlery, and two granite-ware cups. The salt-rising bread and dutch bread were laid out with a knife beside them. A saucer contained a pat of butter; a bottle, milk; and a plate was heaped with doughnuts.

"Supper's ready," announced Mr. Kincaid cheerfully. "Sit up, Bobby."

The frying pan proved to contain two generous slices of ham; and four eggs fried crisp.

"What's the matter with this for a feast?" cried Mr. Kincaid; "sail in!"

The man and the boy ate, the flickering light between them. Outside howled the wind. Curly slumbered peacefully in the corner.

"This," proffered Mr. Kincaid after an interval, as he reached toward the basket, "is what my grandfather used to call a 'good competent pie.' Like pie, Bobby?"

"Yes, sir," replied Bobby, "but I mustn't eat the under crust."

"Right you are. Well, there's somebody here who'll eat it for you."

"Do you want it?" asked Bobby, wondering.

Mr. Kincaid laughed. "No, I mean Curly," he explained.

"Will Curly eat pie?" marvelled Bobby.

"Curly," said Mr. Kincaid impressively, "will eat anything you can throw down a hole."

It was a good pie, with lots of room between the crusts, and cinnamon on the apples, and sugar and nutmeg on top. When finally Mr. Kincaid pushed back his stool, Curly gravely arose and came forward to get his share of whatever had not been eaten.

"Now, dishes!" said Mr. Kincaid. "Will you wash or wipe, Bobby?"

"My, I'm full!" said Bobby in the way of indirect expostulation against immediate activity.

"The time to wash dishes is right away," said Mr. Kincaid briskly. "They wash easier; and when they're done you have a comfortable feeling that there's nothing more to be done--and a clear conscience. Did you ever wash dishes?"

"No, sir."

"Well, it's time you learned. Come on."

Bobby learned how to manipulate hot water, soap, and a dish-rag. Also how difficult it is to remove some sorts of grease.

"Condemned!" pronounced Mr. Kincaid severely, returning him the frying pan.

But when the simple task was done, Bobby felt an unusual glow of competence and experience. He was really "camping out." A new ambition to learn came to him, an ambition to do his share and to understand other people's share. Naturally his mind turned first to accustomed things.

"Where's the wood pile?" he asked Mr. Kincaid. "Can't I fill the wood-box?"

"It's just behind the house," approved Mr. Kincaid.

Bobby turned the wooden "button" that fastened the door from the inside. At once it was snatched from his hand and flung open. A burst of wind rioted in, extinguished the candle, flared up the fire in the stove, and hurled a loose paper against the roof.

"Whew!" cried Mr. Kincaid, coming to Bobby's assistance; "she's blowing _some_! When you come back, just kick on the door, and I'll open it for you."

Bobby stood still a moment until his eyes should expand to the darkness. He heard the repeated and rapid _swish, swish, swish_, of wavelets driven against the float, which rose and fell gently beneath his feet. A roar of wind filled the night. Occasionally it lulled. Then quite distinctly he could make out a faint grumbling diapason which he knew to be the surges beating against the distant coast.

The armful of wood he brought in was not very large, but Mr. Kincaid pronounced it enough.

"And now, youngster," said he, "you'd better turn in. We're going to get up very early in the morning."

For as long as five minutes Bobby lay awake between the soft woollen blankets. This was his first experience without sheets. Mr. Kincaid had blown out the candle and was sitting back smoking a last pipe. Light from the dying fire in the stove threw his shadow gigantic behind him. As the flames rose or died this shadow advanced or receded, leaped or fell, swelled or diminished; and all the other shadows did likewise. In the entire room Mr. Kincaid's figure was the only motionless object. Soon Bobby's vision blurred. The dancing shadows became unreal, changed to dream creatures. Twice a realization, a delicious, poignant realization of the morrow brought him back to consciousness; and the dream creatures to the shadows. Then finally he drifted away with only the feeling of something pleasant about to happen, lying as a background to sleep.

He awoke in what seemed to him the middle of the night after an absolutely _black_ sleep. His first thought was that the broad of his back was shivering; his next that the tip of his nose was marvellous cold; his last that he was curled all up in a ball like a furry raccoon. Then he heard the scratch of a match. A light immediately flickered. In two minutes the little stove was roaring and Mr. Kincaid was exhorting him to arise.

"Come on, now!" he called. "Duck time!"

Bobby dressed in his thickest winter clothes, which he had brought for the occasion. When, after breakfast, he put on his reefer and over that the canvas coat, he looked and felt like a cocoon.

"That's all right," Mr. Kincaid reassured him. "It's going to be cold, and you'll be mighty glad of them."

They stepped out on the float, and Mr. Kincaid thrust the duck-boat into the water.

Bobby had never seen so many stars. The heavens were full of them, and the still water had its share. Not a breath of wind was stirring. Through the silence could be heard more plainly the roar of the surf far away. The quacking of ducks came from near and far. Nothing of the marsh was visible.

Bobby took his place on the shell-box in the bow, his rifle between his knees. Curly, without awaiting command, jumped in and lay at his feet. Mr. Kincaid stepped in aft. Bobby could feel the quiver of the boat as it took the weight, but having been instructed to sit quiet, he did not look around. The craft received an impetus and moved forward. Immediately the breaking of thin scum ice set up a crackling.

"Pretty cold!" said Bobby.

"Don't talk," replied Mr. Kincaid in a guarded voice.

They moved forward in silence. Only the slight crackling at the prow, the soft dip of the paddle, and an occasional breath of effort from the paddler broke the stillness. The motion forward was slow; for the back suction in the shallow, narrow channel, which they almost immediately entered, stopped the boat at the end of each paddle stroke. Bobby was vaguely aware of high reeds or low banks on either side; but he could not see ten feet ahead, and he wondered how Mr. Kincaid could tell where to go. Shortly the latter put aside his paddle in favour of the punting pole. Bobby, stealing a glance over his shoulder, saw him standing against the sky.

From right and left, in mysterious side lagoons and pockets, came the low quacking and chattering of wildfowl, now close at hand. They were, of course, quite invisible; but their proximity was exciting. Twice the duck-boat approached so close as to alarm them into flight. They arose, then, with a mighty quacking. Bobby could see the silver of broken water where they took wing; but although there seemed to be enough light against the sky, he could not make out the birds themselves. He clasped his rifle close, and shivered with delight, and patted Curly to relieve his feelings.

For a long time, and for a tremendous distance as it seemed to Bobby they crept along through the lagoons and channels of the marshes. The dawn had not come yet, but the air was getting grayer in anticipation of it, and the wind began to blow faintly from the direction of the Lake. Bobby could see the shapes of the grasses and cat-tails, and make out the bodies of water through which they passed. Almost he could catch the flight of ducks as they leaped; and quite distinctly he saw a flash of teal that passed with a startling rush of wings within a dozen feet of the boat.

And then deliberately the whole universe turned faintly gray, and the smaller stars faded in the lucence of dawn, and the brief, weird world of half-light came into being. At the same moment, Mr. Kincaid turned the boat to the left, forced it by main strength through a thick fringe of reeds, and debouched on a little round pond silvering in the dawn.

The crackling of the duck-boat through the reeds was answered by a roar like the breaking of a great wave. Bobby saw very dimly the rise of hundreds of ducks straight up into the air. The roar of the first leap was immediately succeeded by the whistling of flight.

"My!" breathed Bobby to Curly, "My! My! My!"

But a second roar thundered, as a second and larger flight took wing; and then after an interval a third. The air all around seemed full of ducks circling in and out the limited range of vision before finally taking their departure.

Mr. Kincaid, however, pushed forward without paying the slightest attention to this abundance. Fifteen or twenty yards out in the pond he brought the boat to a stand-still by thrusting his punting-pole far down into the mud.

"We're here, Bobby," he said in a guarded tone. "Turn around very carefully, take off your mittens and help me put out the decoys."

"My, there's a lot of 'em," ventured Bobby in a whisper.

"Yes, this is called the Mud Hen Hole. It's the best place in the marshes. Quick! Get to work! It's getting near daylight!"

Bobby helped unwind the cords from around the necks of the decoys and drop them overboard. Mr. Kincaid moved the boat here and there, scattering the flock in a life-like manner. The gray daylight was coming stronger every instant. Even while they worked in plain sight, big flocks of teal and blue-bill stooped toward them and whirled around them with a rush of wings.

"They're awful close!" whispered Bobby excitedly, "why don't you shoot?"

"Hurry!" commanded Mr. Kincaid.

When the last decoy was out, he thrust the boat hastily into the thick reeds where already a blind had been constructed quite simply by thickening the natural growth. "Crouch down!" whispered Mr. Kincaid; "and don't move a muscle!"

Bobby crouched, drawing his head between his shoulders like a mud-turtle. Curly crouched too. Above and around was the continued whistle of wings as the wildfowl, with their strange, early-morning persistence, insisted on returning to the spot whence they had been so lately disturbed. A movement shook the boat as Mr. Kincaid arose to his feet.

_Bang! Bang!_ spoke both barrels of the ten-gauge.

"Two," said Mr. Kincaid in his natural voice.

"Kneel around to face the decoys, Bobby, and you can see. But when I say 'mark,' don't move by a hair's breadth."

Bobby shifted position and found that he could see quite easily through the interstices of the reeds. On the pond, silvered bright by the increasing day, the decoys floated snugly. Even at close range Bobby was surprised at their life-like appearance. Among them floated two ducks, white bellies to the sky. This was all Bobby had time to observe for the moment.

"Mark!" warned Mr. Kincaid behind him.

A tremendous tenseness fell on the world. Bobby's muscles stiffened to the point of aching. The limited vista bounded on right and left by the sidewise movement of his eyeballs, and above by the brim of his cap contained nothing. He did not dare extend this vista by so much as one inch. But in the air sounded that magic soul-stirring whistle of wings, now gaining in volume until it seemed overhead; now fading until Bobby thought surely the ducks must have become suspicious and left.

And then, low to the reeds across the pond, a long deliberate flight of black bodies against the sky came into sight at the left, slanted across the field of his vision and disappeared to the right. Their wings were set, and every instant Bobby expected to hear the splash of water that should indicate their alighting. But Mr. Kincaid's figure held its immobility. He knew that the wily old mallards were not yet satisfied. Indeed at the last moment, instead of swinging in, they arose with a sudden swift effort, and resumed the slow scrutinizing circle about the pond.

Bobby lived an eternity in the next few moments. His neck muscles grew stiff; his eyeballs strained from a constant attempt to see farther to one side than nature had intended him to see. Each circle he followed visually as far as he could, and then aurally, his hopes arising and falling as the whistling of the wings sounded near or far. And each circle was lower than its predecessor, until at last the flight swung scarcely twenty feet above the tops of the reeds.

Then, quite unexpectedly to Bobby, and when at its farthest from the blind, the flock turned in and headed directly for him, its wings set.

Bobby caught his breath, and his heart commenced to thump violently. Not a bird of them all seemed to move, and yet with the rush of a railroad train each individual grew in size like magic. It was just like coasting--the same breathless headlong feeling--that quivering avalanche of ducks projected at his head so abruptly and so swiftly that he hardly had time to wink. Nearer and nearer they came, larger and larger they grew. Something inside him seemed to expand like a bubble with their approach; like a bubble too rapidly blown, so that at once, without warning, the bursting point seemed to be reached. Instinctively Bobby shrank back. The moment of collision was imminent. Nothing could stop this headlong flight of living arrows launched against his very face. And then, in a flash, the appearance of the flock changed. As though at a preconcerted signal each duck dropped his legs, threw back his head, opposed to momentum the breadth of his wings and tail. An indescribable and sudden rushing sound smote the air. The flock, its course arrested, hung motionless above the decoys in the attitude of alighting.

At this precise instant Mr. Kincaid, without haste, smoothly got to his feet. Involuntarily Bobby arose also. Curly, who up to this instant had even kept his yellow eyes closed, put his forepaws on the gunwale, and craned his neck upward the better to see.

Immediately with a mighty beating of wings the ducks "towered." It was almost incredible, the rapidity with which, from a dead stand, they broke into the swiftest flight--and straight up. Bobby could see them plainly, in every detail, the beautiful iridescent green heads of the drakes, stretched eagerly upward, the dove and the cinnamon of the breasts, the white bellies snowy against the sky. The gun spoke twice. Instantly three of the outstretched necks seemed to wilt. For a brief moment the bodies hung in the air; then plunged downward with increasing speed until they hit with an inspiring _splash, splash, splash!_ that threw the water high. There they floated belly up. The orange-coloured leg of one kicked slowly twice.

"Mallard!" said Mr. Kincaid with satisfaction.

Curly looked inquiringly at his master, then dropped back to his former position in the bottom of the boat. Bobby settled himself on his shell-box----

Swish!----he peered out startled and there among the decoys swam a dozen little ducks, their heads up, their brights eyes glancing suspiciously from one to another of their stolid wooden relations. Before Bobby could realize that they were there, they had made up their minds; and, with the same abruptness that had characterized their arrival, sprang into the air and departed. Not, however, before Mr. Kincaid had shot.

"Only one," said he. "They're a lively proposition."

"What are they?" asked Bobby.

"Teal. They often fly low just over the marsh, and drop in unexpectedly like that."

Daylight was full and broad now; and the sun was rising. With it came the first signs of wind. Ducks filled the air in all directions, some circling about other ponds; others winging their way in long flights toward distant feeding grounds. Every few moments Mr. Kincaid had a shot as some of these dropped to the decoys. Sometimes they came down boldly in an attempt to alight; at others they merely stooped, and flew by. These offered difficult side shots at long range. Always the mallards made their wide circles of inspection; but always Mr. Kincaid waited patiently for them, ignoring absolutely other ducks that in the meantime lit among the decoys. Big flocks of teal manoeuvred back and forth erratically like blackbirds, wheeling, turning, rising and darting without apparent reason but as though at the word of command. The high buzz of their wings was quite different from the whistling flight of the larger ducks. One of these bands came within range, but without attempting to alight. Into the compact formation Mr. Kincaid emptied both barrels. Instantly the air seemed to Bobby full of ducks falling. They hit the water like huge rain drops. Bobby could not begin to keep count; but Mr. Kincaid said nine. Among them was a broken-winged cripple, which at once began to swim toward the rushes on the other side the pond.

"Fetch, Curly!" commanded Mr. Kincaid.

Curly, with a whimper of delight, plunged into the icy water, and with astonishing speed overtook and seized the wounded duck. He returned proudly carrying his prize; was handed in over the gunwale; shook himself like a lawn sprinkler; and resettled himself in the bottom of the boat. Curly was a quiet and reserved character. His specialty was lying still, and swimming after ducks. The rest of life did not interest him.

Now little by little the flight slackened. Longer intervals ensued between the visits to the decoys. The sky was occasionally quite clear of ducks, so that for a few moments Mr. Kincaid and Bobby would rise to stretch their legs. Always they kept a sharp lookout in all directions, and at the first sight of game, even so far away in the sky it looked like a flock of specks, they would drop down into concealment. This was something Bobby could do; and he was always overjoyed when he caught sight of the ducks first; and could say "mark east"--or west or whatever it was--as Mr. Kincaid taught him.

Sometimes the ducks passed far away; but again the direction of their flight brought them within hearing distance of the blind. Then Mr. Kincaid produced his duck-call, and uttered through it the most natural duck sounds.

"Quack!" it said sharply, and then after the briefest possible pause. "Quok-quok-quok-quok-quok!" in increasing rapidity. It was quite remarkable to observe how the flock, apparently with a fixed destination of its own, would hesitate, waver, finally swing down to investigate. At this, Mr. Kincaid's call became confidential and intimate. It uttered all sorts of clucks and half-notes, telling, probably, of the manifold advantages of feed and shelter offered by this particular pond. Then came the slow circles ending with the final breathless, level-winged rush.

But presently, as the sun mounted higher and higher, even these flights ceased. Mr. Kincaid lit his pipe. Curly made trip after trip, carrying in the game.

"Fun?" enquired Mr. Kincaid succinctly.

"I should think so!" breathed Bobby with rapture.

They sat opposite each other in the sociable silence that seemed to come so easily to them. The wind had risen again, until now it had once more attained the proportions of a respectable gale. Bobby liked to watch the brisk puffs as they hit, spread in a fan-shaped ruffle of dark water and skittered away. In the miniature wavelets possible under the lea, the decoys bobbed gravely, swinging to their anchor strings. The sun flashed from their backs, and from the little waves. All about were the tall stalks of reeds; and ahead, where the open water was, grew tufts of grasses that looked silvery-brown and somehow intimate when, as now, Bobby looked at them from their own plane of elevation. They waved and bent before the wind, and the reeds across the pond bowed and recovered; and over the low, flat landscape seemed to hover a brown, untamed spirit of wildness.

But, though the wind blew a gale, the duck-boat was so snugly hidden that hardly a breath reached its occupants. The warm rays of the sun shone full down upon them, first driving the early chill from Bobby's bones, then making him sleepy. He fell into a delicious lethargy, running over drowsily the small details of his immediate surroundings. In the course of a few hours this cosy nest which he had never seen before had become strangely familiar. He experienced a sense of personal acquaintanceship with many of the individual reeds; he recognized, as one recognizes an accustomed landscape, the angle at which certain clumps crossed one another; or the vistas allowed by the different interstices. A marsh wren had business among the galleries. Bobby watched it hop in and out of sight, sometimes right side up, sometimes upside down. A dozen times he thought it had gone; but always it came back, flirting its absurd short tail, one bright eye fixed on the occupants of the blind. When Bobby slipped still further into the warm bright land of laziness, he abandoned even the effort of observation, and amused himself by sifting rainbows through his eye-lashes.

"Bobby!" whispered Mr. Kincaid sharply.

He came to with a start, rapping his knee against the gunwale of the boat. Mr. Kincaid held his hand up warningly, then pointed toward the decoys. Bobby looked, and saw, preening its feathers calmly, a live duck rising to the wavelets. Mr. Kincaid handed over two 22-short cartridges.

Bobby's breath caught with a gasp. His fingers trembling, he opened the breach of the Flobert and loaded; then cautiously thrusting the muzzle through an opening in the reeds, tried to aim. But his heart was thumping like a hammer, and do his best he could not hold the wavering sights in alignment. In vain he recalled all the many principles of accurate shooting he had so laboriously acquired in his target practice. Finally in desperation he pulled the trigger. The duck, with a startled quack, sprang into the air.

"Got one!" chuckled Mr. Kincaid. "That furtherest decoy," he replied to Bobby's unspoken question. "Saw the splinters fly. Must have over-shot three feet."

Bobby, carrying with him the bitterest possible cud of failure, retired within himself and gloomed angrily at the situation from all points of view. He was completely out of conceit with himself. After he had finished his performance, he naturally took to reviewing it and recasting it in terms of success. If he'd only shot at first, before he lost his breath! If he'd only remembered to get his hand away around the grip of the rifle! If he'd only----

As though to test these theories, the Red Gods at this moment vouchsafed him a wonderful favour. As he frowned steadily between the reeds, his attention was dragged by a moving object from its abstractions to that which he gazed on so unseeingly. He came to alertness with a snap. A duck flying not a foot above the water swung in an awkward circle and lit with a long furrowing splash not forty feet away.

Bobby glanced toward Mr. Kincaid. The latter was gazing at the sky, his hands clasped behind his head. Cautiously Bobby reloaded with the other cartridge, and again thrust the rifle muzzle between the reeds. His entire mind was now occupied by a vengeful spirit against himself because of his first miss. Therefore he had no room for self-consciousness or nervousness. The sights aligned with precision, and held rigidly on the mark. His teeth set, Bobby pulled the trigger.

Instantly the duck fell on its side, and, beating the water frantically with its wings, began to kick around in a circle.

"I got him! I got him! Oh, he'll get away!" screeched Bobby in a breath.

At the crack of the rifle Mr. Kincaid had leaped to his feet with surprising agility.

"Well, good boy!" he exclaimed, "I should say you did get him! He won't get away; he's hit in the head."

"Is that the way they act when they're hit in the head?" asked Bobby, still doubtful.

"Yes. Fetch him, Curly."

Bobby took the duck from Curly's mouth and held him up by the bill to drain the water, just as he had seen Mr. Kincaid do. Then he laid his prize across the bow and gloated.

It was a very beautiful duck, with an erect topknot of white edged with black running over the top of its head like the plume of a Grecian helmet. The sides of its white breast were covered with feathers of a bright cinnamon tipped with gray; its back was black and gray with fine black edgings; and its wings were dark with a white and iridescent band on each. But what interested Bobby especially was its bill. This differed entirely from the bills of all the other ducks. It was very long and very slender and had teeth!

"What kind is it?" asked Bobby looking up to encounter Mr. Kincaid's amused gaze.

"Well--it's called a merganser in the books," said Mr. Kincaid.

"I'm going to have mama cook it," announced Bobby, and returned to his blissful contemplation.

Mr. Kincaid grinned quietly to himself. He would not spoil the little boy's pleasure by telling him that his first trophy was a fish-duck, and, beautiful as it was, utterly useless.

No more ducks came for a long time after that. The wind continued to increase, blowing from a clear sky, without scuds. By and by Mr. Kincaid produced a package of lunch, and they ate, drinking in turn from the demijohn that Bobby had filled the night before. The sun swung up overhead, and down the westward slope. With the advance of afternoon came more, but scattered, ducks rushing down the wind at railroad speed, to wheel sometimes into the teeth of it like yachts rounding to as they caught sight of the decoys. When the sun was low and red, thousands of blackbirds began to fly by in an unbroken succession, low to the reeds, uttering their chattering and liquid calls. So numerous were they that the entire outlook seemed filled with the crossing lines of their flight, until Bobby's eyes were bewildered, and he could not tell whether he saw blackbirds near at hand or ducks farther away. Whence they had come or whither they were going he could not guess; but that they had some definite objective he could not doubt. Out from the gray distances of the east they appeared; laboured by against the gale; and disappeared into the red distances of the west.

Now the evening flight of ducks was on in earnest, and the warm excitement of decoy-shooting again gripped hard all three occupants of the boat. Over the wide marshes spread the brief crimson of evening. The sun set and dusk came on. It was first indicated, even before a perceptible diminution of daylight, by the vivid flashes from the gun. Then the low western horizon turned to a dark band between sky and water, and the heavens immediately above took on a pale green lucence of infinite depth.

"More wind," said Mr. Kincaid, glancing at it.

Finally, although it was still possible plainly to see the incoming ducks against the sky, Mr. Kincaid laid aside his gun and picked up the punt-pole.

"Mustn't shoot much after sun-down," he told Bobby. "If we do, there won't be any here in the morning. Nothing drives the duck off the marshes quicker than evening shooting."

He pushed the duck-boat out into the open. Instantly the weight of the wind became evident. Although on the lea side of the pond, the light boat drifted forward rapidly; and Bobby had to snatch suddenly for his cap. Mr. Kincaid snubbed her at the edge of the flock of decoys.

"Pick 'em up, Bobby," said he. "You'll have to do it, while I hold the boat."

Bobby lifted the nearest decoy out of the water and, under direction, wound the anchor line around its neck and stowed it away. This was easy. Also the next and the next.

But by the time he had lifted the tenth he had discovered a number of things. That a wooden decoy is heavy to lift at arm's length over the gunwale; that it brings with it considerable water; that the anchor lines carry with them a surprisingly greater quantity of water; that the water is very cold; that said cold water causes the flesh to puff up, the hands to turn numb, and the fingers to ache. This was disagreeable; and Bobby had not been in the habit of continuing to do things after they had become disagreeable.

"My, but this is awful cold work!" said he.

Mr. Kincaid looked at him.

"You aren't going to quit, are you?" he asked.

Bobby had not thought of it with this definiteness.

When the issue was thus squarely presented to him, his reply of course, was in the negative. But the night got darker and darker; the decoys heavier and heavier; the water colder and colder. Little by little the glory of the day was draining away. Mr. Kincaid, leaning strongly against the punt-pole, watched him for some time in silence.

"Pretty hard work?" he enquired at last.

"Yes, sir," said Bobby miserably.

"Why is it hard?"

Bobby looked up in surprise.

"Because the water is so cold, and the decoys are hard to lift over the edge," he answered presently.

"No; it's not that," said Mr. Kincaid, "It's because you're thinking about how many more there are to do."

Bobby stopped work in the interest of this idea.

"If you're going to be a hunter--or anything else"--went on Mr. Kincaid after a moment, "you're going to have lots of cold work, and hard work and disagreeable work to do--things that you can't finish in a minute, either, but that may last all day--or all the week. And you'll have to do it. If you get to thinking of how long it's going to take, you'll find that you will have a tough time, and that probably it won't be done very well, either. Don't think of how much there is still to do; think of how much you have done. Then it'll surprise you how soon it will be finished."

"Yes, sir," said Bobby.

"Now pick 'em up," said Mr. Kincaid, "one at a time. Don't begin to pick up the next one before you get this one out of the water."

Bobby went at it grimly, trying to keep in mind Mr. Kincaid's advice. The task was as disagreeable, and apparently as interminable as ever, but Bobby had gained this: he had not now, even in the subconscious background of his mind, any desire to quit; and there no longer pressed upon the weight and cold of the decoy he was at the moment handling, the useless and imaginary, but real, cold and weight of all the decoys yet to be lifted.

Nevertheless he was very glad when the last had found its place on the pile amidship.

"Good boy!" said Mr. Kincaid. "Now it's all over."

It was somewhat after twilight; although objects about were still to be made out in the unearthly half-illumination that precedes starlight. Mr. Kincaid lifted his punt-pole and allowed the duck-boat to be carried down wind to the other side of the pond. Here floated the dead ducks. They were lying all along the edges of the reeds, their white bellies plainly to be seen. After all those in sight had been picked up, Curly was allowed a short search on his own account. It made Bobby shiver to see him plunge into the icy water; but Curly did not mind. He found two more inside the reeds; then was hauled over the gunwale and settled himself happily, wet fur and all, in the bottom of the boat.

The homeward trip seemed to Bobby interminable. He was very cold; his fingers ached; the anticipations of the day had all been used. The sudden rise of waterfowl near at hand aroused in him no excitement; their presence was just now useless from the shooting standpoint.

"We might try the big slough to-morrow," said Mr. Kincaid, more as an audible thought than as a remark to Bobby.

"I don't want to go to-morrow," said Bobby.

In spite of Mr. Kincaid's advice, he could not prevent himself from anticipating the arrival at the cabin-float. A dozen little bends he mentally designated as the last before the lagoon; and each disappointment came to him as a personal affront.

But finally, when he had fallen into the indifference of misery, the two elms loomed in silhouette against the skyline.

Mr. Kincaid held the boat while Bobby stepped ashore; then made it fast, and, without bothering with the game, opened the hut and lit the candle. Bobby sat down dully. He had no further interest in life. Mr. Kincaid glanced at his disconsolate little figure humped over on the stool, and smiled grimly beneath his moustache. But he made no comment; and set about immediate construction of a fire.

Bobby relapsed into a dull lethargy which took absolutely no account of space or time. The shadows danced and flickered against the wall. He saw them, but as something outside the real centre of his consciousness. The wind howled by in gusts that shook the structure; Bobby did not care if it blew the whole thing over!

"Come, Bobby! Supper!" Mr. Kincaid broke in on his black mood.

"I don't believe I want any supper," mumbled Bobby.

Mr. Kincaid took two long steps across to him, picked him and the stool up bodily, and set him against the table.

"Now get at it," said he.

Bobby languidly tasted a piece of bread and butter.

In five minutes he was at his fifth slice, and had had four eggs and three pieces of bacon. In ten the world had brightened marvellously. In fifteen Bobby was chattering eagerly between mouthfuls, rehearsing with some excitement the different events of the day.

"To-morrow," said he, "I'm going to shoot a lot."

"Thought you weren't going to-morrow," suggested Mr. Kincaid.

Bobby smiled shamefacedly.

"That's all right, Bobby," said Mr. Kincaid kindly. "Supper makes a big difference to any of us, especially after a long day."

Curly received with gratitude the few scraps and three dog biscuits. The guns were cleaned and oiled. All the ducks were tied in bunches by their necks and hung from hooks on the north side of the hut. Bobby held the heads together while Mr. Kincaid slipped the loops over them. Both counted. Bobby made it eighty-four; while Mr. Kincaid's tally was only eighty-three.

"Enough, anyway," said the latter.

Then Bobby suddenly found himself so extraordinarily drowsy that he actually fell asleep while taking off his shoes. Mr. Kincaid put him to bed. Outside, the wind howled, the water lapped against the float. Inside, the shadows leaped and fell. But Bobby did not even dream of ducks. _

Read next: Chapter 12. The Trespassers

Read previous: Chapter 10. The Sportsman's Association

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