I’ll be a sad son of a bitch, the shooter said to himself. I will indeed
“Get your decoys out,” he called to the man in the boat. “But get them out fast. I won’t shoot until they are all out. Except straight overhead.”
The man in the boat said nothing that could be heard.
I can’t figure it, the shooter thought to himself. He knows the game. He knows I split the work, or more, coming out. I never shot a safer or more careful duck in my life than that. What’s the matter with him? I offered to put the dekes out with him. The hell with him.
Out on the right now, the boatman was still chopping angrily at the ice, and tossing out the wooden decoys in a hatred that showed in every move he made.
Don’t let him spoil it, the shooter told himself. There won’t be much shooting with this ice unless the sun should melt it later on. You probably will only have a few birds, so don’t let him spoil it for you. You don’t know how many more times you will shoot ducks and do not let anything spoil it for you.
He watched the sky lightening beyond the long point of marsh, and turning in the sunken barrel, he looked out across the frozen lagoon, and the marsh, and saw the snow-covered mountains a long way off. Low as he was, no foot-hills showed, and the mountains rose abruptly from the plain. As he looked toward the mountains he could feel a breeze on his face and he knew, then, the wind would come from there, rising with the sun, and that some birds
