“I’ll take him,” the Colonel said. “Bobby!”
He took the duck from the dog’s light-holding mouth and felt him intact and sound and beautiful to hold, and with his heart beating and his captured, hopeless eyes.
He looked at him carefully, gentling him as you might gentle a horse.
“He’s only wing-tipped,” he said. “We’ll keep him for a caller or to turn loose in the Spring. Here, take him and put him in the sack with the hen.”
The boatman took him carefully and put him in the burlap bag that was under the bow. The Colonel heard the hen speak to him. Or, maybe she is protesting, he thought. He could not understand duck-talk through a burlap bag.
“Take a shot of this,” he said to the boatman. “It’s damned cold today.”
The boatman took the flask and drank deeply again.
“Thank you,” he said. “Your grappa is very, very good.”
