“Poor creeters!” he pitied, holding the gay-colored bill of one of them between his fingers. “Ain’ e a beauty!”
“I hope you ain’ gettin’ chicken-hearted,” Uncle Bill twitted, and Sherry grinned back.
“Maybe I is, Uncle.” Sherry’s big fingers gently ruffled the feathers on the duck’s breast to show them to Breeze. They were beautiful, indeed. The trim head had a high crest of purple and green and black feathers. White lines were above and below the poor death-dulled eyes. The throat and warm breast, colored soft tan like a chinquapin, and spotted with white, were bloodstained across the fine black markings. The bill was bright pink; the feet and legs, bright orange. Sherry said they were safe to be loud-colored, for they were hidden under water most of the time.
The drake’s mates were less gay. The brown and gray and white feathers on their trim bodies were quiet as shadows on the water.
All three of them were quite dead, and Sherry tossed them back to Uncle Bill who put them far back under the seat, saying as he did so:
“We better hide ’em fo’ true. Dey’s all summer ducks. It’s five hundred dollars to kill one! Five hundred!”
“Shucks!” Sherry answered, reloading his gun. “Dem white folks way off yonder to Columbia sho’ do make some fool laws!”
“If de game warden was to slip up on you right now you’d wish you had kept ’em, dough. Where’d you git de money to pay?”
“Oh, I know I’d go straight to de gang as a martin to his gourd,” Sherry answered cheerfully. “But I trust to my luck to don’ git caught.”
All three of them laughed, and Uncle Bill thrust the boat silently on. Once Sherry pointed to a hollow high up on the body of a leaning cypress. The tree’s feathery top rose far above the mesh of interlaced vines and branches on the bank of the stream. As likely as not a summer duck made her nest in that hollow. They choose knot-holes or hollows, sometimes forty feet high, sometimes near the water. Queer fowls. Hard to fool.