They were covered with mud. Crosson was jealous and suspicious and indignant. They told him that they were looking for the hurt bird. He was furious. He advised them to go along about their own business. It was his bird.
"Who gave it to you?" Drury answered, with a battling look in his soft eyes.
"The Lord and my shot-gun."
"What right you got to go shootin' wild birds, anyway?" Drury demanded.
Crosson was even then devoted to the Bible for its majestic music, if for nothing else. He quoted the phrase about the dominion over the fowls of the air given to man for his use.
Drury would not venture to contradict the Scriptures, and so he turned away silenced. But he continued his search. And Irene followed him.
In sullen humor Crosson also searched, till he heard Drury cry out; then he ran to see what he had found.
Irene and Drury were shrinking back from something that even the son of Nimrod regarded with disquiet. The duck, one wing caked and festered, and busy with ants and adrone with flies, was still alive after all those many days.
Its flat bill was opening and shutting in hideous awkwardness, its hunger-emaciated frame rising and falling with a kind of lurching breath, and the film over its eyes drawing together and rolling back miserably.
At the sight of the three visitors to its death-chamber it made a hopeless effort to lift itself again to the air of its security. It could not even lift its head.