“I cal’late I must have fell asleep, for when I looked at my watch it was close to one o’clock, and time for us to be gittin’ back to the port. I got up and stretched and took an observation, but further’n Clarissa’s umbrella on the skyline, I didn’t see anything stirrin’. Brother James wa’n’t visible, but I jedged he was within hailin’ distance. You can’t see very fur on that point, there’s too many sand hills and hummocks.
“I started over toward the Greased Lightnin’. I’d gone a little ways, and was down in a gully between two big hummocks, when ‘Bang! bang!’ goes both barrels of a shotgun, and that Todd critter busts out hollerin’ like all possessed.
“‘Hooray!’ he squeals, in that squeaky voice of his. ‘Hooray! I’ve got ’em! I’ve got ’em!’
“Thinks I, ‘What in the nation does that lunatic cal’late he’s shot?’ And I left my own gun layin’ where ’twas and piled up over the edge of that sand bank like a cat over a fence. And then I see a sight.
“There was James, hoppin’ up and down in the beach grass, squealin’ like a Guinea hen with a sore throat, and wavin’ his gun with one wing—arm, I mean—and there in front of him, in the foam at the edge of the surf, was two ducks as dead as Nebuchadnezzar—two of Lonesome Huckleberries’ best decoy ducks—ducks he’d tamed and trained, and thought more of than anything else in this world—except rum, maybe—and the rest of the flock was diggin’ up the beach for home as if they’d been telegraphed for, and squawkin’ ‘Fire!’ and ‘Bloody murder!’
“Well, my mind was in a kind of various state, as you might say, for a minute. ’Course, I’d known about Lonesome’s ownin’ them decoys—told Todd about ’em, too—but I hadn’t seen ’em nowhere alongshore, and I sort of cal’lated they was locked up in Lonesome’s hen house, that bein’ his usual way when he went to town. I s’pose likely they’d been feedin’ among the beach grass somewheres out of sight, but I don’t know for sartin to this day. And I didn’t stop to reason it out then, neither. As Scriptur’ or George Washin’ton or somebody says, ‘’twas a condition, not a theory,’ I was afoul of.
“‘I’ve got ’em!’ hollers Todd, grinnin’ till I thought he’d swaller his own ears. ‘I shot ’em all myself!’
“‘You everlastin’——’ I begun, but I didn’t git any further. There was a rattlin’ noise behind me, and I turned, to see Lonesome Huckleberries himself, settin’ on the seat of his old truck wagon and glarin’ over the hammer head of that balky mare of his straight at brother Todd and the dead decoys.
“For a minute there was a kind of tableau, like them they have at church fairs—all four of us, includin’ the mare, keepin’ still, like we was frozen. But ’twas only for a minute. Then it turned into the liveliest movin’ picture that ever I see. Lonesome couldn’t swear—bein’ a dummy—but if ever a man got profane with his eyes, he did right then. Next thing I knew he tossed both hands into the air, clawed two handfuls out of the atmosphere, reached down into the cart, grabbed a pitchfork and piled out of that wagon and after Todd. There was murder comin’ and I could see it.