“Forget it, you confounded old dollar-grubber!” A fresh torrent of smoke belches forth, so that I see Sandford’s face but dimly through the haze. “If you mention teeth again, until we’re back––merely mention them––I’ll throttle you!”
The train is in motion now, and the arc-lights at the corners, enshrouded each by a zone of mist, are flitting by.
“Yes,” he repeats, and again his voice has that minor strain of suppressed excitement, “we’re hitting it just right. There’ll be rain, or a flurry of snow, maybe, and the paddle feet will be down in the clouds.” 292
Chapter VI––“Mark the Right, Sandford!”
And they are. Almost before we have stumbled off at the deserted station into the surrounding darkness, Johnson’s familiar bass is heralding the fact.
“Millions of ’em, boys,” he assures us, “billions! Couldn’t sleep last night for the racket they made on the lake. Never saw anything like it in the twenty years I’ve lived on the bank. You sure have struck it this time. Right this way,” he is staggering under the load of our paraphernalia; “rig’s all ready and Molly’s got the kettle on at home, waiting breakfast for you.... Just as fat as you were last year, ain’t ye?” a time-proven joke, for I weigh one hundred and eight pounds. “Try to pull you out, though; try to.” And his great laugh drowns the roar of the retreating train.
At another time, that five-mile drive in the denser darkness, just preceding dawn, would 293 have been long perhaps, the springs of that antiquated buckboard inadequate, the chill of that damp October air piercing; but now––we notice nothing, feel nothing uncomfortable. My teeth chatter a bit now and then, when I am off guard, to be sure; but it is not from cold, and the vehicle might be a Pullman coach for aught I am conscious.
For we have reached the border of the marsh, now, and are skirting its edge, and––Yes, those are ducks, really; that black mass, packed into the cove at the lee of those clustering rushes, protected from the wind, the whole just distinguishable from the lighter shadow of the water: ducks and brant; dots of white, like the first scattered snowflakes on a sooty city roof!
“Mark the right, Sandford,” I whisper in oblivion. “Mark the right!”