The Colonel, feeling himself sweating, although he knew he was protected from the wind by his field jacket, took two tablets from the bottle and a sip of gin from his flask.
The flask was flat and of silver with a leather cover. Under the leather cover, which was worn and stained, it was engraved, on one side, to Richard From Renata With Love. No one had ever seen this inscription except the girl, the Colonel, and the man who had engraved it. It had not been engraved in the same place it was purchased. That was in the earliest days, the Colonel thought. Now who cared?
On the screw-on top of the flask was engraved From R. to R.C. The Colonel offered the flask to the boatman who looked at him, at the flask, and said, “What is it?”
“English grappa.”
“I’ll try it.”
He took a long drink of it; the type of drink peasants take from a flask.
“Thank you.”
“Did you have good shooting?”
“I killed four ducks. The dog found three cripples shot by other people.”
“Why did you shoot?”
“I’m sorry that I shot. I shot in anger.”
I have done that myself sometimes, the Colonel thought, and did not ask him what the anger was about.
“I am sorry they did not fly better.”
“Shit,” the Colonel said. “That’s the way things go.”
The Colonel was watching the movement the dog made in the high grass and sedge. Suddenly he saw him stop; he was quite still. Then he pounced. It was a high leap and a dive forward and down.
“He has a cripple,” he said to the boatman.
“Bobby,” the boatman called. “Bring. Bring.”
The sedge moved and the dog came out with the mallard drake in his jaws. The gray white neck and the green head were swaying up and down as a snake’s might move. It was a movement without hope.
The boatman put the boat in sharp for shore.
“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.”
CHAPTER XLIII
AT the landing, before the long low stone house by the side of the canal, there were ducks laid out on the ground in rows.
They were laid in groups that were never of the same number. There were a few platoons, no companies, and, the Colonel thought, I barely have a squad.
The head game-keeper was standing on the bank in his high boots, his short jacket and his pushed back old felt hat, and he looked critically at the number of ducks on the bow of the boat as they came alongshore.
“It was frozen-up at our post,” the Colonel said.
“I suspected so,” the head keeper said. “I’m sorry. It was supposed to be the best post.”
“Who was top gun?”
“The Barone killed forty-two. There was a little current there that kept it open for a while. You probably did not hear the shooting because it was against the wind.”
“Where is everyone?”
“They’re all gone except the Barone who is waiting for you. Your driver is asleep in the house.”
“He would be,” the Colonel said.
“Spread those out properly,” the head keeper told the boatman who was a game-keeper too. “I want to put them in the game book.”
“There is one green-head drake in the bag who is only wing-tipped.”