Hostages to Fortune by William Humphrey Page B

the rolling of their eyes allowed. This was the prescribed reaction to the appearance of all ducks, but wood ducks were not to be missed. Not because they were the most prized on the plate, for they were not, but because theirs was the plumage most sought after by tiers of trout flies. The five most indispensable patterns required feathers from the cape of the wood duck drake, and the sale of them was illegal. You got your own or you got none—unless, as both were hoping now, you had a father and a godfather to get them for you. For years the breed had been so near extinction that all shooting of them was banned. They had recovered from decimation and come back in numbers enough to permit shooting—limit one per day. Would these wing over now or would they circle and come back, maybe flock in to the decoys?
    â€œThey’re turning,” Tony whispered. “They’re circling. They’re coming in. Oh, damn it, they’ve seen us! Now or never!”
    This was pass-shooting at tiny targets going fifty miles an hour. The eye had to focus and function with the speed of a camera shutter. He chose a bird out of the flock, tracked it on its line of flight, overtook and passed it, fired and kept swinging. When he looked back the crumpled bird was tumbling out of the sky, striking the water with a splash. Tony too had scored.
    These two would not be plucked, they would be skinned whole. They would make many trout flies; even so, they would soon be used up. The flytying that Anthony had taken up as a hobby had become a business. In the beginning he sold flies to the members of the fishing club. They showed them to friends and soon he was filling mail orders. Now he had several part-time employees, boys and girls whom he had trained and who tied flies as a cottage industry. Never one to do things by halves, he bred his own gamecocks. He kept them in coops and incubated the eggs, always in quest of a strain that would consistently produce feathers with hackles of the requisite stiffness and of the perfect subtle shade of dun blue. Toward the undesirable poults he was unsentimental, businesslike. Lately he had found a use for them. He fed them to the hawks he had begun to fancy.
    Long before they saw them they heard the geese. They appeared over the mountaintops to the northwest. There must have been two hundred of them. They grew louder as the stately beat of their wings brought them overhead. If the ducks streaked over dipping and banking in formation like squadrons of fighter planes, these were bombers massed on a mission navigating a straight and steady course. Big Canada geese they were, recognizable even at that altitude by their white throat patch like a clergyman’s collar. Tirelessly chanting their command, they were like a column of marching men in the regimented, plodding steadiness of their pace, and when one of them got out of line it quickly got back as a straggler among soldiers closes ranks. For a long time they stayed in sight before disappearing into the southern sky, and still for a long time afterwards their honking, more like baying, could be heard against the wind.
    Small flocks, mainly mallards and teal, swooped down only to flare off. There was gunning now throughout the bay and the heavy boom of the big long-range magnums of gunners out on the open water of the river. They decoyed one flock of five and he singled and missed while Tony doubled. Then a distant whistle blew.
    â€œNoon in Hudson,” said Tony.
    A couple of minutes passed and another whistle blew.
    â€œNoon in Catskill,” said Tony.
    Another couple of minutes passed and another whistle blew.
    â€œNoon in Germantown,” said Tony.
    A fourth whistle blew and Tony said, “Noon here.”
    They stacked their guns, rubbed the backs of their stiff necks, stretched themselves, and sat down on the bench. A hot toddy never tasted better than then, and was all the better for being limited to one—many a hunting