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"Ah!" exclaimed Monsieur le Curé, "you should have seen the duck-blind I had three years ago. This gabion of mine is smaller, but it is in better line with the flights," he explained as he opened the door. "Look out for the steps there are two."
The more I know this modest great man the more I like him, and I have known him in all kinds of wind and weather, for Tanrade is an indefatigable hunter. He and I have spent nights together in his duck-blind a submerged hut, a murderous deceit sunk far out on the marsh cold nights; soft moonlight nights the marsh a mystic fairy-land; black nights -mean nights of thrashing rain.
I saw a lot of houses in the water, made of sticks and trash?" "I was told there were. Of course I've seen the little varmints at times, when I've been hiding in a duck-blind; but they never trouble me, and I don't go out of my way to interfere with them. Ah! there!" He threw up his gun, and a second later two shots rang out in rapid succession.
He had been all night in his duck-blind I doubt if he had much luck, for the wind is from the south. There is a fellow for you who loves to shoot," chuckled the mayor. "Some news for him of game?" I inquired. The small eyes of the mayor twinkled knowingly.
His domain extended for several miles along the beach, and, with deer quietly browsing in his grand old woods, formed a pretty picture. The beach shore now became more thickly settled, while out in the water, a few rods from each little house, arose the duck-blind, with the gunner and his boat inside, anxiously watching for birds, while their decoys floated quietly on the surface of the water.
Back of my pillow was, tightly closed, in three sections, a narrow firing-slit. Beside the bed the candle's glow played over the carved back of the leather-seated chair. Above the closed slit ran a shelf, and ranged upon it were some fifty cartridges and an old-fashioned fat opera-glass. This, then, was Monsieur le Curé's duck-blind, or rather, in French, his gabion.
Was there ever such an indefatigable sportsman? Lucky curé! He was not a prisoner, neither had he been pressed into the customs patrol like a hired assassin. At that moment I knew Monsieur le Curé was snug in his duck-blind for the night, a long two miles from where I lay; warm, and comfortable, with every chance on such a night to kill a dozen fat mallards before his daylight mass.
He had his own gabion now at the lower end of the bay at Pont du Sable, in which he slept and shot from nights when the wind was northeast a comfortable, floating box of a duck-blind sunk in an outer jacket of tarred planks and chained to a heavy picket driven in the mud and wire grass, for the current ran dangerously strong there when the tide was running out.
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