The Yearling

Chapter XXIII

The first heavy frost came at the end of November. The leaves of the big hickory at the north end of the clearing turned as yellow as butter. The sweet gums were yellow and red and the black-jack thicket across the road from the house flamed with a red as bright as a camp-fire. The grapevines were golden and the sumac was like oak embers. The October blooming of dog-fennel and sea-myrtle had turned to a feathery fluff. The days came in, cool and crisp, warmed to a pleasant slowness, and chilled again. The Baxters sat in the evening in the front room before the first hearth-fire.

Ma Baxter said, “Don’t seem possible fire-time’s here agin.”

Jody lay flat on his belly, staring into the flames. It was here that he was often able to see Fodder-wing’s Spaniard. By squinting his eyes and waiting for the blaze to shift just-so up a crotched log, he could picture, with no trouble at all, a horseman in a red cape, wearing a shining helmet. The picture never lasted long, for the wood stirred and the logs fell, and the Spaniard rode away again.

He asked, “Did the Spaniards have red capes?”

Penny said, “I don’t know, son. Now you see how handy a teacher’d be.”

Ma Baxter said wonderingly, “Now what put sich a idee as that in his head?”

He rolled over on his side and stretched one arm across Flag. The fawn lay asleep, his legs tucked under his stomach, like a calf. His white tail twitched in his sleep. Ma Baxter did not mind his being in the house in the evening, after supper. She even turned an unseeing eye on his sleeping in Jody’s bedroom, for at least then he was into no mischief. She took him for granted with the critical disinterest she showed the dogs. They were outside, sleeping under the house. On bitter nights Penny brought them in too, not that it was necessary, but because he enjoyed sharing his comfort.

Ma Baxter said, “Throw a stick on the fire. I cain’t quite see to foller my seams.”

She had cut down a pair of Penny’s winter breeches for Jody.

She said, “Now take another notion to grow like you done this spring, and I’ll be cuttin’ down your breeches to fit your daddy.”

Jody laughed out loud and Penny pretended to be offended. Then his eyes twinkled in the firelight and his thin shoulders shook. Ma Baxter rocked complacently. They were all pleased whenever she made a joke. Her good nature made the same difference in the house as the hearth-fire had made in the chill of the evening.

Penny said, “You and me had ought to be gittin’ out that speller, boy.”

“Mebbe the roaches has ate it.”

Ma Baxter poised her needle in the air. She pointed it at him.

“You best study your grammar, too,” she said. “You’d ought to say, ‘The roaches has eat it.’”

She rocked again, placidly.

Penny said, “You know, I got a idee we’ll not have no great cold this winter.”

Jody said, “I like it cold, if ‘twa’n’t for totin’ in wood.”

“Yes, sir, hit look like a good winter. We come out a heap better’n I figgered on the crops and meat. Mebbe a feller kin git his breath now.”

Ma Baxter said, “About time.”

“Yes, sir, ol’ Starvation’s doin’ his huntin’ another place.”

The evening wore on without further speech. There was no sound but the hearth-fire simmering, the puff of Penny’s pipe, and the creak-pat, creak-pat of Ma Baxter’s rocker on the board floor. Once a great whistling passed over the house, like a sudden wind in the pine trees. Ducks were flying south. Jody looked up at his father. Penny pointed the stem of his pipe upward and nodded. If he were not so comfortable, Jody would have liked to ask what kind they were and where they were going. If he could know such things as his father knew them, he could manage, he thought, without the sums and the spelling. He liked the reading. Most of it was tales, not as good as Penny’s — none was — but still, tales.

Penny said, “Well, it’s go to sleep here, or find the bed.”

He rose and knocked out his pipe on the hearth. As he bent, the dogs began to bark and dashed from under the house. It seemed as though his stirring had awakened them from sleep, and they had plunged after an imaginary enemy. Penny opened the front door and cupped his hand to his ear.

“Now I don’t hear a thing but them dogs.”

The calf bleated. The cry was at once of terror and pain. There was another that lifted to a scream, then was abruptly muffled. Penny ran to the kitchen for his gun.

“Fetch a light!”

Jody chose to believe that his mother was indicated. He ran after his father with his own gun, which since old Slewfoot’s last visit he was allowed to keep loaded. Ma Baxter followed unwillingly with a lighted splinter, feeling her way with slow feet. Jody climbed the lot fence. He was sorry now that he had not brought the torch himself. He could see nothing. He could hear only a tumult of fighting and snarling, a snapping of many teeth, the voices of Rip and old Julia silenced. Above it came the desperate voice of his father.

“Git ‘em, Julia! Hold ‘em, Rip! My Lord, the light!”

Jody turned back over the fence and ran to his mother and took the torch from her. The thing that was happening was for Penny to handle. He ran back again. He lifted the torch high in his hand. The wolves had invaded the lot and killed the heifer calf. A band of them, three dozen or more, milled about the enclosure. Their eyes caught the light in pairs, like corrupt pools of shining water. They were emaciated and rough-coated. Their fangs glistened as white as gar-fish bones. He heard his mother screaming beyond the fence and became aware that he was screaming, too.

Penny shouted, “Hold that light still!”

He tried to steady it. He saw Penny lift his gun and shoot once, then again. The wolves turned and flowed over the fence in a gray wave. Rip snapped at their heels. Penny ran shouting after them. Jody ran behind him, trying to keep the light on the swift forms. He remembered that he had his own gun in the other hand. He pushed it at his father and Penny took it and shot again. The wolves were gone like a thunderstorm. Rip hesitated, his light hide plain in the darkness, then turned and limped back to his master. Penny stooped and petted him. He, too, turned, and walked back slowly into the lot. The cow was bellowing.

Penny said quietly, “I’ll take the light.”

He lifted it and swung it about the enclosure. The shredded body of the calf lay in the middle. Near it lay old Julia, her teeth in the throat of a gaunt wolf. The wolf was taking its last breaths. Its eyes glazed. It was tick-ridden and mangy.

Penny said, “All right, gal. Leave go.”

Julia released her hold and stood back. Her teeth, worn by age to the flatness of corn kernels, had accounted for the only casualty. Penny looked at the mangled calf, and at the dead wolf. Then, as though he stared into the green eyes of an invisible enemy, he looked off into the night. He seemed small and shrunken.

He said, “Well—”

He handed Jody his gun and retrieved his own from the side of the fence. He leaned and picked up a hoof of the calf and walked decisively toward the house, dragging the carcass. Jody understood, shivering, that his father meant to have it handy if the marauders returned. He was still frightened. A panther or a bear at bay always terrified him. But there the men had always stood with leveled guns. There the dogs had room to dart in and get away. The fierce pack in the lot had made a sight he wanted never to see again. He wished his father had dragged the carcass into the woods. Ma Baxter came to the door and called quaveringly.

“I had to come to the house in the dark. I never been so scairt. Were it bears agin?”

They went into the house and Penny brushed past her to go to the hearth to the swinging kettle for hot water for the dogs’ wounds.

“Wolves.”

“Oh dear Heaven! Did they kill the calf?”

“They kilt it.”

“Oh dear Heaven! And hit a heifer!”

She followed him about while he poured hot water in a basin and bathed the dogs’ wounds. They were not serious.

“I wisht I could git the dogs on them beasts one at a time,” he said grimly.

In the warm safety of the house, bold now because his mother was afraid, Jody could speak at last.

“Will they be back tonight, Pa? Will we go hunt ‘em?”

Penny rubbed boiled pine gum into Rip’s one deep wound, a jagged tear on one flank. He was in no mood for answers or talk of any kind. He did not speak until he was done with the dogs and had made them a good bed under the house near his bedroom window. He did not mean to be taken by surprise again. He came in and washed his hands and warmed them by the fire.

“Now this be the kind o’ time a man needs a snort,” he said. “I shore aim to beg a quart offen the Forresters tomorrer.”

“You goin’ there tomorrer?”

“I got to have he’p. My dogs is all right, but a big woman and a leetle man and a yearlin’ boy is no match for that many hongry wolves huntin’ in a pack.”

It gave Jody a strange feeling to have his father admit that he could not handle anything alone. But the wolves had never before descended on the clearing in a band. Deer and small animals had been plentiful to feed them. Only a few had come, singly or in pairs, skulking about timorously, running at the first alarm. They had never before been a major menace. Penny took off his breeches and turned his back to the fire.

“Now I was scairt,” he said. “My very bottom’s cold.”

The Baxters went to bed. Jody made sure his window was tight shut. He tried to make Flag lie under the covers with him, but the fawn kicked off the quilt as often as he drew it over him. He was content to sleep on the foot of the bed, and Jody awakened twice in the night and felt down to make sure he was still there. Flag was not as large as the nearly grown calf — His heart thumped in the darkness. The fortress that was the clearing was vulnerable. He drew the quilt over his head and was afraid to go to sleep again. But bed was a comfortable and a sleepy place on the first cold night in autumn—

Penny got an early start for the Forresters’ in the morning. The pack had not returned in the night. He hoped that perhaps one or two were wounded. Jody begged to go with him, but his mother refused outright to stay alone.

“Hit’s all fun to you,” she complained. “‘Kin I go? Kin I go?’ No thought o’ bein’ a man and lookin’ out for your Ma.”

His pride was touched. He patted her arm.

“Don’t fret, Ma. I’ll stay and keep off the wolves.”

“About time. I git the weak jerks, thinkin’ about ‘em.”

He felt bold after his father’s assurance that the pack would not be seen in the daytime, but when Penny rode off on old Cæsar he was uneasy in spite of himself. He tied Flag in his room to a post of the bed and went to the sinkhole for water. On the way back, he was certain he heard sounds that he had never heard before. He looked back frequently, and broke into a trot past the fence-corner. He was not afraid, he told himself, but his mother might be. He chopped wood hurriedly and filled the kitchen wood-box to overflowing and stacked a pile by the hearth, in case his mother thought of it later. He asked if she needed meat from the smoke-house. She did not, but called for a can of cracklings and a bowl of lard.

She said, “Now your Pa went off and never said what to do with the pore calf, bury it or cook it for the dogs or save it for bait. Well, best wait ‘til he says.”

No further outside work was necessary. He bolted the kitchen door behind him.

“You put that fawn out,” she said.

“Ma, don’t make me put him out. Why, the smell of him’d jest toll the wolves from all over.”

“All right, but you got to clean up after him if he don’t mind his manners.”

“I will.”

He decided to study his speller. His mother fished it out from the trunk that held extra quilts and winter clothes and the deed to the Baxter land. He occupied himself with it all morning.

“I never seed you so content with that book,” she said suspiciously.

He scarcely saw the words on the page. He was not afraid, he told himself again. But his ears were strained with listening. He listened all morning for a swift rush of padded feet. He listened for the sweet sound of old Cæsar’s hooves in the sand, and his father’s voice at the gate.

Penny was back in time for dinner. He had eaten little breakfast and was hungry. He would not talk until he had eaten his fill. He lit his pipe and tilted back his chair. Ma Baxter washed the dishes and brushed out the floor with the palmetto sweep.

“All right,” Penny said, “I’ll tell you jest how it stand. Hit’s like I figgered, the wolves was about the worst destroyed by the plague of ary o’ the creeturs. This pack was here last night is all there is left. Buck and Lem has been to Fort Butler and Volusia and no wolves has been seed nor heered since the plague but these uns. Allus in a bunch. They worked over here from near Fort Gates and has been cleanin’ out stock all the way acrost. They ain’t got to feed much, for they’ve been caught at it before they fed, and drove off. They’re purely starvin’, and night before last they got a heifer and a yearlin’ bull o’ the Forresters. Toward daylight this mornin’ they heered ‘em howlin’. After they was here.”

Jody now was eager.

“Will we git to hunt with the Forresters?”

“That’s it. I had me a good go-round with them jessies. We cain’t see it the same way about killin’ ‘em. I want a couple o’ good hunts, and traps around our lot and their corral. But the Forresters is bent on pizenin’ ‘em. Now I ain’t never pizened a creetur and I don’t aim to.”

Ma Baxter flung her dishcloth at the wall.

“Ezra Baxter, if your heart was to be cut out, hit’d not be meat. Hit’d be purely butter. You’re a plague-taked ninny, that’s what you be. Leave them wild things kill our stock cold-blooded, and us starve to death. But no, you’re too tender to give ‘em a belly-ache.”

He sighed.

“Do seem foolish, don’t it? I jest cain’t he’p it. Anyways, innocent things is likely to git the pizen. Dogs and sich.”

“Better that, than the wolves clean us out.”

“Oh now Ory, they ain’t goin’ to clean us out. They ain’t like to bother Trixie nor Cæsar. I mis-doubt could they git their teeth through their old hides. They shore ain’t goin’ to mess up with dogs that fights as good as mine. They ain’t goin’ to climb trees and ketch the chickens. They’s nary other thing here to bother, now the calf’s gone.”

“There’s Flag, Pa.”

It seemed to Jody that for once his father was wrong.

“Pizen’s no worse’n them tearin’ up the calf, Pa.”

“Tearin’ up the calf was nature. They was hongry. Pizen jest someway ain’t natural. Tain’t fair fightin’.”

Ma Baxter said, “Hit takes you to want to fight fair with a wolf, you—”

“Go ahead, Ory. Ease yourself and say it.”

“If I was to say it, hit’d take words I don’t scarcely know to think, let alone speak.”

“Then bust with it, wife. Pizenin’s a thing I jest won’t be a party to.”

He puffed on his pipe.

“If it’ll make you feel better,” he said, “the Forresters said worse’n you. I knowed they’d mock me in the head when I takened my stand, and they done so. And they’re fixin’ to go right ahead and set out the pizen.”

“I’m proud there’s men some’eres around.”

Jody glowered at both of them. His father was wrong, he thought, but his mother was unfair. Something in his father towered over the Forresters. The fact that this time the Forresters would not listen to him, must mean, not that he was not a man, but that he was mistaken. Perhaps, even, he was not wrong.

“You leave my Pa alone. I reckon he’s got more sense than the Forresters.”

She wheeled on him.

“Now mister impudent big-mouth, you’ll git yourself frammed good with a bresh.”

Penny rapped on the table with his pipe.

“Leave off! Ain’t it enough to have trouble with the animals, without the family quarrelin’? Has a man got to die to find peace?”

Ma Baxter turned back to her work. Jody skulked away to the bedroom and untied Flag and took him outdoors for a run. He was uneasy in the woods and did not go far. He called the fawn in and went and sat with him under the hickory tree and watched the squirrels. He decided to gather hickory nuts before the squirrels finished the crop. Mast was plentiful and the squirrels, because of the plague, were not, but he wished, crossly, not to divide the nuts on his own land. He climbed the tree and shook the limbs. The nuts fell in a shower and he climbed down and gathered a pile. He took off his shirt and made a sack of it and filled it with nuts and took them to the house. He emptied the pile on the ground in the shed and spread them out to dry. When he put on his shirt, he realized that he had stained it past all washing with the juice from the hulls. It was a quite good shirt, with only one small patch on it where he had snagged the sleeve sliding down the roof of the corn-crib. He grunted to himself. It was peculiarly difficult to know ahead of time what would get him into trouble and what would keep him out. However, when his mother was angry at Penny, she seldom noticed anything he did.

She smoothed down through the afternoon. After all, the Forresters would get the job done. Three of them rode in toward sunset. They had come to notify Penny of the exact location of the poison, so that he might keep his dogs away from the trail. They had set it out ingeniously. They had done it entirely from horseback, so that the wolves should not scent the hated taint of man. They had prepared chunks of raw meat from their killed heifer and yearling, handling it with pieces of buckskin over their hands while they inserted the poison. The three had separated and ridden over the trails the pack might be expected to follow. They had dug holes with pointed palmetto stems, leaning from the saddle, and dropped in the poisoned bait, raking leaves over it again with their sticks. They had brought the last trail back toward Penny’s lot, in a line from the sink-hole, where the wolves might water or wait for other game. Penny accepted the situation philosophically.

“All right. I’ll keep my dogs tied for a week.”

They accepted a drink of water and a twist of Penny’s tobacco, but refused supper with thanks. They wanted to be home again before night when the pack might return to the corral. They visited with Penny a few minutes and rode away again. The evening passed peacefully. Penny filled more shell-cases, capped them and loaded his gun. He loaded Jody’s muzzle-loader as well. Jody took it and propped it carefully by his bed. He was grateful to his father for including him in such preparations. He lay thinking after they were all in bed. He could hear his father talking with his mother.

He heard him say, “I got news for you. Buck told me Oliver Hutto takened a boat from Jacksonville to Boston and figgered on bein’ there a while before he shipped agin. He give Twink Weatherby money and she slipped off to Jacksonville and got on a boat and follered him. Lem’s rarin’. He says do he meet Twink and Oliver, he’ll kill ‘em all two.”

Jody heard his mother’s bulk, turning, creak the bed.

She said, “Now if the gal’s honest, why don’t Oliver marry her and be done with it? If she’s nothin’ but one o’ them leetle ol’ chipperdales, why do he mess up with her?”

“I couldn’t rightly say. Been so long sincet I was a young buck, studyin’ on courtin’, I dis-remember how Oliver mought figger.”

“Anyways, he hadn’t ought to of let her foller him that-a-way.”

Jody agreed with her. He threshed his legs under the covers in fury. He was finished with Oliver. If he ever saw him again, he would tell him what he thought of him. He hoped most to see Twink Weatherby and pull her yellow hair or throw something at her. Because of her, Oliver had gone away without coming to visit them. He had lost him. He was so angry at him that he did not care. He dropped asleep, painting enjoyable pictures of Twink wandering in the scrub and eating the wolf-poison and falling dead in deserved agonies.