The Yearling

Chapter XXIV

The Forrester poisoning killed thirty wolves in one week. There was a pack left of a dozen or two that was wary and avoided the poison. Penny agreed to help with their extermination by the legitimate means of trap and gun. The pack ranged wide and never killed twice in the same place. It invaded the Forrester corral one night. The calves bleated and the Forresters poured out. They found the cows holding the wolves at bay. They had formed a ring, with the calves in the center, and were on the defensive with lowered horns. One calf was dying with a torn throat and two had their tails bitten off neatly at the rump. The Forresters brought down six of the pack. The next day they set poison again, but the wolves did not return. Two of their own dogs found the bait and died horribly. The Forresters were willing to track down the rest of the pack in slower fashion.

Buck came one evening at dusk to invite Penny to join them in a hunt the next morning at dawn. The wolves had been heard howling early that day at a water-hole west of Forresters’ Island. A long dry spell had followed the flood and the high waters had shrunk away. The swamps, the marshes, the ponds, the creeks, were at nearly their usual level. What game was left could be counted on to visit various known water-holes. The wolves had made the same discovery. The hunt would serve two purposes. With luck, all the remaining wolves might be killed. Game also could easily be taken. The plague seemed to have run its course. Venison and bear-meat again tempted the imagination. Penny accepted the invitation gratefully. There were enough Forresters to make any hunt without outside help. It was generosity that had sent Buck to Baxter’s Island. Jody knew it. He knew, too, that his father’s knowledge of the ways of the game was always welcome.

Penny said, “Spend the night, Buck, and we’ll git off soon before day.”

“No, for do I come up missin’ at bed-time, they’ll figger they’s no hunt and not be ready.”

It was agreed that Penny should meet them an hour or so before day, at the intersection of the main trail with their own. Jody tugged at his father’s sleeve.

Penny said, “Kin I carry my boy and my dogs?”

“The dogs, we counted on, since Nell and Big Un was pizened. The boy we hadn’t figgered on, but if you’ll speak for him not to mess up the hunt—”

“I’ll speak for him.”

Buck rode away. Penny prepared ammunition and oiled the guns. The Baxters went to bed early.

It seemed to Jody that Penny was leaning over him, shaking him awake, before he had even had time to go to sleep. It was still night. Rising was always early, but there was usually at least a thin streak of light across the east. Now the world was as black as tar, and the trees still rustled with the night winds. There was no other sound quite like it. For a moment he regretted his anxiety of the evening before. Then he thought ahead to the hunt and excitement warmed him and he jumped from bed in the cold air. He slid his feet along the snug softness of his deerskin rug as he pulled on his shirt and breeches. He hurried to the kitchen.

A fire was crackling on the kitchen hearth. His mother was placing a pan of biscuits in the Dutch oven. She had an old hunting coat of Penny’s over her long flannel nightgown. Her gray hair hung in braids over her shoulders. He went to her and smelled of her and rubbed his nose against her flannel breast. She felt big and warm and soft and he slipped his hands under the back of the coat to warm them. She tolerated him a moment, then pushed him away.

“I never had no hunter act like sich a baby,” she said. “You’ll be late for the meetin’ if breakfast’s late.”

But her tone was friendly.

Jody sliced bacon for her. She freshened it in hot water, then dipped it in flour and put it in an iron skillet to fry to a crisp brown. He had not thought he was hungry, but the sweet nut-like fragrance of it was overwhelming. Flag came from the bedroom and sniffed too.

She said, “You feed that fawn and tie him in the shed before you forgit it. I’ll not be tormented with him while you’re gone.”

He led Flag outside. The fawn was frisky and bolted away. He had trouble in following him and catching him in the blackness. He tied him first, then gave him a mash of meal and water.

He said, “You be good and I’ll tell you about the wolves when I git home.”

Flag bleated after him. If it were only an ordinary hunt, he would almost rather stay home with him. But Penny had said that they meant to kill off the last wolf in the scrub, and he might never see another again as long as he lived. When he went to the house, Penny had come in from milking. The quantity was short because of the early hour. Breakfast was ready. They ate hurriedly. Ma Baxter did not eat but put up a lunch for them. Penny insisted that they would be home again for dinner.

She said, “You’ve said that before, and then come in after dark with your belly pinchin’ you.”

Jody said, “Ma, you’re shore good.”

“Oh, yes. When it’s rations.”

“Well, I’d a heap ruther you was good about rations and mean about other things.”

“Oh, I be mean, be I?”

“Only about jest a very few things,” he soothed her.

Penny had saddled Cæsar when he was at the barn. The horse stamped now, hitched at the gate. He knew a hunt as well as the dogs. They came with waving tails, gulped a pan of grits and gravy, and followed after. Penny slung a coil of rope and the saddle-bags over Cæsar’s back, mounted into the saddle, and pulled Jody up after him. Ma Baxter handed their guns up to them.

Penny said to Jody, “Now take keer how you swing that thing around. You kill your Pa, and you’ll r’aly have to hunt for a livin’.”

It seemed surely that day must break. The horse’s hooves thumped in the sand. The road gave back the sound, then dropped behind them, as it stretched before, in silence. Strange, he thought, that the night should feel more silent than the day, when most of the creatures stirred then, and did their sleeping when the sun rose. Only a hoot-owl cried, and when its crying ended, they rode forward into a dark emptiness. It was natural to speak in whispers. The air was chill. In his excitement, he had forgotten to put on his ragged jacket. He leaned close against his father’s back.

“Boy, you ain’t got on your coat. You want mine?”

He was tempted but refused.

“I ain’t cold,” he said.

Penny’s back was thinner than his own. It was his own fault that he had no coat.

“You reckon we’ll be too late, Pa?”

“Reckon not. Mebbe day’ll hold off ‘til we git there.”

They were ahead of the Forresters. Jody climbed down and tussled with Rip to warm himself, and because the waiting was intolerable. He began to fear they had missed them. Then a clop-clop of hoofs sounded at what seemed some distance and the Forresters were there. All six had come. They greeted the Baxters briefly. The light wind was favorable, blowing from the southwest. If they did not stumble on a wolf sentry, they might take the pack unawares. It would be long-range shooting at best. Buck and Penny took the lead, side by side. The rest followed in single file.

A grayness that was scarcely light crept through the forest. There was an interval between daylight and sunrise that was an unreal hour. It seemed to Jody that he moved in a dream between night and day, and when the sun rose, he would awaken. The morning would be foggy. The grayness lingered in the fog and seemed unwilling to rise through it. The two merged, joined against the sun that would tear them to tatters. The file of riders came out of the scrub and into an open area of grass and live oak islands. A favorite water-hole of the game lay beyond. It was a clear deep pool and something about the water was to the taste of the creatures. It was protected as well with marsh on two sides, from which danger might be seen approaching, and forest on the other two, into which they might quickly retreat.

The wolves had not yet come, if they were coming. Buck and Lem and Penny dismounted and tied the dogs to trees. A thin strip of color like a yellow ribbon lay low across the east. The autumn mist hung above it. Figures were visible only a few feet above the ground. At first the water-hole seemed deserted. Then bodies took shape here and there about it, as though the fog itself had solidified, still gray and tenuous. The antlers of a buck deer formed in the distance. Lem lifted his gun instinctively, then lowered it. The wolves were more important for the moment.

Mill-wheel murmured, “I don’t remember no stumps around that pond.”

As he spoke, the stumps moved. Jody blinked his eyes. The stumps were young bears. There were a good dozen of them. Two larger bears ambled slowly beyond them. They had not seen or winded the buck, or chose to ignore him. The curtain of mist lifted higher. The band of color broadened in the east. Penny pointed. There was movement in the northwest. The forms of the wolves were barely visible, slipping down in single file as the humans had done. The keen nose of old Julia caught a faint taint and she lifted it high and wailed. Penny struck at her to hush her. She dropped flat to the ground.

Penny whispered, “We ain’t got a chancet in the world o’ gittin’ a shot this way. We cain’t git clost enough.”

Buck’s whisper was a growl.

“How about a shot at the buck and mebbe the old bears?”

“Listen to me. One of us kin slip around to the east and south and make a quick dash acrost the south marsh. The wolves’ll be too fur down to turn back. They won’t go to the marsh. They’re obliged to come out to the woods right past where we be now.”

Acceptance of the idea was immediate.

“Go ahead.”

“Jody kin do it as good as a man. And he’s no shot. We’ll need all our shots here.”

“All right.”

“Jody, you ride down jest inside the edge o’ the woods yonder. When you git opposite that tallest pine, you cut right back acrost the marsh towards us here. Jest as you turn, take a pot-shot at the pack. Ne’ mind tryin’ to hit ‘em. Git goin’. Go fast but quiet.”

Jody touched Cæsar’s rump and trotted away. His heart had jumped from its normal position and was beating somewhere high in his throat. His vision blurred. He was afraid he would never see the tall pine, and cut in too soon or too late and bungle the whole business. He rode unseeing. He straightened his back and slid one hand along the barrel of his gun. A blessed stiffening and clarity came to him. He picked out the pine before he reached it. He swung Cæsar’s head sharply to the right, dug his heels into him, slapped his neck with the reins and shot into the open. The marsh water flew under him. He saw the young bears scatter. He was afraid he had not come in far enough behind the wolves. The creeping pack ahead of him hesitated, on the verge of turning back the way they had come. He lifted his gun and shot behind them. They bolted in a mass. He held his breath. He saw them stream toward the scrub. He heard the barking of guns and the sound was music. He had done his part and it was out of his hands. He galloped around the south side of the pond toward the men. The tethered dogs lifted their voices. A single gun spoke now and again. His mind was clear. He wished that he had another shot. He was sure he could take it coolly and accurately.

Penny’s ruse had worked to perfection. A dozen of the gray bodies lay about on the earth. An argument was in progress. Lem wanted the dogs turned loose after the rest of the pack. Buck and Penny were opposed.

Penny said, “Lem, you know we ain’t got a dog kin run down one o’ them streaks o’ lightnin’. They won’t tree like a cat, they won’t turn at bay like a bear. They’ll run forever.”

Buck said, “He’s right, Lem.”

Penny turned excitedly.

“Look at what them young bears has done. They’ve treed. What say we have a go at ketchin’ ‘em alive? Ain’t there a good price on the east coast for live creeturs?”

“That’s what they say.”

Penny swung up in the saddle and Jody eased back behind him.

“Take it easy, men, slower you work on this, better we’ll do.”

Three of the spring cubs, motherless, perhaps, long enough to have forgotten discipline, had not even treed. They sat on their haunches, crying like babies. They made no effort to escape. Penny tied the three together and looped the end of the rope around a large pine. Some of the cubs had only climbed saplings. It was a simple matter to shake them out and tie them too. Two others were high in a larger tree. Jody, as the lightest and nimblest, climbed after them. They climbed higher above him, then scrambled out on a limb. He edged along the limb. It was ticklish work to shake it without falling off himself. The limb cracked faintly. Penny shouted to him to wait. An oak limb was cut and trimmed and handed up. Jody slid down the tree until he could reach it and climbed back. He poked it at the cubs. They clung as though they had grown to the limb. At last they dropped. He climbed down.

The old bears and the buck had vanished with the first shot. Two yearling bears showed too much fight to be taken alive. They were sleek and plump and since both houses were in need of fresh meat, they were shot down for food. The take of cubs was ten.

Buck said, “Now wouldn’t Fodder-wing of loved to of seed this? Now I wisht he was alive to see it.”

Jody said, “If I didn’t have me Flag a’ready, I shore would carry one home.”

Penny said, “And you and hit both git barred out together.”

Jody went close and talked to the cubs. They lifted their sharp snouts, scenting him, and stood up on their hind legs. He said, “Now ain’t you-all proud you goin’ to git to live?”

He moved closer and reached out a tentative hand to touch one. It raked its sharp claws across his sleeve. He jumped back.

He said, “They ain’t grateful, Pa. They ain’t a mite grateful we saved ‘em from the wolves.”

Penny said, “You didn’t look at his eyes good. You picked a mean un to pet. I’ve done told you, where there’s twin cubs, one’ll be friendly and t’other’ll be mean. Now see kin you find one has got a friendly eye.”

“I mought not pick good. I’ll leave ‘em be.”

The Forresters laughed. Lem picked up a stick and began to tease one of the cubs. He poked it in the ribs to make it bite the stick. He knocked it over and it squealed in pain.

Penny said, “Now kill the thing, Lem, if you’re goin’ to torment it.”

Lem turned angrily.

“You have your say-so for your young un. I’ll do what I please.”

“You’ll not torment nothin’ long as I got breath to interfere.”

“You want the breath knocked outen you then, eh?”

Buck said, “Leave off your meanness a little while, Lem.”

“You want a fight, too?”

The Forresters took sides among themselves without rhyme or reason, but this time they all sided with Buck and Penny. They were good-natured from the kill and the catch. Lem glowered but put down his fists. It was agreed that Gabby and Mill-wheel should stay and keep an eye on the cubs in case they chewed loose from their bindings, which ranged from Penny’s rope to Buck’s deer-hide boot laces. The rest would return to Forresters’ Island for the wagon to fetch the cubs.

“Now kin we agree on where to carry ‘em,” Penny said, “me and Jody jest as good to go on home. I got a leetle huntin’ business o’ my own on the way.”

“You fixin’ to go run down that buck?” Lem asked suspiciously.

“If you got to know my business, I’m fixin’ to go on to Juniper Spring and shoot me a ‘gator. I need grease for my boots and I want to smoke me the tail for meat for my dogs. Now you satisfied?”

Lem did not answer. Penny turned to Buck.

“Don’t you reckon St. Augustine’s the best place to sell them cubs?”

“Well, if the price ain’t right, hit’d be wuth a try to go on to Jacksonville.”

“Jacksonville,” Lem said. “I got some business there myself.”

“I got a gal in Jacksonville,” Mill-wheel said, “but I got no business there.”

“If she’s the one got married,” Buck said, “you shore as the devil got no business there.”

Penny said patiently, “Hit’s Jacksonville, then. Now who’s goin’?”

The Forresters looked at one another.

Penny said, “Buck’s the only one o’ you kin trade without quarrelin’.”

Lem said, “The wagon don’t go without me.”

“That’s Buck and Lem, then. Now you want I should go? Ain’t room for but three on the seat.”

They were silent.

Mill-wheel said at last, “You got high shares in the cubs, Penny, but I shore do crave to go. Come to think on it, I got a barrel o’ somethin’ else I’d love to carry and trade.”

Penny said, “Well, I got no cravin’ a-tall to go. Buck, I’ll be beholden to you to look out for my share and do my tradin’ for me. When’ll you go? Tomorrer? All right, if you’ll stop by tomorrer, me and Ma’ll have it figgered what-all we want you to trade for.”

“I’ll not fail you, you know that.”

“I know.”

The party separated. The Forresters went north and the Baxters south.

Penny said, “Love nor money wouldn’t git me to the east coast with them jay-birds. There’ll be broke jugs and broke heads all the way along their track.”

“You reckon Buck’ll do us right?”

“He’ll do right. Buck’s the only one o’ the litter was wuth raisin’. Him and pore Fodder-wing.”

Jody said, “Pa, I feel peculiar.”

Penny halted Cæsar and looked around. Jody was white.

“Why, boy, you jest had too much excitement. Now it’s over, you’ve give out.”

He got down and lifted Jody in his arms. He was limp. Penny propped him against a sapling.

“You’ve done a growed man’s work today. Now set easy and I’ll fetch you a bite to eat.”

He fumbled in the saddle-bags and brought out a cold baked sweet potato and peeled it.

“This’ll freshen you up. When we git to the spring, you take a good drink o’ water.”

At first Jody could not swallow. Then the taste of the sweet potato touched his palate. He sat up and ate it in small mouthfuls. He felt better immediately.

“You’re jest like I was when I were a boy,” Penny said. “You take ever’thing hard and hit leaves you faintified.”

Jody grinned. With any one but his father, he would have been ashamed. He clambered to his feet. Penny laid a hand on his shoulder.

“I didn’t keer to praise you in front o’ the men, but you done noble.”

The words were as strengthening as the sweet potato.

“I’m all right now, Pa.”

They mounted and rode on. The morning haze had thinned and vanished. The November air was crisp. The sun was a warm arm across their shoulders. The black-jacks flamed, the scrub oaks glistened. The fragrance of the purple deer-tongue filled the road. Scrub jays flew across the road. Their solid blue feathered coats, Jody thought, were prettier than the bluebirds’, because there was more of it. The strong smell of the yearling bear over old Cæsar’s rump behind him blended not unpleasantly with the sweat of the horse, the rich smell of the saddle, the deer-tongue and the lingering odor of the sweet potato. He would have a great deal, he thought, to tell Flag when he got home. The finest part about talking to Flag was that he could think most of the talk and not have to try to say it. He preferred talking to his father, but he could never find the words in which to make things clear. When he tried to say a thing that he had thought, the idea vanished while he was still floundering. It was like his efforts to shoot doves in a tree. He saw them, he cocked his gun, he crept close. Then they were gone before he could pull the trigger.

With Flag, he could say, “There come the wolves, slippin’ in to the pond,” and he could sit and see the whole thing, and feel the feelings again, the fears and the sharp ecstasies. Flag would nuzzle him and look at him with his soft liquid eyes, and he could feel that he was understood.

He came to himself with a start. They had picked up the old Spanish trail through the hammock to Juniper Spring. The spring was at its normal level. Debris from the flood was thick about its banks. The spring itself bubbled clear and blue from a bottomless cavern. A fallen tree lay across it. They hitched Cæsar to a magnolia and skirted the spring for ‘gator sign. There was none. An old female alligator who was almost tame inhabited the spring. She raised a swarm of young every second year, and she would swim to the bank when called and take meat thrown to her. She was perhaps down in her cave with the year’s young. Because she was so tame and had been there so long, no one ever disturbed her. Penny was afraid that some day a stranger would come and kill her, finding her easy prey. They worked down the bank of the run. A shipoke flew.

Penny put out a hand behind him to halt Jody. On the opposite bank was a fresh ‘gator wallow. The mud had been packed smooth where they turned and rolled their hard bodies. Penny dropped to his haunches behind a buttonwood bush. Jody dropped behind him. Penny had reloaded his gun. There was shortly a commotion in the waters of the swift-running creek. What seemed a log lifted not quite to the surface. There were two bumps at one end. The log was an eight-foot alligator. The bumps were its heavy-lidded eyes. It submerged again, then raised clear and lifted its fore-quarters to the bank. It crawled slowly to the wallow, heaved its bulk up and down on its short legs, flipped its tail and lay quietly. Penny drew a bead more carefully than Jody had ever seen him do on bear or deer. He fired. The long tail thrashed wildly, but the body sank instantly to the mud. Penny ran up-stream, around the head of the spring with Jody at his heels, and down-stream on the other side of the wallow. The broad flat jaws were opening and closing automatically. Penny held them shut with one hand and gripped a fore-leg with the other. The dogs barked excitedly. Jody took hold and they dragged the body to firm ground. Penny stood up and wiped his forehead with his sleeve.

“That’s light totin’ for a leetle bit,” he said.

They rested, then bent to the work of slicing out the tail meat, which, smoked, would make convenient hunting rations for the dogs. Penny turned back the hide and sliced out the layers of fat.

“The ‘gators is one thing got fat on the flood,” he said.

Jody sat back on his heels with his knife in his hand.

“And likely the moccasins and the turtles,” he said.

“And the birds now,” Penny said. “All excusin’ the turkeys, the birds ain’t suffered pertickler.”

Jody pondered the strangeness of it. The creatures of the water and the creatures of the air had survived. Only the things whose home was the solid land itself had perished, trapped between the alien elements of wind and water. The thought was one of those that stirred him, and that he could never bring to earth to share with his father. It moved now across his mind like a remnant of the morning’s haze. He returned to the fat of the alligator.

The dogs were not tempted by the ‘gator flesh, just as frogs were not to their taste, or coots, or ducks that fed on fishy matters. But when the tail meat, pink as veal, was smoked, the foreign taste and odor would disappear and they would eat it when no better meat was at hand. Penny emptied the lunch from the saddle-bags and filled them with the strips of meat and of fat. He looked at the package of food.

“Kin you eat now, boy?”

“I kin near about eat ary time.”

“Then we’ll eat it jest to be done with it.”

They washed their hands in the running creek and went to the head of the spring for drinking water. They lay flat on their bellies and drank deeply. They opened the lunch and divided it evenly into two portions. Penny left a biscuit filled with mayhaw jelly and a square of cassava pudding. Jody accepted them gratefully. Penny looked at the small protruding belly.

“Where you put it all, I cain’t see. But I’m proud I got it to give to you. There was times when I were a boy, they was sich a passel of us, my own belly lay mighty flat.”

They lay comfortably on their backs. Jody stared up into the magnolia tree over him. The under-sides of the thick leaves were like the copper of the pot that had belonged to his mother’s grandmother. The red cones of the magnolia were beginning to spill their seeds. Jody gathered a handful and dropped them idly on his chest. Penny rose lazily and fed the dogs the scraps. He led Cæsar to the spring to drink. They mounted and turned north toward Baxter’s Island.

West of Sweetwater Spring, Julia began to work a trail. Penny leaned down to look at it.

“Now that’s a mighty fresh buck track she’s got there,” he said. “I’ve a notion to leave her foller it.”

Her tail was in constant motion. Her nose was glued to the ground. She moved ahead rapidly. She lifted her nose high and began to trot with a gaited motion, scenting only by the wind.

“He must o’ cut in right ahead of us here,” Penny said.

The trail kept to the road for several hundred yards, then turned to the right. Julia gave a high thin cry.

Penny said, “Now he’s clost. I’ll bet he’s layin’ up right in the thick.”

He rode into the thicket after the dog. She bayed and a buck swayed to its knees and leaped to its feet. The buck was in full antlers. Instead of rushing away in flight, he charged headlong at the dog. The reason was instantly plain. A doe lifted her smooth unhorned head beyond him. Because of the interruption of the flood, the deer were late with their mating. The buck was courting and ready for fight. Penny held his fire, as he did often when a thing was strange. Old Julia and Rip were as amazed as he. They were fearless with bear and panther and wild-cat, but here, they had expected the game to run. They retreated. The buck pawed the earth like a bull and shook his antlers. Julia gathered her wits and jumped for his throat. He caught her on his horns and tossed her into the bushes. Jody saw the doe wheel and bolt away. Julia was unhurt and came back for action. Rip was at the buck’s heels. The buck charged again, then stood at bay with lowered antlers.

Penny said, “I’m shore sorry, ol’ feller,” and fired.

The buck dropped, kicked a moment and lay still. Julia lifted her hound’s voice in a howl of triumph.

Penny said, “Now I hated to do that.”

The buck was large and fine, well fattened on acorn mast and palmetto berries. His red coat of summer, however, was already shabby. It had turned to the winter’s grayness, the color of the Spanish moss, or the lichens that grew on the north side of the pine trees.

“A month from now,” Penny said, “what with runnin’ all over the scrub courtin’, he’d of been pore and his meat stringy.”

He stood beaming.

“Now ain’t this our day, boy? Ain’t this jest our day?”

They dressed the buck.

Penny said, “I mistrust kin old Cæsar tote all we got.”

“I’ll walk, Pa. Do the buck weigh more’n me?”

“As many stone agin. We’d both best walk.”

Cæsar accepted his load patiently. He seemed to have no fear of the yearling bear, as he had had of the large one. Penny walked ahead, leading him. Jody felt as fresh as though the day were only beginning. He ran in front. The dogs trailed behind. It was not much after noon when they reached the clearing. Ma Baxter was not expecting them so soon. She heard them and came to the gate to meet them. She shaded her eyes against the sun. Her heavy face lightened at sight of the game.

“I don’t mind stayin’ alone when you-all come home with sich as that,” she called.

Jody broke into a babble of talk. His mother only half-listened, concerned with the quality of the meat of buck and bear. He left her and slipped into the shed to Flag. There was not time to sit and talk. He let Flag smell his hands and shirt and breeches.

“That’s bear smell,” he told him. “You run like lightnin’ do you ever smell it clost. And that’s wolf. Since the flood, they’re wusser’n the bear, but we shore cleaned ‘em out this mornin’. There’s three-four left, and you run from them. Now t’other smell is your kin-folks.” He added with a horrified fascination, “Mebbe your daddy. No need to run from them. Yes, they is, too. A ol’ buck’ll kill a fawn or a yearlin’, Pa says, times, in ruttin’ season. You jest run from ever’thing.”

Flag switched his white tail and stamped his feet and tossed his head.

“Don’t you say ‘No’ to me. You listen to what I tell you.”

He untied him and took him outside. Penny was calling him to help with the carrying of the game to the back of the house. Flag bolted at scent of the bear, then returned to sniff cautiously from a distance, craning his slim neck. The skinning and cutting up of the meat took the rest of the afternoon. Dinner had not been cooked. They were not hungry and Ma Baxter waited and cooked the big hot meal an hour ahead of the usual supper time. Penny and Jody ate ravenously at first, but were suddenly so tired that appetite left them when they were half through. Jody left the table to go to Flag. The sun was only now setting. His back ached and his eyes grew heavy. He whistled Flag in. He had wanted to listen to his mother’s and father’s talk about the trading, and to decide what he wanted from Jacksonville for his special portion. But his eyes would not stay open. He stumbled into bed and was instantly asleep.

Penny and Ma Baxter spent the evening discussing their most urgent needs for the winter. Ma Baxter drew up at last a list, carefully written in pencil on ruled paper.

The Forresters stopped the next morning on their way. Jody ran out to meet them and Penny and Ma Baxter followed. Buck and Mill-wheel and Lem were crowded together on the wagon seat. The wagon body behind them was filled with a quarreling, wrestling, whining tangle of shiny black fur, shot through with flashes of small teeth and claws and pairs of bright beady black eyes. Their individual ropes and chains were hopelessly tangled. A barrel of moonshine whiskey stood in the middle. One cub with a longer chain had climbed to its top and sat loftily above the tumult. Jody jumped up on a wagon wheel to peer in. A clawed paw went past his face and he dropped back to the ground. The wagon-load was bedlam.

Penny called, “Don’t be surprised do all Jacksonville take out and foller you.”

Mill-wheel said, “Mebbe hit’d raise the price.”

Buck said to Jody, “I cain’t git over how Fodder-wing would of loved to of seed ‘em.”

If Fodder-wing had been alive, Jody thought wistfully, the two of them might have been taken along to Jacksonville. He looked longingly at the cramped space on the floorboards under the men’s feet. He and Fodder-wing could have sat there comfortably, and so have seen the world.

Buck took the Baxters’ list.

He said, “This look like a heap o’ things wrote out here. If we don’t git a good price and the money don’t hold out, what must I skip?”

“The gingham and the domestick,” Ma Baxter said.

Penny said, “No, Buck, you git Ma’s gingham, whatever come. Git the gingham and the ax head and the shell cases and lead. And the hickory shirtin’, that’s Jody’s portion.”

“Blue and white,” Jody called. “All mingledy, Buck, like a joint snake.”

Buck shouted, “Well, if they ain’t money enough, we’ll stop and ketch some more bears.”

He slapped the reins over the backs of the horses.

Ma Baxter shrilled after him, “The wool cloth’s the worst needed.”

Lem said, “Stop this wagon. You see what I see?”

He jerked his thumb at the deer-hide stretched on the smoke-house wall. He jumped down from the wagon-seat and opened the gate and walked with long rangy strides to the smoke-house. He turned aside, searching. He discovered the antlers, drying on a nail. He walked deliberately to Penny and knocked him against the smoke-house wall. Penny went white. Buck and Mill-wheel came hurrying. Ma Baxter turned and ran into the house for Penny’s gun.

Lem said, “That’ll learn you to lie to me and slip off that-a-way. Wasn’t goin’ after the buck, eh?”

Penny said, “I’d ought to kill you for that, Lem, but you’re too sorry to kill. Gittin’ that buck was pure happen-so.”

“You’re lyin’.”

Penny turned to Buck, ignoring Lem.

He said, “Buck, no man’s never knowed me to lie. If you-all had remembered that, you’d not of got beat in the dog-trade.”

Buck said, “That’s right. Don’t pay him no mind, Penny.”

Lem turned and stalked back to the wagon and climbed into the seat.

Buck said in a low voice, “I’m powerful sorry, Penny. He’s mean, at best. He’s been this-a-way ever since Oliver takened his gal away from him. He’s got ugly as a buck-deer that cain’t find his doe.”

Penny said, “I was aimin’ to give you-all a quarter o’ the venison on your way back. I’ll swear, Buck, this be hard to forgive.”

“I’d not blame you. Well, don’t fret about your share in the cubs, or the tradin’. Me and Mill-wheel kin tie Lem in knots ary time he need it.”

They returned to the wagon. Buck lifted the reins and turned the horses around. He would pick up the north road past the sink-hole. It would take them through Hopkins Prairie, past Salt Springs, and so north to Palatka, where they would cross the river and perhaps spend the night before proceeding. Jody and Penny watched after the wagon and Ma Baxter, peering from the door, set down the gun. Penny went into the house and sat down.

Ma Baxter said, “Why’d you take it from him?”

“When one man’s on-reasonable, t’other has got to keep his head. I ain’t big enough to fight him jest-so. All I could of done was to of takened the gun and shot him. When I kill a man, hit’ll be for somethin’ more serious than a ignorant man’s meanness.”

He was plainly unhappy.

“Now I would love to live peaceable,” he said.

To Jody’s surprise, his mother said, “I reckon you done the right thing. Don’t set studyin’ about it no more.”

He could not quite understand either of them. He was filled with resentment at Lem, and with disappointment that his father had let him go unpunished. He was confused by his own feelings. Just as he had changed his allegiance from Oliver to the Forresters, Lem betrayed his father. He finally solved it in his mind by deciding to hate Lem, but to continue to like the others, especially Buck. The hate and the friendliness were of equal satisfaction.

There was nothing in particular to be done in the way of work, and he spent the morning helping his mother peel pomegranates and string the peelings to dry. They were the best remedy, she said, for dysentery. He ate so many pomegranates that she was afraid he would need the remedy before it was ready. He liked to bite the transparent crispness from around the seeds.