The Yearling

Chapter XXVI

The cow freshened the week before Christmas. The calf was a heifer and there was rejoicing on Baxter’s Island. It would take the place of the one the wolves had killed. Trixie was no longer young and it was necessary to raise a heifer soon to replace her.

There was little talk at the house except of the coming Christmas. Now that the calf was born, the whole family would be able to be away for over-night on Christmas Eve, for the nursling would take care of the milking.

Ma Baxter baked a fruit-cake in the largest Dutch oven. Jody helped her pick out hickory nut meats for it. It took all day to bake it. For three days, the cake was all there was of life; a day for preparing it, a day for baking it, and the day after for admiring it. Jody had never seen a cake so huge. His mother bulged with her pride.

She said, “I don’t go to the doin’s often, and when I do go, I aim not to go scarce.”

Penny presented her with the black alpaca the evening the cake was done. She looked at him and at the material. She burst into tears. She dropped into a chair and threw her apron over her head and swayed back and forth with every appearance of grief. Jody was alarmed. She must be disappointed. Penny went to her and laid his hand on her hair.

He said, “‘Tain’t the lack o’ will I don’t do sich as that for you all the time.”

Jody understood then that she was pleased. She wiped her eyes and gathered the alpaca in her lap and sat holding it for a long time, now and then stroking it lengthwise.

She said, “Now I got to move quick as a black snake to git this made in time.”

She worked day and night for three days, her eyes bright and contented. She was forced to call on Penny for help in the fitting. He knelt humbly, his mouth full of pins, and took up and let out as she directed. Jody and Flag watched, fascinated. The dress was done and hung under a sheet for clean keeping.

Four days before Christmas, Buck Forrester stopped by. He was good-humored and Penny decided that he had imagined any mistrust. Old Slewfoot had visited Forresters’ Island again and had killed a two hundred and fifty pound blue male hog in the nearby hammock. The kill had been in battle and not for food. The hog had put up a mighty fight, he reported. The ground was torn up for yards around. One of the boar’s tusks was broken off and the other was wrapped with old Slewfoot’s black fur.

“Hit’s a good time to come up with him,” Buck said, “for he belongs to be hurt.”

They themselves had not discovered the kill until the day after it had happened. It had been too late to follow. Penny thanked him for the information.

“I reckon I’ll set a trap inside the lot, jest to scare him,” he said. “We-all are fixin’ to go to the river for the doin’s.” He hesitated. “You fellers comin’?”

Buck too hesitated.

“I reckon not. We don’t fool much with them Volusia jessies. No fun goin’ if we wasn’t drunk, and Lem’d likely pick a fight with some of Oliver’s friends. No, reckon we’ll git Christmas-drunk to home. Or mebbe Fort Gates.”

Penny was relieved. He could imagine the distress of the river folk if the Forresters had rolled into the prim and Christian gathering.

He oiled his largest bear-trap. It was six feet in width and weighed, he said, nearly six stone. The chain alone weighed two. He planned to shut the cow and calf together inside the stable, barricade the door and set the trap just outside. If old Slewfoot came to make Christmas dinner of the new heifer while they were all away, he would have to take the trap first. The day passed busily. Jody polished again the necklace of Cherokee beans. He hoped his mother would wear them with the black alpaca. He had nothing for a gift for Penny. He worried and puzzled and in the afternoon went to a low place where pipe-elders grew. He cut a reed and made a pipe stem, and cut a bowl from a corn-cob and fitted it. The Indians who had once been here had made pipe-stems of the reeds, Penny had told him, and he had always meant to make one for himself. He could think of nothing for Flag. He admitted to himself that the fawn would be satisfied with an extra piece of cornbread. He would make him a halter of mistletoe and holly.

That night Penny stayed up after Jody had gone to bed. He occupied himself with a mysterious pounding and slapping and scraping that had something to do, no doubt, with Christmas. The three days left seemed like a month.

No one, not even the dogs, heard any sound in the night. When Penny went to the lot in the morning to milk Trixie, and then to the calf’s stall to turn it in to the mother to nurse, the calf was gone. He thought it had broken down its bars. They were intact. He went into the soft sand of the lot and studied it for tracks. In a straight line across the crisscross of cow and horse and human trails, the track of old Slewfoot stretched inexorably. Penny came to the house with the news. He was white with anger and frustration.

“I’ve had a bait of it,” he said. “I mean to track that creetur down if I foller him clare to Jacksonville. This time, hit’s me or him.”

He went immediately at the business of oiling his gun and preparing shells. He worked rapidly, his manner grim.

“Put me some bread and ‘taters in a bag, Ory.”

Jody asked timidly, “Kin I go, Pa?”

“If you kin keep the pace with me and not holler quits. If you give out, you got to lay where you fall or come on back alone. I ain’t stoppin’ before night-fall.”

“Must I shut up Flag or leave him foller?”

“I don’t give a blasted rap who follers. Jest don’t nobody look for me for mercy do the goin’ git rough.”

He went to the smoke-house and cut strips of ‘gator tail for the dogs. He was ready. He trudged through the yard to the lot to take up the trail. He whistled for the dogs and put Julia on the track. She bayed and was off. Jody looked after him in a panic. His gun was not loaded, he had on no shoes, and he could not remember where he had left his jacket. He knew from the set of Penny’s back that it was useless to beg him to wait. He scrambled about, gathering up his belongings. He shouted to his mother to put bread and potatoes in his shot-bag, too.

She said, “You’re like to be in for it. Your Pa’s locked horns with that bear. I know him.”

He called to Flag and tore madly after his father and the dogs. Their pace was swift. He was out of breath by the time he caught up to them. Old Julia was jubilant on the fresh trail. Her voice, her merry tail, her easy lope, showed plainly that this was the thing above all other she wished to be doing. Flag kicked up his heels and ran beside her.

“He’ll not be so frisky,” Penny said ominously, “do old Slewfoot raise up in front of him.”

A mile to the west they found the remains of the calf. The old bear, kept perhaps by his injuries inflicted by the Forresters’ boar, from recent hunting, had eaten heavily. The carcass was well covered with trash.

Penny said, “He’s due to lay up not too fur away, figgerin’ on comin’ back.”

But the animal followed no rules. The trail continued. It led nearly to Forresters’ Island, swung north and west and skirted Hopkins Prairie to the north. The wind was strong from the southwest and Penny said that it was almost certain old Slewfoot was not far ahead of them, but had winded them.

The pace was so rapid and the distance so long that in the late morning even Penny was obliged to stop for a rest. The dogs were willing to continue, but their heaving sides and hanging tongues showed that they too were weary. Penny stopped on a high live oak island by a clear pond on the prairie for the dogs to drink. He threw himself on the ground in the sunlight. He lay on his back without speaking. His eyes were closed. Jody lay down beside him. The dogs dropped flat on their bellies. Flag was unwearied and pranced about the island. Jody watched his father. They had never come so hard and so fast. Here was not the joy of the chase, the careless pitting of man’s brain against creature speed and cunning. This was hate and revenge and there was no happiness in it.

Penny opened his eyes and rolled over on his side and opened his shot-bag and took out his lunch. Jody took out his own. They ate without speaking. The biscuits and cold baked sweet potato seemed almost savorless. Penny threw a few strips of the ‘gator meat to the dogs. They gnawed contentedly. It was all one to them whether Penny hunted casually or with a desperate intent. The game was the same, the strong sweet trail, and the good fight at the end. Penny sat upright and swung to his feet.

“All right. Time to git goin’.”

The siesta had been brief. Jody’s shoes were heavy on his feet. The trail led into scrub, then out again, back to Hopkins Prairie. Old Slewfoot was trying to shake the dogs. Their scent still came to him. Penny was obliged to stop twice in the afternoon to rest. He was furious.

“Dog take it, time was I didn’t have to stop,” he said.

Yet each time that he set out again his walk was so fast that Jody was tired out from following him. He dared not say so. Only Flag frisked and frolicked. The long trek was a casual jaunt for his long legs. The trail led almost to Lake George, cut back sharply south, and again, to the east, lost itself in the dusk of the swamp. The sun was setting and visibility was low in the shadows.

Penny said, “Uh-huh. He’s fixin’ to come back and feed on that calf agin. We’ll go home and fool him.”

The distance back to Baxter’s Island was not great, but it seemed to Jody that he could never make it. On any other hunt, he could have said so and Penny would have waited for him patiently. His father moved toward home as doggedly and relentlessly as he had left it. It was dark when they reached it, but Penny at once loaded the great bear trap on the slide, hitched Cæsar to it and dragged it to the site of the kill. He allowed Jody to ride on the slide. He himself walked beside Cæsar, leading him. Jody stretched out his aching legs with relief. Flag had lost interest and hung around the kitchen door.

Jody called, “Ain’t you tired, Pa?”

“I don’t git tired when I be this mad.”

Jody held a fat-wood torch for him while he lifted the ragged carcass with sticks, in order to leave no human taint, baited the trap and set it, and scratched leaves and rubbish over it with a pine bough. Penny squatted on the slide for the ride home, dropping the reins and allowing old Cæsar to pick his own way. He put up the horse and found gratefully that Ma Baxter had done the milking. They went to the house. Hot supper was on the table and he ate quickly and lightly, then went directly to his bed.

“Ory, what’d you take to rub my back with panther oil?”

She came and worked on him with big strong hands. He groaned with the comfort of it. Jody stood watching. Penny rolled over and dropped his head on the pillow with a sigh.

“How you makin’ it, boy? Had enough?”

“I feel good sincet I ate.”

“Uh. A boy’s strength rise and fall on his belly. Ory.”

“What?”

“I want breakfast before crack o’ day.”

He closed his eyes and was asleep. Jody went to bed and lay a moment aching, then he too passed beyond hearing of Ma Baxter clattering in the kitchen, laying out materials for the early breakfast.

He slept through the first sounds in the morning. He awakened, still drowsy. He stretched. He was stiff. He heard his father’s voice in the kitchen. Evidently Penny was in the same grim mood as yesterday and had not even thought to call him. He got out of bed and pulled on his shirt and breeches and went sleepily to the kitchen with his shoes in his hand. His hair was shaggy in his eyes.

Penny said, “Morning’, feller. You ready for more?”

He nodded.

“That’s the spirit.”

He was too sleepy to eat much. He rubbed his eyes and dallied with his food.

He said, “Ain’t it too soon to see?”

“Time we git there it’ll jest be soon enough. I aim to creep up on him, do he be suspicious and jest sniffin’ around.”

Penny rose and leaned a moment on the table. He grinned wryly.

“I’d feel right good,” he said, “if my back wasn’t broke smack in two.”

The black morning was bitter cold. Ma Baxter had made up the wool from Jacksonville into hunting jackets and jeans for both of them. They seemed too fine to wear, but walking slowly through the pine woods they wished they had put them on. The dogs were still sleepy and tired and were willing to follow silently at heel. Penny put his finger in his mouth and lifted it to test any imperceptible stirring of air. There seemed to be none and he went in a direct line toward the baited trap. It was in a place that was comparatively open and he halted a hundred yards away. Day was breaking in the east behind them. He slapped the dogs lightly and they dropped to the ground. Jody grew numb with the cold. Penny was shivering in his thin clothes and ragged jacket. Jody saw old Slewfoot in every stump and behind every tree. Interminably slow, the sun rose.

Penny whispered, “If he’s ketched, he’s dead, for I’ve heered nothin’.”

They crept forward with lifted guns. The trap was exactly as they had left it the night before. There was not light enough to make certain of the tracks, to determine whether the wary creature had come and been suspicious and gone away. They rested their guns against a tree and swung their arms and stamped their feet to warm themselves.

“If he’s been here,” Penny said, “he ain’t fur away. Ol’ Julia’ll jump him right quick.”

The light was without warmth but it spread through the forest. Penny walked forward, bent low to the ground. Julia was snuffing, silently.

Penny said, “I be dogged. I jest be dogged.”

Even Jody could see that the only tracks were the day-old ones.

“He ain’t been anywhere near,” Penny said. “He wouldn’t foller a rule to save him.”

He straightened and called in the dogs and turned back for home.

“Anyways,” he said, “we know where he left off yestiddy.”

He did not speak again until they reached the house. He went to his room and pulled on his new wool hunting clothes over the old thin ones.

He called to the kitchen, “Ma, put me up meal and bacon and salt and coffee and all the cooked rations you got. Put ‘em in the knapsack. And scorch me some more rags for my tinderhorn.”

Jody tagged after him.

“Must I put on my new things, too?”

Ma Baxter came to the door of the room with the knapsack. Penny paused in his dressing.

“Now boy, you’re plumb welcome to go. But git this in your head and git it good. This is nary pleasure hunt. Hit’s cold weather and hit’ll mebbe be hard goin’ and cold campin’. I jest ain’t comin’ home agin ‘til I git that bear. Now you still want to go?”

“Yes.”

“Then git ready.”

Ma Baxter glanced at the sheet over the black alpaca dress.

“You’ll be gone tonight?”

“More’n likely. He’s got a night’s start on me. Mebbe tomorrer night, too. Mebbe a week.”

She swallowed.

She said weakly, “Ezra — tomorrer’s Christmas Eve.”

“Cain’t he’p it. I got a right fresh trail to foller and I’m takin’ it.”

He stood up and fastened his braces. His eye caught the look of misery on his wife’s face. He pursed his mouth.

“Tomorrer’s Christmas Eve, eh? Ma, you’d not be afeered to drive the horse and wagon to the river in daylight, would you?”

“No, not in daylight.”

“Then if we ain’t back tomorrer by time to make it, you hitch up and go on. And if they’s a chancet in the world, we’ll come on to the doin’s. You milk before you go, and if we don’t make it in, you’ll be obliged to come on back next mornin’ and milk. Now that’s the best I kin do.”

Her eyes were moist but she went without comment and filled the knapsack. Jody waited his chance when she went to the smoke-house for meat for Penny. He pilfered a quart of meal from the barrel and hid it, for Flag, in his own new knapsack made of the hides of the panther kittens. It was the first time he had carried it. He stroked it. It was not as soft as the albino, coonskin knapsack he had given Doc Wilson, but the blue and white spots were almost as pretty. Ma Baxter returned with Penny’s meat and finished the packing. Jody stood hesitant. He had anticipated eagerly the Christmas doings at the river. Now he would miss them. His mother would be glad to have him stay with her, and he would be considered honorable and even unselfish for doing so. Penny slung his knapsack over his shoulder and picked up his gun. Suddenly Jody would not be left behind for all the festivities in the world. They were out to kill old Slewfoot. He swung his little knapsack over his own warm wool shoulder and picked up his gun and followed his father with a light heart.

They cut directly north to pick up the trail where it had ended the evening before. Flag made a sortie into the brush. Jody whistled shrilly.

“Huntin’s a man’s business, ain’t it, Pa, even on a Christmas?”

“Hit’s a man’s business.”

The track was still fresh enough for old Julia to keep it without pause or difficulty. It led east only a short distance beyond the point where they had left it, then turned sharply north.

“Jest as good we didn’t foller it last night,” Penny said. “He was makin’ for other counties.”

The trail swung west again toward Hopkins Prairie and ran into wet marsh. It was difficult to follow. Old Julia splashed through the water. Now and then she lapped it, tasting, it seemed, the very scent of it. Again she laid her long nose against the rushes and stared vacantly, deciding for herself on which side the rank fur had brushed them. Then she was off again. She lost the scent entirely at times. Then Penny cut back to firm land and followed the line of the marsh to watch for the great nubbed track where it came out. If he found it before she struck, he called her with the hunting horn and put her on it.

“Here he goes, gal! Here he goes! Git him!”

Rip with his short legs followed Penny. Flag was everywhere.

Jody asked anxiously, “Flag ain’t no hindrance, is he, Pa?”

“Not a bit in the world. Did a bear wind him, he’d pay him no mind, lessen it was to turn around and come to him.”

In spite of Penny’s grimness the hunt began to take on the old delight. The day was crisp and bright. Penny slapped Jody on the back.

“This is better’n Christmas play-dollies, ain’t it?”

“I mean.”

The cold food at noon tasted better than most hot dinners. They sat and ate and rested under the good strong sun. They loosened their jackets. When they rose to go on, the knapsacks seemed heavy for a time, then they became once more accustomed to them. It seemed for a time that old Slewfoot meant either to make a wide circle back to Forresters’ or Baxter’s Island, or to continue straight across the scrub to new feeding grounds on the Ocklawaha.

“If Forresters’ hog hurt him,” Penny said, “he shore don’t give a tinker’s damn.”

Irrationally, in mid-afternoon, the great tracks turned back into the swamp toward the east. The going was rough.

“Minds me o’ the time last spring you and me tracked him through Juniper swamp,” Penny said.

In the late afternoon they were not far, he said, from the lower reaches of Salt Springs Run. Suddenly old Julia gave tongue.

“He would bed up in sich a place!”

Julia dashed forward. Penny began to run.

“She’s jumped him!”

There was a crashing ahead as though a storm broke through the denseness.

“Git him, gal! Hold him! Yippee! Git him! Yippee!”

The bear moved with incredible speed. He crashed through thickets that slowed the dogs. He was like a steamboat on the river, and the dense tangle of briers and thorny vines and fallen logs was no more than a fluid current under him. Penny and Jody were sweating. Julia gave tongue with a new note of desperation. She could not gain. The swamp became so wet and so dense that they sank in muck to their boot-tops and must pull out inch by inch, with no more support perhaps than a bull-brier vine. Cypress grew here, and the sharp knees were slippery and treacherous. Jody bogged down to his hips. Penny turned back to give him a hand. Flag had made a circle to the left, seeking higher ground. Penny stopped to get his wind. He was breathing heavily.

He panted, “He’s like to give us the slip.”

When his breath came more easily, he set out again. Jody dropped behind, but across a patch of low hammock found better going and was able to catch up. The growth was of bay and ash and palmetto. Hummocks of land could be used for stepping stones. The water between was clear and brown. Ahead, Julia bayed on a high long note.

“Hold him, gal! Hold him!”

The growth dissolved ahead into grasses. Through the opening old Slewfoot loomed into sight. He was going like a black whirlwind. Julia flashed into sight, a yard behind him. The bright swift waters of Salt Springs Run shone beyond. The bear splashed into the current and struck out for the far bank. Penny lifted his gun and shot twice. Julia slid to a stop. She sat on her haunches and lifted her nose high in the air. She wailed dismally, in misery and frustration. Slewfoot was clambering out on the opposite shore. Penny and Jody broke through the low wet bank. The black rounded rump was all that was visible. Penny seized Jody’s muzzle-loader and fired after it. The bear gave a leap.

Penny shouted, “I tetched him!”

Slewfoot continued on his way. There was a moment’s crashing as he broke a path through the thicket, then even the sound of him was gone. Penny urged the dogs desperately. They refused flatly to cross the wide creek. He threw up his hands in despair and dropped down on his haunches in the wetness and shook his head. Old Julia rose and snuffed the foot-prints at the edge of the bank, then sat down and took up her lament where she had left it. Jody’s flesh quivered. He supposed the hunt was done with. Old Slewfoot had given them the slip again.

He was astonished when Penny rose, wiped the sweat from his face, reloaded both guns and set off northwest along the open edge of the run. He decided that his father knew a less tangled way of returning home. Yet Penny kept to the creek even when open pine woods showed to their left. He dared not question him. Flag had disappeared and he was in a panic for him. It was part of his bargain not to whimper, either for himself or the fawn. Penny’s narrow back was stooped with weariness and discouragement, but it was a back of stone. Jody could only follow with sore feet and aching legs. The old muzzle-loader was heavy across his shoulder. Penny spoke, but rather to himself than to his son.

“Now I seem to remember her house yonder—”

The edge of the creek began to lift to high ground. Oaks and pines towered against the sunset. They came to a tall bluff overlooking the run. There was a cabin at the top of it and a cleared field below. Penny climbed the winding path and walked up on the stoop. The door was shut and no smoke came from the chimney. The cabin had no windows. Wooden shutters over square openings served the purpose. These were drawn closed. Penny walked around to the back of the cabin. A shutter here was ajar. He looked in.

“She ain’t here, but we’ll go in all the same.”

Jody asked hopefully, “Will we go home from here tonight?”

Penny turned and eyed him.

“Go home? Tonight? I tol’ you, I’m goin’ to git that bear. You kin go home—”

He had never seen his father so cold and implacable. He followed after him meekly. The dogs had lain down in the sand by the house, panting. Penny went to the wood-pile and chopped wood. He gathered an armful and dropped it through the shutter opening. He climbed through after it and unbarred the kitchen door from the inside. Jody went back to the woodpile and split off a handful of fat-wood splinters and brought them in and laid them on the floor. A Dutch oven and iron kettles stood or hung on cranes at an open hearth.

Penny kindled a fire and hung a shallow kettle over it. He opened his knapsack on the floor and took out the slab of bacon and cut slices of it into the kettle. It began to sizzle slowly. He went outside to an open well and drew up a bucket of water on the windlass. He took a stained coffeepot from a shelf in the kitchen and made coffee and set it close to the growing blaze. He stirred up a cornpone in a borrowed pan. He laid two cold baked sweet potatoes near the fire to warm through. When the bacon had fried, he scraped the cornmeal batter into the grease, turned it in a solid cake when it was brown and turned the crane away from the blaze to finish the baking. The coffee boiled. He set it aside. He took cups and plates from the rickety safe and set them on the bare deal table.

“Draw up,” he said. “Hit’s ready.”

He ate quickly and hungrily and took what cornpone seemed likely to be left and gave it to the dogs outside, with two more strips each of ‘gator meat. Jody was cold with more than the evening’s bitterness. He hated having his father so silent. It was like eating with a stranger. Penny heated water in the kettle he had cooked in and washed the cups and plates and put them back in the safe. There was coffee left and he set the pot aside on the hearth. He swept the floor. He went outside and gathered armfuls of moss from a live oak and made a bed under a sheltered corner of the house for the dogs. The night was settling down, very still and bitter cold. He brought in logs from the woods and pushed the ends of two of them into the fire, to be pushed forward from time to time, nigger-fashion. He filled his pipe and lit it and lay down on the floor by the fire with his rolled knapsack for a pillow.

He said kindly, “You best do the same, boy. We’ll be settin’ out soon in the mornin’.”

He seemed more himself and Jody dared now to question him.

“You figger ol’ Slewfoot’ll come back by here, Pa?”

“Not him. Not for longer’n I keer to wait. I’m right certain he’s wounded. I’m goin’ up to Salt Springs and cross over above the head o’ the run. Then down t’other side to where he lit into the thicket this evenin’.”

“That’s a heap o’ distance, ain’t it?”

“Hit’s a fur piece.”

“Pa—”

“Well?”

“You reckon Flag ain’t come to no harm?”

“You ain’t forgot what I tol’ you, about lettin’ him foller?”

“I ain’t forgot. I—”

Penny relented.

“He ain’t lost, if that’s frettin’ you. You couldn’t lose no deer in the woods. He’ll turn up, if he ain’t takened the notion to go wild.”

“He’ll not go wild, Pa. Never.”

“Not so young, anyways. He’s likely tormentin’ your Ma this minute. Go to sleep.”

“Whose house is this, Pa?”

“Used to belong to a widder woman. I ain’t been here in a long whiles.”

“Will she keer, us comin’ in?”

“If it’s the woman used to be here, she’ll not keer. I come all around courtin’ her, ‘fore I married your Ma. Go to sleep.”

“Pa—”

“Now you got one more question comin’ to you ‘fore I take a bresh to you. And if ‘tain’t a question with sense to it, I will anyway.”

He hesitated. The question was whether Penny thought they could possibly reach the Christmas doings the next night. He decided that the query was not sensible. Following old Slewfoot was probably a life-time job. He brought his thoughts back to Flag. He pictured him lost and hungry and followed by a panther. He was lonely without him. He wondered if his mother had ever been so concerned about him, her only son, and doubted it. He went with some mournfulness to sleep.

He was awakened in the morning by the sound of wagon wheels in the yard. He heard the dogs bark and a strange dog answer. He sat up. Penny was on his feet, shaking his head to clear it. They had overslept. The sunrise lay rosy about the cabin. The fire had burned to embers and the charred ends of two logs still extended over the hearth. The air was like ice. Their breaths hung in frosty clouds. They were chilled to the bone. Penny went to the kitchen door and pulled it open. A step sounded and a middle-aged woman came into the room, followed by a youth.

She said, “For the Lord’s sake.”

Penny said, “Well, Nellie. Looks like you cain’t git rid o’ me.”

“Ezra Baxter. Now you could wait to be invited.”

He grinned at her.

“Meet my boy, Jody.”

She glanced at Jody quickly. She was a pretty woman, plump and rosy.

“He favors you a mite. This here’s my nephew, Asa Revells.”

“Not Matt Revells’ boy? I’ll swear. Why, boy, I knowed you when you was no bigger’n a dirt-dauber.”

They shook hands. The youth looked sheepish.

The woman said, “Now you’re so mannerly and all, Mr. Baxter, you could tell me how come you’re makin’ free o’ my house.”

Her tone was jovial. Jody liked her. Women ran in breeds, like dogs, he thought. She was of Grandma Hutto’s breed, that made men easy. And two women could say the same words and the meaning would not be the same, as the bark of two dogs, one menacing and the other friendly.

Penny said, “Lemme git us a fire goin’. My breath’s too froze to talk.”

He knelt by the hearth and Asa went outside for wood. Jody followed to help. Julia and Rip were moving with stiff tails around the strange dog.

Asa said, “Your dogs like to scared Aunt Nellie and me to death.”

Jody could think of no suitable response and hurried into the house with wood.

Penny was saying, “If you never been a angel from Heaven, Nellie, you was one last night. Jody and me and the dogs has been trailin’ a big nub-tooted bear two days steady. He’d kilt my stock one time too many.”

She interrupted, “A bear with one toe gone off his front foot? Why, he’s cleaned me out o’ hogs, the past year.”

“Well, we trailed him clear from home and jumped him in the swamp south o’ the lower end o’ the run. Iffen I’d had ten more yards on him, I’d o’ had him. I shot after him three times, but he was too fur. The last time I stung him. He swum the creek and the dogs wouldn’t take the water. Well, Nellie, I never been so near give out since the time you told me Fred wanted to keep steady comp’ny with you.”

She laughed, “Oh, go on with you. You never wanted me.”

“Hit’s too late to commit myself — Well, I knowed if you hadn’t married agin and moved off, your place was up here some’eres. And I knowed you’d not begrudge me your floor and hearth. And when I laid down to sleep last night, I said, ‘God bless leetle Nellie Ginright.’”

She laughed out loud.

“Well, I don’t know nobody is more welcome. But next time, I’d not have sich a start did I know ahead o’ time. A widder woman ain’t used to strange dogs in the yard and a man by the hearth. What you fixin’ to do now?”

“Soon as I eat a bite o’ breakfast, I’m fixin’ to cross the run above the head o’ the spring and take up the trail on t’other side where we last seed him.”

She knitted her forehead.

“Now Ezra, no need to do that. I got a old dug-out right above here, is mighty sorry and season-cracked, but hit’d carry you acrost the creek. Take it and welcome and save the miles.”

“Hi-yippee! You hear that, Jody? Now I got to say agin, ‘God bless leetle Nellie Ginright.’”

“Not so leetle as when you knowed me.”

“No, but you’re a heap better lookin’ now. You was allus purty, but you was too thin. You had legs like a buck-rubbed saplin’.”

They laughed together. She took off her bonnet and bustled about the kitchen. Penny seemed now in no great hurry. The distance saved by the use of the dug-out to cross the creek gave them time for a leisurely breakfast. He donated the rest of the bacon. She cooked grits and made fresh coffee and biscuits. There was syrup for the biscuits, but no butter or milk.

“I cain’t keep stock here,” she said. “The ‘gators gits what the bears and panthers don’t.” She sighed. “A widder woman’s hard put to it, times.”

“Asa, here, don’t live with you?”

“No. He jest come back with me from Fort Gates, and he’s goin’ to the doin’s at the river with me tonight.”

“We was aimin’ to go, too, but I reckon we jest as good fergit it.” A thought struck him. “But now my wife’ll be there. You tell her you met up with us, so she’ll not be fretted.”

“You’re jest the kind, Ezra, would worry was his wife fretted. You never asked me, but I often figger I made a sorry out of it, not encouragin’ you.”

“And I reckon my wife figgers she made a sorry out of it, doin’ so.”

“None of us don’t never know what we want ‘til it’s mebbe too late to git it.”

Penny was judiciously silent.

Breakfast was a feast. Nellie Ginright fed the dogs generously and insisted on putting up a lunch for the Baxters. They left reluctantly, warmed in body and spirit.

“The dug-out’s less’n a quarter up the run,” she called after them.

There was ice everywhere. The switch grass was coated with it. The old canoe was embedded in it. They broke it loose and launched it. It had been out of water a long time. It leaked so fast behind their efforts that they gave up bailing and got in to make a dash for it. The dogs were suspicious of the boat and as fast as Penny lifted them into it, they jumped out. In the wasted minutes, the canoe acquired several inches of icy water. They bailed again. Jody climbed into the middle and squatted. Penny handed him the two dogs by the scruff of their necks. He clasped them tightly around their middles and held on desperately against their struggles. Penny poled out from shore with an oak limb. Once out from the fringes of ice, the current ran swiftly. It caught the dug-out and swung it down-stream. The water seeped in to Jody’s ankles. Penny sculled madly. The water gushed in from a crack at the bow. The dogs stood quiet now, trembling with fear at the strangeness. Jody crouched and paddled with his hands.

The creeks all seemed friendly in summer. When he was dressed in a thin ragged shirt and as ragged breeches, a spill meant only a quick cool swim to either shore. The heavy wool jeans and jackets would be poor friends in the freezing water. The canoe was sluggish and unmanageable with its weight of water. Penny made the far bank just as it settled obstinately to the creek bottom. The water sloshed over their boot tops and numbed their feet. But they were on land, on the same side of the run as old Slewfoot, and they had saved hours of heavy going. The dogs shivered with the cold and looked to Penny for orders. He gave none, but set out immediately southwest along the creek bank. In places it was so low and marshy that they were forced to cut back into the swamp or even higher into the woods. The area lay between an arm of Lake George and the continued northward reach of the St. John’s River. It was boggy and treacherous going.

Penny halted to take his bearings. He could depend on old Julia to pick up the trail when they crossed it, but he dared not push her too rapidly. He had an uncanny feeling for distance. He identified a dead cypress across the run as one they had passed shortly after losing the bear. He slowed his pace to a walk and went cautiously, studying the frozen earth. He pretended to find a track.

He said to Julia, “Here he goes. Git him. Here he goes—”

She stirred from her cold lethargy, swayed her long tail and began to snuff noisily. After a few yards she gave a small thin cry.

“There ‘tis. She’s got it.”

The great tracks were imprinted solidly in the muck. They could be followed easily with the eye. Bushes were broken in the thicket where Slewfoot had crashed through. Penny was close behind the dogs. The bear had bedded as soon as he was certain he was no longer followed. A scant four hundred yards beyond the creek bank, Julia jumped him. He was invisible in the thicket. His ponderous leap sounded. Penny could not shoot without a sight, for the dogs were close on the leathery heels. Jody expected his father to break into as much of a run as was possible in the dense swamp growth.

Penny said, “We cain’t ketch him ourselves, no-way. Leave him to the dogs. I got a idee slow time’ll prove the fastest.”

They pushed through steadily.

Penny said, “We got this much satisfaction, he’s wore out, too.”

He underestimated his enemy. The chase continued.

Penny said, “Looks like he’s got a ticket to Jacksonville.”

Bear and dogs were out of sight and hearing. The trail was still plain to Penny’s eyes. A broken bough, a bent clump of grasses, unrolled a map before him even where the ground was hard and showed no foot-prints. In late morning they were winded and had to stop to rest. Penny cupped his ear into the light icy wind that had risen.

“Now I think I hear old Julia,” he said. “At the bay.”

The impetus sent them forward again. At high noon they came up with the quarry. He had decided, at long last, to stop and fight it out. The dogs had him at bay. He swayed sideways on his thick short legs, growling and baring his teeth. His ears were laid flat in his fury. When he turned his back for further retreat, Julia nipped at his flanks and Rip rounded him to spring for his shaggy throat. He slashed at them with great curved claws. He backed away. Rip swung behind him and sunk his teeth in a leg. Slewfoot squealed shrilly. He wheeled with the swiftness of a hawk and raked the bulldog to him. He caught him up in his fore-paws. Rip yelped in pain, then fought gamely to keep the jaws above him from closing on his backbone. The two heads tossed back and forth, snarling and snapping, each trying for the other’s throat while protecting his own. Penny lifted his gun. He took steady aim and fired. With Rip hugged to his breast, old Slewfoot dropped. His killing days were done.

It seemed so easy now that it was over. They had followed him. Penny had shot him. There he lay—

They looked wonderingly at each other. They approached the prone carcass. Jody was weak in the knees. Penny’s walk was unsteady. Jody felt a clear lightness fill him, as though he were a balloon.

Penny said, “I declare, I believe I’m surprised.”

He slapped Jody on the back and cut a buck-and-wing.

He screeched, “Yippee!”

The sound echoed through the swamp. A jay-bird screeched after him and flew away. Jody took up his excitement and shrilled “Yippee!” Old Julia crouched and barked with them. Rip, licking his wounds, wagged his stumpy tail.

Penny shouted tunelessly,

He pounded Jody again.

“Who’s a poor white man?”

Jody shouted, “We ain’t pore. We got ol’ Slewfoot.”

They capered together and shouted and yippeed until their throats were hoarse and the squirrels were chattering all about them. They were at last relieved. Penny laughed breathlessly.

“I ain’t whooped and hollered that-a-way, I don’t know when. I’ll swear, it done me good.”

Jody’s exuberance was still on him and he whooped again. Penny sobered and leaned to examine the bear. He would weigh five hundred pounds. His hide was magnificent. Penny lifted up the huge front paw with its missing toe.

He said, “Well, old fellow, you was a mighty mean enemy, but you got my respect.”

He sat down victoriously on the stout ribs. Jody touched the thick fur.

Penny said, “Now we got to do a piece o’ studyin’. Here we be in the middle o’ nowhere, with a thing bigger’n you and me and your Ma put together, and the cow throwed in.”

He took out his pipe and filled and lighted it leisurely.

“Jest as good to study comfortable,” he said.

He was in such high spirits that the problem, which seemed insoluble to Jody, was no more to him than a pleasant challenge. He began to figure, half to himself.

“Let’s see, now. We’d ought to be jest about between Bear Spring and the river. The Fort Gates road to the west — the river to the east. Now kin we git the black gentleman here to Horse Landin’—there’s boats passin’ all the time — Well, we’ll git him gutted and figger some more.”

It was like turning a wagon-load of sacks of meal all at once, to turn him over on his back. The thick layers of fat under the hide made him roly-poly and flabby. He would not stay firmly when held.

“Jest as ornery dead as alive,” Penny said.

He disemboweled the carcass neatly. Old Slewfoot was as trim and harmless as a whole beef hanging in a butcher shop. Jody tingled, holding out the heavy legs so that Penny could get at his work. He had never thought to see the day when he would hold the huge paws in his small ones. He had had no share in the hunt except to follow his father’s small inexorable back, but now he felt strong and mighty.

Penny said, “Now we’ll see be we men enough to budge him.”

Each took a fore-paw and strained ahead. The effort needed to move the dead weight was prodigious. By heaving and jerking it was possible to pull it a foot at a time.

“We’ll not git to the river by spring, this-a-way,” Penny said, “and starve to death on the way to boot.”

The inability to keep a firm grip on the smooth-haired paws was the greatest bar to their progress. Penny sat on his heels and pondered.

He said at last, “We kin walk on to Fort Gates and git he’p. That’ll cost us a good share o’ the meat but hit’ll spare our own gizzards. Or else we kin rig up a kind of a pullin’ harness and fight it out to the river. And mebbe tear our very hearts out. Or we kin make it on in home and git the wagon.”

“But the wagon’ll not be there, Pa. Ma’ll be done gone to the doin’s.”

“Now you know I plumb forgot ‘twas Christmas Eve day.”

Penny pushed back his cap and scratched his head.

“Well, come on, boy.”

“Where we goin?”

“Fort Gates.”

The road leading to the small settlement on the river was a scant two miles to the west, as Penny had been certain. It was good to turn from the swamp and the scrub to the open sandy road. A cold wind blew down it but the sun was beneficent. Penny found a patch of cancer-weed by the road-side and broke the stems and let the healing sap drip on Rip’s wounds. He was talkative, and as they walked on he brought out from his half-forgotten lore tales of other bear hunts, long ago.

Penny said, “When I were about your size, my uncle Miles come visitin’ from Georgia. And a cold day about like this he takened me in the very swamp we come through today. We was moseyin’ along, not lookin’ for nothin’ in pertickler, and on beyond us we seed what looked like a buzzard settin’ on a stump, peckin’ at somethin’. Well, we got there and what do you suppose ‘twas?”

“‘Twasn’t no buzzard?”

“‘Twasn’t no buzzard a-tall. ‘Twas a bear cub cuffin’ playful-like at his twin on the ground below him.

“My uncle Miles said, ‘Now we’ll jest ketch us a bear cub.’ They was right gentle and he goes up to the one on the stump and ketched it. Well, when he’d ketched it, he didn’t have nary thing to tote in it. And them scaper’s’ll gnaw on you if they ain’t in a sack. Well, them up-country folks wears underwear in the winter. He takened off his breeches and he takened off his long drawers and he tied knots in the legs of ‘em and he made him a sack. He puttened the cub in it and about the time he reached for his breeches to put ‘em back on agin, here come a crashin’ and a woofin’ and a stompin’ in the bresh, and the old she-bear come outen the thick right at him. Well, he takened out through the swamp and dropped the cub and the mammy gathered it up, drawers and all. But she were so clost behind him she stepped on a vine and it tripped him and throwed him flat amongst the thorns and brambles. And aunt Moll was a muddle-minded kind o’ woman and she couldn’t never make it out how he come home without his drawers on a cold day, and his bottom scratched. But uncle Miles allus said that wasn’t nothin’ to the puzzlin’ the mammy bear must o’ done over them drawers on her young un.”

Jody laughed until he could laugh no more.

He complained, “Pa, you got all them tales in your mind and you don’t tell ‘em.”

“Well, it takes a thing like bein’ in the swamp where it happened, to call it back to me. Now in that same swamp, one very cold March, I remember comin’ on another pair o’ bear cubs. They was whimperin’ with the cold. New-borned cubs is no bigger’n rats and plumb naked, and these uns hadn’t yit growed much fur. They was huddled up in a red bay thicket and cryin’ like human babies. Listen!”

The sound of hoof beats was unmistakable along the road behind them.

“Now wouldn’t it be fine not to have to go clare to Fort Gates for he’p?”

The sounds came closer. They stepped to the side of the road. The riders were the Forresters.

Penny said, “Looks like I mis-called myself.”

Buck led the cavalcade. They streamed down the road. They were drunk as lords. They reined in.

“Now look at this! Ol’ Penny Baxter and his he-cub! Hey, Penny! What the devil you doin’ up here?”

Penny said, “I been on a hunt. And this un was deliberate. Me and Jody takened out after ol’ Slewfoot.”

“Whoops! On foot? Listen to that, boys! That’s better’n a pair o’ biddies rompin’ on a hawk.”

“And we got him,” Penny said.

Buck shook himself. The whole array seemed to sober.

“Don’t tell me none o’ them tales. Where’s he at?”

“‘Bout two mile to the east, between Bear Spring and the river.”

“Reckon he is. He fools around there a good bit.”

“He’s dead. How I know he’s dead, I gutted him. Me and Jody’s walkin’ to Fort Gates for he’p in totin’ him outen the swamp.”

Buck stiffened in a drunken dignity.

“You goin’ to Fort Gates for he’p gittin’ out ol’ Slewfoot? And the best slew-footers in the county right here beside you?”

Lem called, “What’ll you give us, do we go tote him out?”

“Half the meat. I figgered on givin’ it to you anyways, account of him tormentin’ you so, and Buck comin’ to warn me.”

Buck said, “You and me’s friends, Penny Baxter. I warn you and you warn me. Git up here behind me and point the way.”

Mill-wheel said, “I don’t know as I crave goin’ into no swamp today, and clare back to Baxter’s Island. I got my mind set on a frolic.”

Buck said, “You ain’t got no mind. Penny Baxter!”

“What you want?”

“You still figgerin’ on goin’ to them doin’s at Volusia?”

“Could we git the bear out in time to make it, we figgered on it. We’re runnin’ mighty late.”

“Git up here behind me and point the way. Boys, we’ll git out the bear and we’ll go to the doin’s at Volusia. If they don’t want us, they kin throw us out — if they kin.”

Penny hesitated. Help of any sort from Fort Gates, especially Christmas Eve day, would be hard to obtain. But the Forresters at the respectable gathering would scarcely be welcome. He decided to let them help him with the big carcass and then trust to luck to send them on their way again. He swung up behind Buck. Mill-wheel held down a hand for Jody to clamber up behind him.

Penny said, “Who’s big-hearted enough to tote my bulldog? He’s not bad hurt, but he’s done a heap o’ runnin’ and fightin’.”

Gabby picked up Rip and carried him in the saddle in front of him.

Penny said, “Likely the way we come out is as good as any. You kin about see where we come.”

The walk that had seemed so long was as nothing on the Forresters’ horses. The Baxters remembered that they had not eaten since breakfast. They fished in their knapsacks and munched on Nellie Ginright’s bread and meat. Penny in his light-heartedness fell into the spirit of the Forresters’ drunkenness.

He shouted back, “Spent the night with an old gal o’ mine.”

They whooped noisily in applause.

“Only she wasn’t there!”

They whooped again.

Jody, at leisure, remembered the jovial air of Nellie Ginright.

He said to Mill-wheel’s back, “Mill-wheel, if my Ma had been somebody else, would I be me, or would I be somebody else, too?”

Mill-wheel shouted ahead, “Hey! Jody wants a new Ma!”

He thumped on Mill-wheel’s back.

“I do not either. I jest want to know.”

The question was beyond Mill-wheel, sober. It was only a source of ribald comment, drunk.

Penny said, “Now jest past that stretch o’ low hammock, there’s our bear.”

They dismounted. Lem spat in disgust.

“You lucky son of a preacher—”

“Ary man could of come up with him that was willin’ to stay with him,” Penny said. “Or got mad enough, the way I done, to foller.”

There was disagreement as to how to cut up the meat. Buck wanted to take it in whole for effect. Penny struggled to convince him of the impossibility. They talked him at last into agreeing to quarter it as was usually done with a bear of so great a size. Each dressed quarter would weigh a hundred pounds. They skinned and quartered it. The hide was left intact, with the great head and clawed feet.

Buck said, “I got to have it that-a-way. I got a idee for some fun.”

They had a round of drinks from their bottles. They set back for the road with a bear quarter over each of four horses and the hide over a fifth. It needed a family as big as the Forresters’ to provide transportation for old Slewfoot and both Baxters too. The procession was boisterous. They shouted back and forth to one another.

They reached Baxter’s Island after dark. The house was barred and shuttered. There was no light, no curl of smoke from the chimney. Ma Baxter had gone on to the river with the horse and wagon. Flag was not about. The Forresters dismounted and drank again and called for water. Penny suggested cooking supper, but their minds were fixed on Volusia. They hung the bear-meat in the smoke-house. Buck clung stubbornly to the hide.

Jody found it strange to go around his own closed house in the dark, as though other people lived there and not the Baxters. He went to the back and called, “Flag! Here, feller!” There was no answering thump of small sharp hooves. He called again, fearfully. He turned back to the road. Flag came galloping to him from the forest. Jody clutched him so hard that he broke loose in impatience. The Forresters were shouting to him to hurry. He longed to have Flag follow along with them, but he could not endure it if he should run away again. He led him into the shed and tied him safely and barred the door against marauders. He ran back and opened it and spread out the meal he had been carrying for him in his knapsack. The Forresters thundered at him. He barred the door again and ran and climbed up behind Mill-wheel with a full heart. He could depend on Flag to come home to him.

When the Forresters burst into harsh-voiced song, like a flock of crows strung out along a fence-row, he sang with them.

Buck sang:

Mill-wheel called, “Whoopee! How ‘bout it, Lem?”

Buck went on:

“Whoopee!”

Gabby sang a plaintive lament of matrimony, each stanza ending with the refrain:

The scrub echoed with their shouting.

They reached the river at nine o’clock and bellowed for the ferry. Across the river, they rode on to the church. It was lighted. Horses and wagons and oxen and carts were tethered to the trees in the yard.

Penny said, “Now we’re all right rough-lookin’ for church doin’s. How about Jody goin’ in and fetchin’ us out rations?”

But the Forresters had passed beyond persuasion or interference.

Buck said, “Now you-all he’p me git fixed. I’m aimin’ to scare the devil right outen that church buildin’.”

Lem and Mill-wheel draped the bear-skin over him. He got down on all fours. He could not get an effect realistic enough to suit him, for the hide, split down the belly, allowed the great heavy head to slide forward. Penny was impatient to be inside and to reassure Ma Baxter, but the Forresters were in no hurry. They donated two or three pairs of boot laces and laced the hide together across Buck’s chest. The result was all he could ask for. His bulky back and shoulders filled out the hide almost as completely as the original owner. He gave a trial growl. They crept up the steps of the church. Lem swung the door open to let Buck pass inside, then pulled it back, leaving a crack wide enough for the rest to watch through. It was a moment or two before the visitor was noticed. Buck swayed forward with so true an imitation of a bear’s rolling gait that Jody felt the hair crawl on the back of his neck. Buck growled. The assembled company turned. Buck halted. There was an instant of paralysis, then the church emptied through the windows as though a gale of wind had blown a pile of oak leaves.

The Forresters entered through the door, bellowing with laughter. Penny and Jody followed. Suddenly Penny leaped for Buck and pulled the bear’s head away so that the human face was exposed.

“Git outen that thing, Buck. You want to git kilt?”

His eye had caught the glint of a gun-barrel at one of the windows. Buck stood up and the hide slipped to the floor. The frolickers crowded in again. Outside, a woman screaming could not be quieted and two or three children wailed in fear. The first reaction of the gathering was one of anger.

One man called, “This be a purty way to come celebratin’ Christmas Eve. Scarin’ young uns outen their wits.”

But the holiday spirit was strong, and the drunken joviality of the Forresters was infectious. Interest centered in the great bear hide. Here and there a man guffawed and at last the crowd was laughing, and agreeing that Buck had looked more like a bear than old Slewfoot himself. The big bear had done damage for several years. His reputation was known to all.

Penny was surrounded by most of the men and boys. His wife greeted him and bustled away to bring him a plate of food. He sat on the edge of one of the church benches, pushed back against the plain bare walls, and tried to eat. He swallowed a few mouthfuls. Then the men’s eager questions enmeshed him and he was away on the flowing stream of his tale of the hunt. The food sat in his lap, uneaten.

Jody looked shyly about in the unaccustomed color and brightness. The small church was decorated with holly and mistletoe and donations of house plants; sultanas and geraniums, aspidistras and coleas. Kerosene lamps shone from brackets along the walls. The ceiling was half hidden with suspended ropes of colored paper, green and red and yellow. At the front, where the rostrum stood for services, a Christmas tree was hung with tinsel and strings of popcorn, figures cut from paper, and a few shining balls that had been a present from the captain of the Mary Draper. Gifts had been exchanged and the wrappings were strewn under the tree. Little girls moved trance-like with new rag dolls clutched to their flat gingham breasts. The boys too young to be engrossed with Penny, played on the floor.

The food was on long plank tables near the Christmas tree. Grandma Hutto and his mother bore down on him to lead him to it. He found that glory hung about him, too, in a sweet aroma. Women crowded around him and pressed food on him. They too asked questions about the hunt. At first he was struck dumb and could not answer. He felt hot and cold and spilled salad from the plate in one hand. The other hand held three varieties of cake.

Grandma Hutto said, “Now leave him be.”

He was suddenly afraid he would not have a chance to answer the questions and would miss the shining triumph of the hour.

He said quickly, “We follered him near about three days. We jumped him twice. We got into mud Pa said would bog a buzzard’s shadow, and we wrangled out of it—”

They listened with flattering attention. He was filled with enthusiasm. He began at the beginning and tried to tell it as he thought Penny would do. Half-way through, he looked down at the cake. He lost interest in the account.

“Then Pa shot him,” he ended abruptly.

He crammed a chunk of pound cake in his mouth. The clustered women turned to bring him more sweets.

Ma Baxter said, “Now you begin on cake, you’ll not be able to hold nothin’ else.”

“I don’t want nothin’ else.”

Grandma Hutto said, “Leave him be, Ory. He kin eat cornbread the rest o’ the year.”

“I’ll eat it tomorrer,” he promised. “I know you got to have cornbread to grow on.”

He went from one kind of cake to another and back again.

He asked, “Ma, did Flag come in ‘fore you left?”

“He come in yestiddy at dark. I declare, hit worried me, him comin’ in without you. Then Nellie Ginright was here a while tonight and reported you.”

He looked at her with approval. She was really handsome, he thought, in the black alpaca. Her gray hair was combed smoothly and her cheeks were flushed with her contentment and her pride. The other women addressed her respectfully. It was a great thing, he thought, to be kin to Penny Baxter.

He said, “I got somethin’ purty for you, home.”

“Have? ‘Twouldn’t be red and shiny, would it?”

“You found it!”

“I got to clean house now and agin.”

“You like it?”

“Purty as kin be. I’d of wore it, but I figgered you’d want to give it to me. You want to know what I got hid for you, or no?”

“Tell me.”

“I got a sack o’ pep’mint candy. And your Pa made you a deer-leg scabbard for the knife Oliver give you. And he made a buckskin collar for your fawn.”

“How’d he do it without me knowin’?”

“When you’re oncet asleep, he could put a new roof over you, and you’d not know it.”

He sighed with repletion of soul and body. He looked at the remnants of cake in his hands. He thrust them at his mother.

“I don’t like it,” he said.

“About time.”

He looked about at the company and was again stabbed with shyness. Eulalie Boyles was doing a hop-skip-and-jump in a corner with the wordless boy who sometimes ran the ferry. Jody stared from a distance. He would scarcely have known her. She had on a white dress with blue ruffles and blue bows of ribbon swung at the ends of her pig-tails. He was swept with resentment, not of her, but of the ferry-boy. Eulalie in a remote fashion belonged to him, Jody, to do with as he pleased, if only to throw potatoes at her.

The Forresters had formed a group of their own at the end of the church near the door. The bolder of the women had taken them plates of food. To look twice at a Forrester was to invite scandal. The more roistering of the men were with them, and the bottles were going around again. The Forrester voices boomed above the hum of the festivities. The fiddlers went outside and brought in their instruments and began to tune and scrape. A square dance was formed and called. Buck and Mill-wheel and Gabby induced giggling girls to be their partners. Lem frowned from the outskirts. The Forresters made a violent and noisy affair of the dance. Grandma Hutto retired to a far bench. Her black eyes snapped.

“You’d never of got me here, did I know them black devils was comin’.”

“Nor me,” Ma Baxter said.

They sat stonily side by side, for once in agreement and harmony. Jody was half-drunk himself with the noise and music, the cake and the excitement. The outside world was cold, but the inside of the church was hot and stuffy with the roaring wood-stove and the heat of the packed and sweating bodies.

A man, a newcomer, entered the door. A cold gust of air followed him, so that every one looked up to see what had brought it. A few noticed that Lem Forrester spoke to him, and the man answered, and Lem said something to his brothers. In a moment the Forresters went out together. The group around Penny had been filled and satisfied with his story of the hunt and was now supplementing it with tales of their own. The square dance continued with a reduced number. Some of the women went to the group of hunters, protesting their absorption. The newcomer was brought to the still-loaded tables for food. He was a traveller who had disembarked from a steamer that had stopped for wood at the river landing.

He said, “I was tellin’ the men, ladies, there was other passengers got off here. I reckon you know ‘em. Mr. Oliver Hutto and a young lady.”

Grandma Hutto stood up.

“You sure o’ that name?”

“Why, yes, Ma’am. He said his home was here.”

Penny was pushing his way toward her. He took her aside.

He said, “I see you’ve done had the news. I’m feered the Forresters has gone to your house. I’m fixin’ to go there to try to ward off trouble. You want to go? Could be, they’d behave theirselves better was you there to shame ‘em.”

She bustled about for her shawl and bonnet.

Ma Baxter said, “Now I’ll jest go with you. I’d as soon give them varmints a piece o’ my own mind.”

Jody trailed behind them. They piled in the Baxter wagon and turned back toward the river. The sky was strangely bright.

Penny said, “Must be a woods fire some’eres. Oh, my God.”

The position of the fire was unmistakable. Around the bend of the road, down the lane of oleanders, flames were shooting high into the air. Grandma Hutto’s house was burning. They turned into the yard. The house was a bonfire. The flames showed details of the rooms within. Fluff ran to them, his tail between his legs. They jumped down from the wagon.

Grandma called, “Oliver! Oliver!”

It was impossible to approach within yards. Grandma ran toward the blaze. Penny pulled her back.

He shouted above the roaring and crackling, “You want to git burnt to death?”

“Oliver’s there! Oliver! Oliver!”

“He cain’t be. He’d of got out.”

“They’ve shot him! He’s in there! Oliver!”

He struggled with her. In the bright light the earth was plain. It was cut and trampled with the hooves of horses. But the Forresters and their mounts were gone.

Ma Baxter said, “There’s jest nothin’ them black buzzards won’t do.”

Grandma Hutto fought to break free.

Penny said, “Jody, for the Lord’s sake, drive back to Boyles’ store and see kin you find somebody seed where Oliver headed when he left the boat. If there’s nobody there, go on to the doin’s and find out from the stranger.”

Jody clambered to the wagon seat and turned Cæsar back up the lane. His hands seemed wooden and he fumbled with the reins. He was panicked and could not remember whether his father had told him to go first to the doings or first to the store. If Oliver was alive, he would never be unfaithful to him, even in his mind, again. He turned into the road. The winter night was bright with stars. Cæsar snorted. A man and woman were walking down the road toward the river. He heard the man laugh.

He cried, “Oliver!” and jumped from the moving wagon.

Oliver called, “Now look who’s drivin’ around by hisself. Hey, Jody.”

The woman was Twink Weatherby.

Jody said, “Git in the wagon, quick, Oliver.”

“What’s the hurry? Where’s your manners? Speak to the lady.”

“Oliver, Grandma’s house is a-fire. The Forresters done it.”

Oliver tossed his bags into the wagon. He lifted Twink and swung her to the seat, then vaulted the wheel and took the reins. Jody scrambled up beside him. Oliver groped with one hand inside his shirt and laid his revolver on the seat.

“The Forresters is gone,” Jody said.

Oliver whipped the horse to a trot and turned down the lane. The frame of the house stood revealed around the flames, as though a box enclosed them. Oliver caught his breath.

“Ma wasn’t in it?”

“She’s yonder.”

Oliver stopped the wagon and they climbed down.

He called, “Ma!”

Grandma threw her arms in the air and ran to her son.

He said, “Easy, there, old lady. Quit tremblin’ now. Easy.”

Penny joined them.

He said, “No man’s voice was never more welcome, Oliver.”

Oliver pushed Grandma aside and stared at the house. The roof crashed and a fresh blaze leaped to the moss in the live oaks.

He said, “Which-a-way has the Forresters gone?”

Jody heard Grandma murmur, “Oh God.”

She braced herself.

She said loudly, “Now what in tarnation you want o’ the Forresters?”

Oliver wheeled.

“Jody said they done it.”

“Jody, you fool young un. The idees a boy’ll git. I left a lamp burnin’ by a open window. The curtain must of blowed and ketched. Hit worried me all through the evenin’ at the doin’s. Jody, you must want a ruckus mighty bad.”

Jody gaped at her. His mother’s mouth was open.

Ma Baxter said, “Why, you know—”

Jody saw his father grip her arm.

Penny said, “Yes, son, you got no business thinkin’ sich things of innocent men is miles away.”

Oliver let out his breath slowly.

He said, “I’m shore proud ‘twasn’t their doin’. I’d not of left one alive.” He turned and drew Twink close to him. “Folks, meet my wife.”

Grandma Hutto wavered, then walked to the girl and kissed her cheek.

“Now I’m glad you got it settled,” she said. “Mebbe Oliver’ll take time to visit with me now and again.”

Oliver took Twink by the hand and went to circle the house. Grandma turned fiercely on the Baxters.

“If you dast to let it out — You think I aim to have two counties strowed with Forrester blood and my boy’s bones, for a burnt-up house?”

Penny laid his hands on her shoulders.

“Ol’ lady,” he said. “Ol’ lady — Did I have the sense you got—”

She was quivering. Penny held her and she quieted. Oliver and Twink returned.

Oliver said, “Don’t take it too hard, Ma. We’ll build you the best house on the river.”

She gathered her strength.

“I don’t want it. I’m too old. I want to live in Boston.”

Jody looked at his father. Penny’s face was drawn.

She said defiantly, “I want to go in the mornin’.”

Oliver said, “Why, Ma — Leave here?”

His face lightened.

He said slowly, “I always ship out of Boston. Ma, I’d love it. But do I turn you loose amongst them Yankees, I’m feered you’ll start another war between the states.”