House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  Mr. Pudrick chuckled enviously. “I’m in the wrong line of business, gentlemen; but all I know is slaves.”

  Darrell grinned. “With prime niggers worth three or four thousand dollars, you make a living, my friend.”

  “That reminds me.” Mr. Pudrick bestirred himself. “I think the rain has stopped. If my man is here, he saw the dogs, and he’ll be off to the swamps by this time. Mr. Currain, may I let the hounds take a swing around?”

  “Can they do anything in the dark?”

  “They see with their noses,” Mr. Pudrick assured him. “Let’s have a look at the weather.”

  Tony came to his feet. By God, if that nigger was here, the sooner he was caught the better. From the veranda they saw that the west wind had freshened to blow rain clouds away, and stars were out. Tony bade ’Phemy summon Mr. Pudrick’s Negro with the hounds; and Peg-leg brought men to carry lanterns.

  When they were ready, they went afoot, the dogs loudly snuffling at the wet ground. Mr. Pudrick said the man they sought would make for the nearest running water to lose his scent. There was a branch, a tributary to the south fork of the Yadkin, which threaded its way through the hills northeast of the house and furnished power for the mill below the quarter before it crossed the Martinston road. Darrell remembered this stream, and spoke of it, and Mr. Pudrick agreed that it was a probability. Tony thought that if the fugitive had been hidden in the quarter they might pick up his scent among the cabins there, but Mr. Pudrick said this was unlikely.

  “He’d have got some buck nigger to tote him to where he could put his feet in water,” he predicted.

  So they went down the driveway to the main road, and along the road to the ford. The Negro, if he were wading, might have gone toward the Yadkin. “They most generally head downstream,” Mr. Pudrick admitted. “But this is a smart nigger. We’ll try the other way tonight, and if we don’t pick him up we’ll go down the branch tomorrow.”

  So they turned up toward the mill. The Negroes with the lanterns were wall-eyed in the darkness, staring fearfully at the dogs, edging away from the mournful beasts. Mr. Pudrick’s man who controlled the hounds held them on leash in couples, and he went afoot, his mule on lead. Now and then, to remind the dogs of their prey, he thrust under their noses a worn old shoe.

  Tony watched them, and his pulse was pounding and his lips were dry, and there was a murderous impatience in him. “Suppose you find him?” he asked.

  “I’ll teach him not to run away again!”

  “Kill him?”

  “No, no. Sam’s worth four thousand dollars in Alabama or Mississippi today. No, but I’ll teach him some manners.”

  The slow search went on, and Tony began to think it would prove futile. They came up the branch past the saw mill; but a few yards above, the hounds gave tongue. Mr. Pudrick cried out in triumph; and Tony asked: “Have they got him?”

  “Yes, got the smell of him. We’ll need horses now.”

  Tony sent for mounts. While they waited, the hounds clamored to be gone; and there was a zealous haste in Tony too. The horses came, and Tony and Darrell and Mr. Pudrick mounted, and each took a lantern. The Negroes who had brought the horses faded away into darkness and at Mr. Pudrick’s command the hounds were loosed, and the black man who handled them shouted some encouragement. Two of the hounds splashed across to the other bank of the little brook while the others stayed on this side. With the horsemen following, they began to move up the stream through the winding gorge.

  The hounds, save for an occasional questing bay, were silent at their work. They tested every inch of the ground, considered every bush and tree, tried not only the ground scent but the air. They moved for a while so slowly that it was easy to keep upon their heels, and Tony sweated with the excitement of this man hunt. He forgot his personal animus against the fugitive in watching the dogs and in watching Mr. Pudrick’s Negro, mounted on his old mule, as he directed them. This was for Tony a completely new experience. At Great Oak no slave ever ran away. As long as Negroes were decently treated, they were easily content. A man whose people ran away was subject to almost as much criticism, spoken or unspoken, as one who whipped his slaves. But Tony reminded himself that dealers like Mr. Pudrick were in a category by themselves. They were not masters of their slaves; they were simply owners, commanding from their human property neither affection nor slightest loyalty. A slave who had been sold away from home might run away if he saw his chance; so dealers had to be prepared to hunt them down.

  Mr. Pudrick saw Tony’s interest, and he explained: “Those dogs know he’s gone to water, you see. Watch them look up at every tree to see if he’s climbed it. See them stand up and smell the trunk and sniff the air. When he comes out of the water, they’ll know it. They’ll tell us.”

  This prediction proved a good one. A mile or two above their starting place, a smaller tributary stream threaded the laurel to enter the creek they were following. Tony saw one of the hounds wade up that lesser stream, scenting the banks, standing on its hind legs to sniff at the boughs on either side. Almost at once it uttered a long doleful cry that made Tony shiver. The other hounds answered and came that way.

  “Got him!” Mr. Pudrick shouted; and he urged the dogs. “On, boys! On, on, on!”

  The hounds broke into a loose-jointed lope that seemed slow; but it soon became impossible to keep up with them. They threaded their way through the undergrowth faster than a horse in the darkness could safely go. Tony forgot caution in his zeal, till a branch he did not see twitched the lantern out of his hand and broke it and left him in darkness. Thereafter he followed Mr. Pudrick and Darrell; and for a while the mournful baying of the hounds drew farther and farther away. The dogs reached the crest of this ridge well ahead of the horses, and their cries were muffled as they went down the slope beyond, to become clearer again when the riders topped the crest. Then the tonguing faded and was almost lost before Tony heard, far away, a sudden fiercer clamor.

  “Treed,” said Mr. Pudrick in calm satisfaction. “You can tell by the sound. We’ll take our time now, gentlemen. That nigger will wait for us right where he is.”

  They were long in coming to him, picking their way through tall pines and then through tangled scrub oak, descending steadily, the baying of the hounds beckoning them on. But the end was sure. The fugitive in his panic had allowed himself to be overtaken in a sparse-grown old field where there were no big trees, and only a few young pines offered brief security. The tree into which he had climbed was hardly tall enough and stout enough to keep him above the reach of the leaping hounds. In the light of the upheld lanterns Tony saw his eyes burning red like those of a wild thing in the night. They were red with a rim of white, and below him the hounds leaped sluggishly, more from duty and from a sense of what was expected of them than from any lust to kill. Between leaps they bayed, or in a bored way scratched themselves.

  Pudrick’s Negro who was their warden and their master had outrun the three white men. He sat his mule a little to one side, drooped and still. “He’ll tell around what we do to Sam,” Pudrick explained. “It makes the others slow to run away.” He rode nearer the tree and spoke in calm tones to the fugitive. “Sam,” he said, “you might as well come down.”

  Tony stared at that frightened thing, more animal than man, in the tree above them; and his throat was hot with rage. That and Sapphira? He wished he had brought a pistol, one of those revolving pistols that would ram slug after slug into the nigger. No man, white or black, should touch Sapphira, should lay even a thought upon her. He heard the click of a lock, and saw Pudrick with a pistol in his hand.

  “Are you going to kill him?” he asked.

  “No, no; just wing him, shoot him out of the tree, let the dogs tear him a little.” And Mr. Pudrick said: “Here, take my lantern. Hold it so I can see.” He spoke to Darrell. “Hold yours up too. I don’t want to spoil him, break any bones.” He gave Tony the lantern, urged his horse around the tree. “I’ll get a side shot, burn his rump,” he said. />
  The tree was small. Pudrick on his horse was only a few feet below the Negro. The fugitive had heard Pudrick’s word. He tried to scramble around the slender trunk, to keep his face to the slave dealer; but the tree bowed under his weight. Then suddenly the Negro screamed and flung himself outward like a bat, arms and legs wide.

  Pudrick, too late, tried to spur aside; Sam descended upon him, had his throat. They slid sidewise off the horse together. Mr. Pudrick’s horse danced away from the rolling heap, white man and black, on the ground almost under his feet. The dogs with dutiful cries found black flesh and began to tear. The Negro was making a worrying, unearthly sound, but Mr. Pudrick was silent. Clearly, Sam had him by the throat.

  Darrell laughed aloud. “Damnedest funniest thing I ever saw,” he said; and he moved his horse in among the dogs, his pistol now in hand, the lantern in his other hand held low. The flash of the pistol for a moment blinded Tony; its smoke briefly blurred the scene. Then the dogs were worrying something under a screen of smoke that thinned and drifted away.

  Pudrick yelled with pain and anger. He rolled Sam’s body aside and kicked his way to his feet, kicked the dogs. “The God-damned hounds bit me!” he roared, shocked and scandalized. Darrell bowed in his saddle, weak with laughter; and Pudrick raged at him. “Your powder flash singed my ear!”

  Darrell, his pistol lightly balanced, asked in icy tones: “Do you object, Mr. Pudrick?”

  “Eh? No! Oh no, not at all!” Mr. Pudrick spoke in quick appeasement. His Negro came to pull the hounds away from dead Sam and put them on leash again. Pudrick counted rents in coat and trousers; he inspected a gashed leg. “Bet I won’t sit easy for a month,” he grumbled.

  “You’ll be able to take nourishment, at least,” Darrell reminded him. Pudrick touched his throat.

  “I feel as though I’d been half-hanged!” He mounted, looked down at the dead Negro. “Four thousand dollars for the buzzards!” he said disgustedly. “Well, that’s all there is to that.” He kicked his horse and moved away.

  Tony stayed a moment longer, looking at the Negro on the ground. That and Sapphira? That buzzard bait? Why, good enough. This was the due of any man who looked at her.

  He rode after the others, and when he overtook them Darrell turned in his saddle with a question. “Uncle Tony, is there any better way up through these woods? They’re thick riding in the dark.”

  “Wait for light,” Tony suggested. “It won’t be long. The night’s nearly gone.”

  This seemed wise. They dismounted, and Mr. Pudrick found a little stream and bathed his wounds. “By God, Mr. Streean,” he cried, “you’ve burned half my hair away, and blistered my ear. Can’t you shoot straighter than that?”

  Darrell turned toward him. “By daylight, yes, I think so, Mr. Pudrick,” he said coldly. “If I see a target still at hand.”

  For a moment silence lay among them. “Eh?” said Mr. Pudrick. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” Darrell explained, “that the business that brought you here is done. Why should you stay?” Tony held his tongue. This might lead to something. Mr. Pudrick did not seem like a man who would submit to such dictation. Darrell, a chuckle in his tone, added: “Unless, of course, you wish to make a really extended stay.”

  There was a long silence, while Mr. Pudrick, pressing his handkerchief against his burned ear, seemed to consider. The handkerchief was in his right hand, while Darrell’s hands were free; so he was at a disadvantage. This may have influenced him, for when he spoke it was peaceably enough. “Why, perhaps you’re right,” he agreed. “If Mr. Currain here will forgive my somewhat unceremonious departure, I have in fact affairs which require my prompt return.” His Negro was near, with the leashed hounds sleeping about the feet of the mule he rode. Mr. Pudrick mounted his horse. There were no more words. The horse, the mule, the men, the dogs, receded into darkness. Hoof beats muffled on the sodden ground departed into silence and were gone.

  Tony, his horse’s reins knotted to a low-hanging bough, set his shoulders against a tree to wait for dawn. This hour had left him drained and very tired; but Darrell, sitting against another tree, talked casually of many things. He remarked that Tony seldom came to Richmond. “You should, you know. Things happen there. I sometimes think, for instance, that Aunt Enid has fallen out of love with Uncle Trav. Do you suppose that’s true?” Tony did not reply, and Darrell asked: “And had you heard, Uncle Tony, that Uncle Faunt has taken up with your old light-o’-love?” Tony thought someone would throw a bullet into Darrell, one of these days. Pudrick, a while ago, had wanted to, had not dared. Tony wished Pudrick had dared. If Darrell stayed at Chimneys, how long would it be before he knew Sapphira was hidden there? Darrell’s mocking voice went on and on.

  When they came back to Chimneys, Peg-leg reported that someone in the night had tried to wrench the lock off the smoke house door, prying at the staples with an inexpert hand; that someone had loosened a board on the corn crib and laboriously extracted a few ears. Tony, listening abstractedly, thought that probably Sam, who now was buzzard bait over in the next valley, had tried before he fled to lay hand on some provisions. He decided not to ask Peg-leg or ’Phemy or Sapphira about Sam. If they had sheltered Sam, he did not want to know it. Besides, if they had hid his presence, they would lie now; and you couldn’t make a nigger tell the truth unless he wanted to. Buzzards circling in the next valley, miles away, would not be noticed here; and a day or two would finish that. Let Sam be forgotten.

  “Put on a stronger lock,” he directed. “And nail up the corn cribs so they’re tight.”

  Darrell said: “Wait a minute, Uncle Tony. Who’d be thieving here? Don’t you feed your people?”

  “Certainly. It might have been—” Better not speak of Sam at all, in Peg-leg’s hearing. “It might have been some of these white trash farmers around here.”

  Darrell seemed pleased. “Why, that’s mighty interesting. Maybe I can find a way to protect you, Uncle Tony. I don’t like thieves.”

  Tony, moving toward the house in a fog of weariness, and hungry for sleep, hardly heard him. He went to his room and to bed, and he slept till dark, and to avoid seeing Darrell he kept his bed and let ’Phemy bring him supper. Perhaps Darrell would be gone tomorrow.

  In the morning ’Phemy said Darrell had ridden off to Martinston. “Anyways, he say he do.” Tony read the warning in her words, so he did not ask for Sapphira, and this was fortunate, for in midfore-noon Darrell came casually down through the orchard behind the house and up the back steps and was in the house before ’Phemy knew he was near.

  “Oh, I was in the mood for a stroll,” he replied, to Tony’s question. “Send someone to bring my horse. He’s a mile or so away toward Martinston, tied in the edge of the woods.”

  Tony shivered to think what might have happened if Darrell had returned and found Sapphira with him here. For the week that followed he felt like a man besieged. Darrell made no move to depart, yet during the daylight hours he was seldom at the house. He disappeared without saying where he was going, returned without forewarning. Usually in the evening he insisted on cards, and Tony lost enormous sums, inattentive to the game, searching his wits for some way to be rid of this young man so that he and Sapphira could once more be at ease. He was sure by this time that Darrell suspected or knew she was somewhere here, but the young man asked no questions, never provoked an issue. Yet Tony felt the other’s watchfulness. Even after he went to bed, Darrell was apt to sit for hours, perhaps idling over a book, before the fire in the big room across the hall from which he could see Tony’s closed door; and Tony, though he sometimes tried to stay awake, inevitably fell asleep before he heard his unwelcome guest go upstairs.

  Darrell was waiting to tire him out, waiting for Sapphira to appear, waiting for something; of this he was sure. Tony settled grimly to the necessity of patience. If Darrell could wait, then so could he.

  On the eighth night, hard asleep, he was roused by the heavy roar of a gun. The sound was muffled, as
though the explosion were somehow confined. Before he could move, he heard Darrell’s window, in the room above his, flung open; and he heard Darrell’s pistol speak twice, heard the young man’s exultant cry. That first shot had come from the direction of the smoke house, beyond the kitchen wing. Tony scrambled to his window and looked out, but though the stars were shining he could see nothing clearly. He touched a spill to the coals on the hearth and lighted a candle, and as he did so he heard Darrell coming at a run down the stairs. He was pulling on his trousers over his night shirt when Darrell, without knocking, opened his door.

  “Well, I got your thief, Uncle Tony!” the young man cried exultantly. “I rigged a set gun in the smoke house, just inside the door. When the gun went off just now I jumped to my window. The charge didn’t catch him square, because he was trying to crawl away; so I put a bullet through him. Come on.”

  Tony, still dazed with sleep, drew on his boots. As they went out along the kitchen gallery, Peg-leg appeared from down toward the quarter with a pine torch flaring, hurrying toward them. In the torch light, Tony saw a shadow on the ground by the open smoke house door. As they approached, the shadow seemed to be the body of a small man, in clothes too big for him, sprawled on his face.

  Darrell leaned down and caught one outflung hand to turn the dead man over; and then he checked, looking at the hand in his grasp, upon which now as Peg-leg stumped nearer the torch light began to play.

  “By God, he’s white, Uncle Tony,” he exclaimed. “It’s just a boy!” He twitched the body over; the hat fell off, a mass of long hair tumbled loosely free. “It’s a woman!” Darrell Streean cried.

  Tony saw that this was true. It was a woman. It was Mrs. Blandy.

  6

  December, 1863

  CINDA, when she let herself, had dreaded this Christmas. It when she let herself, had dreaded this Christmas. It would be the first without her mother; and though Brett might come home, Trav was off in Tennessee with Longstreet, and she knew there was no likelihood that Faunt or Tony would appear. Jenny and the children were at the Plains, and Barbara and her babies—little Burr had been born in October—were in Raleigh, so if big Burr had a furlough he would certainly go to them. Christmas had always been a day for family gatherings and a crowded dinner table loaded with good things to eat, but this year it promised to be a dreary, empty time.