Buck said, “We kin shoot somethin’ for ’em.”
They were ready at last. They swung into the saddles and set off briskly south-east down the road in the direction of Silver Glen and Lake George.
Penny said, “Long as we’re this clost, we best go see how ol’ Doc Wilson come out. That place o’ his is like to be half under water.”
Buck said, “And him mebbe too drunk to know it.”
The road dipped sharply between Baxter’s Island and Silver Glen. The flood had washed down it with such volume and such force that the flat sand road was now a narrow ravine. Rubbish of all sorts was caught in the lower branches of the close-growing scrub pines. Farther down the road the toll of small animal life began to show. Skunks and ’possums seemed the heaviest sufferers. Their bodies lay by dozens on the ground, where the waters, receding, had deposited them, or hung with the trash in the limbs of trees. To the south and east there was a great silence. The scrub was always silent, yet Jody realized now that there had always been an undertone of cry and movement, where the creatures called and stirred, no more discernible than the wind. To the north, where high scrub land was dense with thin pines, there was an unusual rustling and distant chattering. The squirrels had evidently taken up residence here in droves, driven, if not by water, at least by hunger and fear, from the swamps and hammocks below them.
Penny said, “I’ll bet that scrub there is purely alive with creeturs.”
They hesitated, tempted to go in to the denseness. They agreed that it was best, as first planned, to skirt the low regions and determine the damage, and then to check on the still living creature population. Toward Silver Glen they reined in the horses.
“You see what I see?”
“If you didn’t see it, too, I’d not believe it.”
Silver Glen had overflowed and backed up, and the flood waters had rushed down to join it and make a greater havoc. Dead animals drifted about in the backwash.
Penny said, “I didn’t know there was that many snakes in the world.”
The bodies of highland reptiles were as thick as cane-stalks. There were dead rattlesnakes, king snakes, black snakes, coach whips, chicken snakes, garter snakes and coral snakes. At the thin edge of the receding water, cottonmouth moccasins and other water snakes swam about thickly.
Buck said, “I don’t understand that. Ary snake kin swim. I’ve met a rattler in the middle o’ the river.”
Penny said, “Yes, but the land snakes likely got ketched in their holes.”
The flood had reached everywhere, like the searching fingers of a ’coon, and had torn out all the things for whom the solid earth was their only refuge. A fawn lay dead with swelling belly. Jody’s heart jumped. Flag might have perished in just this fashion, if he had not become, in time, a Baxter. As they gaped, two rattlers slithered across the ground in front of them. The rattlers ignored them, as though in the face of greater dangers man was of no concern.
Penny said, “Hit’ll be all a man’s life is wuth, for a while, to cross high land.”
Buck said, “I mean.”
They could go no farther east and turned north, skirting the low waters. Where there had been swamp, there were ponds. Where there had been hammock, there was swamp. Only the high infertile scrub had turned aside the devastation. Even here, pines were up-rooted, and those that had stood, all leaned to the west, bowed down by the week-long weight of wind and rain.
Penny said, “Hit’ll be a long day before them trees stands straight agin.”
They became uneasy as they approached the Branch. The water was still high here, well above the level of Lake George. Three and four days ago it must have been much higher. They stopped and stared down at the doctor’s land, sloping to the lake. The thick hammock might have been a cypress slough. The giant live oaks, the hickories, the sweet gums, the magnolias, the orange trees, stood deep in a turgid wetness.
Penny said, “Let’s try the road.”
The road, like the one leading southeast from Baxter’s Island, had formed a sluiceway for the waters. It was now a gully, and dry. They rode down it. Doc Wilson’s house appeared ahead, dark and shadowy under the great trees.
Buck said, “I’ll be blest if I see why ary man would choose a place this dark to live in, even to stay drunk.”
Penny said, “If ever’body loved the same places, we’d be right over-crowded.”
Water stood ankle-deep around the house. The blocks on which it rested showed that the water had at one time been over the floor. The boards of the broad veranda were warping. They waded to the front steps, eyes open warily for coiled moccasins. A white pillow-slip was tacked across the front door. A message was printed on it with ink. The ink had run but the letters were plain.
Buck said, “Us Forresters cain’t read good. Read it, Penny.”
Penny spelled out the liquid words.
“I have gone toward the ocean where this much water ain’t so peculiar. I mean to stay drunk until the storm is over. I will be somewhere between here and the ocean. Please don’t come after me unless it’s a broke neck or a baby. Doc.
P.S. If it’s a broke neck no use anyway.”
Buck and Mill-wheel and Penny shouted, and Jody laughed because they did.
Buck said, “That Doc, he’d crack him a joke right in the Lord’s face.”
Penny said, “That’s why he’s a good doctor.”
“How come?”
“Well, he gits to fool the Lord now and agin.”
They laughed until they were weak. It was good to be light-hearted, when the world had been gray and heavy so long. They went inside the house and found a tin of crackers and a bottle of whiskey on the table and added them to their stores. They turned back up the road and went north for a mile or so, then west again.
Penny said, “No use goin’ to Hopkins Parairie. We kin figger hit’s a pure lake.”
Buck and Mill-wheel agreed. South of Hopkins Prairie they found the same story. The weaker animals and the ground creatures had been washed down to destruction. At the edge of a bay-head, a bear lumbered across in plain sight.
Penny said, “No use shootin’ him. We may need his meat a month from now. Hit’s too fur to tote him and we’ll git many a shot before night-fall.”
The Forresters agreed reluctantly. A shot to them was a shot, whether or no they could use the game. Penny would shoot nothing for which he could not see a use. He preferred even to kill the enemy bears at a time when their flesh was welcome and usable. They continued west. Here was a long stretch of gallberry flats that in good weather was the favorite haunt of bear and wolf and panther. The ground was always boggy, the vegetation low, and bay-heads to the north and east gave both food and a hiding place. Now the section was a swamp. Water drained off quickly from a sand soil, but where the earth was heavy, it remained as on clay. Islands of scrub oak and live oak, and a few high palm hammocks, lay between the flats and the broad stretch of the scrub itself. They skirted the new-made swamp and made for these.
At first Jody could see nothing. Then when Penny pointed to this tree and that, he was able to make out the forms of animals. They rode close. The creatures seemed unafraid. A fine buck stared at them. The shot was irresistible. Buck brought it down. They rode closer. Wild-cats and lynxes peered visibly from the branches of trees. The Forresters urged their killing.
Penny said, “Hit’s a pity we should add to their troubles. Seems like there’d ought to be room enough in the world for folks and creeturs, both.”
Mill-wheel said, “Trouble with you, Penny, you was raised by a preacher. You look for the lion and the lamb to be layin’ down together.”
Penny pointed to the high earth ahead of them.
“Well,” he said, “the deer and the bob-cat—there you be.”
But he was forced to agree that every wild-cat on the loose, every bear, lynx, wolf or panther, meant depredations on hogs, chickens and cattle, and on the milder game, the deer, the ’coons, the squirrels and the ’possums. It
seemed to make an endless circle of “Eat or be eaten. Kill or go hungry.”
He joined in the attack on the great cats and six fell killed or wounded. Jody brought down a lynx. The recoil of the old muzzle-loader all but knocked him from Cæsar’s rump. He dismounted to reload. The Forresters patted him on the back. The men dressed the buck. The meat was lean, showing the week of privation. They flung the carcass over the rump of Buck’s horse. They went forward on foot to the oak island. Dim forms scurried at the far side. It was eery, hearing the rustling of creatures, seeing the skulking.
The hides of the wild-cats were poor and not worth saving.
Penny said, “Now them carcasses’d make a fine dinner for the dogs, and easy carried.”
The dogs were already chewing on the haunches of the cats. They too had been underfed through the storm. The cat-meat was dressed out and slung over the horses. Mid-afternoon found the exploring party due north and a little west of Forresters’ Island. They decided that it was best to continue, and camp out for the night. For an hour or two the sun was strong. A putrid odor began to rise from the wet earth and from the waters. Jody felt a little ill.
Buck said, “I’m proud Fodder-wing ain’t here right now. He’d hate it, all these creeturs dead.”
Bears began to be seen again. The wolves were not in evidence, nor the panthers. They rode through several miles of scrub. Deer and squirrels were plentiful here. Probably they had never left, feeling secure. They were all bold and plainly hungry. The Forresters, greedy, and anxious as well that both families should surely have meat, shot another buck and slung it over Mill-wheel’s horse.
Toward sunset, the scrub dissolved again into live oak islands. Farther south was Juniper Prairie. That would now be flooded. A little to the east lay a stretch of land that was neither scrub nor prairie, neither island nor swamp nor hammock. It was as open as a clearing. It was agreed to camp here for the night, even though an hour or two of daylight remained. No one was of a mind to be caught in the low places, malodorous and crawling with reptiles. They made camp under two giant long-leaf pines. There was not much protection overhead, but the night would be clear, and it was better under such unnatural circumstances to be in the open.
Mill-wheel said, “When I bed with a panther, I crave for that panther to be dead.”
They turned the horses loose with dropped reins to graze before tethering them for the night. Mill-wheel had disappeared into a patch of scrub oak south of the camp site. The others heard him shout. The dogs had followed him on one of the endless trails that had enchanted them all day. They were moving slowly, tired out from the abundance of scent and track. Old Julia lifted her voice.
Penny said, “That’s cat.”
Wild-cats had lost their zest. All four dogs were baying, their voices ranging from a high keening to the bass rumble of Rip. Mill-wheel shouted again.
Penny said, “Don’t you Forresters ever git a bait o’ wildcats?”
Buck said, “Now he’d not holler that-a-way over no wildcat.”
The dogs’ voices lifted into a frenzy. Penny and Jody and Buck became infected with the sound and ran into the thick growth. A scrub oak had grown to considerable size. Halfway up its gray twisted trunk they saw the quarry. It was a female panther with two cubs. She was lean and gaunt but of immense length. The cubs still wore the blue and white spots of panther infancy across their hides. Jody thought they were prettier than any kittens he had ever seen. They were the size of grown house-cats. They lifted back their delicate whiskers in imitation of their mother’s snarl. Her appearance was formidable. Her teeth were bared, her long tail switched back and forth, her claws worked on the oak limb. She seemed about to drop on the first creature, man or dog, to move closer. The dogs were wild.
Jody called out, “I want the cubs! I want the cubs!”
Mill-wheel said, “Let’s knock her out and leave the dogs have a go-round.”
Penny said, “We’ll have four tore-up dogs if you do.”
Buck said, “You mighty right. We best drop her and be done with it.” He shot.
The dogs were on her the instant she hit the ground. If there was a spark of life, it was at once snuffed out. Buck climbed up the low tree and shook the limb.
Jody called again, “I want the cubs.”
He planned, when they dropped, to run to them and pick them up. He was sure they would be gentle. They fell finally under Buck’s vigorous shaking. Jody darted in but the dogs were ahead of him. The cubs were dead, and shaken and tossed, before he could approach them. Yet in their dying, he saw that they slashed at the dogs and bit and clawed. He would have had ragged flesh, he realized, to show for his seizing of them. Yet he wished they were still alive.
Penny said, “Sorry, boy. But you’d not have had nothin’ you’d of keered to keep. Them scapers learns meanness early.”
Jody eyed the small fierce teeth.
“Kin I have the hides for another knapsack?”
“Why, sho’. Here, Buck, he’p me git ’em away from the dogs before they’re tore up.”
Jody took the limp bodies and cradled them.
“I hate things dyin’,” he said.
The men were silent.
Penny said slowly, “Nothin’s spared, son, if that be ary comfort to you.”
“’Tain’t.”
“Well, hit’s a stone wall nobody’s yit clumb over. You kin kick it and crack your head agin it and holler, but nobody’ll listen and nobody’ll answer.”
Buck said, “Well, when it come my time, I shore aim to git my money’s wuth hollerin’.”
They called the dogs away from the dead panther. She measured nine feet from tip of nose to the end of long curled tail. She was too lean, however, to dress out for her oil.
Penny said, “I got to either ketch me a fat panther or quit havin’ rheumatism.”
The hide too was in poor condition. They cut away the heart and liver to roast for the dogs.
Penny said, “No use nussin’ them cubs no longer, Jody. Give ’em here and go fetch wood. I’ll skin ’em out for you.”
He went away. The evening was clear and rosy. The sun was drawing water. Shadowy fingers reached through the luminous sky to the sodden earth. The wet leaves of the scrub oaks, the thin needles of the pines, glittered, and he forgot his distress. There was much to be done to make camp. All wood was wet, but, prowling about, he found a fallen pine whose core was rich with resin. He called, and Buck and Mill-wheel came and dragged it bodily to the camp site. It would make a burning base to dry out the other wood. They chopped it in half and laid the two long pieces side by side. Jody struggled with flint and steel from the tinder horn until Penny took it away from him and kindled a fire between the logs with fat-wood splinters. He piled on small brush that caught fire quickly. Larger limbs and logs were added. They smoked and smoldered but ended by bursting into flame. Now there was a glowing bed on which the wettest logs might dry, and then burn slowly. Jody dragged in all available wood that was not too heavy to handle alone. He had a high pile ready for the night’s long burning. Buck and Mill-wheel dragged in logs as big as themselves.
Penny cut out the backstraps from the fattest buck and sliced them for frying for supper. Mill-wheel appeared from a prowl with palmetto fronds to be used as plates, for laying out the food, and other camp means of tidiness. He had as well the hearts of two palms. He pulled away layer after layer of the white cores and came at last to the hearts, crisp and sweet.
He said, “Now I want that fryin’ pan, Mr. Penny, please, for my swamp cabbage. Then I’ll leave you fry that back-strap when I’m done with the pan.”
He sliced the palm-hearts thinly.
“Where’s the grease, Penny?”
“In a bottle in the crocus sack.”
Jody ambled about, watching the others. His job was to feed the fire with twigs to keep the flame from dying too low. The logs blazed brightly. There were already embers suitable for roasting. Buck whittled forked sticks on which each could roa
st his meat. Mill-wheel dipped water from a nearby pond for his pan of swamp cabbage, covered it with a section of palm-frond and set it over the coals to cook.
Penny said, “Now I forgot coffee.”
Buck said, “Well, with ol’ Doc Wilson’s whiskey, I’ll not miss it.”
He brought out the bottle and passed it. Penny was ready for the frying pan for his venison, but the swamp cabbage was not done. He improvised spits on which he hung the wild-cat carcasses. He sliced the wild-cat and panther hearts and livers and stuck them on sticks and propped them over the coals to roast. The smell was enticing. Jody sniffed the air and sniffed again and patted his flat stomach. Penny sliced the deer livers and placed them more carefully on Buck’s forked sticks and gave each man his own toasting fork to hold, to cook his meat to his own taste. The flames licked around the dog-meat and the odor brought in the dogs. They came close and lay flat and slapped their tails back and forth and whined. Raw cat-meat was not too much to their fancy. They had gnawed a bit on it by way of proving their victory. The roasted flesh was another thing. They licked their chops.
Jody said, “I’ll bet that’s good.”
“Well, try it.” Penny withdrew a portion from the fire and held it out to him. “Look out. It’s hotter’n stewed apples.”
The Yearling Page 23