The Baxters went to bed. Jody made sure his window was tight shut. He tried to make Flag lie under the covers with him, but the fawn kicked off the quilt as often as he drew it over him. He was content to sleep on the foot of the bed, and Jody awakened twice in the night and felt down to make sure he was still there. Flag was not as large as the nearly grown calf— His heart thumped in the darkness. The fortress that was the clearing was vulnerable. He drew the quilt over his head and was afraid to go to sleep again. But bed was a comfortable and a sleepy place on the first cold night in autumn——
Penny got an early start for the Forresters’ in the morning. The pack had not returned in the night. He hoped that perhaps one or two were wounded. Jody begged to go with him, but his mother refused outright to stay alone.
“Hit’s all fun to you,” she complained. “’Kin I go? Kin I go?’ No thought o’ bein’ a man and lookin’ out for your Ma.”
His pride was touched. He patted her arm.
“Don’t fret, Ma. I’ll stay and keep off the wolves.”
“About time. I git the weak jerks, thinkin’ about ’em.”
He felt bold after his father’s assurance that the pack would not be seen in the daytime, but when Penny rode off on old Cæsar he was uneasy in spite of himself. He tied Flag in his room to a post of the bed and went to the sinkhole for water. On the way back, he was certain he heard sounds that he had never heard before. He looked back frequently, and broke into a trot past the fence-corner. He was not afraid, he told himself, but his mother might be. He chopped wood hurriedly and filled the kitchen wood-box to overflowing and stacked a pile by the hearth, in case his mother thought of it later. He asked if she needed meat from the smoke-house. She did not, but called for a can of cracklings and a bowl of lard.
She said, “Now your Pa went off and never said what to do with the pore calf, bury it or cook it for the dogs or save it for bait. Well, best wait ’til he says.”
No further outside work was necessary. He bolted the kitchen door behind him.
“You put that fawn out,” she said.
“Ma, don’t make me put him out. Why, the smell of him’d jest toll the wolves from all over.”
“All right, but you got to clean up after him if he don’t mind his manners.”
“I will.”
He decided to study his speller. His mother fished it out from the trunk that held extra quilts and winter clothes and the deed to the Baxter land. He occupied himself with it all morning.
“I never seed you so content with that book,” she said suspiciously.
He scarcely saw the words on the page. He was not afraid, he told himself again. But his ears were strained with listening. He listened all morning for a swift rush of padded feet. He listened for the sweet sound of old Cæsar’s hooves in the sand, and his father’s voice at the gate.
Penny was back in time for dinner. He had eaten little breakfast and was hungry. He would not talk until he had eaten his fill. He lit his pipe and tilted back his chair. Ma Baxter washed the dishes and brushed out the floor with the palmetto sweep.
“All right,” Penny said, “I’ll tell you jest how it stand. Hit’s like I figgered, the wolves was about the worst destroyed by the plague of ary o’ the creeturs. This pack was here last night is all there is left. Buck and Lem has been to Fort Butler and Volusia and no wolves has been seed nor heered since the plague but these uns. Allus in a bunch. They worked over here from near Fort Gates and has been cleanin’ out stock all the way acrost. They ain’t got to feed much, for they’ve been caught at it before they fed, and drove off. They’re purely starvin’, and night before last they got a heifer and a yearlin’ bull o’ the Forresters. Toward daylight this mornin’ they heered ’em howlin’. After they was here.”
Jody now was eager.
“Will we git to hunt with the Forresters?”
“That’s it. I had me a good go-round with them jessies. We cain’t see it the same way about killin’ ’em. I want a couple o’ good hunts, and traps around our lot and their corral. But the Forresters is bent on pizenin’ ’em. Now I ain’t never pizened a creetur and I don’t aim to.”
Ma Baxter flung her dishcloth at the wall.
“Ezra Baxter, if your heart was to be cut out, hit’d not be meat. Hit’d be purely butter. You’re a plague-taked ninny, that’s what you be. Leave them wild things kill our stock cold-blooded, and us starve to death. But no, you’re too tender to give ’em a belly-ache.”
He sighed.
“Do seem foolish, don’t it? I jest cain’t he’p it. Anyways, innocent things is likely to git the pizen. Dogs and sich.”
“Better that, than the wolves clean us out.”
“Oh now Ory, they ain’t goin’ to clean us out. They ain’t like to bother Trixie nor Cæsar. I mis-doubt could they git their teeth through their old hides. They shore ain’t goin’ to mess up with dogs that fights as good as mine. They ain’t goin’ to climb trees and ketch the chickens. They’s nary other thing here to bother, now the calf’s gone.”
“There’s Flag, Pa.”
It seemed to Jody that for once his father was wrong.
“Pizen’s no worse’n them tearin’ up the calf, Pa.”
“Tearin’ up the calf was nature. They was hongry. Pizen jest someway ain’t natural. Tain’t fair fightin’.”
Ma Baxter said, “Hit takes you to want to fight fair with a wolf, you——”
“Go ahead, Ory. Ease yourself and say it.”
“If I was to say it, hit’d take words I don’t scarcely know to think, let alone speak.”
“Then bust with it, wife. Pizenin’s a thing I jest won’t be a party to.”
He puffed on his pipe.
“If it’ll make you feel better,” he said, “the Forresters said worse’n you. I knowed they’d mock me in the head when I takened my stand, and they done so. And they’re fixin’ to go right ahead and set out the pizen.”
“I’m proud there’s men some’eres around.”
Jody glowered at both of them. His father was wrong, he thought, but his mother was unfair. Something in his father towered over the Forresters. The fact that this time the Forresters would not listen to him, must mean, not that he was not a man, but that he was mistaken. Perhaps, even, he was not wrong.
“You leave my Pa alone. I reckon he’s got more sense than the Forresters.”
She wheeled on him.
“Now mister impudent big-mouth, you’ll git yourself frammed good with a bresh.”
Penny rapped on the table with his pipe.
“Leave off! Ain’t it enough to have trouble with the animals, without the family quarrelin’? Has a man got to die to find peace?”
Ma Baxter turned back to her work. Jody skulked away to the bedroom and untied Flag and took him outdoors for a run. He was uneasy in the woods and did not go far. He called the fawn in and went and sat with him under the hickory tree and watched the squirrels. He decided to gather hickory nuts before the squirrels finished the crop. Mast was plentiful and the squirrels, because of the plague, were not, but he wished, crossly, not to divide the nuts on his own land. He climbed the tree and shook the limbs. The nuts fell in a shower and he climbed down and gathered a pile. He took off his shirt and made a sack of it and filled it with nuts and took them to the house. He emptied the pile on the ground in the shed and spread them out to dry. When he put on his shirt, he realized that he had stained it past all washing with the juice from the hulls. It was a quite good shirt, with only one small patch on it where he had snagged the sleeve sliding down the roof of the corn-crib. He grunted to himself. It was peculiarly difficult to know ahead of time what would get him into trouble and what would keep him out. However, when his mother was angry at Penny, she seldom noticed anything he did.
She smoothed down through the afternoon. After all, the Forresters would get the job done. Three of them rode in toward sunset. They had come to notify Penny of the exact location of the poison, so that he might keep his
dogs away from the trail. They had set it out ingeniously. They had done it entirely from horseback, so that the wolves should not scent the hated taint of man. They had prepared chunks of raw meat from their killed heifer and yearling, handling it with pieces of buckskin over their hands while they inserted the poison. The three had separated and ridden over the trails the pack might be expected to follow. They had dug holes with pointed palmetto stems, leaning from the saddle, and dropped in the poisoned bait, raking leaves over it again with their sticks. They had brought the last trail back toward Penny’s lot, in a line from the sink-hole, where the wolves might water or wait for other game. Penny accepted the situation philosophically.
“All right. I’ll keep my dogs tied for a week.”
They accepted a drink of water and a twist of Penny’s tobacco, but refused supper with thanks. They wanted to be home again before night when the pack might return to the corral. They visited with Penny a few minutes and rode away again. The evening passed peacefully. Penny filled more shell-cases, capped them and loaded his gun. He loaded Jody’s muzzle-loader as well. Jody took it and propped it carefully by his bed. He was grateful to his father for including him in such preparations. He lay thinking after they were all in bed. He could hear his father talking with his mother.
He heard him say, “I got news for you. Buck told me Oliver Hutto takened a boat from Jacksonville to Boston and figgered on bein’ there a while before he shipped agin. He give Twink Weatherby money and she slipped off to Jacksonville and got on a boat and follered him. Lem’s rarin’. He says do he meet Twink and Oliver, he’ll kill ’em all two.”
Jody heard his mother’s bulk, turning, creak the bed.
She said, “Now if the gal’s honest, why don’t Oliver marry her and be done with it? If she’s nothin’ but one o’ them leetle ol’ chipperdales, why do he mess up with her?”
“I couldn’t rightly say. Been so long sincet I was a young buck, studyin’ on courtin’, I dis-remember how Oliver mought figger.”
“Anyways, he hadn’t ought to of let her foller him that-a-way.”
Jody agreed with her. He threshed his legs under the covers in fury. He was finished with Oliver. If he ever saw him again, he would tell him what he thought of him. He hoped most to see Twink Weatherby and pull her yellow hair or throw something at her. Because of her, Oliver had gone away without coming to visit them. He had lost him. He was so angry at him that he did not care. He dropped asleep, painting enjoyable pictures of Twink wandering in the scrub and eating the wolf-poison and falling dead in deserved agonies.
Chapter XXIV
THE Forrester poisoning killed thirty wolves in one week. There was a pack left of a dozen or two that was wary and avoided the poison. Penny agreed to help with their extermination by the legitimate means of trap and gun. The pack ranged wide and never killed twice in the same place. It invaded the Forrester corral one night. The calves bleated and the Forresters poured out. They found the cows holding the wolves at bay. They had formed a ring, with the calves in the center, and were on the defensive with lowered horns. One calf was dying with a torn throat and two had their tails bitten off neatly at the rump. The Forresters brought down six of the pack. The next day they set poison again, but the wolves did not return. Two of their own dogs found the bait and died horribly. The Forresters were willing to track down the rest of the pack in slower fashion.
Buck came one evening at dusk to invite Penny to join them in a hunt the next morning at dawn. The wolves had been heard howling early that day at a water-hole west of Forresters’ Island. A long dry spell had followed the flood and the high waters had shrunk away. The swamps, the marshes, the ponds, the creeks, were at nearly their usual level. What game was left could be counted on to visit various known water-holes. The wolves had made the same discovery. The hunt would serve two purposes. With luck, all the remaining wolves might be killed. Game also could easily be taken. The plague seemed to have run its course. Venison and bear-meat again tempted the imagination. Penny accepted the invitation gratefully. There were enough Forresters to make any hunt without outside help. It was generosity that had sent Buck to Baxter’s Island. Jody knew it. He knew, too, that his father’s knowledge of the ways of the game was always welcome.
Penny said, “Spend the night, Buck, and we’ll git off soon before day.”
“No, for do I come up missin’ at bed-time, they’ll figger they’s no hunt and not be ready.”
It was agreed that Penny should meet them an hour or so before day, at the intersection of the main trail with their own. Jody tugged at his father’s sleeve.
Penny said, “Kin I carry my boy and my dogs?”
“The dogs, we counted on, since Nell and Big Un was pizened. The boy we hadn’t figgered on, but if you’ll speak for him not to mess up the hunt——”
“I’ll speak for him.”
Buck rode away. Penny prepared ammunition and oiled the guns. The Baxters went to bed early.
It seemed to Jody that Penny was leaning over him, shaking him awake, before he had even had time to go to sleep. It was still night. Rising was always early, but there was usually at least a thin streak of light across the east. Now the world was as black as tar, and the trees still rustled with the night winds. There was no other sound quite like it. For a moment he regretted his anxiety of the evening before. Then he thought ahead to the hunt and excitement warmed him and he jumped from bed in the cold air. He slid his feet along the snug softness of his deerskin rug as he pulled on his shirt and breeches. He hurried to the kitchen.
A fire was crackling on the kitchen hearth. His mother was placing a pan of biscuits in the Dutch oven. She had an old hunting coat of Penny’s over her long flannel nightgown. Her gray hair hung in braids over her shoulders. He went to her and smelled of her and rubbed his nose against her flannel breast. She felt big and warm and soft and he slipped his hands under the back of the coat to warm them. She tolerated him a moment, then pushed him away.
“I never had no hunter act like sich a baby,” she said. “You’ll be late for the meetin’ if breakfast’s late.”
But her tone was friendly.
Jody sliced bacon for her. She freshened it in hot water, then dipped it in flour and put it in an iron skillet to fry to a crisp brown. He had not thought he was hungry, but the sweet nut-like fragrance of it was overwhelming. Flag came from the bedroom and sniffed too.
She said, “You feed that fawn and tie him in the shed before you forgit it. I’ll not be tormented with him while you’re gone.”
He led Flag outside. The fawn was frisky and bolted away. He had trouble in following him and catching him in the blackness. He tied him first, then gave him a mash of meal and water.
He said, “You be good and I’ll tell you about the wolves when I git home.”
Flag bleated after him. If it were only an ordinary hunt, he would almost rather stay home with him. But Penny had said that they meant to kill off the last wolf in the scrub, and he might never see another again as long as he lived. When he went to the house, Penny had come in from milking. The quantity was short because of the early hour. Breakfast was ready. They ate hurriedly. Ma Baxter did not eat but put up a lunch for them. Penny insisted that they would be home again for dinner.
She said, “You’ve said that before, and then come in after dark with your belly pinchin’ you.”
Jody said, “Ma, you’re shore good.”
“Oh, yes. When it’s rations.”
“Well, I’d a heap ruther you was good about rations and mean about other things.”
“Oh, I be mean, be I?”
“Only about jest a very few things,” he soothed her. Penny had saddled Cæsar when he was at the barn. The horse stamped now, hitched at the gate. He knew a hunt as well as the dogs. They came with waving tails, gulped a pan of grits and gravy, and followed after. Penny slung a coil of rope and the saddle-bags over Cæsar’s back, mounted into the saddle, and pulled Jody up after him. Ma Baxter handed their guns
up to them.
Penny said to Jody, “Now take keer how you swing that thing around. You kill your Pa, and you’ll r’aly have to hunt for a livin’.”
It seemed surely that day must break. The horse’s hooves thumped in the sand. The road gave back the sound, then dropped behind them, as it stretched before, in silence. Strange, he thought, that the night should feel more silent than the day, when most of the creatures stirred then, and did their sleeping when the sun rose. Only a hoot-owl cried, and when its crying ended, they rode forward into a dark emptiness. It was natural to speak in whispers. The air was chill. In his excitement, he had forgotten to put on his ragged jacket. He leaned close against his father’s back.
“Boy, you ain’t got on your coat. You want mine?”
He was tempted but refused.
“I ain’t cold,” he said.
Penny’s back was thinner than his own. It was his own fault that he had no coat.
“You reckon we’ll be too late, Pa?”
“Reckon not. Mebbe day’ll hold off ’til we git there.”
They were ahead of the Forresters. Jody climbed down and tussled with Rip to warm himself, and because the waiting was intolerable. He began to fear they had missed them. Then a clop-clop of hoofs sounded at what seemed some distance and the Forresters were there. All six had come. They greeted the Baxters briefly. The light wind was favorable, blowing from the southwest. If they did not stumble on a wolf sentry, they might take the pack unawares. It would be long-range shooting at best. Buck and Penny took the lead, side by side. The rest followed in single file.
A grayness that was scarcely light crept through the forest. There was an interval between daylight and sunrise that was an unreal hour. It seemed to Jody that he moved in a dream between night and day, and when the sun rose, he would awaken. The morning would be foggy. The grayness lingered in the fog and seemed unwilling to rise through it. The two merged, joined against the sun that would tear them to tatters. The file of riders came out of the scrub and into an open area of grass and live oak islands. A favorite water-hole of the game lay beyond. It was a clear deep pool and something about the water was to the taste of the creatures. It was protected as well with marsh on two sides, from which danger might be seen approaching, and forest on the other two, into which they might quickly retreat.
The Yearling Page 27