The Yearling
Page 32
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 Slew-foot. 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 become 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 fatwood 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 compone 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 compone 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-footed 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?”
The Death of Old Slewfoot (p. 329)
“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. The
re 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.