“Then I’d of let Oliver know the truth.”
“Yes, and what’d he of done then? Lit in and killed two-three of ’em. Oliver’s hot-headed and why wouldn’t he be? Most ary man’d take out after fellers did sich as that to him. All right. Kill him a few Forresters and mebbe hang for it. Or else have the rest of ’em pitch in and kill the bunch of ’em, him and his Ma and his purty leetle wife.”
“Purty leetle wife!” she snorted. “Chipperdale!”
Jody felt a new loyalty surge up in him.
“She do be mighty purty, Ma,” he said.
“Men is all alike,” she said conclusively.
Baxter’s Island was at hand. A sense of safety, of well-being, came over Jody. Other people had catastrophe, but the clearing was beyond it. The cabin waited for him, and the smoke-house full of good meat, with old Slewfoot’s carcass added to it, and Flag. Above all, Flag. He could scarcely contain himself until he reached the shed. He had a tale to tell him.
Chapter XXVIII
THE January weather was mild. Now and then the sun would set in a cold red stillness, quilts would be inadequate through the night, and morning would show a thin film of ice on the water buckets. Then in a day or two it would be so warm that Ma Baxter could sit on the porch in the sun in the afternoon and work at her mending and patching, and Jody could run through the woods without his wool jacket.
The Baxter life had quieted along with the weather. The river folk were no doubt in a swivet, Penny said, over the burning of the Hutto house and the migration of the sharptongued mother, never understood, the sailor son, almost like a foreigner, and their own golden-headed Twink. Belief must be general that the drunken Forresters had set fire to the place on receipt of the word that Oliver had returned with the girl. But the river was a long way off, and news filtered slowly to Baxter’s Island. Penny and Ma and Jody sat by the hearth-fire evening after evening, reliving the night through which they had stood with the Huttos and watched the house char into embers; had waited with them, warmed by its heat, for the morning boat that nothing could dissuade Grandma from taking.
“To my notion,” Penny said, “if that stranger that come in to the doin’s had knowed it was Oliver’s wife, and not jest said it were a gal with him, not even Lem’d of bothered ’em. They’d of figgered ’twas time to call quits, oncet she was married.”
“Wife or no wife, hit’s low-down varmints’ll burn a house down, figgerin’ somebody’s in it.”
Penny sighed and was forced to agree. The Forresters must be doing their trading at Fort Gates. They never passed. They had not picked up their share of the bear meat on their return. Their avoidance of Penny made their guilt incontrovertible. It saddened him. His hard-won peace lay shattered about him. A stone thrown at some distance, and meant for some one else, had struck him. He was bruised and troubled.
Jody was concerned, but it was the anxiety he felt for characters in a tale. Grandma and Oliver and Fluff and Twink had steamed away down the river as people in a book might steam. Oliver became one with the stories he had told of distant places. Now, in the stories, there were Grandma and Twink and Fluff. Oliver had said, “I’ll not forget you, not even in the China Sea.” And it was in the China Sea, for the most part, that he pictured him, infinitely remote and abused by people as fictitious as he.
The end of January brought continued warmth. There would be frost, even, perhaps, a freeze again, before spring truly came. But the balmy days were a harbinger. Penny plowed the fields that would have early crops. He turned the new ground that Buck had cleared for him during his illness from the rattler’s striking. He had decided to try a little cotton for a money crop. The low ground near the north hammock would go into tobacco. He prepared his seed-beds between the house and the grape-arbor. With the stock reduced to old Cæsar and Trixie, he decided to plant cow-peas more sparingly and to put the extra land in corn. There seemed never to be enough. The chickens went short of feed, the hogs were not properly fattened, the Baxters themselves gave out of meal at the end of summer, all for lack of enough corn. Nothing on the clearing was more important. Jody helped him carry the winter’s compost from the lot and scatter it over the sandy acres. He planned to have the ground in good condition, bedded up and ready to plant in early March, by the time the first whip-poor-will should call.
Ma Baxter complained bitterly that she had always wanted a ginger bed. Every one else had one. The storekeeper’s wife at the river had promised her roots any time she was ready for them. Penny and Jody prepared the bed. They dug down four feet deep at the side of the house and laid down cypress slats. They hauled clay from the southwest and filled it in. The first time he went trading to the river, Penny promised to bring back the roots, knobby and peaked, like antlers.
The hunting was poor. The bears were feeding over a wide range, preparing themselves to go in February into hibernation. Their dens were under up-turned hurricane stumps, or where two large logs lay crossed, affording protection. Sometimes they dragged in oak and palmetto limbs and piled them in a hollow tree to make a rough nest. Wherever the bed, it was hollowed out in a trench, over the edge of which the bear would rest his forequarters. Jody thought that it was strange that they did not go into their winter beds in December, when the first really cold weather came, and then come out earlier, in March instead of April.
“I reckon they know their own business,” Penny said.
The deer were distressingly scarce, both because of the plague and the increased voracity of the remaining killers. The bucks were in poor condition, the meat lean, their coats moss-gray and shabby. They wandered usually alone. The does traveled alone or in pairs. An old doe traveled with a maiden doe, or with her male yearling. Many of the does were already heavy with fawn.
The principal work once the land was turned was hauling in wood and chopping and splitting it for both fire-places. Wood at least was more easily gotten than ever before, for the storm had brought down large numbers of trees, and the weakening of their roots from the long days of rain and steady wind had toppled still more. Timber had died by the acre in the low places. The effect was as though fire, not flood, had passed through such sections, for the dead trees stood gray and naked.
Penny said, “Now I’m proud I live in a high place. Hit’d fret me, havin’ to look at all that bleakness.”
Jody loved the morning jaunts for wood as well as a hunt. They were leisurely. Penny would hitch old Cæsar to the wagon on a cool sparkling morning after breakfast, and they would jog one way or another along the road as their fancy took them. The dogs would trot under the wagon and Flag would gallop ahead or to the side. He looked peculiarly wise in his buckskin collar. They would turn off into a clear place in the woods and prowl on foot for a suitable fallen tree, water oak or yellow pine by preference. There was abundant fat pine. This made the hottest and brightest hearth-fire and made fine kindling, but it smoked and smuttied the pots and kettles. They would take turns chopping, or use the crosscut saw together, Jody liked the rhythmic swing of the saw, the singing hum as it ate into the wood, the sweet smell of the sawdust sifting to the ground.
The dogs nosed nearby in the bushes or ran rabbits. Flag nibbled at the leaf-buds or found a succulent sprig of grass that had escaped the frost. Penny always carried his shotgun. Sometimes Julia ran a rabbit within range, or a fox squirrel whisked injudiciously up a nearby pine, and there was pilau for supper. One day a pure white fox squirrel peered boldly at them and Penny would not shoot. It was a curiosity, he said, like the albino ’coon. The meat of old Slewfoot had been coarse and stringy with age and it took long cooking to tender it. The Baxters had been glad when the last of it was gone. Most of it had been smoked for the dogs, and while it would have been edible in necessity, no one was ever tempted to ask for it. His fat, however, tried out, filled a large wooden bucket. It was as clear and golden as early honey and was fine for all cooking. The cracklings were as flavory as those from a prime hog. There was a double satisfaction whenever any of the
Baxters snapped them between their teeth.
Ma Baxter spent long hours at her quilting. Penny held Jody to his lessons. The evenings were spent by the hearthfire, blazing brightly to supply light as well as heat. The wind howled cozily around the house. On still nights of moonlight, the foxes could be heard barking in the hammock. Then the lesson stopped and Penny nodded to Jody and they listened together. The foxes seldom came to raid the Baxter hen-roost.
“They know ever’ hair o’ Julia’s head,” Penny chuckled. “They ain’t temptin’ Providence.”
One cold bright night at the end of January, Penny and Ma Baxter had gone to bed while Jody lingered with Flag by the fire. He heard a sound outside in the yard, as though the dogs were scuffling. The commotion was livelier than the pair usually made. He went to the front window and pressed his face to the cold pane. A strange dog was romping with Rip in play. Julia watched tolerantly. He caught his breath. It was not a dog. It was a gray wolf, lean and lame. He turned to run and call his father, then, irresistibly drawn, went back to watch again. Wolf and dog had plainly played together before. They were not strangers. They played silently, as though the dogs kept the secret. Jody went to the door of the bedroom and called softly. Penny came.
“What’s the matter, son?”
Jody tiptoed to the window, beckoning. Penny followed on bare feet and looked out where Jody pointed. He whistled under his breath. He made no move for his gun. They watched silently. In the bright moonlight the motions of the animals were plain. The visitor was crippled in one hip. Its movements were clumsy.
Penny whispered, “Someway piteeful, ain’t it?”
“Reckon it’s one o’ them we rounded up that day at the ponds?”
Penny nodded.
“Hit’s almost certain the last one. Pore thing, hurt and lonesome— Come visitin’ its nighest kin to pick a play.”
Perhaps the sibilance of their whispers reached beyond the closed window or their scent drifted to the wolf’s nose. Sound lessly, it turned and left the dogs and clambered with difficulty over the fence and was gone into the night.
Jody asked, “Will it do harm here?”
Penny stretched out his feet to the embers on the hearth.
“I mis-doubt it’s in shape to ketch itself a square meal. I’d not dream o’ botherin’ it. A bear’ll finish it, or a panther. Leave it live out the rest of its life.”
They squatted together by the hearth, caught up in the sadness and the strangeness. It was a harsh thing, even for a wolf, to be so alone that it must turn to the yard of its enemy for companionship. Jody laid an arm across Flag. He wished Flag could understand that he had been spared desolation in the forest. As for himself, Flag had eased a loneliness that had harassed him in the very heart of his family.
He saw the lone wolf once again on the waning moon. It never came again. By tacit consent, its visits were not revealed to Ma Baxter. She would have demanded its death, whether or no. Penny believed that the dogs had made its acquaintance on one of their hunts, or perhaps when they were cutting wood, and the dogs had wandered away on their own business.
Chapter XXIX
IN FEBRUARY, Penny became badly crippled for a time with his rheumatism. It had bothered him for several years in cold or wet weather. He was careless always about exposure, doing whatever he wished to do, or what seemed necessary, regardless of the weather and unsparing of himself. It was as good a time as any, Ma Baxter said, for him to be laid up, but he was uneasy for fear he would not be ready for his spring planting.
“Then let Jody do it,” she said impatiently.
“He’s never done nothin’ but foller me at it. There’s so many things a boy kin do wrong at sich work as that.”
“Yes, and whose fault is it he don’t know more about it? You’ve spared him too long. When you was nearly thirteen, wasn’t you plowin’ like a man?”
“Yes, and that’s jest why I don’t crave for him to do it ’til he’s got his growth and his strength.”
“Old butter-hearted,” she muttered. “Plowin’ never hurt nobody.”
She pounded poke-root and boiled it and made poultices for him, and made him a tonic of prickly ash and poke-root and potassium. He accepted her ministrations gratefully, but was no better. He went back to his panther oil, and rubbed his knees patiently with it, an hour at a time, and said it helped him more than the other remedies.
While his father was idle, Jody did the light chores and kept up with the wood. He had an incentive to hurry at his work, for when it was done, he was free to wander away with Flag. Penny even permitted him to take the shotgun with him. He missed his father’s company, yet he liked to hunt alone. He and Flag were free together. They liked best going to the sink-hole. They had stumbled on a game there one day when Flag had gone with him when he went to fetch drinking water. The game was a mad one of tag, up and down the steep slopes of the great green bowl. Flag was unbeatable at it, for he was up and down one side half a dozen times while Jody was making one climb to the top. Finding that he could not be caught, he alternated between a teasing business of wearing Jody out, and a more satisfying and ingratiating trick of deliberately allowing himself to be captured.
On a warm sunny day in mid-February, Jody looked up from the bottom of the sink-hole. Flag stood in silhouette at the top. For a startled moment, it seemed to him that it was another deer. Flag was so big— He had not seen how fast he was growing. Many a young yearling shot for food was no bigger than he. He went home to Penny in excitement. Penny sat by the kitchen hearth, wrapped in quilts, though the day was mild.
Jody burst out, “Pa, you reckon Flag’s near about a yearlin’?”
Penny looked at him quizzically.
“I been thinkin’ that myself lately. Give him a month more, I’d say he was a yearlin’.”
“How’ll he be different?”
“Well, he’ll stay off in the woods longer. He’ll grow a good bit bigger. He’ll be betwixt and between. He’ll be like a person standin’ on the state line. He’ll be leavin’ one and turnin’ into t’other. Behind him’s the fawn. Before him’s the buck.”
Jody stared into vacancy.
“Will he have horns?”
“He’ll likely not show no horns before July. The bucks is sheddin’ their horns right now. They’ll be butt-headed all through the spring. Then along in the summer the spikes’ll show and by ruttin’ season they’ll have full sets agin.”
Jody examined Flag’s head carefully. He felt the hard edge of his forehead. Ma Baxter passed by with a pan in her hand.
“Hey, Ma, Flag’ll soon be a yearlin’. Won’t he be purty, Ma, with leetle ol’ horns? Won’t his horns be purty?”
“He’d not look purty to me did he have a crown on. And angel’s wings.”
He followed her to cajole her. She sat down to look over the dried cow-peas in the pan. He rubbed his nose over the down of her cheek. He liked the furry feel of it.
“Ma, you smell like a roastin’ ear. A roastin’ ear in the sun.”
“Oh git along. I been mixin’ cornbread.”
“’Tain’t that. Listen, Ma, you don’t keer do Flag have horns or no. Do you?”
“Hit’ll be that much more to butt and bother.”
He did not press the point. Flag was in increasing disgrace, at best. He had learned to slip free from the halter about his neck. When it was tightened so that he could not get out of it, he used the same tactics that a calf used against restraint. He strained against it until his eyes bulged and his breathing choked, and to save his perverse life, it was necessary to release him. Then when he was free, he raised havoc. There was no holding him in the shed. He would have razed it to the ground. He was wild and impudent. He was allowed in the house only when Jody was on hand to keep up with him. But the closed door seemed to make him possessed to enter. If it was not barred, he butted it open. He watched his chance and slipped in to cause some minor damage whenever Ma Baxter’s back was turned.
She set the dish o
f shelled dried peas on the table and went to the hearth. Jody went to his room to look for a piece of rawhide. There was a clatter and commotion and then Ma Baxter’s storm of fury. Flag had leaped onto the table, seized a mouthful of the peas and sent the pan sprawling, the peas scattered from one end of the kitchen to the other. Jody came running. His mother threw the door open and drove Flag out with the broom. He seemed to enjoy the fracas. He kicked up his heels, flicked his white flag of a tail, shook his head as though threatening to attack with imaginary antlers, sailed over the fence and galloped away to the woods.
Jody said, “That were my fault, Ma. I shouldn’t of left him. He were hongry, Ma. The pore feller didn’t git enough for breakfast. You should of beat me, Ma, not him.”
“I’ll tear down all two of you. Now git down and pick up ever’ one o’ them peas and wash ’em off.”
He was only too glad to do so. He crawled under the table and reached behind the kitchen safe and under the inside water-shelf and in every corner, to retrieve them. He washed them carefully and went to the sink-hole for extra water, to replace what he had used, and more. He felt entirely righteous.
“Now see, Ma,” he said, “they’s no harm done. Ary leetle harm Flag do, you kin depend on me to take keer of it.”
Flag did not return until sunset. Jody fed him outside and waited to smuggle him into his bedroom after Penny and Ma were in bed. Flag had lost his fawn’s willingness to sleep long hours and had been increasingly restless at night. Ma Baxter had complained that she had heard him tripping about in Jody’s room or the front room several times. Jody had invented a plausible tale of rats on the roof, but his mother was sceptical. Perhaps Flag had had a sleep that afternoon in the woods, for this night he left his moss pallet and pushed open the rickety door of Jody’s bedroom and wandered about the house. Jody was aroused by a piercing shriek from his mother. Flag had awakened her from a sound sleep by pushing his wet muzzle against her face. Jody slipped the fawn out by the front door before she should do a more thorough job of it.
The Yearling Page 35