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Southern Cross AI 14

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

They passed the bottle once more. The fire blazed, the meat dripped its juices into the flames, the fragrance eddied up with the smoke. The sun set behind the scrub oaks and Mill-wheel's swamp cabbage was done. Penny emptied it on a clean palm frond and put it over a smoldering log to keep warm. He wiped out the frying pan with a handful of moss and set it back over the coals to heat. He sliced bacon into it. When the bacon was brown and the fat sizzling hot, he fried the thin slices of backstrap crisp and tender. Buck cut scoops from the palm stems and every one dipped, share and share alike, into the swamp cabbage. Penny made hush- puppies of meal and salt and water and fried them in the fat the venison had cooked in.

"Hit were before you were borned. Mebbe two-three of you was back in the house some'eres in cradles. I were jest a leetle ol' young un myself. I come over to your island with my own daddy. Reckon mebbe he come to try to give your Pa salvation. When he was young, your Pa was wilder'n you-all. He could tip a jug o' corn liquor back and drink it down like water. And he done so, in them days, right frequent. Well, we rode up to your door and here was broke dishes and rations all strowed down the walk, and chairs pitched over the gate. And all over the yard, and all along the fence row, was feathers. Looked as if chicken Heaven had done blowed up. Layin' on the stoop was the tickin' o' the feather bed where it had been split open with a knife.

"Your daddy come to the gate. Now I won't say he was drunk, but he shore had done been drunk. He'd tore up ever'thing had takened his eye. And the last thing he noticed was the feather bed. Now he wa'n't mad nor quarrelin'. He was jest havin' him a big time crackin' things open. He'd got all over it, and was peaceful and happy as could be. Now what your Ma was doin' and sayin' whilst he was at it, you'd know better'n me. But right now she was still, and cold as ice. She was settin' rockin' with her hands folded and her mouth like a steel trap. My daddy had sense, if he was a preacher, and I reckon he figgered another time'd be best for whatever 'twas he'd come to say. So he jest passed the time o' day and set out to ride on agin.

Jody laughed to himself long after the Forresters were quiet. His father made a story so real, he could see the feathers still, blown against the split-rail fence. The dogs, roused by the laugher, stirred and changed their positions. They had edged close for the warmth of the humans and of the fire. Old Julia lay at his father's feet. He wished Flag were with him, to snuggle close with his smooth warm coat. Buck rose and pulled another log on the fire. The men began to talk of the probable movements of the scrub and swamp animals. The wolves were evidently moving in another direction from the rest of the animals. They disliked wet sections even more than the big cats and were no doubt in the heart of the high scrub. Bear had not been as plentiful as expected.

Jody put his arms under his head and looked up into the sky. It was as thick with stars as a pool of silver minnows. Between the two tall pines over him, the sky was milky, as though Trixie had kicked a great bucket of milk foaming across the heavens. The pines swayed back and forth in a light cool breeze. Their needles were washed with the silver of the starlight. Smoke from the camp- fire eddied up and joined the stars. He watched it drift through the pine tops. His eyelids fluttered. He did not want to go to sleep. He wanted to listen. The hunting talk of men was the finest talk in the world. Chills went along his spine to hear it. The smoke against the stars was a veil drawn back and forth across his eyes. He closed them. For a moment the talk of the men was a deep droning against the snapping of the wet wood. Then it faded into the sound of the breeze in the pines, and was no longer sound, but the voiceless murmur of a dream.

It seemed almost at their feet. Jody's flesh crept. It might be Fodder-wing's Spaniard. Were ha'nts susceptible, like mortals, he wondered, to flood and rain? Did they yearn to warm their thin transparent hands at a hunter's camp-fire? Penny eased himself to his feet and fumbled for a pine knot for a torch. He lit it at the fire and started forward cautiously. The sighing sound had ceased. Jody followed close behind him. There was a rustling. Penny swung the torch. A pair of eyes, red as a bull-bat's, caught the light. He shifted the light. He laughed. The visitor was an alligator from the pond.

From where he lay, Jody could look straight across into the sunrise. It was strange to see it on a level with his face. At home the thick scrub growth beyond the cleared fields obscured it. Now there was only a morning fog between. The sun did not seem to rise, but to sweep forward through a gray curtain. The curtain began to part its folds for the passing. The light was the thin pale gold of his mother's wedding ring. It grew brighter and brighter until he found himself blinking into the very face of the sun. The light September fog clung tenaciously a little while to the tops of the trees, as though resisting the tearing and destructive fingers of the sun. Then it too was gone and the whole east was the color of ripe guavas.

The fried and roasted venison and the hush-puppies did not taste as good as the night before. Penny cleaned up after breakfast. Grazing for the horses had been poor because the grasses were beaten flat. Jody gathered armfuls of moss for them and they ate it with relish. Breaking camp, mounting, turning the heads of the horses south, was the beginning of a fresh journey. Jody looked over his shoulder. The camp site was desolate. The charred logs, the gray ashes, were forlorn. The magic had died out with the flames of the camp-fire. The morning had been cool but the climbing sun began to heat the day. The earth steamed. The stench of the polluted waters was often overpowering.

Jody would not have recognized the prairie. It was a flat body of water, where even a crane might hesitate to wade and wander. Farther south was scrub again, then gallberry flats and bay-heads. But where marsh should be, was a lake. They reined in the horses. It was as though they had camped overnight on some strange borderland and had now come into another country. Fish were leaping in the air from water that a week ago had been land. And here, after all the miles, were the bears--They were fishing with an abandon that made them unaware of, or indifferent to, the approach of horses and riders. Two or three dozen black forms moved through the waters, belly-deep. Fish jumped ahead of them.

Buck and Mill-wheel indicated their choices and the group spread cautiously in both directions. Penny lifted his hand. They halted. Jody was trembling so violently that when he lifted his gun he could see nothing in front of him but a blur of water. He forced himself to steady his aim. His bear was quartering from him, but he was able to draw a bead on the left cheek from the rear. Penny dropped his hand. Guns barked. There was a second bombardment from Buck and Mill-wheel. The horses reared a little. Jody could not remember having pulled the trigger. But fifty yards in front of him a black body, that had been upright, lay half-sunk in the water.

The remaining bears were scrambling across the swamp like paddle boats, churning the water behind them. It would take a long shot now to bring one down. Again Jody was amazed at the speed of the bulky bodies. The first shot of each man had been accurate and deadly. Buck and Mill-wheel had only wounded on their second shots. The dogs, kept at heel, broke into bedlam. They barked in a frenzy and dashed into the water. It was too deep for wading and too thick with growth for swimming. They were forced to retreat, shrill with frustration. The men rode in close on the two wounded animals. They fired again and the game lay still. The unharmed bears were vanishing before their eyes. No game was quicker or cleverer.

Penny was already on his feet. The water was over his knees. Jody was ashamed to stay on his horse as though he were a child. He too slid off into the water. The bottom was firm. He helped drag his bear to high ground. The Forresters seemed unaware that it was important that he had shot it, for it was his first. Penny touched his shoulder, and that was praise enough. The bear would weigh better than three hundred pounds. They agreed that it was best to halve it lengthwise so that the portions might easily be thrown over the rumps of the two horses. They skinned it and were surprised at its fatness, when deer and panther were so lean. The bears must have fed here through the latter days of the storm.

They lifted their hands and were gone. Penny and Jody jogged after them. They would all use the same trail for some miles, but the Forresters, unburdened, on their fast horses, were already far ahead. To the east, they came out on the trail toward home. The going was slow and troublesome. Old Caesar would not follow behind the bear hide. But when Penny had Jody ride ahead, the Forrester horse insisted on taking the lead. There was a constant struggle. At last, through Juniper Prairie, Penny touched his heels to the horse and took a long lead. With the bear hide out of sight and smelling, old Caesar was content to trot along reasonably. At first Jody was uneasy, alone in the new wilderness of water. Then, with his bear meat behind him, he felt bold again, and mature.

For two weeks Penny concerned himself with the salvaging of crops. The sweet potatoes were not ready, by two months, for digging. But they were rotting and would be a total loss if they were not dug. Jody worked long hours at them. He must be careful to go deeply enough with the potato fork and not go too close to the middle of the beds. Then, by lifting carefully, he brought up a forkful of potatoes unharmed. When they were all dug, Ma Baxter spread them out to dry and cure as best they could on the back porch. They all had to be gone over and more than half discarded. Rotting ends were cut off and with the nubbins set aside for the hogs.

A month after the flood, in October, he returned with Jody in the wagon beside him to Mullet Prairie to gather the cut and cured hay. Rip and Julia trotted along behind the wagon. Penny allowed Flag, too, to follow for he had begun to make a great commotion whenever he was shut up and left behind in the shed. He ran, sometimes ahead of old Caesar, sometimes, when the road was wide enough, beside him. Now and then he dropped back and frolicked with the dogs. He had learned to eat green stuff and he stopped occasionally to nibble a tender bud or sprout.

There was still no explanation of the wild-cat's feebleness. They reached the prairie and loaded the wagon with hay. Penny estimated that three more trips would be necessary. The marsh hay was coarse and stringy, but when frost had come and the wire grass was dry and harsh, Caesar and Trixie and the heifer calf would be glad to have it. They drove toward home leisurely. Old Caesar quickened his gait and even Julia ran on ahead, eager, as all domestic animals, for home. Past the trail to the sink-hole, at the corner of the first fence-row, Julia lifted her nose and bayed.

His father left him alone to take hay and load the wagon while he unhitched Caesar and rode on to the Forresters for information. Jody felt uneasy and miserable, alone at the edge of the marsh. The world seemed empty. Only over the scrub the buzzards wheeled, profiting. He hurried at his work and had finished it long before his father returned. He climbed to the top of the load of hay and lay flat on his back, staring at the sky. He decided that the world was a very peculiar place to live in. Things happened that had no reason and made no sense and did harm, like the bears and panthers, but without their excuse of hunger. He did not approve.

Against the uncomfortable and alarming things that happened, he balanced Flag. His father, too, of course. But Flag lived in a secret place in his heart that had been long aching and vacant. If Flag were not stricken with the plague, the flood, he decided, would be interesting. If he lived to be as old as Penny, as old as Grandma Hutto and Ma Forrester, he would never forget, he knew, the fright and enchantment of the endless days and nights of storm. He wondered if the quail would die of the black tongue. In another month, his father had told him, he might make a trap of crossed twigs and catch a few for eating. Shot was too valuable to be wasted on such small mouthfuls. But Penny would not allow them to be trapped until the covey was full-grown, and he insisted each year that two or three pairs of cocks and hens be left for seed. And would the turkeys die, and the squirrels, and the wolves and bears and panthers? Speculation absorbed him.

By November, the Baxters and the Forresters knew the extent of the plague and what to expect, both of the game and the predatory animals, during the winter. The deer had been cut down to a fraction of their usual numbers. Where a herd of a dozen had fed across the edge of the clearing, a lone buck or doe leaped the fence into the cow-pea field in search of food that was not there. The deer became bold, nosing in the old sweet potato beds for undiscovered nubbins. The quail appeared in almost their usual numbers, but the wild turkeys were decimated. From that fact, Penny concluded that the damage indeed lay somehow in the polluted swamp waters, for the turkeys fed there and the quail did not.

All the food animals, deer and turkey, squirrel and 'possum, were so scarce that a day's hunt might produce nothing. The unfriendly animals had suffered as heavy losses. At first Penny thought that this would be of advantage. It became plain almost at once that the result was to make the remaining killers hungrier and more desperate because of their own shortened food supply. He became alarmed for the Baxter hogs and built a pen for them inside the lot. All the family went together to the woods and gathered acorns and scrub palmetto berries for the hogs. Penny set aside a measure of the new corn for fattening them. A few days later a stamping and squealing sounded in the lot at midnight. The dogs, aroused, ran barking and Penny and Jody pulled on their breeches and followed with a torch. The fattest barrow was missing. The kill had been made so neatly that there was no sign of struggle. A small trail of blood led across the lot and over the fence. It had required a large animal to kill and carry a heavy hog so handily. Penny took a hasty look at the tracks.

When Penny was able to leave the bed, they agreed that it was best to kill the hogs without waiting either for the full moon, or for the animals to be properly fattened. Jody split fat-wood and built a fire under the syrup kettle and brought water from the sink-hole to heat in it. He tilted a barrel on its side and propped it with sand. When the water was exactly right, Ma Baxter ladled it into the barrel. Penny killed the hogs and scalded them one after the other in the barrel, twirling them by the legs with his quick deftness. Ma and Jody had to help him lift them to the cross- trees, for his strength suddenly failed him. All three worked furiously at the scraping, for the hair must come off before it set.

Again Jody marveled at the metamorphosis of live creatures in whom he had felt interest and sympathy, into cold flesh that made acceptable food. He was glad when the killing was over. Now, scraping away on the smooth firm hides, he enjoyed seeing the skin become clean and white. He began to anticipate the smell of sausage frying and of cracklings browning in the fat. Nothing was wasted, not even the entrails. The meat itself was dressed out into hams and shoulders, side-meat and belly-bacon, which would be cured with salt and pepper and brown sugar made from their own cane juice, and then smoked slowly over hickory coals in the smoke- house. There remained the hocks and feet, which would be pickled in brine; the ribs and backbones which would be fried and put down in crocks under a protective layer of lard; the heads and livers and kidneys and hearts which would be made into head-cheese and put down the same way. The trimmings of lean meat would be ground into sausage. The fat would be tried out in the wash-pot and the lard put down in crocks and cans and the brown cracklings laid away for shortening in cornbread. The stomachs and intestines would be scraped and turned and soaked, and then used for casings in which the sausage meat would be stuffed, and the sausages hung in festoons and smoked along with the hams and bacons. Odds and ends would be cooked with cornmeal for the dogs and chickens. Even the tails were dressed. Only one part, like a windpipe, seemed without use and was tossed away.

The corn was not much damaged, even the ears that had stood in the field through the rains. Jody spent hours every day at the millstone. The lower stone had small grooves that waved out from the center like the spirals on a snail shell. The upper stone rested on it, and the pair sat in a wooden frame with four legs. The shelled corn was fed into a hole in the center of the upper millstone, and when the ground meal reached a certain fineness, it sifted out through the waste hole and was collected in a bucket. Swinging the overhead lever in a circle hour after hour was monotonous but not unpleasant. Jody dragged up a high stump and when his back was tired, sat on it by way of rest and variety.

The prospect was more than acceptable. Penny would start him on his reading lesson or his sums, and then, before either of them knew it, would be off on a tale. Jody went on with his grinding with a light heart. Flag came up and he stopped to let the fawn lick the meal at the waste-hole. He often took a taste himself. The stones became hot from friction and the meal smelled like popcorn or cornpone. When he was hungry enough, a mouthful was palatable, but it never tasted as good as it smelled. Flag was bored with the inactivity and wandered away. He was becoming bolder and was sometimes gone in the scrub for an hour or so. There was no holding him in the shed. He had learned to kick down the loose board walls. Ma Baxter expressed the belief, only because it was her hope, that the fawn was going wild and would eventually disappear. Jody was no longer even troubled by the remark. He knew that the same restlessness came to the fawn that came to him. Flag merely felt the need of stretching his legs and exploring the world about him. They understood each other perfectly. He knew, too, that when Flag wandered away, he moved in a circle, and was never out of hearing of Jody's call.

That evening Flag got himself in serious disgrace. The sweet potatoes had been cured and heaped in a pile on the back porch. Flag roamed there while every one was occupied and found that by butting the pile, the potatoes would roll. The sound and motion charmed him. He butted the pile until it was strewn over most of the yard. He tramped on the potatoes with his sharp hooves. The odor enticed him and he nibbled one. The taste pleased him and he went from one to another, nibbling. Ma Baxter discovered him too late. Grave damage had been done. She drove him furiously with a palmetto broom. The game was much the one of chase that Jody played with him. When she turned away, he turned as well, and, following, butted her in her ample rear. Jody came in from his grinding to a hullabaloo and a crisis. Even Penny upheld Ma Baxter in the gravity of the matter. Jody could not endure the expression on his father's face. He could not keep back the tears.

Jody rose before day the next morning and began work on a pen in the corner of the yard. He studied its position with an eye to using the fence for two corners of the pen, and to having it where he could see Flag from most of his own work-spots, the millstone, the wood-pile and the barn lot in particular. Flag would be content, he knew, if he was in sight of him. He finished the pen in the evening, when his chores were done. The next day he untied Flag from the shed and lifted him into the pen, kicking and struggling. Flag was over the bars and out and at his heels again before he reached the house. Penny found him again in tears.

The first heavy frost came at the end of November. The leaves of the big hickory at the north end of the clearing turned as yellow as butter. The sweet gums were yellow and red and the black-jack thicket across the road from the house flamed with a red as bright as a camp-fire. The grapevines were golden and the sumac was like oak embers. The October blooming of dog-fennel and sea-myrtle had turned to a feathery fluff. The days came in, cool and crisp, warmed to a pleasant slowness, and chilled again. The Baxters sat in the evening in the front room before the first hearth-fire.

He rolled over on his side and stretched one arm across Flag. The fawn lay asleep, his legs tucked under his stomach, like a calf. His white tail twitched in his sleep. Ma Baxter did not mind his being in the house in the evening, after supper. She even turned an unseeing eye on his sleeping in Jody's bedroom, for at least then he was into no mischief. She took him for granted with the critical disinterest she showed the dogs. They were outside, sleeping under the house. On bitter nights Penny brought them in too, not that it was necessary, but because he enjoyed sharing his comfort.

The evening wore on without further speech. There was no sound but the hearth-fire simmering, the puff of Penny's pipe, and the creak- pat, creak-pat of Ma Baxter's rocker on the board floor. Once a great whistling passed over the house, like a sudden wind in the pine trees. Ducks were flying south. Jody looked up at his father. Penny pointed the stem of his pipe upward and nodded. If he were not so comfortable, Jody would have liked to ask what kind they were and where they were going. If he could know such things as his father knew them, he could manage, he thought, without the sums and the spelling. He liked the reading. Most of it was tales, not as good as Penny's--none was--but still, tales.

Jody turned back over the fence and ran to his mother and took the torch from her. The thing that was happening was for Penny to handle. He ran back again. He lifted the torch high in his hand. The wolves had invaded the lot and killed the heifer calf. A band of them, three dozen or more, milled about the enclosure. Their eyes caught the light in pairs, like corrupt pools of shining water. They were emaciated and rough-coated. Their fangs glistened as white as gar-fish bones. He heard his mother screaming beyond the fence and became aware that he was screaming, too.

He tried to steady it. He saw Penny lift his gun and shoot once, then again. The wolves turned and flowed over the fence in a gray wave. Rip snapped at their heels. Penny ran shouting after them. Jody ran behind him, trying to keep the light on the swift forms. He remembered that he had his own gun in the other hand. He pushed it at his father and Penny took it and shot again. The wolves were gone like a thunderstorm. Rip hesitated, his light hide plain in the darkness, then turned and limped back to his master. Penny stooped and petted him. He, too, turned, and walked back slowly into the lot. The cow was bellowing.

He handed Jody his gun and retrieved his own from the side of the fence. He leaned and picked up a hoof of the calf and walked decisively toward the house, dragging the carcass. Jody understood, shivering, that his father meant to have it handy if the marauders returned. He was still frightened. A panther or a bear at bay always terrified him. But there the men had always stood with leveled guns. There the dogs had room to dart in and get away. The fierce pack in the lot had made a sight he wanted never to see again. He wished his father had dragged the carcass into the woods. Ma Baxter came to the door and called quaveringly.

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--

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 Caesar 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.

"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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 wolves had not yet come, if they were coming. Buck and Lem and Penny dismounted and tied the dogs to trees. A thin strip of color like a yellow ribbon lay low across the east. The autumn mist hung above it. Figures were visible only a few feet above the ground. At first the water-hole seemed deserted. Then bodies took shape here and there about it, as though the fog itself had solidified, still gray and tenuous. The antlers of a buck deer formed in the distance. Lem lifted his gun instinctively, then lowered it. The wolves were more important for the moment.

As he spoke, the stumps moved. Jody blinked his eyes. The stumps were young bears. There were a good dozen of them. Two larger bears ambled slowly beyond them. They had not seen or winded the buck, or chose to ignore him. The curtain of mist lifted higher. The band of color broadened in the east. Penny pointed. There was movement in the northwest. The forms of the wolves were barely visible, slipping down in single file as the humans had done. The keen nose of old Julia caught a faint taint and she lifted it high and wailed. Penny struck at her to hush her. She dropped flat to the ground.

Jody touched Caesar's rump and trotted away. His heart had jumped from its normal position and was beating somewhere high in his throat. His vision blurred. He was afraid he would never see the tall pine, and cut in too soon or too late and bungle the whole business. He rode unseeing. He straightened his back and slid one hand along the barrel of his gun. A blessed stiffening and clarity came to him. He picked out the pine before he reached it. He swung Caesar's head sharply to the right, dug his heels into him, slapped his neck with the reins and shot into the open. The marsh water flew under him. He saw the young bears scatter. He was afraid he had not come in far enough behind the wolves. The creeping pack ahead of him hesitated, on the verge of turning back the way they had come. He lifted his gun and shot behind them. They bolted in a mass. He held his breath. He saw them stream toward the scrub. He heard the barking of guns and the sound was music. He had done his part and it was out of his hands. He galloped around the south side of the pond toward the men. The tethered dogs lifted their voices. A single gun spoke now and again. His mind was clear. He wished that he had another shot. He was sure he could take it coolly and accurately.

Three of the spring cubs, motherless, perhaps, long enough to have forgotten discipline, had not even treed. They sat on their haunches, crying like babies. They made no effort to escape. Penny tied the three together and looped the end of the rope around a large pine. Some of the cubs had only climbed saplings. It was a simple matter to shake them out and tie them too. Two others were high in a larger tree. Jody, as the lightest and nimblest, climbed after them. They climbed higher above him, then scrambled out on a limb. He edged along the limb. It was ticklish work to shake it without falling off himself. The limb cracked faintly. Penny shouted to him to wait. An oak limb was cut and trimmed and handed up. Jody slid down the tree until he could reach it and climbed back. He poked it at the cubs. They clung as though they had grown to the limb. At last they dropped. He climbed down.

They mounted and rode on. The morning haze had thinned and vanished. The November air was crisp. The sun was a warm arm across their shoulders. The black-jacks flamed, the scrub oaks glistened. The fragrance of the purple deer-tongue filled the road. Scrub jays flew across the road. Their solid blue feathered coats, Jody thought, were prettier than the bluebirds', because there was more of it. The strong smell of the yearling bear over old Caesar's rump behind him blended not unpleasantly with the sweat of the horse, the rich smell of the saddle, the deer-tongue and the lingering odor of the sweet potato. He would have a great deal, he thought, to tell Flag when he got home. The finest part about talking to Flag was that he could think most of the talk and not have to try to say it. He preferred talking to his father, but he could never find the words in which to make things clear. When he tried to say a thing that he had thought, the idea vanished while he was still floundering. It was like his efforts to shoot doves in a tree. He saw them, he cocked his gun, he crept close. Then they were gone before he could pull the trigger.

He came to himself with a start. They had picked up the old Spanish trail through the hammock to Juniper Spring. The spring was at its normal level. Debris from the flood was thick about its banks. The spring itself bubbled clear and blue from a bottomless cavern. A fallen tree lay across it. They hitched Caesar to a magnolia and skirted the spring for 'gator sign. There was none. An old female alligator who was almost tame inhabited the spring. She raised a swarm of young every second year, and she would swim to the bank when called and take meat thrown to her. She was perhaps down in her cave with the year's young. Because she was so tame and had been there so long, no one ever disturbed her. Penny was afraid that some day a stranger would come and kill her, finding her easy prey. They worked down the bank of the run. A shipoke flew.

Penny put out a hand behind him to halt Jody. On the opposite bank was a fresh 'gator wallow. The mud had been packed smooth where they turned and rolled their hard bodies. Penny dropped to his haunches behind a buttonwood bush. Jody dropped behind him. Penny had reloaded his gun. There was shortly a commotion in the waters of the swift-running creek. What seemed a log lifted not quite to the surface. There were two bumps at one end. The log was an eight-foot alligator. The bumps were its heavy-lidded eyes. It submerged again, then raised clear and lifted its fore-quarters to the bank. It crawled slowly to the wallow, heaved its bulk up and down on its short legs, flipped its tail and lay quietly. Penny drew a bead more carefully than Jody had ever seen him do on bear or deer. He fired. The long tail thrashed wildly, but the body sank instantly to the mud. Penny ran up-stream, around the head of the spring with Jody at his heels, and down-stream on the other side of the wallow. The broad flat jaws were opening and closing automatically. Penny held them shut with one hand and gripped a fore-leg with the other. The dogs barked excitedly. Jody took hold and they dragged the body to firm ground. Penny stood up and wiped his forehead with his sleeve.

He rode into the thicket after the dog. She bayed and a buck swayed to its knees and leaped to its feet. The buck was in full antlers. Instead of rushing away in flight, he charged headlong at the dog. The reason was instantly plain. A doe lifted her smooth unhorned head beyond him. Because of the interruption of the flood, the deer were late with their mating. The buck was courting and ready for fight. Penny held his fire, as he did often when a thing was strange. Old Julia and Rip were as amazed as he. They were fearless with bear and panther and wild-cat, but here, they had expected the game to run. They retreated. The buck pawed the earth like a bull and shook his antlers. Julia gathered her wits and jumped for his throat. He caught her on his horns and tossed her into the bushes. Jody saw the doe wheel and bolt away. Julia was unhurt and came back for action. Rip was at the buck's heels. The buck charged again, then stood at bay with lowered antlers.

He untied him and took him outside. Penny was calling him to help with the carrying of the game to the back of the house. Flag bolted at scent of the bear, then returned to sniff cautiously from a distance, craning his slim neck. The skinning and cutting up of the meat took the rest of the afternoon. Dinner had not been cooked. They were not hungry and Ma Baxter waited and cooked the big hot meal an hour ahead of the usual supper time. Penny and Jody ate ravenously at first, but were suddenly so tired that appetite left them when they were half through. Jody left the table to go to Flag. The sun was only now setting. His back ached and his eyes grew heavy. He whistled Flag in. He had wanted to listen to his mother's and father's talk about the trading, and to decide what he wanted from Jacksonville for his special portion. But his eyes would not stay open. He stumbled into bed and was instantly asleep.

A bolt good wool for huntin jeans for Mr. B & Jody A haf bolt perty blue and wite check gingham for Mrs. B now a real perty blue A bolt domestick A sack cofee beans A barrl flowr A ax hed Sack salt 2 lb sody 2 stiks lead for shot Buckshot 4 lb Some more shel casis Mr. B's gun 1 lb powder for shells Homespun 6 yd Hickory shirtin 4 yd Osnaburg 6 yd Brogan shoes, Jody 1/2 quire paper 1 box buttons, pantaloon 1 paper shirt buttons 1 bottle caster oil 50¢ 1 box worm candy 1 box liver pills 1 pain curer 1 vial laudnum 1 do camphire 1 do Paragorick 1 do lemon 1 do peppermint Now if enuf money left 2 yd black alpacy

The Forresters stopped the next morning on their way. Jody ran out to meet them and Penny and Ma Baxter followed. Buck and Mill-wheel and Lem were crowded together on the wagon seat. The wagon body behind them was filled with a quarreling, wrestling, whining tangle of shiny black fur, shot through with flashes of small teeth and claws and pairs of bright beady black eyes. Their individual ropes and chains were hopelessly tangled. A barrel of moonshine whiskey stood in the middle. One cub with a longer chain had climbed to its top and sat loftily above the tumult. Jody jumped up on a wagon wheel to peer in. A clawed paw went past his face and he dropped back to the ground. The wagon-load was bedlam.

November slid into December with no more sign than the high, sad cry of the wood ducks flying. They left their hammock nests and moved from lake to pond and back again. Jody wondered why some birds cried in flight while others were silent. The whooping cranes gave their rusty call only in motion. Hawks screamed from the air but sat still and frozen in the tree. Sapsuckers were noisy on the wing but gave themselves to the bark of trees with no further sound than the tat-tat of their pecking. Quail spoke only from the ground, and soldier blackbirds shrilled from the rushes. Mocking birds sang and chattered day or night, on the wing, or perched along the fences or in the poke-berry bushes.

Buck stopped one day, however, to announce that he believed they had accounted for all the wolves. They had shot one at the corral, had trapped three more and had seen no sign of one since. The bears were giving them constant trouble. The most troublesome was old Slewfoot, whose maraudings were taking him, Buck said, from the river on the east to Lake Juniper on the west. His favorite stopping place was the Forrester corral. He watched the wind and eluded both dogs and traps, slipped into the corral and made off with a calf whenever it pleased him to do so. The nights the Forresters sat up and waited for him, he did not appear.

Jody found a patch of Cherokee beans in the pine woods beyond the sink-hole. He gathered his pockets full of the bright red seeds. They were as hard as flint. He stole a large needle and a length of stout cotton thread from his mother's sewing basket and took them with him when he went prowling. He sat down in the warmth of the sun with his back against a tree and strung them laboriously, a few each day, to make a necklace for his mother. The seeds were strung unevenly but the effect pleased him. He carried the completed necklace in his pocket so that he might look at it often, until it began to have a sticky appearance from crumbled biscuits and squirrel tails and other such articles. He washed the necklace at the sink-hole and hid it on a rafter of his bedroom.

A puzzling incident occurred. South of the island Penny tried to put the dogs on the track of what appeared to be a small yearling or a well-grown fawn. The dogs refused to take the trail. Penny did a thing he had not done in years. He broke a switch and thrashed old Julia for her stubbornness. She yelped and whined, but still refused. The mystery became clear at the end of the day. Flag showed up, as he had made a habit of doing, in the middle of the hunt. Penny exclaimed sharply, then knelt to the ground to compare his tracks with those the dogs had refused to follow. They were the same. Old Julia, wiser than he, had recognized either the track or the scent of the newest Baxter.

The second day's hunt was more profitable. They found deer feeding in the swamp. Penny shot a large buck. He trailed still another, a smaller, and jumped it in a bay-head. He gave Jody a shot, and as he missed, shot it down. They had come on foot, for slow- trailing was the only chance these days of getting game, except by accident. Jody tried to carry the smaller deer, but its weight knocked him almost to the earth. He stayed with the kill while Penny went back for the horse and wagon. Flag was with them when they returned.

He tied Flag reluctantly in the shed and changed into clean clothes to go to Volusia. Penny was dressed in his broadcloth suit with the shrunken sleeves, with his black felt hat on top of his head. The roaches had eaten a hole in the brim, but it was after all a hat. He had no other except his wool hunting cap and his palmetto field hat. Jody was in his best, brogan shoes, homespun breeches, big wire-grass hat and a new black alpaca coat bound with red tape. Ma Baxter was clean and crisp in a new dress made of the blue and white checked gingham from Jacksonville. It was a darker blue than she wanted, but the check was pretty. She wore her blue sun-bonnet but carried her black frilled bonnet to put on when she should approach the village.

It was pleasant, jogging down the sand road in the wagon. Jody sat on the floor of the wagon body with his back against the seat. It was interesting to see the scrub drop away behind him as he watched it. The sense of progressing was more acute than when he faced forward. The wagon jolted and his thin rump felt bruised by the time they reached the river. He had nothing much to think about and he gave himself over to thoughts of Grandma Hutto. She would be surprised to know that he was angry with Oliver. He pictured her face with satisfaction. Then he felt uncomfortable. He felt toward her exactly as he had always felt, except that through the summer he had actually forgotten her. Perhaps he would not tell her that he was through with Oliver. He saw himself being kind to her and maintaining a noble silence. The imagined scene pleased him. He made up his mind definitely to inquire politely after Oliver's health.

Penny hallooed on the west side of the river to call the ferry from the east. The sound echoed down the river. A boy appeared on the opposite bank. He came leisurely. For an instant it seemed to Jody that the boy had an enviable life, pulling the ferry back and forth across the river. Then it occurred to him that such a life was quite without freedom. There would be for such a boy no hunts, no jaunts into the scrub, no Flag. He was glad he was not the ferry-man's son. He said "Hey" to him with condescension. The boy was ugly and bashful. He helped lead the Baxters' horse on the ferry with lowered head. Jody was filled with curiosity about his life.

The boy jerked his head sideways in a negative and fastened his eyes on the east shore of the river. Jody recalled Fodder-wing longingly. From the minute he used to come in sight, Fodder-wing had talked to him. He gave up the new boy as a bad job. Ma Baxter was anxious to do her trading before she went visiting. They drove the wagon the short distance to the store and laid their articles of exchange on the counter. Storekeeper Boyles was in no hurry to trade. He wanted news of the scrub. The Forresters had given an incredible account of conditions after the flood. A few hunters from the Volusia territory had been there and had reported game almost impossible to find. The bears were troubling stock along the river, which they had not done in years. He wanted Penny's verification of the tales.

Boyles weighed out the meat promptly. With venison scarce, he could find a ready sale for it at a good price. The river steamer would take a haunch or two by way of novelty to the English and Yankee travelers. He examined the hides carefully, and at last expressed his satisfaction with their condition. He had an order and could pay five dollars each. The rate was higher than the Baxters had hoped for. Ma turned to the dry goods counter with a complacent air. She was high-handed and would have only the best. He was out of brown alpaca. He could send for it by the next boat, he said. She shook her head. It was too far to send back for it from the Island.

The request was so absurd that he gaped at her. Penny winked at him. He wheeled quickly so that she could not see him smile. She meant to buy something to surprise him for Christmas. Penny would have thought of a better excuse to get him out of the way. He went outside and stared at the boy who tended the ferry. The boy sat and studied his own knees. Jody picked up bits of limestone and aimed them at the trunk of a live oak up the road. The boy watched him furtively, then came behind him without speaking and picked up bits, too, and hurled them at the tree. The contest continued wordlessly. After a time Jody thought his mother would have finished and he ran back into the store.

Grandma's tidy yard was recovering from the effect of the high water. The river had been over its bank here and her fall flower garden had been washed away. There was unaccustomed debris here and there. The second planting was thriving, but there was no bloom, except of shrubs close beside the house. The blooms of the indigo had fruited into small black seed-pods, curved like scythe blades. Grandma was inside the house with his mother. He heard their voices and as he stepped up on the porch and looked through the window, he saw the flickering of flames on the hearth. She saw him and came to the door.

He oiled his largest bear-trap. It was six feet in width and weighed, he said, nearly six stone. The chain alone weighed two. He planned to shut the cow and calf together inside the stable, barricade the door and set the trap just outside. If old Slewfoot came to make Christmas dinner of the new heifer while they were all away, he would have to take the trap first. The day passed busily. Jody polished again the necklace of Cherokee beans. He hoped his mother would wear them with the black alpaca. He had nothing for a gift for Penny. He worried and puzzled and in the afternoon went to a low place where pipe-elders grew. He cut a reed and made a pipe stem, and cut a bowl from a corn-cob and fitted it. The Indians who had once been here had made pipe-stems of the reeds, Penny had told him, and he had always meant to make one for himself. He could think of nothing for Flag. He admitted to himself that the fawn would be satisfied with an extra piece of cornbread. He would make him a halter of mistletoe and holly.

No one, not even the dogs, heard any sound in the night. When Penny went to the lot in the morning to milk Trixie, and then to the calf's stall to turn it in to the mother to nurse, the calf was gone. He thought it had broken down its bars. They were intact. He went into the soft sand of the lot and studied it for tracks. In a straight line across the crisscross of cow and horse and human trails, the track of old Slewfoot stretched inexorably. Penny came to the house with the news. He was white with anger and frustration.

He went to the smoke-house and cut strips of 'gator tail for the dogs. He was ready. He trudged through the yard to the lot to take up the trail. He whistled for the dogs and put Julia on the track. She bayed and was off. Jody looked after him in a panic. His gun was not loaded, he had on no shoes, and he could not remember where he had left his jacket. He knew from the set of Penny's back that it was useless to beg him to wait. He scrambled about, gathering up his belongings. He shouted to his mother to put bread and potatoes in his shot-bag, too.

The pace was so rapid and the distance so long that in the late morning even Penny was obliged to stop for a rest. The dogs were willing to continue, but their heaving sides and hanging tongues showed that they too were weary. Penny stopped on a high live oak island by a clear pond on the prairie for the dogs to drink. He threw himself on the ground in the sunlight. He lay on his back without speaking. His eyes were closed. Jody lay down beside him. The dogs dropped flat on their bellies. Flag was unwearied and pranced about the island. Jody watched his father. They had never come so hard and so fast. Here was not the joy of the chase, the careless pitting of man's brain against creature speed and cunning. This was hate and revenge and there was no happiness in it.

The distance back to Baxter's Island was not great, but it seemed to Jody that he could never make it. On any other hunt, he could have said so and Penny would have waited for him patiently. His father moved toward home as doggedly and relentlessly as he had left it. It was dark when they reached it, but Penny at once loaded the great bear trap on the slide, hitched Caesar to it and dragged it to the site of the kill. He allowed Jody to ride on the slide. He himself walked beside Caesar, leading him. Jody stretched out his aching legs with relief. Flag had lost interest and hung around the kitchen door.

The black morning was bitter cold. Ma Baxter had made up the wool from Jacksonville into hunting jackets and jeans for both of them. They seemed too fine to wear, but walking slowly through the pine woods they wished they had put them on. The dogs were still sleepy and tired and were willing to follow silently at heel. Penny put his finger in his mouth and lifted it to test any imperceptible stirring of air. There seemed to be none and he went in a direct line toward the baited trap. It was in a place that was comparatively open and he halted a hundred yards away. Day was breaking in the east behind them. He slapped the dogs lightly and they dropped to the ground. Jody grew numb with the cold. Penny was shivering in his thin clothes and ragged jacket. Jody saw old Slewfoot in every stump and behind every tree. Interminably slow, the sun rose.

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 Slewfoot. He swung his little knapsack over his own warm wool shoulder and picked up his gun and followed his father with a light heart.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 cornpone 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.

He ate quickly and hungrily and took what cornpone 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 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.

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.

The creeks all seemed friendly in summer. When he was dressed in a thin ragged shirt and as ragged breeches, a spill meant only a quick cool swim to either shore. The heavy wool jeans and jackets would be poor friends in the freezing water. The canoe was sluggish and unmanageable with its weight of water. Penny made the far bank just as it settled obstinately to the creek bottom. The water sloshed over their boot tops and numbed their feet. But they were on land, on the same side of the run as old Slewfoot, and they had saved hours of heavy going. The dogs shivered with the cold and looked to Penny for orders. He gave none, but set out immediately southwest along the creek bank. In places it was so low and marshy that they were forced to cut back into the swamp or even higher into the woods. The area lay between an arm of Lake George and the continued northward reach of the St. John's River. It was boggy and treacherous going.

The great tracks were imprinted solidly in the muck. They could be followed easily with the eye. Bushes were broken in the thicket where Slewfoot had crashed through. Penny was close behind the dogs. The bear had bedded as soon as he was certain he was no longer followed. A scant four hundred yards beyond the creek bank, Julia jumped him. He was invisible in the thicket. His ponderous leap sounded. Penny could not shoot without a sight, for the dogs were close on the leathery heels. Jody expected his father to break into as much of a run as was possible in the dense swamp growth.

The impetus sent them forward again. At high noon they came up with the quarry. He had decided, at long last, to stop and fight it out. The dogs had him at bay. He swayed sideways on his thick short legs, growling and baring his teeth. His ears were laid flat in his fury. When he turned his back for further retreat, Julia nipped at his flanks and Rip rounded him to spring for his shaggy throat. He slashed at them with great curved claws. He backed away. Rip swung behind him and sunk his teeth in a leg. Slewfoot squealed shrilly. He wheeled with the swiftness of a hawk and raked the bulldog to him. He caught him up in his fore-paws. Rip yelped in pain, then fought gamely to keep the jaws above him from closing on his backbone. The two heads tossed back and forth, snarling and snapping, each trying for the other's throat while protecting his own. Penny lifted his gun. He took steady aim and fired. With Rip hugged to his breast, old Slewfoot dropped. His killing days were done.

"My uncle Miles said, 'Now we'll jest ketch us a bear cub.' They was right gentle and he goes up to the one on the stump and ketched it. Well, when he'd ketched it, he didn't have nary thing to tote in it. And them scaper's'll gnaw on you if they ain't in a sack. Well, them up-country folks wears underwear in the winter. He takened off his breeches and he takened off his long drawers and he tied knots in the legs of 'em and he made him a sack. He puttened the cub in it and about the time he reached for his breeches to put 'em back on agin, here come a crashin' and a woofin' and a stompin' in the bresh, and the old she-bear come outen the thick right at him. Well, he takened out through the swamp and dropped the cub and the mammy gathered it up, drawers and all. But she were so clost behind him she stepped on a vine and it tripped him and throwed him flat amongst the thorns and brambles. And aunt Moll was a muddle-minded kind o' woman and she couldn't never make it out how he come home without his drawers on a cold day, and his bottom scratched. But uncle Miles allus said that wasn't nothin' to the puzzlin' the mammy bear must o' done over them drawers on her young un."

Jody found it strange to go around his own closed house in the dark, as though other people lived there and not the Baxters. He went to the back and called, "Flag! Here, feller!" There was no answering thump of small sharp hooves. He called again, fearfully. He turned back to the road. Flag came galloping to him from the forest. Jody clutched him so hard that he broke loose in impatience. The Forresters were shouting to him to hurry. He longed to have Flag follow along with them, but he could not endure it if he should run away again. He led him into the shed and tied him safely and barred the door against marauders. He ran back and opened it and spread out the meal he had been carrying for him in his knapsack. The Forresters thundered at him. He barred the door again and ran and climbed up behind Mill-wheel with a full heart. He could depend on Flag to come home to him.

Lem and Mill-wheel draped the bear-skin over him. He got down on all fours. He could not get an effect realistic enough to suit him, for the hide, split down the belly, allowed the great heavy head to slide forward. Penny was impatient to be inside and to reassure Ma Baxter, but the Forresters were in no hurry. They donated two or three pairs of boot laces and laced the hide together across Buck's chest. The result was all he could ask for. His bulky back and shoulders filled out the hide almost as completely as the original owner. He gave a trial growl. They crept up the steps of the church. Lem swung the door open to let Buck pass inside, then pulled it back, leaving a crack wide enough for the rest to watch through. It was a moment or two before the visitor was noticed. Buck swayed forward with so true an imitation of a bear's rolling gait that Jody felt the hair crawl on the back of his neck. Buck growled. The assembled company turned. Buck halted. There was an instant of paralysis, then the church emptied through the windows as though a gale of wind had blown a pile of oak leaves.

Jody looked shyly about in the unaccustomed color and brightness. The small church was decorated with holly and mistletoe and donations of house plants, sultanas and geraniums, aspidistras and coleas. Kerosene lamps shone from brackets along the walls. The ceiling was half-hidden with suspended ropes of colored paper, green and red and yellow. At the front, where the rostrum stood for services, a Christmas tree was hung with tinsel and strings of popcorn, figures cut from paper, and a few shining balls that had been a present from the captain of the Mary Draper. Gifts had been exchanged and the wrappings were strewn under the tree. Little girls moved trance-like with new rag dolls clutched to their flat gingham breasts. The boys too young to be engrossed with Penny, played on the floor.

The Forresters had formed a group of their own at the end of the church near the door. The bolder of the women had taken them plates of food. To look twice at a Forrester was to invite scandal. The more roistering of the men were with them, and the bottles were going around again. The Forrester voices boomed above the hum of the festivities. The fiddlers went outside and brought in their instruments and began to tune and scrape. A square dance was formed and called. Buck and Mill-wheel and Gabby induced giggling girls to be their partners. Lem frowned from the outskirts. The Forresters made a violent and noisy affair of the dance. Grandma Hutto retired to a far bench. Her black eyes snapped.

A man, a newcomer, entered the door. A cold gust of air followed him, so that every one looked up to see what had brought it. A few noticed that Lem Forrester spoke to him, and the man answered, and Lem said something to his brothers. In a moment the Forresters went out together. The group around Penny had been filled and satisfied with his story of the hunt and was now supplementing it with tales of their own. The square dance continued with a reduced number. Some of the women went to the group of hunters, protesting their absorption. The newcomer was brought to the still-loaded tables for food. He was a traveller who had disembarked from a steamer that had stopped for wood at the river landing.

The Baxters drove home toward the scrub. Penny was wracked with sorrow for his friends. His face was strained. Jody was swept with so contradictory a tumult of thoughts that he gave up trying to sort them and snuggled down on the wagon-seat between the warmth of his mother and father. He opened the package Twink had given him. It was a small pewter canister for his gunpowder. He hugged it to him. He remembered that Easy Ozell was on the east coast, and wondered if he would follow Grandma Hutto to Boston when he found her gone. The wagon jogged on to the clearing. The day would be cold but brilliant.

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 sharp-tongued 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.