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  She spoke, not to him, but to his father.

  “He’s tough as you. He’s all right.”

  Penny appeared on the other side of the bed. One wrist was bandaged and one eye was black. He grinned at Jody.

  He said, “We was a big help, you and me.”

  A cold wet cloth slipped from Jody’s forehead. Grandma took it away and laid her hand in its place. She reached her fingers back of his head and felt carefully for the source of pain. It was in his left jaw, where Lem had struck him, and in the back of his head, where he had hit the sand. It eased under her slow manipulation.

  She said, “Say somethin’, so I’ll know your brains ain’t jellied.”

  “I cain’t think o’ nothin to say.” He added, “Ain’t it past dinner-time?”

  Penny said, “’The only serious hurt could come to him, is likely his belly.”

  He said, “I ain’t hongry. I jest seed the sun and I was wonderin’.”

  She said, “That’s all right, Punkin.”

  He asked, “Where’s Oliver?”

  “In the bed.”

  “Is he bad hurted?”

  “Not bad enough to learn him sense.”

  “I don’t know now,” Penny said. “One more clip, and he’d not of had much left to learn with.”

  “Anyway, he’s spoiled his pretty looks so no yellow-headed thing’ll look at him for a while.”

  “You women is right smart hard on one another,” Penny said. “Seems to me ’twas Oliver and Lem done most o’ the lookin’.”

  Grandma rolled up the cold cloth and left the bedroom.

  Penny said, “’Twa’n’t noways fair, gittin’ a young un knocked dead. But I’m proud you was man enough to mix in it, when you seed a friend in trouble.”

  Jody stared at the sunlight.

  He thought, “The Forresters are my friends, too.”

  As though he read his thoughts, Penny said, “This’ll likely end neighborin’ with the Forresters.”

  A twinge of pain shot from Jody’s head into the pit of his stomach. He could not give up Fodder-wing. He decided that he would slip away some time and call to Fodder-wing from the bushes. He pictured the secret meeting. Perhaps they would be discovered and Lem would whip them both to death. Then Oliver would be sorry he had fought because of Twink Weatherby. Jody was more resentful at Oliver than at the Forresters. Something of Oliver that had belonged to him, and to Grandma, had been taken away and given to the yellow-headed girl who wrung her hands over the fighting.

  Yet if he had it to do over again, he would still have to help Oliver. He recalled a wild-cat that the dogs had torn to pieces. Wild-cats deserved what they got. Yet at one moment, when the snarling mouth had gaped wide in agony, and the evil eyes had filmed in dying, he had been stabbed with pity. He had cried out, longing to help the creature in its torture. Too much pain was unjust. Too many against one were unjust. That was why it had been necessary to fight for Oliver, even if it lost him Fodder-wing. He closed his eyes, satisfied. Everything was all right when he understood it.

  Grandma came into the bedroom with a tray.

  “Now, Punkin, see can you sit up.”

  Penny slipped his hands under the pillow and Jody eased up slowly. He was stiff and sore, but he felt no worse than the time he had fallen out of the chinaberry tree.

  Penny said, “I wisht pore Oliver had got off this light.”

  Grandma said, “He’s lucky he didn’t get his fine nose broke.”

  He ate his way painfully toward a plate of gingerbread. Because of the soreness, he was forced to leave a square. He looked at it.

  Grandma said, “l’ll save that for you.”

  Penny said, “Ain’t it a treat, to have a woman reads your mind and then agrees with it.”

  “I mean.”

  Jody lay against his pillow. Violence broke into peace, and tore the world to tatters, and then, suddenly, all was peaceful again.

  Penny said, “I got to be pushin’ on. Ory’ll be rarin’.”

  He stood in the doorway. He was a little stooped. He looked lonely.

  Jody said, “I want to go with you.”

  Penny’s face grew bright.

  He said, “Now, boy.” He was eager. “You shore you’re fitten? Tell you what I’ll do. Borry Boyles’ ol’ mare, the one goes home alone. We’ll ride her back and turn her a-loose.”

  Grandma said, “Ora’ll feel better about him, if he goes with you. I know what happens to Oliver where I can see him, ain’t near as bad as what happens out of my sight.”

  Jody eased his body from the bed. He was dizzy. His head felt large and full. He was tempted to sink back on the smooth sheets.

  Penny said, “Jody’s a man, if I do say it.”

  He straightened and went to the door.

  “Must I say good-by to Oliver?”

  “Why, shore, but don’t let on how bad he looks. He’s proud.”

  He went to Oliver’s room. Oliver’s eyes were swollen shut, as though he had fallen in a nest of wasps. One cheek was purple. A white bandage was tied around his head. His lips were puffed. The fine sailor was laid low, and all because of Twink Weatherby.

  Jody said, “Good-by, Oliver.”

  Oliver did not answer. Jody softened.

  “I’m sorry Pa and me didn’t git there quicker.”

  Oliver said, “Come here.”

  Jody went close to the bed.

  “You do somethin’ for me? Go tell Twink I’ll meet her at the old grove Tuesday about dusk-dark.”

  Jody was frozen.

  He burst out, “I won’t do it. I hate her. Ol’ yellow-headed somethin’.”

  “All right. I’ll send Easy.”

  Jody scuffled the rug with one foot.

  Oliver said, “I thought you were my friend.”

  Being friends, he thought, was a nuisance. Then he remembered the hunting knife and was filled with gratitude and shame.

  “Well, all right. I don’t want to, but I’ll tell her.”

  Oliver laughed from the bed. He would laugh, Jody thought, if he lay dying.

  “Good-by, Oliver.”

  “Good-by, Jody.”

  He left the room. Grandma was waiting.

  He said, “It come out kind o’ disappointin’, didn’t it, Grandma? Oliver fightin’, and all.”

  Penny said, “Boy, be civil.”

  Grandma said, “The truth’s civil enough. When bears with sore heads go courtin’, there’s always trouble. As long as this is the end and not the beginning——”

  Penny said, “You know where to send for me.”

  They went down the path through the garden. Jody looked back over his shoulder. Grandma stood waving after them.

  Penny stopped at Boyles’ store for his supplies and for his forequarter of venison. Boyles was willing to lend the mare, if Penny would strap a length of good buckskin for boot laces on the saddle when he sent her home, in payment. The supplies, flour and coffee and powder and lead and shell cases for the new gun, were dropped in a sack. Boyles went to his lot and brought out the mare, saddled with a blanket.

  “Don’t turn her loose ’til morning,” he said. “She can outrun a wolf, but I wouldn’t want a panther dropping on her.”

  Penny turned away to lift his sacks. Jody sidled close to the storekeeper. He was reluctant to have his father know Oliver’s secret.

  He whispered, “I got to see Twink Weatherby. Where do she live?”

  “What you want of her?”

  “I got somethin’ to say to her.”

  Boyles said, “A heap of us have something to say to her. Well, you’ll have to bide your time. The young lady’s put a kerchief on her yellow curls and slipped off on the freight boat to Sanford.”

  Jody felt a satisfaction as great as though he had driven her away himself. He borrowed a piece of paper and a thick pencil and printed a note to Oliver. It was laborious work, for his father’s teachings had been supplemented only by one brief winter of instruction from the it
inerant school teacher. He wrote:

  Dear ollever; yor ol twinkk has dun gode up the rivver. im gladd. yor frend jody.

  He read it over. He decided in favor of a greater kindness. He crossed out “im gladd” and wrote in its place “im sorry.” He felt virtuous. Something of the old glow for Oliver came back to him. Perhaps he could still hear his tales.

  Crossing to the scrub side on the ferry, he stared down into the swift river. His thoughts were as turbulent as the current. Oliver had never failed him before. The Forresters were after all as rough as his mother insisted. He felt deserted. But he was sure Fodder-wing would not change. The gentle mind in the twisted body would be as aloof from the quarrel as his own. His father, of course, stood as unchangeable as the earth.

  Chapter XIV

  THE quail were nesting. The fluted covey call had been silent for some time. The coveys were dividing into pairs. The cocks were sounding the mating call, clear and sweet and insistent.

  One day in mid-June Jody saw a cock and a hen run from the grape arbor with the scuttling hurry of paternity. He was wise enough not to follow them, but prowled about under the arbor until he found the nest. It held twenty cream-colored eggs. He was careful not to touch them, for fear the quail might desert them, as guineas did. A week later he went to the arbor to look at the progress of the Scuppernongs. They were like the smallest pellets of shot, but they were green and sturdy. He lifted a length of vine, imagining the dusty golden grapes in the late summer.

  There was a stirring at his feet, as though the grass had exploded. The setting was hatched. The young quail, each no bigger than the end of his thumb, scattered like small wind-blown leaves. The mother quail cried out, and made alternate sorties after the brood, in defense, and at Jody, in attack. He stood quiet, as his father had taught him to do. The hen gathered her young together and took them away through the tall broom-sage grasses. Jody ran to find his father. Penny was working the field peas.

  “Pa, the quail has hatched under the Scuppernong. And the grapes is makin’.”

  Penny rested on the plow handles. He was wet with sweat. He looked across the field. A hawk flew low, quartering.

  He said, “If the hawks don’t git the quail, and the ’coons don’t git the Scuppernongs, we’ll have a mighty good meal, about first frost.”

  Jody said, “I hate the hawks eatin’ the quail, but I don’t someway mind the ’coons eatin’ the grapes.”

  “That’s because you love quail-meat more’n you love grapes.”

  “No, ’tain’t. Hit’s because I hate hawks and I love ’coons.”

  “Fodder-wing learned you that,” Penny said, “with all them pet ’coons.”

  “I reckon so.”

  “The hogs come up yit, boy?”

  “Not yit.”

  Penny frowned.

  “I purely hate to think the Forresters has trapped ’em. But they ain’t never stayed off so long. If ’twas bears, they wouldn’t all be gone to oncet.”

  “I been as far as the old clearin’, Pa, and the tracks goes on west from there.”

  “Time I git done workin’ these peas, we’re jest obliged to take Rip and Julia and go track ’em.”

  “What’ll we do, do the Forresters have ’em trapped?”

  “Whatever we got to do, when the time comes.”

  “Ain’t you skeert to face the Forresters agin?”

  “No, for I’m right.”

  “Would you be skeert if you was wrong?”

  “If I was wrong, I wouldn’t face ’em.”

  “What’ll we do, do we git beat up agin?”

  “Take it for our share and go on.”

  “I’d ruther let the Forresters keep the hogs.”

  “And go without meat? A black eye’ll quiet down a heap quicker’n a empty belly. You want to beg off goin’?”

  He hesitated.

  “I reckon not.”

  Penny turned back to his cultivating.

  “Then go tell your Ma please Ma’am to fix us early supper.”

  Jody went to the house. His mother was rocking and sewing on the shady porch. A small blue-bellied lizard scuttled from under her chair. Jody grinned, thinking how quickly she would heave her frame from the rocker if she had known.

  “Please, Ma’am, Pa says to fix us supper right now. We got to go huntin’ the hogs.”

  “About time.”

  She finished her seam leisurely. He dropped on the step below her.

  “We likely got to face the Forresters, Ma, if they got ’em trapped.”

  “Well, face ’em. Black-hearted thieves.”

  He stared at her. She had been furious at both him and his father because they had fought the Forresters at Volusia.

  He said, “We’re like to git beat up and bloodied agin, Ma.”

  She folded her sewing impatiently.

  “Well, pity on us, we got to have our meat. Who’ll git it if you don’t?”

  She went into the house. He heard her thumping the lid on the Dutch oven. He was confused. His mother talked much of “duty.” He had always hated the very word. Why was it his duty to let the Forresters maul him again, to recover the hogs, if it had not been his duty to let them maul him in order to help his friend Oliver? It seemed more honorable to him to bleed for a friend than for a side of bacon. He sat idly, listening to the fluttered whirring of mockingbirds in the chinaberry. The jays were chasing the red-birds out of the mulberry trees. There was a squabble for food even in the safety of the clearing. But it seemed to him there was always enough here for every one. There was food and shelter for father and mother and son; for old Cæsar; for Trixie and her spotted calf; for Rip and Julia; for the chickens, clucking and crowing and scratching; for the hogs, grunting in at evening for a cob of corn; for the song-birds in the trees, and the quail nesting under the arbor; for all of these, there was enough at the clearing.

  Out in the scrub, the war waged ceaselessly. The bears and wolves and panthers and wild-cats all preyed on the deer. Bears even ate the cubs of other bears, all meat being to their maws the same. Squirrels and wood-rats, ’possums and ’coons, must all scurry for their lives. Birds and small furred creatures cowered in the shadow of hawk and owl. But the clearing was safe. Penny kept it so, with his good fences, with Rip and old Julia, with a wariness that seemed to Jody to be unsleeping. Sometimes he heard a rustling in the night, and the door opened and closed, and it was Penny, slipping back to his bed from a silent hunt for some marauder.

  There was intrusion back and forth, as well. The Baxters went into the scrub for flesh of deer and hide of wild-cat. And the predatory animals and the hungry varmints came into the clearing when they could. The clearing was ringed around with hunger. It was a fortress in the scrub. Baxter’s Island was an island of plenty in a hungry sea.

  He heard the trace chains clanking. Penny was returning to the lot along the fence row. Jody ran ahead to open the lot gates for him. He helped with the unharnessing. He climbed the ladder into the loft and pitched down a forkful of cowpea hay into Cæsar’s manger. There was no more corn and would not be until the summer’s crop was made. He found a pile of hay with the dried peas still clinging to it and threw it down for Trixie. There would be more milk in the morning for both the Baxters and the spotted calf. The calf was inclined to leanness, for Penny was weaning it from the cow. The loft was heavy with heat, trapped under the thick hand-hewn slabs of the shingled roof. The hay crackled with a dry sweetness. It tickled his nostrils. He lay down in it a moment, abandoning himself to the resiliency. He was no more than comfortable when he heard his mother call. He scrambled down from the loft. Penny had finished milking. They went to the house together. Supper was on the table. There were only clabber and cornbread, but there was enough.

  Ma Baxter said, “You fellers try to git a shot at some meat while you’re off.”

  Penny nodded.

  “I’m totin’ my gun o’ purpose.”

  They set off to the west. The sun was still above the tre
etops. There had been no rain for several days, but now cumulus clouds were piled low in the north and west. From the east and south, a steel grayness crept toward the glaring brilliance of the west.

  Penny said, “A good rain today’d near about leave us lay by the corn.”

  There was no breeze. The air lay over the road like a thick down comforter. It seemed to Jody that it was something that could be pushed away, if he could struggle up through it. The sand burned his bare calloused soles. Rip and Julia walked listlessly, heads down, tails sagging, their tongues dripping from open jaws. It was not easy to follow the tracks of the hogs where the loose soil had been so long dry. Penny’s eye was keener here than Julia’s nose. The hogs had fed through the black-jack, crossed the abandoned clearing, and then headed for the prairie, where lily roots could be dug, and pools of cool water could be muddied and wallowed in. They did not range so far when food could be had close at home. Now was a barren and parlous season. There was no mast yet, of pine or oak or hickory, except what could be rooted deep under the leaves from last year’s falling. Palmetto berries were still too green, even for the undiscerning taste of a hog. Three miles from Baxter’s Island Penny crouched to examine the trail. He picked up a grain of corn and turned it over in his hand. He pointed to the hoof-marks of a horse.

  “They baited them hogs,” he said.

  He straightened his back. His face was grave. Jody watched him anxiously.

  “Well, son, we’re obliged to follow.”

  “Clare to the Forresters?”

  “Clare to wheresomever the hogs be. Mought be, we’ll find ’em in a pen some’eres.”

  The trail zigzagged where the hogs had weaved back and forth for the scattered corn.

  Penny said, “I kin understand the Forresters fightin’ Oliver and I kin understand them rompin’ on you and me. But I be dogged if I kin understand cold-out meanness.”

  A quarter of a mile beyond stood a rough hog-trap. It had been sprung but the pen was now empty. It was made of untrimmed saplings and a limber sapling had been baited to spring the gate behind the crowding hogs.

  “Them rascals was nearby, waitin’,” Penny said. “That pen wouldn’t hold a hog no time.”

  A cart had turned around in the sand to the right of the pen. The wheel tracks led down a dim scrub road toward Forresters’ Island.