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  “Well, sir, I was obliged to set down with that dog my ownself, to see what ’twas he was doin’. Now you know how a wild-cat or a fox’ll fool most dogs? He’ll double back on his own tracks. Yes sir, he’ll double back on his own tracks. He’ll git a good start on the dogs and he’ll light out and put a heap o’ distance between ’em. Then what do he do? He turns right back over his own trail. He cuts as far back as he’s daresome to do, listenin’ all the while for the dogs. Then he cuts off at another angle, so a picture o’ his trail’d look like a big V, like the ducks makes flyin’. Well, the dogs follers the trail he made in the first place, extry strong on account of him havin’ been over it twicet, and then they come to a place where they jest ain’t no more trail. They nose around and they nose around and they complain, and when they jest cain’t figger no sense to it, they turns back agin, backtrackin’. ’Course, they picks up then the turn-off where the fox or cat cut off in another direction. But all that time is wasted, and nine to one the cat or fox has made an out of it and got plumb away. Well, what do you figger this lopeared dog o’ mine done?”

  “Tell me.”

  “He figgered it out, that’s what he done. He figgered out about when ’twas time for the creetur to double back—and he’d slip back along the trail and lay down and wait. And when Mister Fox or Mister Cat come slippin’ back, there was old Dandy waitin’ to pop out on him.

  “Now sometimes he’d make his cut-off too fur back, and did he hang them long ears when he guessed it wrong! But mostly speakin’, he studied it out right, and he ketched me more wild-cats and more foxes than ary dog I’ve had, before or since.”

  He puffed his pipe. Ma Baxter moved her rocker closer to the candle. It was depressing to have the tale end so soon.

  “What else did old Dandy do, Pa?”

  “Well, one day he met his match.”

  “A cat or a fox?”

  “Neither one. A big ol’ buck, was as smart a deer as he was smart a dog. He was a buck with a twisted antler. Each year it growed in twisted. Now a deer don’t generally double back on his tracks. But now and again this old buck’d do it. And that was jest to this sly ol’ dog’s likin’. But this is where he wasn’t smart enough. The buck’d do jest the opposite to whatever the dog figgered he’d do. One time he’d double back. Next time he’d keep on runnin.’ He’d change his ways ever’ whip-stitch. That went on, year in, year out, the dog and the buck tryin’ to out-smart each other.”

  “Which was the smartest, Pa? How’d it end?”

  “You shore you want the answer?”

  He hesitated. He wanted the droopy-eared dog to outsmart the buck, and yet he wanted the buck to get away.

  “Yes. I got to know. I got to know the answer.”

  “Well, hit’s got a answer but no endin’. Old Dandy never come up with him.”

  He sighed with relief. That was a proper tale. When he thought of it again, he could picture the dog trailing the buck perpetually.

  He said, “Tell another tale like that un, Pa. A tale has got a answer but no endin’.”

  “Now boy, they ain’t many tales like that in the world. You best be content with that un.”

  Ma Baxter said, “I ain’t much for dogs, but they was a dog oncet I takened a notion to. It was a bitch and she had the purtiest coat. I said to the feller owned her, ’When she finds pups,’ says I, ‘I’d like one.’ He said, ’You’re welcome, but ’twon’t do, for you got no way o’ huntin’ it’—I wasn’t yit married to your Pa—’and a hound’ll die,’ he said, ’if it ain’t hunted.’ ’Is she a hound?’ says I, and he said, ’Yessum.’ And I said, ’Then I shore don’t want one, for a hound’ll suck eggs.”

  Jody waited eagerly for the rest of the tale, then understood that was all there was to it. It was like all his mother’s tales. They were like hunts where nothing happened. He went back in his thoughts to the dog that could out-smart wild-cats and foxes, but never caught the buck.

  He said, “I’ll bet Flag’ll be smart when he grows up.”

  Penny said, “What’ll you do, do somebody else’s dogs take out after him?”

  His throat constricted.

  “I’ll kill ary dog or ary man comes here, huntin’ him. Nobody ain’t likely to come, is they?”

  Penny said gently, “We’ll spread the word, so folks’ll be keerful. He’s not likely to roam far, no-how.”

  Jody decided to keep his gun always loaded, against marauders. He slept that night with Flag on the bed beside him. The wind shook the windowpanes all night and he slept uneasily, dreaming of clever dogs that ran the fawn mercilessly through the rain.

  In the morning he found Penny dressed as for winter, in his heavy coat and with a shawl over his head. He was preparing to go out into the storm to milk Trixie, the only chore that was entirely necessary for the time being. There was no lessening of the torrential downpour.

  Ma Baxter said, “Now you be peert and git back in here or you’ll die o’ the pneumony.”

  Jody said, “Leave me go,” but Penny said, “The wind’d blow you away, boy.”

  It seemed to him, watching the small bones of his father leaning against the tumultuous air, that there was little to choose between them in bulk and sturdiness. Penny came in again, drenched and breathless, the milk in the gourd spotted by the rain.

  He said, “Hit’s a mercy I toted water yestiddy.”

  The day continued as stormy as it had begun. The rain fell in sheets and the wind whipped it in under the eaves, so that Ma Baxter set pans and gourds to catch it. The rain barrels outside were overflowing and the rain from the roof gurgled into their fullness. Old Julia and the fawn had to be turned out by force. They were both back at the kitchen door in a brief time, wet and shivering. This time Rip was with them, whining. Ma Baxter protested, but Penny admitted the three. Jody dried them all with the crocus sack rug from in front of the hearth.

  Penny said, “We’re about due for a lull.”

  The lull did not come. Now and then there seemed to be a few moments when the wind and rain were less intense and Penny rose hopefully from his chair and peered outside. But he had no sooner decided that he would risk going out to cut wood and see to the chickens, than the deluge came again, as violent as before. In the late afternoon he went again to milk Trixie, to feed and water Cæsar, and to feed the chickens, huddled and frightened and unable to scratch for their living. Ma Baxter made him change his wet clothes immediately. They steamed and dried by the hearth with the sweet, musty smell of wet cloth.

  Supper was not so ample. Penny was not inclined to tales. The dogs were allowed to sleep in the house and the family went to bed early. Darkness had come at an unseemly hour and it was impossible to tell the time. Jody awakened at what would ordinarily have been an hour before daylight. The world was dark and the rain was still falling, the wind still blowing.

  Penny said, “We’ll git a break this mornin’. Hit’s a three-day nor’easter a’right, but sich a rain. I’ll be proud to see the sun.”

  The sun did not appear. There was no morning break. In mid-afternoon there came the lull that Penny had expected the day before. But it was a gray lull, the roof dripping, the trees soaked, the earth sodden. The chickens came out from their huddle for a few forlorn moments and scratched halfheartedly.

  Penny said, “We’ll git a change o’ wind now, and all be clare and fine.”

  The change of wind came. The gray sky turned green. The wind roared in from a distance, as before. When it came, it was not from the northeast but from the southeast, and it brought more rain.

  Penny said, “I’ve never seed sich a thing.”

  The rain was more torrential than before. It poured down as though Juniper Creek and Silver Glen Run and Lake George and the St. John’s River had all emptied over the scrub at once. The wind was no fiercer than before, but it was gusty. And there was no end to it. It blew and rained and blew and rained and blew and rained.

  Penny said, “This must be the way the Lord made the b
lasted ocean.”

  Ma Baxter said, “Hush. You’ll be punished.”

  “Cain’t be no worse punished, woman. The ’taters’ll be rotted and the corn flat and the hay ruint, and the cane.”

  The yard was afloat. Jody looked out of the window and saw two drowned biddies floating about with upturned bellies.

  Penny said, “I’ve seed things in my time, but I’ve never seed a thing like this.”

  Jody offered to go to the sink-hole for drinking water.

  Penny said, “Hit’ll be nothin’ but rain-water, and riled to boot.”

  They drank rain-water from a pan under the northwest corner of the house. It had a faintly woody taste from the cypress shingles. Jody did the evening chores. He went out of the kitchen door with the milk gourd into a strange world. It was a lost and desolate world, like the beginning of time, or the end of it. The vegetation was beaten flat. A river ran down the road, so that a flat-bottomed boat could have gone down it clear to Silver Glen. The familiar pines were like trees at the bottom of the sea, washed across not with mere rain, but with tides and currents. It seemed to him that he might swim to the top of the rain. The water was knee-deep in the lot, which lay at a lower level than the house. Trixie had broken down the bars that separated her from the calf and had taken it with her to a high corner. They stood huddled together. The calf had taken most of the milk and he was able only to draw a quart or so from the drained udders. The passage between the stalls and the corn-crib was a sluiceway. He meant to gather the dry husks for extra feed for Trixie, but the water swept through so discouragingly that he decided to let her make out until morning with the hay from the loft. It was a good thing, he thought, that the new crop of hay would soon be ready. There was little left. He did not know whether to try to separate the overgrown calf from the cow again. There was no place to put it where it would be dry. Yet the Baxters needed the milk as badly. He decided to wait and ask his father, coming back again if necessary. He fought his way outside and plodded to the house. The rain blinded him. The clearing seemed alien and unfriendly. He was glad to push open the door and to be again inside the house. The kitchen seemed safe and intimate. He made his report on conditions.

  Penny said, “Best leave the calf stay with its mammy, a time like this. We kin make out without milk ’til mornin’. Hit’ll shorely be clare by then.”

  Morning brought no abatement. Penny paced up and down the kitchen.

  He said, “My daddy told of a storm in the ’50’s was mightly bad, but I don’t reckon all Floridy history has had sich a rain.”

  The days passed with no change. Ma Baxter usually left the weather in Penny’s hands, but now she cried, and sat rocking with her hands folded. On the fifth day, Penny and Jody made a rush to the pea-field to pull enough cow-peas for a meal or two. The peas were flattened. They pulled up the whole vines with their backs to the rain and wind. They stopped at the smoke-house for a piece of pickled meat from the bear Buck Forrester had shot on his last night with them. Penny remembered that his wife was short of cooking grease. They tipped the can that held the golden bear grease and filled a stone crock. They laid the meat over the top to protect it and rushed for the house.

  The cow-peas were already moulding on the outside, but the peas inside were still firm and good. Supper was again a feast. There was the wild honey to fall back on, and Ma Baxter made a pudding sweetened with its rich flavor, tasting faintly of wood and smoke.

  Penny said, “Don’t seem possible it’ll not clare by mornin’, but if so be ’tain’t, Jody, you and me had best git out in it and pull as many peas as we kin manage.”

  Ma Baxter said, “But how’ll I keep ’em?”

  “Cook ’em, woman, and warm ’em ever’ day, if need be.”

  The morning of the sixth day was exactly like the others. Since they would be drenched in any case, Penny and Jody stripped to their breeches and went to the field with sacks. They worked until noon in the down-pour, pulling the slippery pods from the bushes. They came in for a hurried dinner and went back again without troubling to change their clothes. They covered most of the field. The hay, Penny said, was a total loss, but they would do what they could to save the peas. Some of the pods were mature. They spent the evening and late into the night shelling the peas, sticky and mouldering. Ma Baxter built up a slow fire on the hearth and spread out the peas close to the heat to dry. Jody was awakened several times in the night by the sound of some one going out to the kitchen to replenish the fire.

  The morning of the seventh day might have been the morning of the first. The gusty wind whipped around the house as though it had always blown and always would blow. The sound of the rain on the roof and in the rain-barrels was now so familiar that it was not noticed. At daylight, a limb of the chinaberry crashed to the ground. The Baxters sat silently at breakfast.

  Penny said, “Well, Job takened worse punishment than this. Leastways none of us ain’t got risin’s.”

  Ma Baxter snapped, “Find the good in it, that’s right.”

  “They ain’t no good in it. Lest it is to remind a man to be humble, for there’s nary thing on earth he kin call his own.”

  After breakfast he took Jody to the cornfield. The corn had been broken on the stalks before the storm. The stalks were beaten to the ground but the ears were unharmed. They gathered them and brought them too into the warm dry refuge of the kitchen.

  Ma Baxter said, “I ain’t got the peas dried yit. How’ll I dry all this?”

  Penny did not answer but went to the front room and kindled a fire on the hearth. Jody went outside to bring in more wood. The wood was soaked through, but when the fat-wood was heated a little while it would burn. Penny strewed the ears of corn on the floor.

  He said to Jody, “Now your job be to keep changin’ it, so’s it’ll all git a mite o’ the heat.”

  Ma Baxter said, “How’s the cane?”

  “Hit’s flat.”

  “What you reckon has happened to the ’taters?”

  He shook his head. In the late afternoon he went to the sweet potato field and dug enough for supper. They were beginning to rot. By trimming, some were usable. Again, supper seemed lavish, because of the sweet potatoes.

  Penny said, “If they ain’t no change by mornin’, we jest as good to quit fightin’ and lay down and die.”

  Jody had never heard his father speak so disconsolately. It froze him through. Flag was showing the effect of short rations. His ribs and backbone were visible. He bleated often. Penny had given up all attempt to milk the cow, for the sake of the calf.

  In the middle of the night Jody awakened and thought he heard his father about. It seemed to him the rain was falling less violently. He was asleep again before he could be certain. He awakened on the morning of the eighth day. Something was different. There was silence instead of tumult. The rain had stopped. The long winds were still. A light the color of pomegranate blossoms sifted through the gray, wet atmosphere. Penny flung all the doors and windows wide open.

  “’Tain’t much of a world to go out to,” he said, “but let’s all go out and be thankful there’s a world at all.”

  The dogs pushed past him and bounded out side by side. Penny smiled.

  “Dogged if ’tain’t like goin’ outen the Ark,” he said. “The animals two by two— Ory, come go out with me.”

  Jody jumped about and leaped down the steps with the fawn.

  “We’re the two deer,” he called.

  Ma Baxter looked across the fields and began to cry again. But the air, Jody felt, was cool and sweet and gracious. The fawn shared his feeling and bounded over the yard-gate with swift twinkling heels. The world was devastated with the flood, but it was indeed, as Penny kept reminding his wife, the only world they had.

  Chapter XX

  THE second day after the storm, Buck and Mill-wheel Forrester came riding to the island to see whether all was well with the Baxters. They had come straight from their own work of caring for the stranded stock. Along the m
ain trail the sights, they said, were new in their generation. The flood had played havoc with the small animals. It was agreed that the four of them, Buck and Mill-wheel and Penny and Jody, should make a tour of exploration for some miles around, so that they might know what to expect, in the immediate future, of the movements not only of the game, but of the predatory creatures. The Forresters had brought two dogs, and an extra horse, and asked to have Rip and Julia join them. Jody was excited that he was to be taken.

  He asked, “Kin Flag foller along, too?”

  Penny turned on him sharply.

  “This here is serious,” he said. “I’m carryin’ you with us to learn you. If you figger on frolickin’, you kin stay home, too.”

  Jody hung his head. He slipped away and shut Flag in the shed. The sand floor was still soaked and the shed smelled musty, but he made a bed of crocus sacks where the fawn might keep dry. He put out water and feed for it in case he should be long away.

  “You stay quiet,” he said to it, “and I’ll tell you all I see when I come home agin.”

  The Forresters were well stocked, as always, with ammunition. Penny had spent two evenings during the storm in making low-mould shot and in loading his own shells. He had a month’s supply filled and capped and ready for use. He filled his shot-bag and polished the barrels of his gun.

  He said to the Forresters, “Now I worked a rabbit’s-foot on you fellers about that wuthless dog I traded you. Ary time you crave to use this gun, you say so.”

  Buck said, “Ain’t none of us but Lem mean enough to take it back, Penny. I’ll swear, he got so mean, cooped up in the storm, I had to dress him down myself.”

  “Where’s he now?”

  Buck spat.

  “Gone off to the river, fretted about harm comin’ to that tormented gal Twink. Figgerin’ on makin’ it up with her, and layin’ for Oliver. He kin fight it out by hisself this time.”

  It was decided to make a wide circle that would take in both Baxter’s and Forresters’ Islands, Juniper Springs, Hopkins Prairie, and the good deer territory where the live oak islands that lifted from the marshy saw-grass would certainly have provided refuge for the animals. With the exception of a rolling ridge to the west, toward the Ocklawaha River, the Baxter’s Island terrain was the highest in the scrub. But it dropped down all around to low land, and the circle they had mapped out would tell the story. They would try to return to Forresters’ Island to sleep, but if that was not practicable they would camp wherever night found them. Penny filled a knapsack carefully. He put in a frying pan, salt, meal, a side of bacon and a twist of tobacco. In a crocus sack he put a handful of lighter’d splinters, a bottle of thin lard, and a bottle of panther oil which he treasured for his rheumatism. The exposure during the days of storm had brought his aches on him with vicious force. He had no meat for the dogs.