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  Penny said, “You wakeful, son?”

  “I cain’t stop walkin’.”

  “We went a fur piece. How you like bear-huntin’, boy?”

  “Well—” He rubbed his knees. “I like thinkin’ about it.”

  “I know.”

  “I liked the trackin’ and the trailin’. I liked seein’ the saplin’s broke down, and the ferns in the swamp.”

  “I know.”

  “I liked old Julia bayin’ now and agin——”

  “But the fightin’s right fearsome, ain’t it, son?”

  “Hit’s mighty fearsome.”

  “Hit’s sickenin’, the dogs gittin’ bloodied and sich as that. And son, you ain’t never seed a bear kilt. But mean as they be, hit’s someway piteeful when they go down and the dogs tears their throats and they cry out just like a person, and lay down and die before you.”

  Father and son lay in silence.

  “If the wild creeturs’d only leave us be,” Penny said.

  “I wisht we could kill ’em all off,” Jody said. “Them that steals offen us and does us harm.”

  “’Tain’t stealin’, in a creetur. A creetur’s got his livin’ to make and he makes it the best way he kin. Same as us. Hit’s panther nature and wolf nature and bear nature to kill their meat. County lines is nothin’ to them, nor a man’s fences. How’s a creetur to know the land’s mine and paid for? How’s a bear to know I’m dependin’ on my hogs for my own rations? All he knows is, he’s hongry.”

  Jody lay staring into the brightness. Baxter’s Island seemed to him a fortress ringed around with hunger. Now in the moonlight eyes were shining, red and green and yellow. The hungry would dart in to the clearing in swift forays, and kill and eat and slink away again. Pole-cats and ’possums would raid the hen-roost, wolf or panther might slay the calf before daylight, old Slewfoot might come again to murder and feed.

  “A creetur’s only doin’ the same as me when I go huntin’ us meat,” Penny said. “Huntin’ him where he lives and beds and raises his young uns. Hit’s a hard law, but it’s the law. ’Kill or go hongry.’”

  Yet the clearing was safe. The creatures came, but they went away again. Jody began to shiver and could not tell why.

  “You cold, son?”

  “I reckon.”

  He saw old Slewfoot wheel, and slash and snarl. He saw old Julia leap, and be caught and crushed, and hold on, and then fall away, broken and bleeding. But the clearing was safe.

  “Move close, son. Ill warm you.”

  He edged closer to his father’s bones and sinews. Penny slipped an arm around him and he lay close against the lank thigh. His father was the core of safety. His father swam the swift creek to fetch back his wounded dog. The clearing was safe, and his father fought for it, and for his own. A sense of snugness came over him and he dropped asleep. He awakened once, disturbed. Penny was crouched in the corner in the moonlight, ministering to the hound.

  Chapter V

  PENNY said at breakfast, “Well, it’s trade for a new gun, or court trouble.”

  Old Julia was better. Her wounds were clean, without swelling. She was exhausted from loss of blood and wanted only to sleep. She had lapped a little milk from the gourd Penny held for her.

  “How you aim to buy a new gun,” Ma Baxter asked, “and not money scarcely for taxes?”

  “I said ’trade’,” Penny corrected.

  “Ary day you git the best of a trade, I’ll eat my wash-pot.”

  “Now Ma, I wouldn’t even crave to beat a man. But there’s trades where all is satisfied.”

  “What you got to trade with?”

  “The feice.”

  “Who’d have him?”

  “He’s a good ketch-dog.”

  “Good to ketch biscuits.”

  “You know as good as I do, the Forresters is fools for dogs.”

  “Ezra Baxter, do you go tradin’ with the Forresters, you’ll do good to come home wearin’ your breeches.”

  “Well, that’s where me and Jody is headin’ for, today.”

  Penny spoke with a firmness against which the bulk of his wife was sheer air. She sighed.

  “All right. Leave me without nobody to split my wood or fetch me water or care do I drop in my tracks. Go. Take him.”

  “I ain’t never left you without wood nor water.” Jody listened anxiously. He would rather visit the Forresters than eat.

  “Jody has got to mix with men and learn the ways o’ men,” Penny said.

  “The Forresters’ is a fine place to begin. Do he learn from them, he’ll learn to have a heart as black as midnight.”

  “He might learn from them, not to. Anyways, that’s where we’re goin’.”

  He rose from the table.

  “I’ll fetch water and Jody, you go split a good bait o’ wood.”

  “You want to tote lunch?” she called after him.

  “I’d not insult my neighbors that-a-way. We’ll noon with them.”

  Jody hurried to the wood-pile. Every blow of the axe on that fat pine brought him closer to the Forresters and his friend Fodder-wing. He split a plentiful amount and carried enough to the kitchen to fill his mother’s wood-box. His father had not yet returned from the sink-hole with his load of water. Jody hurried to the lot and saddled the horse. If the horse were ready and waiting, they might get off before his mother discovered some fresh pretext for detaining him. He saw Penny coming down the sand road from the west, bowed under the ox-yoke with the two heavy wooden buckets brimming with water. He ran to help him ease the load to the ground, for a lack of balance would tumble the buckets headlong, and the tedious hauling would have to be done all over again.

  “Cæsar’s saddled,” he said.

  “And the woods is a-fire, I take it.” Penny grinned. “All right. Leave me put on my tradin’ coat and tie up Rip and git my gun and we’re long gone.”

  The saddle had been bought of the Forresters, having proved a trifle small for any of their great butts. It held Penny and Jody together in comfort.

  “Git in front, son. But do you keep out-growin’ me, you’ll be obliged to ride behind, for I cain’t see the road before me. Here, Perk! Heel up.”

  The feice fell in behind. He stopped once and looked back over his shoulder.

  “I hope it’s your last look,” Penny told him.

  Cæsar, well rested, went into a steady trot. His old back was broad, the saddle was wide, and riding so, with his father braced behind him, was as comfortable, Jody thought, as a rocking chair. The sand road was a sunny ribbon, leaf-shadowed. West, by the sink-hole, the road forked, one branch continuing on to Forresters’ Island, the other turning north. Ancient axe-marks on venerable long-leaf pines blazed the turn to the northerly trail.

  “Did you or the Forresters make them blazes?” Jody asked.

  “Them was cut before me and the Forresters was ever heered tell of. Why, son, some’s so deep, and them pines grows so slow, I’d not be surprised was some of ’em Spanish blazes. That teacher never learned you no history last year? Why, boy, the Spaniards made this trail. This right here, that we’re leavin’ now, is the old Spanish trail clear acrost Floridy. It split back near Fort Butler. The south un goes to Tampa. Hit’s the Dragoon trail. This un here’s the Black Bear.”

  Jody turned big eyes to his father.

  “You reckon the Spaniards fit the bears?”

  “I reckon they had to, when they stopped to camp. They had Injuns to fight and bears and panther-cats. Same as us, only we ain’t got the Injuns.”

  Jody stared about him. The pine-woods were suddenly populous.

  “Is there any Spaniards hereabouts now?”

  “There’s nary a man livin’, Jody, has even heered his grandpappy say he’d ever seed a Spaniard. The Spaniards come from acrost the ocean, and went tradin’ and fightin’ and marchin’ acrost Floridy, and no man knows where they’re gone.”

  The business of the spring woods went forward leisurely in the golden morning. Red-bi
rds were mating, and the crested males were everywhere, singing until Baxter’s Island dripped with the sweetness of the sound.

  “Hit’s better’n fiddlin’ and guitarin’, ain’t it?” Penny said.

  Jody came back to the scrub with a start. He had been halfway across the ocean with the Spaniards.

  The sweet gums were in full new leaf. The flowers of red-bud and jessamine and dogwood had come and gone, but huckleberries and ti-ti and dog-tongue were in full bloom. The road ran to the west through a mile of tender green, of white and rosy blossoming. Wild honey-bees hummed in the small lacelike flowers of the St. Augustine grapes. The road narrowed past an abandoned clearing. Cæsar slowed to a walk. The scrub closed in around them. Scrub oak and gallberry and myrtle bushes brushed their legs. The growth was thick and low and there was only occasional shade. The April sun was high and strong. Cæsar was sweating and the stirrup leathers rubbed and squeaked.

  Two miles of the way were hot and silent. Only jorees darted among the bushes. A fox crossed, dragging his brush, and a yellow shape that might have been a wild-cat shot almost invisibly into the myrtle. Then the road widened, the vegetation withdrew, and the landmark that was the tall trees of Forresters’ Island lifted ahead. Penny dismounted and picked up the feice and mounted again, holding the dog in his arms.

  Jody said, “Why you totin’ him?”

  “Jest never you mind.”

  They passed into hammock, cool and deep, arched with palms and live oaks. The road wound about and the weathered gray of the Forrester cabin showed under a giant oak. A pond shone beyond and below it.

  Penny said, “Now don’t you torment Fodder-wing.”

  I don’t never torment him. He’s my friend.”

  “That’s good. He’s the second settin’ and he ain’t to blame for hatchin’ out peculiar.”

  “He’s my best friend. Except Oliver.”

  “You better stick to Oliver. His tales is tall as Fodderwing’s, but at least he knows when he’s lyin’.”

  Suddenly the quiet of the forest exploded. A commotion broke loose inside the cabin. The sound came of chairs hurled across its width, a large object crashed, glass shattered, heavy feet stamped on the plank floor and the voices of male Forresters beat against the walls. A female voice shrilled above the tumult. The door flew wide and a pack of dogs streamed into the open. Ma Forrester flailed at them with a hearthbroom as they raced for safety. Her sons crowded behind her.

  Penny called, “Hit safe for a feller to git down here?”

  The Forresters roared greetings to the Baxters and commands to the dogs. Ma Forrester lifted her gingham apron in both hands and waved it up and down like a flag. The shouts of welcome were so mingled with orders to the dogs that Jody was uncomfortable, faintly uncertain of the reception.

  “Git down and come in! Git away, you blasted baconthieves! Hi-yuh! Howdy! Git to tarnation!”

  Ma Forrester swooped after the dogs and they scattered into the forest.

  “Penny Baxter! Jody! Git down and come in!”

  Jody dropped to the ground and she thumped him on the back. She smelled of snuff and of wood-smoke. The odor did not offend him but he was obliged to think of the delicate sweet scent of Grandma Hutto. Penny dismounted. He held the feice tenderly. The Forresters milled about him. Buck led the horse away to the corral. Mill-wheel caught Jody up and swung him over one shoulder and to the ground again, as though he swung a puppy.

  Beyond, down the cabin steps, Jody saw Fodder-wing hurrying toward him. The humped and twisted body moved in a series of contortions, like a wounded ape. Fodder-wing lifted his walking stick and waved it. Jody ran to meet him. Fodder-wing’s face was luminous.

  He cried, “Jody!”

  They stood, embarrassed and delighted.

  A sense of pleasure came over Jody that he felt with no one else. His friend’s body was no more unnatural to him than the body of a chameleon or a ’possum. He took the word of grown folks that Fodder-wing was witless. He himself would have known better than to do the thing that had given Fodder-wing his name. The youngest Forrester had conceived the idea that if he could attach himself to something light and airy, he could float from the roof-tree of the barn as gently as any bird. He had attached great bundles of fodder, cow-pea hay, to his arms, and jumped. He had survived, miraculously, adding a few broken bones further to contort the hunch-backed frame with which he had been born. It was a crazy thing to do, of course. Yet privately, Jody felt, something of the sort might work. He had, himself, often thought of kites, very large kites. And some secret understanding was his of the crippled boy’s longing for flight; for lightness; for a moment’s freedom from his body, earth-bound and bent and stumbling.

  He said, “Hey.”

  Fodder-wing said, “I got a baby ’coon.”

  He had, always, a new pet.

  “Le’s go see it.”

  Fodder-wing led him back of the cabin to a collection of boxes and cages that sheltered his changing assortment of birds and creatures.

  “My eagle died,” Fodder-wing said. “He was too wild to pen.”

  The pair of black swamp rabbits was not new.

  “They won’t raise no young uns,” Fodder-wing complained. “I’m fixin ’to turn ’em a-loose.”

  A fox-squirrel worked an endless treadle.

  “I’ll give him to you,” Fodder-wing offered. “I kin git me another.”

  Jody’s hopes lifted and fell.

  “Ma won’t let me keep nothin’.”

  His heart swelled, aching for the fox-squirrel.

  “Here’s the ’coon. Here, Racket!”

  A black nose protruded between narrow slats. A tiny black paw, like a nigger baby’s hand, reached out. Fodder-wing lifted a slat and brought out the ’coon. It clung to his arm and gave a strange chirring cry.

  “You kin hold him. He’ll not bite you.”

  Jody cuddled the ’coon against him. He thought he had never seen or touched a thing so delightful. The gray fur was as soft as his mother’s outing flannel nightgown. The pointed face was masked across the eyes with a black bar. The bushy tail was beautifully ringed. The ’coon nibbled at his flesh and cried again.

  “He wants his sugar-teat,” Fodder-wing said maternally. “Le’s take him to the house whilst the dogs is out. He’s mighty skeert o’ the dogs, but he’ll git used to ’em. He don’t like no commotion.”

  “What was you-all fightin’ about,” Jody asked, “when we come up?”

  “I wasn’t into it,” Fodder-wing said with disdain. “It was them.”

  “What was it?”

  “One o’ the dogs wet in the middle o’ the floor. They couldn’t agree whose dog ’twas, done it.”

  Chapter VI

  THE ’coon sucked greedily at his sugar-teat. He lay on his back, cupped in Jody’s arm, and clutched the sugar-filled cloth with his fore feet. He closed his eyes blissfully. His small paunch was already round with milk and shortly he pushed the sugar-teat away and scrambled to be free. Jody lifted him to his shoulder. The ’coon parted his hair and felt along his neck and ears with his small, restless hands.

  “His hands is never still,” Fodder-wing said.

  Pa Forrester spoke from the shadows beyond the hearth. Jody had not noticed him, he sat so quiet.

  “I had me a ’coon when I were a young un,” he said. “Hit were gentle as a kitten for two yare. Then one day hit bit a chunk outen my shin.” He spat into the fire. “This un’ll grow up to bite. Hit’s ’coon nature.”

  Ma Forrester came into the cabin and went to her pots and pans. Her sons trooped in behind her; Buck and Mill-wheel, Gabby and Pack, Arch and Lem. Jody looked puzzled at the dried and wizened pair that had bred these mountainous men. They were all much alike, except Lem and Gabby. Gabby was shorter than the rest and not unduly bright. Lem alone was clean-shaven. He was as tall as any of them, but thinner, and not so dark, and had the least to say. He often sat apart, brooding and sulky, while Buck and Mill-wheel, the most boist
erous, caroused.

  Penny Baxter came in, lost among them. Pa Forrester continued his discourse on the nature of ’coons. No one listened but Jody, but the old man relished his own words.

  “That ’coon’ll grow up to where he’s big as a dog. He’ll whop ary dog on the yard. A ’coon lives for one thing, to whop a dog. He’ll lie on his back in the water and fight a hull pack o’ dogs. He’ll drown ’em, one by one. And bite? A ’coon’ll bite one more time after he’s dead.”

  Jody was torn between the desire to follow him, and his interest in the talk of the other Forresters. He was surprised to see that his father still carried the worthless feice tenderly in his arms. Penny crossed the room.

  “Howdy, Mr. Forrester. Proud to see you. How’s your health?”

  “Howdy, sir. I’m right smart tol’able, seein’ as how I be near about done for. Truth to tell, I’d ought to be dead this minute and gone to glory, but I keep puttin’ it off. Seems like I’m better acquainted here.”

  Ma Forrester said, “Set down, Mr. Baxter.”

  Penny drew a rocker and sat down.

  Lem Forrester called across the room, “Your dog lame?”

  “Why, no. I’ve never knowed him to go lame. I jest figger on keepin’ him outen the jaws o’ them blood-hounds o’ yourn.”

  “Valuable, eh?” Lem asked.

  “Not him. He ain’t wuth a good twist o’ t’baccy. Don’t you-all aim to detain him when I leave here, for he’s not wuth stealin’.”

  “You takin’ mighty good keer of him, iffen he’s that sorry.”

  “So I be.”

  “You had him on bear?”

  “I’ve had him on bear.” Lem came close and breathed down heavily. “Do he track good? Do he holt a bear at bay?”

  “He’s mighty sorry. Sorriest bear-dog I ever owned or follered.”

  Lem said, “I never heered a man run down his own dog that-a-way.”

  Penny said, “Well, I’ll admit he’s likely-lookin’, and most ary man’d want him, lookin’ at him, and I jest wouldn’t put no notion o’ tradin’ in your minds, for you’d git fooled and cheated.”

  “You figger on huntin’ some on your way back?”