JULE ROBINSON WAS lying in bed snoring when his foxhounds struck a live trail a mile away and their baying woke him up with a start. He jumped to the floor, jerked on his shoes, and ran out into the front yard. It was about an hour before dawn.
Holding his hat to the side of his head like a swollen hand, he listened to the trailing on the ridge above the house. With his hat to deflect the sound into his ear, he could hear the dogs treading in the dry underbrush as plainly as his own breathing. It had taken him only a few seconds to determine that the hounds were not cold-trailing, and he put his hat back on his head and stooped over to lace his shoes.
“Papa,” a frightened voice said, “please don’t go off again now — wait till daybreak, anyway.”
Jule turned around and saw the dim outline of his two girls. They were huddled together in the window of their bedroom. Jessie and Clara were old enough to take care of themselves, he thought, but that did not stop them from getting in his way when he wanted to go fox hunting.
“Go on back to bed and sleep, Jessie — you and Clara,” he said gruffly. “Those hounds are just up on the ridge. They can’t take me much out of hollering distance before sunup.”
“We’re scared, Papa,” Clara said.
“Scared of what?” Jule asked impatiently. “There ain’t a thing for two big girls like you and Jessie to be scared of. What’s there to be scared of in this big country, anyway?”
The hounds stopped trailing for a moment, and Jule straightened up to listen in the silence. All at once they began again, and he bent down to finish tying his shoes.
Off in the distance he could hear several other packs of trailing hounds, and by looking closely at the horizon he could see the twinkle of campfires where bands of fox hunters had stopped to warm their hands and feet.
“Are you going, anyway, Papa?” Clara asked.
“I’m going, anyway,” he answered.
The two girls ran back to bed and pulled the covers over their heads. There was no way to argue with Jule Robinson when he had set his head on following his foxhounds.
The craze must have started anew sometime during the holidays, because by the end of the first week in January it looked and sounded as if everybody in Georgia were trading foxhounds by day and bellowing “Whoo-way-oh!” by night. From the time the sun went down until the next morning when it came up, the woods, fields, pastures, and swamps were crawling with beggar-liced men and yelping hound-dogs. Nobody would have thought of riding horseback after the hounds in a country where there was a barbwire fence every few hundred yards.
Automobiles roared and rattled over the rough country roads all night long. The fox hunters had to travel fast in order to keep up with the pack.
It was not safe for any living thing with four legs to be out after sundown, because the hounds had the hunting fever too, and packs of those rangy half-starved dogs were running down and devouring calves, hogs, and even yellow-furred bobcats. It had got so during the past two weeks that the chickens knew enough to take to their roosts an hour ahead of time, because those packs of gaunt hunt-hungry hounds could not wait for sunset any more.
Jule finished lacing his shoes and went around the house. The path to the ridge began in the back yard and weaved up the hillside like a cow-path through a thicket. Jule passed the well and stopped to feel in his pockets to see if he had enough smoking tobacco to last him until he got back.
While he was standing there he heard behind him a sound like water gurgling through the neck of a demijohn. Jule listened again. The sound came even more plainly while he listened. There was no creek anywhere within hearing distance, and the nearest water was in the well. He went to the edge and listened again. The well did not have a stand or a windlass; it was merely a twenty-foot hole in the ground with boards laid over the top to keep pigs and chickens from falling into it.
“O Lord, help me now!” a voice said.
Jule got down on his hands and knees and looked at the well cover in the darkness. He felt of the boards with his hands. Three of them had been moved, and there was a black oblong hole that was large enough to drop a calf through.
“Who’s that?” Jule said, stretching out his neck and cocking his ear.
“O Lord, help me now,” the voice said again, weaker than before.
The gurgling sound began again, and Jule knew then that it was the water in the well.
“Who’s down there muddying up my well?” Jule said.
There was no sound then. Even the gurgling stopped.
Jule felt on the ground for a pebble and dropped it into the well. He counted until he could hear the kerplunk when it struck the water.
“Doggone your hide, whoever you are down there!” Jule said. “Who’s down there?”
Nobody answered.
Jule felt in the dark for the water bucket, but he could not find it. Instead, his fingers found a larger pebble, a stone almost as big around as his fist, and he dropped it into the well.
The big rock struck something else before it finally went into the water.
“O Lord, I’m going down and can’t help myself,” the voice down there said. “O Lord, a big hand is trying to shove me under.”
The hounds trailing on the ridge swung around to the east and started back again. The fox they were after was trying to back-trail them, but Jule’s hounds were hard to fool. They had got to be almost as smart as a fox.
Jule straightened up and listened to the running.
“Whoo-way-oh!” he called after the dogs.
That sent them on yelping even louder than before.
“Is that you up there, Mr. Jule?” the voice asked.
Jule bent over the well again, keeping one ear on the dogs on the ridge. He did not want to lose track of them when they were on a live trail like that.
“This is me,” Jule said. “Who’s that?”
“This is only Bokus Bradley, Mr. Jule,” the voice said.
“What you doing down in my well, muddying it up like that, Bokus?”
“It was something like this, Mr. Jule,” Bokus said. “I was coming down the ridge a while ago, trying to keep up with my hounds, and I stumbled over your well cover. I reckon I must have missed the path, somehow or other. Your well cover wouldn’t hold me up, or something, and the first thing I knew, here I was. I’ve been here ever since I fell in. I reckon I’ve been down here most of the night. I hope you ain’t mad at me, Mr. Jule. I just naturally couldn’t help it at all.”
“You’ve muddied up my well water,” Jule said. “I ain’t so doggone pleased about that.”
“I reckon I have, some,” Bokus said, “but I just naturally couldn’t help it none at all.”
“Where’d your dogs go to, Bokus?” Jule asked.
“I don’t know, Mr. Jule. I haven’t heard a sound out of them since I fell in here. They was headed for the creek when I was coming down the ridge behind them. Can you hear them anywhere now, Mr. Jule?”
Several packs of hounds could be heard. Jule’s on the ridge was trailing east, and a pack was trailing down the creek toward town. Over toward the hills several more packs were running, but they were so far away it was not easy to tell to whom they belonged.
“Sounds to me like I hear your dogs down the creek, headed for the swamp,” Jule said.
“Whoo-way-oh!” Bokus called.
The sound from the well struck Jule like a blast out of a megaphone.
“Your dogs can’t hear you from ’way down there, Bokus,” he said.
“I know they can’t, Mr. Jule, and that’s why I sure enough want to get out of here. My poor dogs don’t know which way I want them to trail when they can’t hear me talk to them. Whoo-way-oh!” Bokus shouted. “O Lord, help me now!”
Jule’s dogs sounded as if they were closing in on a fox, and Jule jumped to his feet.
“Whoo-way-oh!” he shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Whoo-way-oh!”
“Is you still up there, Mr. Jule?” Bokus asked. “Please, Mr. Jule, don’t go away and leave me down here in this cold well. I’ll do anything for you if you’ll just only get me out of here. I’ve been standing neck-deep in this cold water near about all night long.”
Jule threw some of the boards over the well.
“What you doing up there, Mr. Jule?”
Jule took off his hat and held the brim like a fan to the side of his head. He could hear the panting of the dogs while they ran.
“How many foxhounds have you got, Bokus?” Jule asked.
“I got me eight,” Bokus said. “They’re mighty fine fox trailers, too, Mr. Jule. But I’d like to get me out of this here well before doing much more talking with you.”
“You could get along somehow with less than that, couldn’t you, Bokus?”
“If I had to, I’d have to,” Bokus said, “but I sure enough would hate to have fewer than my eight dogs, though. Eight is just naturally the right-sized pack for me, Mr. Jule.”
“How are you figuring on getting out of there?” Jule said.
“I just naturally figured on you helping me out, Mr. Jule,” he said. “Leastaways, that’s about the only way I know of getting out of this here well. I tried climbing, but the dirt just naturally crumbles away every time I dig my toes into the sides.”
“You’ve got that well so muddied up it won’t be fit to drink out of for a week or more,” Jule said.
“I’ll do what I can to clean it out for you, Mr. Jule, if I ever get up on top of the solid ground again. Can you hear those hounds of mine trailing now, Mr. Jule?”
“They’re still down the creek. I reckon I could lower the water bucket, and I could pull a little, and you could climb a little, and maybe you’d get out that way.”
“That just naturally would suit me fine, Mr. Jule,” Bokus said eagerly. “Here I is. When is you going to lower that water bucket?”
Jule stood up and listened to his dogs trailing on the ridge. From the way they sounded, it would not be long before they treed the fox they were after.
“It’s only about an hour till daybreak,” Jule said. “I’d better go on up the ridge and see how my hounds are making out. I can’t do much here at the well till the sun comes up.”
“Don’t go away and leave me now, Mr. Jule,” Bokus begged. “Mr. Jule, please, sir, just lower that water bucket down here and help me get out. I just naturally got to get out of here, Mr. Jule. My dogs will get all balled up without me following them. Whoo-way-oh! Whoo-way-oh!”
The pack of fox-trailing hounds was coming up from the creek, headed toward the house. Jule took off his hat and held it beside his ear. He listened to them panting and yelping.
“If I had two more hounds, I’d be mighty pleased,” Jule said, shouting loud enough for Bokus to hear. “Just two is all I need right now.”
“You wouldn’t be wanting two of mine, would you, Mr. Jule?” Bokus asked.
“It’s a good time to make a trade,” Jule said. “It’s a mighty good time, being as how you are down in the well and want to get out.”
“Two, did you say?”
“Two is what I said.”
There was silence in the well for a long time. For nearly five minutes Jule listened to the packs of dogs all around him, some on the ridge, some down the creek, and some in the far-off fields. The barking of the hounds was a sweeter sound to him than anything else in the world. He would lose a night’s sleep any time just to stay up and hear a pack of foxhounds live-trailing.
“Whoo-way-oh!” he called.
“Mr. Jule!” Bokus shouted up from the bottom of the well.
Jule went to the edge and leaned over to hear what the Negro had to say. “How about that there trade now, Bokus?”
“Mr. Jule, I just naturally couldn’t swap off two of my hounds, I just sure enough couldn’t.”
“Why not?” Jule said.
“Because I’d have only just six dogs left, Mr. Jule, and I couldn’t do much fox hunting with just that many.” Jule straightened up and kicked the boards over the top of the well.
“You won’t be following even so few as one hound for a while,” he said, “because I’m going to leave you down in the bottom where you stand now. It’s another hour, almost, till daybreak, and I can’t be wasting that time staying here talking to you. Maybe when I get back you’ll be in a mind to do some trading, Bokus.” Jule kicked the boards on top of the well.
“O Lord, help me now!” Bokus said. “But, O Lord, don’t make me swap off no two hounds for the help I’m asking for.”
Jule stumbled over the water bucket when he turned and started across the yard toward the path up the ridge. Up there he could hear his dogs running again, and when he took off his hat and held it to the side of his head he could hear Polly pant, and Senator snort, and Mary Jane whine, and Sunshine yelp, and the rest of them barking at the head of the trail. He put on his hat, pulled it down hard all around, and hurried up the path to follow them on the ridge. The fox would not be able to hold out much longer.
“Whoo-way-oh!” he called to his hounds. “Whoo-way-oh!”
The echo was a masterful sound to hear.
(First published in the Atlantic Monthly)