OUR DOGS rustled out a fox, south and east beyond all hearing, running like they were tied to him. It was eleven o’clock at night, middling damp and black-dark, for the young moon had already gone to hide.
We squatted on the west slope of the Divide above Heaven Creek—the usual four of us, armed with boiled eggs and onion sandwiches, and we carried along a water jug, and my father had a half-a-pint of whiskey. Our trucks were under the oaks, just far enough back for firelight to pretend that radiator caps were precious gems. The spooky places among big trees were full of betty-millers and numerous other moths, and beetles were a-buzzing.
But it seemed as if the timberland considered itself incomplete, without voices of hounds splitting themselves upon the shagbarks; and so all life was waiting and summoning—acorn and peeking coon and noxious flytrap weeds beside the creek—urging that the pack return and make dutiful music in the background.
Benjy Davis pulled his thin brown face away from the fire: the blaze was good to watch but hard to sit by. He said to all and sundry, “She’s just about coming in.”
We knew without his saying that he made mention of Little Lady.
“Yes,” said Benjy, agreeing with himself. “From all signs, this should be the last time I run her till she’s clean out of season.”
Springfield Davis moved his jaws around the usual rich wad of chewing tobacco. “Now, I was over to the Maitland place, week before last. Young Lee Maitland took me there in his car to see Flying Bobby Ford.”
“If Little Lady belonged to me,” spoke up my father, Cal Royster, “I would of had me a couple of litters out of her before this.”
Benjy spoke short. “Little Lady doesn’t belong to you.”
Pa took out his flask, and squinted against the flame to see how many swallows were there and how long they’d do him. “The greatest fox-hound in captivity, the daughter of Bugle Ann, and you’ve never let her drop a pup!”
“No,” spoke Spring Davis’s calm old voice. “She belongs to Camden. And Benjy.”
“She belongs to you, Pa. Camden presented her, right in these woods.”
“Oh,” said Spring, “just call her a Davis dog.”
Indeed it was share and share with those fine neighbors of ours nowadays. After Spring was pardoned, and after Little Lady was escorted mysteriously to run on the same extensive ranges where her mother’s voice had spoken—and after Camden Terry and Benjy had been wed, right there on the Davis porch beneath an arch of wild phlox the Armstrong daughters manufactured—after these great events took place, there had to be a new arrangement for living.
It worked to advantage. Benjy and Camden toiled for weeks previous to their marriage, fix-ing up the old Terry place as a cottage for themselves and their future family if ever they would own one. Benjy had money in the bank, and he employed a Wolf Center carpenter and plumber, and he and Camden painted outside and in.
About that time big Gabe Strickland got weary of attending so many prayer-services at the Armstrong place where he had served as hired man. He said morning prayers were enough and plenty, or evening prayers, but not both; and he stamped away with his valise and guitar-case, and offered himself to the Davises.
This was a sane solution: Gabe slept on a cot in the machine shed until the wedding ceremony, and then he moved up into Benjy’s former room. With the Camden Terry acres now ready for mutual cultivation along with Davis land, it took the best efforts of two ablebodied men. Spring could perform only the lightest of chores in his antiquity, and through brief periods Benjy even had to hire extra help.
The fate of farmers had improved. Prices went up, and there were Government checks, and electricity brought down into our region on high lines. We sported trucks and telephones and such-like, where in many cases we hadn’t experienced them before; and my mother loved the radio, and kept it going on a shelf above her dishpans. But though we had all grown modern and prosperous, we still loved to hunt our dogs, and did so as much as was morally possible. Sometimes it seemed that we were even immorally neglectful of other matters, when foxes smelled sweet and the first lovely squawl tuned up on the jump.
Spring liked to keep his fine stock close to hand, so only Little Lady dwelt with Benjy and Camden. That was fitting, for Camden had reared her from the first. But Spring went a-calling over there whenever the spirit moved him, and that was frequently. He sat often on the canvas porch-swing with the pink nose of this fabulous animal pushed against his trouser-leg. Just call her a Davis dog.
These knowledges and understandings pre-vailed in my mind on this night; I studied them and found them good.
Then came a clarion echo, like the love-song of some savage ghost who paced across the wooded miles all dressed in deerskins and his eagle feathers.
It was a baying which commanded over all the insects, and Benjy and I heard it first because our ears were younger.
“She’s in front again.” He spoke without exasperating pride, but just as if he’d said the world was round.
“That’s a good chop, right up there with her,” and I was taking note of our own Vinegar Blink, who was keenly close on the fox, even if he couldn’t sing like Kate Smith or someone else.
My father took a next-to-the-last sample of his whiskey. “I’ll testify to God,” he said. “They do pack well, Spring. Our’n and your’n.”
Spring Davis smiled under his mustache and touched his fingers on the bugle-lip. “They always have, Cal.”
Owk, owk, owk. We Roysters bred for push and drive and speed; we didn’t care for bench, nor how the judges graded up some sorry potlicker who looked like hell on wheels because of his back or stifles or the firmness of his toes, but who couldn’t stay with a fox if the fox only had three feet and corns on one of those.
I stood and snapped my fingers in pleasure, and counted out the names of those we owned, and Benjy named the Davises. Old Spring just leaned against a black oak trunk, and crushed a sandwich in his long claw hand. His ears were hearing only one good trumpet over all the clacking.
He said, “There never lived a voice like that in any time or nation. Excepting one.”
My father took a final swallow from his flask, and screwed the top back on; he tossed it in the flames.
And pretty soon the flask would burst like any bomb, and then we all would dodge, and laugh; and Spring would shake his head, and ask my Pa how soon he’d grow up, anyway.
Pa said, “You’d have some other mouths as good. With luck you’d get a one or two, in any litter that you bred.”
“Take this stud dog at the Maitland place,” Spring told us. “He’s sired champions.”
“And bubble-babbler-bumblebees as well,” his son reproved. “Did you glimpse those two-year-olds the Lanceys tried to run of late? I swear they didn’t know if they was crying fox or polecat or the morning news. And they’re by Flying Bobby Henry Ford, or what the hell they call him.”
Springfield sighed, and ate the last remain-ders of his sandwich. “That’s the rub,” his foggy voice declared. “We can’t agree. I guess we’ll breed her, but—”
“Well, she ain’t ready to be introduced to anyone tonight,” my father said. “Now, Bake, just set and listen to the tune.” And there I was, not saying anything.
Just marveling at it all. For we were happy; and strange it was to reason that such pleasantness could ever have emerged from all the cruelties which lay on us before—especially upon the Davises. Old Spring had slain a neighbor for Bugle Ann’s own sake, and faced his penalty without a murmur; but still the daughter of that murdered man had been the key to open up his jail-house door.
So we were joyful, though never speaking much about it. We had no inkling of the fury to come.
Spring talked about this breeding business, when the fox trail swept off distantly again and took the voices from our ears. Sometimes he felt a mood to tell fine stories of the days agone: the war he’d known when he was beardless, and feuds and fightings, and the bushwhack days. How he was wounded at Pea Ridge, and people held him down to probe the bullet from his thigh. He had the bullet yet; it weighed an ounce, and he’d let children hold the lead, but never let them use it for a mar-ble, though they prayed to frequently.
On this night he talked about great fox-hounds of the past—how tall they bred them then, and how they holed a panther till the menfolks smoked it out. He spoke of Triple Trouble, Triple Choke and Buck-and-Ball—the long-eared dogs my grandfather had owned—and how, if they were living in this age, he’d admire to bring one of them to Little Lady.
Benjy spoke his share. They chewed it back and forth; they never could agree. Not Flying Bobby Henry Ford, said Benjy, or any other Maitland which he knew. The Lanceys owned some good producers, and two of them were ready for the stud; but Spring just snorted loud; he prophesied their faults.
It was half an hour later when the fox holed, over in the Bachelor’s timber, and we brought the hounds in and put them in their boxes. Once more the Davis bugle came to play; that was the summons Little Lady answered to, as had her mother before her. We doused the fire and prepared to go. I thought of how we’d sat pretty close to that same spot in I93I, and explained to some stranger about how we worked this enterprise, and how our dogs enjoyed it too: a race, with no intent to kill. Indeed we cherished all our foxes.
But when at last the Davises had gone their way, and we’d gone ours, and put the dogs to bed, I knew restlessness. Pa was snoring down the hall (so was my mother, just a little bit, though continually she denied it) and I lay there and looked out through my screen. All I could see was the rim of timber and the black sky above, like a blackboard in a schoolhouse, and no stars. But a phantom pack kept tonguing, or so it seemed.
Such a sound would be retained by cotton-woods and elder brush, and by the hickory trees on higher ground, and butternuts. The staunch chop which our Royster dogs emitted, the long trailing note of mixed-up Davises, and up above the clearness of music played by Little Lady. It was something to consider: the whole wide universe was like a timbered pasture with hounds a-coming through.
But, like I’ve said, we did not know the panic approaching soon, nor the gall to follow. So eagerly I listened to an echo of the dogs throughout whatever dreams occurred.