CAMDEN DAVIS—she that was a Terry—came by our place about ten o’clock the next morning. This was August, with the corn beyond any necessity for combing it; our small grain was cut; there was some piddling work to do in our big garden patch, but I got a dose of energy and cleaned the stable out instead.
There I stood, fork in my hands, and nigh up to my knees in straw and other stuff, when Camden drove her way down the lane. I felt a mite embarrassed, dirty as I was; she always looked so clean and like a little girl, and fresh. She had the ruddy hair of Terry folks but there resemblance stopped; her face and eyes and mouth were made for quality and gentleness, like all the Camden tribe.
“Just wondered,” she cried, “whether your mother had any trading I could do for her in town?”
I hid behind a wagon, for my shirt was off. “Don’t know. You better get out and go in and ask her. You going to Wolf Center?”
She shut off the engine and stepped to the ground, slim and dainty and graceful. I envied Benjy Davis, and so might any man. She gave a giggle as she turned toward the house. “Main purpose of my errand is to get some extra chicken wire. He’s eking out that old pen on the slope, and resetting the posts.”
So that was where he would retire Little Lady to, this trip. Earlier they used to pen her at the Davises’, and that made for hullabaloo, with other hounds around.
“It’s a good place, Camden,” I agreed. “Ground slopes enough so any rain will clean the place out properly. I don’t trust these dog-runs on the bottom land. They’re germ-collectors and distemper-breeders.”
She nodded, and went to speak to Ma, who only wanted blue yarn and some arnica. We always did that, back and forth, when anyone was driving in to town: it saved a lot of fuss and gas.
Meanwhile I went on with my work, and grimly realized what pen we were discussing. It was a chicken house and chicken pen originally, although the chickens were always getting out; but Camden didn’t keep a hen, and I was just as glad. She and Benjy toted eggs from the Davises’, and fryers when they wanted them, or guinea fowl.
The day when old Spring Davis put his bullet through Camden’s father, there were some young chickens skittering around, and when Jake Terry fell he fell on one and pressed it flat. I never could abide to mess with chicks from that day forth; I reckon Benjy couldn’t either, though he never mentioned it.
It was interesting to think that a fox-hound would occupy that hillside space, for all the years of sun and rain and winter had certainly exterminated any germs. And Little Lady occupied it soon enough.
I was past their place, a few days after, and Benjy showed the structure off with pride. Little Lady stood within the mesh, and tried to signal me how glad she was to see a friend.
“You approached any decision yet?” I asked of Benjy.
He shook his head. “Tried to interest Pa in the Lancey idea again, but no good luck. That big Champ Clark of theirs is always out in front; he’ll run a fox until it walks; but Pa says that he’s got a parrot-jaw.”
A few days more, and Little Lady had a visitor.
Just where this particular suitor came from, nobody ever knew. But he was there when Camden looked out early one afternoon. He was sitting just outside the pen, looking in at Little Lady, and she lay there solemn with her nose squeezing the grass, and let him look.
Camden didn’t recognize this creature as belonging to any farm in the neighborhood, and no wonder. In our immediate neck of the woods the scales were tipped heavily in favor of foxhounds: the Davises and we Roysters and the Armstrongs owned nothing else. My young brother Del was married to a Lancey girl (so was my brother Tom) and she had always held a notion about cockers, so they bought a cocker for their kids to play with, all kisses and slobbers.
Uncle Punch Lancey possessed a collie dog not quite as old as himself, but striving to be, which used to fetch the cows all the way home from Heaven Creek whenever you asked him to—and frequently even when you didn’t.
This new character come a-calling on Little Lady had no inkling of the cocker or collie or old-Rover-Shep-native-Grandpa-Missouri-farm-dog about him. Looked as if he had started out to be a hound and then decided to be an Airedale as an afterthought. His face was spiny as an acre of brown burdock; his eyes were glass; he looked pauperish and used up—a kind of tramp and gypsy who had no moral scruples so far as other people’s chickens were concerned. Or other people’s ladies, big or Little.
Camden went out and said Shoo, get away. She said Scat, and made as if to pick up a rock and heave it at him; so obligingly he got out of the way, but not as if he believed it was a real rock she was throwing. It would take more than the hurling of imaginary stones to discourage this tattered hoodlum, and Camden reckoned that most folks would have started thinking in traditional terms of shotguns and rock salt.
The sun shone pleasantly all along the ridge, and it found tossled corn in a field stretching over toward the Davis place. Though nobody was there to see, except the penned-up gyp and the vagabond laying suit to her, the sun must have discovered Camden’s hair and made a willow-red of it. I know: I’ve seen it that way many’s the time, and have seen the look on Benjy Davis’s face when he watched her.
“You go away,” ordered the young woman in her little-girl voice, and she pretended to find another imaginary bullet to let fly at him. So the hairy-faced coot trotted off another few yards, and then he turned and observed, and sat down calmly on his haunches. He sat with fuzzy face directed square at Little Lady; he gave Camden Davis no more heed, though she played at throwing further stones, and actually did sling a handful of gravel which went wide of the mark.
Then down she strolled, all the way to the pen, and petted Little Lady through the fence, calling her baby names as women will; I reckon Little Lady liked that part well enough. But now and again the hound would twist her neck away from Camden’s hands. Ears and deep wide eyes and famous muzzle and all, she would turn to gaze at that stickery old wretch a-squatting in the sun.
It was as if she knew that in him dwelt a power more compelling than the happiest endearments of her mistress. It was the same strength which gave the corn blades their gleam, and made the earth smoke as it put its force upward into the tall tough stalks.
“You wouldn’t have anything to do with some rapscallion like that, would you, honey?” said Camden. And then, building an answer which was certainly unfair to Little Lady’s fervent inclinations: “No, of course you wouldn’t. You’re fine and special. You’re by Proctor Pride out of Bugle Ann. You’re the one like her,” and so she proceeded, as she confessed afterward, uttering scornful things about that shaggy heathen, and fabricating more denials than even the most confirmed old maid among fox-hounds would have desired to speak.
No neighbors stopped by during the afternoon, and Benjy himself did not appear until it was time for the evening chores. One of the Pettigrews had lain sick for a month, so everybody was over there, pitching in on the threshing.
Camden heard the sound of Benjy’s car; she ran out to kiss him, ready to help with milking and feed, and bragging about the guinea hen she was fixing to give him for supper.
“How’s Little Lady?” he wanted to know, first off.
Camden couldn’t help but giggle, though it did seem cruel. “She’s not happy in that chicken pen.”
“Happy or not, there she stays,” said Benjy Davis. “If we don’t make up our minds about breeding her this trip, it’s just her hard luck.”
Camden told him about the gentleman caller, if such an elegant term could be used, and Benjy started off toward the chicken-run with speed.
“Oh, Benjy. He won’t hurt her. That wire’s tough enough; he can’t get to her.”
Benjy glowered over his shoulder. “Naturally he wouldn’t hurt her. But I don’t want him hanging around. I mistrust all the hounds in this county holding a convention here. Which one is he? You didn’t say.”
“Course I didn’t, hon. I don’t know. He’s bushy in the face. Looks something like Whiskey Wilson, down in front of the pool hall at Wolf Center.”
Benjy said with decision, “If folks can’t keep their dogs to home, brushy-faced or not, they’re going to get a good switching,” and he broke off a whip from the lilacs. He went striding away through long shadows, peeling leaves free as he went. Well enough he knew how strong the chicken wire was, for he had tested it. But he didn’t like to have stray or nameless critters breathing the same air which Little Lady breathed.
That mutt-skinned hound never lingered to be switched. He hiked away, showing more speed than Benjy could have guessed. He ran clean across the run which puddled the slope below the barnyard, and then in usual fashion he sat down and stared with his glass eyes.
Benjy threw a few rocks; all came close, none struck. He hoped that would be proper warning, and hastened up to his chores so Camden wouldn’t feel obliged to undertake the heavy work. Benjy figured that womenfolks had enough to do in their houses, and it galled him to imagine Camden handling a pitchfork; his own mother had had to do that often enough when he and his father got overly engaged with the dogs. He was ashamed of certain things in the past, and swore he’d never make those selfish errors his father had made, however much he worshipped Springfield Davis.
So did we all.
When Camden and Benjy came back together, to feed Little Lady and change her water, and baby her awhile, there was that same hairy savage just outside the wire, fairly begging for rudest punishment. Again the running feet and yells and stones being flung; one must have hit the wretch this time, for he gave a yip, and Camden pressed her hand against her mouth.
She cried, “Oh, Benjy!”
“Plague that buzzard.”
“But you oughtn’t to really hurt him.”
“I’ve got to hurt him to make him stay clear of her. Suppose he managed to sneak under that wire when our backs were turned? My pa would never forgive us; I swear he’d never speak a word to us again. If—” He shook his head and said no more.
Then later they went in moonlight to take Little Lady for a walk, and she frisked at the end of a piece of clothesline which Camden held wrapped around her own wrist. Benjy was taking no chances; he kept his switch handy. Every so often he’d say, “Wait,” or “Hold on a minute,” and all three of them would stop and stand, looking out across those hills which seemed to have melted and spooned together in the mist.
Surely they had a Presence following on. He danced well out of range of Benjy’s switch or any stones which could be slung, and mostly out of their combined sight too. Far up the creek some of us were out with our dogs—myself and my father, Cal Royster, and maybe a Lancey or two, on that same night. The hounds were driving a fox south of the Bachelor’s timber, and it was hell to tell the boss.
Once Little Lady swung her muzzle high, and seemed about to give fair voice in answer. But good custom ruled: she was no babbler, nor came from any cheap line. Therefore she lowered her nose again and uttered a kind of sigh, and that was all. She’d never give voice to a fox which other hounds were working; it had to be her own quarry if she was to tongue it.
“Jackie Cooper,” said Benjy. “Reckon that’s him out ahead. I think higher of that dog than when he was younger. His voice is only an Armstrong voice—no real sense or value to it—but he’s always in front. If her blood could fur-nish the bugle voice—”
“You said—” Camden cut in, sharp above the night rustle of frogs and peepers. “I heard you tell your father, plain and straight, that you’d never mingle Armstrong blood with hers.”
Benjy said, “There’s Top Soak.” (That was one of mine at the time; sold him later to a man from Oklahoma, and he seeded out some of the best pups in that section.) “He don’t know quit or miss. He’s a powerful driver, and never runs the road. If I made the right kind of deal with Bake Royster—but maybe Bake would want the pick of the litter—”
I wouldn’t have demanded it, but he never asked me.
“I heard Springfield Davis declare,” cried Camden in wonder, “that he’d considered every Royster dog in his mind. He was reluctant, but he said he didn’t want to try any of them, for one reason or another. He was dead set in his soul, the way old people get.”
For all this discussion about dogs of the region, and their breeding chances if associated with Little Lady, the fox-hound herself gave no heed. Times she’d lift her ears slightly, and gaze into creeping shadows where the mist lay like flat white rivers above each low place. She knew that that unkempt stranger with the broomstubble face was lurking nigh; her nose told her. If dogs do make up their minds I guess hers was made up before this, and she must have concluded she would bide her time.
The young Davises came at last from the walk, and they were yawning, and scarcely raising eyes any more to the cream and beauty all around. But a far-rooted desire of mating time was magic in that season; so peculiar it was, to feel that the hardiness of whirling stars and planets was represented in the yearnings of one persistent old stray, and in the quiet willingness which Little Lady awarded him.
Both Camden and Benjy were thinking, sleepily and separately, about other violences which had ruled the land they were treading. Here they were, returned to their dooryard which once had been Jacob Terry’s dooryard. Here (their feet pressed the very spot) was where Spring Davis had stood when he lifted his 30-30 and shot Camden’s own father to the death.
Off past the barn and pens rose a smudge of forest where Terry had set his wire fencing which inaugurated all the strain and misery. And far over in higher secrecy beyond the fog still existed a few scraps of the Bachelor’s cabin. There Bugle Ann had gone leaping to her final doom amid wire, and Benjy Davis himself had caressed her collar and gathered her little bones.
They heard the distant racing of neighbor dogs; they closeted Little Lady securely, and went to their rest—sleeping close, I would guess, as people do when they’re in love. But still that spiny reprobate clung, to speak in silence his eagerness toward the creature whom he courted—to lie near, persuading and promising and tempting her—as if she needed promise or the barest temptation. For he had a well-set vigor about him; its beginning lay way yonder in the choke of katydids. He was lingering to hand again when the sun came fresh.