IN BEST OFFICIAL MANNER the judges were assembled on the platform, and they read their tickets out, but you could scarcely hear the words of Benjy when it came his turn.
First in Hunting, Eight. First in Speed and Driving, Seventeen. First in Endurance, Seventeen. First in Voice, Seventeen.
Though the conclusion was foregone before they reached him, and after that too. Points had mounted sky-high for Seventeen, and the noise which people made might have flabbergasted wiser hounds than Little Bristles. He lay and heaved his sides, and let the children finger at his fuzzy coat.
The jug came forth, and Uncle Punch he made the presentation; but guns had started up before he rambled on his speech. You’d hear a volley and a bang, and then the dogs would lift their voices, and the kids would yelp in glee or terror; then more guns, and women holding hands across their ears. I felt my eyes grow wet, remembering the day when first I stood up, old enough to fire blanks there at the Butternut.
Cap Hurley’s silver band shone bright. Camden stood quiet-eyed and beautiful when Uncle Punch took his crusty fist and wrapped her fingers round the handle in a ceremony of award. And, “Take a drink,” the menfolks yelled. “Camden, you got to take a drink. You’ve won the Butternut!” but still she stood and squeezed her eyes shut, and made as if to run away.
“I can’t,” she cried. “I couldn’t take a drink of that pure stuff. And—the jug’s so heavy I can’t even lift it. Uncle Punch,” she said, “—and all. My husband’s in the crowd somewhere. I’ll ask him to come up and take the drink for me.”
So folks pushed Benjy through the rows, and more than one man took a hard swat at his backside for his waywardness.
Then all who wanted to drink in ceremony, toasting the hound and owner who had won, they formed in line. I stood my turn and had my drink; my father Cal Royster was before me, taking longer swallows than the rest, and I could never gainsay him upon this day.
I looked out for the Davises, but they had gone by now; and Little Bristles he was carried off as well. Old Spring and Mrs. Davis—Benjy and Camden had toted them away, clean over to the Delbert Royster place; and that was related to what my brother informed me on that morning.
Camden had halted there and left her baby with LaVonne. The child was waiting in a pen out on the porch, and long LaVonne described the scene that dusky evening and beamed to tell each memory of it.
There they came, the Davises, a-driving in at last. The child stood sober, holding up against the playpen bars, and laughing only when he saw his mother and felt her hands on him again.
“Not all blood quarrels with other blood, you see,” said Camden, still with a tiny edge of hurt inside her voice.
Benjy said, “Camden, I’ll try to make it up to you. What do we call him?”
“Spring.”
Then they stood silent, Benjy holding up that child with bright black eyes so like his own, and watching as his Pa traversed the yard.
Old Spring came slowly; he was edging ninety in this year. His wife moved there, assisting him; and she was only fifty-nine, but she was crying. Her face was like a little lantern while she sought a first glimpse of that grandchild which such willfulness had held away from her.
It was delight to recognize the way that hound voice bred itself into the years a-coming. For, when the last firm-spoken old Confederate—who was Springfield Davis—had gone his way among the cedar trees, the voices of the kin of Bugle Ann would still go echoing. Wisdom of the Davis kin would breed and manage them.
And Spring could rise through long imagining, and sally forth as in the flesh. Doubtless we would hear his bugle-note among the crickets and the berry vines, compelling hounds to come, and loving them forever. So did we all.