An hour before sunrise the girl Piety was awakened by the throaty cries of hoot-owls. The great night-birds had seldom sounded in the piney-woods. The bare pines were not to their liking. They preyed on small creatures that fed in the richness of marsh and hammock. Their cry was stirring, like a thick sob. It rose in a rhythmic crescendo of four major notes, subsiding in agony in a minor key.
It had a pattern and a tune. It was, strangely, a dance step. A bass fiddle was playing a schottische. Piety had seen a man and woman from Virginia dance the schottische. Slowly; one-two-three-four. And then a quick running step; one-two-three!
She slipped from the bed and dressed fumblingly in the darkness. She laid a fire in the main room, blowing the embers to life under fresh fat-wood splinters. The boys breathed heavily in their bed. The coffee pot was empty of liquid and she added new coffee and water from the kettle to the stale grounds. In the bedroom behind her she could hear her mother creaking from the bed. Lantry's deep voice sounded in a question.
The girl hurried from the cabin. Voices would soon populate the rooms. The sun would fill the earth with the sounds of birds and creatures. Men would come shortly after sunrise to help Lantry raise his fences. Women would bring food and gossip; children would run across the clearing. There was a need for hurry. For a few moments she could listen to the hoot-owls, vibrant in the grey daylight.
As the slow light felt its way towards the house, she saw the scrub recede, as though darkness were going out like a tide. It was the hammock that was black now. The scrub unrolled towards the east in mist-filled valleys. The thin young pines and palmettos were no taller than she. She could look far across them to the horizon, pink and purple like the petunias they had brought with them to plant. She was startled—where she looked, the scrub was moving. The motion was almost imperceptible, yet the pines before her had changed their position. Against the east appeared a set of antlers; another. The smooth unhorned heads of does lifted in the mist. Piety ran across the clearing into the house. She cried out to the Lantrys.
"I seed deer! A hull mess o' deer! 'Most as many as cattle!"
They stared at her, absorbed with the day's beginning. Abner guffawed.
"A body'd figger you r'aly seed somethin'," he said. "Deer's plentiful."
Lantry stretched his long legs, lacing his boots by the morning fire.
"Hit's one thing to know," he said, "and 'tother thing to see. You kin know deer's plentiful all your life-time, but it ain't like seein' 'em clustered-like, the way Py-tee jest done."
She looked at him with bright eyes, breathing quickly. She had heavy lids, like a turtle's. They moved up and down over the direct hazel-coloured eyes. Her hair was hazel-brown. It still hung in the night's plaitings. Slowly, looking into the fire, she unbraided it. Mrs. Lantry was frying hot cakes on a long oval griddle propped on bricks over the flames. The smell of lard and batter and coffee was sweet in the room. Piety forgot the deer.
The fire on the hearth was golden in the sunlight that came in through the front windows. The room was quick with the vibrancy of change. The night's sleep had made the place familiar. The Lantrys had slept in their own beds in this house and it became overnight their home. The woman and her children accepted the cabin, as squirrels accept a nest in new feeding grounds. Only Lantry paced up and down the room before he went about his chores, his chin sunk in his beard.
The boys fed the chickens in their coop; the mule and cow at their stakes. The feed was a coarse corn fodder. The animals were fed from troughs hand-hewn from cypress. Lantry milked the cow. He leaned his face against her warm flank, his long fingers rippling over the teats. She was a heifer with her first calf, and skittish. He spoke to her now and then, his voice deep in his beard.
Piety and Martha tidied the cabin, hanging garments on nails behind the doors. They swept the floors with a new broom-sage sweep. The old palmetto broom had been left behind, for it was unlucky to move it. Mrs. Lantry busied herself with the day's dinner. She had protested the day of the fence-raising as coming too soon after the move. She had had no time to bake and stew. Lantry was anxious to fence, and sent the word up and down the river, ignoring her.
He said, "Folkses 'll carry rations."
"I don't want to be scarce with the table," she said.
The Wilsons, Mrs. Lantry's kin, appeared at the river end of the clearing before Piety had the stoop swept. They had come by rowboat across the river. The hammock immediately behind the house had been cleared as far as the top of the steep river bank. The Wilsons' heads bobbed abruptly over the edge of the clearing, as though they had been in hiding all night behind the ledge. They walked splay-footed, bent a little forward, pushing against the shifting soil. The women carried baskets among them. They were dressed in neat cotton prints with large hats of woven palmetto strands. The men wore their ordinary boots and breeches or blue denim trousers.
They hailed Lantry with reserve. The tall massive man who had walked with great strides into their section some twenty years before and had married their kinswoman was still unknown to them. They did not have with him the ease of intercourse they had among themselves. The women went into the house. Piety lingered at her sweeping on the stoop. The men in the yard called, "Howdy, Miss Py-tee," and she answered, "Howdy."
Old man Wilson said, watching Lantry at a pile of cypress slats ready for the fencing, "I favors a split-rail fence myself. Good heart pine."
Lantry said, pointing, "I got split rails laid out yonder. I aim to fence the yard with slats and split-rail the rest. I like a yard fenced in so's a stranger cain't jest step over."
Wilson nodded. "That's a good idee. A man kin step over a split-rail fence."
They handled the wood, discussing grain and quality. The men meandered about the clearing, making free comment. The scrub was unknown to many of them who had seldom crossed the river. They remarked the sharpness of the line where hammock ended and scrub began. Spudd Wilson hunted here.
He said, "Hit's the river. Hammock follers the water. Here's the river and the swamp and the bank. Hit's plentiful wet. The hammock follers the wet. First foot you gits away from the river damp, and into the white sand and the sand soaks, nothin' won't make exscusin' palmeeters and that sorry pine."
Jack Wilson said, spitting, "And rattlesnakes."
They guffawed, their mouths wide.
"I mean!"
Old man Wilson said, "I don't like the scrub. This hammock piece here is fine ground, and game plentiful. But I wouldn't keer to live with the scrub shuttin' me in this-a-way." He added profoundly, "But it's ever' man to his taste. I got nothin' to say."
The sun was an hour high before other families reached the clearing from Big Saw Grass, Tobacco Patch Landing, Turner Farm, Mill Creek and Moss Bluff. They came largely by river. The Lantry landing at the foot of the bluff was boggy and the visitors arrived with wet and mucky shoes. The women and girls sat down in the yard and took off their shoes and stockings with relief. They were accustomed to going with bare feet about their own homes. It was good to stretch their broad strong toes in the clean sand. Piety placed their shoes in a row. They walked with curiosity through the cabin. Many expressed disappointment that Mrs. Lantry had nothing new in the way of chairs or tables; that the windows were bare of curtains and that there was no kitchen. She was not offended.
"'Tain't nothin' special," she agreed, "but we kin make out 'til the crops gits a-goin'."
Piety led them outside to the western wall. The two windows here had no panes, but were fitted with wooden shutters that could be swung to at night.
She told them, "Pa promises faithful when the spring crops is made, him and the boys'll put a blow-way here and another bedroom to the side and a kitchen yonder."
They approved the prospect.
"Hain't nothin' like a kivered blow-way for comfort."
"Yes," Ella Martin complained, "but the men-folks keeps 'em so littered with their contraptions, their ol' trapses and sich, they ain't no room hardly to set and shell peas."
"Well, when the guns and the trapses gits too thick, I pitches 'em off the place," Annie Wilson said.
"Yes, and Annie wouldn't be past pitchin' off the men theirselves."
They laughed together in a soft cackling. The woman Annie Wilson laughed with them with a rich sound. She was heavily built, deep-voiced and deep-breasted. Her hair grew thick and low, the shining black of gallberries. There was a dark down on her upper lip and on her large arms. She took everything comfortably, as it came. Piety darted her quick look from Annie to the others. She thought that it was easy to distinguish the women who did field work from those who did not. The women who helped their men to plough, to hoe, to cultivate, to harvest, were stripped gaunt and lean, stringy as an overworked horse. Only the women of more casual natures, like Annie Wilson, or of better circumstances, like the Fikes and Jacklin women, grew stout in middle age.
At eight o'clock late-comers came in wagons from Ft. McCoy, Orange Springs and Eureka. They had crossed the river by ferry at the Springs and by bridge at Eureka. They plodded up the sandy road that bordered the river between scrub and hammock. They found the fence-raising in full swing. The men joined the others already at work. Twenty-five or thirty men and boys swarmed about the split rails, the gates, the stakes and the posts that were to put the mark of civilisation on the clearing.
They worked leisurely, stopping short, dropping their hands to boast of strength and speed; to tell a derisive anecdote of one of them. Yet while they were in movement they worked deftly. When Mrs. Lantry was occupied, Piety slipped away to watch the men. The fencing of fields was of greater interest than house matters. The slat fence about the yard went slowest. A group of six, familiar with such a style of fencing, toiled most of the day at the smaller area. Post-holes were dug, posts driven deep, slats nailed between with square nails and at last, breast high to Lantry, a flat top was nailed on for finish. These men worked quietly. The job was exacting.
Most of the men worked at the split-rail fences around the cleared fields. The type of fence was familiar to the youngest boy and it went up rapidly. Lantry and his sons, labouring all of their spare time for two years, had wrestled twenty acres of ground clear of the jungle hammock. Now in a little while, between sun and sun, a handful of men was shutting it in.
They tussled with the grey, seasoned wood, but there was an abandon in the familiar motions. They sweat and jostled and jested and threw a fence carelessly about what had been so recently a virgin wood. The fence went in a zig-zag pattern. The eye of old Wilson, overseeing, was true. Where men piled the rail-ends at the corners, interlacing them like the fingers of two hands, there became evident an undeviating straightness.
Some of the women left the house and came to the fields to watch. Piety trailed them. Annie Wilson climbed ponderously into a wagon to look down the fence line, which wavered insolently, like a drunken man, along the pushed-back edge of hammock. The men dropped the rails to watch her, large and rich and black-headed. She put her hands on her broad hips.
"How we comin', Annie?" they bellowed.
She bellowed back at them.
"A heap neater'n I figgered you'd git it!"
They roared with laughter.
"Looks jest like feather-stitchin'," she called, "dogged if it don't."
Mo Jacklin yelled, "You come take a hand, Annie, see kin you feather-stitch with split pine!"
She eased her heavy body over the wagon wheels and rested a hand on Piety's shoulder as she jumped. She ran to the men on small agile feet. Her teeth were white in her dark face. Beads of sweat were like crystals across her forehead and her downy upper lip. She lifted an armful of rails and hurled them at the men. They warded them off or dodged them or caught them from her in the air.
"I'll feather," she panted, "and you-all kin stitch!"
Spudd Wilson protested, doubling up with laughter, "Iffen you'd please to feather with somethin' light, Ma'am—"
Old man Fikes, her uncle, broke a switch from a myrtle bush.
He said, "Annie, it's been thirty yare since I whopped you when you was a young un, and you 'bout four time the size you was then. But dogged if I ain't man enough to do hit agin. You git back to the women-folks and leave the men raise their fences."
She left them, turning a broad amiable back. Mo Jacklin called after her.
"When we're ready to stake and rider, come on back, Annie, and set on top o' the stakes and they'll be no need o' drivin' 'em."
She joined the women, puffing and chuckling. Most of them were pale and quiet. Her robustness was a rank growth, like a huge ragweed flowering in a worn-out field. The thin women dropped their eyes.
Ella Martin said querulously, "Iffen you worked hard as I do, Annie Wilson, you'd have no strength left for sich foolishness."
Annie linked her arm in Piety's and they walked together to the yard. Piety saw her mother's face sharpen. The long nose seemed to grow more pointed. Mrs. Lantry reproached her cousin.
"I'll say to your face, Annie, what I'll say behind your back. 'Tain't mannerly no-ways to go scaperin' acrost to the men-folks that-a-way."
The big woman laughed.
"I always gives them fellers as good as they sends," she said. "They perfeckly enjoys it," she added complacently.
The women called in some of the younger boys to help lay plank tables on the south side of the house. Romping children and sprawling babies were pushed aside to make room. Mrs. Lantry brought out a long white tablecloth. The others protested its use.
"No use lettin' them dirty men smutty it."
Gratified, she sent Piety to return it to her trunk in the bedroom. The guests had brought more food than twice their number could eat. Each woman flushed with satisfaction over her splint hickory basket as the others insisted she had brought too much. Mrs. Lantry was providing pork backbone and rice for the crowd. The last of the winter's butchering had been done before leaving the west side of the river. Sausage casings had been stuffed and given a first smoking. Hams and shoulders and side-meat had been put down in barrels of salt brine. The fresh backbones were simmering in the black iron wash-pot, the smell sweet and heavy on the thin March air. As the sun rose high, rice was added. Piety was told to stir the pot.
Annie Wilson said, "Leave Marthy do it. Then mought be she'd git Syl Jacklin to he'p."
Mrs. Lantry said, "I don't aim to encourage Marthy courtin'. She ain't but sixteen."
Annie said easily, "I'd buried me a man time I were seventeen. Sho, Py-tee here ain't too young—what you, honey, fifteen? Leastwise, to make a beginnin'. Twelve ain't too young jest to let the boys come a-settin' around. A gal young un o' twelve's mighty near growed."
"Well, mought be, but Marthy's my big he'p in the house. Py-tee's a purely willin' worker, but she's the biggest crazy for field work. Always a-follerin' her daddy to the field, totin' a hoe since she were so-big."
Ella Martin said, "Lantry's lucky. Them boys is big enough to take out for theirselves. 'Twon't be too long 'til they're done gone. Iffen Py-tee's a good hand in the field, I say, Lantry's lucky."
The women warmed up to their talk as the day warmed. They buzzed and clacked as they spread out the food, tasting one another's samples. Dinner was not at noon, because the men found that by working steadily they could raise the fences without dividing the day in two.
"Le's be done when we be done," old man Wilson suggested. "I aim to eat hearty when I sets down to eat, and they ain't a mite o' pleasure in eatin' good and then carryin' your pore full belly to the field agin."
Young boys carried river water to the workers. The new-split rails were spotted with the sweat of men. Hands were blistered and splintered. The lean tanned faces were grimy from a constant wiping away of moisture. There was no more jesting. The work went doggedly. The rails swung into place at the end of long arms, precisely, rapidly. There was no pause except to drink from hollow gourds or to bite off a fresh mouthful of tobacco.
The women nursed their babies, the breasts hot and pendulous. The babies slept. Children whimpered and were quieted with sips of water and squares of cake, yellow with eggs and strong with meat-drippings. At half-past three the men plodded in from the north-east corner. The clearing was girdled with good fence. The mark of order was on the Lantry lands. The men washed their hands and faces, rubbing their hair with damp towels. They went to the plank tables and seated themselves. Lantry towered over them. The sun glinted in his eyes and beard. He cleared his throat.
"Men," he said, "I cain't eat a bite without I say I'm powerful proud to have me a noble fence like this un. I'm much obliged to you all, I'm shore." He hesitated. "Ary time I kin do the same for ary man he'ped me, I'll be proud to have him call on me."
The words were a fixed form. Piety saw that they tortured him. His teeth were tight together; the muscles in his neck constricted. All he asked was that these men go away now and leave him alone. Old man Wilson, helping himself to a fried squirrel head before he sat down, answered for the others.
"That's jest all right, son Lantry. Proud to he'p, and you'll be called on, never fear."
The women served the food, hurrying around the tables with hunched shoulders, bending a little forward from years of walking in the sand. They had put on their shoes again for the occasion. There was a hesitancy in beginning, although several had filled their mouths.
Mrs. Lantry said uncomfortably, "Reckon somebody had orter give thanks—"
"I'll ask the blessin'," Mo Jacklin proffered gravely.
He rolled his eyes and nudged Spudd Wilson. He bowed his head.
"Good God, with a bounty
Look down on Marion County,
For the soil is so pore, and so awful rooty, too,
I don't know what to God the pore folks gonna do."
There was a silence, a lifting of heads. Spudd Wilson covered his mouth to stifle a gulp of mirth. Young Johnny Martin giggled and poked Piety, standing behind him with a plate of biscuits. Annie Wilson's broad shoulders shook. Most of the women were vaguely horrified, looking at one another. They sat down with the men.
"That's a powerful quare-soundin' blessin'," Ella Martin complained. "Don't know as it's safe to eat under the sign o' sich foolishness."
The men came stoutly to Mo's defense, shovelling in fried chicken, pork backbone and rice, sausage, beans, grits, corn pone and biscuit.
"Ary thanks for rations is good thanks," said old Fikes. "I figger the Lord know when a man's thankful, and He ain't a-goin' to snatch the victuals outen his gullet jest account o' he don't mention 'em ser'ous."
"I mean! When a feller ain't proud to set down to table, and plenty on it, time to git worried over what-all God's fixin' to do to him."
"Pass me the rabbit stew," Annie Wilson said. She helped herself generously. "I'm a slave to rabbit."
The women, for all their leanness, ate as much as the men. Talk increased as the eating grew slow. They were labouring at the food. The men picked and chose among the desserts; pound cake, lard cake, sweet potato pone, pies of canned blueberries and peaches, wild orange preserves, guava paste and cassava pudding.
"Must be I got a bait," Mo Jacklin said, "I be gittin' kind o' pertickler."
The men drifted away from the tables. The women scraped plates indolently. Groups of men squatted on their haunches on the shady side of the stoop, others sat on the edge with legs suspended, chatting idly. Clusters of boys threw knives at the young live-oak at the northwest corner of the house. The well-aimed blades quivered in the wood.
Ella Martin called, "You boys'll kill that tree."
Piety said quickly, "They ain't barkin' it none."
The crowd was replete. Here and there a man lay back on the sand, his hat over his eyes, and dozed. The smaller children slept inside the house, curled like kittens on the beds and on quilts on the floor. Their dirty bare feet twitched. Now and then a woman came in quietly to look at them. In the late afternoon a southerly breeze brought a sound from the road. Piety heard it first and pulled at her father's sleeve. Lantry lifted his hand.
"Be still!" he said.
Spudd Wilson winked.
"I figgered them fellers'd be moseyin' along 'bout now."
"Who is it?" Ella Martin asked. "Sounds like a wagon."
Spudd said, "Willy Saunders and Buck Hinson and them."
The crowd stirred. The men sat upright. The women fluttered like disturbed hens. Mrs. Lantry spoke indignantly.
"Them Moss Bluff rowdies!"
"Easy, daughter!" Old man Wilson lifted his eyebrows at her. "They likely bein' sociable. They got the same right as ary man to be friendly."
Lantry listened closely, his eyes fixed on the blue haze across the river, as though the approaching sound might be of men from distant hills. The creaking of wheels came closer. As the wagon emerged from the forest growth, the men riding on high seats waved wide black felt hats and called lustily.
"Hi-yuh! How's the work a-comin'?"
Lantry walked to the new gate to meet them. The others straggled after him. He hailed the wagon.
"Git down, men, and come in."
The newcomers were four: Saunders, Hinson and two strangers. They were markedly of a different breed from the men who watched them jump down from their seats. They were more heavily built and swarthier, as though a thicker blood ran through them. Not all the men knew them. Spudd Wilson greeted them in the casual tone of intimacy.
"You-all's right peert gittin' to a fence-raisin'. Fence is done raised."
"That's good news, boys." Saunders cocked his head at his companions. "We studied on the correck time to go to a fence-raisin', and we figgered 'twere when the work was done done."
He slapped his leg and roared with laughter. The rest grinned, spitting. Hinson reached in the wagon and lifted out two brown crockery demi-johns with corn-cobs for stoppers.
"We didn't want you should think hard of us, Mr. Lantry, and we carried somethin' we figgered 'd make us a sight more welcome than the work."
Lantry said nothing. Old man Wilson looked at him and moved forward.
"Men, you're mighty welcome jest-so, we had he'p and a plenty, and we're proud to see you. But now see here, iffen ever' man figgered that-a-way and carried what I reckon you-all carried, and come late with it, what I say is—where-all'd be the fence-raisin'?"
Hinson uncorked a jug.
"There shore wouldn't be none," he said, "but there'd be a mighty merry time."
The crowd laughed and edged in towards the jug. Each man drank from the narrow mouth. Lantry hesitated a moment, then tipped the jug far back and swallowed deeply. He wiped the drops from his mouth.
"That's fine, sir. That's prime corn liquor." He opened and closed his mouth, judging the after-taste. "Sprouted corn or meal?"
"'Pears to me the feller made it, mentioned meal," Hinson said demurely.
The whiskey was of his own distilling, as all knew. They snickered in appreciation.
"Come to the house, men, and set down to the table."
Lantry waved them through the gate.
"We had dinner, but we kin drink and set," they told him.
They moved to the house with the demi-johns. Spudd Wilson introduced the Moss Bluff men to the women, gathered together.
"Ladies, these here is Mr. Saunders and Mr. Hinson and their friends."
"How do."
Here and there a woman greeted them, lowering her eyes. Piety was afraid food would not be offered them.
Mrs. Lantry said stiffly, "Won't you set down and eat cold rations?"
They refused food, but invited the women to drink. They declined for the most. Those who accepted said, "A mighty leetle. Seems like hit goes to my head." Piety noticed that the older women drank with greater gusto. Grandma Jacklin said, "Yes, I'll have a good big swaller. I were raised on it, and when hit's good, hit he'ps my stummick." Annie Wilson, too, drank with pleasure.
Mrs. Lantry said, "I got good scuppernong wine I made last summer, iffen you ladies prefers it. Go fetch it, Py-tee."
The lassitude of the men vanished. The liquor, sweet and raw, burned their throats. It struck through them, hotter than the noon-day sun, drawing the sweat from them. They complained of the quality of the last whiskey sold by the Eureka storekeeper. It had no strength, no virtue. The price was high. Fifty cents a quart was unreasonable. It paid a man to make his own.
Old man Wilson said, "I always figger to git me a barrel made from cane-skimmin's in the fall."
The sun dropped below the hammock. Twilight came unnoticed. Suddenly they were aware of the darkness. Willy Saunders shouted for lights. Piety and Martha brought torches of fat-wood splinters. They held them while Lantry and the boys did the belated chores. The Moss Bluff crowd was out-drinking the others two to one. The women made ineffectual sorties at their men, hinting of home. The men ignored them.
"We ain't a-goin' home 'til we've done danced with all you ladies," Buck Hinson called.
"That's right! Make us a leetle music for a breakdown!"
Three of the men brought their instruments from the house. Old man Wilson, as crack fiddler, struck up a tune, "Sugar in the Gourd." One of the Moss Bluff strangers, a little tipsy, picked the strings of a banjo, and Mo Jacklin played the harmonica. They played lustily, somewhat out of tune. The music jangled and the men clapped their hands. The women could not resist patting their feet.
Annie Wilson said, "A feller cain't dance to 'Sugar in the Gourd' is purely ailin'."
Suddenly Lantry leaped into the light of the torches.
"Take your partners!"
He whooped and cried out a verse of the song.
"Sugar in the gourd
Goed on the ground—
Way to git it out
Is to roll the gourd around."
He was calling the set. No one knew that he was familiar with the figures of the dance. They looked at one another. Piety edged in close to watch him. She followed the big figure with shining eyes. Some of the women murmured a protest at dancing with the Moss Bluff men. Annie Wilson was kicking off her shoes. Tittering, others of the women removed theirs. They came slowly to the light and men seized them. Lantry snapped Annie Wilson towards him as easily, Piety thought, as though the woman were a sapling. There were shouts of laughter when Buck Hinson, instead of gathering in one of the pretty girls, swooped on Grandma Jacklin and swung her into the circle forming for the square-dance.
"Older they be, the more they knows!"
The old woman showed the hit-or-miss pattern of her teeth and cackled shrilly. She followed until she was out of breath.
"I got to quit," she gasped. "Listen to me hasslin'."
Then Hinson swung out a girl. Annie Wilson and Lantry were dancing furiously. He called the figures with a roar.
"Take two back!
Promenade all!
Hold that calico
From the wall!"
The pair scuffled hugely in the sand, the woman's bare feet kicking up a spray behind her. The bearded man and the big woman cast vast shadows that followed them grotesquely in the smoky light. Both were sweating. When the set was ended, Annie dropped near-by on the sand and fanned her hot face. Piety slipped to her side and sat close against her. A warm sweet steam came to her from the woman's flesh. She saw a streak of grime across Annie's wrist where Lantry had pulled her towards him.
Lantry called to his wife to dance the next set with him. She refused curtly. He blew through his beard and drank again from the demi-john.
Piety heard one man say, "Never did see Lantry that sociable," and another, "No, nor I never seed that much corn liquor into him, to make him sociable." She was pleased that her father danced and sang. Old man Wilson began to fiddle again. Lantry stood in front of Annie Wilson and Piety. He hesitated. Then he held out his hand to the girl.
"Time your daddy was learnin' you somethin' besides ploughin', honey," he said.
She followed him, dizzy with pleasure in the hold of his hot hand on her arm. When he called the set, swinging her gallantly, he howled the name of a figure that was strange to the dancers. They continued to shuffle their feet in time to the music, but did not advance, watching him with puzzled faces. He danced the figure and some of the quicker men followed his steps. Others dropped out of the set. He fell back on familiar figures. They sashayed, swung their partners.
"Swing or cheat!"
The set was ended. Lantry indicated that he was done for the evening. The tune-makers put up their instruments. The demi-john passed around. There was excited talk of the new figure. Groups knotted here and there outside the light, talking of Lantry. The Moss Bluff men nodded to one another.
"That feller's from a good ways off," they said wisely.
"Lantry," Willy Saunders said, moving close to him, "where did you l'arn that figger?"
Lantry did not look at him.
"I dis-remember. I reckon some knows it and some don't."
"Don't nobody know hit in these parts. Where-all you come from, man?"
Saunders asked the question in apparent innocence.
The man Lantry seemed to expand. The deep chest swelled, like a bull breathing before a charge. The vast shoulders lifted higher, the great arms lifting with them. The red-brown eyes smouldered like coals about to blaze. Above his beard clenched teeth bared white for an instant. Instinctively the crowd shrank away. Piety blinked at him in a sudden panic. She had never seen him so. Saunders faced him, swaying a little.
"Mought be you ain't a-sayin', Mr. Lantry."
There were murmurs. It seemed to those who knew Lantry that they had waited twenty years for this moment. Lantry would bring down his fist like an axe-head. Willy Saunders would go down like a rotten fence post. Through his tipsiness the Moss Bluff man felt their fear. He rubbed his eyes and his mouth with the back of his hand. Lantry was staring beyond him. The big man's pent breath burst out in a sigh. He dropped his arms. The deep voice rumbled.
"Where I come from, Willy, men ain't impudent nor nosey. They minds their business and leaves the other man mind his."
He turned his back. Saunders laughed nervously. Hinson spoke sullenly.
"Le's go."
The Moss Bluff men took their jugs and wavered to their wagon. They rattled off without leave-taking. Mrs. Lantry's friends spoke indignantly after their going.
"Them fightin' Jessies come jest to stir up a ruckus. Lantry had orter crawled his frame."
Old man Wilson said, "No, they come sociable. Leave 'em go that-a-way."
The women gathered up the sleeping children. They had divided the food by daylight, each one filling her basket with scraps of another's cooking. A plentiful supply was left for Mrs. Lantry. They said to her, "Hit's hard to cook, and you no more than moved." They were tired and sleepy. The men were half-blind with drowsiness. They moved silently to their wagons at the gate; through the clearing, the hammock, down the bluff to the river landing, into their rowboats. They closed Lantry's new gates after them. He had fenced his land in. One or two among them understood as well that he had fenced them out.
Lantry watched them disappear into the darkness. Their voices died away. Far down on the river there was the click of an oarlock. The man threw back his head.
"Well, you had a plenty this evenin'," Mrs. Lantry complained.
"Git into the house, woman!"
The woman and her children were as alien to him as the rest. He herded them away. Piety did not move. She watched him, her hand half over her mouth. He could never be strange to her, nor far away.
She said, "Cain't I he'p free the creeters?"
He stared at her. He moved to her, laying his arm across her thin shoulders.
He said gently, "Yes, Py-tee, we'll turn 'em loose tonight."
They went together to the animals. The chickens were asleep in their coop. They did not disturb them. They untethered the mule and cow and removed the rails from around the hogs. The creatures snorted but did not stir. The mule understood that he was free and galloped across the clearing. The hogs grunted and shifted. Lantry tried the slats here and there.
A feeling of elation swept him. He panted, like a man who has run a long way in the sun and has now flung himself down in the shade to rest. He looked over the fence into the scrub, invisible with night. There was no sound but the stir of the pines. He spoke in the blackness to his daughter.
"I think we'll git along all right and make a livin'." He hesitated. "Honey, I got a idee this place be safe."