Twelve men from the piney-woods met at Zeke Lantry's place and walked down the scrub road to the Moody homestead. Lant walked in front with Abner and Zeke. Red and Black trailed him. Cleve dropped back to talk with Lem Posey. The lean faces of the men were taciturn under broad-brimmed black slouch hats. They were unarmed, their hands hanging open at their sides. Only the stillness of the faces was ominous. They went through the Alabaman's gate and into his yard. Debris lay about where he had begun to enlarge the old Moody house.
The new owner walked out and Abner said courteously, "My name's Lantry, and these here men is my friends and kin-folks."
The stranger said, "What you want? I'm busy."
Abner asked, "Is it you done fenced in consid'able scrub?"
"I've fenced in the land I've paid for."
Abner pulled his lip.
"Don't matter what you've paid for, Mister. All of us has homestidded or paid for our land, and we never had nary cattle fence amongst us. We fences our yards and the fields we're croppin' and sich as that. But now stock has always been free to come and go in these parts, both sides o' the river. Your stock is welcome to go acrost my land and the land of all these here men. But, Mister, we aim for our stock to go acrost yours."
"You're wasting your time if that's what you're here about."
"That's what we're here about."
"Well, you just go on about your business."
Abner's thick neck swelled and turned crimson.
"Mister, we're here peaceable, but if you aim to act that-a-way, you'll jest natchelly find your fences cut."
The Alabaman was a bully. He made sure they had no guns before he reached for his own, standing on his porch.
"You damn Crackers get going," he said. "You keep off my land and keep your stock off."
Abner asked quietly, "You want trouble?"
"Yes, I want trouble, if that's all you know."
He shot deliberately over their heads. Three or four ducked instinctively and Red and Black turned tail and ran out of the yard. He shot again, this time to one side. Abner moved swiftly, so that the stranger did not see what he was doing. From the carpenter tools scattered about, incident to the building, he picked up a ten-penny nail and a hammer. He turned his back on the rifle and walked to the gate. The others half-turned to follow. A massive live-oak stood by the gate-post. The hoary Spanish moss, festooned almost to the ground, stirred as Abner moved to it. With a few sharp blows he drove the nail an inch or so into the tree. The men crowded after him, their eyes on the Alabaman, who came too, but warily, afraid of being rushed. Abner pointed to the spike.
"Mister," he said, "when that ten-penny nail is done drove in that oak-tree plumb to the head—you be gone from here."
He closed one eye leisurely, squinting out of the other.
"I mean, long gone," he said.
They moved off down the road. The Alabaman gaped after them. They went silently as far as Zeke's place, then sat down to talk. There was little to say.
Syl Jacklin asked, "How long you studyin' to give him to git?"
"'Bout a week."
"You want somebody should slip up and drive the spike 'bout a half inch or inch a day, eh?"
"That's right."
"You want we should all take turns?"
Abner's eye fell on Lant and Cleve. He looked, calculating, from one to the other. Cleve stooped and began to pick sand-spurs from the hems of his pincheck trousers. Lant grinned at Abner and the man grinned back at him.
Abner said, "How 'bout it, Lant?"
Lant said, "You-all best leave me do it. I'm right here. I ain't workin' until trappin' begins, jest messin' around, huntin' deer and sich, sellin' the saddles when I kin."
Syl Jacklin asked, "What you gittin' for 'em?"
"Dime or so a pound. Wisht I'd been huntin' when them passenger boats was on the river. They quit runnin' 'bout the time I commenced huntin' reg'lar. Them scapers paid forty cents a pound."
Syl said, "That were good money."
Lant said, "I make sufficient now. Ma don't complain."
There was a silence.
Zeke said uneasily, "Don't seem right, lettin' a young feller take the risk."
Syl said, "That's right. That bastard'll cut down on ary thing he see move."
Lant spat contemptuously.
"He cain't hit me. I kin move faster amongst them pines than he kin watch me."
Abner nodded.
"They's no special risk. Leave the boy do it."
They agreed.
Zeke said, "But now if they's much shootin', somebody else got to git into it."
They nodded and began to break up to go home. Lant started down the road with Cleve. He turned to Abner, moving towards the river.
"Uncle Ab!"
"What you want?"
"What you fixin' to do time I git the spike drove in and the feller ain't gone?"
Abner laughed, shaking his ponderous chest.
"How come you askin' sich triflin' questions?"
He said softly, watching the grave young face, "Fixin' to git jest a leetle rougher, son."
Lant brightened. He would have felt foolish slipping up to drive in a spike that meant nothing.
The Alabaman ignored the ten-penny nail for a day or two; or was not aware that it had sunk deeper. It was undisturbed the first two times Lant slipped up to the gate, just after dusk, and gave it a measured blow. The third time when he came, it had been pulled out. He had considered this possibility, for he would have done the same. He replaced it with another that he carried for the purpose. On the fourth night he made out the figure of the man sitting beside the gate. The glimmering of the late twilight struck the gun barrel in the watcher's hands. Lant squatted noiselessly on his haunches to wait. He could outwait a squirrel hiding in a palmetto; a snake in a hole; a catamount in a tree; he was in no hurry now.
Until midnight there was no sound except a vague restlessness from the stranger. He shifted his position occasionally. He was sitting on a chair or box. Once it scraped against the wooden gate. Now and then he coughed softly or cleared his throat. Lant could not see him move, but at last he heard him stir; heard the even crunch that was the sound of a man's feet walking on sand. He let the sound no more than fade, to run to the tree, for if the man was smart, this was a ruse, and he would return in an instant. The nail was there. He struck it lightly, his hammer-head muffled this time with the shirt he had taken off to wrap around it. He ran on soundless bare feet down the road. It was like fishing for a bass that struck and got away. It was good sport to keep after him.
At breakfast he said to Piety and Cleve, "This ruckus is mighty good fun. I b'lieve I'm obliged to drive that nail a mite slower."
Cleve said, "I'll spell you off, Lant."
"You shore won't. You lost your chancet when you didn't speak up to Uncle Ab."
The next two nights the Alabaman kept vigil all night long directly under the live-oak. He was in position when the boy arrived; so still that Lant checked himself only in time from walking up on him. He had to stop in his tracks, much closer than he cared to be in case an accident gave him away. He made up his mind that if ants stung him, or a small animal startled him, or a snake crossed his feet, he would not stir.
The Alabaman sat almost as quiet. There was a time towards morning when Lant was afraid that he would not know if the man dropped to sleep. But as the first grey light appeared in the east, he heard a heavy sighing under the live-oak that must, he thought, be slumber. That too might be a trick. He waited. In a little while there came an unmistakable snore. Lant crept in, struck the spike over the sleeper's head and was gone without awakening him.
The next night he did not fare so well. The watcher must have been on the alert most of the day, expecting this time a daylight visit, but he was at his post at dark. Lant was able to choose a safer position from a distance. He did not dare come in so close again. He had seen tracks over a wide radius where the man had hunted him. This time the Alabaman, exhausted, fell asleep a little earlier. Keyed to a high pitch, his sleep was light and restless, for when Lant, hearing him snore, moved in and sunk the nail to its head, some sound registered.
There was the frenzied "Eh, eh, eh!" of a man startled from a nightmare slumber, and the figure started up under the boy's withdrawn arm. Lant was off like a deer, but he was seen. A rifle bullet whined over him, snipping off a small limb. The man was shooting high, but Lant ran madly to get out of range. He slowed down only when he was opposite Zeke's clearing. The night was black, and hearing the hoot-owls cry, and rabbits stirring in the hammock, he knew the south moon was under him.
The direct encounter unnerved the Alabaman; or he was already at the end of his tether. The next day he packed his household goods in his wagon and drove across on the ferry at the Springs, his face drawn and ugly. He was not seen again, and Lant took down the fencing and wound it into rolls. Abner gave him a yearling and told him to keep the fencing. The big red man laughed deeply.
"Them Alabamy fellers is got no chitlin's," he said. He waggled a portentous finger at the youth. "Now you see, son, how nice it be to settle things peaceable and civilised."