On Christmas Day Zeke Lantry went across the river to a gathering of Jacklins and Wilsons. Kezzy came down the road to spend the holiday with Piety. Cleve had come over the day before. He and Lant had roosted a flock of wild turkeys at dark. At daylight on Christmas they had gone to the swamp. Cleve was a poor shot and missed the birds entirely. Lant brought down the old gobbler and a young hen. They brought them home for Piety and Kezzy to dress and stuff and roast and went away again for a day's deer-hunting.
The birds smoked, golden-brown, in the centre of the white tablecloth when Lant and Cleve came in at sunset. Piety brought out a blue glass bottle of her scuppernong wine. It was white and sparkling. A tumblerful apiece made them flushed and talkative. Kezzy's black eyes shone and the white skin of her cheeks was touched with a faint colour.
"Don't let me git so drunk I cain't fight for my share o' the turkey," she said.
Piety said, "There's enough nobody won't have to quarrel about it."
They ate with zest and sat talking after the meal was done. Towards dark they heard a hail at the rear gate.
Piety said, "That sounds like Zeke."
Lant called, "We're too full to come to the door. Come in."
A double set of steps sounded, somehow furtively, on the floor of the breezeway. Zeke opened the kitchen door sparingly and crowded through, drawing a tall gaunt woman behind him. He was tremulous in his excitement.
"Who's got a better Christmas present than mine?" he asked. "I goed to the frolic and I got me a wife."
The woman parted her mouth and flashed a gold tooth. The mouth snapped shut again. The four at the table stared and did not move or speak. Piety stirred at last.
"Won't you set down to the table and eat?" she asked dubiously.
The woman looked over the table.
"We've et," she said.
She brought a cold hard glance to rest on the younger woman.
"You Kezzy?"
The girl stood up.
"I'm Kezzy. Pleased to meet you."
The woman inclined her head.
"Pleased to meet you." She turned to Zeke. "Let's git goin'."
Zeke backed out of the door.
"We jest stopped to give you the news," he said. "Come see us, Py-tee. See you later, Kezzy."
They were gone.
Cleve muttered, "God A'mighty."
Kezzy stood numb and bewildered.
"You'd of thought Zeke would of told me," she said.
Lant said, "He were drunk, ain't that about it?"
She shook her head.
"He's been sort o' hintin' at it. He's a big ol' tease—I never took it serious."
Cleve began to whistle and stopped to grin.
"Looks to me like this about settles your business and mine, Miss biggety Kezzy," he said.
She smiled a little.
"We'll see."
Cleve took her home at bed-time.
Two weeks later Cleve and Kezzy together stopped at the house. They found Piety alone. Kezzy had a bulging suit-box under her arm and Cleve carried a worn handbag. Kezzy laid down the box and held the older woman close in her strong arms.
Piety said, "Don't seem like I kin hardly stand it to see you go."
Kezzy said, "I'll come see you. Zeke's the one's in trouble, Aunt Py-tee."
"I reckon so. I knowed that were a mean woman when I laid eyes on her."
The girl laughed shortly.
"She thinks Zeke's got money hid out. I seed her goin' thu my boxes, scairt I was makin' off with it. Hell won't begin to tear loose 'til she finds Zeke ain't scarcely makin' a livin'."
"Did Abner let you have that ten-acre farm out his way?"
"He were mighty nice about it. He come down on the rent to suit what Cleve had saved up. Better come go to Eureka with us, Aunt Py-tee, and see do a justice o' the peace do as good a job as a preacher."
"I got no way to git back, or I'd shore go. That Ab's team you got there, Cleve?"
"That's Uncle Ab's. How much money you think a man kin save? I was feered I'd have to cut Kezzy a weddin' ring outen a sardine can 'til I found they wa'n't as high as I figgered."
She walked down the lane with them to the gate.
"You better wait 'til Lant gits in from the swamp," she said. "He'll feel bad not to see you."
Kezzy said, "You jest tell him good-bye."
Piety waved after the wagon as far as she could see it and Kezzy waved back.
Zeke and his new wife kept to their house. Lant went to Eureka no oftener than once a month and brought back through the spring no more news of Cleve and Kezzy than that they were farming part of the ten acres and were getting along. Piety urged Lant to take her across the river to see them.
He said, "I got no time for visitin' right now."
By the middle of May she had decided to row the river herself. But in a mid-afternoon, trudging across the clearing from the swamp garden, she saw with her failing sight a figure in the breezeway, and shaded her eyes to make sure that it was Kezzy.
"You quit stealin' my peaches," she called delightedly.
She laid her soft wrinkled cheek against that of the young woman.
"I knowed somebody were comin'," she said, "for the rooster crowed in the day-time. I jest hoped it were you."
Kezzy said, "I figgered you'd be comin' along soon. I could see you'd done been gone 'most all day."
"How'd you know?"
"I could see where-all the chickens had tromped out all your tracks. It takes chickens 'bout all the day to cover the hull yard."
"You and Lant is perfect sights for keepin' up with tracks."
"I like to know who-all's come and who-all's gone."
"That's what Lant says. He'll come in and he'll say, 'Zeke come thu the hammock 'bout a hour 'fore sun and goed back about dusk-dark.' Or he'll say, 'Next time you go for fat-wood you take the gun and crack down on the Half-breed. He's been huntin' your hogs in the scrub today.' Lant's a sight that-a-way."
"Where's the scaper now?"
"He's off down the river some'eres. I cain't keep up with him. We fished the creeks this mornin' and took dinner with us. He put me out at the swamp landin' and goed back. I don't know where. I been workin' the low garden."
"I been worried to death about you-all, Aunt Py-tee. Did he go to Palatka?"
"Yes, and to Jacksonville too. There wa'n't no job to be had."
"I'm mighty sorry, Aunt Py-tee."
"Well, he ain't. I don't know as he hunted him a job too hard. He says if 'twa'n't for me, he'd rather starve in the scrub than eat light bread in sich places."
She looked intently at the girl.
"Kezzy, he acts quare. He's up to somethin'."
"Is?"
"He brought back somethin' on the river boat. It passed by at dark and Zeke heerd Lant totin' somethin'."
"Zeke's always hearin' things. Don't you pay him no mind. Lant knows what he's doin'."
Kezzy frowned. Cleve had failed to care properly for his spring crops and he would probably lose them, but she was more concerned for Lant and his mother than for herself. As long ago as November, when she had gone with him to his traps, she had seen a desperation in his eyes, as of a young bull penned up and fretted for too long a time. She sat in the breezeway and listened to the mocking-birds and stroked the grizzled head of old Red. Black had died soon after she had left the scrub, Piety told her.
They heard the front gate click. Zeke came to the breezeway. He stopped short at sight of Kezzy. His mouth quivered and his drake's-tails fluttered in his neck. She went to him and put an arm across his slight shoulders.
"I jest got a good will to quarrel with you," she said. "I didn't dast come to you, but I figgered you'd slip off and come to see me."
He looked long at her with unhappy pale eyes.
"Py-tee," he said, "ain't the sight of her jest meat and drink?"
They sat side by side on the steps and Piety rocked near them.
Kezzy asked, "Has your old lady found all that money yit?"
He shuddered. His blue eyes were watery.
"I'm gittin' my just deserts," he said. "I should of left well enough alone. You and I were mighty comf'table, Kezzy. But I got to studyin', how a woman in the house ain't a woman in the bed. But I see now, I should of left well enough alone."
He looked at her solemnly.
"You know I've always been fond of a leetle whiskey."
She nodded, smiling.
"Not enough to harm, but jest a leetle snort." He lowered his voice confidentially. "Now I have to keep me a jug hid out in the bushes. Then the Lord he'p me do she smell it."
Kezzy said, "You come to see me, and I'll try to have you a pint you kin set and enjoy decent."
He watched her wistfully.
"I feel like I done drove you out. Kin you forgive me, Kezzy?"
She laughed easily.
"I had it in my mind to marry Cleve right on," she said. "Don't you take no blame for nothin' I do, no time."
He rose to go.
"I'm jest unlucky with my women," he said.
When he had gone, Piety said, "He shore is unlucky. When he buried your Ma, Syl Jacklin said he couldn't figger what-all a rabbity leetle feller like Zeke could do to his women to wear 'em down to the grave."
Kezzy smiled.
"He's got one now, Aunt Py-tee," she said, "he shore won't be lucky enough to lose."
Lant came in for supper at sunset. Kezzy hailed him across the yard. He grinned broadly. He tossed a dead limpkin at her.
"I seed your boat," he said. "This speckled bastard were settin' on a limb. I knowed you liked 'em."
"I'll carry him home like he was a gold piece I'd won to the Fair."
"Don't do that, for God's sake. You and me both'll go to the jail-house."
"Don't you belong to shoot limpkins?"
"It's agin the law."
"Well, I want to know, what ain't agin the law!"
"That's what I say!" Piety agreed.
The youth was excited. He walked back and forth through the cabin, taking down his guns from their nails, unrolling a bearskin, whetting his knife on a soap-stone. He sat restlessly at table and picked and chose among the dishes. When he had finished, he took his banjo from the trunk but laid it down again without more than tuning it. Darkness took over the cabin and he sat rocking violently in a hickory rocker, shuffling his long legs nervously.
"Them cities is a mess, Kezzy," he told her. "I got losted in Jacksonville, dogged if I didn't. I was to the saw-mill oncet with Uncle Ab and I took my bearin's by a big ol' oak tree jest goin' into town. Then we made a turn by a yard where they was a boat upside down. Bless Katy, 'tother day, they'd done cut down the oak tree and I never did find me no rowboat in a yard."
She laughed.
"You been used to trees stayin' where you kin find 'em."
"I wouldn't live in a place where they wa'n't no landmarks. It all looked alike."
He jumped up.
"Wait 'til I fix us somethin' for some fun."
He disappeared in the kitchen. After a few minutes he came back and sat down.
"Tell her what 'tis," Piety said.
"She'll hear direckly. You-all be still."
They sat in silence for half an hour. There was a small explosion and the squeal of a mouse. Lant guffawed and Piety chuckled.
"Got him," he said.
He lit a kerosene lamp and showed Kezzy his patent mouse trap. He had rigged up a miniature cannon, loaded with lead from buckshot shells, and attached it to a small storage battery. The mouse, stepping on a platform after the bait, completed a circuit, fired the cannon and received a diminutive pellet in his breast. The mouse lay dead.
Kezzy said, laughing, "You crazy! Whatever put sich a idee in your head, makin' mice shoot theirselves!"
"The winter evenin's gits kind o' long. Hit jest gives Ma and me somethin' to set and listen to." He whispered in her ear. "I'm 'bout to git me somethin' else to listen to."
"Tell me," she whispered back.
"You be patient. I'll tell you when the time come."
Piety called, "You noticin' the moon? The buck'll soon be in the sweet pertaters. You said you'd try agin tonight."
"I'm a-noticin'. Kezzy, let's you and me go 'bout moondown and kill us the scoundrel been usin' in the 'tater field."
She hesitated.
"I ain't been feelin' too good, Lant."
"It'll do you good. You're gittin' fat."
"That's jest why. I'm startin' me a young un, if you want to know. Long as you're so nosey 'bout the way I look. Well," she conceded, "they say if you put a pointer bitch in the woods, and her carryin' pups, they make the finest bird dogs ever. Jest born with huntin' sense. Mebbe it'll work the same way with a person."
"Kezzy, if it's a litter, save me one. Ma'd love a young un to raise."
"If it's a litter," she said, "you kin have the hull bunch."
It was good to have Kezzy prowling around with him again. They set out across the yard and Piety called after them.
"I'll wait up for you. If I hears you shoot, I'll come with knives and pans."
Kezzy said, "This is agin the law too, eh?"
"You mighty right. Out o' season and fire-huntin', too. 'Tain't like it was a ways back."
"I reckon not. I ain't hunted much."
Lant said, "They was more game in the scrub when they wa'n't no laws, than they is now, with 'em."
She watched his tense lean back with an affectionate amusement. She followed close on his heels, for when she dropped behind, the focussing flashlight fastened to his head shone too far ahead, and she stepped on noisy limbs and stuck the barbs of prickly pear in her ankles. He walked quickly across the open clearing through the broom sage, past the scuppernong vine, speaking in hoarse whispers. When he reached the fence that joined the hammock he put his fingers to his lips and motioned her to caution. He slipped over the fence like an eel and turned to help her climb it without noise. The low palmettos stood flat under the arc of his flashlight. The hammock was flat. The broom sage was a golden wash. There was no roundness anywhere except the barrel of his gun, smooth as a black snake under the steady light.
His body stiffened. His jerking awkwardness disappeared. He moved now in slow-motion, one position flowing liquidly into another. He held his Winchester rifle in his left hand. He used his right arm for balance, laying it on the air ahead of him, as though he grasped an invisible support. He lifted his right foot with a dancer's grace and laid it down toe first. If a palmetto frond was dry and crackling, or a dry twig met his foot, he withdrew it as though it swung on a pivot, and laid it down on another spot.
A yellow half-moon hung low between two palms. Kezzy thought the youth in front of her was like a great red cat in the night, stalking his prey. Long nights of hunting had turned his muscles to ribbons of flexibility. He flowed through the hammock, his head swinging from side to side like a snake's. He focussed his headlight on every clump of palmettos or curtain of low-hanging Spanish moss where a deer might stand. She could not move as he did. She thought that he was very patient to let her spoil his hunt, perhaps, with her clumsiness. She understood that he was hunting tonight as any young male animal would hunt; because he was restless, and his blood itched in his veins, so that he must scratch it against the moon and the wind and the darkness.
He was taking his present direction to keep down-wind of the deer. Instead of waiting for the buck to come to the potato patch, as he had been doing, Lant meant to meet him on the deer-run where he came through the hammock from the scrub. He took a stand under a low-limbed hickory where his light swept the deer-trail on both sides. He motioned Kezzy behind him. The moon turned to orange against the ledge and only the palm tops were visible. A hoot-owl cried over them. Suddenly there was a thin shrill squealing under a near-by oak and a sneezing in the dark. Lant cursed softly and Kezzy thought the deer had come and gone.
"Hammock rabbits," he whispered to her. "Them whistlin' bastards." In a moment he whispered again. "I'm feered no deer will come tonight. A rabbit's a kind of a witch. When the rabbits is feedin' and scaperin', it ginrally means no deer is out. When the deer is feedin', no rabbits is out but mebbe a ol' buck rabbit, and him keepin' mighty quiet."
Again and again Kezzy thought she heard hoof-beats in the distance. She realised that it was her own pulse pounding in her ears. When the buck came, she did not hear him. Lant put one hand behind him and tightened it on her arm to give her warning. He turned his light on the trail between the hammock and the broom-sage field. The buck came trotting through, his head high. The light caught his attention and he stopped short for an instant. His eyes and white throat shone. It seemed to Kezzy that he had time to run to the river, away forever, before Lant shot. But the one steel-jacketed bullet was all that was needed. The buck leaped forward, kicked a moment and straightened out. Lant ran to him, then stood with his head as high as the buck's had been. He listened. The game warden, Bill Mersey, lived ten miles away across the river, but it was reasonable to listen for him.
He said to Kezzy, "Let's drag him off in the hammock. Then we kin cool out do we hear ary one comin'. Ma'll be here direckly."
Piety came, floundering in the dark without a light, by the time they had the buck in the bushes. The single shot had indicated a kill to her, and she had left the house as soon as it was apparent there would not be another. She had with her two large dishpans and two heavy knives. She fussed and fumed about the danger from the warden when Lant went fire-hunting, but she was as anxious as he to have the meat in the house and the hungry caller out of the cow-pea or potato patch. Lant skinned the buck, looking for the bullet hole. It had passed through the centre of the chest to the heart.
He said, "I'm a mind to bury the hide along with the head and sich. That nosey Bill Mersey find a hide and head and chitlin's, he'll know good and well the deer didn't jest run off and leave 'em."
Kezzy said, "Roll it up for me, Lant. I'll take it home with me in the mornin'. I been wantin' a deerskin for the side o' the bed the worst way. I ain't afeered o' Bill. I kin ask him out of ary thing."
He cut the meat into pieces and piled as much in the pans as they would hold. He guessed the deer's weight at something over a hundred pounds. The scrub deer seldom weighed over a hundred and fifty. Piety and Kezzy each took a pan and he strung a strip of palmetto through the remaining pieces and slung them over his shoulder. He covered the refuse with woods debris.
"Now you git," he said. "If you hears ary sound, you stop dead in your tracks."
He switched off his flashlight and led the women to the house in darkness. They put the meat in the smoke-house and he double-barred the door.
"Tomorrow," he said, "I'll smoke hell outen it before Bill comes moseyin' around."
He had his pants and shoes off before the women had finished talking in Piety's bedroom. They heard him strike the bed and when they passed his room to wash their faces for the night, he was asleep.
In the morning he asked Kezzy to go to the river with him.
"I'm in a slow hurry," she said. "Taint right to leave my ol' man Cleve too long."
They sat in silence while he paddled the rowboat through the swamp and down the river. She asked no questions. When he swung the boat under a clump of laurel and up a shallow creek, she looked at him.
"I reckon I know," she said.
"Wa'n't nothin' else to do, Kezzy."
"No, 'twa'n't," she agreed slowly, "and stay in the scrub."
"You remember the place?" he asked. "Taylor's Dread?"
"I don't know who'd remember better. Lest it's Zeke hisself. Do Zeke know?"
He nodded.
"Zeke told me jest what to start off with."
She smiled.
"The cute ol' scaper—never lettin' on to Aunt Py-tee—"
He landed in muck, a half-mile of tortuous travelling from the river. He led her in to the swampy heart of the island to the site of Zeke's old still. The freight he had brought with him from Jacksonville was two large squares of sheet copper. He had four barrels made from old staves and salvaged hoops. He had begun the cooker, utilizing Zeke's old bricks and rocks for the furnace. The girl listened quietly as he explained what further was to be done. She walked about examining the assembled materials.
"You got money to git you started?" she asked.
"I got no cash money left. I figgered the storekeeper to Eureka'd trust me for meal and sugar to git goin'."
"He's trustin' half a dozen on my side the river for the same thing. He's been mighty good to trust ever'body. You got plans for sellin it?"
"Not special. They was hunters here all winter askin' where could they git whiskey. I figgered they'd come ask agin."
"Lant," she said, "how old you, boy? 'Bout twenty? You sure you know what-all you're doin'? I'd mighty hate to see you git into trouble. What'd your Ma do for a livin', and you in the jail-house?"
"What'll she do for a livin' if I don't git to makin' one? I don't aim to see the inside o' the jail-house. Nobody cain't slip up on me here. They's a risk, I know that. I'm jest natchelly countin' on nary snooper gittin' in to this lay-out."
"It's mighty well hid-out," she agreed. "Couldn't nobody but you find the way in here."
"Dogged if I know why I ain't thought of it before," he said. "I've always knowed they was a livin' makin' corn liquor. You've heerd Zeke say he shouldn't never of quit. He jest got skeert. I someways never thought about it before."
"You got it to think about now, son," she said drily.
They walked back to the boat. The channel reassured her as Lant poled out to the river again. There were a dozen blind leads and only one true entrance. Time and again the water was so shallow, or ran over so obstinate an obstruction, that any one would have turned back, refusing to believe there was an opening and an end.
"You're jest a wild enough scaper," she said, "to where it'll suit you perfect. It'd jest suit you, givin' a mess o' strangers the slip."
His enthusiasm mounted as she found fewer objections.
"I'm fixin' to make it clean and nice, Kezzy," he assured her earnestly, "plenty fitten to sell to ary man."
"Well," she said at last, "'tain't like it was somethin' wrong. 'Shinin's an honest trade. A man buys his meal and sugar and he pays for 'em and he takes 'em and makes somethin' other folks wants."