Abner Lantry and the Poseys and Luke Saunders came together across Lant's clearing at sunrise. Fog veiled the scrub, as though a grey misted sea washed through the stockade of the pines. The sun filtered through as they approached the cabin, so that bars of sunlight alternated with the shadowy bars that were the tree trunks.
Abner said, "I mind me comin' here to live when I were a young un. The scrub front o' the place were low and rollin', jest thick scrubby bush and palmettos. Hit's growed now to a perfeck wall."
"Like all the rest o' the scrub," Luke said.
"Like all excusin' the Big Burn. Give the rough five yare more thouten no farr, the hull scrub'll be thick-growed like that there."
"Hit's a mighty good place to be," Jim Posey said. "Pertickler right now, with sons o' bitches thick as they be, our side the river."
"A man that knowed the scrub," Abner said irrelevantly, "and somebody takened out arter him, he could jest cool out acrost it and nobody never ketch up with him."
They fell silent. Each man gnawed on the thought buried in him, as on a bone. Abner rapped on the floor of the breezeway and called "Hi!" There was no answer.
"You reckon they ain't up yit?"
"They up long 'fore crack o' day."
Piety's voice came weakly from the bedroom.
"Come in, unless it's strangers."
They stepped on the breezeway and sat down. Abner went into the room.
"You sick in the bed, Sis?"
"I'm right smart porely," she agreed. "I got the fever and I cain't eat. Ary mouthful gorges me. My spells is comin' frequent. I were dead most all yistiddy evenin'."
"I'm mighty sorry. Where-all's Lant?"
"He left for Jacksonville 'bout four o'clock this mornin'."
"I knowed he were goin'. I didn't know what for."
"Come clost and I'll tell you."
"Hit's jest the Poseys and Luke with me."
"You cain't tell who-all's fitten to hear things," she whispered hoarsely, "since Cleve done what he done."
He lifted the edge of the mosquito bar that enveloped the bed and sat beside her. She was grey-white and wasted. Her thin hair spread about her small face on the pillow, as though a child lay ill and prematurely old.
"Hit's been two weeks," she told him, "since Cleve takened the Prohis to the outfit, and Lant's jest now got his last whiskey sold. He figgered he'd best git him a new outfit goin' whilst he had the money to pay for it. He kin git the copper sheetin' to Jacksonville for half the price. Him and Zeke goed together. They're fixin' to come back thu St. Augustine and stop to the rep-tyle farm and see kin they mebbe sell some 'gator hides and snake skins."
"He ain't afeered the outfit'll git tore up agin?"
"Hit'll be tore up if the pimp finds it," she prophesied earnestly.
"What time he studyin' on gittin' back?"
"He said to cook noon dinner, if I kin git outen the bed."
"We'll set here and wait on 'em. You go back to sleep."
"I cain't sleep for the fleas," she complained, "and them a-runnin' and a-hoppin'."
"That ol' cat o' yourn sleepin' by the bed here on the deerskin, is what brings 'em in."
"That's what Lant say, but when he's gone, the cat's my only comp'ny. I figger hit's squirrel fleas. We been eatin' squirrel and Lant's keerless with the hides. I been dustin' insect powder 'round my shoulders."
"Insect powder won't kill 'em. Take a flea, all you kin do is git with him."
"Mebbe hit won't kill 'em, but it'll addle 'em to where they won't run nor hop."
The four men sat immobile in the breezeway. Towards noon Piety left the bed and dressed tremblingly. She started a fire in the kitchen-range, put sweet potatoes in the oven and filled the kettle. She felt in the flour-barrel for a quart bottle of raw white whiskey and poured herself three or four tablespoonfuls, which she drank with sugar and water. The bottle had raised letters that read, "Casper's Whiskey, Made By Honest North Carolina People." It had belonged to Lantry. She took it to the breezeway.
"If Lant was here, he'd say offer you the bottle," she said.
Abner and the Poseys drank from the tilted mouth.
Luke Saunders said, "I wouldn't keer for it." He added in apology, "Jest a leetle seem to make me drunk. I don't hold with gittin' drunk."
Abner said, "Nor me. When a man gits drunk, I don't want nothin' to do with him. But it's his business," he added.
Jim said, "I'm proud you got no objections, for many's the time I couldn't tell night from day. And some kind of enjoyed it."
Piety sat down with them.
"The on'y time I wants it, is when I first gits on my feet. Hit steadies me, like."
The talk turned to the one matter they mulled over in their minds. The old woman was the first to speak.
"Well," she asked querulously, "is Cleve still sayin' he weren't the one done it?"
"He's jest now quit lyin' about it," Abner said. "I faced him down yistiddy. He heerd Lant and Zeke was goin' to Jacksonville. You know what he figgered? He figgered Lant were goin' to the Prohis' office and git to look at their books, and see were Cleve's name there. I seed Cleve to the store yistiddy. I usually take up some time with him, but lately I ain't been speakin' to him, like ever'body else. I took the notion, jest to see what he'd say. Howdy, Cleve, I says, I hear tell Lane's fixin' to go to Jacksonville." He spat across the breezeway.
"What'd he say?" Piety leaned towards him.
"He said nary word. He jest turned as white as a log o' Cotton."
"Well, I do know."
"Hit give me the idee. Cleve, I says, you're found out. No use lyin' no longer. Kezzy told it on you and you tried to make out like she were crazy. You was low-down enough to do it and you wa'n't man enough to own up to it. Now you're found out."
"What'd he say?"
"He said, 'What I done was lawful, and what the boys was doin' was on-lawful.' And Py-tee, when he said it, he were tremblin' like a bonnet-patch where the bream is feedin'."
"I do know. Do ary one know if he got the money from the Prohis?"
"Don't nobody know. They jest lately changed the rule, is what folks say, and the gov'mint ain't payin' for no more spies. Did Cleve git the money 'fore they changed the rule, I cain't say. He owes most that much to the store. He charged his rations as long as he was daresome to do so. He wouldn't dast show no money at the store, no-ways."
They sat in silence.
Luke Saunders said, "Sometimes Cleve look so piteeful. Then you think of what he done and you forgit to pity him."
Jim Posey asked, "Mis' Jacklin, what make Cleve like that?"
"I cain't figger. His ma were all right and Sylvester were all right. They wa'n't nothin' quare to neither of 'em."
"Well," he said profoundly, "hit's an awfu' way to be."
"Kezzy and the young uns is what worries me," she said.
"That were a pain," Jim said. "The way she were tryin' to make out. She were diggin' sweet pertaters to eat, and sellin' a few, to git somethin' to eat with 'em."
"I feels bad about cuttin' Cleve," Jim said. "I figgered shore he had a gun. I feels bad about firin' him, as things has come out. But hit weren't r'aly cold-out firin'. I jest said to him, Cleve, you ain't doin' the work I'm payin' you to do. Now you git, but ary day you take a notion to do a piece o' rale work, that day you come back. He never come. He jest goed to stealin' my whiskey and sellin' it at Lynne."
"If he'd told they was on starvation," Luke said, "ary one would of holped him."
"Starvation don't excuse him," Abner said. "His belly never pinched him. He ate hot dinner to my house nigh ever' day. Kezzy and them young uns was the ones went hongry. And Kezzy were the one jest wouldn't have it, when he goed to turn you fellers up."
Jim said, "Kezzy tells, the mornin' Cleve took the Prohis on the river, a rattlesnake struck at her three times thu the fence. She knowed right then what were happenin'."
"Who's a-feedin' Kezzy now?" Piety asked.
"Ever' one. Her and the young uns gits asked out twicet a day. We all sees to that. Nary man's fool enough to buy stuff for Cleve to tote off, but Kezzy and the young uns is welcome to what they kin carry away in their own bellies."
Piety put grits on the stove to cook and scalded white bacon to fry. She mixed biscuits and shaped them ready to bake. Lant and Zeke came a little after noon, carrying a sheet of copper between them. Abner pretended that he could not make out Lant's companion.
"Who that with you, Lant? Hit's Cleve, ain't it? Why, no, hit's ol' Zeke. I figgered shore you'd have your buddy Cleve along."
They slapped their thighs and laughed to hear Lant curse.
Jim Posey said, "Time you sees that pimp along with me, hit'll be his dead body."
Piety called shrilly from the kitchen door.
"Now you men quit a-talkin' that-a-way. Cleve'll be punished. Nobody don't need to go a-killin' of him. God will reward him for what he done."
Jim Posey said, "A man cain't starve to death waitin' for God to take a hand."
Abner said gravely, "That's what it comes down to. Long as Cleve's about, won't nobody have no peace nor make a livin' peaceable. He's done been talkin' 'bout goin' in with the Streeters to make trouble agin about the cattle. Tell what he know about the whippin', and sich as that. He says he'll turn up stills fast as he kin find 'em, and ary man shootin' deer and turkey out of season, he'll turn him up too."
"How long he been talkin' wild that-a-way?" Lant asked.
"Since yistiddy, when I got him to say he were the one done what were done. He broke out and said all them things."
Luke said, "If I was high sheriff, I'd have me a cellar dug under the court-house for jest sich fellers. I wouldn't see fit to put 'em in with men had done ordinary wrong."
Zeke offered mildly, "Lant and me jest come from a place'd 'bout suit him. We goed thu the ol' fort at St. Augustine. I mean, they got a dungeon there is some kind of a good place for Cleve. If you could git him in there now and roll a stone agin the door and leave him set there and think over what he done."
"He'd die," Lant said.
Jim said, "Well—" and they laughed.
Lant said, "That dungeon's a hell of a place. I felt faintified, thinkin' of all them people had died there. If I was to be shut up in there, I'd dig 'til I died."
"You'd die," Zeke assured him, "never fear it."
"Well, I'd have the satisfaction o' diggin'."
"You know," Zeke went on, "people must of purely dreaded that place in them days. You'd of thought they'd of kept out of devilment."
"Some of 'em hadn't done nothin'," Lant reminded him. "Like the Injun Osceola, where they showed he tried to git out and couldn't make it."
Zeke nodded. "He grieved hisself to death."
Lant said, "He jest couldn't make out without his freedom."
Piety called the men to dinner. They washed at the basin in the kitchen window and sat down in a comfortable hunger. They talked about the Indians and their dug-out canoes. They had all seen the canoe raised from the St. John's river.
Luke said, "I'll bet a bunch o' them fellers layin' on their oars could send them things along."
They agreed that white men had treated the Indians shabbily.
"Of course," Abner said judicially, "they was savage-like in a way o' speakin'."
They ate heartily and returned to the breezeway while Piety washed the dishes. They had not yet said the thing they came to say. At last Abner shuffled his feet.
"What I want to know is, who's goin' to put Cleve where he won't interfere with nobody?"
Piety shrilled from the kitchen.
"You men quit a-talkin' 'bout killin'. If it was me, now, I'd jest have his credit stopped at the store. You'd bring him to time mighty quick. I'd jest say at the store, 'Hit's his trade or ours.'"
"Nobody ain't talkin' 'bout killin', Py-tee," Abner called. "But you think up a better idee than stoppin' credit, for that's been stopped a good whiles."
"We could write him a letter," Martin Posey suggested, "and git somebody to mail it off a ways."
"What'd the letter say?"
"Oh, tellin' him to be gone by Friday-week—" he waved his hand vaguely.
"And git the gov'mint nosin' around agin," Jim grunted. "The least I got to do with ary letter, the better it suit me."
"That's your house and land where they been livin', ain't it, Ab? Tell you, we'll give you two dollars for the house—jest so we kin say it's bought legal—and move the house right from offen him."
"He'd on'y set farr to hit."
"I'd like to burn his winter wood-pile," Lant said, "jest to see how he like havin' things tore up and burnt."
"Tell you, Lant," Martin offered, "le's four-five of us line up along the river-bank and hide in the bushes and all shoot buckshot under his boat. Jest riddle the boat, like, and if so it happened to sink, and him have to swim to the land, he might study 'fore he turned up the next feller."
"I wouldn't dast shoot at that rowboat," Abner said, "for I couldn't guarantee I wouldn't aim a leetle mite high."
They laughed lazily and stretched their legs.
"I reckon we're a sorry bunch," he said in the long easy silence. "In Clay County, Cleve'd never of got home."
Jim said apologetically, "We ain't never been bothered before, Ab. We ain't used to these here pimps."
Abner rose and hitched the straps of his overalls.
"We best to git goin'. Shore were a fine dinner, Py-tee. I hopes you feels some better."
She came to the breezeway to send them off.
"I hopes Cleve don't find your new outfit, Lant," Abner continued. "And I shore would venture to say, if he jest natchelly don't never come home agin, nobody won't never find hisself in no trouble about it. Ain't I right, Jim?"
"You mighty right."
They walked through the garden at the rear.
Piety said to Lant, "Them fellers is as good as tellin' you to kill Cleve and they'll be still about it. Ab had orter be ashamed."
Lant frowned.
"Ab don't want Cleve messin' up with the Streeters and startin' up the cattle trouble agin," he said. "I be dogged if I'll do it," he burst out. "I got no idee o' killin' Cleve. He better not mess up around me no more, but if he'll mind his business and leave me mind mine, I got nary call to harm him."
The garden gate clicked.
"Hey, Uncle Ab," he called loudly. "What you mean about Cleve not comin' home agin? Where-all's he at?"
Abner raised his voice, but it was bland.
"Don't nobody know, Lant. Must o' skeert him to hear 'bout you goin' to Jacksonville. His tracks stops 'tother side o' the river, 'bout opposite Zeke's place. Folks figgers he made for the scrub. Don't nobody know is he goin' for somebody—or from somebody. He's hid out."