Stories of Erskine Caldwell Page 16

  “Mal’ll catch him under a tree some of these days,” Sanderson, who was the head teamster, said. “Let Mal have him.”

  Mal sat back on his haunches and said nothing.

  Scott had enough sense to go into his shack every night after supper and not show himself until daylight. He could have been finished in five minutes in the dark, and he knew it.

  But at the end of six weeks Scott was in as good condition as he had ever been. He watched himself pretty closely in the woods and he did not show himself after dark.

  In the meantime two of the men got it into their heads that they were going out of the woods, Scott or no Scott. They said nothing about it and got ready to slip out alone. Scott was in his shack washing up for dinner when they ran down to the river and pushed off in a canoe.

  Scott missed them a few minutes later when everybody sat down at the table to eat. Calling Mal and another man, they ran down to the river. The two men who had set their heads on going out of the woods were half a mile downsteam paddling like mad. They were standing up in the canoe on the lookout for submerged logs and rocks. Their arms and paddles waved like a windmill in a cyclone.

  “Get a canoe, Mal, and pick out a good man to help you and bring those God-damn Canucks back to me,” Scott ordered, swearing and stamping around on the riverbank.

  Mal motioned to one of the men nearest him and they shoved off without a word. Mal was the biggest and strongest man in camp. The other man was to help with the canoe.

  The river lay in a straight course downstream for two miles or more. It was used for running logs to the spool mill in the spring and summer. In winter it was frozen over to a depth of three or four feet and the logging teams drove over it going and coming to the woods. Scott sent a man to camp for his field glasses.

  Mal and the other woodsman struck out down the river after the two runaway men. In both canoes the men worked frantically with their oars. Mal’s canoe shot through the water at a terrific rate of speed. There was no doubt that he would overtake the other canoe within the next mile. He and the man in the stern squatted on their knees so they would be nearer the water. Their canoe shot down the river, leaving a foaming white wake spreading out to the shores behind.

  The man came running back from camp with the field glasses for Scott. “I’ll break those God-damn Canucks of wanting to run away from the job,” Scott shouted, snatching the glasses from the man’s hand.

  The two canoes looked only a dozen lengths apart now. The leading canoe was about a mile and a quarter downstream. Mal’s canoe closed up on it with every powerful stroke of his blade. Scott thrust the glasses to his eyes and held them there. The woodsmen crowded down to the edge of the water straining their eyes to see Mal overtake the men. It would be a sight worth seeing. What he would probably do would be to hold their heads under the water until they were nearly drowned before hauling them into his canoe and bringing them back to Scott. Scott had already planned enough work to take all the fight out of them.

  Mal’s canoe closed up on the one that had had the first start. The men in the canoe were still paddling with all their might, but Mal was stroking faster and faster.

  The next instant the two canoes were prow-and-prow, only an oar’s length apart. And then, before anybody could see what had happened, Mal had passed them and the first canoe was a whole length behind.

  “The God-damn son of a bloody —” Scott swore, smashing the field glasses against the rocks. He was so mad he was almost speechless, Mal had double-crossed him. He shouted at the men and kicked savagely at the broken field glasses on the shore. “The God-damn son of a bloody —” he shouted from the depths of his powerful lungs.

  Both canoes were completely out of sight now. One canoe was actually half a mile ahead of the other.

  Scott ordered the men back to the woods. After they had gone he walked slowly up the hillside to the camp. Mal Anderson had put one over on him.

  Mal got home early the next afternoon and opened the door of his shack. His dog was sleeping under the shack and woke up when he sniffed Mal’s scent inside. Mal made a fire and cooked something for the dog and himself to eat.

  After they had finished eating Mal got his banjo and pushed his automobile out of the shed and down the street as far as the Penobscot Hotel. Signe was sitting on the front porch rocking in her chair. When she saw Mal coming down the street with his automobile, she leaned back in her chair and rocked faster and faster.

  Mal pushed the car down the street and stopped it in front of Signe’s hotel. He opened the door and he and the dog got into the back seat and sat down. Mal slammed shut the door and picked up his banjo. Then he began playing a tune for Signe.

  The dog curled up and went to sleep. Mal strummed away on the banjo.

  Plunkety plunk . . . plunkety plunk . . . plunkety plink!

  Signe rocked back and forth, smiling out into the street at Mal sitting in his car and glad he was back in town again.

  Mal settled down and propped his feet on the back of the driver’s seat. Signe brought a bone for the dog and Mal opened the door. The dog jumped out after the bone and hopped in again and began licking it. Mal slammed shut the automobile door and took up his banjo again.

  Plunkety plunk . . . plunkety plunk . . . plunkety plink!

  The tune floated to the porch of the Penobscot Hotel and up the street and down it.

  (First published in Hound and Horn)

  The Negro in the Well

  JULE ROBINSON WAS lying in bed snoring when his foxhounds struck a live trail a mile away and their baying woke him up with a start. He jumped to the floor, jerked on his shoes, and ran out into the front yard. It was about an hour before dawn.

  Holding his hat to the side of his head like a swollen hand, he listened to the trailing on the ridge above the house. With his hat to deflect the sound into his ear, he could hear the dogs treading in the dry underbrush as plainly as his own breathing. It had taken him only a few seconds to determine that the hounds were not cold-trailing, and he put his hat back on his head and stooped over to lace his shoes.

  “Papa,” a frightened voice said, “please don’t go off again now — wait till daybreak, anyway.”

  Jule turned around and saw the dim outline of his two girls. They were huddled together in the window of their bedroom. Jessie and Clara were old enough to take care of themselves, he thought, but that did not stop them from getting in his way when he wanted to go fox hunting.

  “Go on back to bed and sleep, Jessie — you and Clara,” he said gruffly. “Those hounds are just up on the ridge. They can’t take me much out of hollering distance before sunup.”

  “We’re scared, Papa,” Clara said.

  “Scared of what?” Jule asked impatiently. “There ain’t a thing for two big girls like you and Jessie to be scared of. What’s there to be scared of in this big country, anyway?”

  The hounds stopped trailing for a moment, and Jule straightened up to listen in the silence. All at once they began again, and he bent down to finish tying his shoes.

  Off in the distance he could hear several other packs of trailing hounds, and by looking closely at the horizon he could see the twinkle of campfires where bands of fox hunters had stopped to warm their hands and feet.

  “Are you going, anyway, Papa?” Clara asked.

  “I’m going, anyway,” he answered.

  The two girls ran back to bed and pulled the covers over their heads. There was no way to argue with Jule Robinson when he had set his head on following his foxhounds.

  The craze must have started anew sometime during the holidays, because by the end of the first week in January it looked and sounded as if everybody in Georgia were trading foxhounds by day and bellowing “Whoo-way-oh!” by night. From the time the sun went down until the next morning when it came up, the woods, fields, pastures, and swamps were crawling with beggar-liced men and yelping hound-dogs. Nobody would have thought of riding horseback after the hounds in a country where there was a barbwire
fence every few hundred yards.

  Automobiles roared and rattled over the rough country roads all night long. The fox hunters had to travel fast in order to keep up with the pack.

  It was not safe for any living thing with four legs to be out after sundown, because the hounds had the hunting fever too, and packs of those rangy half-starved dogs were running down and devouring calves, hogs, and even yellow-furred bobcats. It had got so during the past two weeks that the chickens knew enough to take to their roosts an hour ahead of time, because those packs of gaunt hunt-hungry hounds could not wait for sunset any more.

  Jule finished lacing his shoes and went around the house. The path to the ridge began in the back yard and weaved up the hillside like a cow-path through a thicket. Jule passed the well and stopped to feel in his pockets to see if he had enough smoking tobacco to last him until he got back.

  While he was standing there he heard behind him a sound like water gurgling through the neck of a demijohn. Jule listened again. The sound came even more plainly while he listened. There was no creek anywhere within hearing distance, and the nearest water was in the well. He went to the edge and listened again. The well did not have a stand or a windlass; it was merely a twenty-foot hole in the ground with boards laid over the top to keep pigs and chickens from falling into it.

  “O Lord, help me now!” a voice said.

  Jule got down on his hands and knees and looked at the well cover in the darkness. He felt of the boards with his hands. Three of them had been moved, and there was a black oblong hole that was large enough to drop a calf through.

  “Who’s that?” Jule said, stretching out his neck and cocking his ear.

  “O Lord, help me now,” the voice said again, weaker than before.

  The gurgling sound began again, and Jule knew then that it was the water in the well.

  “Who’s down there muddying up my well?” Jule said.

  There was no sound then. Even the gurgling stopped.

  Jule felt on the ground for a pebble and dropped it into the well. He counted until he could hear the kerplunk when it struck the water.

  “Doggone your hide, whoever you are down there!” Jule said. “Who’s down there?”

  Nobody answered.

  Jule felt in the dark for the water bucket, but he could not find it. Instead, his fingers found a larger pebble, a stone almost as big around as his fist, and he dropped it into the well.

  The big rock struck something else before it finally went into the water.

  “O Lord, I’m going down and can’t help myself,” the voice down there said. “O Lord, a big hand is trying to shove me under.”

  The hounds trailing on the ridge swung around to the east and started back again. The fox they were after was trying to back-trail them, but Jule’s hounds were hard to fool. They had got to be almost as smart as a fox.

  Jule straightened up and listened to the running.

  “Whoo-way-oh!” he called after the dogs.

  That sent them on yelping even louder than before.

  “Is that you up there, Mr. Jule?” the voice asked.

  Jule bent over the well again, keeping one ear on the dogs on the ridge. He did not want to lose track of them when they were on a live trail like that.

  “This is me,” Jule said. “Who’s that?”

  “This is only Bokus Bradley, Mr. Jule,” the voice said.

  “What you doing down in my well, muddying it up like that, Bokus?”

  “It was something like this, Mr. Jule,” Bokus said. “I was coming down the ridge a while ago, trying to keep up with my hounds, and I stumbled over your well cover. I reckon I must have missed the path, somehow or other. Your well cover wouldn’t hold me up, or something, and the first thing I knew, here I was. I’ve been here ever since I fell in. I reckon I’ve been down here most of the night. I hope you ain’t mad at me, Mr. Jule. I just naturally couldn’t help it at all.”

  “You’ve muddied up my well water,” Jule said. “I ain’t so doggone pleased about that.”

  “I reckon I have, some,” Bokus said, “but I just naturally couldn’t help it none at all.”

  “Where’d your dogs go to, Bokus?” Jule asked.

  “I don’t know, Mr. Jule. I haven’t heard a sound out of them since I fell in here. They was headed for the creek when I was coming down the ridge behind them. Can you hear them anywhere now, Mr. Jule?”

  Several packs of hounds could be heard. Jule’s on the ridge was trailing east, and a pack was trailing down the creek toward town. Over toward the hills several more packs were running, but they were so far away it was not easy to tell to whom they belonged.

  “Sounds to me like I hear your dogs down the creek, headed for the swamp,” Jule said.

  “Whoo-way-oh!” Bokus called.

  The sound from the well struck Jule like a blast out of a megaphone.

  “Your dogs can’t hear you from ’way down there, Bokus,” he said.

  “I know they can’t, Mr. Jule, and that’s why I sure enough want to get out of here. My poor dogs don’t know which way I want them to trail when they can’t hear me talk to them. Whoo-way-oh!” Bokus shouted. “O Lord, help me now!”

  Jule’s dogs sounded as if they were closing in on a fox, and Jule jumped to his feet.

  “Whoo-way-oh!” he shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Whoo-way-oh!”

  “Is you still up there, Mr. Jule?” Bokus asked. “Please, Mr. Jule, don’t go away and leave me down here in this cold well. I’ll do anything for you if you’ll just only get me out of here. I’ve been standing neck-deep in this cold water near about all night long.”

  Jule threw some of the boards over the well.

  “What you doing up there, Mr. Jule?”

  Jule took off his hat and held the brim like a fan to the side of his head. He could hear the panting of the dogs while they ran.

  “How many foxhounds have you got, Bokus?” Jule asked.

  “I got me eight,” Bokus said. “They’re mighty fine fox trailers, too, Mr. Jule. But I’d like to get me out of this here well before doing much more talking with you.”

  “You could get along somehow with less than that, couldn’t you, Bokus?”

  “If I had to, I’d have to,” Bokus said, “but I sure enough would hate to have fewer than my eight dogs, though. Eight is just naturally the right-sized pack for me, Mr. Jule.”

  “How are you figuring on getting out of there?” Jule said.

  “I just naturally figured on you helping me out, Mr. Jule,” he said. “Leastaways, that’s about the only way I know of getting out of this here well. I tried climbing, but the dirt just naturally crumbles away every time I dig my toes into the sides.”

  “You’ve got that well so muddied up it won’t be fit to drink out of for a week or more,” Jule said.

  “I’ll do what I can to clean it out for you, Mr. Jule, if I ever get up on top of the solid ground again. Can you hear those hounds of mine trailing now, Mr. Jule?”

  “They’re still down the creek. I reckon I could lower the water bucket, and I could pull a little, and you could climb a little, and maybe you’d get out that way.”

  “That just naturally would suit me fine, Mr. Jule,” Bokus said eagerly. “Here I is. When is you going to lower that water bucket?”

  Jule stood up and listened to his dogs trailing on the ridge. From the way they sounded, it would not be long before they treed the fox they were after.

  “It’s only about an hour till daybreak,” Jule said. “I’d better go on up the ridge and see how my hounds are making out. I can’t do much here at the well till the sun comes up.”

  “Don’t go away and leave me now, Mr. Jule,” Bokus begged. “Mr. Jule, please, sir, just lower that water bucket down here and help me get out. I just naturally got to get out of here, Mr. Jule. My dogs will get all balled up without me following them. Whoo-way-oh! Whoo-way-oh!”

  The pack of fox-trailing hounds was coming up from the creek,
headed toward the house. Jule took off his hat and held it beside his ear. He listened to them panting and yelping.

  “If I had two more hounds, I’d be mighty pleased,” Jule said, shouting loud enough for Bokus to hear. “Just two is all I need right now.”

  “You wouldn’t be wanting two of mine, would you, Mr. Jule?” Bokus asked.

  “It’s a good time to make a trade,” Jule said. “It’s a mighty good time, being as how you are down in the well and want to get out.”

  “Two, did you say?”

  “Two is what I said.”

  There was silence in the well for a long time. For nearly five minutes Jule listened to the packs of dogs all around him, some on the ridge, some down the creek, and some in the far-off fields. The barking of the hounds was a sweeter sound to him than anything else in the world. He would lose a night’s sleep any time just to stay up and hear a pack of foxhounds live-trailing.

  “Whoo-way-oh!” he called.

  “Mr. Jule!” Bokus shouted up from the bottom of the well.

  Jule went to the edge and leaned over to hear what the Negro had to say. “How about that there trade now, Bokus?”

  “Mr. Jule, I just naturally couldn’t swap off two of my hounds, I just sure enough couldn’t.”

  “Why not?” Jule said.

  “Because I’d have only just six dogs left, Mr. Jule, and I couldn’t do much fox hunting with just that many.” Jule straightened up and kicked the boards over the top of the well.

  “You won’t be following even so few as one hound for a while,” he said, “because I’m going to leave you down in the bottom where you stand now. It’s another hour, almost, till daybreak, and I can’t be wasting that time staying here talking to you. Maybe when I get back you’ll be in a mind to do some trading, Bokus.” Jule kicked the boards on top of the well.

  “O Lord, help me now!” Bokus said. “But, O Lord, don’t make me swap off no two hounds for the help I’m asking for.”

  Jule stumbled over the water bucket when he turned and started across the yard toward the path up the ridge. Up there he could hear his dogs running again, and when he took off his hat and held it to the side of his head he could hear Polly pant, and Senator snort, and Mary Jane whine, and Sunshine yelp, and the rest of them barking at the head of the trail. He put on his hat, pulled it down hard all around, and hurried up the path to follow them on the ridge. The fox would not be able to hold out much longer.