It was the middle of the afternoon before Genny came. Sayward made them out first on the path, Louie ahead and Genny humble on behind as a woman should. Sayward had been getting her dander up against Louie, but now she was so glad to see Genny she didn’t hold it against him any more. She watched her lovingly as she came over where the married women sat.
Genny gave her oldest sister shy greetings with her eyes.
“You got here ahead a me,” was all she said and sat on the log beside her and let herself be stared at by two little girls going by who stopped stock still like she was some white flower of the woods to look at.
“You missed a good dinner, Ginny,” Mrs. Covenhoven said.
“I ain’t a hungry,” Genny murmured. “The days go so fast out’ar, Louie and me plumb forgot what day it was till noontime.”
Oh, Genny would never complain it was Louie who wouldn’t fetch her in, either here or to Sayward’s cabin. No, when Wyitt went by out there with the cows she would always call after him to tell Sayward they’d be in one of these here days. And never would she come. Sayward would go out, but if Louie wasn’t home, as happened mostly, he claimed she came to carry tales behind his back. Once when Wyitt stopped off after such a time, Genny tried to hide black and blue marks under her shortgown.
What all Louie had against her, Sayward wasn’t certain. But it was plenty. He couldn’t abide her, that she knew. And it didn’t help any that he had to keep his woman’s sister and family in meat. He wouldn’t fetch it in the cabin any more but hung it on a dogberry back where none could see him when he came. They’d find it when one would go behind the cabin to see. Bad as she needed the meat sometimes, Sayward felt like taking it out and throwing it back in his face. But that would make it all the harder for Genny.
The sisters didn’t talk much today. It felt good just to sit side by each. After a fitting time, Sayward told her the news from Worth. Genny didn’t say anything. Her eyes were watching them clean off rotten logs for a dance ground. Her cowhide shoes tapped to the fast time of Old Man Steffy’s fife and Billy Harbison’s fiddle.
Jake Tench came up and asked Sayward to jig one off with him.
“Give the rest a chancet, Jake,” she said.
What she wanted was some body to ask Genny. Heavens to Betsy, it was nothing out of the way for a man to jig or shuffle out in front of everybody with some other man’s woman. That gaunt woman from Kentucky gave her babe to one of her young ones to hold and swung off with old Jude MacWhirter till her shortgown blew out like hogshead hoops and her black eyes glowed deep in her hollow sockets. Truth to tell, it had plenty who would like to ask Genny but they held back on account of Louie. Louie could fly up and get ugly over no reason at all. The bound boy stood around with his eyes bleeding on Genny and yet, even with Jake to back him, he didn’t want bad feelings with Louie Scurrah.
Louie didn’t take Genny out either. The only one he reeled with was Achsa.
“You don’t many times see folks so brother-and-sister-like,” Idy Tull had to go and say sweet as sap that has stood too long and started to work.
Nobody said anything to that, for they hadn’t need to. Achsa hopped around with her sister’s man as gaudy as a poppinjay in her blue shortgown. So that, Sayward thought, was why she had plagued for a kettle of burr oak dye. Sayward had told her red would look better on a dark-complected body like her. But Achsa had said, if Genny could wear blue, she could, too, so she could. Yes, any color would do for Achsa so long as it was blue, like Genny was married in.
After while, when Sayward looked around, her eyes couldn’t light on Achsa or Louie, either one. Wherever they went, they stayed a long time. Achsa came back to the grove first from one side of the bush and Louie some time after from the other. Oh, Sayward’s face kept tolerable calm but the set of her cheek bones warned Idy Tull she better make no more cracks now.
The day was at its short end when the frolic broke up. Those that had a long ways to go lit shellbark or candlewood at the coal pit so they wouldn’t have to make fire for light on the way home. Genny caught sight of Louie waiting. He wouldn’t come up where Sayward was but stood off by himself with a touchy face.
Genny slipped down off her log.
“Well, I expect me and Louie’ll have to skedaddle for home.” Her eyes met Sayward’s for a moment.
“When are you a comin’ in?” Sayward asked for something pleasant to say.
“Oh, Louie’ll fetch me in some time I got the time. Why don’t you come out? It’s moughty nice out’ar. I sure like my cabin.”
Achsa stood by hard as blacksmith nails, not saying anything. Wyitt had his shocked head down gravely. His eyes peered up like he was staring away out through the dark woods where his married sister had to go.
“Look fur me out’ar tomorry — if the cows come thataway!”
Genny flashed back a radiant face.
“Goodby to you!” she called.
Sayward said no word to Achsa on the way home. When they got to the cabin the fire was out. Down under the ashes and all. The hearth felt stone cold.
“I won’t make a fire till mornin’,” she told them shortly. “You kin go to bed in the dark.”
To herself she said she would like to take Achsa out and beat some sense in her. But that would do little good all around. No, it would only dare Achsa and double-dare Louie. Some you could talk to. Achsa would close up her face like a squaw. Even Worth couldn’t get anything out of her then. Worth could be glad he was out in the French Settlements, not knowing anything about this.
Come to think on it, she guessed she wouldn’t write him a letter after all. Let him go on thinking Genny was still single and things were all right in here. They didn’t need anything, did they? No, they could make out. When she lay down in her lone bed she recollected her dream. Yes, that was all over with. She would have no excuse for striking up acquaintance with Portius Wheeler now. Well, it just went to show. She never had much for this telling fortunes anyhow.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE EVER HUNTER
WYITT wished he had him a brother. He had one once, with the fairest hair they ever saw, but it never drew breath. Sayward slapped its little naked backside till her young hand stung, but this babe wouldn’t squall or suck in any of the world of air just waiting around for living things to breathe on it.
That brother would come in handy now. He could tramp along through the woods listening for cowbells or help devil Tull’s hogs when they ran across them wild as bear rooting up mast on the hills or anise root in the bottoms. He’d be company going out before daylight to the snares and fish baskets. At night on the loft they could lay on their backs together and make out what far parts they’d run off to. A brother stuck closer than a cockle burr. If some wild beast or human picked on one, he’d have to fight them both.
But the only brothers he had living now wore shortgowns. When his sisters were little he didn’t know it had much difference betwixt a boy and girl except to look at. Achsa and Genny could race him, wrestle him, fight him any day. But once they got around twelve or thirteen, something came over them. They had to run the haw comb through their hair or wash their feet or oil up their feathers like gabby birds. They didn’t even look at you the same any more. No, they knew they were girls now and you were a boy, and that’s all there was to it.
He daren’t as much as scratch his head at the table any more. A wild buck could rub his head against a tree whenever he had a mind to, but the minute Wyitt lifted a hand to his, he saw Sayward and Achsa watching him.
“He’s a growin’ hisself horns agin,” Achsa jeered.
“Come over here by the fire and let me look at you,” Sayward said.
“It’s only the bed leaves,” he flared up at her. “That fine dust itches my scalp.”
“I’ll tell you if its bed leaves,” Sayward promised him.
But Wyitt wouldn’t trust her. He moved himself handy to the door. Only when she paid him no more attention did he go back to his bench
at the table. He’d wait till Sayward and Achsa went to their beds. They must be mighty tired, for they had worked all day cleaning out brush with the grubbing hoe in the Covenhoven corn patches. It was lucky the Covenhovens had no more heavy tools as these or they might have asked him. He wouldn’t like to be caught working at such foolishness. Fast as you grubbed them out one place, the sprouts came up some place else. They wouldn’t grow much any more this fall but early next spring they’d be up again all over the cleared land thicker than hair on a dog. If Worth was home, he’d bust his sides laughing at these settlers chopping down trees, burning them up, shovel-ploughing around the stumps and fighting the roots from spring to fall just to raise wheat and corn. All the wheat they got was sick wheat. The black ground was too rich. And the sick wheat made you vomit.
The only good part of it was the wages. Now they had Indian meal again. He could hug his belly tonight filled with hot mush and maple sweetening. He’d go to bed himself if he had a brother. It was lonesome for just one up in that loft. He had slept betwixt Achsa and Sulie too long. Sometimes he got awake in the night with the feeling that Sulie was still there. Not till he reached out his hand in the dark and found her bed empty would he give in that she had never come back with the cows.
He would stay down by the fire a while tonight. My, but he was gappy. He would lay his head on the table only for a minute. In a shake he thought that Jary was back. She looked a little like Mrs. Covenhoven but her hair and ways were Jary’s. She was bent over tucking pine splints between the fire logs for light. Now she came puttering over and pulled his hair apart to peer down short-sighted at what she could find. She pulled so hard that it hurt.
He woke up and found pine splints burning between the fire logs and Sayward jerking the haw comb through his tangled hair.
“Look at ’em a tumblin’ out!” she called angrily. The back of the comb dabbed fast here and there on the table, making fine cracks like the splitting of tiny hazel shells.
Wyitt was mad as a hawk to get found out.
“You let my hair alone!” he bawled although the quiet, righteous way Sayward turned her back on him for the clapboard shelves struck fear in his soul.
“I seed all I want to,” she told him. “Now some body got to burn your bed leaves and lay out your bed clothes so the wild things kin eat off the varment.”
She lifted down a gut of bear’s lard and dished some out in a cracked gourd with a small paddle.
“What’s that fur?” he demanded, bristling.
“Before you go to bed tonight,” she said shortly, “you kin lard up your head.”
Wyitt stared at the cold, greasy stuff. Always had he liked lean meat, never the fat. One lip stuck out over the other. She couldn’t play off such a mean trick on him! Never would he slop that fat on his fine stand of hair till it lay down flat and bedraggled as a wolf sneaking out of the river.
When Sayward went out, he climbed up to the loft.
“He’s abed without lardin’ hisself!” Achsa sang out the door.
“You’re a liar and don’t know a bee from a bull’s foot,” Wyitt told her angrily, climbing down. His bed clothing was trailing on his arm. “If you want to tattle, I’ll give you something to tattle about. If my hair and bed clothes don’t suit, you kin tell Saird I’ll sleep outside till they do.”
Although the night was fresh, he dragged off to sleep on the ground under the leaning elm where he could shin up quick in the dark if there was reason. It felt like a frost till morning. More than once he wished himself back in his loft with his bare feet on the warm chimney. But he told himself oxen couldn’t drag him back now.
Before daylight came right, he was up with the axe, making himself a half-faced cabin like hunters put up in the woods. Oh, he would build himself a house to fetch their eyes out! High enough in front it would be to sit up in and at the back down snug to an old beech log.
Achsa came out to watch a while and devil him with fool questions. But Sayward walked by only when her business took her. She gave it no more than a short glance. You could trust Sayward to keep her mouth shut except when he came in for his meals. And then all she said was to leave his fur cap off the pegs where her and Achsa’s clothing hung. He could hang it on a bush outside. Every day he could see his cracked gourd of bear’s lard waiting. Sayward would not give in about that, no not if the stars fell and the world came to its end.
The front of his half-faced cabin was done from the first, for that side was left open to the weather. His side logs weren’t very big. He could lift them up and notch them in himself. The cracks between he stuffed with moss. The roof poles he laid thick with bark to run the rain and snow water back over the beech log. In one of the side logs he set two pins. He could lay a clapboard on these if ever he had need of a shelf. A third pin he whittled out and set in its augur hole for a fine hat rack. He could tell you right now that never in his own house would his cap have to hang outside. Fresh green leaves he stripped and carried in till the place was snug with creature comforts as a wild thing’s den. Now he could sit at home and scratch his head all he pleased, and no one around to hinder.
He wondered that he had not done this before. Lying here of an evening with his own roof overhead, with the beech log snug behind him and the light from his own fire shining in warm and red from in front, he could feel the woods like he never could shut up in the dark cubbyhole of the loft. Even at night something in him knew the woods and the woods knew him. Away out yonder where the forest was deep and wild, where it hadn’t a path a white man had made, he could hear it calling to him.
“Come away!” it sounded like. “Come on away!”
It wasn’t the loons and it wasn’t the river. It wasn’t the wind and it wasn’t the hill hooters coasting silent as a sled of gray feathers over the soft moonlit tips of the forest. No, the trees stood quiet as if they heard something, too. Now they would listen. And now they would talk softly together like a flock of turkeys talk when settling down for the night, feather to feather and wattles to wattles, up in some wild roost.
From the time the first poplar leaf turned yellow back in the dog days, he could hear that horn although it was mighty faint then. It came a little plainer when the wind blew cool down the river. Away up on the far side of the English Lakes where that wind hailed from, it must be cold already for he could smell fall on the air. Soon it wouldn’t need a wind to fetch fall from somewhere else, for fall would be here.
Now snakes were traveling across the path. The spotted rattler and coppersnake were the first to hole up and the last to come out in the spring. The water in the river was getting mighty chilly. You needn’t wash yourself all over any more till next May. Ringtail coons ran heavy with fat. Wild pigeons feasted on the acorn trees. Fox grapes turned blue along the runs and skunks smelled fine and sweet on the evening air.
Now it was cold and wet, and the rainy spell hung on. Around the change of the seasons you could look for bad weather in the full of the moon. And now one fine morning the gums by the river were red as blood, the hickory ridges yellow. Directly the whole woods were burning up. The young beeches on the north side of the hills were the only thing left green among the hardwoods. Colored leaves floated in the spring and run. You had to fish them out of the kettle when you dipped water. All through the night you could hear nuts and acorns come rattling down.
Hardly could Wyitt stand any more lying in his half-faced cabin night after night, smelling the turned leaves and waiting for Louie. Oh, he and Louie had a secret between them. When he went out to Genny’s, she told him Louie said it wouldn’t be long now. Then one day he didn’t go out and that evening when he fetched the cows, Mrs. Covenhoven told him Louie had left word for him to come.
That night on his pallet he lay first on one side and then on the other. He kept twisting like one of those horsehairs that get alive when they fall in the spring. Long before daybreak he was up but it was plenty light till he reached the cabin in the sumach. Louie and Genny still lay abed. It
was good, Wyitt told himself, Sayward didn’t know about this. Genny unbarred the door and the boy came in slowly, his eyes ransacking the room. There was Louie’s brassbound, curly-maple, sporting rifle in a corner and that’s all. There wasn’t any more. He could see the whole cabin.
“You was warm when you come in and never knowed it,” Genny told him.
He fetched himself around. On two pins over the door stretched a long rifle, its wood and metal the same rusty color. A patched powder horn hung over it. The rifle was tied together at one place with tow, and the stock had a dent like it had been clubbed over the head of a bear. Or it might have been where a wolf chewed it.
He stood on a stool and lifted it down. It was two heads taller than he. Never had he lifted anything so heavy.
“I kin handle it,” he said quickly before they might take it away.
“You kin be glad it ain’t curly maple like mine,” Louie said when he had pulled on his leggins. “I got to keep a takin’ my bor’l off. It rusts from the acid. Now walnut has nothin’ in it to rust a bor’l.”
Wyitt nodded. Louie needn’t talk up the gun to him. Walnut might be the commonest tree in the woods but it was plenty good enough for him, just so he had a rifle. The flint on this one was set in buckskin and somebody must have hunted a long time in the woods to find a hickory whip for such a long, straight ramrod.
“I’ll show you somethin’ you never seed,” Louie said. He loosed the tow, unbreeched the gun and took a stained, brown paper from between barrel and walnut. It had faded writing on it.
“What’s that fur?” Wyitt wanted to know.
“ ’Wait till I tell you,” Louie said testily. “George Roebuck hisself couldn’t read it. He said it was Dutch so I took it to Mrs. Covenhoven.”
“Tell him what it says,” Genny urged.
Louie held up the paper and made as though he could spell it out.
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