by James Still
I kept an eye green on Stote, and before long he called Felt Wayland, whispering a bug in his ear. Felt edged outside, coming back in five minutes though, and it had me fuddled. Stote got in fair humor, beginning to clap to the music, beating time with a briar-toed shoe.
When the second set ended, Stote walked toward Ellafronia. Folks turned and looked, moving a little way apart. Harl stood in front of Ellafronia, heading Stote off. Stote’s face got grim as a skull. He plunged his right hand into a pocket, and when it came out, swinging through the air, a pair of brass knuckles shone on his fist. They caught Harl square on the chin, but he didn’t go down. He just stood there shaking his head, unbelieving. In a minute, ole Judge Middleton was standing betwixt them, mad as a wet turkey. Harl lit for the door, waiting on the porch for Stote, and Stote had to follow, settling what he’d started.
We crowded onto the porch, hush-mouthed and nervous. Harl unhitched his mare, and the saddle fell off. I knew then pine-blank what Felt had been up to. He’d whittled that saddle-seat with a knife. I looked for Felt, but he had skeedaddled, and it might o’ been a good thing. Harl and Stote galloped off, Harl riding bare-bones, and we could see them for a half mile, the moon being that bright.
Well, now, I was standing there, and aye gonnies if Hulda didn’t come up to me, coming so nigh it made me have goose bumps. Then I figured that hoot-owl feather under my hatband was beginning to work after all. She leant her head over and said, wee down in her throat, “Go after them.” And I went. I whistled up Trigger and lit a shuck down the road, Trigger running ahead to smell out the tracks.
Harl and Stote had gone lickety-split down Pigeon Roost, then turned up the ridge, plumb to the tiptop. Hadn’t been for my hound, I’d missed them sure. I plugged up to where they were standing ten yards apart in a clearing, above the cliff-rocks, and holding pistols in their hands. I didn’t know what they’d said to each other. I know Stote’s face was white as dough-bread. I got behind a tree, spying around it. Sudden-quick, Stote leveled his pistol-gun and fired. He missed, and Harl didn’t move. Being closest to Stote, I got a glimpse of his gun, and if I hadn’t been so scared and out o’ wind I’d a-busted laughing. He’d borrowed a little pearly handled squeeze-trigger off Felt Wayland. I’d swapped that gun to Felt myself for a set o’ mink traps, and knowing Felt wasn’t safe with gunpowder, I’d crooked the sight-piece a grain.
It looked bad for Stote, I tell you. Harl never was what you’d call a sharp-shooter—I reckon because his eyesight wasn’t good as most fellers’—but he wouldn’t have to shoot a lead mine to hit a chunk big as Stote. Well, it was Harl’s time to shoot, but aye gonnies if Stote didn’t lose his nerve and shoot three bullets, one jamb after another, missing every dabbed time. Harl stood there, cool as mint. He brought his gun level and took a step or two forward, squinting in the moonlight. I couldn’t bear to look. I just tucked my head behind the tree and waited. Well, now, I waited a spell, and nothing happened. Not a sound I heard. Then I spied out, and there was Stote running off the ridge in a mighty hurry. And nary a sign o’ Harl could I see.
I got up to the place where Harl had been standing fast as two legs could fetch me, and by juckers if he hadn’t stepped square off the cliff before he could shoot. I remember then it was Friday, his bad-luck day, and I knew pine-blank this thing had happened.
Black as Egypt it was below, seventy-five feet down into pitch dark. I hollered and squalled, getting no answer. I figured then he must o’ broken his neck, and I climbed down, risking my bones, snagging and scratching to the bottom. There was a thicket of sumac at the foot of the pocket, and a steep bed of limerock dropping to a bench level. Even Trigger couldn’t climb down into the pocket, and he couldn’t reach the bench from below. I lit a pine-knot, but nary a sight or sign I found of Harl. Aye gonnies, I searched till crack o’ day. The only way I could ever figure he got out was to edge around the cliff, walking like a fly-bug on a wall, and I don’t reckon he could o’ made it then unlessen the devil was holding him up by the seat of his britches.
Well, now, Stote Hyden got his walking papers from ole Judge Middleton for starting a racket in his house, and Stote had to go back to Longfield to practice. Ellafronia Saul traipsed to where she’d come from, marrying a bluegrass lawyer, I’ve heard it said, but you can’t nail much truth in what you hear this day and time. Nigh on to six years ago, a medicine drummer came through swearing he’d seen Harl up in pennyrile country, a land so flat you can see five miles withouten your eyes hitting against anything. I had the drummer up to my place to eat a new robbing of poplar-bloom honey and to talk a spell. He said Harl was wearing glass specs, and he like not to have known him; and he was in the dog business, raising and selling foxhounds. After Harl skipped the country ole Ring sort o’ took up with me, and I’ve still got a batch of dogs he sired by Trigger. I wouldn’t take a war pension for a one of my fourteen foxhounds, but if Harl ever comes back to the hills, he can take his choose and pick.
And while that drummer talked, Hulda sat afar in the corner, like a wife ought to sit when there’s a strange man in the house, and she never said a word. I always did figure I got the sweetest little woman ever beat dough.
The Straight
I shall call him Abner Stegall, which was not his name. When I moved to Mule Creek country, it was he who declared to B. J. Claymore and the storehouse crowd, “My opinion, the feller’s been rode out of Linemark School on a rail, else he’d not o’ left a good job.” And later, when this notion proved false, he told them, “There must be an enemy after his hide. The ground got hot over there and he tuk off. For what other cause earthly would a man come backside of the county and endure a fox’s life? The next time I go to Linemark I’ll learn the truth on that feller, what he’s running from.”
Abner, a sometimes miner, lived temporarily on Ivy Branch, a valley opening into Lower Mule below the Foot, in a home called the old Malahide homeseat. He left the mine camps “for good and forever” every two or three years and had lived in various abandoned homeseats along Mule; he stood six feet six bare-heeled, too tall for mine labor, he claimed. This was his second period of residence on Ivy. A lumber company held legal title to the valley and Abner was a squatter. Ivy had been one of my ways home until Abner grumbled to Claymore, “Might’s well live on a highroad, so much passing lately. My old woman’s mad, says got to hang shades to the windows to stop the spying in.”
My occasional journeying up Ivy had been to pass through the beech forest above the valley head where flying squirrels might be seen. But I had already decided to shun the place. On approaching Abner’s house the previous week I had heard a shout. Two small children playing in the yard ran under the floor, the front door slammed, the window holes were covered, and I caught a glimpse of Abner at a corner of the house furtively watching me.
When I arrived at the Foot for my mail the following week, B. J. Claymore drew me aside and told of Abner’s further complaints. A patch of ’sang he had expected to harvest in the valley head had disappeared, and a bee tree that bore his ax-mark claim had been robbed. Claymore quoted Abner, “That newcomer’s the guilty devil.” Abner had kicked the horseshoe keg in apparent wrath and swore, “God dog! A body can’t have a thing nowadays.” Claymore’s advice to me had been, “Steer clear of Ivy, and the head of the valley, and the mountain beyond. There’s a reason, but I don’t want to speak it.”
I grunted disinterestedly.
Claymore reddened. “I didn’t want you to find out the hard way,” he said.
“I regret not getting a taste of the wild honey,” I said. “And if I’d found the ’sang, I’d have dug it likely. Sells fifteen dollars to the pound, I hear. Already I’m feeling out of pocket.”
Claymore grinned weakly, and our talk ended. We had been in the rear of the storehouse, and I joined Jace Malahide, Hask Wycherly, and Tilford Cleveland at the front. Jace held his guitar on his knee. Hask said, “According to Ab Stegall you’re a bear for honey.” He was trying to get a rise out of
me.
I used Hask’s own favorite expression to reply, which was about the only way you could break even with Hask. “Right as a rabbit’s foot,” I said. And knowing Hask’s penchant for teasing, I asked, “How do you and Abner Stegall hit it off?”
Hask’s face soured, his countenance bespeaking his reply. Hask and his fellow prankers at the Foot spared Abner as he was obviously slow of wit and reputedly sharp of temper. A tale is told that once in emptying a pocket on a counter in search of money to purchase tobacco Abner brought forth a handful of bullets. A bystander had observed, “Ab, you’ve got more lead than silver,” and Abner had nodded dully. Minutes later, the tobacco bought, a cud pouched in his jaw, Abner suddenly repeated, “More lead than silver,” and threw his head back and gagged. And then, unaccountably, he got angry, his eyes fired, and he stalked out of the storehouse.
Hask said to me, “You and Old Ab will make cronies yet. He’s spitting in your tracks right now, but you wait. He’ll mellow up.”
“I want to know one thing,” Jace Malahide addressed me. “Ab’s got a daughter, sixteen or eighteen, and have you seen her in passing along Ivy?” He strummed the guitar idly. “She’s fair as a dove on a limb, and suits my notion to a hair, but I’d die single ere I’d call Old Ab Stegall pappy.”
“Hell’s bangers!” Hask blurted. “Who named Ab Stegall in the first place? I say we switch the subject.”
My knowledge of Abner and his family remained limited, and I did not try to improve it by inquiry. I knew him on sight and met him along the creek now and then. We spoke our greetings heartily enough and passed on. He was thin and bony, all hasps and hinges, as the saying goes, and had the sticklike walk of the gaunt and tall. I used to come on Abner’s teenage sons fishing along Lower Mule. During dog days, a season of low water, they fished with sledgehammers, wading upcreek and striking exposed boulders. Perch and bass in the vicinity of the boulders were momentarily numbed by the sound and easily gained. I suspected the Stegall boys of dumping the walnut hulls I found in pools near the mouth of Ivy, drowning the fish. Abner himself, reportedly, had dynamited the creek more than once, and perhaps in this fashion obtained the only eel ever caught in Mule Creek. I never saw Abner’s wife or the daughter living at home. Two married daughters and a son lived in mine camps.
One day Claymore drew me into the storehouse yard under the pretext of pointing out his choice of a route for the county road through the Foot. I had once chagrinned him by remarking I wished the roads kept at their present distance. He had chuffed, “You and Old Wick Jarrett hold the same notion. Man-o! This is the twentieth century. Wake up.” But the morning we stepped outside the storehouse, there had been no preliminary discussion of highways.
Under the hitching-post willows Claymore said, “Just wanted to cut you out of the crowd so we can talk freely. Yesterday Ab Stegall asked if you’d come down lately and said, ‘I’m itching to question him, ask the straight on two, three happenings.’ Tom Bud Cranch and Til Cleveland and a couple more were settling in, and we all asked what happenings, and Ab wouldn’t tell right off, and we picked at him, and he said, ‘Killings.’ Everybody hollered, ‘Ah?’ and he said, ‘I got the facts at Linemark, teeth to teeth, no hearsay.’ ”
I also breathed, “Ah,” and I noticed Claymore’s eyes sharpen.
“We’d heard the wind slew before,” Claymore assured. “Til and Tom Bud took your part. Til said, ‘Ab, you’ve strifed that feller right along. Whyn’t you two make fair weather?’ And Tom Bud threw in, ‘What’s the purpose of freshening old troubles?’ Ab got meeky, and he allowed, ‘No harm to burn off the waters, see what’s in under.’ And Tom Bud said, ‘You neighbor that feller, hear me? If he suffered a wrong the law’d clap you in jail first thing, guilty or no.’ Ab said, ‘You reckon?’ and ‘I’ve got ought against him.’ The hurries was eating him up. He left right shortly.”
“My trespassing on Ivy Branch upset Stegall uncommonly,” I observed.
“Ab sees a booger behind every tree. His nature.”
I said, “An occupational disease, I figure.”
Claymore glanced narrowly at me. “Hmmn.”
Claymore consulted his great silver watch, momentarily expecting Hod Burchell with the mail pouches. With eyes yet fast upon the timepiece he declared, “You’ve never mixed in a killing,” and paused, watch in hand, apparently awaiting my concurrence. I gained a moment to think by spitting out the willow leaves I chewed. How much of an explanation was practicable? I decided on the minimum. When I did not reply immediately, Claymore held the watch to an ear, appeared dissatisfied with its performance, hammered the edge against the base of a thumb, and listened again.
“Now, no,” I said.
I happened upon Wace Pottsfield, John Rennett, and Abner Stegall at the sandbar mouth of Harls Branch on Laurel. I had gone downcreek to the sugar orchard an hour or so before. It was Sunday, a few weeks after my talk with B. J. Claymore. They sat on a pile of beech logs, idly grooving the trunks with pocketknives. The three spoke, “Howdy,” and Wace Pottsfield added, “Join up.” Then Abner invited, “Climb and help whittle.”
“Whose log heap?” I inquired, making talk.
“John’s,” Wace said, “but don’t mind the ownership. Climb and roost.”
“I’ll go along,” I said indecisively.
John reminded, “Sunday’s a rest day.”
“Come around,” Abner insisted, and suddenly lifted an arm. We shook hands. I saw Wace and John cut their eyes at each other, probably as surprised as I, and as Abner had shaken hands, they offered theirs.
I climbed onto the logs and opened my Barlow. The logs had endured a year’s weather on the ground, and the bark was soft and wood-thieves scurried underneath. I grooved and sliced, and I noticed Abner stared long at my knife. It was a two-bladed Barlow jack B. J. Claymore sold for seventy-five cents.
John said, “These logs are going into mine props. Won’t hurt to scar ’em.”
“Sorry timber, beech is,” Wace commented.
Abner said, “Can’t beat it for barrel staves.”
“All right for patching timber,” said I.
The subject played out.
Abner asked me, “How’ve you been standing the times?”
“Common,” I answered. “How have you?”
“Common.”
The talk lapsed.
After a studied pause Abner inquired, “Your kin—you hear from them, I reckon. They’re well?”
“Common. Your family, they’re in good health?”
“Common.”
To get out of the conversational rut I said, “I hear you caught an eel in Lower Mule several years ago.”
“Upper Mule,” Abner corrected.
“What did you do with it?”
“The hide made shoestrings.”
We spoke no more of the eel. We dug steadily into the wood. The sun beat upon the unshaded logs and heat danced the sandbar. We began to sweat. We scraped water beads from our brows with the dull side of the blades. Presently Abner said to me, “Let’s have a look at the weapon you’re handling.”
We exchanged knives. Abner tested my jack’s edges with a finger, plucking them as a guitar string is plucked. He mumbled, “This trick wouldn’t cut butter. The metal’s dead.” I examined his knife. It was a cattle, with clip, spay, heavy duty, and sheepsfoot blades. The edge of the heavy duty had a razor’s sharpness. Abner handed back my knife, and I returned his. I said, “Yours is the boss.”
“Is that all the body protection you pack?” Abner inquired.
“Yep.”
“A danger to leave home with that plug. Must have got it off a punchboard.”
“Hmmn.”
“You ever see a knife fight?”
I nodded.
Wace and John ceased whittling and cocked their chins attentively. And it occurred to me that neither our meeting at the mouth of Harls Branch nor the present subject of conversation had been chance. Abner probably saw me go downcreek, fetch
ed Wace and John as witnesses, and had awaited my return. Abner drawled, “Let’s hear about the scrape.”
I made brief, “Two boys began whacking at each other and were dragged apart before serious damage was done.”
“Gee-o,” John commented, “that battle was over ere it begun, to hear you tell it.”
Abner raised his cattle knife dirk-fashion and stabbed the log and left it sticking. “A feller ought to spend money on a knife. Don’t expect to buy a suiting one under three dollars.”
Wace tempered Abner’s instructions. “Ah, now, he might have the finest make of gun at his house.”
“Pistol or rifle?” Abner asked, accepting Wace’s theory, his voice hard and imperative.
Both John and Wace appeared suddenly embarrassed by Abner’s abruptness, and Wace made a delaying statement, “ ’Lysses Jarrett’s the one owns the weapons. I was at his house and he lifted a mattress and there lay three shotguns and a rifle, and he ope’s a trunk and shows two pistols, and he says there’s some old-timers in the closet, not worth looking at.”
Abner reiterated, “Pistol or rifle?”
“A hog-rifle,” I reported, “with a bullet lodged in the barrel.”
John related offhandedly, “Recollect Crock Wills renting up my creek? The house burning? The house burnt of a night and he lost everything. Wiped out. Saved just the shirttails and gowns they slept in, and them scorched. Did Crock grunt over lost furniture and his naked family? Now, no. Says to me, ‘I’m sick to my heart for losing my guns. I had five.’ ”
