The rain dripped on, dripped and dripped; beside him Buddy breathed placidlyand steadily: he had not even changed his position. At times Bayard dozed fitfully: dozing, he was wide awake; waking, he lay in a hazy state filled with improbable moiling and in which there was neither relief nor rest: drop by drop the rain wore the night away, wore time away. But it was so long, so damn long. His spent blood, wearied with struggling, moved through his body in slow beats, like the rain, wearing his flesh away. It comes to all...Bible...some preacher, anyway. Maybe he knew. Peace. It comes to all.
At last, from beyond walls, he heard movement. It was indistinguishable, yet he knew it was of human origin, of people he knew ‘waking again into the world he had not been able even temporarily to lose, people to whom he was...and he was comforted. The sounds continued, and at last and unmistakably he heard a door, and a voice Which he knew that with a slight effort of concentration he” could name; and best of all, that he could rise and go where they were gathered about a crackling fire. Arid he lay, at ease at last, intending to rise the next moment and go to them, putting it off a little longer while his blood beat slowly through his body and his heart was quieted. Buddy breathed steadily beside him, and his own breath was quiet now as Buddy’s while the human sounds came murmurously into the cold room with grave and homely reassurance. It comes to all, it comes to all, his tired heart comforted him, and at last he slept.
He waked in the gray morning, his body wearyand heavy and dull: his sleep had not rested him. Buddy was gone, and it still rained, though now it was adefinite sound on the roof and the air was warmer, with a rawness that probed into the very bones of him; and in his stockings and carrying his scarred, expensive boots in his hands, he traversed the cold room where Lee and Rafe and Stuart slept, and found Rafe and Jackson before the living-room fire.
“We let you sleep,” Rafe said, then he said: “Good Lord, boy, you look like a hant. Didn’t you sleep lastnight?”
“Yes, I slept all right,” Bayard answered. He sat down and stamped into his boots, and buckled the thongs below his knees. Jackson sat at one side of the hearth; in the shadowy corner near his feet a number of small, living creatures moiled silently, and still bent over his boots Bayard said:
“What you
“New breed Tin trying Jackson answered, and Rafe approached with a half a tumbler of Henry’s pale amber whisky.
“Them’s Ethel’s pups,” he said. “Git Jackson to tell you about ‘em after you eat Here, drink this. You look all wore but. Buddy must a kept you awake, talkin’,” he added, with dry irony.
Bayard accepted the glass and emptied it, and lit a cigarette. “Mandy’s got yo’ breakfast on the stove,”‘ Rafe added.
‘‘Ethel?’’ Bayard repeated. “Oh, that fox. I aimed to ask about her, last night.”
“Yes, Jackson aims to revolutionize the huntin’ business, with her. Aims to raise a breed of animals with a hound’s wind and bottom, and a fox’s smartness and speed.”
Bayard approached the shadowy corner and examined the small creatures with interest and curiosity.
“I never saw many fox pups,” he said at last, “but I never saw any that looked like them.”
“That’s what Gen’ral seems to think,” Rafe answered,
Jackson spat into the fire and stooped over the creatures. They knew his hands, and the moiling of them became more intense, and Bayard then noticed that they made no sound at all, not even puppy whimperings. “Hit’s a experiment,” Jackson explained. “The boys makes fun of ‘em, but they haint no more’n weaned, yet. You wait and see.”
“Don’t know what you’ll do with ‘em,” Rafe said brutally. “They won’t be big enough for work stock. Better git yo’ breakfast, Bayard.”
“You wait and see,” Jackson repeated. He touched the scramble of small bodies with his hands, in a gentle, protective gesture. “You can’t tell nothin’‘bout a dawg ‘twell hit’s at least two months old, can you?” he appealed to Bayard, looking up at him with his vague, intense gaze from beneath his shaggy brows.
“Go git yo’ breakfast, Bayard,” Rafe repeated. “Buddy’s done goneand left you.”
He bathed his face with icy water in a tin pan on the porch, and ate his breakfast—ham and eggs and flapjacks and sorghum and coffee—while Mandy talked to him about his brother. When he returned to the house old Mr. MacCallum was there. The puppies moiled inextricably in their corner, and the old man sat with his hands on his knees, watching them with bluff and ribald merriment, while Jackson sat nearby in a sort of Covering concern, like a hen,
“Come hyer,boy,” the old man ordered when Bayard appeared “Hyer, Rafe, git me that ‘ere bait line.” Rafe went out, returning presently with a bit of pork rind on the end of a string. The old man tookit and rose, and hauled the puppies ungently into the light, where they crouched abjectly moiling—as strange a litter as Bayard had ever seen. No two of them looked alike, and none of them looked like anything else. Neither fox nor hound; partaking of both, yet neither; and despite their soft infancy, there was about them something monstrous and contradictory and obscene. Here a fox’s keen, cruel muzzle between the melting, sad eyes of a hound and its mild ears; there limp fears tried valiantly to stand erect and failed ignobly in flapping points; shoebutton eyes in meek puppy faces, and limp brief tails brushed over with a faint, golden fuzz like the inside of a chestnut burr. As regards color,, they ranged from pure reddish brown through ail indiscriminate brindle to pure ticked beneath a faint dun cast; and one of them had, feature for feature, old General’s face in comical miniature, even to his expression of sad and dignified disillusion. “Watch ‘em, now,” the old man ordered.
He got them all facing forward, then he dangled the meat directly behind them. Not one noticed it; he swept it back and forth above their heads; not one looked up. Then he swung it directly before their eyes
“You can’t tell nothin’ about a dawg—” Jackson began. His father interrupted him.
“Now, watch.” He held the puppies with one hand and with the other he forced the meat into their mouths. Immediately they surged clumsily and eagerly over his hand, but he moved the meat away and at the length of the string he dragged it along the floor just ahead of them until they had attained asort of scrambling lope. Then in midfloor he flicked the meat slightly aside, but without seeing it the group blundered on and into a shadowy corner, where the wall stopped them and from which there rose presently the patient, voiceless confusion of them. Jackson left his chair and picked them up and brought them back to the fire.
“Now, what do you think of them, for a pack of huntin’ dogs?” the old man demanded. “Can’t smell, can’t bark, and damn ef I believe they kin see.”
“You can’t tell nothin’ about a dawg—” Jackson essayed patiently.
“Gen’ral kin,” his father interrupted. “Hyer, Rafe, call Gen’ral in hyer.”
