Rafe went to the door and called, and presently General entered, his claws hissing a little on the bare floor and his ticked coat beaded with rain, and he stood and looked into the old man’s face with grave inquiry. “Corne hyer,”Mr. MacCallum said, and the dog moved again, with slow dignity. At that moment he saw the puppies beneath Jackson’s chair. He paused in midstride and for a moment he stood looking at them with fascination and bafflement and a sort of grave horror, then he gave his master one hurt, reproachful look and turned and departed, his tail between his legs. Mr. MacCallum sat down and rumbled heavily within himself.
“You can’t tell about dawgs—” Jackson repeated. He stooped and gathered up his charges, and stood up.
Mr. MacCallum continued to rumble and shake. “Well, I don’t blame the old feller,” he said. “Ef I had to look around on a passel of chaps like them and say to myself Them’s my boys—” But Jackson was gone. The old man sat and rumbled again, with enjoyment.
“Yes, suh, I reckon I’d feel ‘bout as proud as he does. Rafe, han’ me down my pipe.”
All that day it rained, and the following day and the day after that. The dogs lurked about the house all morning, underfoot, or made brief excursions into the weather, returning to sprawl before the fire, drowsing and malodorous and steaming, until Henry came along and drove them out; twice from the door Bayard saw the fox, Ethel, fading with brisk diffidence across the yard. With the exception of Henry and Jackson, who had a touch of rheumatism, the others were somewhere out in the rain most of the day. But at mealtimes they gathered again, shucking their wet outer garments on the porch and stamping in to thrust their muddy, smoking boots to the fire while Henry was fetching, the kettle and the jug. And last of all, Buddy, soaking wet.
Buddy had a way of getting his lean length up from his niche beside the chimney at any hour of the day and departing without a word, to return in an hour or six hours, or twelve or twenty-four or forty- eight, during which periods and despite the presence of Jackson and Henry and usually Lee, the place had a vague air of vacancy, until Bayard realized that the majority of the dogs were absent also. Hunting, they told Bayard when Buddy had been missingsince breakfast.
“Why didn’t he let me know?” he demanded.
“Maybe he thought you wouldn’t keen to be out in the weather,” Jackson suggested.
“Buddy don’t mind weather,” Henry explained. “One day’s like another to him.”
“Nothing ain’t anything to Buddy,” Lee put in, in his bitter, passionate voice. He sat brooding in thefire, his womanish hands moving restlessly on his knees. “He’s spent his whole life in that ‘ere river bottom, with a hunk of cold cawnbread to eat and a passel of dawgs fer comp’ny.” He rose abruptly and quitted the room. Lee was in the late thirties. As a child he had been sickly. He had a good tenor voice and lie was much in demand at Sunday singings. He was supposed to be keeping company with a young woman living in the hamlet of Mount Vernon, six miles away. Hespent much of his time tramping moodily and alone about the countryside.
Henry spat into the fire and jerked his head after tie departing brother. “He been to Vernon lately?”
“Him and Rale was there two days ago,” Jackson answered.
Bayard said; “Well, I won’t melt. I wonder if I could catch up with him now?” They pondered for a while, spitting gravely into the fire. “I misdoubt it,” Jackson said at last “Buddy’s liable to be ten mile away by now. You ketch ‘im next time ‘fo’ he starts out.”
After that Bayard did so, and he and Buddy tried for birds in the ragged, skeletoned fields in the rain, in which the guns made a flat, mournful sound that lingered in the streaming air like a spreading stain, or tried the stagnant backwaters along the river channel for duck and geese; ‘or, accompanied now and then by Rafe, hunted ‘coon and wildcat in the bottom. At times and far away, they would hear the shrill yapping of the young dogs in mad career. “There goes Ethel,” Buddy would remark. Then toward the end of the week the weather cleared, and in a twilight imminent with frost and while the scent lay well upon the muddy earth, old General started the red fox that had baffled him so many times.
All through the night the ringing, bell- like tonesquavered and swelled and echoed among the hills, and all of them save Henry followed on horseback, guided by the cries of the hounds but mostly by the old man’s and Buddy’s uncanny and seemingly clairvoyant skill, in anticipating the course of the race. Occasionally they stopped while Buddy and his father wrangled about where the quarry would head next, but usually they agreed, apparentlyanticipating the animal’s movements before it knew them itself; and once and again they halted their horses upon a hill and sat so in the frosty starlight until the dogs’ voices welled out of the darkness mournful and chiming, swelled louder and nearer and swept invisibly past not half a mile away; faded diminishing and with a falling suspense, as of bells, into the darkness again.
“Thar, now!” the old man exclaimed, shapeless in his overcoat, upon his white horse. “Ain’t that music feraman,now?”
“I hope they git ‘im this time,” Jackson said. “Hit hurts Gen’ral’s conceit so much everytime he fools ‘im.”
“They won’t git ‘im,” Buddy said. “Soon’s he gits tired, he’ll hole up in them rocks.”
“I reckon we’ll have to wait till them pups of Jackson’s gits big enough,” the old man agreed. “Unless they’ll refuse to run they own gran’pappy. They done refused ever’ tiling else excep’ vittles “
“You jest wait,” Jackson repeated, indefatigable. “When them puppies git old enough to—”
“Listen.”
The talking ceased, and again across the silence the dogs’ voices rang among the hills. Long, ringing cries fading, falling with a quavering suspense, like touched bells or strings, repeated and sustained by bell-like echoes repeated and dying among the darkhills beneath the stars, lingering yet in the ears crystal-clear, mournful and valiant and a little sad.
“Too bad Johnny ain’t here,” Stuart said quietly. “He’d enjoy this race.”
“He was a feller far huntin’, now,” Jackson agreed. “He’d keep up with Buddy, even.”
“John was a fine boy,” the old man said.
“Yes, suh,” Jackson repeated. “A right warmhearted boy. Henry says he never come out hyer withouten he brung Mandy and the boys a little sto’-bought somethin’.”
“He neve’ sulled on a hunt,” Stuart said. “No matter how cold and wet it was, even when he was a little chap, with that ‘ere single bar’lhe bought with his own money, that kicked ‘im so hard every time he shot it. And yit he’d tote it around, instead of that ‘ere sixteen old Colonel give ‘im, jest because he saved his money and bought hit hisself.”
“Yes,” Jackson agreed, “ef a feller gits into some-thin’ on his own accord, he ought to go through with hit cheerful.”
“He was sho’ a feller fer singin’ and shoutin’,”Mr. MacCallum said. “Skeer all the game in ten mile. I mind that night he headed off a race down at Samson’s bridge, and next we knowed, here him and the fox come a-floatin’
