“You aren’t going to hunt this year, Aleck,” Molly said. “Remember how you stayed awake nights last fall with the pain in your leg.”
In October light frosts came. In the afternoons when I sat on the back porch going over my fishing tackle I marked their progress on the elderberry bushes that were left standing against the stable fence. The lower, spreading branches had turned yellow and were already sinking to the ground but the leaves in the top clusters still stood up stiff and straight.
“Ah-h, it’ll get you yet!” I said, thinking how frost creeps higher and higher out of the ground each night of fall.
The dogs next door felt it and would thrust their noses through the wire fence scenting the wind from the north. When I walked in the back yard they would bound twice their height and whine, for meat scraps Molly said, but it was because they smelled blood on my old hunting coat.
They were almost matched liver-and-white pointers. The big dog had a beautiful, square muzzle and was deep-chested and rangy. The bitch, Judy, had a smaller head and not so good muzzle but she was springy loined too and had one of the merriest tails I’ve ever watched.
When Joe Thomas, the boy that owned them, came home from the hardware store he would change his clothes and then come down the back way into the wired enclosure and we would stand there watching the dogs and wondering how they would work. Joe said they were keen as mustard. He was going to take them out the first good Saturday and wanted me to come along.
“I can’t make it,” I said, “my leg’s worse this year than it was last.”
The fifteenth of November was clear and so warm that we sat out on the porch till nine o’clock. It was still warm when we went to bed towards eleven. The change must have come in the middle of the night. I woke once, hearing the clock strike two, and felt the air cold on my face and thought before I went back to sleep that the weather had broken at last. When I woke again at dawn the cold air was slapping my face hard. I came wide awake, turned over in bed and looked out of the window.
There was a scaly-bark hickory tree growing on the east side of the house. You could see its upper branches from the bedroom window. The leaves had turned yellow a week ago. But yesterday evening when I walked out there in the yard they had still been flat with green streaks showing in them. Now they were curled up tight and a lot of leaves had fallen on to the ground.
I got out of bed quietly so as not to wake Molly, dressed and went down the back way over to the Thomas house. There was no one stirring but I knew which room Joe’s was. The window was open and I could hear him snoring. I went up and stuck my head in.
“Hey,” I said, “killing frost.”
He opened his eyes and looked at me and then his eyes went shut. I reached my arm through the window and shook him. “Get up,” I said, “we got to start right away.”
He was awake now and out on the floor stretching. I told him to dress and be over at the house as quick as he could. I’d have breakfast ready for us both.
Aunt Martha had a way of leaving fire in the kitchen stove at night. There were red embers there now. I poked the ashes out and piled kindling on top of them. When the flames came up I put some heavier wood on, filled the coffee pot, and put some grease on in a skillet. By the time Joe got there I had coffee ready and some hoe cakes to go with our fried eggs. Joe had brought a thermos bottle. We put the rest of the coffee in it and I found a ham in the pantry and made some sandwiches.
While I was fixing the lunch Joe went down to the lot to hitch up. He was just driving Old Dick out of the stable when I came down the back steps. The dogs knew what was up, all right. They were whining and surging against the fence and Bob, the big dog, thrust his paw through and into the pocket of my hunting coat as I passed. While Joe was snapping on the leashes I got a few handfuls of straw from the rack and put it in the foot of the buggy. It was twelve miles where we were going; the dogs would need to ride warm coming back late.
Joe said he would drive. We got in the buggy and started out, up Seventh Street and on over to College and out through Scufftown. When we got into the nigger section we could see what a killing frost it had been. A light shimmer over all the ground still and the weeds around the cabins dark and matted the way they are when the frost hits them hard and twists them.
We drove on over the Red River bridge and up into the open country. At Jim Gill’s place the cows had come up and were standing waiting to be milked but nobody was stirring yet from the house. I looked back from the top of the hill and saw that the frost mists still hung heavy in the bottom and thought it was a good sign. A day like this when the earth is warmer than the air currents is good for the hunter. Scent particles are borne on the warm air and birds will forage far on such a day.
It took us over an hour to get from Gloversville to Spring Creek. Joe wanted to get out as soon as we hit the big bottom there but I held him down and we drove up to the ridge. We got out there, unhitched Old Dick and turned him into the one of Rob Fayerlee’s pastures – I thought how surprised Rob would be when he saw him glazing there – put our guns together, and started out, the dogs still on leash.
It was rough, broken ground, scrub oak, with a few gum trees and lots of buckberry bushes. One place a patch of corn ran clear up to the top of the ridge. As we passed along between the rows I could see the frost glistening on the north side of the stalks. I knew it was going to be a good day.
I walked over to the brow of the hill. From here you can see off over the whole valley – I’ve hunted every foot of it in my time – tobacco land, mostly. One or two patches of corn there on the side of the ridge. I thought we might start there and then I knew that wouldn’t do. Quail will linger on the roost a cold day and feed in shelter during the morning. It is only in the afternoon that they will work out to the open.
The dogs were whining. Joe bent down and was about to slip their leashes. “Hey, boy,” I said, “don’t do that.”
I turned around and looked down the other side of the ridge. It was better that way. The corn land of the bottoms ran high up on to the hill in several places there and where the corn stopped there were big patches of ironweed and buckberry. I knocked my pipe out on a stump.
“Let’s go that way,” I said.
Joe was looking at my old buckhorn whistle that I had slung around my neck. “I forgot to bring mine.”
“All right,” I said, “I’ll handle ‘em.”
He unfastened their collars and cast off. They broke away, racing for the first hundred yards and barking, then suddenly swerved. The big dog took off to the right along the hillside. The bitch, Judy, skirted a belt of corn along the upper bottomlands. I kept my eye on the big dog. A dog that has bird sense will know cover when he sees it. This big Bob was an independent hunter, all right. I could see him moving fast through the scrub oaks, working his way down toward a patch of iron weed. He caught first scent just on the edge of the weed patch and froze with every indication of class, head up, nose stuck out, and tail straight in air. Judy, meanwhile, had been following the line of the corn field. A hundred yards away she caught sight of Bob’s point and backed him.
We went up and flushed the birds. They got up in two bunches. I heard Joe’s shot while I was in the act of raising my gun and I saw his bird fall not thirty paces from where he stood. I had covered the middle bird of the larger bunch – that’s the one led by the boss cock – the way I usually do. He fell, whirling head over heels, driven a little forward by the impact. A well-centered shot. I could tell by the way the feathers fluffed as he tumbled.
The dogs were off through the grass. They had retrieved both birds. Joe stuck his in his pocket. He laughed. “I thought there for a minute you were going to let him get away.”
I looked at him but I didn’t say anything. It’s a wonderful thing to be twenty years old.
The majority of the singles had flown straight ahead to settle in the rank grass that jutted out from the bottomland. Judy got down to work at once but the big dog broke off to the left, wanting to get footloose to find another covey. I thought of how Trecho, the best dog I ever had – the best dog any man ever had – used always to be wanting to do the same thing and I laughed.
“Naw, you don’t,” I said, “come back here, you scoundrel, and hunt these singles.”
He stopped on the edge of a briar patch, looked at me and heeled up promptly. I clucked him out again. He gave me another look. I thought we were beginning to understand each other better. We got some nice points among those singles but we followed that valley along the creek bed and through two or three more corn fields without finding another covey. Joe was disappointed but I wasn’t beginning to worry yet; you always make your bag in the afternoon.
It was twelve o’clock by this time, no sign of frost anywhere and the sun beating down steady on the curled-up leaves.
“Come on,” I said, “let’s go up to Buck’s spring and eat.”
We walked up the ravine whose bed was still moist with the fall rains and came out at the head of the hollow. They had cleared out some of the trees on the side of the ravine but the spring itself was the same: a deep pool welling up between the roots of an old sycamore. I unwrapped the sandwiches and the piece of cake and laid them on a stump. Joe got the thermos bottle out of his pocket. Something had gone wrong with it and the coffee was stone cold. We were about to drink it that way when Joe saw a good tin can flung down beside the spring. He made a trash fire and we put the coffee in the can and heated it to boiling.
It was warm in the ravine, sheltered from the wind, with the little fire burning. I turned my game leg so that the heat fell full on my knee. Joe had finished his last sandwich and was reaching for the cake.
“Good ham,” he said.
“It’s Ferguson’s,” I told him.
He had got up and was standing over the spring. “Wonder how long this wood’ll last, under water this way.”
I looked at the sycamore root, green and slick where the thin stream of water poured over it, then my eyes went back to the dogs. They were tired, all right. Judy had gone off to lie down in a cool place at the side of the spring, but the big dog, Bob, lay there, his forepaws stretched out in front of him, never taking his eyes off our faces. I looked him and thought how different he was from his mate and like some dogs I had known – and men too – who lived only for hunting and could never get enough no matter how long the day. There was something about his head and his markings that reminded one of another dog I used to hunt with a long time ago and I asked the boy who had trained him. He said the old fellow he bought the dogs from had been killed last spring, over in Trigg – Charley Morrison.
Charley Morrison! I remembered how he died, out hunting by himself and gun had gone off, accidentally they said. Charley had called his dog to him, got blood over him and sent him home. The dog went, all right, but when they got there Charley was dead. Two years ago that was and now I was hunting the last dogs he’d ever trained…
Joe lifted the thermos bottle. “Another cup?”
I held my cup out and he filled it. The coffee was still good and hot. I drank it, standing up, running my eye over the country in front of us. Afternoon is different from morning, more exciting. It isn’t only as I say that you’ll make your bag in the afternoon, but it takes more figuring. They’re fed and rested and when they start out again they’ll work in the open and over a wider range.
Joe was stamping out his cigarette: “Let’s go.”
The dogs were already out of sight but I could see the sedge grass ahead moving and I knew they’d be making for the same thing that took my eye: a spearhead of thicket that ran far out into this open field. We came up over a little rise. There they were, Bob on a point and Judy backing him not fifty feet from the thicket. I saw it was going to be tough shooting. No way to tell whether the birds were between the dog and the ticket or in the thicket itself. Then I saw that the cover was more open along the side of the thicket and I thought that that was the way they’d go if they were in the thicket. But Joe had already broken away to the left. He got too far to the side. The birds flushed to the right and left him standing, flat-footed, without a shot.
He looked sort of foolish and grinned.
I thought I wouldn’t say anything and then I found myself speaking: “Trouble with you, you try to out-think the dog.”
There was nothing to do about it, though. The chances were that the singles had pitched in the trees below. We went down there. It was hard hunting. The woods were open, the ground everywhere heavily carpeted with leaves. Dead leaves make a tremendous rustle when the dogs surge through them. It makes a good nose to cut scent keenly in such noisy cover. I kept my eye on Bob. He never faltered, getting over the ground in big, springy strides but combining every inch of it. We came to an open place in the woods. Nothing but hickory trees and bramble thickets overhung with trailing vines. Bob passed the first thicket and came to a beautiful point. We went up. He stood perfectly steady but the bird flushed out fifteen or twenty steps ahead of him. I saw it swing to the right, gaining altitude very quickly – woods birds will always cut back to known territory – and it came to me how it would be.
I called to Joe: “Don’t shoot yet.”
He nodded and raised his gun, following the bird with the barrel. It was directly over the treetops when I gave the word and he shot, scoring a clean kill.
He laughed excitedly as he stuck the bird in his pocket. “My God, man, I didn’t know you could take that much time!”
We went through the open woods. I was thinking about a day I’d had years ago in the woods at Grassdale, with my uncle, James Morris, and his son, Julian. Uncle James given Julian and me hell for missing just such a shot. I can see him now standing up against a big pine tree, his face red from liquor and his gray hair ruffling in the wind: “Let him alone! Let him alone! And establish your lead as he climbs.”
Joe was still talking about the shot he’d made. “ Lord, I wish I could get another one like that.”
“You won’t,” I said, “we’re getting out of the woods now.”
We struck a path that led due west and followed it to half a mile. My leg was stiff from the hip down now and every time I brought it over, the pain would start in my knee, Zing! and travel up and settle in the small of my back. I walked with my head down, watching the light catch on the ridges of Joe’s brown corduroy trousers and then shift and catch again. Sometimes he would get on ahead and then there would be nothing but the black tree trunks coming up out of the dead leaves.
Joe was talking about some wild land up on the Cumberland. We could get up there on an early train. Have a good day. Might even spent the night. When I didn’t answer he turned around: “Man, you’re sweating.”
I pulled my handkerchief out and wiped my face. “Hot work,” I said.
He had stopped and was looking about him. “Used to be a spring somewhere around here.”
He had found the path and was off. I sat down on a stump and mopped my face some more. The sun was halfway down through the trees now, the whole west woods ablaze with the light. I sat there and thought that in another hour it would be good and dark and I wished that the day could go on and not end so soon and yet I didn’t see how I could make it much farther with my leg the way it was.
Joe was coming up the path with his folding cup full of water. I hadn’t thought I was thirsty but the cold water tasted good. We sat there awhile and smoked, then Joe said that we ought to be starting back, that we must be a good piece from the rig by this time.
We set out, working north through the edge of the woods. It was rough going and I was thinking that it would be all I could do to make it back to the rig when we climbed a fence and came out at one end of a long field that sloped down to a wooded ravine. Broken ground, badly gullied and covered with sedge everywhere except where sumac thickets had sprung up – as birdy a place as ever I saw. I looked it over and knew I had to hunt it, leg or no leg, but it would be close work, for me and the dogs too.
I blew them in a bit and we stood there watching them cut up the cover. The sun was down now; there was just enough light left to see the dogs work. The big dog circled the far wall of the basin and came up wind just off the drain, then stiffened to a point. We walked down to it. The birds had obviously run a bit into the scraggly sumac stalks that bordered the ditch. My mind was so much on the dogs I forgot Joe. He took one step too many. The fullest blown bevy of the day roared up through the tangle. It had to be fast work. I raised my gun and scored with the only barrel I had time to peg. Joe shouted; I knew he got one too.
We stood there trying to figure out which way the singles had gone but they had fanned out too quick for us, excited as we were, and after beating around awhile we gave up and went on.
We came to the rim of the swale, eased over it, crossed the dry creek bed that was drifted thick with leaves, and started up the other side. I had blown in the dogs, thinking there was no use for them to run their heads off now we’d started home, but they didn’t come. I walked on a little farther, then I looked back and saw Bob’s white shoulders through a tangle of cinnamon vine.
Joe had turned around too. “They’ve pinned a single out of that last covey,” he said.
I looked over at him quick. “Your shot.”
He shook his head. “No, you take it.”
I limped back and flushed the bird. It went skimming along the buckberry bushes that covered that side of the swale. In the fading light I could hardly make it out and I shot too quick. It swerved over the thicket and I let go with the second barrel. It staggered, then zoomed up. Up, up, up, over the rim of the hill and above the tallest hickories. It hung there for a second, its wings black against the gold light, before, wings still spread, it came whirling down, like an autumn leaf, like the leaves that were everywhere about us, all over the ground.
Virgil Scott, David Madden. Studies in the short story, 5th edition. (1980_Holt, Rinehart and Winston)
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