Part 9

Len, Burl, Ted, and Ben began to leap up the mountainside and were soon racing along the ridge trail. I could be of no use in heading off the boar, and after one staggered look upward at the almost vertical slope I decided to follow Sam and granpap. Snead was of the same mind, and we struggled along, swinging from bushes and scrambling over boulders until we arrived at the ivy thicket, which was not ivy at all, but a mass of twisted kalmia from which several great chestnut trees rose in triumph. From somewhere in the tangled interior I could hear Sam’s voice constantly repeating a formula, “Sic ’im, Bub! Sic, sic, sic!”--not loud but in a steady tone, half pleading, half commanding.

Snead crawled into the thicket, and in about ten minutes was back again.

“Sam’s standin’ to his waist in a sink-hole,” he said, “an’ skeered white-eyed. But he ain’t in no danger, the ivy’s so thick round the sink-hole. Bub nor Bugle won’t take holt o’ that thing. They prance all round him, much as the ivy’ll let ’em, an’ keep out o’ the way o’ his tusks, an’ that’s all. We got to have a dog that’ll take holt. Sam says fer me to send Ben down the mountain Pizen Branch way an’ git Jake Sutton’s ol’ dog, Drum. Drum’ll bring him out ef anything will.”

“There’s Buck.”

“Shucks, ef Bub won’t take holt we needn’t wait on Buck.”

“What’s granpap doing?”

“Nothin’ but squattin’ in the bottom o’ that sink-hole wishin’ he’s in prayer-meetin’.”

Snead made his way up to the circle of silent watchers, and Ben was soon flying down the mountain Pizen Branch way. In ten minutes he would be at the foot, but he would have to return slowly by a winding trail, and it would be nearly an hour before Drum could be one of us. In the meantime Sam, with the two dogs, endeavored to keep the boar entertained. Suddenly there was a shriek. A dark body was thrown into the air and fell on top of a thick bunch of “ivy.” “The blood jest sprinkled,” said Sam afterward.

“He’s killed my dog,” shouted Burl from the hillside. But Bugle had received only a skin wound and, scrambling down, crept with viscerated courage to his master. Sam kept on incessantly with the formula, “Sic ’im, Bub! Sic, sic, sic!” and finally called to Len: “Send Buck in here ’less ye want me to git tore up. Bub’s winded.”

From somewhere up the hill Len unloosed Buck, who rushed for the thicket. His entrance was Wagnerian, with a sound that reached the spheres. I had crept forward until I could get black glimpses of the boar as he whirled about, charging at the agile Bub and missing him by a hair’s breadth. With the entrance of Buck he decided to run, and dashed along the “tunnel” that in happier days he had worn to his hiding-place. The dogs tumbled over each other and were slower in getting out. Sam appeared and shouted to the watchers above: “Tear along up there! Ef he gits round the mountain we might as well go home.”

I was at granpap’s heels and going fine, when he fell. He wasn’t seriously hurt, but sat on a rock rubbing his ankle, and I was astounded at the imprecations which he dropped on that “b’ar devil.” It meant more to him than being out of the race. Life had beaten him and gone on, and he knew it. “Reckon they’ll say I done it a-purpose,” he said forlornly.

“Oh, no, they won’t. Sam himself couldn’t have jumped that rock.”

“I’ll set here till the pain gits meller.”

We waited, and the tumult died away and with it my hope of witnessing the capture. After a little we heard a sort of scrambling in the bushes.

“That’s Ag,” said granpap. “He’d git out o’ the run ef he had to break his neck fer it.”

A moment passed and Snead joined us, slightly limping.

“I was jumpin’ a blame rock, an’ it tumbled me off,” he said. “What’s the matter with the ol’ man?”

“Not a durn thing,” said granpap. “I jest ’lowed I’d drap out.”

To show his scorn of subterfuge, he got up and took a few firm steps, then sat down, white with pain but grinning with triumph.

“I’d give my coat an’ shirt to go with the boys,” said Snead. “Ef I hadn’t struck on that sore knee I could ’a’ kept up all right.”

“Reckon I couldn’t,” said granpap. “When I got old I knowed it. Time ain’t slipped nothin’ on me.”

“Well, I ain’t give in yit,” Snead asserted, his yellow-brown eyes shimmering. “These woods’ll be my back yard as long as I’m topside o’ earth, an’ when I’m under it I’ll rattle the dirt ef I can.”

“I’d do a lot myself,” said granpap, “ef I could do it with my tongue.”

Snead’s retort was lost in the returning tumult. The racers were coming back with a rush that made us think of scurrying to refuge. Sam afterward related what had happened.

“When I got out of the thicket,” he said, “I started over the rocks like a jumpin’ spider. Thet ol’ devil went straight like he was goin’ round the mountain, but the dogs kept bearin’ down on his upper side an’ brought him up under a cliff that he hadn’t counted on meetin’. He had to turn on ’em then, but they wouldn’t rush in an’ he wouldn’t rush out. The foam was flyin’ an’ Buck was all bloody. Them tusks had scraped some sense into him, an’ he was standin’ off, yappin’ an’ yowin’. Little ol’ Bub was jumpin’ up an’ down an’ wantin’ like fire to go in, but he knowed better. ‘All we can do,’ I says to Len when the boys come up, ‘is to hold the feller here till Ben comes with ol’ Drum.’ An’ about that time the b’ar decided to come out an’ give them dogs a skeer. You run me in here, he thinks, an’ by golly I’ll run ye out. An’ he lit fer ’em. You never seen dogs so skeert. An’ that’s why we all come back. ’Cause that thing wanted to. He jest rid the saplin’s after them dogs. It was the masterest sight, him goin’ over ever’thing like he had wings in his insides.”

He was “riding the saplings” when we saw him, but we had no time for leisurely observation. We were in the most open strip of the brush and this was the highway for the chase. The dogs seemed divided between fear and shame. They rushed forward with their tongues out, but every few rods would fling their heads back as if to turn on their pursuer; then at sight of him they would give an apparently dying screech and flee forward again.

“Scroonch up to that poplar,” called Snead, “an’ they’ll pass us.” The poplar was an immense one, five feet through at the butt, and was only three or four yards from us; but we had barely time to cross the distance and crowd against the tree before the wild runners flew by. I felt that the earth must be moving; that the whole mountain was a penumbration of that black, vaulting body; the air ought to bleed, torn by those merciless tusks.

They passed out of sight, to our left; and very soon, on our right, we saw Sam. His shoes were ripped open, and his overalls, in strips from his knees down, revealed legs and ankles scratched and bloody. In his hard-set face I scarcely recognized the softly placating features of Sam. As he passed us he was muttering something about old Drum. “Ef ol’ Drum’ll ever git here!” A few minutes later Len and Ted came up.

“Where’s Burl?” asked granpap.

“Back yander, tendin’ that no-’count dog o’ hisn.”

They hurried on, and Len called over his shoulder: “Come on, pap, with yer rope. I hear Ben an’ ol’ Drum. We’ll git him now.”

We listened, and a long, deep, fresh-sounding bay echoed through the woods. Granpap grabbed his rope, dropping his lameness and twenty years of his age. “Smoke yer heels, boys,” he said; and like boys we followed. “He’s bayed agin,” said granpap, as we neared a discord of indescribable sounds. Soon we saw the boar, on top of a lichen-covered boulder, sitting on his haunches, his eyes, like two little black stars, pouring vitriol that ought to have made the forest crumple. The rock itself, with its green, black, and creamy spots and veinlike roots climbing over it, seemed a part of the creature’s body, making a monster as superior to attack as granite, as formidable as if Nature had condensed her forces into his resisting form. The yapping dogs at the base of the rock, and the men with their ceaseless “sic, sic,” were as negligible as squeaking gnats.

Sam was the only one with any apparent dignity. He had yielded to fatigue, and lay motionless on the ground, probably forty feet from me and an equal distance from the group about the rock.

A long musical sound came from old Drum. It was not loud, but of a sure timbre that made the woods quiver. The boar threw up his head and his sides thumped. From my safe distance I fancied a trembling among all the little ruffled scales of the lichens. Suddenly Ben’s young voice called out from somewhere above the rock “Go it, Drum, sic ’im, sic ’im!” and Drum’s huge yellow body vaulted from the slope to the upper edge of the boulder. At that instant the boar shot into the air, curved downward, and struck the ground near the men, scattering them to cover. He rolled for a second, like a knotted ball, then found his four feet properly under him and made straight for Sam.

For a second I felt blinded by a swirling black cloud, then stood clear-sighted in a small but painfully vivid human world. Nature with her everlasting forces retreated and consciousness was trivially reabsorbed in the by-product, humanity. I could even see Coretta, a pale widow, in the country store with a basket of eggs, insisting on an exchange of black percale; and myself distractedly guiding the destinies of her fatherless young.

But Sam was quicker than the boar. With one motion he leaped three feet from the ground, and with arms abnormally long seized the limb of a tree that stretched above him, drawing his body up accordion-fashion and hanging there like a half-opened jackknife. The boar dashed under him and on toward me. I resigned life resentfully. My passion for union with earth was spent. There was nothing but ignominy in being trampled into the ground and muddily tusked.

Drum saved me. I saw him at the boar’s side trying to reach his ear. The boar whirled in defense, and Len cried: “Run, God A’mighty, run!” I supposed he meant me, but I couldn’t move. I had to see whether Drum got that ear or not. My arm was grabbed and I was viciously shaken. “Ain’t you got a bit o’ sense?” That didn’t seem to matter, but when I had been pulled to safety I managed to say: “Thank you, Len, I guess I’ll--faint.” Which I did, but it was not a desperate lapse. I was up in a few minutes, watching the game between Drum and the boar, and commenting on it in a meekly diminished voice.

It was worth seeing. Drum clearly understood his difficulty. He was to get his teeth into the boar’s ear and keep his own body safely guarded from the tossing tusks. They shuttled back and forth, for every time that Drum was near getting a hold the boar would whirl in an effort to drive his tusk into the dog, and this would cause a face-about for both of them. I did not see how the game of wits and muscle could end except by the exhaustion of one or the other; and the boar was doubtless using his last strength. It seemed shockingly unfair for Drum to come so fresh to the contest.

“Be right still; be right still,” Len would say, though nobody needed the adjuration, all being tense and motionless. “Drum’s gittin’ him winded. He’ll land in a minute. Be right still.”

I understood what he meant by “landing” when Drum finally sailed upward and dropped down on the boar’s back just behind his ears.

“He’s got him!” shouted Sam. “Git yer sticks, ever’body. I’ll grab his leg. Y’all be ready to come in, er he’ll tear me up ef Drum’s holt breaks.”

But this time Drum held on, and the boar spun round and round helplessly. It seemed death to approach him, but Sam got behind a rock, lay down, and reached out a long arm, ready to grab a flying hind leg if it should come near.

“Len, you an’ pap git the noose over his nose. Where’s that Burl? Let him an’ Ben hold my legs.” But Burl called from a prudent distance: “He ain’t winded yit. You’d all better keep out.”

“Dern yer white skin,” said Sam, “git back to yer dry-goods box in Asheville. Ben, you an’ Ted ketch holt o’ my legs.” They obeyed, bracing their feet against the rock, getting ready, it appeared, to pull Sam in two. Len, holding a big club, took the dangerous position of granpap’s guard in his attempts to noose the boar. Snead was to tie another rope about the leg if Sam succeeded in grabbing it.

There was a ragged, throaty shout. Sam had him. Snead, too reckless, rushed in on the wrong side and had to rush out again.

“Tie him, kain’t you?” puffed Sam. “I ain’t no snake, I kain’t live in two pieces!” Snead made another rush and got the rope securely tied. This freed Sam, who made a grab for the other hapless hind leg of the boar, and the two were then made fast together. The animal, crazed by the outrage, tossed his tusks in a last desperation, and Drum’s hold broke. The dog was thrown ten feet, just as granpap, by a miraculous move, got the noose around the boar’s nose above his tusks.

“Pap’s done it!” cried Len. And “Pap’s got him!” echoed Sam. “Me fer granpap!” shouted Ben. “Smart fer ol’ bones,” said Snead; and “Hurrah, granpap!” said I, to be with the tide.

“I couldn’t ’a’ beat it,” said Burl, and Len turned on him. “Ef you want to marry my girl, you’ll have to carry a better gun’n I do.”

“You got to pay fer my dog,” said Burl, backing off.

“When hell cools butter,” said Len. “Shet yer mouth ef you can do it with them tight breeches on.” Then his angry spurt was over. “You goin’ to he’p carry this thing in home?”

Burl came trippingly forward and looked at the boar. Forefeet and back were tied, and a long pole thrust under them. Safely trussed, but the tusks looked alive. “I’ll he’p at his hind feet,” said Burl, and laughter rolled over him.

“You walk ahead to keep the bears an’ Injuns off us,” said Len. “Ben, you an’ Sam git aholt the hind end o’ that pole. Me an’ Ted’ll take the front.”

They took off their jackets and, doubling them up, placed them between their shoulders and the pole.

“Won’t it hurt him?” I asked, as they swung their load.

“Hurt that feller? I jest wish we could,” said Sam.

I remembered that the creature was revenue and hardened my heart. We ought to get twenty-five dollars, at least, for him, half of which would be mine, the other half going to Sam and Len.

As it was easier to keep around the side of the hill with their heavy load, and come into the trail lower down, I said that I would go up to the ridge and get Serena. I should be glad to be out of sight of the pathetic monster swinging in torture from the pole.

I got up the hill, and at some distance caught sight of Serena’s fire. She was placidly singing, in utter detachment from little Ross, who was “playing horse” up and down the ridge. The song was her favorite ballad about the cruelty of sundering true lovers. She liked to repeat it; and though she usually began singing in a robust major key, with each repetition her tone would become more plaintive. She was now at her happiest, in an unbearably wailing minor. The girl, persecuted by obdurate parents, had wandered from home

“And rambled the green growing meadows around, Until she came to a clear broad river, And under a green shade-tree sat down.

She then took o--u--t a silver dagger-r, And percht it thr--ough her lily-white breast, And these words uttered as she staggered, ‘True love, true l--o--ve, I’m goin’ to rest.’”

And her lover, being at that very moment on that clear, broad river, and passing that very tree,

“He ran, he r--a--n, he ran unto her,”

and picking up the same silver dagger, he “percht it through his weeping heart,” and Serena sang to the world:

“Let this be a gr--ea--t and awful warning, To all who ke--e--p true lovers apart; To all who ke--e--p true lovers apart.”

“Serena,” said I gently, “wouldn’t you just as soon say ‘pierced’ as ‘percht’?”

“That wouldn’t be doin’ right by granmommie. She always sung it thataway, an’ she was a hundred and three when she died, an’ died in her cheer. She knowed what she’s about to the last minute. She sung it ‘percht,’ an’ I wouldn’t change it noways. My, but you look like you’d been bee-huntin’ in a locus’ patch!”

“I’ve had a good time, Serena.”

“So’ve I,” she said, getting up. “An’ I didn’t resk my life fer it nuther.”

We were to meet the men at the place where the spotted sow lay tied. Serena and I arrived first by a few minutes, as the men travelled slowly with their burden, and stopped frequently to “change the bone.” We found the sow quiet and sullen. There was only the one pig with her.

“We must find the other pigs,” I said to the men, when they came up blowing and put their load down.

“We kain’t do that. It’s turnin’ colder, an’ it’ll be night now ’fore we git in home with this chap.”

“But they’re so little! They’ll starve!”

“Oh, half of ’em’ll scratch through alive. Let’s go fer water, boys.”

Everybody but myself went round the side of the hill to the spring. I stayed to ponder on the extravagant method of bringing in wild hogs. The thought of those ten or more little black-and-pink creatures shivering in the woods until starvation released them was more than I could passively bear. I looked at the rope, and found it tied in what to me was an unalterable knot. But I could cut it by laying it against a rock and rubbing it with the sharp edge of another rock. I found the stones I wanted and set to work, making the rope as ragged as possible. When the stringy ends dropped no one would have suspected that the rope had been cut. The sow rushed off with her little pig following, and they were soon out of sight. Then I found that I too was longing for water, and hurried to the spring. I knew I should find the others lingering, each wanting to get in one more comment on the inexhaustible subject of the capture.

“We’d better git back,” said Len at last. “Pap, you can drive the sow in. Thanks to gracious, we don’t have to carry _her_.”

It was an angry and bewildered group that paused at the spot where the sow had been tied.

“Dern her sides, wha’d she mean by layin’ here all day an’ breakin’ the rope at the last minute?” said Sam. “It wuz a good rope too. There wuzn’t a weak spot in it.”

“I reckon it _wuz_ a good rope,” complained Len. “That young-un got holt o’ my plough-lines. I wouldn’t ’a’ give ’em fer that ol’ sow.”

“Ain’t it a cussin’ shame now Mis’ Dolly won’t git nothin’? Ha’f that sow would ’a’ been hern. ’Course the b’ar is pap’s. It wuz pap ’at got in the throw that tied him.”

It was a moment before I got the full meaning of Sam’s words, and when I did my astounded silence seemed to create a slight embarrassment.

“Pap’ll give her a part,” said Len, “ef she wants to take it. Mebbe she didn’t ’zackly mean what she told him ’bout havin’ what he could ketch. It’ll disappint pap, but we ain’t goin’ to have no hard feelin’ ’bout an ol’ b’ar hog.”

“I’m shore glad,” said Sam, “that she saw pap ketch him, an’s got her own eyes fer it. I wouldn’t take a throwed-away dish-rag off’n her underhand. Ez fer her not meanin’ what she said, her word’s as good in the woods as ’tis in the meetin’-house. Ever’body’ll tell ye that. ’Tain’t jest me a-talkin’.”

My inward tumult subsided. There was no profit in rebellion when the elements were against me. I looked at granpap, silent and apart, chewing his bit of dogwood.

“What about it, granpap?”

“What y’all say’s good enough fer me.”

No help there, so I yielded with a gaiety that left them slightly puzzled, not understanding the lubricant value of a good laugh at oneself.

“The victory is yours, granpap. Let’s get him home.”

There was a buzz of spirited talk, all to show granpap that he was to be congratulated. When we started again Snead proposed going by Abe Siler’s.

“He’ll buy that feller right off the pole, an’ we’ll save time by drappin’ him there. Abe’s wantin’ to git a hog to pen right now, an’ he’ll give you six dollars fer that b’ar.”

“Six dollars!” I exclaimed. “Three weeks with all the corn he wants, and he’ll weigh out forty dollars’ worth of meat!”

“It ’ud make a big hole in my pile o’ corn,” said granpap.

“You gittin’ it wrong, Mis’ Dolly,” said Snead. “B’ar meat as old as that feller is stringy an’ tough, an’ don’t make no grease to talk about. Ain’t hardly anybody’ll buy it. Ol’ Abe ain’t pertickler ef he gits it cheap. He’ll take the green meat to Carson an’ sell it. Six dollars is top money fer him.”

“Yer talkin’ right, Ag,” said granpap. “Let’s go by Abe’s.”

We went by Abe’s, and granpap pocketed five dollars for the hog, the buyer considering six a “masterous price.”

Everybody seemed happy going home, except for a few regrets over the sow that got away, and a wail from little Ross for his lost pig. Everybody except myself. I was reflecting heavily in terms of profit and loss. All of my farm-help had given a day’s work; they would give another to-morrow, helping Snead. Four men two days meant a loss to me of eight days’ labor. Coretta would surely shame me into contributing toward new shoes and overalls for Sam. I must also count my disturbing escape from starting a feud; must even consider future entanglements on that score. Nor should I forget the emotional waste due to seeing every member of the party narrowly and frequently elude death from pitching head over heels into a rock-bed. And to its hopeless depths I must consider the probability of becoming indentured to the family of some ghost who had sacrificed his fleshly part in bringing out “my” hogs; that is, if I persisted in exploiting my claim.