But they never caught him. The reached the dark quarters; they could see lights still burning in Mr Hubert’s house and somebody was blowing the fox-horn again and it wasn’t any boy and he had never heard a fox-horn sound mad before either, and he and Uncle Buck scattered out on the slope below Tennie’s cabin.
Then they heard the fyce, not trailing now but yapping, about a mile away, then the nigger whooped and they knew the fyce had faulted. It was at the creek. They hunted the banks both ways for more than an hour, but they couldn’t straighten Tomey’s Turl out.
At last Uncle Buck gave up and they started back toward the house, the fyce riding too now, in front of the nigger on the mule. They were just coming up the lane to the quarters; they could see on along the ridge to where Mr Hubert’s house was all dark now, when all of a sudden the fyce gave a yelp and jumped down from old Jake and hit the ground running and yelling every jump, and Uncle Buck was down too and had snatched him off the pony almost before he could clear his feet from the irons, and they ran too, on past the dark cabins toward the one where the fyce had treed. “We got him!” Uncle Buck said. “Run around to the back. Dont holler; just grab up a stick and knock on the back door, loud.”
Afterward, Uncle Buck admitted that it was his own mistake, that he had forgotten when even a little child should have known: not ever to stand right in front of or right behind a nigger when you scare him; but always to stand to one side of him. Uncle Buck forgot that.
He was standing facing the front door and right in front of it, with the fyce right in front of him yelling fire and murder every time it could draw a new breath; he said the first he knew was when the fyce gave a shriek and whirled and Tomey’s Turl was right behind it. Uncle Buck said he never even saw the door open; that the fyce just screamed once and ran between his legs and then Tomey’s Turl ran right clean over him.
He never even bobbled; he knocked Uncle Buck down and then caught him before he fell without even stopping, snatched him up under one arm, still running, and carried him along for about ten feet, saying, “Look out of here, old Buck. Look out of here, old Buck,” before he threw him away and went on. By that time they couldn’t even hear the fyce any more at all.
Uncle Buck wasn’t hurt; it was only the wind knocked out of him where Tomey’s Turl had thrown him down on his back. But he had been carrying the whisky bottle in his back pocket, saving the last drink until Tomey’s Turl was captured, and he refused to move until he knew for certain if it was just whisky and not blood.
So Uncle Buck laid over on his side easy, and he knelt behind him and raked the broken glass out of his pocket. Then they went on to the house. They walked. The nigger came up with the horses, but nobody said anything to Uncle Buck about riding again. They couldn’t hear the fyce at all now. “He was going fast, all right,” Uncle Buck said. “But I dont believe that even he will catch that fyce, I godfrey, what a night.”
“We’ll catch him tomorrow,” he said.
“Tomorrow, hell,” Uncle Buck said. “We’ll be at home tomorrow. And the first time Hubert Beauchamp or that nigger either one set foot on my land, I’m going to have them arrested for trespass and vagrancy.”
The house was dark. They could hear Mr Hubert snoring good now, as if he had settled down to road-gaiting at it. But they couldn’t hear anything from upstairs, even when they were inside the dark hall, at the foot of the stairs. “Likely hers will be at the back,” Uncle Buck said. “Where she can holler down to the kitchen without having to get up. Besides, an unmarried lady will sholy have her door locked with strangers in the house.” So Uncle Buck eased himself down on to the bottom step, and he knelt and drew Uncle Buck’s boots off.
Then he removed his own and set them against the wall, and he and Uncle Buck mounted the stairs, feeling their way up and into the upper hall. It was dark too, and still there was no sound anywhere except Mr Hubert snoring below, so they felt their way along the hall toward the front of the house, until they felt a door.
They could hear nothing beyond the door, and when Uncle Buck tried the knob, it opened. “All right,” Uncle Buck whispered. “Be quiet.” They could see a little now, enough to see the shape of the bed and the mosquito-bar.
Uncle Buck threw down his suspenders and unbuttoned his trousers and went to the bed and eased himself carefully down on to the edge of it, and he knelt again and drew Uncle Buck’s trousers off and he was just removing his own when Uncle Buck lifted the mosquito-bar and raised his feet and rolled into the bed. That was when Miss Sophonsiba sat up on the other side of Uncle Buck and gave the first scream.
III
When he reached home just before dinner-time the next day, he was just about worn out. He was too tired to eat, even if Uncle Buddy had waited to eat dinner first; he couldn’t have stayed on the pony another mile without going to sleep. In fact, he must have gone to sleep while he was telling Uncle Buddy, because the next thing he knew it was late afternoon and he was lying on some hay in the jolting wagon-bed, with Uncle Buddy sitting on the seat above him exactly the same way he sat a horse or sat in his rocking-chair before the kitchen hearth while he was cooking, holding the whip exactly as he held the spoon or fork he stirred and tasted with.
Uncle Buddy had some cold bread and meat and a jug of buttermilk wrapped in damp towsacks waiting when he waked up. He ate, sitting in the wagon in almost the last of the afternoon. They must have come fast, because they were not more than two miles from Mr Hubert’s. Uncle Buddy waited for him to eat.
Then he said, “Tell me again,” and he told it again: how he and Uncle Buck finally found a room without anybody in it, and Uncle Buck sitting on the side of the bed saying, “O godfrey, Cass. O godfrey, Cass,” and then they heard Mr Hubert’s feet on the stairs and watched the light come down the hall and Mr Hubert came in, in his nightshirt, and walked over and set the candle on the table and stood looking at Uncle Buck.
“Well, ‘Filus,” he said. “She’s got you at last.”
“It was an accident,” Uncle Buck said. “I swear to godfrey — —”
“Hah,” Mr Hubert said. “Dont tell me. Tell her that.”
“I did,” Uncle Buck said. “I did tell her. I swear to god — —”
“Sholy,” Mr Hubert said. “And just listen.” They listened a minute. He had been hearing her all the time. She was nowhere near as loud as at first; she was just steady. “Dont you want to go back in there and tell her again it was an accident, that you never meant nothing and to just excuse you and forget about it? All right.”
“All right what?” Uncle Buck said.
“Go back in there and tell her again,” Mr Hubert said. Uncle Buck looked at Mr Hubert for a minute. He batted his eyes fast.
“Then what will I come back and tell you?” he said.
“To me?” Mr Hubert said. “I would call that a horse of another colour. Wouldn’t you?”
Uncle Buck looked at Mr Hubert. He batted his eyes fast again. Then he stopped again. “Wait,” he said. “Be reasonable. Say I did walk into a lady’s bedroom, even Miss Sophonsiba’s; say, just for the sake of the argument, there wasn’t no other lady in the world but her and so I walked into hers and tried to get in bed with her, would I have took a nine-year-old boy with me?”
“Reasonable is just what I’m being,” Mr Hubert said. “You come into bear-country of your own free will and accord. All right; you were a grown man and you knew it was bear-country and you knew the way back out like you knew the way in and you had your chance to take it. But no. You had to crawl into the den and lay down by the bear.
And whether you did or didn’t know the bear was in it dont make any difference. So if you got back out of that den without even a claw-mark on you, I would not only be unreasonable, I’d be a damned fool. After all, I’d like a little peace and quiet and freedom myself, now I got a chance for it. Yes, sir. She’s got you, ‘Filus, and you know it. You run a hard race and you run a good one, but you skun the hen-house one time too many.”
“Yes,” Uncle Buck said. He drew his breath in and let it out again, slow and not loud. But
