But he was about fifty yards away, eating buck vines, so I brought him back, and we taken Mister Ernest’s galluses and my belt and the whang leather loop off Mister Ernest’s horn and tied the saddle back on Dan. It didn’t look like much, but maybe it would hold.
“Provided you don’t let me jump him through no more grapevines without hollering first,” Mister Ernest said.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “I’ll holler first next time — provided you’ll holler a little quicker when you touch him next time too.” But it was all right; we jest had to be a little easy getting up. “Now which-a-way?” I said. Because we couldn’t hear nothing now, after wasting all this time. And this was new country, sho enough. It had been cut over and growed up in thickets we couldn’t ‘a’ seen over even standing up on Dan.
But Mister Ernest never even answered. He jest turned Dan along the bank of the bayou where it was a little more open and we could move faster again, soon as Dan and us got used to that homemade cinch strop and got a little confidence in it. Which jest happened to be east, or so I thought then, because I never paid no particular attention to east then because the sun — I don’t know where the morning had went, but it was gone, the morning and the frost, too — was up high now.
And then we heard him. No, that’s wrong; what we heard was shots. And that was when we realized how fur we had come, because the only camp we knowed about in that direction was the Hollyknowe camp, and Hollyknowe was exactly twenty-eight miles from Van Dorn, where me and Mister Ernest lived — just the shots, no dogs nor nothing. If old Eagle was still behind him and the buck was still alive, he was too wore out now to even say, “Here he comes.”
“Don’t touch him!” I hollered. But Mister Ernest remembered that cinch strop, too, and he jest let Dan off the snaffle. And Dan heard them shots, too, picking his way through the thickets, hopping the vines and logs when he could and going under them when he couldn’t.
And sho enough, it was jest like before — two or three men squatting and creeping among the bushes, looking for blood that Eagle had done already told them wasn’t there. But we never stopped this time, jest trotting on by. Then Mister Ernest swung Dan until we was going due north.
“Wait!” I hollered. “Not this way.”
But Mister Ernest jest turned his face back over his shoulder. It looked tired, too, and there was a smear of mud on it where that ’ere grapevine had snatched him off the horse.
“Don’t you know where he’s heading?” he said. “He’s done done his part, give everybody a fair open shot at him, and now he’s going home, back to that brake in our bayou. He ought to make it exactly at dark.”
And that’s what he was doing. We went on. It didn’t matter to hurry now. There wasn’t no sound nowhere; it was that time in the early afternoon in November when don’t nothing move or cry, not even birds, the peckerwoods and yellowhammers and jays, and it seemed to me like I could see all three of us — me and Mister Ernest and Dan — and Eagle, and the other dogs, and that big old buck, moving through the quiet woods in the same direction, headed for the same place, not running now but walking, that had all run the fine race the best we knowed how, and all three of us now turned like on a agreement to walk back home, not together in a bunch because we didn’t want to worry or tempt one another, because what we had all three spent this morning doing was no play-acting jest for fun, but was serious, and all three of us was still what we was — that old buck that had to run, not because he was skeered, but because running was what he done the best and was proudest at; and Eagle and the dogs that chased him, not because they hated or feared him, but because that was the thing they done the best and was proudest at; and me and Mister Ernest and Dan, that run him not because we wanted his meat, which would be too tough to eat anyhow, or his head to hang on a wall, but because now we could go back and work hard for eleven months making a crop, so we would have the right to come back here next November — all three of us going back home now, peaceful and separate, until next year, next time.
Then we seen him for the first time. We was out of the cut-over now; we could even ‘a’ cantered, except that all three of us was long past that. So we was walking, too, when we come on the dogs — the puppies and one of the old ones — played out, laying in a little wet swag, panting, jest looking up at us when we passed. Then we come to a long open glade, and we seen the three other old dogs and about a hundred yards ahead of them Eagle, all walking, not making no sound; and then suddenly, at the fur end of the glade, the buck hisself getting up from where he had been resting for the dogs to come up, getting up without no hurry, big, big as a mule, tall as a mule, and turned, and the white underside of his tail for a second or two more before the thicket taken him.
It might ‘a’ been a signal, a good-by, a farewell. Still walking, we passed the other three old dogs in the middle of the glade, laying down, too; and still that hundred yards ahead of them, Eagle, too, not laying down, because he was still on his feet, but his legs was spraddled and his head was down; maybe jest waiting until we was out of sight of his shame, his eyes saying plain as talk when we passed, “I’m sorry, boys, but this here is all.”
Mister Ernest stopped Dan. “Jump down and look at his feet,” he said.
“Nothing wrong with his feet,” I said. “It’s his wind has done give out.”
“Jump down and look at his feet,” Mister Ernest said.
So I done it, and while I was stooping over Eagle I could hear the pump gun go, “Snick-cluck. Snick-cluck. Snick-cluck” three times, except that I never thought nothing then. Maybe he was jest running the shells through to be sho it would work when we seen him again or maybe to make sho they was all buckshot. Then I got up again, and we went on, still walking; a little west of north now, because when we seen his white flag that second or two before the thicket hid it, it was on a beeline for that notch in the bayou.
And it was evening, too, now. The wind had done dropped and there was a edge to the air and the sun jest touched the tops of the trees. And he was taking the easiest way, too, now, going straight as he could. When we seen his foot in the soft places he was running for a while at first after his rest. But soon he was walking, too, like he knowed, too, where Eagle and the dogs was.
And then we seen him again. It was the last time — a thicket, with the sun coming through a hole onto it like a searchlight. He crashed jest once; then he was standing there broadside to us, not twenty yards away, big as a statue and red as gold in the sun, and the sun sparking on the tips of his horns — they was twelve of them — so that he looked like he had twelve lighted candles branched around his head, standing there looking at us while Mister Ernest raised the gun and aimed at his neck, and the gun went, “Click. Snick-cluck. Click. Snick-cluck. Click.
Snick-cluck” three times, and Mister Ernest still holding the gun aimed while the buck turned and give one long bound, the white underside of his tail like a blaze of fire, too, until the thicket and the shadows put it out; and Mister Ernest laid the gun slow and gentle back across the saddle in front of him, saying quiet and peaceful, and not much louder than jest breathing, “God dawg. God dawg.”
Then he jogged me with his elbow and we got down, easy and careful because of that ere cinch strop, and he reached into his vest and taken out one of the cigars. It was busted where I had fell on it, I reckon, when we hit the ground. He throwed it away and taken out the other one.
It was busted, too, so he bit off a hunk of it to chew and throwed the rest away. And now the sun was gone even from the tops of the trees and there wasn’t nothing left but a big red glare in the west.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I ain’t going to tell them you forgot to load your gun. For
