“Yes, sir, I will.”
Buddy led the pony up, and the old man extended his hand without rising. Henry put aside his cobbling and followed him on to the porch. “Come out again,” he said diffidently, giving Bayard’s hand a single pump-handle shake, and from a slobbering inquisitive surging of half-grown hounds Buddy reached up his hand.
“Be lookin’ fer you,” he said briefly, and Bayard wheeled away, and when he looked back they lifted their hands gravely. Then Buddy shouted after him and he reined Perry about and returned. Henry had vanished, and he reappeared with a weighted tow sack.
“I nigh fergot it,” he said. “Jug of cawn pappy’s sendin’ in to yo’ granddaddy. You won’t git no better’n this in Looeyvul ner nowhar else, neither,” he added with quiet pride. Bayard thanked him and Buddy fastened the sack to the pommel, where it lay solidly against his leg.
“There. That’ll ride.”
“Yes, that’ll ride. Much obliged.”
“So long.”
“So long.”
Perry moved on, and he looked back. They still stood there, quiet and grave and steadfast. Beside the kitchen door the fox, Ellen, sat, watching him covertly; near her the half-grown puppies rolled and played in the sunlight. The sun was an hour high above the western hills; the road wound on into the trees.
He looked back again. The house sprawled its rambling length in the wintry afternoon, its smoke like a balanced plume on the windless sky. The door was empty, and he shook Perry into his easy, tireless fox trot, the jug of whisky jouncing a little against his knee.
5
Where the dim, infrequent road to MacCallum’s left the main road, rising, he halted Perry and sat for a while in the sunset. Jefferson, fourteen miles. Rafe and the other boys would not be along for some time yet, what with Christmas Eve in town and the slow, festive gathering of the county. Still, they may have left town early, so as to get home by dark; might not be an hour away. The sun’s rays, slanting, released the chill they had held prisoned in the ground during the perpendicular hours and it rose slowly about him as he sat Perry in the middle of the road, and slowly his blood cooled with the cessation of Perry’s motion. He turned the pony’s head away from town and shook him into his fox trot again.
Darkness overtook him soon, but he rode on beneath the leafless trees, along the pale road in the gathering starlight. Already Perry was thinking of stable and supper and he went on with tentative, inquiring tossings of his head, but obediently and without slackening his gait, knowing not where they were going nor why, save that it was away from home, and a little dubious, though trustfully. The chill grew in the silence and the loneliness and the monotony. Bayard reined Perry to a halt and untied the jug and drank, and fastened it to the saddle again.
The hills rose wild and black about them. No sign of any habitation, no trace of man’s hand did they encounter. On all sides the hills rolled blackly away in the starlight, or when the road dipped into valleys where the ruts were already stiffening into ironlike shards that clattered beneath Perry’s hooves, they stood darkly towering and sinister overhead, lifting their leafless trees against the spangled sky. Where a stream of winter seepage trickled across the road Perry’s feet crackled brittlely in thin ice and Bayard slacked the reins while the pony snuffed at the water. He drank from the jug again.
He fumbled a match clumsily in his numb fingers and lit a cigarette, and pushed his sleeve back from his wrist. Eleven-thirty. “Well, Perry,” his voice sounded loud and sudden. in the stillness and the darkness and the cold, “I reckon we better look for a place to hole up till morning.” Perry raised his head and snorted, as though he understood the words, as though he would enter the bleak loneliness in which his rider moved if he could. They went on, mounting again.
The darkness spread away, lessening a little presently where occasional fields lay in the vague starlight, breaking the monotony of trees; and after a time during which he rode with the reins slack on Perry’s neck and his hands in his pockets, seeking warmth between leather and groin, a cotton house squatted beside the road, its roof dusted over with a frosty sheen as of silver. Not long, he told himself, leaning forward and laying his hand on Perry’s neck, feeling the warm, tireless blood there. “House soon, Perry, if we look sharp.”
Again Perry whinnied a little, as though he understood, and presently he swerved from the road, and as Bayard reined him back, he too saw the faint wagon trail leading away toward a low vague clump of trees. “Good boy, Perry,” he said, slackening the reins again.
The house was a cabin. It was dark, but a hound came gauntly from beneath it and bayed at him and continued its uproar while he reined Perry to the door and knocked on it with his numb hand. From within the house at last a voice, and he shouted “Hello” again. Then he added, “I’m lost. Open the door.” The hound bellowed at him indefatigably. After a moment the door cracked on a dying glow of embers, emitting a rank odor of negroes, and against the crack of warmth, a head.
“You, Jule,” the head commanded, “hush yo’ mouf.” The hound ceased obediently and retired beneath the house, though still growling. “Who dar?”
“I’m lost,” Bayard repeated. “Can I stay in your barn tonight?”
“Ain’t got no barn,” the negro answered. “Dey’s anudder house down de road a piece.”
“I’ll pay you,” Bayard said. He fumbled in his pocket with his numb hand. “My horse is tired out.” The negro’s head peered around the door, against the crack of firelight. “Come on, Uncle,” Bayard added impatiently. “Don’t keep a man standing in the cold.”
“Who is you, white folks?”
“Bayard Sartoris, from Jefferson. Here.” He extended his hand. The negro made no effort to take it.
“Banker Sartoris’s folks?”
“Yes. Here.”
“Wait a minute.” The door closed. But Bayard tightened the reins and Perry moved readily and circled the house confidently and went on among frost-stiffened cotton stalks that clattered drily about his knees. As Bayard dismounted on to frozen rutted earth beneath a gaping doorway, a lantern appeared from the cabin, swung low among the bitten stalks and the shadowy scissoring of the man’s legs, and the negro came up with a shapeless bundle under his arm and held the lantern while Bayard stripped the saddle and bridle off.
“How you manage to git so fur fum home dis time o’ night, white folks?” he asked curiously.
“Lost,” Bayard answered briefly. “Where can I put my horse?”
The negro swung the lantern into a stall. Perry stepped carefully over the sill and turned into the lantern light, his eyes rolling in phosphorescent gleams, and Bayard followed and rubbed him down with the dry side of the saddle blanket. The negro had vanished; he now appeared with a few ears of corn and shucked them into Perry’s manger beside the pony’s eager nuzzling. “You gwine be keerful about fire, ain’t you, white folks?” he asked.
“Sure. I won’t strike any matches at all.”
“I got all my stock and tools and feed in here,” the negro explained. “I can’t affo’d to git burnt out. Insu’ance don’t reach dis fur fum town.”
“Sure,” Bayard repeated. He shut Perry’s stall and while the negro watched him he drew the sack forth from where he had set it against the wall, and produced the jug. “Got a cup here?” The negro vanished again; Bayard could see the lantern through the cracks in the crib in the opposite wall; then he emerged with a rusty can from which he blew a bursting puff of chaff. They drank. Behind them Perry munched his corn. The negro showed him the ladder to the loft.
“You won’t fergit about dat fire, white folks?” he repeated anxiously.
“Sure,” Bayard said. “Good night.” He laid his hand on the ladder, and the negro stopped him and handed him the shapeless bundle he had brought out with him.
“Ain’t got but one to spare, but it’ll help some. You gwine sleep cole, tonight.” It was a quilt, ragged and filthy to the touch, and impregnated with that unmistakable odor of negroes.
“Thanks,” Bayard answered. “Much obliged to you. Good night.”
“Good night, white folks.”
The lantern winked away, to the criss-crossing of the negro’s legs, and Bayard mounted into darkness and the dry, pungent scent of hay. Here, in the darkness, he made himself a nest of it and crawled into it and rolled himself into the quilt, filth and odor and all, and thrust his icy hands inside his shirt, against his flinching chest. After a time and slowly his hands began to warm, tingling a little, but still his body lay shivering and jerking with weariness and with cold.
Below him Perry munched steadily and peacefully in the darkness, occasionally he stamped, and gradually the jerking of Bayard’s body ceased. Before he slept he uncovered his arm and looked at the luminous dial on his wrist. One o’clock. It was already Christmas.
The sun waked him, falling in red bars through the cracks in the wall, and he lay for a while in his hard bed, with chill, bright air on his face like icy water, wondering where he was. Then he remembered, and moving, found that he was stiff with stale cold and that his blood began to move through his limbs in small pellets like bird-shot.
