“That’s a fact,” the first said. “Houston was a secret man.”
“He wasn’t the only secret man around here,” a fourth said. To Cotton it sounded sudden, since the fourth man had said no word before. He sat against the post, his hat slanted forward so that his face was invisible, believing that he could feel their eyes. He watched the sliver peel slow and smooth from the stick, ahead of his worn knife-blade. “I got to say something,” he told himself.
“He warn’t no smarter than nobody else,” he said. Then he wished he had not spoken. He could see their feet beneath his hat-brim. He trimmed the stick, watching the knife, the steady sliver. “It’s got to trim off smooth,” he told himself. “It don’t dast to break.” He was talking; he could hear his voice: “Swelling around like he was the biggest man in the county.
Setting that ere dog on folks’ stock.” He believed that he could feel their eyes, watching their feet, watching the sliver trim smooth and thin and unhurried beneath the knife blade. Suddenly he thought about the gun, the loud crash, the jarring shock. “Maybe I’ll have to kill them all,” he said to himself — a mild man in worn overalls, with a gaunt face and lack-luster eyes like a sick man, whittling a stick with a thin hand, thinking about killing them.
“Not them; just the words, the talk.” But the talk was familiar, the intonation, the gestures; but so was Houston. He had known Houston all his life: that prosperous and overbearing man. “With a dog,” Cotton said, watching the knife return and bite into another sliver. “A dog that et better than me. I work, and eat worse than his dog. If I had been his dog, I would not have … We’re better off without him,” he said, blurted. He could feel their eyes, sober, intent.
“He always did rile Ernest,” the first said.
“He taken advantage of me,” Cotton said, watching the infallible knife. “He taken advantage of ever man he could.”
“He was a overbearing man,” the Sheriff said.
Cotton believed that they were still watching him, hidden behind their detached voices.
“Smart, though,” the third said.
“He wasn’t smart enough to win that suit against Ernest over that hog.”
“That’s so. How much did Ernest get outen that lawing? He ain’t never told, has he?”
Cotton believed that they knew how much he had got from the suit. The hog had come into his lot one October. He penned it up; he tried by inquiry to find the owner. But none claimed it until he had wintered it on his corn. In the spring Houston claimed the hog. They went to court. Houston was awarded the hog, though he was assessed a sum for the wintering of it, and one dollar as pound-fee for a stray. “I reckon that’s Ernest’s business,” the Sheriff said after a time.
Again Cotton heard himself talking, blurting. “It was a dollar,” he said, watching his knuckles whiten about the knife handle. “One dollar.” He was trying to make his mouth stop talking. “After all I taken offen him.…”
“Juries does queer things,” the Sheriff said, “in little matters. But in big matters they’re mostly right.”
Cotton whittled, steady and deliberate. “At first you’ll want to run,” he told himself. “But you got to finish it. You got to count a hundred, if it needs, and finish it.”
“I heard that dog again last night,” the third said.
“You did?” the Sheriff said.
“It ain’t been home since the day the horse come in with the saddle empty,” the first said.
“It’s out hunting, I reckon,” the Sheriff said. “It’ll come in when it gets hungry.”
Cotton trimmed at the stick. He did not move.
“Niggers claim a hound’ll howl till a dead body’s found,” the second said.
“I’ve heard that,” the Sheriff said. After a time a car came up and the Sheriff got into it. The car was driven by a deputy. “We’ll be late for supper,” the Sheriff said. The car mounted the hill; the sound died away. It was getting toward sundown.
“He ain’t much bothered,” the third said.
“Why should he be?” the first said. “After all, a man can leave his house and go on a trip without telling everybody.”
“Looks like he’d a unsaddled that mare, though,” the second said. “And there’s something the matter with that dog. It ain’t been home since, and it ain’t treed. I been hearing it ever night. It ain’t treed. It’s howling. It ain’t been home since Tuesday. And that was the day Houston rid away from the store here on that mare.”
Cotton was the last one to leave the store. It was after dark when he reached home. He ate some cold bread and loaded the shotgun and sat beside the open door until the hound began to howl. Then he descended the hill and entered the bottom.
The dog’s voice guided him; after a while it ceased, and he saw its eyes. They were now motionless; in the red glare of the explosion he saw the beast entire in sharp relief. He saw it in the act of leaping into the ensuing welter of darkness; he heard the thud of its body. But he couldn’t find it. He looked carefully, quartering back and forth, stopping to listen.
But he had seen the shot strike it and hurl it backward, and he turned aside for about a hundred yards in the pitch darkness and came to a slough. He flung the shotgun into it, hearing the sluggish splash, watching the vague water break and recover, until the last ripple died. He went home and to bed.
He didn’t go to sleep though, although he knew he would not hear the dog. “It’s dead,” he told himself, lying on his quilt pallet in the dark. “I saw the bullets knock it down. I could count the shot. The dog is dead.” But still he did not sleep. He did not need sleep; he did not feel tired or stale in the mornings, though he knew it was not the dog. He knew he would not hear the dog again, and that sleep had nothing to do with the dog. So he took to spending the nights sitting up in a chair in the door, watching the fireflies and listening to the frogs and the owls.
He entered Varner’s store. It was in mid-afternoon; the porch was empty, save for the clerk, whose name was Snopes. “Been looking for you for two-three days,” Snopes said. “Come inside.”
Cotton entered. The store smelled of cheese and leather and new earth. Snopes went behind the counter and reached from under the counter a shotgun. It was caked with mud. “This is yourn, ain’t it?” Snopes said. “Vernon Tull said it was. A nigger squirl hunter found it in a slough.”
Cotton came to the counter and looked at the gun. He did not touch it; he just looked at it. “It ain’t mine,” he said.
“Ain’t nobody around here got one of them old Hadley ten-gages except you,” Snopes said. “Tull says it’s yourn.”
“It ain’t none of mine,” Cotton said. “I got one like it. But mine’s to home.”
Snopes lifted the gun. He breeched it. “It had one empty and one load in it,” he said. “Who you reckon it belongs to?”
“I don’t know,” Cotton said. “Mine’s to home.” He had come to purchase food. He bought it: crackers, cheese, a tin of sardines. It was not dark when he reached home, yet he opened the sardines and ate his supper. When he lay down he did not even remove his overalls. It was as though he waited for something, stayed dressed to move and go at once. He was still waiting for whatever it was when the window turned gray and then yellow and then blue; when, framed by the square window, he saw against the fresh morning a single soaring speck. By sunrise there were three of them, and then seven.
All that day he watched them gather, wheeling and wheeling, drawing their concentric black circles, watching the lower ones wheel down and down and disappear below the trees. He thought it was the dog. “They’ll be through by noon,” he said. “It wasn’t a big dog.”
When noon came they had not gone away; there were still more of them, while still the lower ones dropped down and disappeared below the trees. He watched them until dark came, until they went away, flapping singly and sluggishly up from beyond the trees. “I got to eat,” he said. “With the work I got to do to-night.” He went to the hearth and knelt and took up a pine knot, and he was kneeling, nursing a match into flame, when he heard the hound again; the cry deep, timbrous, unmistakable, and sad. He cooked his supper and ate.
With his axe in his hand he descended through his meager corn patch. The cries of the hound could have guided him, but he did not need it. He had not reached the bottom before he believed that his nose was guiding him. The dog still howled. He paid it no attention, until the beast sensed him and ceased, as it had done before; again he saw its eyes. He paid no attention to them. He went to the hollow cypress trunk and swung his axe into it, the axe sinking helve-deep into the rotten wood. While he was tugging at it something flowed silent and savage out of the darkness behind him and struck him a slashing blow.
The axe had just come free; he fell with the axe in his hand, feeling the hot
