“Sally! O-oh, Sally! I’m a-goin’ now.” Jim Gantt pushed back the limp
brim of his rusty felt hat and turned colorless eyes toward the cabin.
A young woman came from around the corner of the house. From each hand
dangled a bunch of squawking chickens. She did not speak until she had
reached the wagon.
“Now, Jim, you ain’t a-goin’ to let them fellers down in Andalushy git
you inter no blind tiger, air you?” The question came in a hopeless
drawl; hopeless, too, her look into the man’s sallow face.
“I ain’t tetched a drop in more’n three months, has I?” Jim’s answer was
in a sullen key.
“No, Jim, you bin doin’ right well lately.” She tossed the chickens into
the wagon, thoughtless of the hurt to their tied and twisted legs.
“They’re worth two bits apiece. That comes to two dollars, Jim. Don’t
you take a nickel less ’n that.”
Jim gave a listless pull at the cotton rope that served as reins.
“Git up thar, mule!” he called, and the wagon creaked off on wobbling
wheels down the hot, dusty road.
The woman looked scornfully at the man’s humpedover back for a full
minute, turned and walked to the house, a hard smile at her mouth.
Sally Gantt gave no heed to her drab surroundings as she crossed the
short stretch from road to cabin. All her twenty-two years had been
spent in this far end of Alabama, where one dreary, unkempt clearing in
the pine-woods is as dismal as the next. Comparisons which might add
their fuel to her smouldering discontent were spared her. Yet,
unconsciously, this bare, grassless country, with its flat miles of
monotonous pine forests, its flatter miles of rank cane-brake, served to
distil a bitter gall, poisoning all her thoughts.
The double cabin of Jim Gantt, its two rooms separated by a
“dog-trot”--an open porch cut through the center of the structure--was
counted a thing of luxury by his scattered neighbors. Gantt had built it
four years before, when he took up the land as his homestead, and Sally
for his wife. The labor of building this cabin had apparently drained
his stock of energy to the dregs. Beyond the necessary toil of planting
a small patch of corn, a smaller one of sweet potatoes and fishing in
the sluggish waters of Pigeon Creek, he now did nothing. Sally tended
the chickens, their one source of money, and gave intermittent attention
to the half-dozen razor-back hogs, which, with the scrubby mule,
comprised their toll of live-stock.
As the woman mounted the hewn log that answered as a step to the
dog-trot, she stopped to listen. From the kitchen came a faint noise; a
sound of crunching. Sally went on silent feet to the door. On the table,
littered with unwashed dishes, a cat was gnawing at a fish head;--a
gaunt beast, its lean flanks covered with wiry fur except where ragged
scars left exposed the bare hide. Its strong jaws crushed through the
thick skull-bone of the fish as if it were an empty bird’s egg.
Sally sprang to the stove and seized a pine knot.
“Dog-gone your yaller hide!” she screamed. “Git out of hyar!”
The cat wheeled with a start and faced the woman, its evil eyes
glittering.
“Git, you yaller devil!” the woman screamed again.
The cat sprang sidewise to the floor. Sally sent the jagged piece of
wood spinning through the air. It crashed against the far wall, missing
the beast by an inch. The animal arched its huge body and held its
ground.
“You varmint, I’ll git you this time!” Sally stooped for another piece
of wood. The cat darted through the door ahead of the flying missile.
“I ’ll kill you yit!” Sally shouted after it. “An’ he kain’t hinder me
neither!”
She sat down heavily and wiped the sweat from her forehead.
It was several minutes before the woman rose from the chair and crossed
the dog-trot to the sleeping-room. Throwing her faded sunbonnet into a
corner, she loosened her hair and began to brush it.
Sally Gantt was neither pretty nor handsome. But in a country peopled
solely by pine-woods crackers, her black hair and eyes, clear skin and
white teeth, made her stand out. She was a woman, and young. To a man,
also young, who for two years had seen no face unpainted with the sallow
hue of chills and fever, no eyes except faded blue ones framed by white,
straggling lashes, no sound teeth, and the unsound ones stained always
by the snuff stick, she might easily appear alluring.
With feminine deftness Sally re-coiled her hair. She took from a wooden
peg a blue calico dress, its printed pattern as yet unbleached by the
fierce suns. It gave to her slender figure some touch of grace. From
beneath the bed she drew a pair of heavy brogans; a shoe fashioned,
doubtless, to match the listless nature of the people who most use them,
slipping on or off without hindrance from lace or buckle. As a final
touch, she fastened about her head a piece of blue ribbon, the band of
cheap silk making the flash in her black eyes the brighter.
Sally left the house and started across the rubbish-littered yard. A
short distance from the cabin she stopped to look about her.
“I’m dog-tired of it all,” she said fiercely. “I hates the house. I
hates the whole place, an’ more ’n all I hates Jim.”
She turned, scowling, and walked between the rows of growing corn that
reached to the edge of the clearing. Here began the pine woods, the one
saving touch nature has given to this land. Beneath the grateful shade
she hastened her steps. The trees stood in endless disordered ranks,
rising straight and bare of branch until high aloft their spreading tops
caught the sunlight.
A quarter of a mile brought her to the lowland. She went down the slight
decline and stepped within the cane-brake. Here gloom closed about her.
The thickly growing cane reached to twice her height. Above the cane the
cypress spread its branches, draped with the sad, gray moss of the
South. No sun’s ray struggled through the rank foliage to lighten the
sodden earth beneath. Sally picked her way slowly through the swamp,
peering cautiously beyond each fallen log before venturing a further
step. Crawfish scuttled backward from her path to slip down the mud
chimneys of their homes. The black earth and decaying plants filled the
hot, still air with noisome odors. Thousands of hidden insects sounded
through the dank stretches their grating calls. Slimy water oozed from
beneath the heavy soles of her brogans, green and purple bubbles were
left in each footprint, bubbles with iridescent oily skins.
As she went around a sharp turn she was caught up and lifted clear from
the ground in the arms of a young man--a boy of twenty or thereabout.
“Oh, Bob, you scairt me--you certainly air rough!”
Without words he kissed her again and again.
“Now, Bob, you quit! Ain’t you had enough?”
“Could I ever have enough? Oh, Sally, I love you so!” The words trembled
from the boy.
“You certainly ain’t like none of ’em ’round hyar, Bob.” There was some
pride in Sally’s drawling voice. “I never seed none of the men folks act
with gals like you does.”
“There’s no other girl like you to make them.” Then, holding her from
him, he went on fiercely: “You don’t let any of them try it, do you?”
Sally smiled up into his glowing eyes.
“You knows I don’t. They ’d be afeard of Jim.”
The blood rushed to the boy’s cheeks, his arms dropped to his side; he
stood sobered.
“Sally, we can’t go on this way any longer. That’s why I asked you to
come to the river to-day.”
“What’s a-goin’ to stop us?” A frightened look crossed the woman’s face.
“I’m going away.”
She made a quick step toward him.
“You ain’t lost your job on the new railroad?”
“No. Come down to the boat where we can talk this over.”
He helped her down the bank of the creek to a flat-bottomed skiff, and
seated her in the stern with a touch of courtesy before taking the cross
seat facing her.
“No, I have n’t lost my job,” he began earnestly, “but my section of the
road is about finished. They’ll move me to another residency farther up
the line in about a week.”
She sat silent a moment, her black eyes wide with question. He searched
them for some sign of sorrow.
“What kin I do after you air gone?”
There was a hopeless note in her voice; it pleased the boy.
“That ’s the point: instead of letting them move me, I ’m going to move
myself.” He paused that she might get the full meaning of his coming
words.
“I ’m going away from here to-night, and I ’m going to take you with
me.”
“No, no! I das n’t!” She shrank before his steady gaze.
He moved swiftly across to her. Throwing his arms around her, he poured
out his words.
“Yes! You will! You must! You love me, don’t you?”
Sally nodded in helpless assent.
“Better than anything in this world?”
Again Sally nodded.
“Then listen. To-night at twelve you come to the river. I’ll be waiting
for you at the edge of the swamp. We’ll row down to Brewton. We can
easily catch the six-twenty to Mobile, and, once there, we’ll begin to
live,” he finished grandly.
“But I can’t! Air you crazy? How kin I git away an’ Jim right in the
house?”
“I’ve thought of all that; you just let him see this.” He drew a bottle
from beneath the seat. “You know what he’ll do to this; it’s the
strongest corn whisky I could find.”
“Oh, Bob! I’m a-scairt to.”
“Don’t you love me?” His young eyes looked reproach.
Sally threw both arms about the boy’s neck and drew his head down to her
lips. Then she pushed him from her.
“Bob, is it so what the men-folks all say, that the railroad gives you a
hundred dollars every month?”
He laughed. “Yes, you dear girl, and more. I get a hundred and a
quarter, and I’ve been getting it for two years in this God-forsaken
country, and nothing to spend it on. I’ve got over a thousand dollars
saved up.”
The woman’s eyes widened. She kissed the boy on the mouth.
“They ’lows as how you’re the smartest engineer on the road.”
The boy’s head was held high.
Sally made some mental calculations before she spoke again.
“Oh, Bob, I jes’ can’t. I’m a-scairt to.”
He caught her to him. A man of longer experience might have noted the
sham in her reluctance.
“My darling, what are you afraid of?” he cried.
“What air we a-goin’ to do after we gits to Mobile?”
“Oh, I’ve thought of everything. They’re building a new line down in
Texas. We’ll go there. I’ll get another job as resident engineer. I have
my profession,” he ended proudly.
“You might git tired, and want to git shed of me, Bob.”
He smothered her words under fierce kisses. His young heart beat at
bursting pressure. In bright colors he pictured the glory of Mobile, New
Orleans, and all the world that lay before them to love each other in.
When Sally left the boat she had promised to come. Where the pine-trees
meet the cane-brake he would be waiting for her, at midnight.
At the top of the bank she turned to wave.
“Wait! Wait!” called the boy. He rushed up the slope.
“Quit, Bob, you’re hurtin’ me.” She tore herself from his arms and
hastened back along the slimy path. When she reached the pine-wood she
paused.
“More ’n a thousand dollars!” she murmured, and a slow, satisfied smile
crossed her shrewd face.
The sun, now directly over the tops of the trees, shot its scorching
rays through the foliage. They struck the earth in vertical shafts,
heating it to the burning point. Not a breath stirred the glistening
pine-needles on the towering branches. It was one of those noontimes
which, in the moisture-charged air of southern Alabama, makes life a
steaming hell to all living things save reptiles and lovers.
Reaching the cabin, Sally went first to the kitchen room. She opened a
cupboard and, taking the cork from the bottle, placed the whisky on the
top shelf and closed the wooden door.
She crossed the dog-trot to the sleeping-room; a spitting snarl greeted
her entrance. In the center of the bed crouched the yellow cat, its
eyes gleaming, every muscle over its bony frame drawn taut, ready for
the spring. The woman, startled, drew back. The cat moved on stiff legs
nearer. Unflinchingly they glared into each other’s eyes.
“Git out of hyar afore I kill yer! You yaller devil!” Sally’s voice rang
hard as steel.
The cat stood poised at the edge of the bed, its glistening teeth
showing in its wide mouth. Without an instant’s shift of her defiant
stare, Sally wrenched a shoe from her foot. The animal with spread claws
sprang straight for the woman’s throat. The cat and the heavy brogan
crashed together in mid-air. Together they fell to the floor; the cat
landed lightly, silently, and bounded through the open door.
Sally fell back against the log wall of the cabin, feeling the skin at
her throat with trembling fingers....
* * * * *
“Jim! Oh-h, Jim!” Sally called from the cabin. “Come on in, yer supper’s
ready.”
“He ain’t took nothin’ to drink to-day,” she thought. “It’s nigh three
months now, he’ll be ’most crazy.”
The man took a few sticks of wood from the ground, and came on dragging
feet through the gloom. As Sally watched his listless approach, she felt
in full force the oppressive melancholy of her dismal surroundings.
Awakened by the boy’s enthusiastic plans, imagination stirred within
her. In the distance a girdled pine stood clear-cut against the horizon.
Its bark peeled and fallen, left the dead, naked trunk the color of
dried bones. Near the stunted top one bare limb stretched out. Unnoticed
a thousand times before, to the woman it looked to-night a ghostly
gibbet against the black sky.
Sally shuddered and went into the lighted kitchen.
“I jes’ kilt a rattler down by the woodpile.” Jim threw down his load
and drew a splint-bottomed chair to the table.
“Ground-rattler, Jim?”
“Naw, sir-ee! A hell-bendin’ big diamond-back.”
“Did you hurt the skin?” Sally asked quickly.
“Naw. I chopped his neck clean, short to the haid. An’ I done it so durn
quick his fangs is a-stickin’ out yit, I reckon.”
“Did he strike at you?”
“Yes, sir-ee, an’ the pizen came out of his mouth jes’ like a fog.”
“Ah, you’re foolin’ me!”
“No, I ain’t neither. I’ve heard tell of it, but I never seed it afore.
The ground was kinda black whar he lit, an’ jes’ as I brought the axe
down on him, thar I seed a little puff like, same as white steam, in
front of his mouth.”
“How big was he, Jim?”
“’Leven rattles an’ a button.”
“Did you skin him?”
“Naw, it was too durn dark, but I hung him high up, so’s the hawgs won’t
git at him. His skin’ll fotch fo’ bits down at Andalushy.”
“Ax ’em six, Jim, them big ones gittin’ kinda skeerce.”
Jim finished his supper in silence; the killing of the snake had
provided more conversation than was usual during three meals among
pine-woods people.
As Sally was clearing away the dishes, the yellow cat came through the
door. Slinking close to the wall, it avoided the woman, and sprang upon
the knees of its master. Jim grinned into the eyes of the beast and
began stroking its coarse hair. The cat set up a grating purr.
Sally looked at the two for a moment in silence.
“Jim, you gotta kill that cat.”
Jim’s grin widened, showing his tobacco-stained teeth.
“Jim, I’m a-tellin’ you, you gotta kill that cat.”
“An’ I’m a-tellin’ you I won’t.”
“Jim, it sprung at me to-day, an’ would have hurt me somethin’ turrible
if I hadn’t hit it over the haid with my shoe.”
“Well, you must ’a’ done somethin’ to make him. You leave him alone an’
he won’t pester you.”
The woman hesitated; she looked at the man as yet undecided; after a
moment she spoke again.
“Jim Gantt, I’m axin’ you for the las’ time, which does you think more
’n of, me or that snarlin’ varmint?”
“He don’t snarl at me so much as you does,” the man answered doggedly.
“Anyway, I ain’t a-goin’ to kill him; an’ you gotta leave him alone,
too. You jes’ min’ yer own business an’ go tote the mattress out on the
trot. It’s too durn hot to sleep in the house.”
The woman passed behind him to the cupboard, reached up, opened wide the
wooden door and went out of the room.
Jim stroked the cat, its grating purr growing louder in the stillness.
A minute passed.
Into the dull eyes of the man a glitter came, and grew. Slowly he lifted
his head. Farther and farther his chin drew up until the cords beneath
the red skin of his neck stood out in ridges. The nostrils of his bony
nose quivered, he sniffed the hot air like a dog straining to catch a
distant scent. His tongue protruded and moved from side to side across
his lips.
Standing in the darkness without, the woman smiled grimly.
Abruptly the man rose. The forgotten cat fell, twisted in the air and
lighted on its feet. Jim wheeled and strode to the cupboard. As his hand
closed about the bottle, the gleam in his eyes became burning flames. He
jerked the bottle from the shelf, threw his head far back. The fiery
liquor ran down his throat. He returned to his seat; the cat rubbed its
ribbed flank against his leg, he stooped and lifted it to the table.
Waving the bottle in front of the yellow beast, he laughed:
“Here’s to yer--an’ to’ad yer!” and swallowed half a tumblerful of the
colorless liquid.
Sally dragged the shuck mattress to the dog-trot. Fully dressed, she lay
waiting for midnight.
An hour went by before Jim shivered the empty bottle against the log
wall of the kitchen. Pressing both hands hard upon the table, he heaved
himself to his feet, upsetting the candle in the effort. He leered at
the flame and slapped his bare palm down on it. The hot, melted wax
oozed up, unheeded, between his fingers. Clinging to the table top, he
turned himself toward the open door, steadied his swaying body for an
instant, then lurched forward. His shoulder crashed against the
door-post, his body spun half-way round. The man fell flat upon his
back, missing the mattress by a yard. The back of his head struck hard
on the rough boards of the porch floor. He lay motionless, his feet
sticking straight up on the doorsill.
The yellow cat sprang lightly over the fallen body and went out into the
night....
Wide-eyed, the woman lay, watching. After moments of tense listening the
sound of faint breathing came to her from the prone figure. Sally
frowned. “He’s too no ’count to git kilt,” she said aloud, and turned on
her side. She judged, from the stars, it was not yet eleven. Drowsiness
came; she fell into uneasy slumber.
Out in the night the yellow cat was prowling. It stopped near the
wood-pile. With extended paw, it touched lightly something that lay on
the ground. Its long teeth fastened upon it. The cat slunk off toward
the house. Without sound it sprang to the floor of the dog-trot.
Stealthily, its body crouched low, it started to cross through the open
way. As it passed the woman she muttered and struck out in her sleep.
The cat flattened to the floor. Near the moving arm, the thing it
carried fell from its teeth. The beast scurried out across the opening.
The night marched on to the sound of a million voices calling shrilly
through the gloom.
The woman awoke. The stars glowed pale from a cloudy midnight sky. She
reached out her right hand, palm down, to raise herself from the bed,
throwing her full weight upon it. Two needle points pierced her wrist. A
smothered cry was wrung from her lips. She reached with her left hand to
pluck at the hurt place. It touched something cold, something hard and
clammy, some dead thing. She jerked back the hand. A scream shivered
through the still air. Pains, becoming instantly acute, unbearable,
darted through her arm. Again she tried to pull away the torturing
needle points. Her quivering hand groped aimlessly in the darkness. She
could not force herself, a second time, to touch the dead, clinging
thing at her wrist. Screaming, she dragged herself to the man.
“Jim, I’m hurt, help me! Help me!”
The man did not move.
“Jim, wake up! Help me!” she wailed uselessly to the inert man.
The terrifying pain spurted from wrist to shoulder. With her clenched
left hand she beat against the man’s upturned face.
“You drunken fool, help me! Take this thing away!”
The man lay torpid beneath her pounding fist....
* * * * *
Along the path to Pigeon Creek, where the pine-woods run into the
cane-brake, a boy waited; waited until the eastern sky grew from black
to gray. Then with cautious tread he began to move, his face turned
toward the cabin. As he neared the clearing the gray in the east changed
to red. He left the woods and entered the field of corn. His footfalls
made no sound on the earth between the furrows.
At the cabin he drew close against the wall and listened. A man’s heavy
breathing reached his straining ears. Slowly he moved toward the opening
in the middle of the house. Above the breathing he heard a grating
noise; between the deep-drawn breaths and the grating, another sound
came to him; a harsh, rhythmic scratching.
The edge of the sun rose abruptly above the flat earth, sending light
within the opening.
The boy thrust his head around the angle. A yellow cat was sitting at
the foot of the mattress. From its throat grating purrs came in regular
measure; between each purr the beast’s spread claws clutched and
released the stiff ticking.
Beyond lay the man.
Between the cat and the man, stretched across the shuck bed, was the
woman; her glassy eyes staring up into the grinning face of the cat.
From her shoulder, reaching out toward the boy, was a vivid, turgid
thing; a hand and arm, puffed beyond all human shape. From the swollen
wrist, its poisoned fangs sunk deep into an artery, hung the mangled
head of a snake.
The swaying corn blades whipped against the boy’s white face as he fled
between the rows.