Tramping on Life | Page 8

husband and
her great-bodied son--as if they were helpless children.
* * * * *
"We're going a-huntin' to-day, Johnny,--wan' ter come along?"
"Sure!"
"Wall, git ready, then!"
But first Paul fed the hounds out in the yard ... huge slabs of white
bread spread generously with lard. This was all they ever got, except
the scraps from the table, which were few. They made a loud,
slathering noise, gulping and bolting their food.
* * * * *
But we started off without the hounds.
"Ain't you going to take the dogs along?"
"Nope."
"Why not--ain't we going to hunt rabbits?"
"Yep."
"Then why not take them?"
"Put your hand in my right hand pocket an' find out!"
I stuck my hand down, and it was given a vicious bite by a white,
pink-eyed ferret Paul was carrying there. I yelled with pain and surprise.
I pulled my hand up in the air, the ferret hanging to a finger. The ferret
dropped to the ground. Paul stooped and picked it up, guffawing. It
didn't bite him. It knew and feared him. That was his idea of a joke, the
trick he played on me!

"Yew might git blood-pisen from that bite!" teased Josh, to scare me.
But I remained unscared. I sucked the blood from the tiny punctures,
feeling secure, after I had done it. I remembered how Queen Eleanore
had saved the life of Richard Coeur de Lion in the Holy Land, when he
had been bitten by an adder, by sucking out the venom. I enjoyed the
thrill of a repeated historic act.
"If we got ketched we'd be put in jail fer this!" remarked Josh with that
sly, slow smile of his; "it ain't the proper season to hunt rabbits in, an'
it's agin the law, in season or out, to hunt 'em with ferrets," and he
chuckled with relish over the outlawry of it.
We came to a hole under a hollow tree. Paul let the ferret go down,
giving him a preliminary smack.
"Mind you, Jim,--God damn you,--don't you stay down that hole too
long."
"Think he understands you?"
"In course he does: jest the same es you do."
"And why would Jim stay down?"
"He might corner the rabbit, kill him, an' stay to suck his blood ... but
Jim knows me ... I've given him many's the ungodly whipping for
playing me that trick ... but he's always so greedy and hongry that
sometimes the little beggar fergits."
"And then how do you get him out again?"
"Jest set an' wait till he comes out ... which he must do, sometime ... an'
then you kin jest bet I give it to him."
We waited a long time.
"Damn Jim, he's up to his old tricks again, I'll bet," swore Josh, shifting
his face-deforming quid of tobacco from one protuberant cheek to the
other, meditatively....
The ferret appeared, or, rather, a big grey rabbit ... squealing with
terror ... coming up backward ... the ferret clinging angrily to his nose ...
and tugging like a playing pup.
Paul took Jim off and put him back in his pocket ... he had to smack
him smartly to make him let go--"hongry little devil!" he remarked
fondly.
A crack of the hand, brought down edgewise, broke the rabbit's neck,
and he was thrust into a bag which Josh carried slung over his shoulder.
We caught fifteen rabbits that afternoon.

We had a big rabbit stew for supper. Afterward the two men sat about
in their socks, chairs tilted back, sucking their teeth and picking them
with broom straws ... and they told yarns of dogs, and hunting, and
fishing, till bed-time.
* * * * *
The morning sun shone brightly over me through three panes of glass
in the window, the fourth of which was stopped up with an old
petticoat.
I woke with Phoebe's warm kiss on my mouth. We had slept together,
for the older folks considered us too young for it to make any
difference. We lay side by side all night ... and like a little man and
woman we lay together, talking, in the morning.
We could smell the cooking of eggs and bacon below ... an early
breakfast for Paul, for he had been taken by a whim that he must work
in the mine over the hill for a few weeks in order to earn some money ...
for he was a miner, as well as a puddler in the mills ... he worked in
coal mines privately run, not yet taken into the trust. He often had to lie
on his side in a shallow place, working the coal loose with his
pick--where the roof was so close he couldn't sit up straight....
* * * *