The Hunter

by H. ARNOW

1

HOUR after hour the hounds, with Nunn Ballou’s Zing in the lead, swung up and around Little Indian Creek over the strong hot trail that only King Devil could lay down. The men squatted in tense silence about a burned-out fire that nobody bothered to replenish — not even old Richmond, whose rheumatic bones ached in the cold. It was uncommon for the big red fox to run a straight race with no tricks and no foolery for so long. Maybe Zing was pressing him so hard he couldn’t backtrack; for not once in the hours of the long running had the old dog boggled or fumbled or given anything except the angry but happy war cry he always gave when hot on the scent of King Devil.

All the men in the county were there, and others besides: Charlie Chitwood from the Gourd Neck in Wayne with one old worn-out hound that looked to be half cur, and Luther Crabtree from the other side of Cooper Creek with his two fine spotted July hounds, and Ernest Coffee who had come to the end of the gravel in an almost new car with two hounds that he’d made his brags about before the race began, for he had paid one hundred dollars of coalmining money for them last spring. But for hours now Ernest had said no more than Chitwood. His hounds were back somewhere with the others while Zing with Lister’s Sourvine, a young hound with a deep wild voice like a cur dog baying at the moon, took the lead and held it.

Nunn squatted apart from the others with his back to a little pine tree and listened with that wild pounding hope in his heart that always came when King Devil ran — maybe this time Zing would catch him, and it would be the end. Zing gave tongue again, his bell-like cry rising up from near the head of Little Indian Creek and echoing and reechoing out of the cliffs. Nunn could feel the anger and the eagerness in the call. King Devil would be close; Zing never gave tongue like that except when the scent was clear and hot. King Devil was an animal, flesh and blood and bone like Zing; press him hard enough and he could take no time for the devilish traps of back tracks and jumps and water runs he laid that would hold Zing up for minutes together while the red devil fox sat resting and laughing as he listened.

Zing’s voice and Sourvine’s voice grew fainter and fainter until they seemed no more than a note of the fitful December night wind that sometimes whistled and cried through the valleys below while it roared in the big timber of the higher hills or again sank into the faintest whispering in the stunted pines on the Pilot Rock. After a little space Nunn knew it was only the wand he heard. King Devil had taken the hard steep road up Caney Fork that ran west from Little Indian Creek, and Zing in the narrow gulch of Caney Fork could not be heard.

He heard the other hounds come up the creek, but they were the stragglers and did not count. He did not bother to unravel the tangle of sound and learn whose hounds were still in the race and whose had slunk home or gone possum hunting, but looked overhead at the sky, ragged with patches of stars and of cloud. The Big Dipper lay low in the northwest now, and when Zing first got scent of King Devil it had been well up in the sky, and now the bottommost stars of it would fall behind the hills before the race would end.

So many nights like this, going on six years now, since Zing first got scent of the big red fox and Nunn had made his brags about how soon he would have his hide. Night after night he had listened to Zing and watched the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper and the evening stars go down, and the morning stars rise and brighten and pale in the sky, and stared at the unblinking, unmoving North Star until he knew the patterns of the stars, at all hours of the night and in all seasons, as well as he knew the old fields and boundaries of his own land. Maybe this would be the last night. He was tired of the stars and the wind and the sitting in the dark — but the thought was old and familiar as the stars, and he got up and moved into the cluster of men.

“Don’t be a-walken in your sleep an’ a-fallen off, man,” old Richmond warned.

“I know this cliff better’n my own bed,” Nunn answered shortly.

Charlie Chitwood and Ernest Coffee were talking of going home. Charlie good-naturedly allowed his old Bogle had swum the Cumberland and was sound asleep at home in the kitchen and Rooshie would be up waiting for him with the poker and her quilting frames, for whenever he got drunk Bogle always went on home, but this was one night he was cold sober and away from Bogle. Ernest was plainly worried over his hundred-dollar dogs and wondered if they could be lost, though Lister told him he’d heard them start that car for going back to town. Richmond in some exasperation told them to go home or else shut up so a man could listen; he wanted to hear Zing come in.

But Nunn as always heard him first; to the other listeners it was only another noise of the wind, but Nunn knew and bowed his head and shut his eyes for better hearing. King Devil had skirted the sloping side of the ridge where the running was hard in the rocky sidehill ground, an old field grown thick with saw briars and sumac bush, and Zing’s voice came faintly — too faintly for Nunn to understand much of what he said.

Maybe he was close — one leap, two leaps. The running through the briars and brush would be harder for the big, long-haired fox than for Zing. Maybe there, on Casseye Ridge, Zing would get him, now, this night, this very minute. He gripped his hands angrily, impatiently, as if he would tear away and destroy all the sounds between him and Zing’s voice out there in the darkness: Lister’s hoarse, excited breathing, the thin whisper of the wind, the river over the shoals, and far away a train blowing for a bridge across the Cumberland.

He stood so for a long while straining his ears, but when he heard Zing give tongue again he was on Kelly’s Point at the end of Casseye Ridge, too far away and smothered by trees and rocks and wind to hear what he said — whether the scent lay hot like a fire in his nose or if King Devil was slipping ahead and the scent growing cold. He squatted again and heard Lister cut a fresh chew of tobacco and old Richmond stomp his feet against the cold and Charlie resume one of his endless lying tales about how many cross ties he had cut down and hewn in one day. Nunn gave little heed to what went on about him, his ears remembering Zing’s last call, and his mind working it over, trying to read it like writing half washed away by rain.

He and Lister sprang suddenly to their feet and stood listening, breath hushed, teeth clamped tight on tobacco, but Charlie was telling a ghost tale and noticed nothing, and by the time Lister had shut him up with a whispered curse, a gust of wind thundered up the valley and they could hear nothing more.

But Nunn squatted again, satisfied, smiling softly to himself in the dark. “Zing’s a-pressen him hard tonight,” he explained to Richmond, who couldn’t hear so well. “They’re a-comen straight down the ridge, a-taken that ole loggen road. An’ when King Devil runs a road, he’s in a hurry.”

“They’ll be a-comen down Richmond’s road in full hearen pretty soon,” Lister whispered excitedly. “I heared Sourvine not much behind Zing. An’ man, oh man, they’re a-pressen him hard.”

2

EVEN Charlie was silent now and listened with the others for the hounds to top the ridge. Nunn watched a little patch of ragged cloud come up behind the Gourd Neck, move on above Ann Liz’s house on the hill above the river — watched it creep across one end of the Big Dipper and wondered if it would cover the North Star and how long it would take.

The North Star dimmed with the first touch of it, and the deep wild bay of a coarse-mouthed hound broke over the ridge crest across the valley, loud and clear as if it had been right on the rock. Nunn sprang to his feet and stood open-mouthed staring through the darkness toward the sound, and Chitwood called out: “Say, ain’t that Sourvine? An’ Nunn allus sayen that ole Zing can outrun any dog in the country. Where’s Zing now?”

Nunn turned slowly, stiffly, suddenly tired with all the heat of the race gone from his body. “Zing, he’s dead, you fool.”

“Aw, Nunn,” Lister comforted, not even listening to his Sourvine, who was giving tongue again. “Mebbe he jist hurt hisself; mebbe he got sick. Listen, mebbe we’ll hear him.”

“There ain’t no rattlesnakes now, an’ nothen could hurt him comen down a straight loggen road,” Nunn spoke over his shoulder, for he was already moving through the darkness toward the first jump over the ledge that led to the path down the Pilot Rock. “I tell ye, man, he’s dead. Ain’t him an’ Sourvine been runnen together for goen on three years, an’ didn’t they allus keep together with Zing alius a little in the lead?”

“But mebbe Sourvine got uncommon fast tonight.” Lister came following behind, his talk loud but with no heartiness or belief in it.

Old Richmond was yelling for them to wait until they got a carbide lamp fixed; they’d break their fool necks in the dark. If a body did happen to miss the path by a foot on either side he would land on rocks a hundred feet below. But Nunn crammed his old felt hat into his pocket and sprang down with no more need of a light than King Devil himself. Lister and Ernest Coffee were at his heels and together they went down to the bottom of the valley, crossed the creek, and took the short cut through the woods to the ridge top where Nunn had last heard Zing. They walked swiftly, soundlessly, never groping or stumbling, though under the great hemlocks in the valley a man could not see his hands before his face. On top of the ridge along the road, the gloom was not so deep, but Nunn waited there and called back for the men with lights to come on.

“The last time I heared him he was jist about here,” he explained. “An’ then we heared Sourvine yon side of the schoolhouse, so I figger he’s ‘tween here an’ yonder.”

Charlie Chitwood and old Richmond turned their lamps on full blast and followed Nunn, but in the unaccustomed glare the night woods were unfamiliar to him and he kept stumbling and grasping at shadows, hurrying from first one side of the road to the other, only to find the bit of brownness he had thought was Zing a sandstone or a heap of watersoaked leaves or nothing at all.

It was Lister who found him lying in the middle of the old logging road. He lay on his side with his paws outspread as he lay at home by the hearth fire, and his mouth was open wide the way he opened it when he laughed with the children, but his wide-open eyes remained fixed and unwanking in the blue carbide light.

The men came up in silence and in silence squatted about him in a little circle and looked at him. “Funny,” Lister said after a time. “He seemed well as could be, frisken around like a cur pup ‘fore the race started.”

“He was,” Nunn said.

Chitwood glanced uneasily into the wall of darkness past the carbide light. “What killed him, then? A hound don’t up an’ die; an’ nobody’ud pizen a hound.”

“That danged fox run him to death,” Nunn said. “I thought all the time Zing was a-pressen him so hard he couldn’t take time for any of his devilish tricks, an’ him with his head set all the time on runnen Zing to death. He knowed he was old.”

Old Richmond, the farmer, shook his head and sighed: “Aye, he’s a fox like any other fox; smarter than most, but not smart like a man.”

“Whyn’t ye kill him, then, Richmond, if you’re smarter’n he is?” Chitwood asked. “An’ he’s all the time stealen your young lambs and chickens.”

“Ain’t I tried? Traps, hunten, watchen. Last spring that red devil carried off a lamb not a hundred feet from me, an’ I never got a shot at him.”

“Spotlight him with a carbide when he swings back this way like he’s shore to do, an’ ye’ll get a shot at him,” Ernest suggested, staring out into the darkness.

Lister glanced up at the stars. “Ye know, mebbe I’m crazy but lots a times I know he ain’t a fox like other foxes. I recollect a tale my granmammy used to tell about a fox that changed itself into —” Somewhere in the woods a stick cracked. Lister jumped. For a moment all the men were silent. Then Lister suddenly, loudly asked; “How many times hev any of ye seen King Devil’s sign, an’ we been runnen him goen on six years?”

“Ye know nobody ain’t never seen hit,” Nunn answered shortly, still gazing down at Zing. “But that ain’t a-sayen he’s a witch or some sinner’s haint that cain’t rest easy in his grave an’ has to run over these hills. He’s jist uncommon smart; he could be spotlighted same as a rabbit or a fish.”

“He ain’t no rabbit an’ he ain’t no fish,” Charlie giggled. “But hit’d be right good pastime to see ye try. Ye’re reckoned one of the best shots in the country, Nunn.”

“Listen, man,” Richmond spoke up eagerly as a boy. “If’n ye’ll kill him this very night I’ll give ye ten dollars. He’ll kill five times that in lambs for me this comen spring.”

3

NUNN seemed not to have heard, and the others were silent while he stripped off his overall jumper and laid it over Zing. Lister looked down at the old dog and after a moment said with a little sigh; “He was the best foxhound, I reckon, that’s ever been in these parts, an’ ‘thout him my Sourvine ain’t worth a damn; he’s the runnenest fool that ever was, but I allus knowed he used old Zing’s nose. Now no hound’ll ever unravel the scent and King Devil’ll never be took.”

Ernest took a chew of tobacco, then stopped with his mouth open, listening into the darkness. “He’s still a-runnen. I hear Sourvine, an’ I’m a-thinken of goen after my rifle an’ gitten King Devil an’ Richmond’s money this very night. Reckon ye’d help me, Nunn.”

Nunn rolled Zing into the jumper and buttoned it up. Charlie Chitwood tittered: “He ain’t no man to be a-coveren up his face that-a-way.”

“He was a danged sight more deserven of the name of man than many a one that walks on two legs,” Nunn said. “He never lied to me or any man, nor swore, nor used his teeth on anything but a varmint I wanted him to kill. Many’s the time I’ve seen him stand an’ cry while the little young-ens, ‘fore they’s big enough to walk, ud pull his tongue — an’ he never got drunk an’ he never made his brags about how quick he’d ketch that red devil of a fox like I’ve done, an’ anyhow hit’s none of yer damned business if’n I lay ten-dollar gold pieces on his eyes an’ bury him in a walnut coffin lined with wool and wrapped in silk.”

“Aw, Nunn, nobody wants ye to leave him here for the buzzards. I’ll help ye carry him home,” Lister offered. “Ye’re fergitten, I reckon, how ye helped me dig a grave for my little Bonnie that night she died a-chasen King Devil an’ got bit by a rattlesnake I reckon hit was.”

“I’ll help, too, soon’s I git my rifle out of the car,” Ernest offered. “Reckon ye’d help me kill that fox, Nunn; I’ll split the money with ye.”

“Do ye honestly think a body could kill him by shooten?” Charlie Chitwood asked in a low, surprised voice.

“Mebbe he’s jist part fox an’ has got claws like a wildcat an’ can climb a rocky bluff to his hole,” somebody said, only half jokingly.

“Did ye ever think that mebbe — mebbe the scent stops an’ somethen else a hound dog won’t foller — or nothen a-tall begins?” Charlie asked, glancing uneasily at Ernest.

“Good Lord, but ye talk pure idjet,” Nunn said, rising disgustedly to his feet. “Someday, sometime, somebody’ll come along with a hound that’ll press him so hard he cain’t jump a bluff into the Cumberland or do whatever hit is he does do when he gits tired a-runnen. . . . Listen. Reckon Sourvine’s chasen a haint; for all ye know, he’s after Bill Weaver’s haint back from hell an’ a-tryen to find some liquor.”

Old Richmond listened to the lone hound a moment, then shook his head reproachfully at Nunn. “When ye’re as old as I am, man, ye won’t be atalken so easy an’ off-like about hell an’ them that’s dead an’ cain’t help theirselves.”

Nunn said nothin to the old man’s reproach but continued to listen to Sourvine. “They’re over in the Simp Jones Holler now, an’ ‘ll be swingen back this-a-way ‘fore mornen. I’d lay good money on hit; an’ Charlie here can take his carbide an’ find out if’n hit’s a haint Sourvine’s a-chasen.”

“Not me,” Chitwood spoke quick as lightning.

“Nunn,” Richmond spoke with urgent earnestness. “Whyn’t ye git a gun an’ wait by the road an’ help Ernest kill him? It ud be worth money to ever’ farmer in the country to be rid of that red fox, an’ you’re about the best shot around.”

Nunn shook his head. “I couldn’t do it, old man. I’ve hunted him too long with a hound to spotlight him like he was no better’n a Jap or a rabbit.”

“Aw, come on, Nunn, help me kill him. Look at the hounds he’s killed. No hound’ll ever git him,” Ernest begged. “I’m afraid of bad luck by myself.”

Lister turned wearily away from listening to his Sourvine. “Aw, go on, Nunn, spotlight him. Without Zing, we’ll never git him.”

Nunn felt the eyes of all the men upon him, but without answering he glanced overhead at the stars. About three o’clock it must be, and he was tired. Tomorrow while he walked miles rounding up his sheep and salting them, his usual Sunday job, he would be tired with his body crying for sleep, and he was tired of being sleepy, and tired of always hoping, and tired of remembering the brags he had made six years ago. He didn’t even have a hound now, and no good pup in sight, and no money to buy one. He cleared his throat, but for a moment the words would not come, and when they did he spoke them to the stars: “Well, I’d try — but I’m not a-wanten to walk four miles home an’ back for a gun.”

“Ye’re welcome to mine. A better shooten gun was never made, an’ since we’re jist a little piece from my place, I’ll go git it into the bargain,” Lister offered.

Nunn shook his head as if flies buzzed about his cars, and said nothing,

Chitwood shivered: “Hit could be that that fox could tear a man’s throat, or make a gun shoot backwards.”

Nunn’s voice rose angrily. “Fool. He’s flesh an’ blood like any other fox. Give me that carbide an’ a rifle, an’ I’ll kill him, spotlight an’ bust him right between the eyes, jist as easy as killen a frog. He ain’t Bill Weaver’s ghost an’ he ain’t no haint, but I wish to the Lord I had a drink.”

Chitwood pulled a pint Mason jar out of his overall bib. “I been a-saven this to git me back over the river, but ye’re welcome. Hit’s soghum whiskey, awful-tasten, but hit’s got plenty of burn.”

Nunn glanced at it, hardly more than a t hird full, but enough to warm a man’s heart. He swallowed it all without taking his lips from the jar, while the others watched half jealously, half disapprovingly. “Don’t go getten on one of your roaren sprees,” old Richmond warned. “I’m getten old an’ not used to sich.”

“That wasn’t enough to hurt a baby,” Nunn answered and walked a few steps away and squatted with his back to a tree and waited for Lister and Ernest to come with the guns. He heard Sourvine give tongue — tired and worried he sounded — up toward the mouth of Brush Creek. King Devil was having his fun tonight letting that fool hound think he could catch him.

The Big Dipper turned lower toward the west, the wind died, and when Ernest and Lister came back frost was beginning to glitter on the withered leaves. No one talked of building a fire, for King Devil might see it. The men moved quietly about, stamping against the cold and talking in low voices like men at a funeral. Nunn continued to sit apart, looking sometimes at the stars, and now and again sighting down the barrel of Lister’s rifle. It had a big buck sight, fine for hunting; shooting King Devil as he ran confused and befuddled into a sudden flash of blinding carbide light “would be easy.

He heard Sourvine loud and clear rounding the head of Nealy’s Creek. King Devil had doubled and was on his way back. Nunn could not sit still but got up clutching the rifle in sweaty hands. Tonight he would make an end of that red-tailed witch, and then he, Nunnally Ballou, could be a man again, working his land and raising his family, instead of a piece of poor white trash getting drunk under the stars and cursing the coming of daylight because every bone in his body ached for sleep. Forget his loud brags and all the fine things he had said yonder so long ago when Zing first got scent of King Devil. He’d thought then it was a red fox he had to catch, not a red devil.

4

ERNEST touched him on the elbow and he jumped as from the touch of a ghost and swore for no reason at all. “How ye aimen to do hit, Nunn?” Ernest asked, too excited to notice that Nunn had called him a dirty name.

“Right between the eyes, God willen.”

“I mean where ye a-goen to wait an’ where’d I better stand? He’s a-comen on fast.”

Nunn considered a moment, and then without answering moved away through the darkness to the knot of men about the carbide lights who had long since left off their ghost tales and stood tense and silent listening, whispering when they talked at a! Nunn whispered too. King Devil could not have heard, but whispers went well with his tongue, for it lay dry and numb in his mouth, and he kept try ing to work up a stream of tobacco juice and could not. He commanded them to fill the lamps with fresh carbide and more water, then directed Chitwood to give Ernest his lamp, while he took Richmond’s for himself, miner’s cap and all. He then had all lights put out, and with the others following, he went down the old logging road. Now and then he called to them in whispered curses to be silent for Chitwood and the others, without lights, sounded like a herd of cattle crashing through the brush.

Sourvine gave tongue again, no farther away than the upper end of the ridge, and Nunn hurried, almost running toward what he was hunting for and found soon with no groping: a great moss-grown pine trunk, uprooted in some unremembered storm, thick enough so that a man on his knees could be hidden from anything on the other side.

In a high whisper he told Ernest to come on and get behind the log with him. He heard Sourvine again, no more than two miles away it seemed, straight up the ridge and already turned into the old logging road, and he cursed the hound in whispers for his noise. King Devil might come at any minute now, and if he was made of blood and bone like any other animal, he would, no matter how soundless his coming, make a noise that Nunn could hear.

He fumbled for a match and it seemed hours that his sweaty hands were fumbling to light it. The big brass inlaid buttons on his jumper, so good for striking matches, were with the jumper and Zing, and his belt buckle was too smooth. He grabbed Ernest and scratched the match on one of his jumper buttons, and it went out as he struck it.

“That’s bad luck,” Ernest whispered, staring down at the glowing but flameless match.

“Granny woman,” Nunn said and struck another match, and lighted his lamp and Ernest’s and listened for King Devil’s coming. Faint it would be, like the Cumberland whispering on a rising tide or the noise of a copperhead coiling, but it would be a sound that he could hear.

They held their lights low behind the log, the flames so small they barely lived, and shielded by their hands and arms. “I’ll give ye the first three shots,” Nunn whispered, and his words sounded loud as Richmond’s radio when the batteries were new, “an’ if they stop him, Richmond’s ten dollars is your’n. Me, I ain’t a-wanten the money. An’ lift your head an’ shine the light when I say ready.”

The carbide light in his miner’s cap, encircled by his lifted arms, made a little world of brightness behind the log, and Nunn stared into it, listening. His stomach no longer lay heavy and dead like a cold anvil under his ribs, and he felt curiously lighthearted and happy. It would soon be over; King Devil would be dead and he could sleep easy in his bed like other men, not out staring at the stars, or sitting under a rock house for shelter from a cold, drizzly rain and listening, always listening and hoping and thinking.

Not twenty yards away a dry leaf rattled faintly, and Nunn whispered, “Ready,” to Ernest, and both men turned their heads toward the sound and lifted their heads, turning their lights on full blast.

Nunn saw the green fire of two eyes — big as a man’s eyes they looked to be, and somehow like a man’s eyes they were, too. The eyes were looking past him, coming straight on, not turning away or blinking; blinded and scared, they seemed no more than a man’s eyes in the lights. Ernest’s bullets sang and he heard the pop-pop of Ernest’s rifle; above him in the woods men were screaming; “Shoot, Nunn, you fool, shoot. Ernest ain’t a-stoppen him. Shoot, dang hit, shoot.”

He heard old Richmond’s curses, and his mind, somehow loose and unhung like a feather floating from a striking hawk, thought that the old man ought to be turned out of church for such black talk, but mostly he thought that here was King Devil point-blank at the end of a loaded rifle and his eyes didn’t look the way he had thought they would look; it wasn’t a bit like shooting a rabbit or a skunk. Back when he’d worked in the company mines a coal car had broken loose from the engine and run backwards; he’d heard the man scream somewhere in the dark and he had gone with his miner’s cap on his head like this and spotlighted the man’s eyes — wide-open they were and they had looked like this for just a second and then they were not man’s eyes, just something glittering like glass or ice or a bit of jack.

He automatically turned his head, keeping the oncoming eyes full in the glare of the light, expecting them to swerve aside or stop suddenly like a rabbit’s eyes under the spotlight, and all the while he could hear the men behind him yelling and cursing him with black bitter oaths and Ernest’s bullets still singing and the pops of the rifle that seemed minutes apart instead of seconds.

The popping stopped and Ernest was yelling: “If’n ye ain’t gonna shoot, gimme that gun. Thisun’s empty.”

Mechanically, like a man in his sleep, he rolled the gun over his forearm and handed it to Ernest, but even as he did so the eyes disappeared, like stars swallowed in a cloud. “He’s jumped over the ridge or run behind a tree,” Ernest yelled, and sprang over the log and ran toward the ridge side.

“Hey, ye’ll break yer fool neck. They’s a bluff there,” Richmond called to Ernest, and his voice sounded old and tired and disgusted. “Ye cain’t find him anyhow. Whyn’t ye kill him, Nunn?”

Nunn sat motionless on a pine log, staring off into the darkness. “I wisht I had a drink,” he said.

“Ye’ve had drink enough,” Richmond told him. “Ye’d better be getten back to yer wife an’ youngens.”

“That little swaller’s dead in me already,” he answered and added softly, “Don’t be getten mad at me, old man, an’ don’t be tellen me what to do. Nobody can tell me what to do. The good Lord in Heaven cain’t tell me what to do, but I can tell ye what I’ll do. I’ll ketch that big red fox for ye, ketch him fair an’ true with a foxhound. Hit went against my grain to shoot him — somehow — ”

He got up and shook his fist over the ridge side. “ I hope the good Lord in Heaven sends me to brile in hell for a million years if I ever stop chasen that fox ’fore I git him. I’ll git him, if’n I have to sell ever’ last thing I got to buy me a hound, an’ sell ever’ last chick to feed him. I’ll chase him till I’m crippled an’ blind an’ bald an’ — an’ — ”

Richmond turned away more in sorrow than anger. “Put’s me in mind of the time his grandad got the call to preach. We was cutten pine logs to saw up for to build a side room on his house, an’ that side room never got built till his oldest boy got up big enough to drive nails.”