William Faulkner - Flags in the Dust

“Darhe,”Isomsaid.

“Hit’s Ruby,” Caspey agreed, picking up the lantern. “She got ‘im.” The young dog yapped again, with fierce hysteria, then the single low cry chimed once more. Narcissa slid her arm through Bayard’s and they hurried on. “‘Taint no rush,” Caspey told her. “Dey ain’t treed yit. Whooy. H’mon, dawg.” The young dog had ceased its yapping, but still at intervals the other one bayed her single timbrous note,” and they followed it. “H’mon, dawg.”

They stumbled a little over fading plow-scars, after Casper’s bobbing lantern, and the darkness ahead was suddenly crescendic with short steady cries in four keys. “Dey got ‘im,” Isom said.

“Dat’s right,” Caspey replied. “Le’s go. Hold ‘im, dawg!” They trotted now, Narcissa clinging to Bayard’s arm, and plunged through rank grass and over another fence and so among trees. Eyes gleamed fleetingly from the darkness ahead, and another gust of barking interspersed with tense and eager whimperings, and among stumbling half-lit shadows dogs surged about them. “He up dar,” Caspey said. “Ole Blue sees ‘im.” He raised the lantern and set it uponhis head, peering up into the vine-matted sapling, and Bayard drew a flashlight from his jacket and turned its beam into the tree. The three older hounds sat in a tense circle about the tree, whimpering or barking in short spaced gusts, but the young one yapped steadily in mad, hysterical rushes. “Kick dat’ puppy still,”Caspey commanded.

“You, Ginger, hush yo’ mouf,” Isom shouted; helaid his axe and sack down and caught the puppy andheld it between his knees. Caspey and Bayard movedslowly around the tree, among the tease dogs; Narcissa followed them. “Dem vines is so thick...”Caspey said.

“Here he is,” Bayard said suddenly “I’ve got ‘im.” He steadied his light and Caspey moved behind him and stared over his shoulder.

“Where?” Narcissa asked.

“Dat’s right,” Caspey agreed. “Dar he is. Ruby don’t lie. When she say he dar, he dar.”

‘Where is he, Bayard?” Narcissa repeated. He drew her before him and trained the light over her head, into the tree, and presently from the massed vines two reddish joints of fire not a match-breadth apart; gleamed at her, winked out, then shone again. “He moving” Caspey said. He young ‘possum. Git up dar and shake ‘im out, Isom.” Bayard held his light on the creature’s eyes and Caspey set his lantern down and herded the dogs together at his knees, Isom scrambled up into the tree and vanished in the vine, but they could follow his progress by the shaking branches and his panting as he threatened the animal with a mixture of cajolery and adjuration,

“Hah,” he panted. “Ain’t gwine hurt you. Ain’t gwine do nothin’ ter you but th’ow you in de cook-pot. Look out, mister; I’se coming up dar.” He stopped; they could hear him moving the branchescautiously. “Here he,” he called suddenly. “Hole dem dawgs, now.”

“Little ‘un, ain’t he?” Caspey asked.

“Can’t tell. Can’t see nothin’ but his face. Watch dem dawgs.” The upper part of the tree burst into violent and sustained commotion; Isom’s voice whooped louder and louder as he shook the branches. “Here he comes,” he shouted, and something dropped sluggishly and reluctantly from branch to branch, stopped, and the dogs set up a straining clamor, then fell again, and Bayard’s light followed a lumpy object that dropped with a resounding thud to the earth and vanished immediately beneath a swirl of hounds. Caspey and Bayard leaped among them, and at last Narcissa saw the creature in the pool of the flashlight, lying on its side in a grinning curve, its eyes closed and its pink, baby-like hands doubled against its breast. She watched the motionless thing with a little loathing—such a contradiction, its vulpine, skull-like grin and those tiny, human-looking hands, and the long, rat-like tail of it. Isom dropped from the tree, and Caspey turned the two straining clamorous dogs he held over to him and picked up the axe, and while Narcissa watched in shrinking curiosity, he laid the axe across the thing’s neck and put his foot on either end of the axe, and grasped the animal’s tail...She turned and fled, her hand to her mouth.

But the wall of darkness stopped her and she stood trembling and a little sick, watching them as they moved about the lantern. Then Caspey drove the dogs away and Isom picked up the lumpy sack and swung it to his shoulder, and Bayard turned and looked for her. “Narcissa?”

“Here,” she answered. He came to her.

“That’s one. We ought to get a dozen, tonight.”

“No,” she said, shuddering. “No;” He peered at her in the darkness.

“Not tired already, are you?”

“No,” she answered, “I just....Come on; they’re going.”

Caspey led than on through the woods, now. They walked in a dry sibilance of leaves and crackling undergrowth. Trees loomed out of the darkness; above them, among the thinning branches, stars swam in the hushed, vague sky. The dogs were on ahead, and they went on over the uneven ground, sliding down into washes and ditches where sand gleamed in the pale glow of the lantern and the scissoring shadow of Caspey’s legs was enormous, struggled up the other side.

“We better head away fum de creek bottom,” Caspey suggested. “Deymought strike a ‘coon, and den dey won’t git home ‘fo’ day.” He bore away toward the fields again.“H’mon, dawg.” They went on. Narcissa was beginning to tire, but Bayard strode on with a fine obliviousness of that possibility, and she followed without complaint. At last, from far away, came that single ringing cry. Caspey stopped. “Le’s see which way he gwine.” They stood in the darkness, in the sad, faintly chill decline of the year, among the dying trees. “Whooy,” Caspey shouted mellowly. “Go git ‘im.”

The dog replied, and they moved again, slowly, pausing at intervals to listen. The hound bayed again; there were two voices now, and they seemed to be moving in a circle across their path. “Whooy,” Caspey called, his voice ebbing in falling echoes among the motionless trees. They went on. Again the dogs gave tongue, this time from a direction opposite that where the first one had bayed. “He ca’yin’‘um right back whar he come fum,” Caspey said. ‘We betterwait ‘twell dey gits ‘im straightened out.” He set the lantern down and squatted beside it, and Isom sloughed his burden and squatted also, and Bayard sat against a tree trunk and drew Narcissa down beside him. The dogs bayed again, nearer. Caspey turned his head and stared off into the darkness toward the sound.

“He headin’ fer dat holler tree, ain’t he?” Isom asked.

“Soun’ like it.” They listened, motionless. “We have a job, den. Whooy.” There was a faint chill in the air now, as the day’s sunlight cooled from the ground, and Narcissa moved closer to Bayard. He took a packet of cigarettes from his jacket and gave Caspey one and lit his own. Isom squatted on his heels, his eyesrolling whitely in the lantern light.

“Gimme one, please, suh,” he said.

“You ain’t got no business smoking, boy,” Caspey told him. But Bayard gave him one, and he squatted leanly on his heels, holding the white cylinder in his black diffident hand. The dogs bayed again, mellow and chiming and timbrous in the darkness. “Yes, suh,” Caspey repeated, “he headin’ fer dat down tree.”

“You know this country like you do the back yard, don’t you, Caspey?” Narcissa said.

“Yessum, I ought to. I been over it a hund’ed times since I wuz bawn. Mist’ Bayard do too. He been huntin’ it long ez I is. Him and Mist’ Johnny bofe. Miss Jenny send me wid‘um when de had dey fust gun; me and dat ‘ere single bar’l gun I used to have to tie together wid a string. You member dat ole single bar’l, Mist’ Bayard? But hit ‘ud shoot. Many’s de fox squir’l we shot in dese woods. Rabbits, too.” Bayard was leaning against the tree. He was gazing off into the treetops and the soft sky beyond, his cigarette burning slowly in his hand. She looked at his bleak profile against the lantern glow, then she moved closer against him. But he did not respond, and she slid her hand into his. But it too was unresponsive, and again he had left her for the bleak and lonely heights of his frozen despair. Caspey was speaking again, in his slow, consonantless voice with its overtones of mellow sadness. “Mist’ Johnny, now, he sho’ could shoot. You ‘member dat time me and you and him wuz—”