Gray Eagle (Sass collection)/Eyes
YEARS ago the lumbermen had spread their blight over Tiger Swamp. That blight would be long in passing. Not for cen turies, if ever again, would the swamp be what it was before the axmen's coming. The towering straight-trunked cypresses were gone; gone, too, were the mighty pines which once grew all along the swamp's edges, pines which soared seventy feet without a limb. But the place was green again, the scars that had disfigured it were no longer visible. In fact, it was greener than it had ever been in its prime, for now that the great trees which had shaded it were no more, undergrowths of a dozen different kinds could find the sunlight which they needed.
Out of these undergrowths which had come into being since the murder of the trees, out of thickets of myrtle and bay and tangles of blackberry and Cherokee rose, wild nature laughed at the mastery of Man. He had despoiled her, had he? He had slaughtered her noblest trees and swept away the virgin forest which she had created through long ages in this place? Yes, he had done these things. But in doing them he had merely made Tiger Swamp a suitable habitation for her, a place of abundant coverts and green, impenetrable refuges where the wildest of her wild creatures could find sanctuary.
And not sanctuary only. The swamp was a fortress as well as a retreat. From its edges hostile invisible eyes looked out at hunters who came to the swamp's margins in search of game; and from its recesses, under cover of night, those of its inhabitants who knew how to wage war in the secret, furtive way of the wild killers launched raids and forays against the neighboring farms.
On a low pine stump near the western edge of Tiger Swamp sat a tall, dun shape, a shape as motionless as the stump of which it might have been a part. It had been there for more than half an hour; it had seen and heard many things; but as yet it had neither seen nor heard the two things which would have interested it most.
It did not know that two pairs of eyes were fixed upon it, that one of those pairs of eyes had never wavered in their gaze since the moment when they had seen this tall, dun shape steal cautiously through the sparse grove of second-growth oaks and sweet gums which bordered the swamp at this point and take its seat on a certain low pine stump fifty yards from the swamp's margin.
Sandy Jim Mayfield believed in luck. Above all, he believed in the luck of lucky places. Sitting on this stump, he had killed the greatest gobbler that had ever fallen to his gun. Sitting on this stump, he had shot down not his biggest buck but the buck whose antlers were the finest of the sixty pairs of deer horns bristling on the walls of his cabin. Spring hunting—and it was now mid-April—called for as little expenditure of energy as possible. Sandy Jim, lazy with the languor of spring, had left his dogs at home and had walked across a mile of lonely pineland straight to the old pine stump near the swamp's edge.
There the old woodsman would sit till dusk, if necessary, his loaded double-barreled gun resting across his knees, his white head dropped forward a little between his square, high shoulders. If a deer or a turkey came to him there, its doom would be sealed. Being a believer in luck and more particularly in the luck of this spot, and knowing deer and turkeys as he did, Sandy Jim thought it more than likely that some time during the long afternoon a deer or a turkey would come.
He waited, therefore, patiently and hopefully, basking in the warm April sunshine, hearing and yet not hearing the songs of the nesting birds, drowsy yet alert, indifferent yet eager, listening and watching silently, never suspecting that he himself was watched.
Of the two pairs of unseen eyes that were fixed upon him, one pair, gazing out from the edge of a small myrtle thicket between the hunter and the fringe of short canes along the swamp's margin, never strayed from the motionless dull-brown shape which had taken its station on the pine stump. To the owner of those eyes that dun figure had become, from the moment of its appearance on the scene, the most important and the most hated thing in the visible world.
Until that figure had appeared, the watchful eyes in the myrtle thicket had seen and taken note of many things—towhee buntings and brown thrashers scratching amid the fallen leaves, a gray squirrel moving about the branches of a sweet gum, a big red-crested logcock hammering on a dead pine sapling a little way up the slope. But now all these were forgotten. The eyes in the myrtle thicket no longer saw them. They saw only the form of the hunter, motionless, silent, as inconspicuous in its brown corduroys as the stump itself; and they saw him with fear and hatred, with hatred which was perhaps even more potent than their fear. If the eyes in the myrtle thicket had possessed the dread power which the ancients attributed to that fabled beast, the basilisk, Mayfield would have died speedily on his stump, the life burnt out of him by the intensity of their gaze.
The other pair of watching eyes, concealed in a clump of broom grass about fifteen feet from the myrtle thicket, were not less alert, not less observant, not less hostile. But they were not so intense, not so fixed and steady. There crept into them now and then an expression which might have denoted both impatience and expectancy. Unlike the eyes in the myrtle thicket, their gaze was not immovably fastened upon the hunter. From time to time they seemed to forget him momentarily, and at such times they searched eagerly all the open spaces of the wood within range of their vision.
Evidently, to the owner of these eyes, the dun form which had suddenly appeared on the pine stump was not the only thing that mattered. There were other things, other possibilities to be remembered and to be watched for. The owner of these eyes, one might have guessed, though keenly interested in watching and studying the strange still shape on the pine stump, was at the same time awaiting with growing impatience some tremendously important event which was due to happen soon.
If Mayfield had suddenly divined the nature of that expected event, if he had become aware through some mysterious sixth sense, of the hidden hostile eyes regarding him from the myrtle thicket in front of him and from the broom grass clump in front and a little to his left, he would not have betrayed his knowledge by any hasty movement.
Probably his own small, gray-blue eyes, which were now rather dull and heavy because he was drowsy, would have brightened suddenly. Probably his brown, leathery, hawk-like face beneath its thatch of white hair would have become even more hawk-like, because in moments of excitement the old hunter had a trick of contracting his nostrils in a way which made his thin, hooked nose look more than ever like a falcon's beak. But he would not have been startled into any sudden motion; he would not have altered in the slightest degree the waiting game that he was playing. He would have figured the chances with lightning-like rapidity, for in problems of this sort his mind was marvelously quick; and he would have decided accurately that his best chance lay in remaining precisely where he was and in doing exactly what he was doing—namely, nothing.
But no mysterious knowledge of those two pairs of watching, inimical eyes came to Sandy Jim as he drowsed in the April sunlight; and no sixth sense warned him when to the eyes already watching from concealment there was added yet another pair of hostile orbs.
The eyes that watched from the myrtle thicket and from the broom grass were in front of him, between his pine stump and the swamp. This third pair of eyes which had now come to play a part in the drama watched him from behind.
From the high land to the swamp-edge the ground sloped gently, and Mayfield's stump was about half way down the slope. On the slope itself the trees were mostly second-growth, but just at the crest of the rise, some forty yards from the pine stump, stood an enormous black oak behind whose huge trunk even the mightiest of wild beasts or the burliest of human killers might have lurked unseen. It was from the ambush of this gigantic black oak trunk that this third pair of eyes now studied Mayfield's motionless form as the old hunter sat waiting, with that long patience which the forest teaches, for the deer or the turkey whose coming he expected.
The eyes that watched from behind the black oak trunk were less intense, perhaps, than those that watched from the myrtle thicket. But they were far more formidable. There was no fear in them. Instead they were aglitter with triumph more menacing and more sinister than hatred. They were like the eyes of one, whether beast or man, who sees his enemy at last in his power—like the eyes of an avenger to whom has come, after long waiting, the yearned for opportunity to strike his foeman down.
These eyes that lurked in the ambush of the black oak trunk were larger than the eyes that watched from the myrtle thicket, smaller than the eyes that watched from the clump of broom grass; and despite the glitter of triumph in them, they were as cold and gray as polished stone. They were eyes that could wait—that could wait and watch with inexhaustible patience until their moment had come.
They would never grow weary, these eyes. Fate or chance had set an ambuscade in the woods, and one whom these eyes hated had entered that ambuscade. Soon or late the trap would be sprung. Hours might pass before the dun figure on the pine stump made the fatal move to which the eyes of stone looked forward with grim, avid expectation. But hour after hour they would await the coming of that moment. Hour after hour they would watch from their ambush, confident of triumph at the last, sure of the revenge which they desired.
The slow minutes dragged their length along. To Sandy Jim Mayfield came no premonition of peril, no subtle hint of impending tragedy. He was not the kind to whom mysterious warnings come, conveyed by influences or forces beyond human comprehension. He had only his physical senses to rely upon, and these gave him no warning. For all his seventy years, his vision was keener than that of most young men, his hearing as acute as it had ever been. But the keenest eyes cannot see that which is invisible; the sharpest ears cannot detect a presence which makes no sound.
No sound came from the myrtle thicket, from the tall broom grass waving gently in the light breeze, from the great black oak trunk at the crest of the slope. Even the smaller folk of the woods seemed unaware of hidden presences in two of these three hiding places. A wren perched on a twig of the myrtle not six inches from the ground and sang for a quarter of an hour with scarcely a pause for breath. A cottontail came out of the swamp and nibbled contentedly at certain appetizing weed stems at the very verge of the broom grass clump. But no bird or little beast ventured close to the black oak trunk forty yards behind the stump where Mayfield sat; and a big iron-gray fox squirrel, which had been exploring the branches of the oak, now lay flattened against an upper limb, staring glassily downward, afraid to move, almost afraid to breathe.
An hour passed. It was now mid-afternoon. The dun figure on the pine stump still held almost exactly the same pose, except that the white head under the battered brown felt hat no longer sagged forward sleepily. But if Mayfield's drowsiness had disappeared, there was no hint of restlessness or impatience in his attitude. As the afternoon waned the prospect of a turkey would grow less, but the prospect of a deer would improve. Most of the turkey hens were now setting, and the gobblers would seek their roosts well before sunset. But in spring, when the law forbade deer hunting, the whitetail bucks and does soon learned that they need not wait till nightfall to begin feeding. As the shadows lengthened, old Sandy Jim would watch the swamp-edge in front of him with growing expectancy in the hope that out of the fringe of short, dense canes a buck or a doe would come to face his gun—a gun to which the law meant nothing.
Of the three pairs of hostile eyes watching the dun figure of the hunter, two seemed as insensible as Mayfield himself to the passage of time. The eyes in the myrtle thicket had, perhaps, lost something of their intensity, but they never wavered in their fixed, inscrutable stare. The eyes behind the black oak trunk—those eyes which had the hardness and the eternal quality of stone—still glittered with that grim confidence, that ominous assurance of triumph which had shone in them from the beginning. But the eyes in the clump of broom grass—the large eyes which all the while had seemed to be awaiting some eagerly desired event—appeared to have lost interest in the motionless figure on the pine stump.
Only occasionally did these eyes return to the hunter's form. In general their gaze roved restlessly here and there, as though searching for something as yet invisible; and more evident than ever now was that look of eagerness, of anxious expectancy, of hungry, desperate yearning for some happening long overdue.
Mayfield, had he now discovered the eyes in the broom grass clump, would not have failed to read their message correctly. He would have known precisely what it was that the owner of those eyes expected; and his own eyes, deep-set, almost hidden under white overhanging brows, would have become on the instant even more alert, even more watchful. Perhaps, reading that warning, he would have moved his right hand very slowly and cocked the right barrel of his old-fashioned hammer gun.
But the eyes in the broom grass clump remained invisible to the hunter; their warning message was not read; the gun rested across Mayfield's knees uncocked, its hammers down. Mayfield could not know that presently there would come a moment when his failure to cock that gun would be regretted bitterly.
Before that moment came, however, there were developments in the drama of which old Sandy Jim, unknown to himself, had become the center—this silent drama of the unseen eyes.
The first of these developments had no apparent starting point, no visible or audible cause. To Sandy Jim's ears no sound had come except the ordinary sounds of the woods—the songs and call notes of small birds, the screaming of a soaring red-shouldered hawk, the cat-like complaining cries of a red-bellied woodpecker somewhere in the swamp. Hence it was not sound which had warned him, if indeed he had received any specific warning. Nor could it have been sight; for while the myrtle thicket and the broom grass clump were in front of him and in plain view, the black oak trunk was directly behind him up the slope and he had never once glanced in that direction.
Nevertheless, the thing which he now did was not purposeless, not accidental. For just before he did it, a change had come over his face, a change so slight as to be scarcely noticeable, yet definite and undoubtedly significant.
Gradually the thin nostrils above the sparse white mustache had contracted and tightened in that odd way which they had in moments of stress, accentuating the hawk-like look of the lean, sun-tanned face; and at the same time a sudden light had flared momentarily in the gray-blue eyes. Then, very slowly, Sandy Jim turned his head.
Very, very slowly he turned it, inch by inch, so that the movement was barely perceptible, at the same time shifting his body slightly: and so—gradually and to all appearances very casually—his gaze described a half-circle, taking in the thinly wooded spaces to the right of him and behind.
At last his eyes rested on the trunk of the great black oak at the crest of the rise. Four feet of solid living oak stood between him and the grim watcher in that ambush; Mayfield's vision could not pierce the opaque wood and see that which lurked behind it. He saw nothing but the tree itself. Yet he looked no farther. As though he had completed his survey of the space behind him and was no longer interested, his eyes traveled somewhat more quickly back across the are of a half-circle and resumed their placid, patient scrutiny of the canes at the edge of the swamp from which he hoped a deer would presently emerge.
He had seen nothing, heard nothing. Yet, studying his deep-set eyes and hawk-like face, one would have guessed that something had been learned—something which stirred Sandy Jim Mayfield with a strange excitement.
This, then, was one development in the drama of the unseen eyes. Somehow, though neither sight nor sound had warned him, Mayfield's attention had been drawn to the huge trunk of the black oak on the brow of the slope behind him. As though fate had decided that events should now move swiftly to a crisis, there took place a few minutes afterwards another development in that drama.
To the three pairs of eyes which were watching Sandy Jim where he sat on his pine stump near the margin of the swamp, a fourth pair was added. These eyes were in the swamp itself, or rather just at its edge—in the fringe of short, close-growing canes at which the hunter was gazing. Yet, so dense were the canes, that Mayfield, although he was looking almost directly at the spot, could not see these eyes or the shape to which they belonged.
That shape remained for many minutes absolutely motionless in the cover of the canes while the eyes glared fixedly at the dun figure on the pine stump. They were eyes at once beautiful and terrible but far more terrible than beautiful. They were even more intense than the eyes in the myrtle thicket, even more ruthless than the eyes behind the black oak trunk. They were large, luminous, marvelously bright. Fire burned in them, yellow fire in which green lights glinted. Yet brilliant and piercing as they were, they seemed somehow pale and cold, and they were incalculably cruel. They were eyes that could know no pity, eyes harder than stone or steel, eyes utterly savage, utterly implacable.
For nearly a quarter of an hour they remained fixed upon the form on the pine stump. Mayfield made not the slightest move. He was as still as though the deadly-cold glare of those unseen, unsuspected orbs in the canes had turned his blood to ice. As a matter of fact, he was thinking hard, thinking not about the implacable eyes in the canes—for he was unaware of their existence—but about the thing which lurked in the ambush of the black oak trunk up the slope behind him.
Some men grow restless when their brains work at utmost speed. Mayfield was of another type. In him intense mental concentration was often accompanied by complete physical repose. If throughout his long vigil he had demonstrated his woodsman's faculty of sitting still in one spot, his stillness was now so perfect that he seemed to have become inanimate.
It was this that hastened the crisis. So inanimate did he seem that to one of the four watching him from ambush he became inanimate. The watcher in the myrtle thicket and the watcher in the broom grass had witnessed his coming and therefore were not to be deceived by his present immobility; the stony-eyed watcher behind the black oak trunk could not be deceived. But the watcher in the canes, having just come there from the inner regions of the swamp, had not seen the hunter take his seat on the pine stump; and when after many minutes this watcher had detected not the slightest movement, he concluded that the odd-looking, erect, dun-colored object yonder was a projecting portion of the stump itself.
At last, therefore, the cruel eyes in the canes shifted their gaze. The shape of which they were a part moved silently, sinuously forward. Next moment the canes parted and this shape came out into the open.
Sandy Jim Mayfield saw it instantly. He saw instantly, also, that this shape, this monstrous bay lynx, one of the largest that he had ever seen, had come out of the canes for a very definite purpose. He knew that the lynx's powers of scent are limited, but the whole attitude and behavior of this lynx showed him that it had scented something. His perception of this fact was so instantaneous that he checked by a conscious effort of his will the slight start of surprise which the sudden appearance of the creature had occasioned.
The lynx was advancing almost directly towards him, gliding forward very slowly, its padded feet making no sound, its great bearded face hanging low. For an instant Mayfield considered the possibility that the animal was deliberately advancing upon him. Almost at once, however, he decided that the thing which the tawny killer had scented was between the lynx and himself, that his own scent had not reached the animal's nostrils. His curiosity immediately aroused, he decided to make no move for the present but to await developments.
For the moment he seemed to forget that which watched from the black oak trunk behind him. For the moment his whole attention was concentrated upon the advancing lynx; and it was in this moment that he invoked silent imprecations upon his own head because his gun lay uncocked across his knees, while his hands rested on the stump beside him. He was in plain view of the lynx, but it was evident that his stillness had deceived the animal—as stillness will deceive most wild animals—and that it did not recognize him as a man. It was certain also that even the slight movement necessary to draw back the hammer of the gun would betray him.
Slowly, stealthily the lynx came on. Sandy Jim knew now that the thing which it had scented, the thing which it was stalking, must be hidden at the edge of the myrtle thicket in front of him. He wondered what this thing was, this creature which had lurked so long and so silently under the edge of the myrtles, for he knew that it must have been there throughout his vigil on the pine stump. Among the guesses which he made was one which was correct. But he did not learn this until afterwards; for when it had come within ten feet of the myrtle thicket, the lynx stopped.
Mayfield watched it curiously. He judged that it had heard what he himself had heard—a sound in the swamp beyond the canes, a faint sound but one which set his pulses beating faster. He knew, or thought that he knew, what that sound was; but the lynx was not so sure. It waited motionless, ears flattened, lips drawn back in a snarl, revealing long, thin, white fangs, its round, bearded face turned a little to the right, so that its pale eyes were no longer directed towards the hunter.
For half a minute it stood thus; and in that half-minute Mayfield's lean, long-fingered right hand moved slowly, cautiously and drew back both hammers of his gun.
Sandy Jim's eyes watched the crouching lynx, but his ears were strained to catch again that faint sound which both he and the lynx had heard. In a moment he heard it again, and this time there was no mistaking it.
Other ears heard it also; and the eyes in the broom grass clump—the large, restless eyes which all along had seemed to be waiting for some desired overdue event—brightened suddenly. But Sandy Jim, unaware of the presence of those eyes, knew only that success was about to crown his vigil. A deer was coming out of the swamp, the game for which he had been waiting all the long afternoon.
Slowly he raised his gun until the butt rested against his shoulder. Next moment a whitetail doe stepped into view out of the fringe of canes.
Mayfield drew a careful bead as she came on. His long, brown finger was crooked about the trigger. His thin, keen face, pressed against the gunstock, was the face of a hunting hawk. She was within easy range. He could not miss. But moment followed moment and he did not shoot.
Even as he aimed, even as his finger touched the trigger, his face had gone pale beneath its tan. Suddenly, in the nick of time, his thoughts had leaped back to the black oak trunk on the slope behind him and to that which waited and watched in ambush there.
Squinting along the gun barrel he cursed silently, cursing his own folly with something resembling dismay. For a moment he was shaken. The trap had all but closed upon him. He had been very near to the disaster which he dreaded most.
Very slowly he lowered his gun barrel slightly and sat watching. So gradual was the movement that the doe did not see it, while the head of the crouching lynx was still turned the other way, facing the newcomer. So for a half-minute he waited; and behind the black oak the stern eyes which had been watching there still watched, ablaze now with fierce expectancy, sure that within another fraction of time the trap would be sprung.
Suddenly Mayfield's eyes widened. The doe had given a mighty leap forward. She was flying up the slope now in long bounds, heading straight towards him and straight towards the lynx fifty feet in front of him. Amazed, Mayfield watched her. She must have scented the lynx by now, yet she came straight on. Sandy Jim saw the light in her eyes, the bristling hair on her neck, and in a flash the truth came to him. This doe was a mother racing to the rescue of her fawn.
The lynx crouched midway between the myrtle thicket and the broom grass clump. The doe's last long forward bound carried her to the edge of the broom grass, and for a tenth of a second she paused to nuzzle something that lay hidden there. Then, stiff-legged, her head high, her neck arched, she bounded sideways towards the lynx.
Once Sandy Jim Mayfield had seen a whitetail buck cut a rattlesnake to pieces in the woods. He knew the deadly swiftness of the rattler's stroke, the incredible quickness with which that spear-shaped head could deliver its lethal thrust. But he had learned on that occasion that the rattler's quickness is as nothing compared with the quickness of the whitetail deer and that even the poisoned fangs of the king of serpents cannot avail against the whitetail's flint-edged hoofs.
That had been a great fight. This was to be a longer and a more spectacular one. Again, in his absorption in this lesser drama, Mayfield seemed to forget the drama of which he himself was the center, to forget the ruthless eyes watching from the ambush of the black oak trunk behind him. He sat in plain view on the pine stump, but the combatants were so intent upon their battle that neither saw him. Almost before he knew it the doe leaped to the attack. But all the big cats are marvelously quick, and the bay lynx is quick as light. When the doe's sharp hoofs came down the lynx was not there.
So swiftly that Mayfield's eyes could not follow the motion, the lithe, tawny cat had leaped three feet to the right. Another short leap would have carried him into the myrtle thicket, but, instead, he bounded back into the open. Probably he had not grasped the significance of what was happening. Occasionally some big buck had displayed a certain arrogance towards him, but in general he had found the deer, especially the does, a timid folk. He did not know that a fawn lay hidden in the clump of broom grass; and he had never before fallen foul of a doe defending her young.
In a moment he had cause to regret his rashness. Stiff-legged, prancing daintily like a dancer, the doe circled him while he crouched, snarling, showing all his pointed white teeth, his bristling back bent like a bow, one keen-clawed forepaw lifted, ready to strike. The doe was trying to get behind him, but he turned as she turned, and presently she tired of the delay.
He knew when the blow was coming, but he did not know exactly where. This time the doe seemed to guess the direction in which he would leap to avoid that blow. Suddenly she bounded high, her long slim legs straightened beneath her; and this time, as the lynx leaped from under her, he leaped almost into the path of those descending hoofs and one of them ripped a long gash in his hindquarter.
Snarling with pain and rage, he whirled in the air, his long body bending as though made of rubber. More swiftly than a boxer's fist, his big right paw, bristling with curved retractile claws, swished downward and across, raking the skin from the doe's slim foreleg. It was a powerful blow, and the doe, thrown off her balance, nearly lost her footing. But the wound which the lynx had dealt was slight compared with the one which he had received. His right hindquarter was streaming blood and the pain of it burnt like fire.
That pain took the heart out of him. The doe was circling him again, dancing around him in that odd, mincing, stiff-legged way, head high, ears flattened, tail erect. He saw her muscles tighten, knew that another attack was coming. With one last savage snarl, he sprang six feet to the left and vanished in the myrtle thicket.
Immediately the doe turned, walked to the broom grass clump, and stood with lowered head, caressing her fawn. The large eyes that had watched from the broom grass were no longer urgently, anxiously expectant. They were calm and happy now. The event for which they had been waiting had come at last. The absent mother had returned to her little one.
Mayfield could not see the fawn from where he sat, but minutes ago he had learned from the doe's actions that the little creature was there in the broom grass, that it had been lying there unknown to him all the long afternoon awaiting its mother's return from the swamp where she had gone to graze. There was no sentiment in Sandy Jim. He had killed scores of deer, in season and out. He could kill this one without a twinge of conscience.
He raised the gun slowly. Deliberately he sighted, aiming at a point just behind the doe's shoulder. Longingly, lovingly his finger caressed the trigger. Into the grim eyes watching from the black oak trunk on the slope behind him leaped a light of exultant joy.
A long stalk was over. Sandy Jim Mayfield's fate was about to overtake him at last.
Two minutes later Sandy Jim Mayfield reared his long, lank form from the pine stump where he had sat so long and so patiently. He was not in a pleasant mood. To gaze along his gun barrel at that doe and refrain from pulling the trigger had imposed upon him a terrible strain. He had been rash, perhaps, in exposing himself to it, but there had been a reason. The ordeal had lasted nearly a full minute, and it had been almost more than the old hunter could stand. Again and again he had all but pressed the trigger. He had been thankful when at last the doe, having recovered somewhat from the excitement of her battle with the lynx, scented him and made off unwillingly into the swamp.
Sandy Jim walked to the broom grass clump and found the fawn. He searched the ground under the edges of the myrtle thicket and discovered what it was that the lynx had been stalking—a wild turkey hen sitting on her eggs gazing up at him with in tense, unwavering orbs. Then he shouldered his gun and started homeward.
Before him at the top of the rise loomed the massive trunk of the great black oak which had played so singular a part in the afternoon's events. Mayfield knew that the eyes which had watched him from behind that oak still waited there. Yet he walked straight towards the tree, his gun slung carelessly across his shoulder. Only the odd contraction of the thin nostrils above his white mustache revealed his knowledge of a crisis yet to come.
He was abreast of the black oak, even a step or two beyond it, when he stopped short and turned his head quickly.
"Why, hello, Sam Woodfin!" he exclaimed.
The man who stood behind the black oak—a big man, bushy-browed, clad in corduroys and hunting boots, a rifle balanced in his right hand—glared at the hunter sternly out of stony gray eyes. On his shirt under the flap of his coat gleamed a game warden's badge. The blackness of his frown, the bulging veins in his forehead, were mute evidences of his temper. With an effort he spoke calmly.
"Mayfield," he said, "you don't like me and I don't like you, and some day I'm going to get you for killing deer out o' season. But there's one or two things I want to ask you. When did you learn that I was watching you from behind this oak?"
Mayfield seemed to consider.
"'Bout a half-hour befo' that doe come out o' the swamp," he answered.
"How'd you spot me?"
Sandy Jim appeared to ignore this second question. "Ain't it funny, Sam," he said in a tone of utmost friendliness, "how fashions change? I was thinkin' about it while I was settin' down yunder by the swamp obsarvin' natur' an' listenin' to the birds a-singin'."
"What's that got to do with what I'm asking you?" growled the game warden.
"Well, you see, Sam, it's like this. A while ago everybody was smokin' them cigarettes that come in a brown paper—I dun'no what you call 'em, not bein' a smoker myself. Then, by an' by, white cigarettes got to be the fashion, an' now there's only two men in this part o' the county that smokes browns—you an' Pete Mason. Henry Harvey down at the store was tellin' me the other day that he wouldn't never sell any browns ef 'twarn't fer you an' Pete."
"Well?" snapped the warden.
"Well," Sandy Jim drawled, "I'm a old hound but I got a pretty good nose. I don't smoke myself, but I kin smell a cigarette 'most a hundred yards ef the wind's right. When I got a whiff of one of the old browns—they got a sweetish tang to 'em that the whites ain't got—I knowed that either you er Pete Mason was a little way up the wind from me; an' Pete ain't in the habit of snoopin' round in the woods."
Warden Sam Woodfin seemed to have lost the power of speech, but Sandy Jim continued earnestly, wagging his white head.
"They's bad things, Sam, them cigarettes. Used to call 'em coffin nails. An' they interfere with business. Ef it hadn't been fer that one you smoked a while ago, you'd have got the proof on old Jim Mayfield who yer been tryin' to ketch fer two years an' more."
Again the old man shook his head mournfully.
"She was a fine doe, Sam," he said, "an' I had her right at the end o' my gun. I shore hated to let her go."