Читать книгу Pale Blue Light - Skip Tucker - Страница 11

A phantom awaited Canon on the depot platform. At least it seemed a phantom, tall and shadowy in the cold December mist. Canon’s sense of foreboding increased as the shadow moved toward him.

“Hello, Mr. Canon,” said the man, extending a welcoming hand, “welcome to the halls of war.”

Canon thought the remark unusual but appropriate. The man taught at a military college and, after all, they were meeting to make war, if only on a turkey. They made polite conversation as they walked toward a line of carriages for hire.

The professor was average size, average complexion, and had thinning dark brown hair. His booted feet were huge, but his hands small, almost girlish. Canon’s hand enclosed the other man’s like a cocoon. Jackson’s broad, full face carried a brush beard. Above the beard projected a Roman nose, above the nose a high domed forehead, between them a pair of pale blue eyes.

The voice was a teacher’s voice, rather high pitched but not loud, and firm in tone and timbre. Modulated. They climbed into the closed gig as a porterloaded Canon’s bags and hunting gear. The driver spoke up his horse. Gauzy outlines of Lexington buildings were visible through the thinning fog as they rolled toward the VMI campus. The professor, for Canon could think of him in no other terms, gave a brief background of town and college as they bumped along.

Canon’s apprehensions vanished with the fog. There appeared nothing unusual about this man. He was the epitome of a scholarly Southern gentleman and most likely a very ordinary fellow.

Canon was beginning to silently chide himself for his wild imaginings when the professor reached into the pocket of his black broadcloth suit, produced two large lemons and matter-of-factly offered one to him.

It was not yet seven A.M. Canon had never considered lemon a particularly desirable fruit, except in the odd bowl of punch, and certainly not for breakfast. He declined, he hoped, graciously.

The professor was nonchalant. “I am of unfortunate physical disposition,” he said, “and stomach disorders are a constant trouble to me. I have found that fruits and vegetables, scientifically consumed, aid the body and mind. The acidic property of the lemon is of particular assistance to my digestive tract. I recommend it to you. No? You must try it sometime.”

He bit off one end of the lemon and noisily sucked its juice.

The fog burned away during the half-hour ride to campus, where students scurrying to class stopped to wave a salute at the professor as the carriage passed.

By the time the driver pulled to a stop in front of a neat white frame house, the two men were engaged in a spirited discussion of astronomy and artillery, the diverse subjects the professor taught at VMI.

Canon warmed to the man. Though certainly a bit unusual in some of his beliefs, the professor at times displayed intensity which Canon found engaging. Most of the talk had been small, but Canon learned the professor was graduated from West Point and had earned the rank of major fighting in the brief Mexican War.

His second wife—the first had died soon after their marriage—was daughter of the school president. They had one daughter, born six summers ago. Jackson’s young nephew lived with them.

If Canon was intrigued by the professor, he was enchanted by his wife. Mary Anna was a model of what Canon considered a Southern lady. She was slight, and her fine light brown hair was pulled back into a bit of a bun, with loosely rolled curls at her temples. She wore a simple but stylish gray day frock.

Graceful and gracious, she was concerned but not patronizing, friendly without a hint of coquettishness. Canon despised the coquette.

She settled Canon in his room while the professor, who had walked to the train station, set out on another constitutional. His frail health, he said, did not allow him to miss his constitutional, rain or shine.

Canon completed his morning toilet with a wash and change of clothes about the time the professor returned to call him to breakfast. Given the episode with the lemon and Mary Anna’s own diminutive frame, he feared there would be light going at table.

Instead, the breakfast board almost groaned in the middle. Everything was in triplicate. There were breakfast meats of ham, bacon and sausage; three gravies; eggs fried, eggs scrambled, eggs poached; pancakes, hoecakes, biscuits. There were fruits, melons, preserves.

Canon willed his stomach not to rumble as he waited through a lengthy and fervent prayer offered by his host. Then he watched in surprise as the professor took one poached egg and a small bowl of preserved figs and Mary Anna took a biscuit and a bowl of hominy grits. The children had apparently been fed in the kitchen and packed off to school.

For the first time since they met, the professor smiled at Canon. Canon would come to learn that smiles were rare to the man because he was of serious demeanor. But the professor smiled over the feast.

“Frankly,” he said, “I was doubtful in regard to reports of your physical stature. But I am happy to know that in this world there are some reports which do not exaggerate. In any event, I believe in being prepared.

“We have a difficulty in our home. My wife loves to cook, though we eat but little. It is rare that she has the opportunity to display her culinary skill. So cook prepares most of our simple meals. When I told Mary Anna about the reports of your size, she was delighted at the prospect of cooking for someone who would appreciate it. This breakfast is for you, sir.”

Canon thanked them and dug in. A half-hour later, it was he who was groaning in the middle and the professor who was amazed. A mouse would make a poor living off what remained on the table.

“Sir,” said the professor, “that was one of the grandest sights I have seen.” Turning to Mary Anna in mock concern, he said, “Mother, alert the tradesmen.”

After breakfast, Canon accepted the professor’s invitation to attend his classes. He needed some exercise after the cramped train ride and huge meal. The brisk fifteen-minute walk to the professor’s building pumped Canon’s circulation and lifted his spirits. He had been looking forward to this.

VMI was a dozen serviceable brick and frame mainbuildings that resembled medieval castles. Various outbuildings and service structures completed the functional campus.

The professor’s schoolroom was well lit and airy. Several windows were partly open even though a coal stove in the corner glowed red in the middle. Canon had enjoyed his own two years of university education and looked forward to learned discussion.

By the end of the day, he was both heartened and dismayed. He was pleased to learn the professor shared his own view of the pervasive war talk in the South. He was dismayed to find VMI Cadets even more rabidly anticipating war than were the gentry back home.

Canon had hoped to find cadets at a war college more enlightened. Instead, they talked as if economics and guns and troop strength were of little consequence in a war with the North. Yankees, by definition, were not gentlemen, they argued. And everyone knew that common Northern rabble could not stand in front of Southern nobility. Consensus was that one Southerner was worth ten Yankees.

The professor listened with patience for a while. He stood beside his desk in front of the blackboard as a score of young men sneered at the prospects of invasion from the north. The professor held up a hand and began to speak. At the start, he was cool and polite. Then a change came over him. The watery blue eyes took on gleam, then flash, until a pale blue light seemed to emanate from them. Without raising his voice, the professor lashed the would-be warriors.

“In Mexico,” he said, “they have a little hairless dog called a Chihuahua. I found it to be a most miserable creature. It is tiny and to my eye misshapen. Yet it appears to be the bravest of creatures, barking and snarling and threatening any and everything around it. It will make as if to set upon someone who only wishes to pet it. It will run at dogs ten times its size.

“But if attacked, even the merest touch in anger will send it yipping and yowling in terror. This animal fills no useful function that I am able to realize.”

The implication was not wasted on the students. A low grumble rose in the room. It was not safe in the South for anyone, be he teacher or preacher, to suggest cowardice. Duels were fought over far less. The professor’s glare never wavered.

“You think I have slandered you,” he said. “That is not my intention. What I point out to you is that the wretched Chihuahua has little choice in running away. Otherwise, it would be chewed to dollrags.

“It is to be despised because of its false bravado. It has no bravery, it has no honor, except in its own light. I do not doubt the bravery or honor of any of you. I only point out to you that it is easy to speak of bravery and honor in war before the fight. But is it seemly? Is it manly?”

No one spoke.

“I have been at war. It is a business which requires bravery and honor. I cannot think it so, but the day may come when your wishes of war are granted. Then you will be called to the test.

“If that day comes, some of you may be faced with the Chihuahua’s choice: Run or be chewed to dollrags.

“You speak of war as if it were all glory and honor. There is glory and honor, but a fractional amount compared to pain, misery and death. You speak of killing Yankees as if they would stand in awe before your aristocracy and be willingly shot down.

“Gentlemen, I will give you the main tenet of war. If you are willing to kill, you had better be willing to die. A bullet owes but one allegiance, and that is to death. And that’s what war is.”

During Canon’s stay in Lexington, which ultimately stretched to January, he attended many of the professor’s lectures. Never again did he hear an idle boast in any of his classes.

It was a while, though, before he heard another lecture. This was the last day of classes before the holiday break. Testing had been finished for the term and students were walking around campus to receive good news and bad as scores were posted.

After dinner that evening, where Canon had been called to consume another huge meal, he and the professor prepared gear for their hunting trip. Sitting in the small, comfortable parlor, a wood fire and snug walls standing proof against the winter, the possibility of war seemed remote indeed to Canon.

The professor agreed. He took an orange from a huge fruit bowl on a sidetable.

“There will be no war, Rabe,” he said. “It would be madness. Wars are economic, almost without exception. This one would benefit neither side. Northern industry cannot afford the loss of our cotton and we cannot rely on total export. The industry is interdependent.

“The problem between North and South is political, economic and sociological. Is this nation to be basically an agricultural nation or an industrial one? Will there be slaves?

“I oppose slavery. We hire freed men and women for our help. I preach at a Negro church and, to the horror of many, teach reading and writing to colored people in night classes. I have heard the term ‘nigger lover’ directed at me more than once. Slavery is sinfully wrong and we must work toward ending it.

“But as to the first question, and the crux of the matter, I see merit in disunion. But I do not want it. And I believe true leaders, Northern and Southern, will find a way to make equitable the trade and transportation tariffs which help create bases for the dispute.

“If not, the South will leave the Union and be allowed to go in peace. Politicians on both sides gesture and posture to remain in favor. But no one is so insane as to start shooting.

“Now let us get some sleep. We have our own shooting to do tomorrow and we must leave at first light if we are to take that damnable bird.”

Canon was surprised to hear the professor so vehemently use a word that even approached being crude. It’s just a turkey, thought Canon, heading for bed.

That damnable bird, thought Canon, striding angrily back to camp next evening. He had never known such a one.

The two men had started early that morning. Canon learned that first light, to the professor, meant an hour before dawn.

Two fine horses and a pack mule had been brought from the professor’s small farm outside town. Canon rode a big bay, and the professor a favorite small sorrel named Fancy. They rode in silence, swathed against the near freezing temperature. Canon was amused that the professor appeared to be a poor horseman, though he claimed to have been a jockey in his youth.

He felt a warm friendship for the eccentric professor and enjoyed his eccentricities. After they set out, the man had raised his left hand. Canon stopped, thinking it a signal, until it was explained that riding in such manner reduced the jolting on the internal organs and kept the body in better balance.

Mary Anna had told him with maternal fondness that the professor had many “little humors” that amused rather than frustrated. Most had to do with careful maintenance of the professor’s inner organs.

He was a strict vegetarian, eating only the blandest boiled vegetables. He could not swallow pepper because, he said, it invariably caused his left leg to go numb. Canon had cautiously pursued the subject of eating pepper to the professor.

Was it any kind of pepper? he asked. The professor nodded sadly. Any and all kinds, he solemnly replied.

The night before, as Canon enjoyed several glasses of excellent brandy, the professor declined to join him.

“You enjoy a drink, Rabe,” he said, “but not so much as I. In that, I am different from most men. To me, the rawest liquor is as tasty as others find a cup of the most expensive coffee or the finest cordial. I do not drink because I love it too well. If I allowed myself, I would be the greatest drunkard in Virginia.”

He also learned from Mary Anna that the professor felt he could not survive on less than ten hours sleep. Ten was required. Twelve preferred. Internal organs require rest.

Although the professor enjoyed reading popular magazines and novels, he had given them up because he believed such reading interfered with the highest functioning of the brain. All considered, the professor was the most compulsive man Canon had met.

His overriding passion now was for the destruction of Old Scratch, the demon turkey from hell that Canon had been called in to kill. For five years the professor had hunted him. Now his compulsion had become obsession. The bird, said the professor, must be taken.

Before daylight, they quietly rode into the domain of Old Scratch.

Like all lesser beings, turkeys in Old Scratch’s territory knew not of men’s naming of names. Had they, though, each would have considered the synonym for Satan appropriate for the big bird that dominated their territory. His territory.

Scratch had been patriarch and overlord in five acres of virgin forest for a decade. His venerable beard was graying, his gobble gone guttural. But he was king. Scratch’s harem reveled in the old bird’s prowess as leader and lover.

Envious rivals feared the twenty-five pounds of winged fury, his carrot-colored legs boasting long thorny spurs. They had long since pledged fealty or fled.

Scratch possessed no reasoning ability, as humans know it, but genes and experience had given him skills and senses so sharp and special that they appeared to be innate intelligence.

This morning, as Scratch rolled like thunder from his roost, he sensed signals which had the old Tom on alert before he touched earth. There was a stillness among the other animals, ground dwellers and tree dwellers. An undercurrent of alarm rippled through the forest like wind through fields of wheat.

Squirrels had stopped their silly chatter and stayed still among protective boughs. Rabbits hugged their hidey holes. Birds were a-wing and a-twitter.

Something had invaded Old Scratch’s kingdom. It was his duty to learn whether it threatened his flock. If it was a predator bigger than Scratch, it was to be watched so it didn’t surprise his brood before he could bustle the family into hiding.

And if it were his size or smaller, a rival turkey, perhaps, then it was time for Scratch to add another victim to his list. With a furious beating of wings, Scratch swept toward and through the lesser birds coming toward him.

As the object of their hunt sped at them through limbs and evergreen boughs, Canon and the professor quietly set up a cold camp. It was a quarter-mile yet to the heart of what the professor knew to be Scratch’s territory, but that distance had to be covered with stealth if they were to have any chance of even sighting the bird. They had to forego a fire and hot coffee until after the morning’s hunt. The professor sucked a lemon. Canon tried it, couldn’t do it, reached instead into the pack of biscuits and meats Mary Anna had prepared.

When everything was unpacked and placed, the professor leaned over to whisper, his breath frosting out like dandelion down.

“Rabe,” he said, “I feel badly about asking this, since I invited you, but I would like one more opportunity at Old Scratch before you hunt him. If you do not mind, I will hunt in the direction of his roost,” he pointed east, “while you go after game in the other direction. If I do not get him this morning, then you hunt him this afternoon.”

Turkey hunters don’t stalk the same turkey at the same time, and Canon as the invited party should have had first rights. But he understood the professor’s feelings.

“Professor,” he said. “I insist that you go after the demon, and I hope you bring him back over your shoulder.”

Nodding thanks, the professor took his shotgun and stepped out of the clearing toward the woods. Agreeing to return to camp for noon lunch, Canon shouldered his gun and walked west. When the professor walked wearily into sight again, Canon was sitting amidst a freshly made camp, tents up and coffee boiling above a hickory fire. It was two P.M.

Whistling a tuneless ditty and trying not to look at the dejected hunter, Canon continued to pluck a fat quail while another roasted on a spit. The professor knelt by the fire and warmed his hands. Finally he looked at Canon.

“I am no gentleman, sir,” he said. “Two hours behind my time and nothing to show. Except these,” he pulled up a woolly pants leg to reveal two long blood crusted furrows up his calf.

“I am not normally profane, Rabe, but this damned bird has confounded me to a point past caring. The bird is from hell. It is an agent of the devil. I know it is from hell because I have just visited there. The beast gave me a guided tour.

“I have been up trees and through underbrush a hog wouldn’t have. I am mud all over. There are three acres of briars in my backside that I hope will kill the red ants which set up a fort in my breeches.

“He took me into a hornet’s nest, Rabe. I am as lumpy as a bride’s biscuits. I crossed the creek twice, falling through the ice each time. No spot on my body is dry or without wound. My internal organs will never be right again. I saw him three times, all out of range, of course. Go kill him, Rabe. I have been in hell.”

“Then the heat of that place is greatly exaggerated, professor,” said Canon with a smile. “You have ice in your beard.”

Canon laughed, but he noticed as the professor stripped off his gear that his gunpowder was still dry. Not bad for going twice into the creek, thought Canon. He hoisted his shotgun and stepped away in the direction from which the professor had returned.

Three hours later, a chagrinned Canon stepped back into camp as sunset washed the woods in red gold. He was not so jaunty now. He was disgusted. Canon did not think he would kill the bird the first day. But he had thought to learn the bird’s parameters and weaknesses. He found neither.

The professor attempted to put on an air of disappointment. “I heard no shot, sir,” he said. “I fear it did not go well for you. Tell me about it.” Then he let go one of his rare smiles.

“Professor, that is one bad bird,” said Canon. And the two men began to commiserate.

For three days, they took lessons in humility from a twenty-five pound fowl. Though each killed game when he walked west, the eastern province belonged to Old Scratch. When feathers flew there, they all flew in the same direction.

Scratch knew what he was doing, though all was by instinct. He had lived through many a close call, from predators with weapons ranging from fangs, claws and talons to shotguns. There were numerous scars on the skin under his feathers, some shotgun pellets under that skin. But for each narrow escape there had been a lesson learned.

If it were possible to watch Old Scratch dismay a hunter, it would be easy to believe the bird possessed a genius intellect. Sometimes circling, sometimes moving parallel, sometimes showing himself at a safe distance, Scratch always led the hunter, be it man or mountain lion, away from his brood and into terrain of his choosing.

He had watched the tall white animals since the first morning. Scratch knew these were the most dangerous of predators. They possessed a thunderous roar that belched smoke and flame. And their invisible claws were able to reach incredible distances. In his younger days, he had twice been clutched by those deadly claws. Had been knocked spinning by them, horribly hurt, and had only escaped by limping into thick underbrush that was luckily near. The claws were poison, too, for he had lain weak and sick for long periods, barely able to forage.

But he had learned to judge safe distance from the white animals, just as he knew the safe distance from things that flew, slithered or pounced. Always he drew predators away from his brood. Now, even after three roosts, the strange creatures had still not admitted Scratch’s mastery over them. Strutting proudly, Scratch gobbled a challenge into the winter dawn for the fools to come after him once more.

The professor flung his tin camp coffee cup at wakening dawn. “Rabe,” he said, “today’s our last hunting day. One of us must kill that bird.”

“Professor, I’m not happy about failing, either. But let’s give that wily bastard credit. You’ll get him next year.”

“No. No, I won’t, Rabe. He won’t be around next year.” The professor took a long, slender salt-and-pepper checked feather from his coat pocket and handed it over. “This is one of his feathers. I saw him lose it first hunt this year when he flew away from me,” he said.

Canon studied the feather, then nodded grimly.

“He’s sick,” he said.

“Old age, more than anything,” said the professor. “Some sort of infection in his internal organs, I reckon, from old wounds. But he’ll weaken quickly. And I don’t want him to end his days as a meal for a skunk, or defenseless against a young Tom that couldn’t even look at him today.

“If I have to, I’ll shoot him off the roost.”

Normally, no self-respecting hunter would shoot a sleeping quarry. But Canon nodded agreement. “From what I know of the disease, it doesn’t transmit,” he said, “but I agree, professor. Scratch ought to go out the easy way.

“If one of us doesn’t get him today, I’ll take him in the morning, off the roost.”

It was part of the hunt to know the general area in which a turkey roosted, just like it was permissible to use a turkey call to open the stalk. Turkeys usually respond to a gobble call, but only the youngest and most foolish Toms would fly or run up to a call without first investigating from safe distance. It was part of the sport.

But the sport had turned serious for the two men. The professor walked into the woods. He returned at noon, looked at Canon, shook his head. Without a word, Canon began the last honorable hunt for Old Scratch.

The woods smelled of winter. Deep inside gigantic oak and hickory, slumbering sap emitted the thinnest of odors, thin as the sunlight filtering down through skeletal limbs from a high, cloudless gray-blue sky.

Canon’s waning determination to take the bird resurged. He had felt a conflict of emotions on the previous day. Though he had wanted to kill the bird to demonstrate his skill to the professor, a part of him had been reluctant. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to deprive the man of a hunt that so frustrated him but that he obviously relished.

He realized the professor would not have sent for him if old Scratch was not dying. Canon also knew none of it mattered much insofar as taking Old Scratch. Canon had done the things that had brought down other turkeys which had reputations similar to that of Scratch. But the damned old bird was far better than anything Canon had sought with a gun.

There was no pattern to his movements, no weakness to be exploited. At the end of the previous day, Canon realized that he probably wasn’t going to be able to outsmart Old Scratch. He still felt so. But he had to try.

Four hundred paces into the forest, Canon found a monstrous, lightning-blasted oak. It had to be a hundred feet tall, he thought. A huge rent had been torn in it years ago by the savage strike. A man on a horse could fit inside it. Canon sat just inside one edge of the opening. Eyes closed, he took deep breaths, tasting the air. He was rewarded only with the lightly lingering malodorous spoor of skunk, hours old. Disgusted, he spat.

He pulled from his pocket his wooden gobbler call. Chopping the hinged lid sideways across the resonator, he produced the garbled yelping challenge of a young Tom. As expected, from the distance came Scratch’s answering war call. “Come on and fight,” said Scratch. “Come on.”

Silently as a wraith, Canon moved left on moccasined feet. Papery leaves rustled no more than if rattled by a small wind. It took him fifteen minutes to travel seventy yards. Kneeling ever so gently in swampy underbrush, Canon barked a low gobble from the box.

Directly behind him, possibly twenty yards, possibly fifty, Scratch loosed a gobble that caused Canon to whirl, gritting his teeth. Where was the blasted bird? In the tangled brambles? In the huckleberry bushes, thick as hedge?

Canon moved to his right, sacrificing some silence for swiftness. Still, a red Indian might not have heard him. But Scratch did and went trotting away. Canon could hear him plainly and could discern the general direction. Out of frustration, he almost risked a shot but immediately stifled the impulse. Chances of a hit were minimal, of a kill, nonexistent. Slowly, Canon moved through muck and stunted shrub, up a gentle hill. He chopped the box. Scratch replied, a hundred yards to the right. Canon sat down, shaking his head in frustration. It was going to be a long afternoon.

Four hours later, Canon had exhausted every device he knew. The day before he had sat motionless for five hours, save for an occasional call. Scratch had circled him all afternoon. Canon never saw him. Had not seen him these three days. Canon had tried mating calls, battle calls, calls for help. Scratch responded almost every time, but never showed a feather.

Only once on the previous day had Canon sensed a nearness. It was near dusk, probably too late for a decent shot, but Canon had barked out love call after plaintive love call. For no real reason he could think of, Canon felt Scratch was nearby. He had tried to get inside the turkey’s head, had offered the half-frightened love call of a young hen. Scratch had fallen strangely silent, not responding at all.

On this alone, Canon pinned his last hopes. He whined out a call of the frightened young hen, half in love and half afraid. Again, Scratch hesitantly answered twice, then was silent. Canon called his heart out. At sundown, he knew it was useless. There was nothing left to try. Cursing to himself, he headed toward camp. He wouldn’t be happy facing the morning task he set himself.

Shotgun hanging from his shoulder by a sling, Canon trudged through the darkening woods. Half in salute, half in frustration, he chopped a fluttering female call as he walked. Scratch mocked him from a distance with the call of a gobbler ready to mate. Enjoy it, old boy, thought Canon, walking along. In honor of Scratch, he made the box imitate the sound of a young hen terrified by the approach of a horny old male.

Old Scratch heard a sound he had not heard in years and it filled him with excitement. It made him strut, spread his tailfeathers in a magnificent fan. Scratch loved a conquest by siege, and it had been a long time. He used to chase down his ladies and dominate them with his power and style until they became his submissives forever.

Now they all chased him or cooed to him until he called on them. It had been a long time since he went winging away to take a maiden by royal prerogative. Any female that wandered into his territory belonged to him. But they came willingly to him now. All the young hens were of his own brood. It had been a long time since he flew out of his territory to take a new maid.

Frankly, he just didn’t feel up to it any more. And deep down, something told him that he might not be able to handle a strapping young Tom as easily as he had done. So he had contented himself by staying home and protecting his property.

He was content, anyhow, until he heard this new girl who had wandered into his territory and was so afraid of his love. She was running away! How delicious. “Wait, dear,” Scratch called to her. “Don’t be afraid. It will be all right.” Still she ran, calling out her terrified passion.

Scratch ran after her.

Canon couldn’t believe it when he heard Scratch follow him with lovesick calls. He ran a few steps and called again. Much nearer, Scratch answered.

Canon ran a hundred yards, gobbling the call madly, then threw himself quietly as possible behind a clump of bushes at the top of a small rise. He dropped the turkey call and pulled his shotgun around.

Scratch was having the time of his old life. He had chased this new honey to ground. Slowing only a bit, he quickly surveyed the hill where his sweetheart waited, no longer calling, but cowering in heat and fear.

“Ho, ho,” gobbled Scratch. He charged the hill. Canon watched the huge turkey lope straight toward him. He waited until the gobbler was twenty-five yards away, then thumbed back the ears of the muzzleloader’s twin hammers. At the click, Scratch gathered himself to fly. He looked at the long snout suddenly pointing at him from the bushes. “Dammit,” was Old Scratch’s last gobble.

In camp, not two hundred yards away, the professor heard the shotgun blast and smiled. In the woods, Canon slung Old Scratch over his shoulder.

“Don’t worry, old fella,” he said. “You’re not the first horny old goat who got it for chasing the young ones. You won’t be the last.”

When they returned to Lexington next day, the professor began a round of victory celebrations for Canon that continued into and finally merged with those at Christmas and then New Year’s.

The professor took Scratch to a taxidermist and stood over the man for two days until the bird was mounted. Then Canon and Scratch were taken for display to every hunter in Lexington, novice and adept, who had joined the professor on an expedition for Old Scratch. The number included practically all the town’s gentility.

Canon sent a letter detailing the adventure to Mulberry and received in return from Mountain Eagle, who had been educated at white schools, a congratulatory letter and newspaper clippings.

Reporters had come from the Lexington daily paper and even from the Dispatch in Richmond, ninety miles away, to do stories about the hunt. Photographs, the country’s new sensation, were made. Party invitations poured in and Canon was rarely seen without one of a half-dozen of the town’s most beautiful belles on his arm.

The annual Christmas Ball at VMI was considered the fete of the year. Canon had intended to be home for Christmas, but gave in to entreaties to stay from the professor and Mary Anna. He sent presents home and received handsome presents in return.

The gift he most wanted to present was for the professor, and the VMI ball would be the perfect place.

It snowed all night Christmas Eve which added to the festivity at VMI. The ball began in late afternoon. Full dress uniforms of black, gold and gray were highlighted by afternoon frocks of diverse color and then in the evening by gorgeous ball gowns of every hue.

The huge ballroom was done up in school colors and gaily bedecked by bright crepe and pine boughs. An orchestra played traditional songs of the season and interspersed them with light airs for the dances of the day.

Old Scratch, at the professor’s insistence, was perched on a table laden with gifts for the school faculty. Canon had grown tired of telling the story, which suited the professor just fine. He gained relish with each recounting of the tale and was more than happy to take over the telling.

After the roast turkey dinner, which was not diminished by the sight of Scratch overlooking the proceeding, the professor rose at the head table with glass of punch in hand.

“Gentlemen and officers of the school, beautiful ladies, I give you compliments of the season,” he said, and was rewarded with cries of “Hear, hear.” “I also present my compliments to my guest, Mr. Rabbarian Canon of Montgomery, who has rid the countryside of a noble but pernicious creature.

“Word has come to me that this bird,” he pointed to Scratch, “is the world record turkey and I add congratulations to my compliments.”

Canon and his chosen lady for the night sat at the guest table next to the professor’s. “Excuse me, lovey,” Canon said to his date as he rose amidst cheers and applause. He was surprised at the information the professor had withheld and said so, then he thanked his host and acknowledged the hospitality he had received from the people of Lexington. Then he sprang his own surprise when he made a present of the stuffed Scratch to the professor, who flushed at the announcement. But Canon wondered at the sly grin which the professor displayed as he accepted the gift.

That grin was explained toward the end of the evening when the professor called for quiet. The school commandant had just ended a short speech of compliments of the season from the stage and a crafty call for more funding from college patrons.

He announced the last dance of the evening and left the stage when the professor mounted it and called for quiet.

“One good scratch deserves another,” he said, and invited the crowd outside. Canon had no idea what was going on but joined the throng as it moved to the exit indicated by the professor.

Outside there stood a magnificent black Arabian charger, saddled and stamping, reins held by a groom. The horse gleamed blueblack in the silvery snow, which was lit by lamps and a lowering half-moon. Twin spumes of smokey breath steamed from its nostrils as it impatiently shook its head.

The professor took the reins from the groom and led the horse to Canon. He handed over the lines.

“I am not surprised by your generosity, sir,” he said, “but I am greatly pleased. This horse is for you. His name is Old Scratch.”

It was Canon’s turn to be flustered. Spurred by the gift and several secret juleps, Canon did his best in a short speech to be as gracious as he had found the people of Lexington.

He refused to believe the professor, who claimed ever after that Canon said he looked forward to riding the turkey and was glad he was able to shoot the horse.