"My milk don't seem ter nourish him none," she answered, and the voice which had once been sweet carried a haunting whine of tragedy.
Into the lawless tangle of the "laurel-hell" that came down the mountainside to encroach upon the meagre patch reclaimed for human habitation, a man who had crept yard by yard to the thicket's edge drew back at the sight of the older woman.
This man carried a rifle which he hitched along with him as he made his slow progress, and his clothes were ragged from laboured travel through rocky tangles. Small stains of blood, dried brown on his face and hands, testified to the stinging obstruction of thorned trailer and creeping briar, and his cheeks were slightly hollowed because for two days he had avoided human habitations where adequate food could be obtained.
Now he crouched there, gazing steadfastly at the house, and schooled his patience to keep vigil until the mother should come out or the other woman go away.
At least, Parish Thornton told himself, his sister and her baby were alive.
Out of the house door slouched a year-old hound puppy with shambling feet and lean ribs. It stood for a moment, whining and wagging a disconsolate tail at the woman's feet, then came suddenly to life and charged a razor-back hog that was rooting at will in what should have been a potato patch.
The hog wheeled with a startled grunt and stampeded into the thicket—almost upsetting in its headlong flight the man who was hiding there.
But the dog had stopped and stood rigidly sniffing as human scent proclaimed itself to his nostrils. The bristles rose erect as quills along his neck and shoulders as a deep growl rumbled in his throat.
That engrossment of interest and disquiet held until the woman with the baby in her arms came down the two steps, in curiosity, and crossed the yard.
Then Thornton let his whisper go out to her with an utterness of caution: "Don't say nothin', Sally.... Walk back inter ther woods ... outen sight of the house ... it's me ... it's yore brother, Ken."