As he reached a heavy hand up for the gourd that hung on a nail beside the water-bucket, his arm lengthened into a lazy stretch, the other arm joined in, and his mouth opened into a wide yawn. Then his fingers dropped wearily on to his head where they began a slow tired scratching.
Big Sue stopped short in her tracks, and the sparkle in her beady black eyes cut him clear through to the quick.
“Looka here, boy! Is you paralyze’? I ain’ got time to stop an’ lick you, now. But if you don’ stir you’ stumps, you’ hide won’ hold out to-night when I git back home. Dat strap yonder is eetchin’ to git on you’ rind right now! Or would you ruther chaw a pod o’ red pepper?”
The long thin strip of leather, hanging limp and black against the whitewashed wall not far from the mantel-shelf, looked dumb and harmless enough, but Breeze gave a shiver and jumped wide awake as his eyes followed Big Sue’s fat forefinger. That strap could whistle and hiss through the air like a blacksnake when Big Sue laid its licks home. Its stinging lash could bite deep into tender naked meat. But the string of red pepper pods hanging outside by the front door were pure fire.
He wanted to cry but fear crushed back the misery that seized him, and gulping down a sob he hurried about his tasks. First he hastily swallowed a bite of breakfast, then he took a big armful of folded quilt tops, and holding them tight hurried to Maum Hannah’s house with them.
The sun was up, and the morning tide rolled high and shiny in the river. The air was cool, and the wind murmuring on the tree-tops strewed the path with falling leaves. Some of them whirled over as they left the swaying boughs, then lay still wherever they touched the ground, while others flew sidewise, and skipped nimbly over the ground on their stiff brown points.
The sunlight smelled warm, but the day’s breath was flavored with things nipped by the frost. The sweet potato leaves were black, the squash vines full of slimy green rags. The light frost on the cabin steps sparkled with tinted radiance as the cool wind, that had all the leaves trembling in a shiver, began to blow a bit warmer and melt it back into dew.
This was the second frost of the fall. One more would bring rain. The day knew it, for in spite of the sun’s brave shining, the shadows fell heavy and green under the trees. Those cast by the old cedar stretched across the yard’s white sand much blacker and more doleful than the sun-spotted shade cast by the live-oaks.
Maum Hannah’s house was very old, and its foundations had weakened, so the solid weight of its short square body leaned to one side. The ridge-pole was warped, the mossy roof sagged down in the middle, and feathery clumps of fern throve along the frazzled edge of the rotted eaves.
Two big black iron washpots in Maum Hannah’s yard sat close enough to the house to be handy, but far enough away to kill any spark that might fly from their fires toward the house, trying to set fire to the old shack, tottering with age and all but ready to fall.