“Whyn’ you take Breeze an’ go in de mawin’?” she pressed. “We could eat turkey to-morrow night.” She smacked her lips.
April turned her words over in his mind, thinking, calculating. Presently he asked, “How ’bout gwine turkey huntin’ wid me in de mawnin’, boy?”
Breeze was rapt with pure joy. April’s smile made him tingle all over. Instead of being bashful and afraid, he looked straight into April’s eyes and nodded.
“Lawdy! Lawdy!” He murmured low, and his heart went pit-a-pat. He was going turkey-hunting with April, the foreman, who had scarcely ever noticed him before!
“Git on to bed, son!” Big Sue said so gently, so kindly, Breeze was at a loss to know why. He walked slowly back to the shed-room, the blood beating clear up in his cheeks, but Big Sue sat down in her chair by the fire to smoke another pipeful. “Set down, April,” she said. “De night is young, yet.”
She woke Breeze before daylight when the black sky held only a narrow moon, without any sign of sunrise. A thin gray mist hung over the earth and all was quiet except a few crickets and the occasional bark of a dog. Breeze had slept little, but he felt wide awake, breathless, as he followed April’s slow ponderous steps. April spoke seldom. He seemed to be brooding over something. Breeze pitied him. A foreman has so much to think about, so many people to rule, so much land to manage. Sherry was wrong to be impudent last night.
They turned off from the road into a path which Breeze could barely see although his eyes worked well in the dark. April led the way, and Breeze hung close at his heels for the silence in the forest was full of strange sounds and shapes.
The turkey blind was a great bush heap, with one small opening in its side, looking straight out on a narrow trench. The bottom of the trench was strewn with white shelled corn, so when April called the turkeys, and they got to eating, their heads would be down in a bee line. One shot might blow two or three heads off. Wild turkeys fly too fast for any gun to have a good second chance at them.
Breeze sat perfectly still inside the blind, while April yelped and yelped. Once a hen yelped back, but she came no nearer. Breeze’s feet went to sleep. Both his legs got cramp. His back ached. The cold morning air chilled his very bones, but he dared not move so much as one muscle. April had warned him not even to whisper. The silence made him drowsy, but when April sniffed and Breeze drew in a long breath of air, then his body’s discomfort fled! Cold fear took its place, for a rattlesnake was near.
“Le’s go, Cun April!”