” ‘Bout time,” said the youngest son, taking a swig from the jug. He was in his early forties, balding and feral.
“Mar’ Beth,” called Baron Neill without turning his head or taking from his mouth the long stem of his meerschaum pipe.
There was silence from within the cabin but no immediate response.
The Baron dropped his feet from the porch rail with a crash and stood up. The Neill patriarch looked more like a rat than anything on two legs had a right to do. His nose was prominent, and the remainder of his body seemed to spread outward from it down to the fleshy buttocks supported by a pair of spindly shanks. “Mar’ Beth!” he shouted, hunched forward as he faced the cabin door.
“Well, I’m comin’, ain’t I?” said a woman who was by convention the Baron’s youngest daughter and was in any case close kin to him. She stepped out of the lamplit cabin, hitching the checked apron a little straighter on her homespun dress. The oil light behind her colored her hair more of a yellow than the sun would have brought out, emphasizing the translucent gradations of her single tortoise-shell comb.
“Simp’s comin’ back,” said the Baron, relaxing enough to clamp the pipe again between his teeth. “Tyse jist called. Git down t’ the trail en bring him back.”
The woman stood hipshot, the desire to scowl tempered by the knowledge that the patriarch would strike her if the expression were not hidden by the angle of the light. “I’m poorly,” she said.
One of the boys snickered, and Baron Neill roared, “Don’t I know thet? You do ez I tell ye, girl.”
Mary Beth stepped off the porch with an exaggerated sway to her hips. The pair of hogs sprawled beneath the boards awakened but snorted and flopped back down after questing with their long flexible snouts.
“Could be I don’t mind,” the woman threw back over her shoulder from a safe distance. “Could be Simp looks right good stacked up agin some I’ve seed.”
One of her brothers sent after her a curse and the block of poplar he was whittling, neither with serious intent.
“Jeth,” said the Baron, “go fetch Dave and Sim from the still. Never know when two more guns might be the difference betwixt somethin’ er somethin’ else. En bring another jug back with ye.”
“Lotta durn work for a durned old plowhorse,” grumbled one of the younger Neills.
The Baron sat down again on his chair and lifted his boots to the porch rail. “Ain’t about a horse,” he said, holding out his hand and having it filled by the stoneware whiskey jug without him needing to ask. “Hain’t been about a horse since he brung Old Nathan into hit. Fancies himself, that ‘un does.”
The rat-faced old man took a deep draw on his pipe and mingled in his mouth the harsh flavors of burley tobacco and raw whiskey. “Well, I fancy myself, too. We’ll jist see who’s got the rights uv it.”
* * *
Eldon Bowsmith tried to step apart from the woman when the path curved back in sight of the cabin. Mary Beth giggled throatily and pulled herself close again, causing the youth to sway like a sapling in the wind. He stretched out the heavy bundle in his opposite hand in order to recover his balance.
“What in tarnation is that ye got, boy?” demanded Baron Neill from the porch. The air above his pipe bowl glowed orange as he drew on the mouthpiece.
“Got a strop uv bullhide, Bar’n,” Bowsmith called back. “Got the horns, tail, and the strip offen the backbone besides.”
He swayed again, then said in a voice that carried better than he would have intended, “Mar’ Beth, ye mustn’t touch me like thet here.” But the words were not a serious reproach, and his laughter joined the woman’s renewed giggle.
There was snorting laughter from the porch as well. One of the men there might have spoken had not Baron Neill snarled his offspring to silence.
The couple separated when they reached the steps, Mary Beth leading the visitor with her hips swaying in even greater emphasis than when she had left the cabin.