Free The Trees by Conrad Richter Page A

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    His eyes retreated suspiciously into his two weeks’ sprouts of beard while Wyitt’s eyes burned at his youngest sister. Oh, he wasn’t finished with her yet. He would fix her in the brush tomorrow. When he woke up early next morning, she lay so small, warm and helpless beside him, all his hate melted. He cared about nothing now save how soon his father went to the woods again. For three days he sat around still as a stone but inside he had never been on such tenterhooks. If his father didn’t clear out soon, he told himself, he’d have to push him. That trader might change his mind and go somewhere else before he could get there. Hemight sell out all he had, for Worth said some Shawanees passing on the trace had already stopped and looked over his stock.
    The morning Worth went after fresh meat, Wyitt watched every move he made. His father had hardly crossed the run till the boy was up throwing down his skins in the bushes. In the cabin he pulled on his hunting shirt with the black squirrel trimming and sopped his hair so that sandy corn-shock of his would slick down.
    “Where you reckon you’re a goin’?” Sayward put to him.
    “I ain’t a goin’ no place much,” he said shortly.
    He didn’t fool her for a minute. When he went out, she took her work and sat on the doorsill with one eye on him, and he hung around fooling with Sarge a while like he was in no hurry. The hound had aged fast the past year. Even the gunpowder Worth fed him sometimes wouldn’t liven him any more. All winter he lay in the cabin where he could feel the chimney heat. Now that it was getting to spring he liked to lay outside where he could smell the woods though he was too blind and worn out to chase any more. Oh, that old hound was a gone Josie! There he made his bed under the eaves where the ground was a little dry, his ears sore, his eyes filmed over with white, his coat gray-streaked, scabby and bothered by flies. But he could still lift his head and wrinkle his nose when a fox or someother game passed between him and the river.
    “C’m on, Sarge! C’m on!” Wyitt coaxed him to climb stiffly to his legs and stagger down the path after him. If he took Sarge along a piece, Sayward had no way but to think he wasn’t going far. Once he got the old hound down in the woods, he sneaked back for his skins. The dog was waiting for him when he got to the path again. He struggled up and started to come after.
    “Go back, Sarge! Go on back!” Wyitt mouthed at him. “You kain’t go along where I’m a goin’.”
    The last he saw of him, the old hound was standing in the path holding up his head high like he did of late, trying to gaze after through his blind spots, the drooped tip of his tail moving just inches between his legs.
    It was a good thing he didn’t take Sarge along, Wyitt told himself when he got there. An old hound wouldn’t know how to act here, for he didn’t himself right. He hardly knew the place when he saw it on ahead through the woods. Trees were down. A fattish boy, bigger than he was, and a black-bearded giant had started putting up a pair of cabins. Wyitt watched them a while from safe back in the bushes. Oh, this was a tony place for a young woodsy to visit. Out there in the clearing a brush cabin had been set up first. This was the store. He could tell by the squaws sitting on thelogs outside while their near-naked young ones rolled and raced around. Every once in a while the squaws would yell at one for getting too close to a lunging beast tied to a log. It was a gaunt, live wolf with a slobbered, rawhide muzzle on to keep him from biting his heavy strap through.
    The Indian dogs left off worrying the wolf to bark at Wyitt and the squaws smiled broadly at him as he came up. Oh, they could tell the way he hung back he had never done anything like this before, hadn’t ever seen the inside of a store up to now. But he was going to see this one. With his back stiff as a poking stick he went up to the brush