After dinner that evening, where Canon had been called to consume another huge meal, he and the professor prepared gear for their hunting trip. Sitting in the small, comfortable parlor, a wood fire and snug walls standing proof against the winter, the possibility of war seemed remote indeed to Canon.
The professor agreed. He took an orange from a huge fruit bowl on a sidetable.
“There will be no war, Rabe,” he said. “It would be madness. Wars are economic, almost without exception. This one would benefit neither side. Northern industry cannot afford the loss of our cotton and we cannot rely on total export. The industry is interdependent.
“The problem between North and South is political, economic and sociological. Is this nation to be basically an agricultural nation or an industrial one? Will there be slaves?
“I oppose slavery. We hire freed men and women for our help. I preach at a Negro church and, to the horror of many, teach reading and writing to colored people in night classes. I have heard the term ‘nigger lover’ directed at me more than once. Slavery is sinfully wrong and we must work toward ending it.
“But as to the first question, and the crux of the matter, I see merit in disunion. But I do not want it. And I believe true leaders, Northern and Southern, will find a way to make equitable the trade and transportation tariffs which help create bases for the dispute.
“If not, the South will leave the Union and be allowed to go in peace. Politicians on both sides gesture and posture to remain in favor. But no one is so insane as to start shooting.
“Now let us get some sleep. We have our own shooting to do tomorrow and we must leave at first light if we are to take that damnable bird.”
Canon was surprised to hear the professor so vehemently use a word that even approached being crude. It’s just a turkey, thought Canon, heading for bed.
That damnable bird, thought Canon, striding angrily back to camp next evening. He had never known such a one.
The two men had started early that morning. Canon learned that first light, to the professor, meant an hour before dawn.
Two fine horses and a pack mule had been brought from the professor’s small farm outside town. Canon rode a big bay, and the professor a favorite small sorrel named Fancy. They rode in silence, swathed against the near freezing temperature. Canon was amused that the professor appeared to be a poor horseman, though he claimed to have been a jockey in his youth.
He felt a warm friendship for the eccentric professor and enjoyed his eccentricities. After they set out, the man had raised his left hand. Canon stopped, thinking it a signal, until it was explained that riding in such manner reduced the jolting on the internal organs and kept the body in better balance.
Mary Anna had told him with maternal fondness that the professor had many “little humors” that amused rather than frustrated. Most had to do with careful maintenance of the professor’s inner organs.
He was a strict vegetarian, eating only the blandest boiled vegetables. He could not swallow pepper because, he said, it invariably caused his left leg to go numb. Canon had cautiously pursued the subject of eating pepper to the professor.
Was it any kind of pepper? he asked. The professor nodded sadly. Any and all kinds, he solemnly replied.
The night before, as Canon enjoyed several glasses of excellent brandy, the professor declined to join him.
“You enjoy a drink, Rabe,” he said, “but not so much as I. In that, I am different from most men. To me, the rawest liquor is as tasty as others find a cup of the most expensive coffee or the finest cordial. I do not drink because I love it too well. If I allowed myself, I would be the greatest drunkard in Virginia.”
He also learned from Mary Anna that the professor felt he could not survive on less than ten hours sleep. Ten was required. Twelve preferred. Internal organs require rest.
Although the professor enjoyed reading popular magazines and novels, he had given them up because he believed such reading interfered with the highest functioning of the brain. All considered, the professor was the most compulsive man Canon had met.
His overriding passion now was for the destruction of Old Scratch, the demon turkey from hell that Canon had been called in to kill. For five years the professor had hunted him. Now his compulsion had become obsession. The bird, said the professor, must be taken.
Before daylight, they quietly rode into the domain of Old Scratch.
Like all lesser beings, turkeys in Old Scratch’s territory knew not of men’s naming of names. Had they, though, each would have considered the synonym for Satan appropriate for the big bird that dominated their territory. His territory.
Scratch had been patriarch and overlord in five acres of virgin forest for a decade. His venerable beard was graying, his gobble gone guttural. But he was king. Scratch’s harem reveled in the old bird’s prowess as leader and lover.
Envious rivals feared the twenty-five pounds of winged fury, his carrot-colored legs boasting long thorny spurs. They had long since pledged fealty or fled.
Scratch possessed no reasoning ability, as humans know it, but genes and experience had given him skills and senses so sharp and special that they appeared to be innate intelligence.
This morning, as Scratch rolled like thunder from his roost, he sensed signals which had the old Tom on alert before he touched earth. There was a stillness among the other animals, ground dwellers and tree dwellers. An undercurrent of alarm rippled through the forest like wind through fields of wheat.
Squirrels had stopped their silly chatter and stayed still among protective boughs. Rabbits hugged their hidey holes. Birds were a-wing and a-twitter.
Something had invaded Old Scratch’s kingdom. It was his duty to learn whether it threatened his flock. If it was a predator bigger than Scratch, it was to be watched so it didn’t surprise his brood before he could bustle the family into hiding.
And if it were his size or smaller, a rival turkey, perhaps, then it was time for Scratch to add another victim to his list. With a furious beating of wings, Scratch swept toward and through the lesser birds coming toward him.
As the object of their hunt sped at them through limbs and evergreen boughs, Canon and the professor quietly set up a cold camp. It was a quarter-mile yet to the heart of what the professor knew to be Scratch’s territory, but that distance had to be covered with stealth if they were to have any chance of even sighting the bird. They had to forego a fire and hot coffee until after the morning’s hunt. The professor sucked a lemon. Canon tried it, couldn’t do it, reached instead into the pack of biscuits and meats Mary Anna had prepared.
When everything was unpacked and placed, the professor leaned over to whisper, his breath frosting out like dandelion down.
“Rabe,” he said, “I feel badly about asking this, since I invited you, but I would like one more opportunity at Old Scratch before you hunt him. If you do not mind, I will hunt in the direction of his roost,” he pointed east, “while you go after game in the other direction. If I do not get him this morning, then you hunt him this afternoon.”
Turkey hunters don’t stalk the same turkey at the same time, and Canon as the invited party should have had first rights. But he understood the professor’s feelings.
“Professor,” he said. “I insist that you go after the demon, and I hope you bring him back over your shoulder.”
Nodding thanks, the professor took his shotgun and stepped out of the clearing toward the woods. Agreeing to return to camp for noon lunch, Canon shouldered his gun and walked west. When the professor walked wearily into sight again, Canon was sitting amidst a freshly made camp, tents up and coffee boiling above a hickory fire. It was two P.M.
Whistling