Before daybreak on a cold morning in January, Leon rose and dressed quickly in the rough, heavy clothes Sarah had laid out for him. Not bothering to light a candle he crept down the stairs to the office. There he found the gun he had cleaned the night before in the cabinet that held all his guns. Going through the wide hall and breezeway, he discovered Floyd in the big kitchen, his gun propped against the back of a straight chair.

The two men did not speak but nodded in greeting. Floyd set two tumblers on the table and poured three fingers of whiskey into each from a stone jug he took from the bottom shelf of a food safe. Each raised a glass and drank.

“Ah,” they said together, experiencing the same shock of pleasure.

“That’ll warm us,” Floyd said.

Leon lifted the cloth that covered a pan of cold biscuits on the back of the stove. He took half of one with one bite and handed another to Floyd, who began to eat it. When they had chewed and swallowed, they stuffed the remaining biscuits inside their shirts against their bodies to warm and soften them. Then they finished their whiskey, took up their guns, and went out the back door, finding Joe-Tom by the old fig tree with two of the best hunting hounds, Brutus and Molly.

Joe-Tom was a skinny boy fourteen years old, son of Sallou who, with Sharon and Lotus, still worked in the kitchens with Myrtis. The boy had a passion for dogs and hunting. No one had trained him to it. He had made a job out of his own inclinations, as often happened on the plantation. He took care of all the dogs, putting them through their early training and recommending the likeliest to Leon and Floyd when they hunted, depending on what the quarry was to be. Floyd and Leon were the only ones on the place who hunted. Neither cared for shooting as sport, but they liked to go about the woods and fields together as they had done ever since they were boys. Now and then someone in the big house would voice boredom with the sameness of the table meats—mostly pork and domestic fowl, sometimes beef—or simply express a longing for game; and then off Leon and Floyd would go, as they were doing this morning.

“Howdy, Joe-Tom,” Floyd said.

“Howdy!” the boy said eagerly. He had been waiting and was not as warmly dressed as they were. He wore trousers that were too short for him, a heavy woolen shirt and stocking cap. He never wore more, no matter how severe the weather, preferring the freedom of easy movement to comfort. His hands were cold, and he had been rubbing them together without generating much warmth in them. He would be all right when they got going; it was only the waiting he minded.

“Howdy, Joe-Tom,” Leon said.

“Howdy!”

“Dogs ready?”

“Yes, sir!”