“Never knowed nobody lived in six miles o’ here.”

His tone was insolent. He drew a flattened package of cigarettes from his corduroy hunting jacket, lighted one, and waited for her to begin scolding. Women always quarreled with him. Middle-aged women, like this one, quarreled earnestly; young ones snapped at him playfully.

“It’s a long ways from anybody, ain’t it?” she agreed.

He stared at her between puffs.

“Jesus, yes.”

“I don’t keer about you shootin’,” she said. “It’s purely sociable, hearin’ men-folks acrost the woods. A shot come thu a winder jest now, that’s all the reason I spoke.”

The intruders shifted their shotguns uneasily. The older man touched his finger to his cap.

“That’s all right, ma’am.”

His companion strolled to the stone curbing of an open well. He peered into its depths, shimmering where the sun of high noon struck vertically.

“Good water?”

“The finest ever. Leave me fetch you a clean cup.”

She turned into the house for a white china coffee cup. The men wound up a bucket of water on creaking ropes. The older man drank politely from the proffered cup. The other guzzled directly from the bucket. He reared back his head like a satisfied hound, dripping a stream of crystal drops from his red mouth.

“Ain’t your dog thirsty? Here—reckon my ol’ cat won’t fuss if he drinks outen his dish.” The woman stroked the animal’s flanks as he lapped. “Ain’t he a fine feller.”

The hunters began to edge away.

“Men, I jest got common rations, bacon an’ biscuit an’ coffee, but you’re plumb welcome to set down with me.”

“No thank you, Ma’am.” They looked at the sun. “Got to be moseyin’ home.”

The younger man was already on his way, sucking a straw. The other fumbled in his game-pocket.

“Sorry we come so clost up on you, lady. How ’bout a bird for your dinner?”

She reached out a large hand for the quail.

“I’d shore thank you for it. I’m a good shot on squirrel, an’ turkeys when I git ’em roosted. Birds is hard without no dog to point ’em. I gits hungry for quail . . .”

Her voice trailed off as the hunters walked through the pines toward the road. She waved her hand in case they should turn around. They did not look back.

The man was hunting alone because he had been laughed at. His cronies in the Florida village, to which he had returned after a few years’ wandering, knew that he detested solitude. It was alien to him, a silent void into which he sank as into quicksand. He had stopped at the general store to pick up a hunting partner. The men lounging there hours at a time were usually willing to go with him. This time none was ready.

“Come go with me, Willy,” he insisted. “I cain’t go by myself.”