Mart said flatly, “The trapses is wuth a sight more’n the bill.”

“They don’t bring nothin’ when you sells ’em, Sheriff,” Cap’n Tack insisted.

“That’s right,” the sheriff agreed gravely. He shook out a handkerchief and wiped his face.

“Tell you what I’ll do for him,” the storekeeper spoke amiably, slapping his knee. “I’ll let him take back the loan of his traps come winter and trap for me on shares.”

Mart stamped out his cigarette butt angrily.

“You jest figgered it out that-a-way,” he raged. “Dogged if I’ll do it.”

“Reckon you will.”

The two men glanced at each other and moved in together toward him.

“You two pilferin’ pole-cats——” He spat contemptuously.

“Look out how you talk to the law,” the sheriff warned him sadly.

Mart kicked at a pile of leaves at the base of the oak.

“Take ’em,” he said, “an’ git.”

He turned his back and walked away.

Cap’n Tack raked out the dozen traps. The sheriff kept an uneasy watch on the contemptuous ragged back.

“I hates to crowd you,” the storekeeper remarked cheerfully.

The two men made off smartly, increasing their pace as they approached the road. Mart wheeled.

“Look at ’em scat,” he said bitterly.

He reached suddenly for his shotgun leaning against the far side of the tree. He lifted it, trembling. Then he laid it carefully down.

“Hit ain’t wuth it,” he said.

The sun set molten, beneficence gone mad. The evening was a soft gray velvet suffocation. Sand gnats and mosquitoes hummed and stung. Mart opened his shirt and fanned himself with its tails. Florry was wet with the labor of waving a palmetto leaf for fan. The fish for supper had made them thirsty. Their lips were cracking. Mart set the bucket of water between them. It was the temperature of the air, nauseating on the palate. Its leaf-flavored brackishness tasted slightly rotten. It was good neither to quench thirst nor to cool the throat. Only ice could make it fit to drink. Florry drank, but Mart pushed the bucket aside.

He sat down with his back to the tree and leaned his head despairingly against the gray trunk. He closed and unclosed his broad fists, then his hands relaxed and lay loosely on the ground. Florry moved to the camp table and cleared off the debris of supper.

“Save them cold grits, Florry. That sack o’ rations is like to be the last you’ll git.”

She stared at him. In the faint light the sweat glistened on his face. She could see his pulse work desperately in and out from his knotted throat. She crouched beside him and peered at him.

“Mart! You be’n’t afeered?”

“I ain’t skeert o’ nobody,” he answered heavily.

“No, I knows that.” She pushed the soft hair impatiently behind her ears. She fixed the bright squirrel eyes earnestly on him. “I mean, you ain’t afeered o’ not gittin’ no rations? Not gittin’ no place for us to be? You ain’t afeered o’ what-all kin happen to folkses?”