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"Another tramp comes round, shoot him," he commanded. "En in de meantime," counselled Aunt Dolcey, "it'll come in mighty handy fer you to kill off some deseyer chicken hawks what makin' so free wid our nex' crap br'ilers." But beyond the learning how to use the gun Annie had learned something more: she added it to her knowledge that Aunt Dolcey had once outfaced that tyrant.
All the farm woman's primer she learned, bit by bit, seeing how it supplemented and harmonized with that life of the fields that so engrossed and commanded Wes. But through it all, beneath it all, she found herself waiting, with dread, for another outburst. Against whom would it be this time Unc' Zenas again Aunt Dolcey one of the animals or perhaps herself?
They went silently to the house. Aunt Dolcey stopped in the kitchen and Annie went on into the living room. There on the walls hung the pictures of Wes's father and mother, cabinet photographs framed square in light wood. Annie looked at those pictured faces in accusing inquiry. Why had they bequeathed Wes such a legacy?
The story Aunt Dolcey had told her about the potatoes of last year was ominous in her mind. He was sitting opposite her now, his head in his hands, brooding, sullen, the implacable vein in his forehead swollen with triumph, something brutish and hard dimming his clean and gallant youth. "That's the way he's going to look as he gets older," thought Annie with a touch of prescience.
As he went whistling out toward the barn Annie heard him salute Unc' Zenas with familiar friendliness: "How's tricks this morning? Think the Jersey'll be fresh next week?" Aunt Dolcey heard him, too, and she and Annie exchanged long glances. The old woman's said, "You see what I told you was true"; and the young woman's answered, "Yes, I see, and I understand. I'm going to see it through."
A curious restraint fell on them, and for the first time Annie felt herself an alien, a stranger, far adrift from familiar shores. She shivered in the light wind. "You cold? You better go in the house and get something round you," Wes said to her. "I guess I'd better." And she left him hammering. In the house she found Aunt Dolcey in the big bedroom over the living room.
She handed him the package and picked up the two bills he had laid down on the counter. There was plainly no reason for his further lingering. But he had an artful idea. "Look here maybe I ought to get Aunt Dolcey a white apron, too. Maybe she won't want the gingham ones at all." The girl looked surprised at such extravagance.
She asked one more question, "Does he get mad often?" and waited, trembling, for the answer. Aunt Dolcey stuck out her underlip. "Sometime he do, en den again, sometime he doan'. Mos' giner'ly he do." Annie walked back to her letter, and looked at its last phrase. She picked up the pen, but did not write.
He was, as Aunt Dolcey had predicted, very silent; the vein in his forehead still twitched menacingly and the pupils of his eyes were distended until the colour about them disappeared in blackness. After he had eaten he went outside and smoked, while Annie sat fiddling with a bit of sewing and dreading she knew not what. But nothing happened.
After an interminable wait she took them down. He had stopped there was silence but she heard footsteps outside, and she literally cowered into the darkest corner of the spring house. But it was only Aunt Dolcey, her lips set in a line of endurance. "I was lookin' erbout foh you, honey," she said reassuringly. "I di'n' know where you was, en den I remembah you come off down heah.
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