Outer Dark(55)

They’s more than one mulefoot in that lot, he said.

What?

Mulefoot. I calculate they’s several hunnerd head of them alone and they ain’t no common hog to come upon.

What’s a mulefoot? Holme said.

The drover squinted professionally. Mountain hog from north of here. You ain’t never seen one?

No.

Got a foot like a mule.

You mean they ain’t got a split hoof?

Nary split to it.

I ain’t never seen no such hog as that, Holme said.

I ain’t surprised, the drover said. But ye can see one here if you’ve a mind to.

I’d admire to, Holme said.

The drover shifted his stave again. Seems like that don’t agree with the bible, what would you say?

About what?

About them hogs. Bein unclean on account of they got a split foot.

I ain’t never heard that, Holme said.

I heard it preached in a sermon one time. Feller knowed right smart about the subject. Said the devil had a foot like a hog’s. He laid claim it was in the bible so I reckon it’s so.

I reckon.

He said a jew wouldn’t eat hogmeat on account of it.

What’s a jew?

That’s one of them old-timey people from in the bible. But that still don’t say nothin about a mulefoot hog does it? What about him?

I don’t know, Holme said. What about him?

Well is he a hog or ain’t he? Accordin to the bible.

I’d say a hog was a hog if he didn’t have nary feet a-tall.

I might do it myself, the drover said, because if he was to have feet you’d look for em to be hog’s feet. Like if ye had a hog didn’t have no head you’d know it for a hog anyways. But if ye seen one walkin around with a mule’s head on him ye might be puzzled.

That’s true, Holme allowed.

Yessir. Makes ye wonder some about the bible and about hogs too, don’t it?

Yes, Holme said.

I’ve studied it a good deal and I cain’t come to no conclusions about it one way or the other.

No.

The drover stroked his whiskers and nodded his head. Hogs is a mystery by theyselves, he said. What can a feller know about one? Not a whole lot. I’ve run with hogs since I was just a shirttail and I ain’t never come to no real understandin of em. And I don’t doubt but what other folks has had the same experience. A hog is a hog. Pure and simple. And that’s about all ye can say about him. And smart, don’t think they ain’t. Smart as the devil. And don’t be fooled by one that ain’t got nary clove foot cause he’s devilish too.

I guess hogs is hogs, Holme said.

The drover spat and nodded. That’s what I’ve always maintained, he said.

Holme was watching the activity below them.

That’s my little brother Billy yander, the drover said, pointing with one tatterclad arm. This is his first time along. I thought mamma was goin to bawl sure enough when we lit out and him with us. Says he goin to get him some poontang when we get sold but I told him he’d be long done partialed to shehogs. The drover turned and bared his orangecolored teeth at Holme in a grimace of lecherous idiocy. Holme turned and watched the hogs. The drovers stood among them like crossers in a ford, emerging periodically out of the shifting pall of red dust and then blotted away again. They seemed together with the hogs to be in flight from some act of God, fire or flood, schisms in the earth’s crust.

I better get on and give them fellers a hand, the drover said.

Luck to ye, Holme said.

We’ll be stopped up on the river somewheres come dark. If ye chance by that way just stop and take supper with us.

Thank ye, said Holme. I’d be proud to.

The drover waved his staff and scrabbled away over the rocks like a thin gnome. Holme sat for a while and then rose and followed along the ridge toward the gap where the hogs were crossing.

The gap was narrow and when he got to it he could see the hogs welled up in a clamorous and screeching flume that fanned again on the far side in a high meadow skirting the bluff of the river. They were wheeling faster and wider out along the sheer rim of the bluff in an arc of dusty uproar and he could hear the drovers below him calling and he could see the dead gray serpentine of the river below that. Hogs were pouring through the gap and building against the ones in the meadow until these began to buckle at the edges. Holme saw two of them pitch screaming in stifflegged pirouettes a hundred feet into the river. He moved down the slope toward the bluff and the road that went along it. Drovers were racing brokenly across the milling hogs with staves aloft, stumbling and falling among them, making for the outer perimeter to head them from the cliff. This swept a new wave of panic among the hogs like wind through grass until a whole echelon of them careering up the outer flank forsook the land and faired into space with torn cries. Now the entire herd had begun to wheel wider and faster along the bluff and the outermost ranks swung centrifugally over the escarpment row on row wailing and squealing and above this the howls and curses of the drovers that now up-reared in the moil of flesh they tended and swept with dust had begun to assume satanic looks with their staves and wild eyes as if they were no true swineherds but disciples of darkness got among these charges to herd them to their doom.