The yellow dog digs for woodchucks on the edge of the garden. Yellow pumpkins and squashes appear everywhere now the potatoes and bean vines are torn up. The hired man piles up a pyramid of hot suns at the garden's center. A pumpkin that a boy cannot get from the ground, that is twice the size he is through the butts, the man balances on one wide palm as though it were an apple.
The rabbits are taking to the swamp where the grass is still green and tender. The crows are falling quiet and are taking to the deeper woods. Grandpa is hugging the stove closer mornings. For there is an edge on the air, and the frost is white on all hills at sunup. The last golden eyes of the frostflowers close even in the shelter of the briars. The rose apples begin to shine everywhere, now the rose leaves are withering. The white alder puts on her berries for Christmas.
On the marsh the ivory cranberries blush deep red on both cheeks because of the heavy frost-fall. The small boy goes deep into the bog in his rubber boots to get the largest and best of the berries. Mother and the girls bring them home by the basketful, and Grandma puts them into the tub of water to pick out the floaters. The fattening geese will have a good sauce to go with their meat. The small boy mashes up the small tur nips that are boiled in the outdoors kettle, and the geese eat till their crops make them one-sided.
Bees make no sound now on the meadows. The earth smells of frost of a morning and of dying leaves of a night. The smoke of great burning lingers through all the afternoons. The little dog comes home early to his place under the warm cookstove.
When the vast sun rolls behind the spruces, the cock partridge swells on his lichened stump with a ruff of burnishe bronze. He bathes in the dying fire of the sun, his feathers run with their own fire. His eyes gleam like sparks. He will take the sun's place, he vows, and his speckled fat spouse and their offspring believe him. Then a twig snaps, the cock's ruff falls, he grows slim as a serpent. All the partridges freeze, and they hear the stealthy steps coming. Then the fox that goes on his hind legs and carries the lightning in a black bough comes in sight, and a standing small fox and a tame yellow fox behind him. The cock turns to thunder, roars into the sky, keeping a birch between him an the hunter. The lightning stabs, but he whirls away safe. Then the hen goes up in her thunder, but the lightning stick is double, fire blazes red, and she falls in blood and torn feathers. And the sun goes into the earth.
Ducks fill the bay. The farmer gets up at the crack of day, his shotgun booms from the blind he and the boys have built, and the winged coot falls plumb to the water. The small boy's eyes are like two holes burned in a blanket with his being up most of the night, but he loves it. His father lets him shoot the twelve-gauge, the sheldrake takes off in a great squawking. The boy is proud of his black-and-blue shoulder. The big boy has three black duck for his day's work. Mother picks pin feathers out with tweezers; there are new feathers for her featherbed.
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