Читать книгу Dave and his Dog Mulligan - Jim Kjelgaard - Страница 4

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Two miles north of Bad Luck Wash, seventeen-year-old Dave Keller steered his desert cruiser from the blacktop down a nameless dirt road that led into the desert. Considerably less than a boulevard to begin with, the dirt road became progressively worse with each succeeding hundred yards. The cruiser’s lights stabbed intense darkness that would shortly lighten to a brief predawn morning, then give way to daylight.

Dave eased into a dry wash, a creek bed that flowed sand most of the year but filled its banks with a roily flood during the summer and autumn rainy seasons. The wash was still soft from fall rains, and the desert cruiser sank tire-deep in mud. Dave gave it the gun and the jalopy sped out of the wash.

The dog on the seat beside him whined. Dave’s smile flashed in the dim lights of the instrument panel. “Getting nervous in the service, Mulligan?” he asked. “It was just another dry wash.”

The dog quieted and sat relaxed on the seat beside his master. A big animal, Mulligan weighed almost seventy pounds. There was a trace of Weimaraner in his muzzle and in his dark, black-spotted gray coat; a hint of German shepherd in his ears; a bit of greyhound in his racy body and trim legs; a suspicion of hound in his soulful eyes—and the destructive potential of a buzz saw in his ability to take on anything that wore fur, give it a handicap of twenty-five pounds, and whip it to a standstill in nothing flat. Because he was a little bit of everything, and not entirely anything, Dave had named him after the stew that hunters make from every imaginable ingredient.

Dave ducked his head a bit deeper into the collar of his wool hunting jacket. The desert, blistering hot in summer, was cold enough in November, and Dave’s desert cruiser boasted no top. Nor did it have fenders, doors, bumpers, or anything else that might be dispensed with. Because it weighed only a little more than half of what it had before Dave undertook the stripping job, it would go where a heavier car would surely have bogged down.

The road dwindled away to two ruts of varying depth and abrupt curves. Dave shifted to second ... and changed to low when he dipped into another wash. Usually, only pickup trucks and jeeps ran this far, but Dave had proven more than once that his desert cruiser would go wherever these versatile vehicles were able to travel.

The desert cruiser growled across the wash and started up the other side. When they struck an uphill slant, the lights probed almost twice their usual distance. Dave stopped suddenly.

The vegetation on both sides consisted of various kinds of cacti, paloverde trees, mesquite, greasewood, a scattering of other shrubs, and the lush green grass that sprang up like a magic carpet in the wake of all prolonged rains. A desert bobcat, that ordinarily would have been fifteen pounds of lightning-fast muscle and sinew, came out of the brush into the road and halted.

Dave reached for his rifle, the trim little scope-sighted 257 Roberts that had been his high-school graduation present from his game warden father. Shooting a hundred-grain bullet that was adequate for most game if the man behind the rifle knew how to use it, it was sighted in at two hundred and fifty yards and the cat was only about twenty yards away. Dave made a mental calculation of the distance he’d have to undershoot in order to score a hit.

Bristling, Mulligan stood on the seat and awaited Dave’s order to go. Then, bewildered, the big dog sat down. One hand in his pocket where he kept loose shells—only a fool or a person bent on suicide carries a loaded firearm in his car—Dave withdrew his hand and eased the rifle back into place. Anger flared in him.

It was not unusual for bobcats to prowl these desert roads. Frequently, when they came from the scrub into the lights of a car, they were either so dazed or so fascinated by the glow that they merely stared. This cat was neither dazed nor fascinated, just very sick.

Rather than stare into the car lights, the animal looked straight ahead. But it was neither supple nor agile. Its head seemed to sag, as though its owner found it very hard to hold it up. Presently, the bobcat rose ... and continued rising until it had attained a height that made its lean body appear twice as gaunt. Suddenly, it tumbled in a furry ball, kicked feebly, and lay still.

Dave said grimly, “Come on, Mulligan.”

He stepped out of the desert cruiser. Mulligan leaped lightly from the other side and came to stand beside his master. The big dog was still puzzled and—something abnormal for him—more than a little afraid. He had fought bigger cats, but there was something here that he did not understand, something that smacked of evil, and terror, and complete ugliness.

Dave did understand, and, in the darkness, he raised his eyes to the north. He could not see them, but he knew that the cloud-stabbing peaks were there and that, at this season, they were white beneath their first layer of snow. They towered over some of the best deer range in the nation, and Dave’s father was there now, helping man a checking station through which hunters brought their deer. Many of the deer lived all year round on the desert. Others started down with—or even before—the first snowfall and they continued to come as the snow deepened. By the time that winter locked the heights in with from seven to twelve feet of snow, all the deer were at lower altitudes because none could hope to survive the harsh winter in the mountains. Dave, who had this day off from his job at Marcy’s Filling Station, had come to the desert to hunt deer.

Deer were not by any means the only creatures that came out of the mountains in winter. Vast flocks of sheep that browsed all summer long in lush alpine pastures wintered on the desert, too. Ahead of the sheep came the poisoners.

When Dave and Mulligan looked down at the dead bobcat the boy’s indignation mounted. It was entirely true that there must be some control over every species of wildlife. If there were none, deer, for example, would shortly increase to such an extent that they would eat themselves out of pasture. Those that did not starve would be easy prey for any disease that struck. Over a period of years, if sane conservation were again practiced and if hunters were allowed to crop the increase under careful supervision, so that the available range would support the deer herd, the few survivors might build up the herds to what they had been. But it took such a short time of carelessness—or ruthlessness—to wipe them out and so long to restore them!

Control must also be exercised over predators, including bobcats, mountain lions, foxes, coyotes, weasels, and a variety of other animals and birds that were considered either harmful or useless. Such creatures received no protection whatever from the law, which, within itself, was probably right.

However—and Dave’s father was wholeheartedly in agreement with him on this point—it definitely was not right for certain of the sheepmen to slaughter predators or anything else in wholesale lots simply because they believed that such creatures preyed on their flocks. Undoubtedly some carnivorous animals did kill sheep. But there certainly were no statistics to prove how great a toll they took. Dave and his father believed, along with numerous others, that their raids were not nearly so damaging as the sheepmen charged.

These sheepmen had some valid arguments and every right to protection, but, in Dave’s mind, the wholesale scattering of poison baits was an unmitigated evil. Six years ago, on this same road, Dave’s father had shown him coyotes, foxes, and bobcats stacked like cordwood, as many as fifty or sixty to a heap. Within two years after that, the mice, gophers, and jackrabbits so vastly increased and destroyed so much vegetation that there was nothing left for the sheep, anyway. But these relentless sheepmen, none of whom had ever been known to admit anything except that the only good predator was a dead one, ascribed that inevitable and unhappy consequence to some mysterious whim of nature. Only this year, with predators back in moderate numbers, did the area afford adequate pasturage for sheep.

Omitted Illustration

Bobcat on a cliff

Besides their value in controlling other pests, predators had an important role in preventing the spread of disease. Sick animals, that were sure to infect others, seldom had an opportunity to do so if there was a balanced population of predators. In addition, predators aided conservation in numerous other ways. Dave thought of one area in which it had been decided to exterminate bobcats. The next year, the yucca failed to bloom. It had required exhaustive investigation to determine that the yucca was pollinated by a certain moth. With no bobcats to keep them under control, the mice increased to such an extent that they ate all the moths. Only when bobcats were allowed to return in reasonable numbers did the yucca bloom again.

Finally, although poison baits were aimed at predators only, they were not the only ones to suffer. Javelinas, the little wild pigs of the desert, would eat meat and nobody had taught them to distinguish between that which was poisoned and that which was not. Desert quail and a variety of other birds were partial to meat. Even deer were not averse to varying their diet with an occasional morsel of meat. Domestic dogs had been wantonly sacrificed, too.

Dave picked up the bobcat, carried it off the road, and laid it down. He scraped dirt over it and covered the dirt with rocks. Buzzards, those desert scavengers whose value was beyond question, would eat this cat if they could find it. Dave had never seen evidence that whatever ate the flesh of a poisoned animal would in turn be poisoned. But neither had he ever seen proof that it wouldn’t.

With Mulligan beside him, Dave returned to his desert cruiser. He tickled the dog’s ears. Mulligan wriggled with joy. There was no need to worry about him as far as poison was concerned. Three years ago, when Mulligan was just a puppy, Dave had decided that he would be the ideal companion for desert tours. Knowing that they could not keep out of areas where poisoners had been at work, the first thing Mulligan had been taught was never to eat anything unless Dave offered it.

Dave drove down the narrow crown where the road now took him, eased over a nest of boulders, and sighed. The sheep were back, the poisoners with them.... For a while he drove ahead in gloomy silence.

But it was impossible to remain depressed. He was young, he had the day ahead of him, and he had come to the desert to get a buck. The meat was needed to stock the family larder, of course. However, it went without saying that the animal must be a big one—or none. When his father had taught him how to hunt, for food—or for preservation—he had instructed him to seek trophies only. Dave grinned.

His father’s normal patrol was the desert, which he knew and loved as few men did. Two weeks ago, when deer season opened, he had been assigned to the checking station in the mountains, for the simple reason that most deer hunters went to the high country. He would have to do his hunting when he could, but he never failed to bring a buck home from the mountains and it was always a worth-while trophy. The twenty racks of antlers that had been gathered over the years occupied almost all available wall space on their back porch at home. Dave’s grin was inspired by the thought that, this year, he might get an even bigger buck than his father—and of the good-natured needling in which he might indulge if he did.

Dave sighed again, wistfully this time. Game wardens were always overworked and underpaid. In the few months since he’d been at Marcy’s Filling Station, his weekly check was nearly equal to what his father could show after twenty years with the Game Commission. Nevertheless, Dave had never wanted to be anything else except a game warden and he had his application in now. Despite the long working hours and short pay, however, there were numerous men who would gladly accept these drawbacks because they offered the bonus of living a game warden’s outdoor life. By Dave’s reckoning, there were so many qualified applicants ahead of him that his application wouldn’t even be processed until he was a hundred and seventy-nine years old!

Dave drove his desert cruiser down the final stretch of what passed for a road, backed into a level space between two tall saguaro cacti, and got out. Mulligan leaped down beside him and Dave loaded his rifle.

Morning had come, but it was not precisely the kind of morning that those who operate plush desert resorts assure prospective guests lies in store for them. Rather than a dreamy, azure-blue sky with a smiling sun shining warmly down, the sky was shrouded in murky clouds that held more than a hint of rain to come. Nor was the stiffening wind, that blew directly from snow-covered mountains to the north, in exactly the same category as a gentle soothing tropical breeze to caress one’s cheek. Dave pulled the collar of his jacket still higher and looked about.

He was in an area of rocky hills that, because they supported only desert vegetation, appeared strangely naked under the gray sky. On the face of the nearest one, halfway to the summit, the tunnel of an abandoned gold mine yawned like a toothless mouth. The hill was about a quarter of a mile away. Between it and Dave was a comparatively level stretch that, because of its apparently sparse vegetation, looked incapable of sheltering anything at all. But Dave had long ago discovered that casual first glances in the desert are invariably deceptive. Even careful looks often are.

There was that thicket of paloverde, for instance, about two hundred yards away. Most of the trees were scrubby, as is customary in lands of little rainfall. Many had tumbled over, evidently victims of some fierce wind that had raged through here. However, although the thicket looked unimpressive, the trees were so close together and their branches were so hopelessly intermingled that it furnished cover fully as good as any evergreen thicket in any northern forest.

More important, Dave knew of thirteen washes, canyons, and gulches between the base of the mountain and the spot where he stood. All were deep enough to shelter a deer, or even a herd of deer, and desert deer are past masters at the art of sneaking down washes where a hunter appears. Few of these depressions were visible, partly because they were flush with the land about them and partly because they were screened by cactus and greasewood. They came as a surprise, not always a pleasant one, to the desert hunter who set out to stroll blithely across what appeared to be a quarter mile of undulating land.

To the right of the hill containing the gold mine, a series of lower and gently sloping knolls rolled serenely toward a range of desert hills. Dave turned to his dog. “Stay with me, Mulligan,” he commanded.

Mulligan wagged his three-inch tail and gave a happy canine grin in return. Lacking the complete skill that might have been possessed by any one of his numerous ancestors, Mulligan was not a trailing hound. But he was a good enough tracker of anything at all, from a bobcat to a human being, if Dave put him on the trail or if he wanted to follow it for reasons of his own. Although he lacked the finesse of the Weimaraner, he would hunt desert quail if that happened to be the order of the day. A racing greyhound would have outdistanced him, but Mulligan was capable of great bursts of speed that would top that of most other dogs and he also had the greyhound’s farseeing eyes.

In addition, he had an intelligence and ability to reason that are sometimes the mark of a composite dog.

Now he paced contentedly beside his master. A hundred yards from where they started, they crossed a wide path beaten by thousands of tiny hoofs, while hundreds of clipping jaws had sheared off every particle of edible grass. Dave grimaced, for this was the trail of a flock of sheep. It was not that he disliked either sheep or sheepmen, but he loved the wild things deeply, and he remembered the bobcat that had died under the lights of his desert cruiser. His thoughts went to other dead or dying creatures that, even now, were lying in the scrub because it was a tradition with some sheepmen to poison varmints wherever sheep were to graze.

Since the sheep trail headed northeast, Dave struck directly west. He skirted a stand of cholla, the terrible jumping cactus that can sink a hundred near-invisible but excruciatingly painful needles into the flesh of whatever touches it. The desert-wise Mulligan likewise gave an adequate, but not over-adequate, berth to the stand of cholla.

Without appearing even to look where he was going, Dave never made a misstep. Wearing soft but thick leather shoes with cleated crepe soles, he seemed to be wandering, if not aimlessly, at least erratically. But he knew every inch of this country, and what seemed to be an unnecessary side excursion brought him to the shallow head of a deep gully that offered treacherous crossing at the steep part because the walls tended to crumble.

Omitted Illustration

Illustration covering two page spread.

Man with rifle and dog looking out across the land towards pile of rocks.

He stopped to look down the gully. This was not because he expected to see any deer in it, since it was not the place for deer. These alert animals balked at entering any depression from which they could not escape easily and at any point, and the steep walls of this gully made escape difficult. But javelinas would travel such a gully because they were small enough to hide beneath overhanging walls.

Dave saw only a cactus wren that, for reasons of its own, was pecking vigorously at some sand in the bottom of the gully. Glancing at Mulligan, Dave grinned when the dog looked back with an expression of polite boredom. Mulligan’s eyes said plainly that there was nothing worth while in the gully. If there was, its scent would be drifting out.

Dave spoke softly. “If people could tell as much with their eyes as any dog can find out with its nose, they’d have a right to call themselves skilled observers. Let’s go, Mulligan.”

The pair mounted the first of the low knolls and Dave stopped again to look at a scene he had watched a hundred times but that somehow was always new.

To the west, the rocky, steep-sided desert hills marched until they were lost on the horizon. In that direction, it was twenty-nine miles to the nearest road. After reaching the road, one could travel ten miles in either direction before finding a house and nineteen miles to the nearest town. It was a wilderness complete within itself. Few men knew it because few had ever seen any reason to enter what most considered a forsaken area, worthless to anything except scorpions, Gila monsters, and rattlesnakes.

Sometimes in the furnace heat of summer and sometimes in the cool, and often cold, of winter, Dave had been over every foot of this ground. He knew it in its cruelty and its kindness, its ugliness and its beauty. He had traveled the endless stretches that meant certain torture and possible death to whoever might enter them without water—and he knew the water holes. He was acquainted with the places where game would be most plentiful in winter and the spots, always within striking distance of a water hole, favored by such hardy creatures as elected to spend the summer on the desert. Some men had, with good reason, condemned it as the nearest thing to hell that would ever be achieved on earth. Dave knew it as a source of complete inspiration.

Now, for a moment, he stood indecisively. The autumn rains did not always fall and weren’t always plentiful enough when they came. There would still be areas, probably those most suited to hold moisture, where a fair amount of forage grew. Where there was forage, there would be creatures that ate it. And the carnivores would not be far from the grass eaters upon which they lived.

This fall, with more rainfall than had been recorded for the past quarter century, the entire desert was rich with grass. Every little cup and depression that normally held water, but for only a short time following every rain, might still be fed by seepage and thus form a drinking place. With favorable conditions everywhere, there would be no concentrations of deer.

Dave grimaced. Even a great herd of deer would not loom largely in a few million acres of desert.

Mulligan whined, very softly and very deep in his throat. At the same instant, his eye attracted by motion, Dave looked into the gully beneath him. There were a few scattered cacti and a ragged growth of greasewood, scarcely belt-high to a man and seeming incapable of hiding a field mouse. Nevertheless, not easy to detect, even though they were in motion, four deer were sneaking across it.

They were three does and a buck. A four-point, or bearing four tines to an antler, the buck carried a good rack but not good enough. Dave knew that, if he brought it home, his father would nominate him for the Herod Club, for even though the buck was no baby, the elder Keller would consider it one.

Dave leveled his rifle on the buck’s shoulder, sighted through the scope, and knew he had only to flick the safety and squeeze the trigger. But it was not his kind of trophy and he never killed for the sake of target practice. However, he knew now where to find the deer.

Just before high noon, after rejecting two more bucks, Dave found the trophy he wanted.

With Mulligan beside him, he was a third of the way up one of the rocky hills, searching the opposite slopes with his scope, when he located the buck. He gasped and lowered his rifle.

“There are no bucks that big!” he exclaimed incredulously.

Mulligan, who knew something out of the ordinary was under way but did not know what, came to tense attention. Dave raised his rifle a second time, and, exactly at that moment, the sun broke through the murky sky.

Dave steadied his rifle across a boulder, centered his scope on the place where he’d seen the buck and peered through the eyepiece. He gasped a second time. The buck was no illusion. It was there, real as the boulder across which the rifle was held. It was a regal thing, even though its physical proportions probably did not greatly exceed any of the three bucks seen so far. It was the antlers that held Dave’s excited attention.

They were huge and branching, with at least seven tines to a side. As nearly as Dave could determine, they were also perfectly symmetrical. Not one of the twenty his father had brought home, and every one was superior, could come near to matching this. Dave knew as he looked that it was not just the buck of the year. It was the trophy of a lifetime.

Realities possessed Dave’s mind. A buck with antlers so impressive must be at least six or seven years old. It followed that the animal had carried those antlers through a number of hunting seasons, and it had done so because it knew how to outwit hunters. Perhaps a half mile away, hopelessly beyond rifle range, it would not be easy to take.

Suddenly, and for no apparent reason, the buck trotted toward the summit of the hill upon which it was grazing. Dave knew that it had neither seen nor scented him. He guessed that the momentarily shining sun had glanced from the end of his scope. The buck, without knowing what caused the flash, did know that it was out of the ordinary. Anything that did not fit in with the normal course of events was best avoided.

Omitted Illustration

Deer buck showing shoulders to head

Dave waited until the buck disappeared over the crest of the hill. Then he started to run.

He knew where he was going, for he decided, even as he began to run, exactly where the buck would go. Just over the crest of the hill beyond which it had disappeared there was a long wash, deep enough to hide a deer but not so deep that it could not be left at any given point. The wash sloped in a northwesterly direction, dipped into a gully, then rose to join a paloverde thicket that led into another wash, which, in turn, offered entrance to any of a dozen washes. By cutting across, Dave hoped, he would intercept the animal when it left the wash to enter the paloverdes.

The buck merely suspected the presence of an enemy, without having positive evidence that one was near. He would not hurry, but would stop frequently to test the wind and search his back trail. In the buck’s world, running without knowing exactly why he fled and what he fled from was far more apt to bring disaster than lead to safety.

With Mulligan keeping effortless pace, Dave ran at top speed toward the point where he would intercept the buck—if he’d guessed right. He opened his jacket as he ran, for the swift pace made him hot, but he must go on. A buck traveling at relatively slow speed could still cover ground twice as fast as a human being exerting his best efforts.

Directly beneath the hoped-for point of interception, Dave halted to catch his breath. Another human being probably wouldn’t hear a winded runner gasp, but the buck would never miss it.

His breath regained, Dave walked noiselessly up the slope toward the junction of the paloverdes and the wash. He reached the summit, inspected the paloverdes, and saw nothing. A flood of disappointment washed over him. Perhaps he had erred in his judgment and the buck had chosen another path. Or it was entirely possible that the animal had decided to run rather than walk, and had already gone through.

Just then Mulligan growled, and Dave looked at his dog.

Mulligan was staring fixedly down the wash. He was bristling. This would not have been the case if he had caught the scent of a deer and nothing else.

Dave said softly, “Go on, Mulligan.”

The dog walked stiff-leggedly down the rim of the wash up which the buck should have come. His head was high, indicating that he had body rather than trail scent. His nostrils worked constantly and he was still bristling. Two hundred yards from where he had started to stalk the enemy the big dog stopped. Peering across the wash, Dave saw his buck.

It was lying where it had fallen, its head twisted to one side. The antlers were even more regal than they had appeared through the scope. Dave raised his rifle to shooting position, even while the short hairs on the back of his own neck prickled. He had heard no shot and seen no other hunter. Just the same, the buck lay dead, a few yards from where it had obviously broken out of the wash.

Two minutes later, Dave reached the animal. A few drops of blood speckled its neck and a shoulder—and plainly imprinted in the sand nearby were the biggest lion tracks Dave had ever seen.

He shivered. A bold lion it was, indeed, to take a buck from under the very nose of a hunter. Dave read the story as it was written in the tracks. The lion had hidden in ambush in the wash, and the buck had appeared. It had not died easily, for it was a big and powerful animal. But it had been attacked by a bigger and stronger creature of the wild.

Mulligan snarled ferociously and cast about for the lion’s scent. He found it, got a true lead, and looked inquiringly back at his young master.

“Stay,” Dave ordered.

Mulligan returned reluctantly. Dave wanted to hunt, but it would be suicide to send one dog on the trail of such a monstrous lion. Almost certainly he would not tree. He would whip around at the base of some boulder, grasp Mulligan with both front claws, flip him over, and disembowel him with his rear talons.

Dave looked around just in time to see a coyote, doubtless a scavenger that had been following the lion in the hope of sharing the big cat’s kill, whirl and streak back toward the wash. Dave raised his rifle and shot.

The first bullet kicked up a little geyser of sand three feet behind the racing coyote. The second was six inches to one side. Before Dave could shoot a third time, the fleeing animal disappeared in the wash. Dave lowered his rifle and, in spite of his disappointment at failing to get the buck himself, it was as though, after all, he had crossed swords with a worthy foe and was not wholly the loser.

Dave leaned his rifle against a boulder, took out his knife, and stooped to dress the buck.