Читать книгу Big Red - Jim Kjelgaard - Страница 3

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The bull Danny was trailing had travelled slowly for the last mile. Danny mounted a little knob, where the bull had apparently stopped, and looked ahead. The next tracks were eight feet beyond. From that point the bull had run. Danny raised the thirty-thirty carbine to his shoulder, and slipped the safety off. When he went forward again he walked slowly and quietly. For he knew that here the bull had scented Old Majesty, and started to run for his life.

Forty feet farther on, the tracks of a monster bear emerged from the beeches and joined those of the bull. Danny knelt, and laid his spread hand in the bear's paw mark. The imprinted track was longer and wider than his hand. Old Majesty! Danny rose and skulked on, careful to break no twig, rustle no leaf, and make no other noise that might reveal his coming. A hundred times he had stalked this great bear whose name had become a legend. But this time he might get the shot that he had so long awaited. Then, a hundred feet ahead, Danny saw what he was looking for.

The bull lay on its back in a little forest glade. Its head was twisted grotesquely under its body, and one lifeless foreleg thrust crookedly upward. Danny stood still, peering through the trees for some sign of the monster bear that had won another victory against the human beings with whom it was eternally at war. But all he saw was the wind-rustled trees and the dead bull. The bear, with his customary cunning, had put a safe distance between himself and the dangerous rifle in Danny's hands.

Danny went forward, and looked down at the fine young Holstein. The bull's neck had been broken by a single blow from a sledge-hammer paw, and there was a hole in its belly where Old Majesty had started to eat.

"Wonder how Mr. Haggin'll like this," Danny murmured to himself. "Another bull gone."

He looked again at the bull, dead scarcely ten minutes and fifteen hundred pounds of good beef. But it was Mr. Haggin's, not his. Still, it would be a neighborly act to see that it didn't spoil. Danny bled the bull, and ripped its belly open with a knife so it wouldn't bloat. Keeping the rifle ready, for he was afraid of the bear, he backed away from the bull's carcass and started off through the beeches.

With the shuffling, loose-kneed gait of the born woodsman he walked mile after mile, through the beeches, past the clearing where, by the grace of Mr. Haggin, he and his father were allowed to live, over the bridge at Smokey Creek, and on to the edge of Mr. Haggin's Wintapi estate. Danny stopped there. He had seen it before. But the sight of such luxury was always worth another look.

Mr. Haggin's carefully nurtured acres stretched as far as the eye could see. Thoroughbred cattle grazed in the elaborately fenced pastures, and blooded horses snorted in the paddocks. Mr. Haggin's gray barns, big as all the other barns in the Wintapi put together, rose in the center of the estate and beside them were the six miniature mansions Mr. Haggin had built for the families of the six men who worked his farms. Mr. Haggin's house, a huge, white-gabled one protectively surrounded by imported blue spruces, was some distance from all the rest. Danny eyed it, then forgot everything but the red dog that was coming toward him.

A shining, silky red from nose to tail, the dog was trotting up the path Danny was walking down. His eyes were fixed on Danny, and his tail wagged gently a couple of times. Ten feet away he stood still, his finely chiselled head erect and his body rigid. Spellbound, Danny returned the dog's gaze. He knew dogs, having owned and hunted with hounds since he was old enough to do anything. The red dog was not a hound—Danny knew vaguely that it was called an Irish setter—but never before had he seen any dog that revealed at first glance all the qualities a dog should have. Danny walked forward, and knelt to ruffle the red dog's ears.

"Hi boy," he said. "How are you, Red?"

The red dog quivered, and raised a slender muzzle to sniff Danny's arm. For a moment Danny petted him, then straightened up. When callers came visiting him, he didn't like his hounds played and tampered with. It spoiled them, made them harder to handle. And certainly Mr. Haggin wouldn't want this red dog played with either. When Danny walked on, the red dog kept pace, walking beside and looking up at him. Danny pretended not to notice, and went straight to the horse barn where Robert Fraley, Mr. Haggin's overseer, was directing two grooms who were saddling two restive horses.

Robert Fraley hailed him. "What do you want?"

Danny stiffened. Sometimes he just didn't like the way that Fraley acted, as though he owned the place and Danny was just dirt under his feet. And his business was with Mr. Haggin.

"I want to see Mr. Haggin," he said.

"He'll be down in a few minutes. Here, Boy."

Robert Fraley snapped his fingers, and the red dog crouched closer to Danny's knees. Danny watched understandingly. The dog wasn't afraid. But he wanted to stay near Danny, and there was a regal something in his manner that told Robert Fraley he was going to stay there. Danny folded his arms and stared stonily out across Mr. Haggin's meadows. He saw Mr. Haggin and another man leave the house, but turned his head in affected surprise when they had come near. Mr. Haggin, a crisp, clipped man in his early fifties, said,

"Hello, Danny."

"Howdy, Mr. Haggin. I found your bull."

"Where?"

"Dead, up Stoney Lonesome. The big bear got him."

Mr. Haggin looked angry. The big red dog rose, and walked courteously over to greet his master. He returned to Danny.

"Put him back in his kennel, will you, Bob?" Mr. Haggin said.

Robert Fraley grasped a short whip and came over to seize the dog's collar. The red dog strained backwards, and fire leaped in Danny's eyes. He had seen what Mr. Haggin had not. Robert Fraley had twisted the red dog's collar, and hurt him. But the dog would not cry out.

"Can't something be done about that bear?" Mr. Haggin was asking irritably. "He's killed five cattle and nineteen sheep for me so far, and every one a thoroughbred."

"Pappy's been gunnin' for him ten years," Danny said simply. "I been after him myself for five, sinst I turned twelve years old. He's too smart to be still-hunted, and hounds are afraid of him."

"Oh, all right. Here's your two dollars. I'll call on you the next time anything goes astray, Danny."

Danny pocketed the two one-dollar bills. "The beef lies on Stoney Lonesome," he volunteered.

"I'll see that it's brought in." Mr. Haggin and the other man walked toward the horses, but Mr. Haggin turned around. "Was there something else, Danny?"

"Yes," Danny said recklessly. "What's that red dog of yours good for, Mr. Haggin?"

"Champion Sylvester's Boy? He's a show dog."

"What's a show dog?"

"It's—it's sort of like a rifle match, Danny. If you have the best dog in the show you get a blue ribbon."

"Do you waste a dog like that just gettin' blue ribbons?" Danny blurted.

Mr. Haggin's eyes were suddenly gentle. "Do you like that dog, Danny?"

"I sort of took a fancy to him."

"Forget him. He'd be lost in your woods, and wouldn't be worth a whoop for any use you might have for a dog."

"Oh sure, sure. By the way, Mr. Haggin, what's the money cost of a dog like that?"

Mr. Haggin mounted his horse. "I paid seven thousand dollars," he said, and galloped away.

Danny stood still, watching the horsemen. A lump rose in his throat, and a deadening heaviness enfolded him. Throughout his life he had accepted without even thinking about them the hardships and trials of the life that he lived. It was his, he was the man who could cope with it, he could imagine nothing else. But since he had started playing with his father's hound puppies a great dream had grown within him. Some day he would find a dog to shame all others, a fine dog that he could treasure, and cherish, and breed from so that all who loved fine dogs would come to see and buy his. That would be all he wanted of Heaven.

Throughout the years he had created an exact mental image of that dog. Its breed made little difference so long as it met all the other requirements, and now he knew that at last his dream dog had come to life in Champion Sylvester Boy.

But seven thousand dollars was more than he and his father together had earned in their entire lives.

Danny looked once at the kennel where Robert Fraley had imprisoned the red dog, and resolutely looked away. But he had seen the splash of red there, an eager, sensitive dog crowding close to the pickets that confined him. If only Red was his...But he wasn't and there was no way of getting him.

With his right hand curled around the two crisp, new bills in his pocket, Danny walked slowly across Mr. Haggin's estate to the edge of the beech woods. He stopped and looked back. Mr. Haggin's place stretched like a mirage before him, something to be seen but never touched. Anything on it was unattainable as the moon to one who lived in a shanty in the beech woods, and made his living by hunting, trapping, and taking such odd jobs as he could get. And seven thousand dollars was an unheard-of sum to one who knew triumph when he captured a seventy-five-cent skunk or weasel pelt.

Danny walked on up the shaded trail that led to his father's clearing. It wasn't rightly his father's; he owned it by squatter's rights only, and Mr. Haggin had bought up all the beech woods clear back to Two Stone Gap. But Mr. Haggin had said that they might live there as long as they chose provided that they were careful not to start any fires or cut any wood other than what they needed for firewood, and Danny reckoned that that was right nice of Mr. Haggin.

The log bridge over Smokey Creek was suddenly before him. Danny walked to the center, and stood leaning on the rail and staring into the purling creek. He seemed to see the red dog's reflection in the water, looking up at him with happily lolling tongue, waiting Danny's word to do whatever needed doing. And he could do anything because a dog with his brains could be taught anything. He...he was almost human.

The image faded. Danny walked on up the trail to where his father's unpainted frame house huddled in the center of a stump-riddled clearing. Asa, the brindle mule, grazed in the split-rail pasture and the Pickett's black and white cow followed Asa about. Four bluetick hounds ran to the ends of their chains and rose to paw the air while they welcomed Danny with vociferous bellows. Danny looked at them, four of the best varmint hounds in the Wintapi except that they were afraid of Old Majesty. But they were just ordinary varmint hounds. Danny went up and sat down on the porch, leaning against one of the adze-hewn posts with his eyes closed and his long black hair falling back on his head. Three lean pigs grunted about his feet. The hounds ceased baying.

Just before sunset his father came out of the woods. A wooden yoke crossed his shoulders, and a galvanized pail swung from either end of the yoke. He wiped the sweat from his head and eased the pails down on the porch.

"Forty pounds of wild honey," he said. "It'll bring eight cents a pound down to Centerville."

Danny sat up and peered into the sticky mess that the pails contained.

"Shouldn't you ought to of waited until fall?" he asked. "There would of been more in the tree."

"Sure now," Ross Pickett scoffed, "any time your pappy can't find a honey tree you'll see white crows a-flyin' in flocks. They'll be more, come fall."

"I reckon that's right," Danny admitted. "You hungry?"

"I could eat."

Danny entered the house and stuffed kindling into the stove. He poured a few drops of coal oil on it, and threw a match in. When the fire was hot he cooked side pork, and set it on the table along with fresh bread, wild honey, milk, and butter. Ross Pickett ate silently, with the ravenous attention that a hungry man gives to his food. When they had finished, both sat back in their chairs, and after a suitable interval Danny asked,

"What's a show dog?"

"I don't rightly know," Ross Pickett said deliberately. "Near's I can come to it, it's a dog that's got more for shape than anything else. They got to be the right distance between their hocks and ankles, their tail's got to droop just right, and every hair on 'em's got to be in the right place."

"What they good for?"

Ross shrugged. "Rich people keeps 'em. What you drivin' at, Danny?"

"A dog," Danny breathed. "Such a dog as you never saw before. He looks at you like he was lookin' right through you. The color and line that dog's got, and the brains...! It would be worth workin' a hundred years to own a dog like that. Mr. Haggin owns him, and he cost seven thousand dollars."

Ross Pickett's eyes lit up. Then his face sobered and he shook his head.

"Forget it," he admonished. "Mr. Haggin's been mighty good to us. We don't want him mad at us, and he would be if ever we brought trouble to one of his dogs. Besides, he wouldn't be no good if he's a show dog."

"I saw him," Danny insisted. "I should know what he's good for."

"Forget him," Ross Pickett ordered.

Night fell, and Danny went to his cot. For a long while he listened to the shrieking whip-poor-wills outside. Finally he fell into a light sleep that was broken by dreams of a great red dog that came up to smell his arm and retreated tantalizingly out of reach. The dog came again, but always ran just as Danny was about to seize it. Finally it climbed a tree, and Danny had climbed halfway after it when a great wind began to shake the tree. Danny rolled sleepily over, and awoke to find Ross shaking his shoulder. His father was excited, breathless, afraid.

"Danny!" he panted. "Wake up! That dog of Mr. Haggin's, the one you talked about! Danny, it followed you and it's a-layin' outside on the porch now! Take it back! Quick, before Mr. Haggin misses it! We'll have every police in the country after us!"

Danny pulled on his trousers, draped a shirt over his shoulders, and went to the door. Morning mists hovered over the clearing. The black and white cow heaved herself humpily from her couch by the haystack and Asa drooped his head in the lee of the barn. Lying on the porch's edge was the red dog. He rose and wagged his tail. There was dignity in his greeting, and uncertainty, as though, after having spent most of his life as a scientific plaything, the dog did not know exactly how he would be received by this new person to whom he had come for the companionship that he craved. Danny knelt, and snapped his fingers.

"You come a-visitin', Red?" he crooned. "Come here, Red."

The dog walked over and laid his head on Danny's shoulder. Danny rubbed the silky coat, and squeezed him ecstatically. Red whimpered, and licked his face.

"Danny!" Ross Pickett said frantically, "take that dog back to Mr. Haggin! I'm goin' in the woods so nobody won't think I tempted it up here!"

"All right," Danny said meekly.

He watched his father, with the honey pails on the yoke and his bee-hunting box in his pocket, stride swiftly across the clearing and disappear into the forest. Danny looked down at the dog, and tried to brush from his mind a thought that persisted in staying there. He had always dreamed of having a dog like this as his constant companion. That, of course, was impossible. But Red could be his for the day. Mr. Haggin might put him in jail or something, but it would be worth it. No, he'd better not. He'd better take him right back.

But it seemed that, once started, his feet just naturally strayed away from the trail over the Smokey Creek bridge. That was bothersome at first, and Danny veered back toward the trail. Then after a while he no longer cared because he knew that this one day out of his life would be worth whatever the penalty for it might be. He was afield with a dog that lived up to his grandest dreams of what a dog should be. Besides, Danny felt resentment toward Mr. Haggin, the money-blinded man who would use a dog like this only for winning blue ribbons.

For Danny had been right and Mr. Haggin wrong. Red—that hifalutin' handle Mr. Haggin had used was no proper title for a dog—was a natural hunter. He swept into a thicket, and came to a rigid point. Danny walked forward, and two ruffed grouse thundered up. But the dog held his point. Danny patted his head.

"You've sure seen birds before this," he said.

But even if Red had been the most blundering fool in the woods, Danny knew that it still would have made no difference. Good hunting dogs were plentiful enough if you knew where to find them, or wanted to take enough time to train them. But a dog with Red's heart and brain—there just weren't any more. Danny looked at the sun and regretted that two hours had already passed. This day would be far too short. With nightfall he simply must take Red back to Mr. Haggin.

They wandered happily on, and climbed the ridge up which Danny had trailed the straying bull yesterday. Red came in to walk beside him, and Danny turned his steps toward the dead bull. If Mr. Haggin hadn't yet sent someone to get it, it was a sure sign that he didn't want it. Danny and Ross could feel perfectly free at least to come take the bull's hide. Danny broke out to the edge of the glade, and the red dog backed against his knees with bristling hackles and snarling fangs. Thirty steps away Old Majesty stood with both forepaws on his kill. Majesty the wise, the ruler of these woods, too smart to be shot and smart enough to know that Danny carried no gun. The outlaw bear rose on his hind legs, swinging his massive forearms. Danny shrank against a tree, awaiting the inevitable charge. Old Majesty was about to settle once and for all their long-standing feud.

The red dog barked once, and flung himself across the clearing straight at the bear. Danny wanted to shriek at him not to do it, to come back because the bear would certainly kill him. But his tongue was a dry, twisted thing that clung to the roof of his mouth, and he could utter no sound. For one tense moment the bear stood his ground. Then he dropped to all fours, and with Red close behind him, disappeared in the forest.

Danny probed the forest with his eyes, and strained his ears, but could neither see nor hear anything. He turned and ran, back down Stoney Lonesome and through the beech woods to his father's clearing. He flung himself inside the cabin, snatched up his gun and a handful of cartridges, and ran back. For five minutes he stood by the dead bull, watching and listening.

But the forest had swallowed both bear and dog.

Danny tried to stifle the panic that besieged him. It was no longer fear of Old Majesty, or of Mr. Haggin and anything he might do, but he was afraid for Red. When Old Majesty had drawn him far enough away he would certainly turn to kill him. Danny suppressed a sob and went forward to find their trail.

He found it, leading out of the glade straight toward the back reaches of the Wintapi. Running hard, the bear had bunched his four feet together and scuffed the leaves every place he struck. Danny ran, hating the sluggishness of his feet and the snail's pace at which they carried him. It was his best speed, but the dog and bear were travelling three times as fast. A mile from the glade he found where the bear had slowed to a trot, and a half mile beyond that where he had turned for the first time to face the pursuing dog.

A huge, knobby-limbed beech raised at the border of a bramble-thick patch of waste land, and the bear had whipped about with his back to the trunk. Danny's heart was leaden as he looked about for tell-tale mats of red hair or drops of blood. But all he saw was the plainly imprinted tale of how the red dog had come upon and charged the bear. Old Majesty had left his retreat by the beech tree, and with whipping front paws had tried to pin the red dog to the earth. Red had danced before him, keeping out of reach while he retreated. A hundred feet from the tree the bear, afraid to leave his rear exposed while a dog was upon him and a man might come, had gone back. Red had charged again, and again had danced away from the bear's furious lunges. Then the bear had left the tree.

"He smelt me comin'," Danny whispered to himself. "Red, you're sure playin' your cards right. If only I can stay close enough to keep him runnin', to keep him from ketchin' you..."

But tracking over the boulders was painfully slow work. Sweat stood out on Danny's forehead while, by a broken bramble, a bit of loosened shale, or an occasional paw print between the boulders, he worked out the direction that Old Majesty had taken. The sun reached its peak, and began slowly to sink toward its bed in the west. Danny clenched his hands, and wanted to run. But by so doing he would lose the trail. And, if he did that, Red would be forever lost too

The first shades of twilight were darkening the forest when Danny finally crossed the boulders and was again among trees. He found the bear's trail in the scuffed leaves there, and with his rifle clutched tightly to him ran as fast as he could along it. Old Majesty had climbed straight up the long, sloping nose of a hump-backed ridge and had run along its top. Then he had dipped suddenly down into a stand of giant pines. Black night overtook Danny there. He bent over, painfully picking out each track and following it. When he could no longer do that, he got down on his hands and knees and tried to follow the trail by feeling out each track. But that was impossible.

"Keep your head, Danny," he counselled himself.

He sat down with his back against a huge pine, straining his ears into the darkness for some bark or snarl, something that might tell him where the bear had gone. But there was only silence. A dozen times he started up to peer hopefully about for dawn. But the night was a thousand hours long. Not able to sleep, he sat against the tree looking into the night-shrouded maze of lost valleys and nameless canyons into which the bear had gone. Then, after an eternity, a gray shaft of light dropped through one of the pines to the needle-littered earth. Danny leaped to his feet. By bending very close to the earth he could see and follow the tracks. And, as daylight increased, he could run once more. He followed the trail down the mountain, and up the side of another one. Along its crest he went, down and up another mountain. And it was from the top of this that he heard a dog's bark.

Danny stopped, let his jaw drop open the better to listen. The bark was not repeated, but there had been no mistake about hearing it. Danny looked down into the wide, boulder-studded valley that stretched beneath him, and put his fingers into his mouth preparatory to whistling. But he stopped himself in time. If the bear and dog were down there, a whistle or sound would only warn Old Majesty that he was coming, and would send him off on another wild chase. Danny studied the valley carefully. The trees in it were only saplings and fire cherries, but the boulders were huge. The bear would make his stand against a boulder rather than one of the small trees. Danny scrutinized each boulder, and selected the one from which he thought the dog's bark had drifted.

But he had to go very carefully now, very slowly. A wrong move, a mis-step, and everything would be ruined. He walked down the mountain. Once on the valley floor he dropped to his hands and knees and crawled, placing each hand and foot carefully, cautious that his clothing should brush against no branch or twig that might make a sound. A hundred feet from the boulder he had chosen, he peered over a small rock and saw Old Majesty.

Perched on a shelf of rock, the bear was five feet from the ground. Huge, monstrous, a presence rather than a beast, his great head was bent toward the ground. Danny saw Red, lying on the ground ten feet before the bear, raising his head suspiciously every time the bear moved, ready to charge or retreat. Danny's hands trembled when he levelled his rifle over the little rock. This was a heaven-sent chance.

Ross had told him that a show dog must be no less than perfect, and there was one chance in fifty of killing that huge bear with a single shot. He would come toppling from his perch with snapping jaws and slashing paws. Red, knowing that at last he was reinforced by the man for whom he had waited, would be upon the bear. Not long, just long enough to get a ripped foot or a slashed side before Danny could send home the shot that would kill the bear. Just long enough to make him entirely useless to Mr. Haggin, to give Danny a chance of getting him. Danny sighted. Then he took his rifle down and crawled around the little rock.

He slithered over the ground, crawling forward with ready rifle held before him, and was twenty feet from the boulder when Old Majesty, all of whose attention had been riveted on the dog, looked up. The rank odor of the great bear filled Danny's nostrils, and for a moment he looked steadily into the eyes of his ancient enemy. Then Red was beside him, backing against Danny's knees still looking at the bear. Danny's left hand reached down to grasp the dog's collar, his right brought the rifle up.

But Old Majesty slid off the back end of the boulder and was gone.

With the dog beside him, Danny started back up the mountain, but early twilight had come again when he and Red got back to Mr. Haggin's estate. Danny scarcely knew that his clothing was in tatters, that he was gaunt from lack of sleep and food. He knew only that he had brought Mr. Haggin's dog safely back. They went to the barn, and Robert Fraley came running from the house.

"Where have you had that dog?" he raged. "Half the estate's looking for him!"

He came close, Red backed against Danny's knees and growled. Robert Fraley pivoted, went to the barn and snatched a whip from its peg. He strode back to Danny and raised it.

"Don't hit that dog," Danny warned.

"Why, you..."

Danny lashed out with his right fist and smacked Robert Fraley squarely on the chin. The overseer fell backward, sat in the dust supporting himself on both hands, and blinked. Then he rose, and stepped back to clench his fists, when someone said,

"The war's over, Bob. You can go."

Danny turned slowly, and saw Mr. Haggin leaning against the barn. There were tears in Danny's eyes, and he was very much ashamed that anyone should see him cry. But he could do nothing else except kneel and put both arms around Red's neck.

"Nobody hits this dog where I can see it," he sobbed. "He, he's honest and clean, Mr. Haggin. He couldn't do a wrong thing, and nobody hits him for doin' right."

"Bob's a good man," Mr. Haggin was saying. "He'll see that things get done, and he has a lot of knowledge. But there are things he could learn about animals."

Danny stood erect and wiped the tears from his eyes. He was a man, and must act the part.

"I fetched your dog back, Mr. Haggin," he said. "He tracked that big bear to a standstill, the only dog with the heart to do it and the brain to handle the bear after he did. But I didn't shoot the bear, though I might have. You can still have a blue ribbon with Red. Feel him over yourself. Nothin's marred."

"No," Mr. Haggin said, but he was looking at Danny instead of the dog. "I guess nothing's marred. The dog isn't scratched and probably he might have been. Danny, how would you like to go to New York?"

Danny looked at Mr. Haggin, and for the first time saw him as something apart from the great Wintapi estate. He was a man, too, one who could love and understand a great dog, and see him as other than just a device for winning another blue ribbon. Somehow Danny knew that without having been there, Mr. Haggin knew just about what had happened in the Wintapi wilderness.

"With the dog," Mr. Haggin continued. "Bob Fraley's going to show him, and I'd like you to be along to sort of learn how it's done. Then I'd like to have you bring him back, and keep him at your house in the beech woods. He'll be the beginning of a long line of champions for the new kennels I'm planning and I believe you are the one to take charge of them. You see, I sort of like to have fine things around me, Danny, and I haven't time to take care of all of them myself."

"I couldn't do it," Danny said gravely. "Red, he's a fightin' dog, Mr. Haggin. Mebbe I wouldn't allus be with him, and he might get clawed or chawed. Then he'd be good for no more shows."

Danny stood breathless, awaiting Mr. Haggin's certain agreement. But his eyes lighted up and a happy smile broke on his face when Mr. Haggin said, "Don't let that worry you, Danny. Take your dog up in the beech woods, and get yourself some sleep. Then come down, and I'll have Bob Fraley give you some pointers on what he's going to do."