Читать книгу Stormy - Jim Kjelgaard - Страница 7

Table of Contents

Next morning's thin, pale dawn was dim against the frosted windows when Allan awoke. For a few minutes he lay drowsily in bed, savoring the warmth of his quilts and reluctant to leave them. Then he leaped out, ran to the stove, and poked beneath gray ashes until he found hot coals. Adding wood, he raced back to bed. He noted in passing that the water pails, standing on a bench beside the door, had a skim of ice on them.

Still lying against the far wall, Stormy raised his head and soberly watched Allan's activity. It was much colder where the big dog had slept than it would have been by the stove, but most retrievers didn't mind cold. Allan remembered that John Deerfield, a Tillotson guide who owned two fine Chesapeakes, had built a wall of snow to protect their kennels from the bitter winds. Scorning both kennels and windbreak, the dogs had chosen to sleep on top of the wall even in below-zero weather.

The fresh wood began to crackle and the stove's welcome warmth spread through the room. Twenty minutes later Allan left his bed a second time, carried his clothing to the stove, and dressed beside it. Remaining reserved and aloof, Stormy followed him with his eyes. As he buttoned a wool shirt over long woolen underwear, it occurred to Allan that Stormy might have been mistreated by human beings to such an extent that he no longer had confidence in them.

Allan pulled on rubber-bottomed, leather-topped pacs, laced them, and went to the front window. He used his forefinger to melt a hole in the frost-rimed glass and saw by the thermometer attached to the outside sill that it was twenty-seven below. That was cold but not unbearable, and certainly the lake ice would now support almost anything that ventured onto it. Snow must have fallen furiously during the night, for drifts up to six feet deep had formed wherever there was enough of an obstruction to stop the wind-driven snow. In other places there was only frozen brown earth.

Looking through his peephole again, Allan saw that the lake ice had been swept clean by the wind. Along the shore a few willow withes thrust above the ice. They marked the places where muskrats grubbed for succulent roots and bulbs. Allan trapped muskrats in late winter and early spring, when pelts were at their best. If next spring's breakup was late, it would be necessary to trap beneath the ice, and the willows would show him where to do it.

A flock of pert chickadees, heads to the wind that still blew, were lined up on a single branch of a leafless maple. Allan smiled at the sight. Chickadees, scarcely bigger than a puff of thistledown, seemed to start assuring each other as soon as the first autumn frost whitened the ground that spring couldn't possibly be far behind. Nor did the most severe blizzard ever seem to daunt them.

Allan glanced once more at the undulating, uneven blanket of snow. Usually the wind died at night and usually, too, there was no snow when it was this cold. Last night's storm had been an exception on both counts.

Allan used all his remaining flour to prepare a bowl of flapjack batter. He put his griddle on, let it heat, greased it, poured flapjacks on, and fed the dog before he himself ate. Although obviously hungry, the big retriever again ate in a dignified, leisurely way. Definitely a mongrel, Stormy still had a courtliness and grace that set him apart. He was as sure of himself as a healthy tiger at a kill, and Allan found himself hoping that he might keep this wonderful hunter for his own.

Allan ate his own breakfast and washed the dishes. When he put on his wool cap and jacket, Stormy looked expectantly up and crowded to the door. Allan hesitated. Stormy should go out, but if he did he might leave. It would be better to clean up the floor than to take any chances.

"Stay!" Allan said sharply.

With no indication that he had even heard, Stormy continued to wait anxiously for the door to open. Allan frowned. Anyone able to teach a dog to hunt as this one could should certainly have taught it manners too.

"Down!" Allan ordered.

When Stormy refused to lie down, Allan opened the door just enough to let himself slip through. Even so he had to push the dog back with his knee. Now he was even more puzzled. Retrievers must often travel in boats, and if they refuse to lie still on command they might very well endanger both the boat and its occupants. They are also hunted from blinds, and those that move about when ordered to lie still would surely frighten waterfowl that might otherwise come within range of the gunners.

The answer must be that Stormy was a one-man dog. He hunted because he loved to hunt, but had never considered himself obliged to obey anyone except old Del Crossman. And Del was dead.

Allan took his toboggan from its rack behind the house, tied his snowshoes to it, and looped a quantity of quarter-inch rope through one of the toboggan's struts. These winter trips to Tillotson, when he could pull a whole load of supplies, did not have to be made nearly as often as in summer, when he must back-pack everything he wanted.

Finally Allan went to the shed where he'd left the wing-tipped mallard. It was standing quietly in a corner, not liking these strange surroundings. When Allan bent to seize it, it darted away. It was cornered on the third try, and after a few protesting flaps of its wings, placed in a wooden box. Allan nailed slats over the box, lashed it to the toboggan, and started up the ice.

He did not need snowshoes here, for last night's high wind had whipped all snow from the ice. Now the wind had lulled to little more than a breeze, and the below-zero cold only made his cheeks tingle pleasantly. Chickadees in the willows along the shore line twittered cheerfully and a great horned owl flapped a slow way across the lake. Unconsciously Allan noted the copse of trees in which the big bird disappeared. Great horned owls were predators but they were not, in Allan's view, pests to be exterminated at all costs. Among their uses were keeping rodents in check, removing diseased creatures that might infect others, and killing injured ones that otherwise would certainly suffer a lingering death.

When a single mottled feather blew across the ice in front of him, Allan halted in his tracks. Then, leaving his toboggan, he followed the wind to the shore, passed through a fringe of willows, and came upon a scattered mass of feathers clinging to a grove of knee-high hemlocks. An incautious grouse had roosted in these little trees and a prowling mink had caught it. Allan marked this place, for he wanted to trap the mink. Far-roaming creatures, mink establish and cling to pretty much the same beat. Perhaps in one week and perhaps not for two or more, this one would come back to the hemlocks. It could be lured into them, and the trap Allan would have ready, by scent.

A half-mile up the ice Allan came to a wide path. This was a public freeway which must at all times be open to anyone wanting to reach this lake. He took his snowshoes from the toboggan, harnessed them to his pacs, and began trampling down a shoulder-high drift. A few minutes later he succeeded in breaking a path for his toboggan. There followed a short space with little snow, then drifts deeper than the first. At the end of forty-five minutes' hard work, Allan stood on the border of Torrance land.

He looked out on wide, cleared acres, with here snow drifts, there stubble thrusting like brown knitting needles through places where the snow had blown shallow, and in the distance a comfortable house, huge barn, and snug outbuildings. The Marleys owned the more than a thousand acres of cut-over timber and marshland around the lake, but the Torrances owned everything on this side that led to civilization. There had been a time when Torrances and Marleys trespassed on each other's property with never a thought save that they were welcome. But no longer, Allan thought bitterly.

William Marley had never wanted a farm. He had been born to the lake and the ways of the wild creatures that lived on and around the lake, and there had been no better or more famous waterfowl guide in the whole Beaver Flowage. Sportsmen travelled halfway across a continent to hunt with Bill Marley. Long before the season officially opened, Marley Lodge had as many reservations as it could handle, and Allan and his father had boarded and guided the hunters. The very fields upon which Allan now looked had held goose pits, from which Marley clients shot wary geese that came to glean the fallen grain.

Then came the quarrel, and like most such it overlapped the ridiculous. Bert Torrance and Bill Marley had shot at the same duck and both had claimed it. Both proud of their marksmanship, neither was especially interested in the duck and would gladly have relinquished it to the other, but under no circumstances would either admit that the other had killed it. What started as a spirited argument led to hot words. With the first blow Bill Marley's touchy temper had exploded and he had beaten the older man senseless.

Allan went soberly on. That had happened only a short year ago, but it seemed another day and age when happy hunters who overflowed the bunk room at Marley Lodge had driven their cars down a road that crossed this farm of Joe Torrance, Bert's oldest son. After the quarrel, the Torrances saw to it that there were no more cars. Even though state law decreed that there must be public access to the lake, it didn't necessarily have to be a road and Joe Torrance had closed it down to a footpath. Thus the beginning of the inevitable end. Hunters who could find good shooting in more accessible places were not inclined to indulge in any unnecessary walking. With his father in prison and the road shrunk to a path, Allan hadn't had a single waterfowl hunter to guide last fall. He could, and did, shoot for his own table, which helped out his meager resources, but that was all.

There was a little money Bill Marley had saved, but Allan used this sparingly and supplemented it by trapping furs and working at any odd jobs he was able to get. There was never an abundance of these and such as Allan was able to find did not pay well. The Torrances, all-powerful in the Beaver Flowage, saw to that.

As he pulled his toboggan across the Torrance farm, Allan tried to keep from his mind the thought that, in the not too-distant future, he would no longer be going to Tillotson. His money had melted away far more swiftly than he'd thought possible; at the best, trapping was a precarious existence. Depending on how much fur he took, he might last through next waterfowl season and into the following summer. Unless he could somehow manage to get hunters back, he couldn't possibly hold on longer than that.

Joe Torrance's shaggy farm dog, in due performance of its duty, barked at him in a half-hearted fashion, and someone emerged from the house to see why the dog was making such a noise. Allan hurried. One Marley who couldn't control his temper was one too many, and Allan wanted no more quarrels.

He reached the highway, that had been transformed into a miniature canyon by heaps of snow that the plows had thrown to either side, removed his snowshoes, and strapped them on the toboggan. A half-hour later he was in Tillotson.

Typical of most vacation villages, in summer and throughout waterfowl season Tillotson buzzed with activity. Cars from many states parked on its streets, its stores were crowded, and conversation ran high over some fisherman who had taken a huge pike or some hunter who, in an unusual fashion, had distinguished himself duck hunting. In winter, when all who could afford it went to loaf in some sunnier clime and many who could not went to work in southern resorts or hotels, Tillotson became the stronghold of a few dozen hardy souls who liked cold weather and a few hundred of the less hardy who would have liked to leave but were kept in this semi-arctic region by their work.

The side of town from which Allan entered was devoted exclusively to motels. Here, in season, rooms were at a premium and rates according. Remembering the twenty-seven below he had read on his thermometer earlier that morning, Allan grinned as he noted the name on one of the closed motels. It was Kool-Aire.

Allan swerved up a side street to a neat white house with a double garage behind it. Blue smoke curled out of the house's chimney to mingle thinly with the cold air. Drifts had piled against one side of the house, and the storm windows were partly frosted. This was the home of Jeff Darnley, game warden for the Beaver Flowage. Jeff himself opened the door when Allan knocked.

"Hello, Al."

"Good morning, Jeff." Allan nodded toward the box on his toboggan. "I've got a wing-tipped mallard drake for you."

Jeff said plaintively, "On a morning like this you bring me a shot-up duck! Come on in!"

Allan grinned as he entered the living room. He greeted Doris, Jeff's pretty wife, then turned to the warden. Weighing not more than a hundred and forty pounds in his winter clothing and pacs, Jeff's lack of stature and seeming lack of strength had proved the downfall of more than one game-law violator who had elected to try conclusions with him. Winded like a greyhound and supple as a mink, Jeff packed the wallop of a ten-pound maul in either fist. He also complained about anything and everything, but he wouldn't have changed jobs for five times his present modest salary. Jeff Darnley was far and away the best warden ever to patrol this area.

"The drake was out in the lake," Allan explained. "He was trying to keep a little puddle open and—"

"Why didn't you leave him?" the warden snapped. "There must be five hundred crippled ducks frozen in one lake or another."

"Yeah. I suppose so. But—"

"Why didn't you just wring his neck if you had to pull him out of the lake?" the fiery little warden asked. "Then the least you'd have had is a duck dinner and nobody would have been the wiser."

"Me?" Allan asked solemnly. "Hurt a pore lil' duck?"

Jeff grinned. Waterfowl season had been closed for the past two days, and might as well have been for the past ten since an early winter had sent most ducks and geese south anyway. The wing-tipped drake would now go to the State Experimental Station at Darville, where it would presumably spend the rest of its life siring more mallards.

"Is it badly hurt?" Jeff asked.

"Just enough so it can't fly."

"Well, leave it in the garage and I'll take it down to Darville."

"Have a cup of coffee, Allan?" Jeff's wife asked.

"I was hoping you'd say that, Mrs. Darnley."

She brought two cups of coffee and Allan and Jeff sipped gingerly of the scalding brew.

"Seen anything of a big killer dog out your way?" Jeff asked seriously.

"Killer dog?" Allan's heart sank.

"Yeah. A mongrel darn near the size of a horse, and he's a man killer. He tackled a man up at Cardsville, fellow named Zermeich, and might have done him in if Zermeich hadn't beaten him off with a pick handle. Only one man's had a good look at him since."

"Who was that?"

"Deputy Sheriff Bill Tarbox had one long shot with a 30-30 about twenty miles north of Tillotson. That was a week ago and Bill thinks he connected but can't be sure; there was no blood. Providing he's still alive, that dog's a bad one to have loose, so just shoot if you see him. You can't make a mistake. The dog has a lot of both Labrador and Chesapeake, but he's bigger than any Lab or Chesapeake you ever saw and his muzzle's slimmer. He's a dull black with a narrow band of white across his upper chest."

For a moment Allan said nothing, but now he knew the origin of the slug he'd taken from Stormy's side. He tried to be very casual.

"Anybody own him?"

"If they did, they'd keep him home. He's an out and out tramp. You haven't seen him, eh?"

Allan said sarcastically, "Sure. He lives behind my woodpile and I have to beat him off with a club every time I want wood."

His hopes sank. Stormy a tramp, a homeless and unwanted wanderer in whom the hunting instinct was so powerful that he just had to hunt? Was it possible that he had turned against men? He'd neither stayed nor gone down when ordered to do so. Allan was grateful when Jeff changed the subject.

"How are you and the Torrances getting along?"

"As usual," Allan said shortly.

"Still fighting, huh?"

"I'm just leaving them alone."

"They leaving you alone, too?"

"So far."

Jeff grinned. "Things must be right sociable out your way."

Allan shrugged. "They could be better. Well, guess I'd better be going."

"How about another cup of coffee?"

"Next time, thanks."

Allan put on his jacket and cap, said goodbye to Jeff and his wife, went outside and left the boxed drake in Jeff's garage. Then he pulled his toboggan down the street to Johnny Malaming's store.

The store was a small building with a misleading MALAMING'S GREAT EMPORIUM spread in gilt letters across the front. But the inside was warm and comfortable, and fragrant with the odors of coffee, soap, tobacco, and the fresh pine boughs with which Johnny decorated his place of business.

Johnny himself, a little gnome of a man who had been in the Beaver Flowage since anyone could remember, came from the rear of the store.

"Hello, Johnny," Allan greeted him. "Cold enough to suit you?"

"You call this cold?" Johnny snorted. "You young'uns today are all sissies! Why many's the time, when I was a boy and my mother threw boilin' water out the door, it froze so fast we had hot ice!"

"The first time I heard that one," Allan said caustically, "I laughed so hard I almost kicked the bottom out of my cradle."

Johnny grinned. "What'll it be? The usual?"

Allan nodded and Johnny handed him four packs of Logger's Crimp Cut, Bill Marley's favorite pipe tobacco. Allan tucked them into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper.

"Here's my grub list, Johnny. I'll pick it up on the way back."

Johnny took it and began to read, "A hundred pounds of flour, ten of bacon, hundred of dog meal—" He looked up questioningly. "When'd you get a dog?"

"Just lately."

"Hope it's a good'un. Say howdy to your dad and tell him I'll be up to see him first chance I get."

"Thanks, Johnny."

Allan walked down to the corner and waited. The bus that came along five minutes afterward stopped without any signal; Allan was on this corner every day visiting was permitted at Laceyville. The bus driver, a taciturn ex-logger, nodded amiably but didn't speak.

"Hi, Pete," Allan said "Cold today."

"Yep."

There were only two other passengers, and Allan settled himself in an isolated seat while the bus rolled out of Tillotson and picked up speed on the evergreen-bordered road beyond. Thirty-two miles away was Laceyville Prison. Depending on whether one believed the authorities in charge or the inmates confined there, it was either the most modern of penal institutions or a veritable Siberia.

Allan stared unseeingly at the winterbound wilderness and did his best not to think. But he had to think, and presently his mind harked back to the mother he couldn't remember. He'd been a baby when she left Bill Marley and her infant son to cast her lot with a young engineer. There were as many versions of the story as there were gossips who cared to discuss it, but all sprang from only two basic beliefs. Some said that even his wife had finally become unable to bear Bill Marley's temper; others claimed that Bill had never had a temper until after Mary left.

The bus slowed. Allan made his way to the front and was ready when it stopped. A blast of frigid air rolled in when the door opened. Stepping down, Allan nodded at the driver.

"Be seeing you, Pete."

"Betcha."

The bus rumbled on as Allan made his way toward the grim stone building that was so grotesquely out of place in this setting. The guard at the gate nodded to the familiar visitor, admitted him without question, and Allan made his way to the visitor's room. The guard there, grown old in the penal service and mellowed rather than hardened by all it had taught him, greeted Allan cordially.

"Hello, young fellow."

"Good morning, sir."

"I'll have him here in a minute. Take a seat." The guard turned and spoke into a microphone.

Allan seated himself on the comfortable sofa, glad that at Laceyville only the most desperate inmates had to meet their visitors with a steel grill between them. He did his best to feel at ease. But despite pictures on the wall, the sofa, a writing table, carpeting, and other attempts to make this place one of informal cheer, a prison was still a prison and it never would be anything else. Then Bill Marley came in.

He was tall and sinewy, and his face bore the tales that had been written there by a thousand gales and storms and burning summer suns. But his eyes were haunted, and Allan felt a sudden great sympathy for the wild wing-tipped mallard that had exchanged limitless flyways for a little crate. Bill Marley had also been wild and free before he was cooped up. But now his eyes lighted as, for a moment, he forgot where he was. He could not go to the flyway, but with Allan, the flyway had come to him.

"Hello, Son!"

"Dad!"

They shook hands self-consciously, then went to the sofa and sat side by side.

"Well, duck season's over," his father said. "I've been keepin' count of the days. Did you have many hunters?"

"If I'd had one more," Allan evaded, "I don't know what I'd have done with him."

"I'm glad," his father said thankfully. "I'm glad you've kept it going, Son." His voice rose eagerly. "I'll bet Tom Morgan was there, and Martin Delehanty would never miss it. Ha! I remember when—"

He went on to speak of others, tried and tested hunters, many of whom had travelled long distances to hunt waterfowl with Bill Marley. Then his father asked about the flight. Omitting no detail, Allan told of the ducks and geese that had come in and the order in which they had arrived and departed.

"And now—" he said and hesitated.

"Yes?" Bill Marley was savoring each word as a starving person might another morsel of food.

About to speak of the dog, Allan decided not to. One outlaw in the Marley family was more than enough. If he knew about Stormy, Bill would worry.

"And now what?" his father asked.

"And now the lake is frozen," Allan amended hastily.

"Time's up," the guard said.

"One more question," Bill pressed. "Has—has there been any trouble with the Torrances?"

"No, Dad."

"Don't let there be any, Son! If they start any, avoid it any way you can. Run if you must, and never mind if they call you coward. Just don't have any trouble."

"I promise."

The haunted look was again in Bill Marley's eyes. As though he'd forgotten all about them until now, Allan took the four packs of tobacco from his pocket.

"I brought these for you."

"Thank you, Son." Bill managed a smile. "And God bless you."

Soberly Allan awaited the next bus to Tillotson, rode it in, and walked over to Johnny Malaming's store. Johnny indicated the packed goods that had been on Allan's written order.

"There you are, Al. Everything's ready."

"Thanks, Johnny." Allan was immensely grateful because Johnny did not ask him how his father was. Being a man of the flyway himself, the storekeeper would know how Bill Marley was.

"Anything else?" Johnny asked.

"Just some information. Did you ever get around Cardsville much?"

"Sure. Used to buy baskets there for the summer trade."

"Ever run across any Zermeichs?"

"They're 'bout all you do run across. They're thicker'n Torrances this side of your lake."

"Do you know a Jacob Zermeich?"

"Yup, and if he bit himself he'd die of his own poison. Meanest man I ever knew. I saw him take a chain to a horse once; it's the one time in my life I'd have killed a man if I had a gun. Jake mistreats every critter on his place. Say, what's this all about?"

"Well, jobs are hard to get here," Allan said vaguely, "and next spring, if I went to Cardsville . . ."

"Sure, sure," Johnny answered sympathetically. "But don't work for old Jake Zermeich!"

"I won't, and thanks for the information. So long."

Allan had learned what he wanted to know. If you misused Stormy, he'd strike back. Beyond any doubt that's why he was now a reputed man killer.