Outlaw Red

by Jim Kjelgaard

  Yet, as he petted Sean, the inborn love that all born dog men feel for a magnificent dog shone in his eyes and showed in his face. Often Billy had dreamed of such a dog, but until he had seen Sean he had never thought one really existed. Sean seemed to him a queer name for such an animal, so Billy addressed the big Setter in his own fashion.

  “You, Dog. Youah all dog. Seems mighty funny to keep you in a piddlin’ little cage, and just use you fo’ gettin’ blue ribbons and little cups when you could be a huntin’ dog. Seems mighty funny. Still, I s’pose it’s impo’tant, else Danny and Mistah Haggin wouldn’t do it. But fo’ the life of me I can’t figgah it.”

  Abruptly the spell was broken. Billy Dash stepped back from the wire and retreated into the shell he had built around himself. He went to and unlatched the kennel gate.

  “Come on, Dog. Time to run.”

  Aquiver with excitement and nervous tension, Sean met him. A chance to stretch his superb legs was what he waited for all day long. He bounded through the open gate, brushed past Billy Dash, and raced in a mad circle that took him halfway to the forest’s border. Whirling, he came back. Almost without pause he raced in another wild circle. Passing the kennel boy again, he leaped up and licked his cheek with a wet, sloppy tongue.

  After ten minutes, his first wild energy spent, he went over and thoroughly snuffled the mushroom patch where the terrapin had been eating. Sean raised his head, testing the various breezes. At a slow trot that increased as he traveled, he started into the meadow. The terrapin’s scent was faint on the breeze, but as Sean came closer the scent strengthened. Sean began to cast in wide circles that shortened as the scent became stronger. He found the terrapin where Billy Dash had put it down.

  Experimentally Sean poked at it with an exploring paw. As though it worked on well-oiled joints, the terrapin’s head glided beneath its hard shell. It drew in its legs and lay quietly. Sean scraped at the little turtle with his paw, turned it over on its back, and sniffed hard.

  Billy Dash came softly up behind him.

  “Not what you want, is it, Dog? No suh. Little old te’pin, that’s not what you want at all. Shuah would like to get you out in the back lands with me, aftah real game.”

  Head bent, ears tumbling forward, Sean regarded the terrapin. Again he poked it with his paw, and turned it over. Then came a hail from the kennels.

  “Billy.”

  “Yes suh.”

  With one last, lingering look at the terrapin, Sean fell in beside him as Billy Dash started back toward the kennels. He changed his smooth walk to an eager trot and raced ahead to greet Danny Pickett with wagging tail and questing nose. Big Red, a little jealous, stiffly sniffed noses with his handsome son. Absently Danny let his dangling hand stray over both dogs.

  “How’s it going, Billy?” he asked.

  “Good.”

  “Do you need anything for the kennels?”

  “No Suh.”

  “Are all the dogs all right?”

  “Yes suh.”

  “Things all right with you?”

  “Yes suh.”

  Danny laughed. He was a hill man himself, and understood other hill men. “You’re the talkative cuss, Billy!”

  “Yes suh.”

  Danny handed Billy Dash a white envelope.

  “Your two weeks’ pay, Billy. By the way, Mr. Haggin and Mr. Jordan have decided to breed Sean with Jordan’s Irisher, Penelope of Killamey. You’re to take Sean over to Jordan’s place next week.”

  Billy’s eyes glowed. He had seen Penny, a champion in her own right and, next to Sean, Billy’s idea of the most beautiful dog in the world.

  “Yes suh,” he said. “I’ll have Sean ready.”

  Danny walked off with Big Red and Billy Dash let Sean continue his exercise. After an hour he pushed the reluctant dog back into his kennel run, latched the gate, and turned to other kennel chores. Ears flattened, begging with his eyes for Billy to come back, Sean watched him go. Then he lay down in his favorite spot beneath a maple tree.

  Twilight lowered, and night folded softly over the Wintapi. Sean stretched, wandered into his kennel, and lay down to sleep. A moment later, he rose again. Four walls were confining, and usually gave him a sense of uneasiness. Most nights, even in very cold weather, he preferred to sleep in the wire run. Finding a soft spot on the clean earth, he curled up with his head resting on his flank.

  Only a few stars glittered wanly in the sky when Sean arose again. He got up happily, eyes bright and tail wagging. Billy Dash was coming toward his kennel. Sean padded to the end of his run and reared against the wire. A moment later, a dim figure in the night, Billy Dash loomed over him.

  “I come to say good night, Dog,” he murmured. “Can’t leave you heah the whole night long thinkin’ that I fo’got all about you. You know I wouldn’t do that.”

  Billy’s fingers came through the wire to scratch Sean’s ears, and Sean sighed blissfully. The young kennel man talked soothingly.

  Suddenly Sean raised his head and stiffened. The bristles on his neck stood straight up, his tail was stiff behind him. Sean growled low in his throat. He continued to strain with questing nostrils into the eddying breeze and he growled again.

  The breezes had brought to him a new scent, an odor laden with danger.

  2. Uncle Hat

  SEAN HELD RIGID, perfectly motionless, while he continued to test the winds. Warned by his almost inaudible growls that something was coming, Billy Dash turned and stood tensely against the wire run. Billy was a woodsman born. Sounds, scents, and noises that would have meant nothing to the average city man had their own meaning for him. But Billy lacked the extra-sharp senses of a dog, so he did not know that a man was coming.

  Sean did know, and he was afraid of the scent that wafted to his nostrils. Just as Red and Mike knew by the scent of the various creatures they ran across whether or not such creatures intended to run away from them or to stay and fight, Sean knew that this man had hostile intentions.

  The dimly lighted night revealed nothing except the misshapen outlines that buildings and trees usually display in darkness. Beyond these there were just scents and very faint sounds by which the oncoming man could be followed to advantage, and only Sean was able to interpret both scent and sound. He knew that the man had come out of the forest, in which he had been hiding, and started across the meadow. Sean followed him with his nose and ears.

  The big dog turned his head for one more look at Billy Dash. Since puppyhood Sean’s every want and need had been taken care of by some human being. His own native initiative and resourcefulness had not been developed to that keen point which Mike and Big Red had achieved. Now, naturally, he looked to the nearest man he trusted to solve any problems that might arise here.

  Out in the meadow a light thump sounded. Billy Dash whirled to face it.

  “Howdy, Billy.”

  Sean heard Billy Dash’s startled, “Uncle Hat!”

  “Uncle Hat!” the other mocked him. “Uncle Hat! A body would think a boy’d be glad to see his own uncle, his own blood uncle, what he hadn’t bothered to see in I dunno how many weeks. Ain’t you glad to see me, Billy?”

  Billy Dash said savagely, “No!”

  “Gettin’ uppity, eh?” Uncle Hat asked. “Never thought ‘twould do you any good to hang ‘round with rich folks thisaway. You get too uppity for yo’r own good, that’s what you do.”

  As he approached in the very dim light, Uncle Hat showed himself to be a short man, lacking six inches of Billy’s six feet. A battered felt hat sat well forward on his head, and uncut black hair straggled from beneath it. His eyes were pale, set close together. A bulbous nose protruded above a luxuriant growth of unkempt beard that concealed his mouth. He wore an old tattered suit coat, torn trousers, cut off at the knee, and heavy leather boots.

  Uncle Hat still had a distinct air of authority. The huge .45 caliber revolver which, cocked and ready, he bore in his right hand, loaned that to him. The gun’s ugly muzzle was trained squarely on
Billy Dash.

  There was a moment’s silence, then Uncle Hat’s teeth gleamed faintly in the bushy beard. “‘No,’ he says! He ain’t glad to see me! What you aim to do about it, Billy?”

  Billy Dash glanced downward, toward the revolver’s ready muzzle.

  “Nothin.”

  “I see you ain’t entirely took leave of your senses,”

  Uncle Hat reflected. “But we might’s well stop this gibble-gabblin’. I want some money.”

  “Got no money.”

  “Oh, yes you have. Yes you have, Billy. I was up on the slope, right behind a big oak tree, when I see Danny Pickett give you some. Hand it over.”

  Without a word, Billy Dash took the unopened envelope from his pocket and passed it over to Uncle Hat.

  Sean crouched low in his cage, still uncertain as to the course he should adopt but not liking the sound of the voices. He did not understand this. But he knew that Billy Dash was in danger and, should a fight come, he wanted to be in it on Billy’s side. He growled again, warningly.

  Uncle Hat laughed.

  “One of Haggin’s fancy mutts, eh? Bet he couldn’t chomp his teeth through a platter of hot cornmeal mush, and he’s growlin’ at me! Now let me see about this.”

  The revolver in his right hand never wavering, he used his left to tear the envelope open. Probing fingers slipped inside. There was another moment of silence, then Uncle Hat’s voice became ugly.

  “Whar’s the rest of it?”

  “There’s no mo’.”

  “Whar’s the rest of it?”

  “That’sall.”

  “Billy, for the last time I’m askin’. No Dash ever worked like you have to for this much money. I want the rest and I want it now!”

  “That’s all! Now git!”

  “I’ll blast yo’r guts to the top of Stoney Lonesome! I’ll-!”

  A great roar of rage escaped Sean’s chest. From up the line of kennels another dog echoed it, and a moment later all the dogs were in full-throated chorus. Sean leaped toward the top of his wire run, made a valiant effort to hook it with his front paws and scramble over, and fell back. He tried again, no longer in doubt as to what he should do and how he should do it. In the fight, on Billy’s side, he must be. Never in his life had he bitten or even threatened a man, but he wanted to hurt this one. So intent was he on getting over the fence that he was heedless of everything else.

  He did not see Billy, agile as a mink, duck low and come in fighting. Billy’s steel-hard left hand shot out. His fingers closed around Uncle Hat’s right wrist, and the gun was forced up. Supple as an eel, Billy twisted to one side, curled the fingers of his right hand around Uncle Hat’s throat, and used his right elbow to block the blows of Uncle Hat’s left fist.

  The big revolver was the prize both wanted, and their hands were locked on tilted arms as they strove for it. Uncle Hat fought with all his strength to bring the gun around to bear on Billy Dash. Cocked, the revolver needed only the pressure of a finger to go off.

  There was a roar, a tongue of flame flashed from the revolver’s muzzle into the black night, and a shadow flitted through the darkness. Uncle Hat lay where he had fallen. Billy Dash was nowhere in evidence.

  And Sean was the only witness.

  Danny Pickett was half asleep in the lodge. Lost in the hazy world that is neither complete sleep nor full wakefulness, he was with some amusement thinking of how times had changed.

  In the old days he and Ross had slept in one room, while the loft of their cabin was reserved for the hunters they guided or the fishermen they took to various streams and ponds. They had cooked over a wood stove, which had also heated the cabin, and carried all their water from a spring. At night the cabin was lighted with kerosene lamps.

  Now all that was changed. The lodge had accommodations for twelve guests, in addition to private bedrooms for Ross, Danny, and Billy Dash. A gasoline-powered generator produced ample current to provide all the electricity they could use. Bottled gas, replenished at frequent intervals, fueled a modern gas range. The spring had been walled in, piped into the house, and part of it ran through an automatic hot-water heater. A bathroom boasted both a shower stall and a tub. There was a gleaming refrigerator and a deep-freeze unit in which food could be stored for long periods of time. In winter the lodge was heated by a central oil furnace. Even the road down to Mr. Haggin’s had been graded and widened so cars could travel it at will.

  Danny grinned faintly. There was something to be said for all the gadgets modern man had created—provided that he didn’t go soft from using them. And there was little danger of it in these parts. The Wintapi slopes were just as steep as they’d ever been and the creeks were as swift. Anyone who prowled around them for several hours a day was certain to stay in first-class physical condition.

  Red raised his head and growled softly. Danny roused from the slumber into which he was fast drifting.

  “You, Red,” he scolded. “Why don’t you shut up?”

  The big dog rose and padded across the floor to the screened bedroom window. He reared on the sill and pressed his nose against the screen so he could test the outside air. Again he growled softly.

  “Listen,” Danny said. “You can’t sleep, so nobody else should either, huh? For pete’s sake go back to bed and stop raising a racket!”

  A second later Sean’s throaty battle roar exploded in the night. The other kenneled dogs took up the challenge, turning what had been peace into bedlam.

  Danny hit the floor with both feet, shucking off his pajamas as he did so and reaching for his clothes. Almost with the same motion he flicked the light switch on. Just as he did, he heard the blast of Uncle Hat’s big .45.

  In feverish haste Danny pulled a shirt over his head, zipped it shut without bothering to tuck it inside his trousers, and slipped his bare feet into moccasins. He snatched a double-barreled shotgun from a rack, loaded both barrels with buckshot, and jerked the door open.

  Red stayed close beside him, bristled and ready. He knew what Danny did not, that Uncle Hat had paid the kennels a visit. And, like Sean, Red knew by the trespasser’s scent that Uncle Hat’s intentions were not good. But Red and Danny had been in trouble many times, and the big dog’s experience told him they could meet every possible emergency.

  The hall lighted suddenly as Danny flipped the switch. With Sheilah padding uneasily behind him, Ross burst out of his bedroom just as Danny started down the hall. Ross carried his favorite weapon, a 30-30 rifle. Father and son, having worked together for so long that there was no need for exchanging comments, looked at each other questioningly. Side by side, Red trotting ahead of them and Sheilah pacing behind, they ran into the kitchen. Danny threw the switch that controlled the kennel flood lights, and they dashed onto the porch.

  Flooded by brilliant white light, the kennels were revealed in every detail. Excited dogs, their tension heightened by the lights, leaped against their wire runs and fell back. Their barking made the night alive with noise.

  Danny and Ross raced across the grass. Both had seen the crumpled figure lying in front of Sean’s run. Danny kept his shotgun ready and his eyes on Red. Who had shot one man here tonight might not be at all unwilling to shoot two. They reached the fallen man and Ross bent over him.

  “Hat Dash!”

  Danny’s voice expressed his relief. “I was afraid, it might be Billy.”

  The two looked meaningly at each other. If Billy Dash was still at the kennels, he would be with them now. Again there was no need for speculation. What had happened here was all too evident.

  “Where Hat Dash goes, trouble goes,” Ross said tensely.

  “He sure brought it here. Billy didn’t go into the mountains to find him.”

  “Boy, I’m not sayin’ you’re wrong. But why should Hat come here to raise a fuss?”

  “I paid Billy today.”

  “I see.” For a moment Ross stared soberly into the night, then he turned to the man on the ground. “Well, we can’t leave him here.�
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  Ross knelt beside Hat Dash and slipped a hand beneath his coat. For a moment he held still, as though uncertain of what he had found. He looked up at Danny.

  “He’s still alive,” he said, “but not too much alive. We’d best not try to move him. Get me some blankets, Danny. Then phone Mistah Haggin.”

  When Danny returned with the blankets, Ross had cut away the wounded man’s coat and shirt and had loosened his belt. Danny glanced soberly at Hat’s wound, just below his ribs. It was a very small hole, with only a few drops of blood, but Danny knew what he would find should he look at the place where the bullet had come out. If Hat Dash lived to tell of this he was going to be the luckiest man in the Wintapi.

  Silently Ross held up a white envelope.

  “Billy’s pay. Found it in Hat’s pocket.”

  “How about the gun?”

  “It’s not here. Billy must of took it. Where he’s goin’ he’ll need that more than money. You go ahead and phone.”

  Danny went back into the lodge, picked up the phone, and gave the two short rings that called Mr. Haggin’s house. He waited a moment, and then Mr. Haggin himself answered the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello. This is Danny, Mr. Haggin, Danny Pickett. There’s been trouble, a shooting.”

  “Who was shot?”

  “Hat Dash. Look, I’ll tell you all about it when you get here. We need a doctor and an ambulance, bad.”

  There was a short pause. Then Mr. Haggin said, “It seems to me that we need the police, too.”

  Danny said reluctantly, “Maybe we do.”

  “All right. I’ll be there as soon as possible.”