No longer hungry, because of his pain, he was very thirsty. When he came to a cold little stream he stopped to drink, then lay down in a shallow pool. The water’s icy touch was soothing, and his injuries did not hurt quite so fiercely as he lay in the pool. But because he was still too near Jake Busher’s cabin, he got up and went on.
For hours he traveled, setting a straight course that carried him away from man and into the haunts of wild animals. The night was two-thirds gone when he finally discovered just what he had been looking for.
He had come to another of the little streams that trickled down every main valley and every tributary gully, and turned upstream. Where the stream entered the valley, he found himself in a thicket of high bush huckleberries. Sean splashed through puddles as he made his way among them to the very center of the thicket, where he discovered a few aspen trees and a pool of clear water. Huckleberries grew profusely among the aspens, and around the pool.
When Sean found the pool, the water was at the normal summer level. But bordering it on all sides was a bed of rich mud and silt created by spring floods of melting snow. It was in this mud that the huckleberries found a rooting.
Sean sighed gratefully. He lay down in the cold mud and pressed his left side firmly into it. That did not cover his neck wounds, so with a struggle he sat up and used his right front paw to scrape a hole. When he lay down in that, the wet mud oozed over his back, covering him almost completely. Only his head protruded from the hole.
The sun rose, and Sean remained absolutely motionless in his mud bath. Over his head rose a shielding growth of huckleberries. His body was completely submerged in cold mud, which cooled the air for a few inches above it, so that no flies or mosquitoes bothered him. His eyes were half-closed and he breathed hard. His nose was very hot.
After a while he raised his head to lap thirstily from a little water-filled depression, then lay down again. He did not want to move because his every instinct told him that it was better not to.
A buck deer, ragged shreds of velvet still clinging to his antlers, passed within thirty feet and never knew Sean was there. A mink, come to hunt finger-ling trout, flashed like a brown shadow along the pool, totally unaware of him. Even a keen-eyed, red-tailed hawk, circling the mud flat for what it could see and pick up, did not detect the big Setter.
All through the day, all night long, and half through the next morning, Sean lay in the mud. Then, his fever gone, he was aroused by a sudden flutter of wings.
A bittern dipped out of the sky, alighted in the swamp, stood a moment, and then, with the extreme slowness of motion that marks its kind, it began to walk toward Sean. Less than two yards away, beside a cluster of reeds that grew near the pond, it took its stance. Bill pointed toward the sky, brown-feathered wings folded and motionless, it looked almost like one of the reeds. The bittern never shifted a feather as it waited for some unwary prey to venture within reach of its spear-like bill.
Sean watched, his eyes wide open. He felt better, and with a return of physical well-being had come the return of hunger. Never in his life had he seen a bittern, but he suspected that they might be good to eat.
With a sudden leap he was out of the mud and flinging himself toward the waiting bird. For a split second the startled bittern did not move, and that mistake was its last. Had it taken to the air instantly, Sean could not have caught it. As it was, the dog overtook the fluttering bird four feet out over the pond and both went under the water.
Sean carried his victim back to the mud flat and shook himself. Water and mud flew in all directions. The big Setter felt a great, glowing pride in this, the first game he had ever caught. He dropped the limp bittern on the mud, snuffled it, and pawed it. Experimentally he touched it with his tongue, and sneezed when a feather tickled his nose. Again he took the bittern in his mouth and trotted toward high ground.
He sat down, head cocked forward and ears pricked up. Now that he finally had something to eat, the next problem was just how to go about eating it. Definitely the feathers were not to his taste. Sean rolled the bittern over with his paw. Then, as though an idea had just occurred to him, he held the bird down with both front paws and used his teeth to pluck the feathers out. As soon as he had stripped a portion he ate it, and went back for another. Five minutes later only the bird’s bill and feathers remained in the huckleberry thicket. Sean was so ravenous that he ate even the feet and head.
He looked about him. For the second time since leaving Danny’s clearing he had eaten. But, like the mushrooms, the bittern had merely dulled the sharpest edges of his appetite. He felt a great need for more food.
Aimlessly he wandered up a ridge. Though he was famished, he hadn’t the least idea of how to go about getting something more to eat. Except for the bittern, and his games with the mouse in his kennel, never in his life had he hunted anything. Though he had already received some lessons in woods lore, he had not yet learned how to apply them.
Unless he did he would die. All his life Sean had been pampered and cared for. Now he must take care of himself; the wild world has no place for the weak or incompetent. Only the fit and knowing survive.
Sean’s neck and shoulder still pained a little, but they no longer burned and hurt as fiercely as they had. He limped slightly as he prowled up the hardwood ridge, snuffling at the various scents about him. All were interesting and some were tempting, but Sean did not know what he could do about any of them. He saw nothing except a few birds that flitted out of reach.
Suddenly a rabbit exploded from a patch of grass and raced away, white tail flashing like a powder puff. Sean gave instant, determined chase. But the cottontail dived into a burrow, a safe twenty jumps ahead of the dog. Sean sniffed the warm odors that wafted out of the burrow, and scratched hopefully at its mouth, but the cottontail knew a safe refuge. This burrow was strategically placed between two almost buried boulders. Not even a bear could dig into it and only a weasel or mink could enter.
After a few minutes Sean wandered despondently on. His shriveled stomach cried for food, but there was none. Coming to a patch of wintergreen, Sean plucked and ate as many of the tangy red berries as he could find. They were as nothing to his hunger.
He was drooling now, and desperately turning aside for anything that might be edible. Again he dashed at a rabbit and again failed to catch it. Hopefully he reared against a tree in which a fat porcupine, rendered safe by his sharp spears and scornful of everything that was not so protected, dwelt in philosophic seclusion. Unaware of his good fortune because he had discovered the porcupine in a tree and had not overtaken it and tried to kill it on the ground, Sean wandered on.
The sun was swinging toward its bed behind the western mountains when Sean halted abruptly. A most enticing odor crossed his nostrils. The dog bent his head into the wind that brought him the scent, and ran out an appreciative tongue.
He smelled fresh meat in ample quantities, but mingled with it was another odor that made Sean bristle. Never before had he detected an odor similar to this one. It was like a dog’s, but it was not dog. There was something about it that was almost evil.
Sean had caught the scent of Slasher, who was neither dog nor coyote but half of each, and one of Slasher’s kills.
The big Setter hesitated. The kill was not his and under ordinary circumstances he would have passed it by. Now he was too hungry to ignore anything that might be good to eat. He trotted forward, halted, and advanced a few more steps. Throwing caution and discretion to the winds, he flung himself toward the food that he knew lay just a few steps ahead of him.
In a little opening among the trees, where Slasher had finally pulled her down this morning, lay a dead whitetail doe. The skin was ripped from her belly, and there was a knife-clean cut where Slasher had gone in to get the liver, the part of a fresh kill that he liked best. Nothing else was touched. Trembling with excitement and hunger, Sean sank his fangs deep into red meat, ripped out a great chunk, and swallowed it whole. He continued to eat, filling his belly as fast as he could
without regard to anything else. Only when the hunger pangs had started to quiet did he make any effort to select only the tenderest and best parts of the slain doe.
Now he went about it a little more carefully and not quite so hastily. For the first time since leaving Danny he had enough to eat. Sean raised his head to lick his chops, then selected another morsel.
Suddenly he became aware that he was no longer alone. The big Setter raised his head to look across the clearing. Fifteen feet away, Slasher faced him.
Product of a big mongrel dog and a female coyote, the coy-dog had inherited the size of his father and the lithe grace of his mother. His fur was long and gray, except for brindle stripes, his father’s markings, down both sides. His muzzle tapered like a wolf’s, but there was a certain squareness about it, and a certain fuzziness, that again bespoke Slasher’s mixed parentage.
His eyes were clear yellow, and in them seemed to glitter the hate that a hybrid, who could claim no family as his own, felt for the entire world. Slasher was a born killer, a perennial pirate who had so far been too clever to be caught and punished for his misdeeds. In spite of the fact that, on occasion, he led a pack of renegade dogs through the hills, most of the time he preferred to be alone. Slasher had simmered in the juices of his own hatred for so long that not even the few mates he had tried to take could for long put up with him.
He edged in to kill the red Setter.
Sean rose to defend himself, and there was no fear in him. Slasher was as big as he, and constant running in the wilds had developed his muscles to a hardness and flexibility that Sean had yet to achieve. In addition, there were few tricks of battle that Slasher did not know. Sean did not realize this. He only knew that here was an enemy who must be faced.
With a haste born of overconfidence, Slasher sprang in for the kill. Sean braced himself to meet the attack, and Slasher stopped short. Like a dancer, he glided safely away.
He had thought to make a plaything of Sean, and to chop him to pieces at his will. Most of the dogs Slasher had killed had been easy victims. Some fought for a little while, some tried to run, but all feared him. Now, for the first time, he met a dog that was not afraid of him and that had no intention of running. Slasher ran out a dripping tongue while he studied his opponent.
Again he dived in, snapped, and the end half-inch of Sean’s left ear hung by bloody shreds. Slasher feinted to the left, crossed suddenly to the right, and made a tentative snap at Sean’s throat. Of one thing Slasher was positive. He could kill this strange dog, this creature who smelled of man but not of fear, at any moment he chose.
Suddenly, for no reason that was at once apparent, Slasher whirled, streaked into a thicket, and faded like a flitting shadow. Sean, whose senses were not as keen as those of the wilderness-trained coy-dog, stood still for a moment. Then the odor that had sent Slasher flying was also borne to him.
A man was coming and it was nobody Sean knew. Therefore he had better go, too. A single prodigious leap carried him into the surrounding trees, but, unlike Slasher, he did not run fast. He knew men, and was aware of the fact that no man could match the pace of a dog that wanted to travel at even moderate speed. Two hundred yards from the dead doe, safely screened by trees and brush, Sean slowed to a walk.
His nose told him when the man, who was Jake Busher’s neighbor, came to the dead doe and halted beside it. Then the man went on.
Sean shook his lacerated ear and tried to lick off the flecks of blood. The interrupted fight had ended with no conclusive victory, though probably Slasher would have won had it continued. He was hard and wise, more than a match for any ordinary dog his own size. Nevertheless Sean remained unafraid. He was entirely willing to fight Slasher again should their paths cross.
Sean sought a high, sun-baked ridge, and slept. The night air roused him and restlessly he started prowling again. Exercise revived his hunger and he cast about for something to eat. He jumped at and missed three rabbits, sniffed hopefully at a tree in which a brood of wild turkeys roosted, and stood rooted in surprise when a big raccoon, prowling among some trees, fluffed its fur to twice its normal size, spat at him, and scampered up a tree. Sean reared against the tree’s trunk, snuffling long and deeply of this new scent. It was tempting, and one he would have to remember.
Dawn had come again, and still Sean had eaten nothing, when he thought of the dead doe. He knew that Slasher might be there too, but Sean remained unafraid of Slasher. At a distance-eating trot he set off toward the place where the doe lay. From a safe distance he stopped to reconnoiter.
The scent of the doe was very plain, as was that of the man who had passed it. There was only yesterday’s evidence of Slasher. Sean dismissed the coy-dog from his mind while he gave all his attention to what lay at hand. He wrinkled his nose distastefully.
There was something present that had not been here before, something more cold, more deadly, and, if possible, more evil than Slasher himself. Sean trembled. Then he heard the faint voice of a sick crow, and slunk forward. Whatever might be present he must discover before he was discovered by it. Carefully he edged through the trees and looked at the place where the dead doe lay.
As he did so a scavenger crow launched itself feebly from the carcass, rose ten feet, made a complete somersault, and fell to the ground. It jerked a convulsive wing as it landed, and then only the breeze ruffled its feathers. Three more dead crows lay close to the deer. Sean smelled only the odor of man, and knew it was the same man who had interrupted his fight with Slasher. But he continued to shiver.
There was something here that he could not figure out, a fearful, deadly something that had no foundation whatever in the logic of his nose. He bristled up to the kill, sniffed at it and at the three dead crows. Then Sean turned his attention to the fourth crow, the one he had watched fall to the ground. It was still warm, the animal heat having not yet gone from its body, but it was certainly dead. Again Sean sniffed at the doe, but all he could discover was that the man, in passing, had paused near it.
Finally Sean’s hunger overcame prudence and he ripped off and swallowed a chunk of meat. He champed his jaws, not liking the taste, and almost at once was violently ill. There was a fierce burning in his stomach and a throbbing in his head. He staggered, and was ill again.
Shakily, unsteadily, he walked away from the dead doe to the cool shade of a nearby hemlock. Overcome by nausea, he lay down. Both lying still and walking were unbearable. Sean rose to stagger on. Sides heaving violently, he stretched his full length on the ground.
He could not know that the hill man, looking for a runaway heifer, had found the doe, recognized it as a dog or wolf kill, and poisoned it. Slasher, like so many wolves and coyotes, knew better than to return to a kill after a man had discovered it. Sean had learned the hard way. It was his good fortune that, in the chunk of meat he had chosen, there was a heavy overdose of strychnine. Instead of killing Sean by being absorbed, it had made him so ill that he had promptly rid himself of it. He was left with nothing more serious than a severe nausea.
That passed, leaving him with a hot tongue and a throbbing head. Sean rose, walked slowly to a little spring he had found, and drank. Very tired, he sought the sunny top of a hillock and curled up to sleep.
A sure sense, an inborn knowledge that something was around, awakened him. But Sean did not move. The games he had taught himself back in the kennel run were well-taught. Not for nothing had he learned that a motionless object is hardest to see. A scent tickled his nostrils, and a moment later Sean found the source of the odor with his eyes.
Four feet away, its back to Sean, a cottontail rabbit was placidly chewing clover. Sean launched himself as he had at the bittern, and, in his kennel, at the mouse. From a recumbent position he went up and out. The startled rabbit made one frantic jump, but Sean’s leap had been perfect. His jaws snapped once and the rabbit quivered in them.
Thus, finally, he learned a priceless lesson. The bittern had alighted near him while he lay buried in the mud. The cotton
tail had ventured close as he lay sleeping. So Sean learned the value and some of the technique of an ambush. It was better, and easier, to let game come to him than it was to waste his strength running after it.
He had found food, but he remained terribly lonely, yearning for companionship. It was loneliness that, two days later, sent him back to Jake Busher’s clearing. From the safe shelter of the forest Sean looked out on the cabin and corral. He danced with his front feet and whined, wanting to be near the man but not daring to go. Jake Busher’s shotgun and the poisoned doe had taught him well the wisdom of being careful in choosing his friends.
Black night fell before he ventured into the clearing at last. He sat there, in no hurry to go near the house until the light winked out and Jake went to bed. Cautious as he was, Sean could not resist creeping up to the cabin and sniffing it. His tail began to wag as he recalled happy memories of the many fine times he had enjoyed with men.
All around the cabin he went, snuffling long and hard at everything. He did not even overlook a chip of wood that Jake Busher had touched. Finally Sean went from the cabin to the corral, where the sheep stared back stupidly as he peered between the corral rails at them.
Sean bristled as a new scent came to him, and looked anxiously at the house. Under no circumstances did he want Jake Busher to find out that he was in the clearing, and Jake might if a fight started there. Sean trotted back toward the forest.
Across the clearing, creeping ever nearer to the corralled sheep, came Slasher.
5. Penny
JAKE BUSKER, sleeping in his cabin, was awakened by the stuttering bawl of a terrified sheep. Without lingering to hear any more, the hill man leaped from his bed, groped in the darkness for his clothing, slipped his feet into moccasins, and padded silently across the cabin’s floor.
This was an act which, in his mind, he had rehearsed many times. He knew the raider that came out of the forest as a devilishly clever brute, a creature crafty beyond belief. As silently as a ghost it struck at his flock and at the flocks and herds of his neighbors, and just as stealthily it was gone. Its technique varied. Sheep and calves that ranged the far-flung hill pastures were often found in their isolated ranges with their throats slashed or their bellies ripped. But by no means did the killer confine itself to open range. Sometimes, as it was doing now, it ventured right up to a house and launched its attack. Nor did it always come by night. On occasion when a hill man went away he was apt to return and find that his livestock had been raided in broad daylight and within sight of a cabin. The killer seemed possessed of an almost supernatural intelligence. Never did it show itself about a clearing in daylight if man was present.
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