Outlaw Red

by Jim Kjelgaard

  A spring-born fawn ran out of his path, and for a little way Sean pursued it. He had never killed a deer, but he knew that venison was very good because he had eaten from Slasher’s kill. The fawn outdistanced him and Sean turned his attention to other things. Not too far away he knew of several good thickets where rabbits played and ate, and thumped the earth with thudding hind feet when danger neared.

  He crossed the very fresh trail of a hunting fox, and because the fox was traveling in the direction he wanted to go, he followed the trail for a ways.

  Only a few minutes ahead of him, the fox entered the thicket Sean had in mind and criss-crossed it thoroughly. Sean sulked behind him. The fox had caught no rabbit, but he had frightened all of them into hiding. Sean followed him into the next thicket, and the one beyond that, and as he did he became more sulky. The fox did not lack enthusiasm, but evidently he was a young and inexperienced hunter. Though he caught nothing, neither did he neglect anything. No rabbit in any thicket had lacked attention, and in consequence there was not one left above ground. Nor would they come out of their burrows until they were sure the enemy had gone.

  Disgusted, Sean left the fox’s trail and struck off at right angles. He climbed the snow-covered slope on the other side of the creek, ran across its forested summit, and descended the opposite slope. Here was another region of thickets where rabbits abounded.

  The big Setter first became aware of danger when a bullet from a high-powered rifle snicked into the snow scarcely five feet away. Then he heard the blast of the rifle.

  His reaction was instantaneous. Dodging and twisting, he raced back up the slope he had just descended. The rifle cracked three times more, but no bullet landed near. The man on the other side of the valley was a hopeless distance away, and a racing target was ten times as difficult to hit as a stationary one.

  Just before he broke over the crest of the hill, Sean heard the musical notes of a hunting horn. Almost at once the mournful bay of a trailing hound answered the summons.

  Slasher had indeed returned to the clearings. Because he had not raided them in some time, the hill men had been lulled into a false sense of security, and Slasher had found wonderful hunting. Two calves, half a dozen sheep, and five geese lay dead behind him. Grimly resolved on full revenge, the hill men and their hounds were out in force. But it was not Slasher’s trail the hounds were on; it was Sean’s!

  He heard them reach the hill’s crest where he had crossed, and Sean stretched out to run. Only a greyhound can outrun an Irish Setter, and the yelling pack was quickly left behind. Having never run in front of hounds, unsure as to just what he should do, Sean fell back to a trot.

  Almost at once the hounds’ swelling voices gathered volume and they drew near again. It was a motley pack that pursued Sean. Everything from cross-breeds to clean-limbed foxhounds were there. Among the dogs were two that never touched a nose to the ground, but just raced along. They were the killers. When the quarry was finally cornered, their job was to go in and pull it down. But also with the hounds were two with long ears, quivering jowls, and keen noses. No fighters, but trailers of vast experience, these two had never been known to leave the scent of a quarry they started.

  Again Sean lengthened out to run. This was something new in his experience, and he did not know what to do about it. There was a coldly terrifying quality in the steady voices of the pack. They could not run as fast as he but they seemed to be tireless. Their blended chorus was like the knell of death.

  Sean circled into the wind, hearing the clamor of the hounds but looking for men. The wind told him nothing, but he was sure the men were coming. Beyond much doubt they would come from the same direction as the dogs, so it was well not to go back there. Sean set a course that took him ever deeper into the wilderness.

  The day wasted and evening came. Sean was bewildered now, and fatigued. He could still, in a little spurt of speed, draw so far ahead of the dogs that he could not even hear them. But it was impossible to lose them. Sean splashed through a stream, and waded out the other side. The pack did not even hesitate at the place he had crossed. The two experienced hounds with them were familiar with every trick that hunted creatures used.

  Panting hard, hot in spite of the bitter wind, Sean paused a minute. The shifting winds had brought him the scent of Slasher, lying up in a thicket on the exact course Sean wanted to run.

  The big Setter did not hesitate or change direction, for he was still unafraid of Slasher. He saw the coy-dog rise to challenge him, and Sean prepared himself for the uneven fight. Slasher was rested and comparatively fresh, while Sean had run, much of the time at full speed, for hours on end.

  Head low, tail stiff, ruff bristled, Slasher waited for his enemy. Sean side-stepped and feinted. Then, very distant and faint, the mingled voices of the hound pack came to them.

  Slasher was gone as silently as a breath of wind. So swift and so unnerving was his departure that Sean was left bewildered. One second Slasher was before him. An eye wink later only his scent remained to prove that he had ever been there. But he must waste no time wondering about Slasher. The hounds were coming fast. Sean raced down the rim of the hill.

  The pursuing pack no longer ran as a unit. It had spread out, with the faster dogs ahead and the rest arranged according to their speed. Leading was a whippet-like youngster with a voice like a clear bell. Trailing him closely were the two killer dogs, who did not tongue at all. Rising steadily behind were the voices of the two experienced trailing hounds, who now ran near the center.

  Coming to the place where Sean had met Slasher, the leading hounds broke into a sudden, half-hysterical yelling. Led by the trim hound with the bell-like voice, all but two of the dogs streamed off on Slasher’s hot trail. Only the two older hounds, the pair that never left the trail until they found the game they wanted, remained on Sean’s scent.

  Night fell, and with its coming went all danger from men with rifles. Sean descended a wild little ridge, jumped the stream at its foot, climbed the slope on the opposite side, and rested in a grove of hemlocks. There he sat on his haunches and listened for the two hounds.

  He heard them, all too soon, the relentless voices of pursuit. Whip-thin, tireless, the two old hounds did not know how to quit. Reluctantly, Sean ran on. Neither of the hounds was very fast, but both were steady, and they covered a lot of ground if given time. Again Sean was driven from his bed, and again.

  Night faded, morning came, and still the voices of the two old hounds blended together in the deep wilderness behind him. Sean slowed to a trot, then to a walk. He had run as far as he intended to run. Panting up a boulder-studded hillock just as the sun broke over the horizon, he turned around to face the two hounds that were still on his trail.

  *

  When the first faint streak of dawn thinned the black mantle of night, Jake Busher got stiffly up from the fire beside which he and four others had spent the night. There had been some sleep, but not much, for every time all five men slept, the fire died and bitter cold awakened them. Jake blinked eyes that were reddened by lack of rest and by constantly straining into the north wind that had keened in his face all day yesterday. He ventured into the semi-darkness of early morning, kicked a dead stump loose from its frozen roots, and threw it onto the fire. Sparks flew, and the fire flared fitfully.

  Like all the rest, Jake was tired and short-tempered. All day yesterday their hound pack, the best they could put into the field, had trailed and failed to overtake the red dog. Then the pack had split, with five hounds running after one dog or wolf and Joel Carter’s prize pair running another. Following, hoping for a shot or a kill, the disappointed hunters had been night-bound in this cold valley.

  As the rest of them woke up, Tobe Miller said surlily, “Got any bright ideas, Price? You was the one said he couldn’t run away from us on a snow.”

  “Seems like I was wrong,” young Price Alien admitted. “He did run away. All I can figure is to call the dogs in and try again.”

  “Them do
gs can be halfway to Canada by now,” Jake Busher grumbled. “We’ll never find ‘em.”

  Joel Carter said flatly, “I ain’t goin’ back ‘thout mine are with me.” He looked angrily at the fifth member of the party, his brother Vince. “How come you missed that red dog when you had four shots at him? If you could shoot straight, we’d be home now ‘stead of roostin’ in this Godforsaken valley.”

  “Ah, shut up!” Vince snarled. Price Alien said, “Well, I aim to have a try at callin’ ‘em in.”

  He lifted the hunting horn that was suspended around his neck, warmed the mouthpiece with his fingers, and blew three clear, sweet notes on it. Nobody paid him the slightest attention. It had been a hard hunt and a miserable and hungry camp. All were too intent on their own physical distress to take interest in anything except building up the fire. An hour later the young hound that had led the pack limped into camp on three legs. He was one of the five that had followed Slasher, and finally brought him to bay. The young hound’s left side and left front leg were ripped and scored by slashing teeth. Five minutes later, unwounded, two of the other hounds joined him. Of the five that had been on Slasher’s trail, only these three would ever again respond to the call of the hunting horn. The two killers were already frozen where Slasher had left them with their throats ripped out.

  The men sat silently around the fire, waiting for the rest of the hounds to come in.

  Almost at the same time, on the high, wind-swept, boulder-strewn hillock, Sean braced himself to meet the two hounds. He saw them come out of the brush and disappear among the boulders, two rangy, black and tan hounds with their noses to the ground. At regular intervals their rolling bay floated forth to echo back from the distance. The two were within six feet of the embattled Sean before they glanced up and saw him.

  The hounds stopped in bewilderment. They had done their part. At last they had bayed the quarry that they had trailed so far and so long. Now they did not know what else to do. It was not their fault if there were no killers present to take over. Besides, their quarry was not a fox or a bear, but a dog.

  The two sat on their haunches, looking curiously at Sean. Bristling, he stalked them. The hounds growled, and just as hostilely came to meet Sean. They sniffed noses, but there was really no reason for a fight here. All the hounds knew how to do, and all they had cared to do, was find Sean. At first stiffly, then amiably, three tails began to wag.

  Because they were all tired from the long chase, the three curled up so they could keep each other warm, and peacefully went to sleep.

  7. Abduction

  THE NOON SUN shone coldly through a bank of gray clouds when the two hounds rose, stretched, wagged a friendly farewell, and started for Joel Carter’s cabin. Sadly Sean watched them go. It had been nice to have friendly company, if only for a little while.

  He sat on his haunches while the pair trotted slowly away. Again the aching loneliness flooded him, but he made no effort to go with the hounds. Though he liked both of them, he felt no strong attachment for either. Besides, their scents told him that they were Joel Carter’s dogs and Joel was a stranger.

  For a while Sean was plagued by memories of Billy Dash, Danny Pickett, Ross Pickett, and the life he had lived in the Pickett clearing. But all that was changed. No longer was he a pampered, prized dog but a wild thing to be hunted and shot at. There was nobody except himself to feed and take care of him, now.

  He sat until the hounds went out of sight over the rim of the boulder-strewn knob, then got up, put his nose to their trail, and followed them a little way. But his hunger soon recalled him to the stern realities of wilderness life. For almost twenty-four hours he had run ahead of the hound pack with nothing to eat.

  Sean started out to hunt. The wind, cutting steadily from the north, blew in his face and plastered his red fur close against his body. A few snowflakes whirled about him, clung to his fur for a moment, and dropped off. The sunny part of autumn was definitely gone, and the weather was turning bitterly cold as real winter set in.

  Because rabbits were easiest to hunt, Sean went first to a likely looking thicket. He slunk into it, careful to make as little noise as possible while he sought a good ambush. His life in the woods had taught him to choose such places carefully.

  A successful ambush was usually where he himself could be hidden or partially hidden by a clump of brush, a stump, a fallen log, or some other natural feature. At the same time, any ambush where he hoped to catch a rabbit must be heavily laden with rabbit odor, a signal that many rabbits ventured there. It was worse than useless to try to hunt anywhere else.

  There was almost no rabbit scent. The thicket abounded in burrows but the bitter weather had driven their owners into them. Only occasionally did Sean find a place where a rabbit had ventured out to feed, and ducked back into a burrow as soon as it had eaten. It was no use.

  Sean struck straight across the wilderness, back toward the creek where the suckers lived. Though fish were cold eating, certainly they were better than an empty belly. On the way he came to a wooded summit where straggling patches of laurel, rhododendron, and blackberry briers grew among the trees.

  A puff of snow seemed to explode right in front of his face and something dashed away. Sean gave instant chase as the creature bounded behind a patch of laurel and stretched out to run.

  This was not a cottontail rabbit but a snowshoe hare, and it was wearing a pure white coat that all snowshoes don when winter comes. Ravenous, Sean leaped clear over a patch of laurel and raced madly after the fleeing snowshoe. But the big-footed hare was nowhere to be seen.

  Sean sniffed eagerly at other fresh tracks, which were all about. No matter how hard the wind blew, or how searing cold made tortured trees creak, the big snowshoes never sought shelter in burrows, but always stayed on top of the ground. Their safety lay in their white fur, an almost perfect camouflage against white snow, in their ability to twist and dodge, and in their sensitive ears. So keen was the snowshoes’ hearing that they could detect the almost noiseless strike of a great horned owl.

  Sean ran by sight, like a greyhound. It was not his nature to trail game, so he chased and lost another fleeting snowshoe that sped from him like a white spirit on the white snow. Hopefully he laid an ambush at a place where there was a heavy concentration of scent, but none of the big hares came along and Sean was too hungry to be patient long enough. He rose and prowled restlessly through the thicket.

  There was a sudden, spitting snarl, and Sean halted abruptly. He had been so interested in snow-shoe scent that he had paid no attention to anything else. Now he found himself face to face with a mottled lynx that had also come to the thicket to catch his dinner.

  The lynx lay on a log overlooking a runway, and so wonderfully did his patched gray fur match his surroundings that Sean wasn’t sure he saw anything at all until the lynx opened his mouth to spit again. With a happy yelp, Sean sprang to the attack.

  The lynx leaped from his log and was running when he landed. Two jumps ahead of the insanely pursuing dog, the lynx leaped six feet up the trunk of a tree and clung there, snarling.

  Without breaking stride, Sean launched himself into the air. His big jaws snapped shut, catching a fold of the lynx’s skin as they did. Surprised because he had thought himself out of harm’s way, the stung lynx scrambled farther up the tree. He looked down, spitting insults. After a minute the lynx climbed all the way up the tree, composed himself on a limb, and went to sleep.

  Sean wasted ten minutes in senseless barking at the lynx and in rearing against the tree trunk. Finally he left to wander on. Chasing the big cat was fun, but now Sean was far too hungry to do anything except look for food.

  He came to a wide meadow which, except for a cluster of wild apple trees in the center, grew almost entirely to long, tangled brush and short grass. Five deer, feeding on frozen apples they had scraped out of the snow, raised white tails over their backs and loped gracefully away as Sean approached.

  The big Setter drooled as he snuffled
hot deer scent. Since feeding from Slasher’s kill he had hoped to have some more venison. But, though he had chased many deer, he had yet to catch one. He looked toward the deer; they had run only about forty yards and were impatiently waiting for him to get away from the apples.

  Sean picked up a frozen apple and crunched it in his teeth. It was cold, filled to the core with ice crystals, but it was food. He ate half a dozen more apples and trotted on, his belly still empty but not as complaining as it had been.

  Almost as soon as he left the trees the deer came back to fight over the remainder of the apples. Sean trotted across the snow-laden meadow, back into the forest, and came to a sudden halt as the stale scent of man wafted to his nostrils.

  Cautiously he circled so that the strongest winds blew from the scent to him. The man had been here yesterday, but he was not here now. Besides, another scent almost drowned his. It was the fresh, hot odor of a snowshoe.

  Sean slunk forward, careful not to let himself be seen until he had looked around carefully. He edged out from behind a big beech tree and looked at a trail packed by a man on webbed snowshoes. About ten feet from the trail, a snowshoe hare, with a steel trap on both front paws, strained as far backward as the trap chain would let him go. Sean had struck the trap line of Crosby Marlett, who spent every winter season taking his furs in the wildest and most inaccessible places he could find.

  Sure that there was no man around now, Sean padded across the trail to the trapped hare. Carefully he circled. Something, he did not quite know what, was amiss here. Though Sean wanted the big hare, he did not want to run into trouble getting it. However, he could neither see nor smell danger.

  He leaped, struck, and the trapped hare quivered in his jaws. Sean wrenched it loose from the trap. Suddenly, the snowshoe still dangling from his jaws, he jumped as though he had come into unexpected contact with a hot electric wire.

  Unknowingly he had brushed and sprung the second trap of the set. It clicked cold jaws against his paw and left a numbing sting there as it slid off without a firm grip. Sean hurried away. This was a new source of food but plainly it was not without its perils. From now on, he must be doubly careful and on the lookout for sudden surprises.