Outlaw Red

by Jim Kjelgaard

  She disappeared within. The puppies, whose mewling had grown loud when Penny left them, quieted when she came back. Only an occasional squeak mingled with the sound of the soft breeze that set the pine branches to whispering among themselves.

  The black squirrel, indifferent to the dogs as long as they did not molest him, practiced his jumping and leaping through the pines. Silverwing, who knew very well that something strange had invaded the pine grove, tilted on a swinging branch and cocked his head to listen. He had never heard anything like this before and he couldn’t figure it out. Finally he flew away to find his mate. When the ravens returned to the pine grove they rested in the outer fringe of trees and did not go near the cave.

  After half an hour Sean rose to trot away. He had brought something for Penny to eat, but he had eaten nothing himself and was very hungry. He trotted swiftly through the pines, following the same path he had used when he came in.

  Had Sean been in a kennel he might have given the puppies no thought. But he was not in a kennel, and running wild had sharpened his wild instincts. It seemed perfectly logical for Penny to stay with, nurse, and protect the puppies while he did the hunting for both of them. The puppies could not possibly feed or defend themselves. Later, when they were big enough, the natural course of events would be for both Sean and Penny to take them out and teach them how to hunt.

  Safely away from the pines, Sean broke into a fast run. Often when he and Penny had hunted together they had gone hungry. Now that he had to find food for both of them his responsibility was tremendous. But Sean knew where there was always food to be had. Although he had purposely kept Penny away from Crosby Marlett’s trap line because of the perils involved in haunting it, he himself had never held back on account of danger. Nor did he now.

  Sean struck the line at the place he had left it earlier, sniffed at the snowshoe trail, discovered that the trapper had not been to visit his traps, and settled down to lope easily along the trail. Suddenly the snowshoe tracks left the old trail and turned up a brushy ridge. Sean followed.

  Crosby Marlett was a good trapper and one who believed in sound trapping practices. He knew that foxes were at their best in the early part of the winter. As soon as the late-winter thaws set in, foxes liked to lie on sunny ledges and in other warm places. The sun bleached their fur, so that a late-caught fox was not worth one third as much as a pelt taken at the proper time. Crosby Marlett had stopped trapping foxes and was now working the thickets for wildcats and an occasional lynx. Wildcat pelts were worth little, but a ten-dollar bounty made them worth trapping. Lynx furs, still prime, found a ready market.

  Sean swung aside to investigate a trap, found nothing in it, left it behind, and went on. The next set held a half-grown wildcat that unsheathed its claws and spat at him, but in the next was a snow-shoe. Sean scratched snow and ice clods to spring the second trap of the set and then went in to take the big hare.

  He ate it down to the last shred of meat, then for a while he lay up in a thicket. The big Setter rose from his nap to prowl restlessly about. He had already taken food to Penny, but she might be hungry again. Sean laid a halfhearted ambush for cottontails, succeeded in catching nothing, and swung back to Crosby Marlett’s trap line. The third set he visited contained another snowshoe. The trapper baited his lynx and wildcat sets with meat upon which he put a drop or two of lure which he himself had invented. But the lure was equally fascinating to snowshoe hares. Since there were fifty of the big-footed creatures for every wildcat, Marlett caught more hares than anything else.

  The snowshoe hanging from his jaws, Sean left the trap line. He sought one of his regular routes to the hemlock-bordered little creek, leaped to the mossy boulder that divided the creek and sprang to the opposite bank. Not once did he stop to look back or to scout his back trail. The little hemlocks on both sides of the creek grew so thickly that nothing could be seen through them, and because no food grew within the small trees nothing else was ever attracted to this place. It was one of the very few ways that Sean had full confidence in, and he had become so accustomed to coming this way in safety that now he seldom bothered to investigate.

  He crossed the ridge upon which the pines grew and swung toward the. cave where Penny lay with her pups. Suddenly he stopped.

  Something was amiss; he did not quite know what. There were no alien odors, but one of the pine branches was swaying and swinging violently and there was not enough wind to move it even gently. Sean took a firmer grip on the snowshoe and ran full speed toward the cave.

  The den was silent, but Sean’s nose told him that Penny and the pups huddled in it. Penny, too, was aware that a visitor had come to the pines and she was ready for whatever might happen. She would not leave the pups, but she was prepared to fight if anything threatened them at the den’s mouth. Sean heard her warning snarl when he came near and dropped the snowshoe.

  The big Setter centered his attention on the pines, now a scene of violent action. The black squirrel’s endless practice leaps and complicated aerial maneuvers were paying off. The marten that he had long feared was finally here.

  The squirrel raced up a limb, teetered for a split second on a supple twig that swayed and shook, and at exactly the right second he leaped. He caught himself on the very tip of another twig, scrambled for a hold, and raced down the limb.

  Behind him the marten sprang across the same space and whisked after the squirrel. Only slightly larger than the quarry he pursued, the marten was as savage and as untiring as a mink or weasel. He was at home in trees and this was an old game to him. He knew that he could follow anywhere the squirrel might lead, and had the situation been even the marten would easily have overtaken his quarry.

  The black squirrel had a slight advantage because of his endless practicing. He knew exactly every crossing he could leap and just how long it would take him to leap it. The pursuing marten had to test and feel his way, and every time he chased the squirrel from one tree into another he lost the fractional part of a second that gave the squirrel a priceless new start.

  The squirrel raced up a big pine almost to the top. In the thin branches there he dodged and twisted, and sprang in a long descending curve that took him to a lower branch on another tree. The marten followed, not five leaps behind. Racing at top speed, leaping from tree to tree, the black squirrel was tiring, and as he became weary the marten closed, inch by inch, the gap that separated them. The marten was almost upon him when the squirrel tried one last, desperate ruse.

  He flung himself from the top of a tall pine, broke his fall by clawing at feathery twigs, bounced to the next limb, clawed a way to the trunk, and ran down it to the ground. Unwilling to follow a course so insane, the marten started straight down the trunk.

  Dashing toward another tree, the black squirrel ran within a foot of Sean. Ordinarily the big Setter would have caught him-he could afford to overlook no source of food-but he knew the real danger here. Penny and the pups were in the cave. Although the squirrel would never harm them, the marten would gladly kill anything it could.

  Sean bounced forward when the little killer was five feet away. Seeing him for the first time, the marten stopped so abruptly that he skidded on the snow. Recovering, he whirled and bounded back toward the tree he had just left. Sean leaped, closed his jaws over the marten, and sank his teeth deep. Carefully he pawed a hole in the snow and stuffed the dead marten in it. At the present time he was not hungry enough to eat a marten, but bitter experience had taught him to waste nothing.

  High in one of the pines, the black squirrel crawled wearily into a nest and at once fell into the sleep of the utterly exhausted. Not again that day would he venture out.

  Penny, satisfied that the danger was past, came out of the cave, picked up the snowshoe, and took it back with her. The pups were mewling and wailing as they sought to crowd each other away from their mother. Young as they were, while peril lurked near they had been satisfied to make no noise. But now the threat was past, and their only idea was to fill
their bellies as full as possible.

  Sean lay down in the pines, afraid to go near the den until Penny invited him to do so. The pups’ squeaking and mewling made a faint chorus that could be heard above the whispering pines, but Sean remained unworried by the noise. Even if the pups attracted hungry things that would not hesitate to eat them, Penny was never more than a jump or two away from her babies and Sean had full confidence in her ability to take care of herself.

  He rested while he could, for he knew that it would soon be time to go hunting again. Night had fallen, and the black squirrel in the tree had recovered from his fear when Sean started out to hunt.

  As he crossed the meadow where he and Penny had leaped at and pulled down grouse, the black and white heifer glared truculently at him. The heifer had undergone her own misadventures while winter was running its course, and was not disposed to be friendly. Sean reminded her too much of Slasher, whom she had met on her travels.

  All day and half the night the coy-dog had circled her, hoping for a killing stroke. But the heifer was very agile and much too strong for him. Always she faced him with flying hooves and raking horns, and had lived through a battle in which a tame cow would have died. The only marks were healing.

  Sean chose a careful course around the embattled heifer. He had no quarrel with her, largely because he knew from inborn good sense what Slasher had had to find out by personal experience. The heifer was too big for any one dog or wolf to pull down. It would take a pack to get her, and then some of the pack would be almost sure to pay with their lives. The heifer was well able to take care of herself, and the big Setter knew it.

  Sean trotted across the meadow and struck an angling course that took him back to Crosby Marlett’s trap line. He stole a snowshoe from a trap, ate as much as he wanted, and carried the rest back to Penny.

  Tired of the pups’ innumerable demands, Penny came out of the den and sat for a while in the winter sunshine. She looked suspiciously at her mate, finally came close enough to sniff noses briefly, then flew back to the den in near panic when the pups began to mewl. When Sean ventured hopefully near, she set upon him and drove him back. He retreated to the usual distance and lay down.

  Hunting was hard and he had a family to provide for. But as long as he could visit the traps he was assured of plenty. There were always snowshoes to be had and once he took Penny a wild turkey that had stepped into one of the traps and was struggling there.

  Still, Sean instinctively realized that it was well not to go to the trap line too often. The pups were four days old when he varied his hunting routine by going into a rabbit thicket. He caught and ate a small cottontail, then ambushed one for Penny. It was hard work for small reward, and the next time they needed meat Sean returned to the trap line.

  A little way from the trail, the Setter stopped in his tracks. His head was up, his nostrils questing. His nose told him that, hours ago, Crosby Marlett had come to visit his traps. After a few minutes, Sean went cautiously forward. He advanced haltingly, and stopped short when he came to the beaten trail.

  Crosby Marlett had visited each one of his traps. He had taken the spitting little wildcat. Sean found its skinned carcass where the trapper had tossed it. Each of the traps from which Sean had wrenched snowshoes was reset. The big Setter felt his hackles rise, and within his mind suspicion mounted. Almost he was tempted to leave the line.

  He did not because hunting for both Penny and himself was hard, and the easiest place to get all they needed was on the trap line. Besides, there was no sign of danger, no indication that the trapper had discovered Sean’s raids or that he intended to do anything about them if he had. Sean padded quietly along Crosby Marlett’s trail.

  He stopped for a long time before the first trap that held a snowshoe, uncertain as to whether or not he should go in. There was nothing noticeably different from what he had always found. The big hare, trapped by both front paws, strained backward as far as it could go and sat still.

  Sean circled, looking for a hidden trap or snare. He found none, but still stood for a long while, studying the situation. Nothing threatened. At the same time, he was warned of an unseen, unknown thing that he could neither smell, nor see, nor hear. He could only sense a hidden menace.

  Again, making sure of exactly where he placed each paw, he circled. The trap chain rattled when the snowshoe jumped suddenly. Kicking with powerful hind paws, it leaped clear across the set, only to find that it could go no farther. The chain was short, the steel jaws relentless. Panting, the hare crouched where it landed.

  Sean went in swiftly, snapping with his big jaws even as he lunged. He seized the snowshoe, wrenched it loose from the trap, and leaped sideways, all in the same motion. Safely away from the trap, he turned to look back at it. Nothing had happened. There remained only the sensation that something might have happened.

  The snowshoe hanging from his jaws, Sean faded away from the trap line. Crosby Marlett had come and gone, as his scent proved, but still the sense of concealed danger lingered. Sean dove into the laurel, running straight and fast. He still could not rid himself of the feeling that something was not as it should be.

  Even the thickly growing little hemlocks that bordered the gurgling stream seemed to be no shelter. Sean halted, dropped the snowshoe, and stood with both front paws on it while he tested the wind currents. They bore no hint of anything amiss.

  Sean took the snowshoe in his jaws again and walked slowly on his usual path toward the little stream. There was nothing here that he had not seen a hundred times before. He could smell the usual woodland odors. There was not the faintest sign of man, and Sean feared nothing else. The big Setter leaped from the hemlock-bordered bank onto the rock around which the stream divided.

  His descending right front paw landed squarely in a wolf trap that leaped up and clutched him with steel jaws.

  For a moment, after the steel clamped on his paw, Sean held perfectly still while the rushing water surged around the rock. He did not, as any animal with an unstable temperament would have done, fly into a writhing panic that would have succeeded only in grinding the trap’s jaws deeper into his paw. He did not even drop the snowshoe he carried.

  When he did let go of the big hare, he laid it carefully on the boulder. Then, his mouth empty, Sean limped on three legs to ease the pain and pressure in his trapped paw. Intently he studied the trap on his foot. He tried to bite it with his jaws, and knew as soon as he tried that his teeth were no match for such a thing.

  Sean sat down while the water curled around his rear and banked up to soak his belly. He tried a sudden, strong leap that only brought him up with a sharp jerk. For a second he struggled furiously, not panic-stricken but merely trying with strength and force to rid himself of the thing on his foot. He couldn’t do it. The trap was stronger than he.

  Wet fur plastered close against his body, his long hair dripping icy water, Sean bent his head to look again at the trap. It was a puzzle, a cold and unyielding thing with no life or being of its own. He had already discovered that he could not rend it with his jaws or pull himself out of it. Still, there must be a way.

  He laid his trapped paw on the boulder, beside the dead hare. Carefully he pulled the big snowshoe over the trap, so that it was completely hidden. He tried to walk away. When he did, the trap came with him. Apparently it could not be hidden. Sean nosed his swelling paw, and licked it gently with a warm tongue.

  Suddenly he tensed himself and bristled. The eddying winds had brought to him the faint scent of man.

  Sean sat down on the boulder and waited. Fear and uncertainty tore at him. He had a great desire to run, but he could not because the trap held him fast. Five minutes later he saw the man.

  Billy Dash stood framed in the hemlocks.

  11. Night Journey

  WHEN BILLY DASH went back to his cabin he was puzzled. Crosby Marlett certainly knew the signs of a trap-line pirate, and Billy was not definitely sure whether the track he had seen was that of a dog or wolf. They
were so very much alike that even experts couldn’t always tell the difference. But there were just some things that didn’t add up.

  Wolves were wary, probably warier than anything else. In the ordinary course of events they wouldn’t come within a hundred yards of anything that looked like a trap or smelled like one. Yet, a trap-line robber most surely knew that he was stealing from traps. The robber must be an outlaw dog.

  Billy stared hard at the wall of his little cabin. He saw visions of the past, of the happy times when he had worked with Danny Pickett and the Irish Setters.

  Dogs turned outlaw for a reason, and some man’s mishandling usually lay behind it. Billy looked hungrily at the wall. It would be nice to have a dog, any dog at all, to share his exile. Of course it would be a breach of their agreement if he trespassed on Crosby Marlett’s trap line, and a serious offense if he interfered with any of Crosby’s traps. Still, Billy knew that he had to go find out for himself.

  The next morning he pushed cautiously through the little hemlocks that bordered Fordyce Creek. He knew the place, even to the rock Crosby had mentioned. Almost he turned and went back. This was an unfair trick to be playing on a man who had been a friend when Billy was in desperate need of one. But he could not help going on.

  When Billy saw Sean his heart seemed to stop beating. Nothing of Sean’s misadventures was known to him, and he could not have been more astounded if he had run across an elephant here in this northern wilderness. Rooted in his tracks, Billy saw the dead snowshoe on the rock and guessed where it had come from.

  When he did advance he went slowly, feasting his eyes upon the dog who, since Billy had first seen him, had filled his dreams. There was no logical explanation as to how he had come here, but here he was.

  “Hello, Dog,” Billy said softly.