by Gary Paulsen
Of course it was still dark but there was the halfmoon and he saw that most of the wound, a foot-and-a-half-long rip down the side, was very superficial, just breaking and peeling back the skin, and it had clotted well. Here and there wet blood oozed but even as he watched, it seemed to diminish.
Still, it needed tending to and to do that he needed light, a fire.
“You stay here,” he told the dog. “I have to get wood and make a fire.”
Either because she understood or perhaps just that she was in pain, the dog stayed by the front of the canoe while Brian moved in the moonlight and found dead wood and dry grass and started a small fire nearby.
He took a burning stick and held it closer to see better and it frightened the dog. “Easy, easy, I have to see it. . . .”
He put his hand on the dog’s head and she settled immediately, responding to the soothing sound of his voice. Brian held the light up again and in the relative brightness saw that the rip, however it had been caused, had torn back a flap of shoulder skin about half as big as his palm.
He could see exposed flesh, muscle. Although the meat was not too damaged he knew he would have to fix it in some way, cover it.
“Or sew it up,” he said aloud. “I have some fishing line and a needle. I wonder if you would let me sew the flap down?”
He went to the canoe and got out his sewing repair kit. He had thread there but thought it might be too light for the job, would pull out. The fishing line would work better except that he would have to use the large needle with it.
This, he thought, moving back to the dog, could go wrong in so many ways. She wasn’t a really large dog—perhaps forty pounds—but she had teeth and Brian had seen dogs fight in the city and had seen wolves kill deer and knew what those teeth could do. He’d read somewhere that the teeth at the back, the molars, even in a moderate dog could come down with twenty-six hundred pounds per square inch. The cross section of the bone in my arm, he thought, is about a square inch. Hmmmm.
Still, he couldn’t leave the wound that way.
“I have to hurt you,” he said to the dog, petting her head. “I’m sorry, but we have to sew that up. I’ll talk and tell you what I’m doing but if we don’t sew it and cover it the flies will plant eggs in it. . . .”
All the time he was talking he was preparing himself, kneeling by the dog, threading the fish line through the needle in the firelight—in itself no mean feat—and hoping his talk would soothe the dog.
“I’m going to clean the wound with a little water,” he said, dipping water from the lake. He knew it wasn’t hygienic but the wound was full of dirt and grass and the water was cleaner than that. He thought of boiling it but then he would have to wait for it to cool and that would take too long. The dog was steady now but might not hold for a long time.
He washed the wound with water as best he could, splashing it gently until the water ran clear without blood or dirt and then folded the flap of skin back up over the wound opening and was dismayed to find that it was too small to cover the space.
It lacked a quarter inch all around, seemed to have shrunk. He would have to pull it and stretch it back while he sewed.
He winced, thinking how it would feel to do it to himself—first stretch his skin and then pull a large needle with fish line through it, again, and again. The dog had remained quiet while he washed and pulled the flap back over—quieter than Brian would have believed—but he did not believe she would lie still for what was coming.
“It’s more of a problem than I thought,” Brian said. “Maybe going to hurt a little more . . .” Later, much later, he would remember talking to the dog that first night as if she were a person and would not think it odd, never thought it odd. He talked to all animals, deer, birds, wolves, sometimes even fish. But only the dog seemed to understand, seemed to know what he meant.
Well, he thought, here goes, and he pulled the flap, had to tug it sharply into place and took the first stitch with the needle, surprised at how hard he had to push to get the needle through the skin. It was almost like cured leather and he had to exert way more force than he thought the dog would tolerate, just for the first edge. Then he had to pull and tug the flap of skin into position and push the needle through the second edge, again, having to push very hard to get even the sharp needle through the hide, then pull the two edges together with the string and tie a first knot to hold it, then move a quarter inch—which seemed about right—and push-pull it through again. . . .
And again.
And again.
And talking all the while, waiting for the dog to come around and hit him.
“You’re such a tough dog. I couldn’t take this, I know. You must have good genes, tough genes, a tough mother and a tough father, to take this pulling and pushing and poking and just keep taking it and taking it. . . .” His voice even and smooth, trying to calm the dog, ease her mind.
And not once did the head come around. Only at first, when Brian jerked the string to pull the two edges together, was there a reaction, a low, deep rumble from the dog’s chest and the head coming up, but it was not a growl so much as a moan and the head never came around, the teeth never bared. The dog just looked at him, looked right in Brian’s eyes in the firelight, a look of understanding, of complete and utter trust, and then the head went back down and there were no more rumbles, no more moans, no more glances. She lay there with her eyes closed, content to let Brian work. Almost relaxed.
Thirty-two stitches Brian sewed, each one knotted in place, twenty across the top and twelve down the front side, all about a quarter inch apart, all tightly sewn and pulling the flaps together, and then it was done.
He had a small first-aid kit in the canoe and he took out the disinfectant bottle. It was not enough to have washed the wound but he trickled it in a line along the sewn-up seam edges and it must not have been painless as the bottle said because the dog rumbled again, though she didn’t open her eyes or change her breathing.
Then it was done.
Brian cleaned the needle and put the kit away in the canoe, washed the blood from his hands in the lake, found more wood for the fire and built the flames up.
The dog stayed where she was, four or five feet from the fire, and rested. Soon Brian could hear the sound of her snoring over the crackle of flames.
Brian squatted by the fire and let his mind float free, glad the dog was so friendly, glad he hadn’t been bitten.
He looked to the east and thought he could see a glow. Maybe a couple of hours to daylight and then . . . what?
Try to figure it out, he thought. The dog was clearly not wild, clearly friendly to people, had heard-smelled-felt that Brian was out in the lake sleeping in his canoe, had awakened him by whining.
Clearly wanted help.
But where had she come from? There was no collar on her, Brian had checked that right away, and it was a her, not a him, Brian had also seen that, but she wasn’t just a loose, wild dog.
She must have come from a trapper’s camp somewhere, maybe a Cree camp, perhaps near, perhaps far. She must belong to somebody. But Brian had seen or heard absolutely no sign at all of any people anywhere within miles, and if there had been a camp or people he would know. Animals in the bush react to people, “feel” differently if there is anyone about, and he had not “felt” that difference. Nor had he seen tracks, smudges in the grass, had not smelled smoke.
Nobody was close.
And yet, here was the dog. Obviously a person dog, a dog that wanted to be with humans, a dog that couldn’t hunt for herself well—she looked thin—and needed to be with people yet had, for some reason, left her people?
No sense there, Brian thought. He put more wood on the fire and studied the dog in the brighter light.
The dog slept soundly, snoring gently, the wounded side moving up and down. Brian liked the sound of her breathing and he thought of never having had a dog. There had always been some reason his parents wouldn’t let him have one. They were too dirty. Th
ey shed hair. His mother had allergies. He wasn’t responsible enough to take care of a puppy. Lord. Back there. His parents. He shook his head—had that ever been real, that life? That whole silliness?
He watched the wound move with the dog’s breathing.
The wound came from a fight with someone or something. It was a slash wound, not from a fall or hitting a stick.
How had it happened?
A fight with another dog? He had considered that possibility while working on the dog. It had been in a major battle with another dog and had been driven out—but Brian wasn’t sure if that sort of thing happened outside Jack London novels and he had come to realize that much of what Jack London wrote about the bush was utter nonsense. He might have been a tough man, and he might be a good writer, but he’d also been a hammer-drunk and there was a lot of silliness in what he said about wilderness.
Besides, most people wouldn’t let a fight get that far out of hand. A dog that was ripped up that badly couldn’t do much work for a while and trapper dogs were used for work, packing, pulling toboggans. And he didn’t think a dog that liked people as much as this one seemed to would leave just because of a fight.
So something else.
But nothing else made sense. The dog wouldn’t leave her home unless she was driven out and the wound was serious enough. . . .
Wolves? Brian’s thinking rolled free. Perhaps the dog was out away from camp, hunting or something, and ran into a pack of wolves. Say they hit her, wound her and in panic she doesn’t run home, back to her camp, but runs off, maybe confused, bewildered until she comes to the lake and finds Brian sleeping in his canoe. . . .
No. If wolves had hit her—and David Smallhorn had told him that sometimes they killed small dogs and ate them—she would either have run back into camp or the wolves would have finished her, eaten her. No dog in the world could outrun or outfight a wolf pack.
The wound didn’t seem to have been man-made but that was a possible explanation and one that made sense. If a man was cruel enough to injure a dog this badly the dog might run off and not come back, and Brian knew there were men that bad, had read about them, seen them in the news. Beasts. Beast-men.
But the wound didn’t seem to be a cut either, did not seem to have been made by a weapon but by teeth, or claws.
There were some big cats. Brian had seen lynx on several occasions and a forty-pound lynx certainly could inflict a wound like this. But lynx could easily get away from a dog if the dog was foolish enough to chase them, and there were rare mountain lions here in the bush, called panthers or painters in the north country, but the same rule applied. While they could easily wound or kill a dog this way, they much preferred to avoid conflict. They would kill and eat a person rather than tangle with a dog, unless it was very small. Brian had seen several accounts of mountain lions stealing poodles and other small dogs from homes around Los Angeles. One mountain lion there had actually taken a woman who was jogging near L.A., killed her, dragged the body off and eaten part of it.
But not dogs, and that wouldn’t explain the dog leaving its main camp.
Deer, moose, could inflict such a wound with their hooves or antlers if attacked, and dogs were sometimes badly injured while trying to attack deer, although more often it was the deer that were injured. Many deer each year were mauled and killed by domestic dogs; people just had no idea how vicious their pet German shepherd could be if it packed with three or four other dogs and ran up on a deer. Or sheep. Or, sometimes, a child.
But again, that wouldn’t explain why the dog ran off. Even if she tried to attack a deer and the deer injured her this badly, she would go home for help. Not run off.
And that left what?
Just one animal left in the north woods could do this.
Bear.
One blow with a clawed paw could easily rip a dog in just this manner. And heaven knew they were strong enough to do it. Brian had seen a bear throw a quarter-ton log through the air, looking for grub worms.
But again, it made no sense. If the dog was injured by a bear it would run home, not away.
No sense.
It was almost light. He put a pot of hot water on the fire to boil and make tea. Today would be busy. Like it or not, and he was coming to like it, he now had a family, someone to look after.
The dog would need food and more care and that meant he had to hunt, to kill.
He could take more fish, even panfish to feed the dog at first if he needed to, but in the end the dog would need good meat, red meat, just as wolves needed it.
A moose would be too much but a small buck deer would fill the bill and between him and the dog there would be no waste.
He would first cast for a trail and see if he could pick up sign where the dog had come from, at least a direction, and at the same time see if he could get a deer.
He could think more that evening on how the dog had come to him. Now there was other work.
6
When he took his bow and quiver in the dawn light the dog tried to follow him.
“No, you have to stay,” Brian tried to tell her. Then held out his hand and said more firmly, “Stay!”
But the dog had gotten to her feet, and, still favoring her wounded side, had tried to follow Brian out of camp.
Finally Brian took the anchor line and fashioned a nonslip collar and a leash and tied the dog to the front of the canoe.
The dog could easily chew through the cord and follow him anyway but she finally seemed to understand with the line tied that she was supposed to stay. At first she sat and watched while Brian walked away, and then she lay down. Brian had left her enough slack so she could get to the water and drink and once in the brush Brian peeked back, well out of sight, and the dog got up, drank a bit, then lay back down and seemed to go to sleep.
Brian worked carefully, slowly, used his best abilities at watching for sign, studying everything he could, and found almost nothing to help in the mystery of the dog.
He started with a small circle, or half circle since it ran from the lakeshore, out three hundred yards and around and back to the lakeshore and on this first loop he saw the dog’s tracks in soft mud in a small clearing coming from the north.
He began to work in that direction, making small arcs, but he found only one more mark, again to the north about a hundred yards from the first one, a dog footprint in soft dirt and just a tiny touch of blood on a leaf.
That was it.
It would have been easier in the fall, and of course much easier in the winter, in snow. In the fall there were no leaves and the grass died back and it was much easier to see things. Now, with thick foliage, you had to be standing almost on top of a track to see it, and he could find no more.
Maybe, probably, the dog had come from the north. That was it. He didn’t know from where, how far, or even if that was the true direction. The dog might have come from the east and turned south when it heard or smelled Brian. Or from the west.
And no deer either.
Oh, he saw sign. He found one pile of dung that was still warm to the touch but the brush was too thick to see a deer, let alone get close enough for a shot.
He came on a snowshoe rabbit and decided to take it. He changed to a field-point arrow—he’d been walking with a broadhead ready in the bow—but the arrow caught a twig on the way and deflected slightly so the rabbit was hit low, in the gut, and had time to scream before he got a second arrow in and killed it. They gave a piercing scream sometimes when they died. Brian had heard it many times at night when predators caught them—it was nerve-wrenching and sounded like a baby screaming for its mother. He hated it.
But more to the point, the scream—and this was probably why it had evolved—alerted all animals within a quarter mile that a predator was hunting and that was the end of hunting, for two reasons. One, all the small animals went into hiding and the deer left the area. Two, the scream brought other predators that were curious about the kill. All wolves, coyotes, hawks, cats, weasels, f
ox, owls, eagles, marten, fisher—any predator—in the immediate area headed for the scream and that ensured that the rest of the small animals stayed in hiding. Probably the only exception to this rule were ruffed grouse, which seemed to be so dumb that nothing really affected them, but they had excellent camouflage covering and in this thick foliage it would be next to impossible to see one, though they had good meat, dark meat.
So rabbit it was, and fish, and aside from chastising himself for making a shot when there was a twig in the way, Brian was grateful and thanked the rabbit.
He worked his way back to the campsite, keeping one eye open for a grouse, but he saw none. He found the dog sitting by the end of the canoe, still tied—she had heard the rabbit scream, and Brian coming, and gotten up to greet him.
“Hi, dog,” Brian said. “We have food. I’ll get some more in a bit and make a stew. . . .”
The dog wagged her tail and stood, moved against the rope and Brian untied her and had to lift the rabbit high to keep the dog away from it.
“Not raw,” he said. “Not the meat. I’ll give you the guts in a minute. . . .”
He set his bow aside, took out his knife and made a neat incision up the middle of the carcass, scooped the entrails, heart, liver and lungs out and gave them to the dog, which virtually swallowed them whole and then cocked her head, tail wagging gently in the puppy begging stance, asking for more.
“Some manners . . .” Brian smiled and thought of himself when he had first come to the bush. Watching a dog eat raw guts would have brought his stomach up.
But he had seen both wolves and coyotes kill now and the entrails were their favorite part. And this dog was more wolf than not; a pure, friendly carnivore.
He skinned the rabbit and stretched the skin high in a tree to dry. The hide was thin and fragile and very far from prime and would not wear well, but he had in mind trying to make some lures with the hair and tiny hooks he had brought to see if he could use a willow as a pole and fly-fish some of the streams between the lakes for trout. He had seen them often beneath the canoe, some of them quite large, but they were very spooky and didn’t seem to want worms for bait, and wouldn’t stand for a shot with an arrow.