Big Red

by Jim Kjelgaard

  The red dog barked once, and flung himself across the clearing straight at the bear. Danny wanted to shriek at him not to do it, to come back because the bear would certainly kill him. But his tongue was a dry, twisted thing that clung to the roof of his mouth, and he could utter no sound. For one tense moment the bear stood his ground. Then he dropped to all fours, and with Red close behind him, disappeared in the forest.

  Danny probed the forest with his eyes, and strained his ears, but could neither see nor hear anything. He turned and ran, back down Stoney Lonesome and through the beech woods to his father’s clearing. He flung himself inside the cabin, snatched up his gun and a handful of cartridges, and ran back. For five minutes he stood by the dead bull, watching and listening.

  But the forest had swallowed both bear and dog.

  Danny tried to stifle the panic that besieged him. It was no longer fear of Old Majesty, or of Mr. Haggin and anything he might do, but he was afraid for Red. When Old Majesty had drawn him far enough away he would certainly turn to kill him. Danny suppressed a sob and went forward to find their trail.

  He found it, leading out of the glade straight toward the back reaches of the Wintapi. Running hard, the bear had bunched his four feet together and scuffed the leaves every place he struck. Danny ran, hating the sluggishness of his feet and the snail’s pace at which they carried him. It was his best speed, but the dog and bear were travelling three times as fast. A mile from the glade he found where the bear had slowed to a trot, and a half mile beyond that where he had turned for the first time to face the pursuing dog.

  A huge, knobby-limbed beech raised at the border of a bramble-thick patch of waste land, and the bear had whipped about with his back to the trunk. Danny’s heart was leaden as he looked about for tell-tale mats of red hair or drops of blood. But all he saw was the plainly imprinted tale of how the red dog had come upon and charged the bear. Old Majesty had left his retreat by the beech tree, and with whipping front paws had tried to pin the red dog to the earth. Red had danced before him, keeping out of reach while he retreated. A hundred feet from the tree the bear, afraid to leave his rear exposed while a dog was upon him and a man might come, had gone back. Red had charged again, and again had danced away from the bear’s furious lunges. Then the bear had left the tree.

  “He smelt me comin’,” Danny whispered to himself. “Red, you’re sure playin’ your cards right. If only I can stay close enough to keep him runnin’, to keep him from ketchin’ you …”

  But tracking over the boulders was painfully slow work. Sweat stood out on Danny’s forehead while, by a broken bramble, a bit of loosened shale, or an occasional paw print between the boulders, he worked out the direction that Old Majesty had taken. The sun reached its peak, and began slowly to sink toward its bed in the west. Danny clenched his hands, and wanted to run. But by so doing he would lose the trail. And, if he did that, Red would be forever lost too.

  The first shades of twilight were darkening the forest when Danny finally crossed the boulders and was again among trees. He found the bear’s trail in the scuffed leaves there, and with his rifle clutched tightly to him ran as fast as he could along it. Old Majesty had climbed straight up the long, sloping nose of a hump-backed ridge and had run along its top. Then he had dipped suddenly down into a stand of giant pines. Black night overtook Danny there. He bent over, painfully picking out each track and following it. When he could no longer do that, he got down on his hands and knees and tried to follow the trail by feeling out each track. But that was impossible.

  “Keep your head, Danny,” he counselled himself.

  He sat down with his back against a huge pine, straining his ears into the darkness for some bark or snarl, something that might tell him where the bear had gone. But there was only silence. A dozen times he started up to peer hopefully about for dawn. But the night was a thousand hours long. Not able to sleep, he sat against the tree looking into the night-shrouded maze of lost valleys and nameless canyons into which the bear had gone. Then, after an eternity, a gray shaft of light dropped through one of the pines to the needle-littered earth. Danny leaped to his feet. By bending very close to the earth he could see and follow the tracks. And, as daylight increased, he could run once more. He followed the trail down the mountain, and up the side of another one. Along its crest he went, down and up another mountain. And it was from the top of this that he heard a dog’s bark.

  Danny stopped, let his jaw drop open the better to listen. The bark was not repeated, but there had been no mistake about hearing it. Danny looked down into the wide, boulder-studded valley that stretched beneath him, and put his fingers into his mouth preparatory to whistling. But he stopped himself in time. If the bear and dog were down there, a whistle or sound would only warn Old Majesty that he was coming, and would send him off on another wild chase. Danny studied the valley carefully. The trees in it were only saplings and fire cherries, but the boulders were huge. The bear would make his stand against a boulder rather than one of the small trees. Danny scrutinized each boulder, and selected the one from which he thought the dog’s bark had drifted.

  But he had to go very carefully now, very slowly. A wrong move, a misstep, and everything would be ruined. He walked down the mountain. Once on the valley floor he dropped to his hands and knees and crawled, placing each hand and foot carefully, cautious that his clothing should brush against no branch or twig that might make a sound. A hundred feet from the boulder he had chosen, he peered over a small rock and saw Old Majesty.

  Perched on a shelf of rock, the bear was five feet from the ground. Huge, monstrous, a presence rather than a beast, his great head was bent toward the ground. Danny saw Red, lying on the ground ten feet before the bear, raising his head suspiciously every time the bear moved, ready to charge or retreat. Danny’s hands trembled when he levelled his rifle over the little rock. This was a heaven-sent chance.

  Ross had told him that a show dog must be no less than perfect, and there was one chance in fifty of killing that huge bear with a single shot. He would come toppling from his perch with snapping jaws and slashing paws. Red, knowing that at last he was reinforced by the man for whom he had waited, would be upon the bear. Not long, just long enough to get a ripped foot or a slashed side before Danny could send home the shot that would kill the bear. Just long enough to make him entirely useless to Mr. Haggin, to give Danny a chance of getting him. Danny sighted. Then he took his rifle down and crawled around the little rock.

  He slithered over the ground, crawling forward with ready rifle held before him, and was twenty feet from the boulder when Old Majesty, all of whose attention had been riveted on the dog, looked up. The rank odor of the great bear filled Danny’s nostrils, and for a moment he looked steadily into the eyes of his ancient enemy. Then Red was beside him, backing against Danny’s knees still looking at the bear. Danny’s left hand reached down to grasp the dog’s collar, his right brought the rifle up.

  But Old Majesty slid off the back end of the boulder and was gone.

  With the dog beside him, Danny started back up the mountain, but early twilight had come again when he and Red got back to Mr. Haggin’s estate. Danny scarcely knew that his clothing was in tatters, that he was gaunt from lack of sleep and food. He knew only that he had brought Mr. Haggin’s dog safely back. They went to the barn, and Robert Fraley came running from the house.

  “Where have you had that dog?” he raged. “Half the estate’s looking for him!”

  He came close, Red backed against Danny’s knees and growled. Robert Fraley pivoted, went to the barn and snatched a whip from its peg. He strode back to Danny and raised it.

  “Don’t hit that dog,” Danny warned.

  “Why, you …”

  Danny lashed out with his right fist and smacked Robert Fraley squarely on the chin. The overseer fell backward, sat in the dust supporting himself on both hands, and blinked. Then he rose, and stepped back to clench his fists, when someone said,

  “The war’s ov
er, Bob. You can go.”

  Danny turned slowly, and saw Mr. Haggin leaning against the barn. There were tears in Danny’s eyes, and he was very much ashamed that anyone should see him cry. But he could do nothing else except kneel and put both arms around Red’s neck.

  “Nobody hits this dog where I can see it,” he sobbed. “He, he’s honest and clean, Mr. Haggin. He couldn’t do a wrong thing, and nobody hits him for doin’ right.”

  “Bob’s a good man,” Mr. Haggin was saying. “He’ll see that things get done, and he has a lot of knowledge. But there are things he could learn about animals.”

  Danny stood erect and wiped the tears from his eyes. He was a man, and must act the part.

  “I fetched your dog back, Mr. Haggin,” he said. “He tracked that big bear to a standstill, the only dog with the heart to do it and the brain to handle the bear after he did. But I didn’t shoot the bear, though I might have. You can still have a blue ribbon with Red. Feel him over yourself. Nothin’s marred.”

  “No,” Mr. Haggin said, but he was looking at Danny instead of the dog. “I guess nothing’s marred. The dog isn’t scratched and probably he might have been. Danny, how would you like to go to New York?”

  Danny looked at Mr. Haggin, and for the first time saw him as something apart from the great Wintapi estate. He was a man, too, one who could love and understand a great dog, and see him as other than just a device for winning another blue ribbon. Somehow Danny knew that without having been there, Mr. Haggin knew just about what had happened in the Wintapi wilderness.

  “With the dog,” Mr. Haggin continued. “Bob Fraley’s going to show him, and I’d like you to be along to sort of learn how it’s done. Then I’d like to have you bring him back, and keep him at your house in the beech woods. He’ll be the beginning of a long line of champions for the new kennels I’m planning and I believe you are the one to take charge of them. You see, I sort of like to have fine things around me, Danny, and I haven’t time to take care of all of them myself.”

  “I couldn’t do it,” Danny said gravely. “Red, he’s a fightin’ dog, Mr. Haggin. Mebbe I wouldn’t allus be with him, and he might get clawed or chawed. Then he’d be good for no more shows.”

  Danny stood breathless, awaiting Mr. Haggin’s certain agreement. But his eyes lighted up and a happy smile broke on his face when Mr. Haggin said, “Don’t let that worry you, Danny. Take your dog up in the beech woods, and get yourself some sleep. Then come down, and I’ll have Bob Fraley give you some pointers on what he’s going to do.”

  * * *

  Chapter 2

  The Journey

  the sun rose over stoney lonesome, and hung like a burning balloon in the sky as Danny danced back up the Smokey Creek trail. The savage, silent, head-swinging bear still roamed the Wintapi, an implacable, hating enemy of all the humans who trod there. But the bear was like the snows that piled up, the gales that roared through the forest, the occasional fire, all the things that those who lived in the Wintapi had to accept as a matter of course and deal with as best they could. The Wintapi could be a hard and lonely place.

  But, hard as it might be, it would never again be lonely. Danny shook his whirling head, trying to arrange in some order the events that had brought about this miracle. He looked at the great red dog pacing beside him, and when he was safely screened by the forest knelt to pass both arms about Red’s neck and hug him tightly. To be sure it was not his dog in the same sense that the mule, the hounds, and the four pigs were owned by his father. But as Red’s caretaker he would naturally keep the dog with him; Mr. Haggin himself had said that.

  Danny whirled into the clearing, waltzed with Red up the shanty steps, and burst through the door. Ross’s rifle and belt of cartridges leaned beside it. A made-up pack lay on the table, and his father was lacing a pair of hiking moccasins on his bare feet.

  “Pappy, I’m goin’ to New York!” Danny shouted.

  “You’re what?”

  Danny sat breathlessly down on a chair. Red padded over, laid his head on Danny’s knee, and turned his eyes to watch Ross, as though trying to fathom the welcome that he might expect from this other occupant of his new home. Outside, the four chained hounds whined uneasily and Asa sent an ear-splitting bray screaming across the pasture. Danny tickled Red’s ear, and the big setter sighed happily. Starry-eyed, Danny stared at the shaft of sunlight streaming through the open door, and his feet seemed to be carrying him step by step back up it. He was jarred back to earth by Ross’s gentle, “Speak sensible, boy.”

  “Yes, Pappy. I’m goin’ to New York.”

  “That ain’t sensible.”

  “But I am!” Danny insisted. “Mr. Haggin’s sendin’ Red down there to a show. That Fraley, he’s takin’ him and I’m goin’ along to watch!”

  “Sure, you’re funnin’ with me.”

  “I’m not. I was goin’ to take Red back to Mr. Haggin. Instead, he lit out after that big bear that’s been plaguin’ us for so long. I had to find him. Red run that bear right to a standstill!”

  “That dog run Ol’ Majesty to a standstill?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I hardly believe it,” Ross breathed. “Go on, Danny.”

  “Red had the bear on a rock, way back in the pine valleys,” Danny continued. “I could of shot, but didn’t on account I knew the bear’d tumble off the rock and hurt the dog. So I caught up the dog and took him back to Mr. Haggin. That Fraley, he started a fuss. Then Mr. Haggin come. He said he could see the dog wasn’t hurt. Then he told me that he was startin’ a new kennel, and I was the one to take charge of it! First thing I got to do is go to New York and see Red in the dog show. Then I’m goin’ to bring him back and we’re goin’ to keep him here.”

  Ross said, “That do beat all!”

  He sat staring at the floor, but when he turned his eyes on Danny pride and pleasure lighted them. A wandering trapper most of his life, he had settled in the Wintapi twenty years ago. He knew his own handicaps and limitations, and since Danny was born he had striven desperately but hopelessly to give him some of the better things. Danny was not just a trapper. He was like his dead mother, with all her charm and intelligence. The pride in Ross’s eyes increased. Quality, whether it was in a man or dog, just couldn’t be hidden.

  “Pappy,” Danny asked seriously, “why do you think Mr. Haggin wants me to go?”

  “I dunno, Danny. Mebbe he figures you’re goin’ to be a good enough dog man to handle his dogs at them big places.”

  Ross looked thoughtfully at his son. Danny had been a natural dog handler since babyhood, and if he could have an opportunity such as this … Ross had been around enough to know that people who handled rich men’s dogs could make more money in a year than some trappers made in a lifetime. They could be somebody, too.

  “Get some sleep, boy,” Ross advised. “Your eyes are redder’n an old coon’s that’s been runnin’ the cricks three nights straight.”

  “I’m not tired.”

  “Of course you’re not. You ain’t been up but two days and two nights. If you’re goin’ to New York with Red, you got to be ready. Lie down a bit of time.”

  “Well, mebbe a bit of time.”

  Danny lay down on his bed and Red curled up beside it. Danny’s hand trailed over the side of the bed, feeling the big dog’s furry back and assuring himself that it was really there. Ross put the yoke across his shoulders, hung his empty honey pails on it, closed the door softly behind him, and went into the woods.

  Danny awoke with a start. The smell of frying pork chops tickled his nostrils. Red was sitting in the doorway, happy tail thumping the floor. Ross stood over the kitchen stove, turning pork chops in a skillet, and the long shades of evening were stealing across the clearing in the beech woods. Danny sprang out of bed, and looked at the windows.

  “It’s night!”

  “Sure,” Ross grinned. “For a man who wasn’t tired, you did right well. That big red dog has been sittin’ there watchin’ me for the whole h
our I been home. I think he would of bit me if I’d woke you.”

  Red trotted back to Danny, buried his muzzle in Danny’s cupped hand, and sniffed. Danny looked away, and Red bumped his forehead gently against Danny’s wrist, demanding more attention. Ross looked proudly from Danny to the dog, and his eyes drank in all the things that a born dog man will see in a fine dog.

  “He’s goin’ to be the best varmint dog we ever had, Danny,” he finally pronounced.

  “Varmint dog?”

  “Sure. You ain’t just goin’ to keep him in the house. That dog’s got to hunt. It’s born in him.”

  “I reckon you’re right, Pappy.”

  Danny swung out of bed, crossed the floor to the two tin pails that stood on a wooden shelf, and poured a basin full of water. He washed his face and hands, and tried to bring from among the thoughts in his mind one that sought expression. But he could not quite find it. Red a varmint dog … Of course he would be a very good one, or he never could have bayed Old Majesty. A frown crossed Danny’s brow, and he sat down to eat the fried potatoes and chops his father had prepared. Red caught a piece of meat tossed to him, and swallowed it daintily. Ross watched him. “I’m right proud,” he said, “to have a dog like that around. He’s goin’ to do a lot for us, Danny.”

  “I reckon he is.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ross said profoundly. “We’ll get more varmints this year than we ever had before. Is Mr. Haggin goin’ to pay you anything for his keep?”

  “Gee. I dunno.”

  “He needn’t,” Ross observed. “Such a dog will pay for his own keep, and ours too. By the way, one of Mr. Haggin’s hired men was up here about two hours past. He wants you should bring the dog down, come mornin’, so you can go to New York.”