Big Red

by Jim Kjelgaard

  late the next afternoon, carrying red across his shoulders on top of his pack, Danny stumbled into the cabin in the beech woods. He put the dog in his bed by the stove, took off his snowshoes, and slipped out of his coat. Ross, who knew from long experience the many things that could happen on a trap-line, waited for him to speak.

  “He got clawed up some, Pappy. But he’s all right. Mr. Haggin can even show him at another dog show if he wants. I packed him the last four miles because he was lame.”

  He took the two foxes and the marten pelt from his pack. “We got these,” he said.

  For a moment he stood over the pack, looking from it to the injured dog. Then, because it would not do for a trapper to boast, he lifted the last pelt out quietly.

  “There was an Injun devil, Pappy. He messed up the traps some. But we got him. Red and me got him.”

  * * *

  Chapter 10

  Sheilah MacGuire

  the winter wore swiftly on, with january bringing its cold and February great, feathery drifts of snow. Ross and Danny were out every day from before dawn until dark, and the stretched furs in the fur shed reached in a long line from one end to the other, and back again. Ross took his hounds into the mountains, brought back a few wildcat and lynx pelts and the fisher he had marked earlier in the fall.

  Late in February Moe Snass, the Wintapi’s fur buyer, led his pack mule up the Smokey Creek trail. For hours Moe, Ross, and Danny stood in the cold shed haggling over the value of the pelts that hung there. But Ross grinned, and winked surreptitiously at Danny, when he pocketed the check that, finally and unwillingly, Moe wrote for him. They stood together, watching the fur buyer lead his laden pack mule down the trail. Ross grinned again.

  “He paid more’n he wanted to,” he observed. “It’s been a good year, Danny.”

  “It sure has. We didn’t cheat him, did we, Pappy?”

  Ross laughed. “Any time you cheat Moe, you’ll see pink owls flyin’ ’round in the day-time. Nope. He made himself a nice profit, but not as much as he would of liked.”

  Red bounded forward and buried his face in the snow, sniffing eagerly at a field mouse in its drift-covered tunnel. He shook the loose snow from his muzzle and came bouncing back to Danny. Ross took the check from his pocket, and looked at it.

  “Five hundred and sixty dollars, Danny. And the muskrat and beaver still got to come into their prime. We’re like to make two hundred dollars more. Let’s jaunt up the valley and look at them six fox traps we got in the beeches.”

  “Sure thing.”

  They donned snowshoes and side by side set off through the beech forest. Red paced behind, stepping in their tracks and looking interestedly about for whatever showed. A fox had walked among the beeches, his dainty trail plain in the new-fallen snow that topped the crust of the old fall. Ross swerved, and the fox leaped wildly away from the trunk of a huge beech to bring up at the end of the trap that held him. He crouched in the snow, his bushy tail curled around his flanks, trying to hide. Ross put his gloved hands on his hips, and turned to Danny.

  “This is it, huh?”

  “It looks thataway.”

  Instead of a burnished and gleaming red-gold, the fox’s pelt was dully copper. The weather was still cold. But the sun was higher and brighter, and during the day the fox had lain on high ledges to absorb such warmth as it offered. It had bleached his pelt, and thus its value was cut sharply. No trapper who hoped to continue trapping ever killed any fur animal except when it was near peak value. Ross knelt beside the trapped fox, and his gloved hand shot out to seize its neck. His other hand closed over its slim jaws, and Danny removed the trap from its paw. The liberated fox sped away among the trees, and Ross grinned.

  “He’ll be there for next year. I reckon we pull our fox traps, Danny.”

  “I reckon we do.”

  “We may as well start with these six.”

  They picked up the six fox traps and carried them down to store in the shed. The next day they made the long trip over half of Stoney Lonesome, taking one good fox and liberating two that, like the one in the valley, had been burned. Red pranced ahead of them, burying his face in the snow and then playfully shaking it off. When they reached the valley he dashed with puppyish enthusiasm at a black crow that clung forlornly to a dead branch. Ross grinned.

  “It’s sure enough time to pull fox traps. The first robin won’t be more’n three weeks behind the first crow.”

  “That’s right,” Danny agreed. “Say, Pappy, there’s a good bit of daylight left. If you can pack these traps in, I can swing up the valley and see if the beaver are movin’ in that pond by the aspens.”

  “We’ll get our share even if they ain’t,” Ross grunted. “But go ahead anyhow.”

  With the heavy pack on his shoulders Ross swung down through the beech woods toward the cabin. Happiness, somehow tempered by doubt, went with him. Spring was not far off, and with it Mr. Haggin would come back to his big estate. And Mr. Haggin, though he had made no definite promises, had certainly hinted that he was going to take Danny in hand and teach him all about dogs.

  Ross could not help the doubt. Never in his life had anyone given him anything, nor had he ever had anything at all for which he had not traded hard and often bitter physical toil. But Danny was different. Danny was like his mother, and it was in him to be more than just a trapper. Fervently Ross hoped that Mr. Haggin lived up to his unspoken promises. Danny was happy enough with Red. But there were so many horizons of which Ross, as a life-long trapper, had had only a bare and tantalizing glimpse, and that might open completely for Danny if only things worked out right.

  “I hope they do,” Ross murmured to himself. “I hope, Mr. Haggin, that you take that boy in hand. You won’t be sad if you do.”

  He left the traps in the shed, entered the cabin, and started a fire. He was in the midst of preparing supper when there was a knock at the door. Ross opened it to confront Curley Jordan, one of the caretakers from Mr. Haggin’s estate. Curley thrust a yellow envelope at him.

  “What is it?” Ross inquired.

  “Telegram,” Curley said.

  Ross opened it, read it, thanked Curley, and shut the door in his face. Then he retreated to the darkest corner of the cabin to sit down on a chair with his chin in his hands. His forehead creased, and he stared moodily at the floor. He had always known that some day such a thing was inevitable. But Danny was so young! Not even eighteen!

  Ross picked the telegram up, re-read it, and rose to pace the floor. But when he heard Danny take his snowshoes off and hang them beside the door he hastily shoved the telegram under the bread box. Danny burst in, his cheeks flushed and his eyes bright. Red padded in behind him and wagged over to greet Ross, who was puttering unconcernedly about the table.

  “How’s it out?” Ross said over his shoulder.

  “Breakin’. The pussy-willow stalks are plumb green, and there’s an inch of water over the ice on the beaver dam. Two more weeks of winter is the most we’ll get.”

  “Yeh?”

  Ross absently tossed a paring knife into the air and caught it by the handle. His brow wrinkled in perplexity. This wasn’t something a man could bull or bluff his way through. Young people were pretty sensitive about their business, and apt to get huffy if somebody tried to run it for them. It was a time for subtlety. But Ross didn’t know how to be subtle.

  “Danny,” he said bluntly, “do you trust me?”

  “Why, why sure, Pappy.”

  “All right. I don’t aim to mind your business for you. But if there’s any way I can help you, I will.”

  “What you talkin’ about?”

  “I’m talkin’ about this woman you met when you took Red to the dog show in New York! Danny, she’s comin’ here!”

  “What!”

  “Here it is,” Ross insisted. He took the telegram from beneath the bread box and thrust it at Danny. “Read it yourself. I expect you to do whatever’s right. But if this Haggin’s aimin’ to palm off on
e of his female relatives on a boy what don’t know his own mind I’ll …”

  “Wait a minute.” Danny opened the telegram and read,

  MEET SHEILAH MACGUIRE ON 10 PM TRAIN

  AT WINTAPI STATION. REGARDS. HAGGIN.

  He folded the telegram and stared over it. Then he began to laugh. “Pappy, that’s no woman. It’s a dog!”

  “A huh?”

  “A dog!” Danny repeated. “A mate for Red. Mr. Haggin said he’d send one up just as soon as he got one good enough! Just think, Pappy! We’re goin’ to raise pups here, good pups, show and field dogs! Man, oh man, Pappy! Just think!”

  Ross scratched his head dubiously. “You sure?”

  “Of course!” Danny danced around the table. “I was too busy at the dog show to meet any women in New York. Just think of the pups we’re goin’ to have, Pappy! Two years from now I bet one of ’em takes first in show at Madison Square! We’ll have to keep her warm and everything, Pappy! And …”

  “Sheilah MacGuire!” Ross snorted. “Who ever heard of a dog named that? Mebbe-so, if the cabin ain’t comfortable enough for her, we can build a steam-heated house!”

  “We don’t need it,” Danny said, blissfully unconscious of the sarcasm. “Let’s see now, spring pups make awful good ones. By gosh, I can take a couple of ’em this fall and start ’em huntin’ with Red. What time is it, Pappy?”

  “Twenty to five.”

  “Whew! I better go!”

  “You better,” Ross said drily. “It’s four whole miles to the Wintapi station, and you ain’t got but five hours and twenty minutes to make it.”

  Nevertheless, Danny insisted on leaving at once, and when Red would have followed he ordered him back. The big dog went to his blanket beside Danny’s bed, and looked resentfully out of his brown eyes. Ross snapped his fingers, and Red padded defiantly over to sit beside him. Ross addressed him with mock sympathy.

  “I hope you got your wild oats all planted, Red. There’s a woman comin’ into your life.”

  From the doorway, Danny grinned. He left the cabin, strapped on his snowshoes, and started up the long valley that led over a mountain to the Wintapi station. A happy little song trailed from his lips as he travelled, and his feet seemed to bear wings. His brightest and most hopeful dreams were at last coming true; he was going to raise fine dogs. Maybe Sheilah MacGuire would bear a big litter, and all would be champions. Danny grinned ruefully. Maybe at least one would be. Danny snowshoed down to the Wintapi station, and for two hours shivered in the late-winter wind that swept it. He went inside the fireless station, and sat on a porcupine-chewed bench while an endless procession of wonderful red dogs gambolled and frolicked through his mind. Then, at long last, he heard the train whistle.

  Danny rushed out to the platform, watched the train stab the darkness with its single headlight, and stamped his feet restlessly as it drew near. As it stopped, the door of the express car rolled open. The agent thrust his head out.

  “Hey, are you waitin’ for a dog?”

  “Yup.”

  “Here it is.”

  He thrust a crate through the door, and Danny lowered it excitedly to the ground. His heart pumped crazily. From the brief glimpse he had had through the slatted crate in the car’s dim light, the dog within had looked like none other than the setter that most nearly approached Red’s perfection, the one that had competed with him for best of breed. But it couldn’t be—Mr. Haggin had said that no money could buy her.

  The train rushed into the darkness and Danny knelt beside the crate. The dog within whined, and pressed her cold nose against Danny’s questing hand. Her wagging tail bumped the side of the crate, and she whined again. A short, sharp bark cut the night’s silence, and the dog scratched with her front paw at the gateway of her prison. Danny murmured soothingly.

  “Oh, sure, sure, Sheilah. Here’s me lookin’ at you, and you wantin’ to get out. I bet you’re tired, cold, and hungry.”

  He felt about in the darkness, found the wire that held the crate’s door shut, and untwisted it. He opened the door, and the dog minced hesitatingly forward. She sat down before Danny, and bent her long, finely formed head upward as she looked at him. Danny stroked her ears, and gently tickled her muzzle. His hands went over her in the darkness, feeling her ribs, her loins, her back, and her rear legs. A sigh escaped him. You could tell almost as much by feeling a dog as you could by looking at one, and if this wasn’t Dr. MacGruder’s bitch it was an exact replica. Danny took a length of buckskin thong from his pocket, slipped it under the dog’s collar, and again spoke to her.

  “This is only until we know each other, Sheilah. Right now we can’t take a chance of losin’ one another in the dark night.”

  He started up through the forest, retracing the snowshoe trail he had made coming down, and for a space Sheilah floundered in the snow beside him. Gently but firmly Danny forced her behind, made her walk where his snowshoes had packed the snow. And he travelled slowly. Sheilah was not Red, who knew the tricks and ways of the forest. But she would learn.

  Danny swung back down into the beech woods, toward the cabin, and Sheilah plunged and bucked as, for the first time in her life, the smell of wood smoke drifted to her sensitive nostrils. Danny knelt beside her, stroking her smooth sides with his hand and talking quietly. A balmy little breeze, forerunner of the warmth that was to come, played up the valley and pushed the cold air before it. Danny heard Red’s challenging bark. The hounds came out of their kennels and bayed sleepily. Ross stood framed in the open door.

  “You got her, Danny?”

  “Yeah. I’ll fetch her in in a minute.”

  He knelt beside the trembling dog, stroking her sides and talking gently to her. Irish setters were a special breed in themselves, sensitive, intelligent, and proud. You had to handle them right or you couldn’t handle them at all. Doubt or mistrust in their minds was very hard to overcome, and getting off to the right start with a new Irish setter was essential. The dog stopped trembling, laid her head on Danny’s thigh, and sighed. For a few moments more he fussed over her.

  When he rose, Sheilah walked confidently beside him and stayed very close to his knees while he took off his snowshoes. A little uncertain, but no longer trembling, she walked up the steps and into the cabin. Then her trepidation returned. She shrank against Danny, the being who had released her from the crate, the person who obviously had had most to do with terminating her long and onerous train ride.

  “There she is,” Danny said proudly.

  “Whew!” Ross whistled. “Is that ever a dog! But she’s scared, Danny.”

  “They’re all high strung.”

  “Well, we got to calm her.”

  Ross dropped a piece of fat beef into the skillet and put it on the stove. It sputtered there, and when it was cooked he carried it over to hold it under the aristocratic nose of Sheilah MacGuire. She sniffed at it, licked it with her tongue, and finally accepted it. She smelled at Ross’s trousers, his shirt, his hands, his shoes, etching in her keen mind an indelible picture of this man who, apparently, meant only to be kind and could be trusted. Danny knelt beside her, hand on her shining ruff.

  “See how she acts with Red,” Ross suggested.

  Danny glanced around to see Red sitting before the stove, apparently engaged in a deep study of the cabin’s opposite wall. He snapped his fingers.

  “Come here, Red. Come over and meet Sheilah.”

  The big dog rose. Looking only at the open door, haughtily ignoring all other occupants of the cabin, he stalked regally into the night.

  Danny stared, dumfounded. Sheilah wriggled a little closer to him, and opened her slender jaws to lick his hand. Danny looked out the open door, then up at Ross.

  “What the dickens …?”

  “Haw, haw, haw!” Ross sat on a chair, bent double with laughter. He straightened to gasp, “You got him a mate, Danny. But you forgot to ask him if he wanted one!”

  “What’s the matter with him?”

  “He
’s jealous, you loon! He’s been king-pin ’round here long’s he’s been here. Now you got another dog to pet. That’s what’s eatin’ him.”

  “Well, I’ll be darned!”

  Danny’s gaze strayed from the slight Sheilah to the open door, and back again. He had known that Red would want to be boss of his own household, and that Sheilah would do as he thought best. But it never occurred to him that Red wouldn’t even want a mate.

  “What’ll I do?” he appealed.

  “I dunno.” Ross shook his head lugubriously, but laughter still sparkled in his eyes. “Mebbe,” he suggested helpfully, “you could write to one of these here newspaper people who give advice to all romantical things and …”

  “I’m not foolin’, Pappy.”

  “He’ll come back if you kick her out.”

  “She’ll run away.”

  “Likely she will,” Ross agreed gravely, “but she sure ain’t goin’ to share Red’s bed. Given she’s in here at all, she can have all of it.”

  “Watch her,” Danny said decisively. “I’m goin’ out and see if I can argue with that old fool.”

  He took a flashlight and went outside. The yard about was tracked up, by both men and dogs, and there was no possibility of choosing Red’s trail from among so many. Mike, leader of the hounds, sat sleepily in front of his cabin revelling in the warm breeze. Asa stood in his snowy pasture, letting the soft wind blow winter weariness away from his gaunt frame. Danny whistled, and Asa tossed his head up to look around. Danny cast the beam of his light in the direction Asa was looking, and saw Red framed in the black doorway of the mule’s shed. Danny whistled again, and the dog ducked into the shed.

  Danny plunged through the melting snow to the shed, and entered. Asa’s stall, fresh and clean, confronted him. Asa’s hay was packed on both sides of the stall, and filled all the rest of the shed. Stretched out, facing the wall and ignoring Danny, Red lay on a forkful of hay that had tumbled from the rack. Danny knelt beside the dog. His fingers tickled Red’s ear in that place which the big dog found so difficult to reach with his own hind paw.