Big Red

by Jim Kjelgaard

  “You’re actin’ like a jug-head,” Danny scolded softly. “Come on back to the house, Red.”

  Red swung his head to look steadily up at Danny, and turned away. Danny flinched. Ross had been right. Red was jealous, fiercely jealous that his beloved master’s hands should even stroke another dog, to say nothing of taking her right into the house.

  “You’re wrong, Red,” Danny protested. “I don’t like her better’n you. But I got to keep her in the house. She don’t know this place like you do, and she don’t know yet that she’s goin’ to belong here. Come on back, Red. You’re still king-pin. Come on, Red!”

  He ran toward the door, and paused to throw his light back on the hay. Red had stretched full length in it, and did not even raise his head when Danny snapped his fingers and whistled. Danny went worriedly from the shed. Red was deeply insulted, and unless there was some way to atone that insult he would continue to sulk. But—just how might that be done? Danny went back into the cabin to be greeted daintily by Sheilah, who had been lolling against Ross’s knees.

  “Where is he?” Ross inquired.

  “Sleepin’ with Asa. He won’t come out.”

  Ross wagged his head. “That dog’s a proud ’un. I just dunno what you’re goin’ to do now.”

  “He’ll come to his senses.”

  “Yeah?” Ross inquired skeptically. “I’ll bet four dollars to an empty shotgun cartridge he never gives in to you.”

  “But, but he’s got to!”

  Danny sat down on a chair to stare hard at Sheilah MacGuire. He had wanted a fine dog, a mate for Red, but he had never wanted it to be like this. Red was Red, partridge dog extraordinary and the most satisfactory canine companion that a man could possibly have. If Red was going to stay mad at him why—why he might just as well not have any dog. If he let Sheilah out, and she ran away, she’d probably only go down to Mr. Haggin’s. He voiced the thought to Ross.

  Ross’s mouth tightened sternly, and he shook his head. “Danny, did you find that dog chasin’ ’round in the snow?”

  “Why no. But …”

  “Mr. Haggin ain’t goin’ to find it thataway, either,” Ross pronounced firmly. “Given he’d wanted the dog down to his place, he’d of sent it there. But he sent it to us—to you. If you’re not goin’ to keep it, you see that he gets it back.”

  “I was just thinkin’,” Danny said miserably. “Maybe we could toll him back with a bait of meat.”

  “Sure!” Ross scoffed. “You know him better’n that. That Red dog ain’t goin’ to do nothin’ without he wants to.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Danny admitted.

  Sheilah looked up at Ross, whom she seemed to have adopted as her special mentor, and sighed deeply. She laid her head on Ross’s lap, and Ross scratched her ear. Danny sighed unhappily. Sheilah had taken to Ross as Red had taken to him, and now instead of having two dogs he hadn’t any. He went to bed, and lay sleepless while the warm zephyrs played outside his window and the long night hours ticked by. A dozen times during the night he reached over the side of his bed for Red, who always slept on a blanket beside him. But the big dog was not there.

  The next morning Red emerged from the mule shed and sat in the sun before it. Haggard and worn from lack of sleep, Danny saw him there when he went out to the wood lot for an arm-load of wood, and tried to whistle him into the house. But Red only turned his head toward the sound and looked away again. Danny took his load of wood and his breaking heart back into the house.

  “What’s he doin’ this mornin’?” Ross inquired.

  “Settin’ by Asa’s shed. He won’t come to me.”

  Ross said gently, “Don’t let it hit you too hard. I bet he’d like to come back in. But a proud dog’s a lot like a proud man.”

  “If’n he wants to go on bein’ a fool he can just be one. I don’t care,” Danny lied.

  “That’s the way to take it.”

  Danny cooked breakfast, and Sheilah went over to sit beside Ross with one paw on his knee as she received tidbits from his plate. Ross finished and pushed his plate back, and a little smile played around his lips as he looked fondly down at the dog. Danny watched, and even in the depths of his own misery found room for surprise. Ross was a man who had always hunted varmints, and preferred varmint hunting dogs. Obviously the delicate Sheilah would never hunt varmints, and maybe not anything, but just the same Ross was engrossed in her.

  “Sure is a lot of dog under them red setters’ hides,” he observed. “We got to let her out to run a bit, Danny.”

  “Do you think she’ll stay here?”

  “Sure,” Ross said confidently. “I think I can handle this dog. You had the right angle on ’em, Danny. You can’t lick such dogs. But they’ll do anything for you given they once want to.”

  He pushed his chair back and opened the door. The sun had climbed brightly over Stoney Lonesome, and great wet spots appeared on top of the snow. The depressions in the pasture were puddles, and the trunks of the trees gleamed wetly. Sheilah stood for a moment on the porch, and the hounds came out of their kennels to bay at her. She glanced up at Ross, and gave the hounds a wide berth as she padded down the steps. Plainly she lacked Red’s bravado—in the first five minutes of his stay at the Pickett household he had shown Mike who was going to be boss of all the dogs there. Ross, a slight smile still on his lips, climbed down the steps with her and followed her about as she cast back and forth in front of the cabin. They started toward the beech woods, and Danny glanced at Red.

  He was still sitting by the door of the mule shed, staring indifferently at Sheilah and Ross. Danny let his gaze return to them, and saw Sheilah race toward a clump of brush. Half a dozen partridges burst out of it. Two lit in a hemlock, and the other four scattered in the beech woods. Sheilah raced wildly about, dashing to and fro as she sought to pin down exactly this new and entrancing scent.

  “Here, Sheilah,” said Ross gently. “Come here, gal.”

  Sheilah went over and rubbed against Ross’s legs. Red left his seat by the mule shed, and at top speed raced across the slush-filled pasture. Danny gasped, and rose to shout. Red had gone mad; he was going to kill this unwelcome trespasser. But he stifled the shout in his throat as Red snapped to a perfect point in front of the hemlocks. He held his point, tail stiff and foreleg curved. Danny dashed in to get his shotgun, and ran across the field.

  He heard his father call to him, but paid no attention to it. A hundred feet from Red he stopped running and edged up behind him.

  “Get ’em out, Red,” he said softly.

  Red lunged forward and the two partridges thundered up. Danny raised his gun, deliberately undershot the out-of-season birds, and lowered his shotgun.

  “Missed!” he said dejectedly.

  Red looked around, his eyes friendly once more and his tail wagging. He looked disdainfully toward the shrinking Sheilah. Red, prince of partridge dogs, had proven himself definitely superior to this puny female, and Danny had witnessed the entire performance. There could not now be the slightest doubt as to which dog was best. He shoved his muzzle deep into Danny’s cupped hands and sniffed loudly. Then he went forward to meet Sheilah.

  She advanced, uncertain but friendly, and they sniffed noses. Then together they set off toward the house.

  * * *

  Chapter 11

  Old Majesty

  the spring advanced. melted snow filled every little ditch and depression, and the swollen creeks surged over their banks into the meadows and forests around them. Then green grass showed, flowers bloomed, trees were bud-laden, and one day a belated flock of north-bound geese squawked over Stoney Lonesome on their strong-winged passage north. In the shallow little gulley where he had been tearing a log apart to get the white grubs that had burrowed into it, the huge bear raised his long head to watch them go. He licked another grub from its damp bed, and climbed ponderously out of the gulley.

  A quiver, starting at the tip of his almost tailless rear, rolled to the tip of his black
snout. A curious light gleamed in his red, pig’s eyes, and he ran a pink tongue from the side of his mouth. Suddenly the bear’s six hundred and fifty pound body whirled about. He stared back down into the gulley, as though expecting something that should not be, his mad eyes the reflection of his mad brain.

  Old Majesty, the huge, the relentless, the savage and unforgiving enemy of every human being in the Wintapi, had come out of hibernation with the first breath of spring, to pad his lean sides with whatever food he could find. But not for him to be contented with spare pickings, or to relinquish the things his shrunken belly craved. Man had not come to him for nearly a year. But he was not afraid to go to man.

  He stood up, his shaggy head swung low and his clublike feet braced. He took a few steps forward, and the laurel stalks in front of him crumpled as though their fibrous, tough stems were brittle sticks. The bear kept going, smashing the laurel as he walked straight to the rim of the big plateau. For ten minutes he stood there, swinging his head, gazing into the valley, and smelling the breezes that blew out of it. He quartered down the slope into the gray-trunked beeches that struggled up the hill. Once among them he stopped again.

  There was no hurry. The sun was only three-quarters across its westward sky-journey, and there were still hours of daylight. Daylight was not Old Majesty’s time when he went among men. Much as he might scorn them, he had a vast respect for their weapons. But when the friendly night clothed the wilderness and made invisible the creatures whose abode it was, man’s weapons became almost impotent. Long ago the colossal black bear had learned that man was an ineffective and puny thing at night.

  When twilight folded its gray wings over the beech woods he went on, perfectly straight, turning aside for nothing. He knew exactly where he was going because he had been there before, many times, and he would go again whenever the impulse moved him. Old Majesty, unbeaten king of the Wintapi, went where he willed.

  He came to the great meadow that enfolded the big Wintapi estate of Mr. Haggin, and stopped just within the protecting forest to examine it. Light gleamed in the houses. The smell of wood smoke tickled his nostrils. With it came the mingled odors of the cattle, sheep, and horses with which Mr. Haggin had stocked his rolling acres. The waiting bear licked his chops. His front feet did a nervous little dance on the ground before him, and an eager whine broke from his half-open mouth. He was king, and the promise of kingly repast was carried to his quivering nostrils on the brisk little wind that blew from the barn to him.

  Not until shortly before midnight, when the last light in the last house winked out, did he start across the meadow. He went slowly, cautiously, lifting his huge paws in the short spring grass and putting them carefully back down on the earth. A dog barked, and the huge bear paused to listen intently to it. He advanced again, still not afraid and ready to meet any foe that might come forth to challenge him. But nothing moved. Knowing only the ways of the farm, nothing of the forest, the caretaker whose dog had scented peril awoke to speak angrily. The dog lay down, nervous but afraid to bark again.

  Old Majesty padded soft-footedly to a corral, and pressed his head against it to peer between the rails. There had been sheep in it that day; their oily scent came heavily to his nostrils and he drooled on the grass. But the sheep had been removed to the security of a barn. Robert Fraley, Mr. Haggin’s overseer, had learned his lesson well. Old Majesty had come raiding before, might at any time come again, and nothing must be left outside at night.

  The big bear swerved to one of the strong gray barns, and pushed his head against the door. Within he heard cattle stamping nervously, and the threatening rumble of a chained bull that scented danger to the herd. The big bear inserted a front claw in the crevice where the two barn doors rolled shut, and with all his tremendous strength tried to pry them open. But they were stoutly built, and the most he could do was force them an inch apart. Then the oaken doors sprang right back together again. The bear champed his jaws angrily, and slapped the earth in senseless fury. A shower of pebbles leaped up to strike him in the face. His jowl curled in a snarl.

  He walked to the sheepfold, and when he could not enter that reared to smash a window with his front paw. Glass tinkled, and the frightened sheep within plunged and milled as they raced to the other end of the fold. Old Majesty settled back to the ground, staring at the houses from which men would come if they came. But still there was no sound. Nothing moved. He reared to thrust his mighty head and shoulders through the broken window, but drew warily back. He could get in. But the barn was a trap. If he was caught within it there was no way out except through the hard-to-enter window. He walked to the horse barn, and the shrill scream of an aroused stallion sliced through the night. Again the stallion screamed.

  The big bear swung about, and sat on his haunches facing a house where man had at last awakened. A door creaked open. A lantern gleamed, and came bobbing toward the barn. Old Majesty took a tentative step toward the man, then retreated slowly into the night. Two hundred feet out in the meadow he stopped to watch while the man with the lantern went slowly from one barn to the other. He exclaimed over the broken window, and unlocked the door of the horse barn to go in and quiet the raging stallion. Then, loud and startling in the night, a bell rang. Lights winked on in all the houses, and more lanterns bobbed in the hands of the running men who carried them.

  Old Majesty turned and ran back into the beeches. He was still unafraid, still contemptuous of the men, and willing to fight them. But there was no reason for fighting since there was nothing in the big gray barns that he could get. Then, because there had not been, a great rage flooded him. He ran straight up the valley, threading his way among the ponderous beeches, and stopped only when he came to the border of another and smaller clearing.

  There was a part-log, part-board cabin nestled in the shadow of some of the huge beech trees. Beside it were four dog kennels, one of them empty, a shed, and a barn. The wind was blowing strongly from the cabin to him, and Old Majesty’s lip curled as he read and interpreted the scents it carried. He knew the three hounds within the kennels. They had been on his trail more than once, and he had nothing but scorn for all of them. But as his brain received and placed in their correct categories the scents of the two men and the two dogs in the cabin, his curled lip emitted an ugly snarl.

  The only living thing he feared, or respected, was one of the two dogs in the cabin. It was Red, the one dog ever on his trail that he had not been able to outwit or kill. Red had followed him a long way, foiling him at every turn, and after a long chase had bayed him on a rock. One of the men in the cabin had come with a gun. But Old Majesty had escaped. His head drooped so low that his black snout almost touched the ground.

  A gaunt mule rested in the pasture that surrounded the shed. Old Majesty’s head swung further around, and his beady little eyes fastened on the mule. His hunt had been frustrated, but here was prey surrounded by no oaken barn. The big bear threw caution away and began to run.

  Instantly everything about the cabin came awake. As one the three chained hounds emerged from their kennels and cast themselves again and again to the ends of their chains, falling down and getting up to leap again. The two dogs in the cabin added their barking to the din, and a light glowed. There were no stolid farmers in this cabin, but woodsmen who knew the ways of the woods.

  Old Majesty plunged on, and now that he had started, nothing would turn him aside. He crashed through the wire fence as though it were paper. The terrified mule swung to gallop away. But the black shadow that raced through the night was beside it, and reared to strike its thin neck with a sledge-hammer paw. For one brief second, with jaws stretched wide, the mule tried to fight back. The bear struck again, and the mule went to its knees. It rolled over on its back with all four legs moving feebly.

  The beam of a flashlight stabbed the darkness, and from the porch of the cabin red streaks flashed as two rifles spat their leaden messengers into the night. Old Majesty’s hind paw whipped up to strike at his right ear, t
hrough which a bullet had passed. He ran around the mule shed, putting it between himself and the riflemen, and went into the beech woods. For a moment he stopped, sitting on his haunches and facing the cabin as though half-minded to go back and renew the fight. But, cutting through the bedlam created by the baying hounds and the hysterically screeching Sheilah, Red’s battle challenge came steadily. With feet shuffling and head swinging Old Majesty climbed through the beech woods back up Stoney Lonesome.

  Daylight found him far back in the wilderness. He had stopped to dig a woodchuck from its hole, and had eaten it. Also, he had torn apart more logs and filled his belly with grubs. Having eaten, he sought a hemlock thicket and curled up to sleep. But he awoke in the soft gray of early morning and sat up on his haunches, straining his ears to catch again the sound he thought he had heard. It came, the silvery, far-off baying of hounds. Five minutes later the big bear knew that they were on his trail. He snapped his jaws, angry because they were, and walked out of the thicket into the wild forest beyond. When the yelling hounds were heard more clearly, and had closed the distance between them, he ran.

  All day, alternately running and walking, he travelled across the top of Stoney Lonesome and into the unnamed wilderness beyond it. And all day he heard the baying hounds. The bear’s jaws gaped wide, his tongue lolled from the side of his mouth. Long, greasy strings of slaver swung from his jaws. And, as his weariness increased, so did his anger.

  Night came, and the yelling dogs ceased their noise. From the summit of a high and brush-covered peak, Old Majesty turned to survey the wilderness through which he had run. Far below, in a valley, something shone brightly yellow. It was the campfire of the man who had come with the dogs. Ross Pickett was taking no chances on his hounds meeting Old Majesty in the dark. But they would meet him, and he would meet him. Asa had been killed. And, though only another four-footed one, Asa had been Ross Pickett’s friend.