Big Red

by Jim Kjelgaard

  Again, with the first faint streak of dawn, Old Majesty heard the dogs yelling on his trail. He left the thicket where he had bedded, ran up and over the mountain and down the other side. The country was wild here, a desolate, lost place whose solitude was rarely broken by the advent of man or the sound of his guns. Forest fire had swept it years ago, and the trunks of the big hardwoods that had clothed it lay supine on the ground or stretched withered skeletons toward the sky. A lush growth of small pines had replaced the hardwoods. Huge boulders lay tumbled all about. All morning Old Majesty ran through them. The sun was directly overhead when, at last, he decided that he would run no more.

  He stopped in front of a boulder as big as a house, and backed against it. Rising on his hind legs, he swung his front ones right, left, and forward, as though to assure himself that he would have plenty of room in which to fight when fighting became necessary. He listened, his head bent forward. Then a cunning gleam flicked across his red eyes and he dropped to all fours.

  He swung into the pines, at a right angle to the trail he had made coming in, and after walking seventy feet swung to parallel it. Moving slowly, careful to rustle no twig and break no branch whose sound might betray him, he stalked through the pines back to the trail and lay beside it. He heard the hounds yelling nearer, then saw them coming. Old Majesty lay still, and when the three hounds were in front of him he sprang.

  His huge body overwhelmed Old Mike, bore him down and into the earth. The grizzled old hound, veteran of a hundred hunts, wriggled and tried to bring his jaws into play. But Old Majesty moved very carefully, feeling beneath his breast with his mighty front paw. His claws encountered and sank into Old Mike’s neck, and he dragged the fighting hound into the open. He slapped with his free paw, and Old Mike’s back sagged. The old hound dragged himself forward with his front feet. His open jaws closed on Old Majesty’s flank. The big bear slapped again, and Mike died as it had from the first been inevitable that he would die. But his jaws were clamped shut, and in them was a long strip of Old Majesty’s skin.

  Then the bear swung to deal with the hysterically yelling pups. They separated, one going to the side while the other feinted from the front. Old Majesty moved slowly, slapping at the dog in front of him and watching it keep just out of range. Suddenly and unexpectedly he whirled, and his slashing paw pounded the neck of the pup that was boring in from the side. The hound flew ten feet through the air and collided soddenly with a boulder. Old Majesty leaped ahead, trapping the other pup between his front paws and pounding it into a bloody pulp. For ten minutes, in delirious, unreasoning rage, he hammered the three dogs. From far off he heard the man shout.

  “Halloo-ooo!”

  Old Majesty rose to listen, his little eyes very bright and his ears alert. The lust of battle still gripped him, and victory was his. He backed into the brush and stood very quietly waiting. The breeze brought Ross Pickett’s scent to him before he saw anything. Carrying his rifle in his right hand, Ross came running toward that place where he had last heard the dogs. Old Majesty lunged and struck, once.

  But fighting a man was very different from fighting a dog, and the big bear knew it. Despite his anger he was nervous, and he did not time his charge with the same split-second precision that had taken the hounds to their deaths. His front paw struck Ross Pickett’s left arm, glanced off his chest, and sent him spinning into the pines. But Ross kept hold of his rifle, and dropped to a sitting position with it in his right hand. He cocked it with his thumb, and raised it with his right arm.

  About to follow up his charge, Old Majesty paused. He had lived to be old because he knew many things, and among them was the certainty that a man with a gun, in broad daylight, was more than a match for him. After split-second indecision he turned and ran into the pines, while Ross’s bullet whistled over him.

  Down at the cabin in the beech woods, Danny Pickett sat in the warm sunshine. Red was beside him, and Sheilah lay outstretched on the soft grass. Danny glanced fondly at her. Sheilah was with pups, due to litter in a very few days, and now could take no violent exercise and must be very careful. Somebody had to stay at the house and watch her while Ross and his hounds were on Old Majesty’s trail.

  Danny looked at the heap of brown earth that covered Asa, and lifted his eyes to the mountains. An anxious frown creased his brow, and uneasiness gnawed within him. But nothing could have stopped Ross going on this hunt, and nothing could have persuaded him to take anyone with him. Old Majesty had killed Asa, and Ross must conduct a deadly feud with any varmint that harmed anything about the Pickett household. Probably the hounds would not bay Old Majesty—no hounds ever had. But they were certainly giving him a run. Ross had been gone for three days.

  Danny’s gaze strayed back to Sheilah, and something deep within him stirred. The indistinct vision that he had tried to see clearly ever since the dog show sought to assume shape and form. But somehow it would not, although it seemed to concern Sheilah directly. Danny knew only that in the back of his mind there lived a fine dog, a magnificent dog, a dog to put all others to shame. But weren’t Red and Sheilah all that? He went down and knelt to tickle Sheilah’s ear.

  “How you feelin’?” he crooned. “You’re goin’ to have a big litter, then you and me and the pups and Red, we’re all goin’ to do great things.”

  Red sat suddenly up, head erect and ears alert. A short, challenging bark rumbled from him, and Danny raised his head to follow the dog’s gaze. He gasped. Ross came out of the beech woods into the clearing. He was walking very slowly, his eyes on the ground and his left arm limp at his side. Danny raced to meet him, passed an arm about his father’s shoulders.

  “Pappy!”

  “I met the bear,” Ross Pickett said wearily. “He got the dogs, all three of ’em.”

  “Don’t talk now, Pappy.”

  Danny guided his father into the cabin, took off his clothes and put him to bed. He held a glass of water to his father’s lips, laid a cool towel across his hot forehead. Then, with Red racing beside him, he ran down the Smokey Creek trail to Mr. Haggin’s. Curley Jordan, one of the caretakers, met him.

  “Call Doc Smedley!” Danny snapped. “Get him here quick! Pappy’s been hurt by a bear!”

  He ran back up the trail, and into the cabin. Ross lay quietly on the bed. But there was misery and heartbreak in his eyes, and he was staring blankly at the ceiling. Danny glanced at his blood-stained shirt, and stared back at Ross. Curley Jordan ran in, and an hour later Dr. Smedley followed. He bent over Ross, while Danny hovered solicitously in the background and watched him work. Dr. Smedley straightened.

  “Is he … Is he bad hurt?” Danny gulped.

  “Three broken ribs and a broken arm,” Dr. Smedley said. “That’s quite a smash. But he’ll be all right.”

  Dr. Smedley filled a hypodermic, and made ready to inject it into Ross’s shoulder.

  “What’s that for?” Danny asked.

  “To put him to sleep. He won’t feel it when we set the broken bones, and he needs a rest.”

  Danny stepped to the bed, and looked down on Ross’s pain-distorted face.

  “Pappy, where’d you leave that big bear’s track?”

  “In all them little pines what grew up where the fire went,” Ross whispered. “You can’t miss it, Danny. Cross three cricks off to the west of Stoney Lonesome, and climb that big mountain where we got the fisher out of the cave two years gone. It’s on a straight line between a dead chestnut on the east side of that mountain, and a big pine on the west side of the next. The only big pine there. Hit right between ’em. He got all the dogs, Danny. All of ’em. Be careful.”

  “I will, Pappy. Don’t fret.”

  He stepped back and watched Dr. Smedley inject the anesthetic into Ross’s arm. Ross dropped into an easy slumber, and Danny turned to Curley Jordan.

  “Will you stay here with Sheilah and Pappy, until I come back?”

  “Gosh yes, Danny. I’ll be glad to, and Mr. Haggin would want me to. What are you goi
ng to do?”

  “There ain’t but one dog ever bayed Old Majesty,” Danny Pickett said grimly. “And that dog can do it again. I’ll be seein’ you when Red and I get him!”

  * * *

  Chapter 12

  Trophy for Red

  danny didn’t look again at any of the men in the cabin. He took a canvas packsack from its hanger, packed into it a box of matches, a slab of bacon, a small package of coffee, five pounds of flour, two loaves of bread, and a first-aid kit. He hung a sheathed knife at his belt, put a box of cartridges in his pocket, took his gun from its rack, loaded it, and was ready for the Wintapi wilderness. Red trotted soberly over to sit beside him, and followed closely when Danny went out on the porch.

  He stood there, feeling the warm spring breezes blow about his face and neck and ruffle his shirt. And it seemed to him that never before in his entire life had he been so calm, or known so exactly just what he was going to do.

  Old Majesty must die, he was very sure of that. Not alone because he had killed Asa and hurt Ross, and probably would hurt or kill other men, but for an added reason. The Wintapi was wild and hard—ever ready with its threats and dangers. Only those who could meet and parry its blows were entitled to live there, or could live there. Now Old Majesty had asserted his own supremacy over all of it and in attacking Ross, proclaimed that nothing could walk in the Wintapi unless he willed it. And Danny knew that he must meet the big bear’s challenge, must go into the mountains and fight Old Majesty on his own grounds. This was not something that a man could forget or run from.

  At the same time, he was fully aware of the risks he ran and the chances he took. First there was Red, the dog that, next to Ross, he loved better than anything else. In hunting Old Majesty Red might be killed. Or, if he was not killed or even hurt, the fact that Danny must urge him to hunt a bear, a varmint, could easily make meaningless all the long hours that Danny had taken to teach him to hunt partridges alone. Lastly, Danny considered the fact that he himself might be hurt.

  But he still knew that he had to go, that Ross expected him to go. Ross saw the Wintapi as Danny did, and knew that he who quailed at any challenge it hurled was forever lost. Danny bit his lip. He was young, but old enough to know that life was seldom easy. And it seemed to him that in the future there would be a great many other bears to meet. How he met them depended in great measure on what he did now with Old Majesty. It had become his fight. Regardless of loss or sacrifice he must give everything to winning it.

  He walked down the porch steps, averted his eyes from the dog kennels, and walked across the pasture into the beech woods. The sun sprayed its golden rays through their budding twigs, painted the forest floor beneath them. Red crowded close to his side, seeming in some mysterious way to know that this was no ordinary trip. Even when he reached the crest of Stoney Lonesome Danny did not turn his eyes back for one last look at the cabin.

  Danny walked around the rim of the big plateau, keeping out of the laurel that grew upon it in the scrub. There was no special hurry. Ross had left the scene of the battle yesterday afternoon, and since had been making his pain-racked journey home. Certainly he would no longer find a fresh trail away from that place where Old Majesty had killed the hounds, and he might be in the mountains many days before he had the final reckoning with the big bear. But he had to stay, and would stay, until the final hour of that reckoning.

  Twilight fell, and Danny stopped beside a brawling little stream that tumbled down a wild mountain valley. He took a line and fishhook from the pack, turned over a rock and picked up the worms that crawled in the damp earth beneath it, and caught eight of the shining little brook trout that swarmed in the stream and nibbled eagerly at his proffered bait. He broiled them on a stick, shared them with Red, and moved his fire to face a huge boulder. Sitting with his back to the boulder, he stared into the flames and caressed Red. And there in the still night it was as though some mysterious vessel poured into him a renewal of an old faith. First it was faith in himself, and then that in Red. His first judgment of the big setter had been that here was a dog with heart, courage and brain, as well as beauty and near perfection. Somehow he knew now that that judgment had been the correct one.

  He was awake with the first streaks of dawn, had caught and cooked more trout and started up the valley. Danny climbed the lost ridge at its head, and struck into the big pines that lined the ridge. The small pines wherein Ross and his hounds had had their tragic meeting with Old Majesty were scarcely two hours away. A warm wind eddied down the ridge to blow against his face, and Danny strode briskly. A pulsing eagerness crept through him, and he gripped the rifle more firmly. Red ranged out to hunt through a copse of brush at one side, and came running back.

  Danny climbed the mountain where he and Ross had taken a snarling, spitting fisher from a cave two years before, and walked to its east slope to stand directly under what had been a fine chestnut tree. Now its branches were leafless and gray, its twigs broken and shapeless. He looked directly across the valley that yawned beneath him at a huge pine growing on the slope of the opposite mountain. The wind, playing up the valley, rippled the tops of the smaller pines down there and coaxed a soft song from them. Danny’s roving eye laid out a straight line between the chestnut stub and the big pine, and in the valley below him he saw a cruising crow plane out of the air into the little pines. From the end of the valley another crow cawed raucously, and presently came winging down to alight where the first had descended. That was where the hounds lay.

  Danny’s eyes marked the spot from which he would have to start. Some day he would return, give what was left of Old Mike and the two pups a suitable burial, and mark something on their grave about the battle they had had. But that must wait. They had to be avenged first.

  Danny sat beneath the chestnut stub, an arm about Red’s neck and the rifle resting where he could instantly reach and bring it into play. His brow wrinkled in deep thought. He could go down into the valley, and work out Old Majesty’s trail from the place where he had fought. But that might take hours or even days of painstaking effort.

  “Where would he go, Red?” Danny asked softly. “Where would that old hellion of gone from here?”

  Red whined, and turned his head to lick Danny’s ear. Danny stared hard at the ground, saw a worm inching along it, and snapped his head erect. Insect eggs were hatching in the dead, damp logs, and they’d be full of grubs. Having failed in his bold attempt to raid the farms, Old Majesty had to take his living from the wilderness. And, at this season of the year, grubs were the most plentiful and easiest-to-get food in it.

  Danny bent his head forward and closed his eyes, trying in his mind to reconstruct a picture of the country as he knew it. Certainly Old Majesty, bold enough to ambush the three hounds and Ross, had not fled in blind panic when he left the scene of the battle. Probably he had even waited around to see if he was going to be followed any more. But he had had a long run, and would want to rest and eat after it. Two mountains away there were a great many fallen trees whose trunks were moss-encrusted and whose pulp was dozey. Danny flipped a penny, and when it fell heads-up rose to quarter down the mountain. Before trying to work out a stale track he would cross those two mountains and see if he could not find a fresh one.

  Red padded behind him as he toiled up one mountain, down its other side, and up the mountain beyond. He paused on the summit to stare down the slope. Red edged around him, pricked up his ears, and raised his hackles. He growled, looked up and wagged his tail.

  Danny squatted down, and clamped his hand over the big dog’s muzzle as he strove to see past the trees in front of him. Wind shook a copse of brush, and Danny brought his rifle up with one hand on the breech, ready to cock it and shoot. He rose and walked slowly down the slope, passing the yellow, ripped stumps that marched in endless lines along it and threading his way among the prostrate tree trunks. Some had been shredded by powerful claws; a bear had been at them.

  It was where a little spring bubbled out of th
e mountain side and softened the earth about it that Danny found Old Majesty’s track. He knelt to examine it, a huge thing longer than his own foot and wider than his spread hand. His guess then, had been the correct one; Old Majesty had come here to feast on grubs. The track by the spring was scarcely two hours old. Danny grasped Red by the scruff of the neck, and shoved his nose down in the track.

  “That’s him,” he said. “That’s the varmint we got to find.”

  Red sniffed long and deeply at the track, and raised his head to look at Danny. He sat down, tail flat on the ground behind him, staring down the slope. Danny watched. Red never had been a trailing dog, and would not now become one. But if he could catch the body scent of Old Majesty, and was urged to the attack, he would chase the big bear and finally bring it to bay. Danny climbed back to the summit of the mountain and sat down. The wind was almost straight out of the west, blowing gently but steadily. Clouds scudded across the sky, and the feathered tips of the pine trees bent. For a long while Danny stared steadily into the valley, and looked from it to Red.

  Old Majesty was not there now or Red would smell him and indicate his presence. But there was no sign that he had been alarmed and knew that another pursuer was on his trail. Danny looked back down to the spring where he had found the track. He could follow the trail if he wanted to, and eventually work it out, but he must wage a battle of wits as well as one of scientific woodcraft. Fresh as it was, it would still take a long while to puzzle out that trail on the hard, rocky ground. Danny looked again down the slope, at the vast number of decaying logs that lay undisturbed. All of them were full of grubs, and if Old Majesty wanted to rest a few days he would not stray far from this place. Probably he was resting now, and not far away. But exactly where was he and what was the best way to go about finding him?