As he considered these awful realities, he began to feel very sorry for himself. No matter how he looked at it, he was surely doomed. If he didn’t die speedily of double pneumonia, he would have a lingering death from starvation, with his broken leg paining like fury to the last horrid minute.
“Oh, poor me,” he whimpered. “Why did I ever leave Clarence?”
He was at rock bottom now and could sink no deeper. So, having enjoyed for a moment the very depths of despair, he wanted no more of it. It was time to climb out.
“Aw, fiffle,” he muttered. “I’ve swallowed too much education, but I’ve still got a little frog sense. Anybody with half a grain of it ought to be able to beat the odds against him. Now, let’s see …”
He still had one good swimming foot. It wouldn’t push him fast enough to catch trout, but he could limp around and find crawfish and frogs. As for his bad leg, it had been injured on the lower part, so at least he could hold it off the ground when he walked and not have to drag it. If he was careful for a couple weeks, maybe it would mend.
What should he do in the meantime?
It struck him all at once that he had sort of upset Doc Hoffman’s applecart by running away. Old Doc was going to be lost without his trained slave to show to the world, and furious to boot. In a matter of hours, sure as anything, there would be a big otter hunt on. Doc had money to burn. He would get men by the dozen.…
This chilling probability brought Swimmer to his feet. It was still raining, and the darkness had grayed only a trifle, but he knew he shouldn’t waste any more time.
He began limping to the edge of the torrent. His intention was to follow the bank, find a quiet stretch where he could safely enter the water, then drift downstream. But he had taken only a few steps through the brush when a frightening thing happened.
The silver harness holding his bell caught on something sharp, and for long frantic seconds he was trapped. It was almost dawn when he finally freed himself and discovered that the sharp thing was a piece of rusted barbed wire. It was dangling from an overgrown fence.
Fuming, Swimmer tried desperately to squirm out of the dangerous harness. It was impossible. Had there been only the single chain about his neck that held the bell, he could have managed it easily. But there was a second chain behind his shoulders, and the two were linked tightly together. To get out of the dratted thing he would simply have to have help.
He crawled glumly under the fence and began limping downstream, the silver bell tinkling merrily with every painful movement. Since there was nothing he could do about the hateful sound, he tried to ignore it as he studied the creek. In the dawn mist the water didn’t look quite so evil as the thunder of it in the dark had indicated. He crept down to the water, then hesitated while he tried to find the courage to enter it.
So much time had passed since he had been in a stream like this that for a moment Swimmer knew the old terror he had felt as a pup—the terror every pup feels before its mother forces it to swim. In the next breath fear was replaced by icy shock as he drove himself into the mist-laced current.
He gasped and grunted, sure that it would be the death of him. But after the first few minutes it didn’t seem so bad. Then suddenly, for a little while, it was quite wonderful, and he found himself barking and chuckling happily, his injury nearly forgotten. Suddenly he glimpsed what he thought was a startled fish trying to dart away from him, and he made the mistake of trying to catch it. Such blinding pain shot through his leg that he was momentarily helpless.
He swam weakly to the farther bank and crawled out in a protected spot beneath an overhanging rock. Gradually the pain quieted. In its place came hunger.
His hunger increased through the morning, then grew teeth as he searched frantically along the bank, turning over small stones and driftwood in a hunt for something edible. Longingly he thought of the uneaten trout Clarence had brought him. It would have taken several trout that size to satisfy him now, but all he could find was one tiny frog that was hardly worth the painful effort of catching it.
“Aw, blatts!” he muttered finally, in weary disgust. “What am I going to do?”
He wasn’t exactly frightened, but it was sort of jolting to realize that he was about as helpless as a month-old pup. What was he going to do?
Almost desperately he looked up at the wise old trees leaning overhead, something his mother always did when she wanted information. Had the trees seen others of the otter folk come this way? Did they know what he wanted to know? They did, and they told him—not with speech, but with a sort of flowing of knowledge they shared with all the wild who would listen.
Swimmer listened. It came to him that every stream too close to man has barren areas and that he was on the edge of them now. He must leave and cross the ridge to another creek. Others of his kind had been doing it for years. He might even find their trail.
Save for the rain, which had died to a misty drizzle, Swimmer might have missed the trail entirely. For the rain, instead of washing out a scent, holds it for a while and even makes it stronger.
Later that day, halfway across a sloping meadow where cows were grazing, he caught the first faint familiar scent of his own kind. It was so very faint in the deep grass that he was unable, in his present ignorance, to guess how long ago it had been made. But it hardly mattered. The otter folk were few in number, and it filled him with a great joy to know that some of them—several members of the same family, it seemed—were somewhere near.
He sprang forward, his miseries momentarily forgotten in his eagerness to get over the ridge and find the new creek. Then he realized he had been foolish to cross the meadow in daylight. All the cows were staring at him, attracted by the tinkling of his bell. The two nearer ones were actually coming to investigate.
It was too late to hide, so he put all his effort into reaching the woods ahead. Even when he was safe, with dense thickets behind him, he limped on. The lessons of the dim past were coming back to him. Where there were cows, he remembered, a dog was usually near.
Several times he was tempted to stop and search for crawfish where small springs oozed from the ground. Caution drove him on. The otters ahead of him hadn’t stopped. Perhaps they hadn’t needed food, but more likely there were dangers near they didn’t care to risk so far from water.
Darkness caught Swimmer near the top of the ridge. Almost mechanically he kept on for a while. When he finally stopped, it was because he had lost the trail and was too weary to search for it.
In his misery it seemed he had been climbing forever. Had it been this way in the past? Had his family changed streams and gone great distances and even crossed mountains to find new water?
But of course they had, as he now remembered. Only, it had been such fun in those days. They had always been playing and exploring, following an endless route around an area that must have been thirty miles across. In spite of the dangers it had been wonderful—until that blatted old snake-eyed trapper came with his net.…
Swimmer was having a horrid dream about that trapper when he was abruptly awakened by the yapping of a dog.
As his head jerked up he was shocked to discover that it was now bright daylight. How could he have slept so late? It was disgusting. No wild otter with the brains of a newt would have allowed himself to be caught out like this so far from water.
The dog yapped again, closer. Swimmer’s impulse was to run, until he remembered his bell and realized the tinkling of it would give him away the moment he moved. From the yapping he decided that it was probably a small dog, one of those troublesome little busybodies of the kind that had belonged to the trapper.
He didn’t know it was part of a hunting team until he saw the two does drifting past, as silently as shadows. At the sight of him the older doe paused briefly. Between them there was a quick exchange of thought.
The real danger, Swimmer learned, was not the dog but the human creature somewhere behind it.
It was time to leave. With the bell caught between
his teeth, Swimmer began working his way cautiously downward in the direction of the new creek, whose rushing he could hear in the distance. Having to limp on three legs was bad enough, what with his empty belly and the way he was feeling, but being forced to do it with his head down, so he could hold the dratted bell, was almost too much.
Every few yards he stopped to test the air and listen. Even before he heard the human over on his left, he was suddenly startled by the feeling of deadly threat in that direction. He had forgotten that danger could be felt before it was seen or heard. Then he glimpsed it moving stealthily between the trees. The human was what Clarence would have called a tough-looking young punk in Levi’s; he carried a gun and he was out to kill anything that moved.
“Drat ’em all!” Swimmer muttered angrily to himself. It was a crying shame the whole human race couldn’t be done away with. Things would sure be better. Oh, he would want to save Clarence, of course, and probably Miss Primm. She had worked so hard teaching him.…
All at once the high yapping of the dog informed him that it must have stumbled across his scent. It was racing down toward him.
Swimmer dropped the bell and began leaping clumsily for the creek. He was only a few yards from it when the dog caught up with him and began yelping and circling in a frenzy. It was a nasty little brown mongrel no larger than himself; something about it was so infuriating to Swimmer that his blood boiled and he started to lunge for the dog. But at that moment there was a hurried crashing in the underbrush and a yell from the dog’s owner.
“Hang on to ’im, Tattle! Don’t let ’im git away!”
Swimmer dodged in the direction of the creek, trying to keep trees and boulders between the gun and himself.
Somewhere in the distance a new voice—it sounded like a small girl’s—cried shrilly, “Stop it, Weaver! Don’t you dare shoot! You’ve no right—”
“I’ll hunt where I danged please!” Weaver snapped. “You keep out of my business, or I’ll bust you one!”
“Weaver—”
The girl’s voice was lost in the roar of the gun. Chips of rock flew over Swimmer’s head. The brown dog circled him swiftly, trying to turn him from the creek. It came an inch too close, and Swimmer made a single lightning snap that drove the dog away, yelping with pain.
As he scrambled down through the creek-side tangle, he was aware of Weaver’s sudden furious burst of language, followed by a choking cry from the girl. It sounded as though she had been struck. Then the water closed over Swimmer’s head and he was carried away by the current.
Downstream where the creek broadened and deepened, Swimmer surfaced briefly, his sleek dark head coming up and turning like a periscope. He was too shaken to see all that he might have seen, for his badly swollen leg was throbbing steadily and he was weak from hunger. All he wanted was a safe hiding place and a chance to find food. At the moment the only spot that seemed to offer shelter was a narrow crevice under an overhanging rock. He dove and swam to it.
It was a better place than he had expected. Only another otter could have found it. Way back under, a crack in the rock actually formed a dry shelf he could stretch out upon.
With the first small feeling of security he had felt since leaving Clarence, Swimmer made himself as comfortable as he could on the shelf. Hunger gnawed at him, but that could wait till he had rested and calmed down a bit. There were trout in the pool, he could see them from the shelf. With a bit of scheming maybe he could catch one in spite of his bum leg.…
Abruptly all the woes of the world seemed to fall upon him. He felt homeless and lost and beaten and drowning in blackness. It was such an unspeakably awful feeling, as bad as that time when the trapper killed his mother, that it drove him out of his hiding place and back into the creek. Something was terribly wrong somewhere.
He surfaced cautiously in an eddy, and again his head came up like a periscope as he searched for danger. There was none. But over by the water’s edge, huddled against a rock with her head in her arms, was a small redheaded girl. She was crying.
Swimmer had never seen a human cry before. Nor had he ever felt such desolation come from one. He was a little stunned.
Something in him melted. Slowly he swam to her.
At the water’s edge he hesitated, trying to think of something soothing to say. But what can you say to a small human who can feel such black and utterly hopeless despair? He thought of inventing a few words, but none that came to mind seemed right for the occasion. Finally he crawled out beside her and nuzzled her arm, all the while making soft little chirruping sounds to show that he understood and sympathized.
The arm went about him instantly and clung tight. “Oh, Ripple,” she sobbed, “I’m so glad you came. W-why does life have to be so—so awful?”
“Aw, it’s not life. It’s the dratted people in it,” Swimmer mumbled, trying not to make his gnome voice sound so weary and gnomish. He hadn’t intended to speak right away, fearing it would frighten her. The words just slipped out.
She wasn’t frightened. But her sobbing stopped, and she turned her very freckled and tear-streaked face and stared at him. She had the brightest and unhappiest blue eye he had ever seen. He supposed the other eye was equally blue, but it was swollen shut and that side of her face was darkening.
“Why—why, you’re not Ripple!” she said in wonder. “She hasn’t learned to talk yet. Thank goodness you have. I—I need somebody to talk to so bad …”
“Is it because of the way that dirty Weaver treated you?”
“That’s only part of it. How—how’d you know about Weaver?”
“Because I heard you yell at him when he and that ratty dog were after me.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “It was you he shot at! He and his pa hate otters, and I was scared to death it was Ripple or her mother he was trying to kill.” Suddenly her fingers discovered his harness. “Why, you’re wearing a silver chain, and—and a bell! How beautiful! Do—do you belong to somebody?”
“Belong to somebody? Me?” Swimmer was outraged. “Phooey! I’ve been a prisoner in old Doc Hoffman’s lab most of my life, and I just escaped the other night. And don’t call this blatted bell beautiful. I hate it. It’s a wonder that dirty Weaver didn’t hear it, but with all the racket … Anyway, if I don’t get rid of it soon, it’ll surely be the death of me.”
She stared at him again, and her good eye grew round and thoughtful. “Is—is your name Swimmer?”
“That’s right. How’d you guess?”
“It was on TV last night,” she said quickly. “I didn’t hear it all. You see, Mr. Sykes—I’m boarded out to Weaver’s pa by the county ’cause I don’t have folks—Mr. Sykes, he was mad at me as usual, and wouldn’t let me listen. But—but there was something about a famous educated otter named Swimmer that was lost over in some other valley—”
She paused abruptly and gave a startled cry. “Oh! Your leg—you’re hurt!”
In the next breath Swimmer was surprised to find her fussing over him like a vet. “I’ve fixed lots of breaks like this,” she said. “Well, three, anyway. They were birds, but I can use the same sort of splint for you. A small piece of fresh poplar bark is best. It’ll curl right around your leg, and I’ll tie it real carefully. If you’ll wait, I’ll go get a knife and some string—”
They were interrupted by a man’s voice calling angrily in the distance. “Penny? Where are you, Penny? Daggone you, girl, you’d better git back here fast!”
A sob caught in her throat, and she jumped to her feet. “That’s Mr. Sykes,” she whispered. “I—I have to run, but I’ll try not to be long.”
3
He Meets the Wild
For several minutes after Penny had gone, Swimmer waited uneasily on the rock, studying the wooded slope where he had seen her last. This part of the mountains was very different from the farming country he had come through yesterday. Everything was thicker and wilder, and there was hardly a sign that humans lived anywhere near. What, then, were people like Weaver
Sykes and his father doing in this kind of place?
He was startled by the sudden excited cry of a kingfisher in the air directly behind him. It was a sound he had nearly forgotten. He turned in time to see the bird dive into the pool and emerge with a small fish in its bill.
The sight of food, caught so easily, was almost too much for the starving otter who had had only one undernourished frog to eat in two whole days. “Dratted cackle-head!” he muttered. “Do you have to show off in front of me?”
But maybe, if he went about it right, he could manage to snag a trout before Penny returned.
He slid back into the water. Cautiously he moved about the pool, keeping to the shadows. Several times he was able to creep close to trout, but they always darted to safety whenever he lunged for them. He was almost in despair when he discovered a crawfish hiding among the pebbles.
It was the most delicious bite he had ever had in his life. But it would have taken fifty such bites to ease the hunger that now raged in him, and he could find only two more crawfish in the pool. Instead of dulling his appetite, they whetted it. When he crawled back on the rock to wait for Penny, he felt hungrier than he had all day.
The afternoon shadows deepened. What could have happened to Penny? Worried now, he tested the air for sound and scent, searching for a clue that would tell more about her. But the breeze was wrong and all he caught was the whiff of a dog coming from the opposite direction.
It wasn’t Tattle, the nuisance who had chased him. The scent was different. Something told Swimmer that the animal approaching was a much larger and more formidable creature. To be on the safe side, he crouched on the edge of the rock, ready to slide into the pool.
The dog appeared suddenly, without a sound—a big tawny beast with powerful jaws and heavy shoulders, eyes as hard and sharp as polished flint. It studied Swimmer a moment, then gave a low growl that was more of a greeting than a threat.
The Preposterous Adventures of Swimmer Page 2