Red trotted down the slope toward them, and stopped to wave his tail gently when he saw Mike. The red puppy seemed in danger of wagging himself in two as he greeted his father. Red backed off and sat down, keeping a wary eye on Mike.
Danny looked at the puppy. Now that they had Mike again, what were they going to do with him?
Mike was thin, but looked hard as nails. He had never got that way in a kennel; plainly he had been doing a lot of running. He must have escaped a long while ago.
“Come on,”’ Danny said. “Come on, you old muttonhead. We’ll take you home for a while, anyhow.”
Red again ranged out to hunt, but Mike stayed so close to Danny that his nose almost bumped Danny’s heels as they struck straight through the forest toward Budgegummon. No smoke rose from the chimney; Ross had gone to Centerville for supplies and evidently hadn’t returned yet.
Danny lighted fires in the cooking and heating stoves, mixed a batch of biscuits, and went out to catch a couple of trout. It was a long way to Centerville, and Ross would be hungry.
Ross came in just as the long evening shadows were beginning to fold into twilight. He pushed into the cabin, his face red from cold, and grinned at Danny.
“Sure smells good, boy.” Then he saw Mike.
“Little cuss!” Ross was ecstatic. “Darn little cuss! Where in blazes did you get him?”
“I didn’t. He got us. Came on Red and me in the woods. Guess he likes us better than John Price.”
“Could be.” A broad grin split Ross’s leathery face. “Or maybe Price sent him to make up for the pay we didn’t stop to get.”
Danny grinned back. “Maybe that’s it, Pappy. If it’s not, he can come and tell us, huh?”
“Sure,” Ross agreed, scratching ‘Mike’s ears. “That reminds me, Danny. Charley Spaulding’s comin’ here.”
“To Budgegummon?”
“Yup. Got the letter today in Centerville. Aims to catch himself a big trout, he does. Says I better have one lined up for him. And if he gets it he’ll pay. Charley always was that way.”
Charley Spaulding was a wealthy sportsman who had hunted and fished with Ross for the past ten years, and now wanted to come to the Wintapi for the fall trout season. If he caught the trout he wanted, and it would have to be a big one to satisfy him, he probably would pay enough to solve the Picketts’ immediate financial problems.
“How about some of the pools up on Tower Head?” Danny asked.
“I figured that’s the place for him. Reckon you can guide him this year, Danny?”
“I reckon.”
Danny said no more. Ordinarily Ross would not even have thought of letting anyone else guide Charley Spaulding. Danny glanced sideways at his father; definitely Ross was not the man he had been. He was getting old.
That night the red puppy curled up to sleep on an old rug beside Ross’s bed.
Two days later, accompanied by Red, Danny hiked into Centerville to meet the train that was bringing their guest. He bought a few extra provisions, then dropped his half-filled pack on the station platform and waited. At last the little mountain train steamed painfully around the bend, whistled its triumph, and Danny went forward.
A lean, well-built man dressed in trail togs dropped off the train. He carried a pack with three rods strapped to it, and a box of tackle.
“Hi, Mr. Spaulding!” Danny called.
“Danny! Boy, you’ve grown. And there’s that- say, what happened to Red?”
“Fracas with a big bear. Old Majesty.”
Charley Spaulding whistled. “You mean Red actually ran that old outlaw into the ground?”
“He sure did.” Danny was proud, knowing that Charley Spaulding knew Old Majesty’s reputation. “Red ran him plumb to a standstill. Here, let me split that pack with you.”
Danny rearranged the two packs, being careful to put all the heaviest gear into his own. Then he hoisted it to his shoulders.
“All set?”
“Let’s go. Hey, bucko, what’d you leave in this pack?”
“Half,” Danny assured him.
Mindful of the fact that his guest was a city man unaccustomed to mountain climbing, Danny stopped to rest halfway up the mountain behind Centerville, then climbed on. They reached the great beeches on top of the mountain, and Danny struck down one of the dim little trails that led toward the cabin.
“Where are we going from Budgegummon, Danny?” Charley Spaulding asked.
“Your letter said you wanted a big trout.”
“That I do. Know where there are any?”
“Biggest I know of are in the pools on Tower Head. They’ll go up to nine pounds.”
“Wow!” Charley Spaulding exclaimed. “Lead me to ‘em!”
They pushed on, arriving at Budgegummon just as night was falling. Mike bayed an enthusiastic welcome. He bounded forth to meet them but stayed warily away when he detected a stranger. Mike had had too many unpleasant experiences with strangers; he fell in at a safe distance behind them as Ross came to the door.
“You old woods-runner!” Charley Spaulding shouted. “How have you been?”
“Tolerable,” Ross said. “That boy of mine didn’t get you lost?”
“Not even near it, Ross. Say, this is a good layout you’ve got here.”
“We like it. Come in and eat.”
Red and Mike came in behind them, the puppy giving this stranger a wide berth as he sought his accustomed rug near Ross’s bed. He stretched out, keeping wary eyes on everything.
Ross served one of his incomparable hunters’ stews, that were never made twice of the same ingredients but were always delicious. Then Danny did the dishes while Ross and their guest relaxed, yarning about old times. After a while, Mike got up, paced across the floor, and snuffled at Charley Spaulding. The fisherman gave him a cookie from the table and Mike crunched noisily. Then he sighed and stretched out at the visitor’s feet.
“Looks like you got a friend,” Ross said.
“A rather strange one. Is he a thoroughbred?”
“Red’s son.”
“No!”
“I’ll admit he don’t look like much. He’s still got what it takes. All I have to do is teach him some sense.”
“How much of a job will that be?”
Ross shrugged. “Mike will come through, and when he does we’re goin’ to have the kind of pa’tridge dog you read about.”
“Wouldn’t it,” Danny asked, “be a good idea to go to bed? If we’re going to Tower Head, we’ll need an early start.”
Danny and Ross were up two hours before daybreak, preparing a heavy breakfast. It was seven miles to Tower Head, with some stiff climbs facing them before they got there. Danny awoke their guest, and fed him huge quantities of ham and flapjacks. Then he caught up the pack.
“Seven miles there and seven back, that’s fourteen miles to make today besides the fishing. If you’re uneasy about it, we can take blankets and lay out tonight.”
“I’ll make it, Danny. If there’s trout there I’ll make it and back. I’m getting sort of old to be without a comfortable bunk at night.”
“Good luck,” said Ross wistfully.
Danny shouldered the pack, Charley Spaulding took up his fishing rods, and Ross kept Red and Mike inside the cabin with him. Long trips were hard for Red, and if Mike was allowed to go along he could be depended on to mess everything up some way.
As they went out, Danny took a flashlight from his pocket and lighted their way into the dark beeches. They walked for forty-five minutes in darkness, then the night began to lift and faint daylight enveloped them. As soon as they could see the trail clearly, Danny put his light away. He turned to look at his guest, who was walking easily with no apparent sign of weariness.
“We’re getting there,” Danny said cheerfully. “And there will be trout.”
“That’s all I-what’s that?”
There was a flurry in the trail behind them, a rattling of pebbles, and Mike leaped enthusiastically upon Danny.
“Gosh-darn mutt! What are you doing here?”
Charley Spaulding grinned. “What are you going to do with him now, Danny?”
“Let him stay, I reckon. We’d lose too much time taking him back.”
Mike, having made sure of his welcome, frisked around them a couple of minutes. Then he galloped headlong into the beech woods and was lost to sight. An hour later, he came up with them, tongue lolling, eyes happy. He had been doing what he loved best to do, trying to catch partridges, and he wanted nothing more.
They started the stiff climb up Tower Head, stopping as often as necessary to let Charley Spaulding rest. On one halt Danny’s eye was attracted by a flash of brown among the beeches. A terrified squirrel sprang up the tree, raced to the top, and flung himself desperately into the next tree. Behind him, fully as agile and as tree-wise as the squirrel, came a lithe brown creature whose silky coat glistened in the sun. Danny’s interest heightened.
It was a marten, a very valuable fur-bearer. Until now Danny had thought that there were none in the Wintapi. Where one was found there were sure to be more, and Danny marked the spot for future investigation. Farther up Tower Head Danny saw another marten. Then they came to the pools.
A spring rose on the very top of Tower Head, and pursued its course for almost half a mile among boulders and-steep slopes. Then it levelled out to form a succession of deep, crystal-clear pools where huge trout lived. Nearing the downward slope, the stream went underground and reappeared at the foot of the mountain. Not many people even knew of the mountain-top pools, and fewer visited them.
The sun was high, lighting the first pool clear to the bottom, when Danny led his guest cautiously to it. They peered over the edge, and Charley Spaulding sucked in his breath.
There were more than a dozen trout in the pool, and the smallest would have made a fine catch anywhere. The biggest were monsters, an angler’s dream come true. Danny backed slowly away from the pool.
“They’re all yours now,” he said. “Go to it.”
“Just give me fishing room!”
While Danny built a small fire, Charley Spaulding rigged a rod and leafed carefully through his tackle box. He tied a fly to the leader and cast. There was a hopeful swirl in the pool, but nothing else. Spaulding cast again, then six times more, then changed his fly.
Danny watched him hopefully. He was a superb fisherman, and had almost every known fly, but none of them seemed to tempt the big trout in the Tower Head pool. As cast after cast failed, Danny’s heart sank. He had wanted his guest to catch one of the big trout. Spaulding had promised a handsome bonus if he did, and the Picketts needed money. But at noon, still without even a fair rise, Spaulding came to eat the hot meal Danny had prepared.
After eating, he went right back to fishing. Patiently he changed and re-changed lures: bucktails, spinners, streamers, dry .and wet flies. Danny’s hopes sank lower. If there was any known lure for trout it was in the tackle box and had been tried without success. Danny glanced at the lowering sun; it was nearly time to start back if they would reach Budgegummon before dark.
Mike, tired out from his latest hunt, came in and sat contentedly near Danny. Keeping anxious eyes on the fisherman, Danny fondled Mike absently. Then he took a snelled hook from his pocket, unravelled a thread from his trousers, and began to work with his knife.
The fisherman was still beside the pool, still casting. Then he reeled in his line and came back.
“Nothing doing,” he announced. “They’re there, but they just aren’t biting.”
“Have you tried everything?”
“Twice.”
“Trout do the darnedest things,” said Danny. “Now if you could cast with a bucktail, set it just right at the head of the pool, and work it right, you still might tie into one of those big lunkers.”
“Danny, I’ve got two dozen bucktails and I’ve set every one of them just right.”
“Mind giving this one a whirl?”
Charley Spaulding looked at the fly Danny handed him, and smiled tolerantly. Danny gulped. “I know it doesn’t look like much, but try it.”
“All right.”
He attached the bucktail to his leader and walked back to the pool. He cast, retrieved, and cast again. On the second cast, the pool seemed to explode.
Charley Spaulding set his hook, and expertly played the big trout. He handled it like the master he was, giving line when necessary but taking every advantage. Slowly he brought the fish in, and scooped it up in his net. His eyes shone as he looked at his prize, then he turned to Danny. “Just what was that lure?” “Oh, something I thought might work.” He really had thought that conditions were right for such a bucktail. But when everything else failed, a big trout had been taken on a lure fashioned from a hook, a bit of unravelled thread, and red hairs from a dog’s tail.
9. Hero Worshipper
Charley Spaulding left Budgegummon with the biggest trout he had. ever taken. He had paid Danny fifty dollars and given him one of his own rods. It was a bonus, he said, for the best fishing trip he remembered and the best bucktail he had ever seen. That much money was more than enough to take care of the Picketts’ immediate needs.
After breakfast the next morning, rifle under his arm and sheathed knife at his belt, Ross went away to get the pig that was still running loose in the forest. When Mike would have followed, Danny grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and held him back while he closed the door. The wriggling puppy whined, knowing that Ross was going away .and anxious to be with him. Red looked on, disgusted with the antics of his son.
“Cool off,” Danny advised. “Take it easy, Mike. You’re going to stay right here with me.”
Danny finished his breakfast, tidied up the cabin, and washed the dishes. Then he slipped a choke collar over Mike’s head, snapped a leash onto it, and took one of Ross’s razor-sharp axes from the rack.
Red sidled softly out and away as soon as the door was opened, but Mike leaped against the restraining leash. Front paws cutting the air, he reared and snuffled in the direction Ross had taken. Danny held firmly to the leash. If the red puppy was ever going to be even a passable hunter he had to have some formal training and it might as well start right now.
Mike continued to strain, unwavering in his determination to be away. The tightening collar shut off his breath, but it was not that which finally distracted his attention. It was a partridge that sailed across the clearing.
Closely pursued by a hunting hawk, the partridge hugged the earth. He barely skimmed bushes and stones as he dodged and twisted to elude the hawk’s strike. The hawk made a false descent and Danny watched the wily partridge sail into a grove of aspens and disappear. Then he looked at Mike, puzzled.
The puppy had gone wild, straining against the leash and making whimpering little noises. It was incredible to suppose that he had identified the partridge by sight; he had merely seen two flying birds. He must have caught the scent, Danny decided, and that in itself was a tribute to a fine nose.
Starting toward the poplars in which the partridge had disappeared, the puppy paid no attention to the hawk when it finally flew away. When Danny started toward the tree he wished to cut, a dead hickory that lay in the general direction of the poplars, Mike paced willingly beside him. Danny tied him to a small tree, and Mike continued to stare at the poplars. Danny scratched his head.
Mike might have smelled the partridge while it was flying across the valley, for it had passed quite near the cabin, but he could not possibly have scented it after the bird alighted among the poplars. Still, he seemed to know it was there.
Even Red did not possess a better eye for marking game down, and Red was far and away the best partridge dog ever to be in the Wintapi. That a puppy should equal him in any respect was little short of amazing. Danny swung his axe against the dead hickory while he continued to steal covert glances at Mike.
The puppy continued to face away, all eager interest centered on the poplar grove. Finally Danny laid his axe do
wn and unfastened the leash. The liberated puppy raced toward the poplars, running at full speed and leaping all obstacles in his path. Danny watched him in amazement. Most hunting dogs cast back and forth until they find a scent, and not one in a thousand has enough hunting sense to mark game. But Mike could. Red was the only other dog Danny had ever seen that hunted in such a fashion; the red puppy had a lot of his father in him. Ross was at least partly right.
Mike stopped running to walk, then slowed to a near crawl. He edged forward, while Danny watched every move. The puppy was exercising so much inborn art and finesse that time seemed to stop. He snapped to a perfect point, and Danny gasped. It was almost as though Red hunted again. Then Mike broke and ran.
It was no nervous, unpremeditated break such as might be expected from the usual inexperienced puppy. Mike planned his break in a deliberate attempt to catch the bird he was stalking. The partridge flushed. Head up, tail stiff, Mike raced along beneath it. Puppy and partridge disappeared.
Danny shook his head. Flushing and chasing birds was a fault that might be remedied in any ordinary dog, but Mike had his own mind and will. Whipping and beating would only make him rebellious, and Danny had no inclination to train any dog in such a fashion anyway.
Turning the problem over in his mind, Danny picked up his axe and resumed chopping the dead hickory. Mike had Red’s old speed and dash, and the Irish setter strength, but he lacked something that he must have before he could even be considered a hunter. He was a rebel, a wild, bull-headed rebel who had never bothered to consider anything except himself.
Mike came back just as Danny finished cutting the dead tree into sections Ross could use in his smoke house. The puppy was panting hard, but it was very obvious that he had had a delightful time. There was no hang-dog sheepishness about him, either. He wagged up to Danny and threw himself down on the cool grass beside Red, who had already come in from his own wanderings.
“Tired out, eh?” Danny asked, “Maybe you’ve got a right to be. Bet you’ve run fifteen miles since leaving me. I never did see a dog with so much get to him and so few brains.”
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