than in the open country where the wind had a full sweep. There were few
drifts and no deep ones, and the five inches of soft snow made a
pleasant cushion beneath Bud's pacs.
By almost imperceptible degrees the day lightened. They were perhaps a
half mile from the house when Gramps stopped. He raised his rifle and
sighted on a stump about a hundred yards away. Then he lowered his
rifle and said, "We'll wait here a bit, Bud."
"Why?"
"It ain't light enough to see the sights, and while I think Old
Yellowfoot will be hanging out in Dockerty's Swamp, he could be anywhere
from here on. If we jump him, we don't want to guess where we're
shooting."
Just then, they heard five shots.
"Fool!" Gramps growled. "He saw something move and, though it's a
lead-pipe cinch he couldn't tell what it was, he shot anyway. Those kind
of hunters got less brains than the game they hunt."
Twenty minutes later there were three more shots spaced far enough apart
to indicate that the hunter was taking aim. Gramps listened carefully.
He sighted a second time on the stump, held his sight for a full three
seconds, and turned to Bud.
"What do you make of it?"
Bud raised his own rifle, centered the ivory bead of the front sight in
the notched rear, and aimed at a puff of snow that clung like a boll of
cotton to the stump. He lowered the rifle.
"It looks all right to me."
"You can see?"
"Well enough for a good aim."
"Come on, and from here on there's no talking."
Gramps slowed to a snail's pace, stopping every ten minutes or so to
look all around. Bud understood what he was doing, for while it is true
that deer are noted for their speed, it is a mistake to try to chase
them. If you slog as far as twenty miles a day through deer country, you
are almost sure to see deer, but not as many as the hunter who works
carefully through a comparatively limited deer cover. Slow and easy is
the proper way nine times out of ten.
Rifles were cracking from all quarters now, sometimes three or four at
once, sometimes only one and occasionally none at all. Gramps stopped
suddenly and pointed to two deer about a hundred and twenty yards away.
Both were bucks. One bore a stunted rack of antlers, but the second had
a trophy that would shame no hunter.
Gramps went on. The two bucks, aware now of their presence, each sounded
a single blasting snort and bounded away. Bud watched them go without
regret. Either buck would have been a fairly simple shot. But they were
hunting Old Yellowfoot.
They saw seven more deer before they reached Dockerty's Swamp. It
covered about seventy acres and was a tangle of high bush huckleberries,
cedar, balsam and a few great hardwoods, whose branches rose gaunt and
bare above the surrounding stunted growth. A bush-grown knoll flanked
the swamp and it was surrounded by low mountains that were covered with
cutover hardwoods and patches of laurel and small evergreens. Although
Dockerty's Swamp was well known as a refuge for deer, Gramps was one of
the few who knew how to flush them out.
Gramps led Bud to the summit of the knoll and halted in a thicket so
dense that they could see no farther than forty feet ahead of them.
Gramps raised a forefinger, a signal for Bud to stay where he was.
Foolish young deer might show themselves in sparse cover or even open
meadows, but a buck as wise as Old Yellowfoot would make for the
thickest cover when Gramps chased him out of the swamp. It was a
foregone conclusion that he would come up the knoll. All other ways out
of the swamp were so sparsely forested that anything emerging would make
an easy shot.
Two and a half hours after Gramps left, Bud saw a deer move farther down
the slope. Bud remained perfectly still. The deer was almost completely
hidden by brush and he was unable to tell if it was a buck or doe or
even how large it was.
Ten seconds later the black fawn stepped into plain sight.
He was a well-grown buck now, and sturdy, and his hair was so dark that
the fawn spots had faded into it. Little nubbins that were his first
antlers projected two inches above his head.
The black buck came on, stopping now and then to look behind him and
always testing the winds. He had been chased from the swamp and, young
though he was, he had planned and executed a masterly retreat instead of
panicking. He passed thirty feet to Bud's right, turned and stared
fixedly at him when they were abreast. Then the black buck leaped out of
sight into a laurel thicket.
Three does came next, then a chesty little six-point buck that shook his
antlers and rolled his eyes as though anything that dared challenge him
did so at its own peril. Finally Gramps appeared.
"Old Yellowfoot wasn't there, Bud. We'll try Happy Ridge."
But Old Yellowfoot was not on Happy Ridge, or in Hargen's Pines or Dead
Man's Hollow, or any other place where they looked. They might have had
either one of two more nice bucks that day, but they scorned both.
Finally, sorry that a nearly perfect day was ending, Gramps and Bud
turned homeward. Tomorrow was another day and there were more to follow.
They entered the house and Gramps said to Gram,
"Nary a sign, not even an old track . . ."
He stopped suddenly, staggered across the floor and dropped his rifle on
the table before sinking into a chair. He buried his face in his hands,
and once more Bud heard the terrible wheezing that had been so
terrifying back in the grouse woods.
chapter 7
From the school bus the blacktop road looked to Bud like a frozen black
river between the banks of snow cast aside by the snowplow and he
pretended that the poles indicating culverts were channel markers. The
Barston farm buildings to the left and a hundred and fifty yards from
the highway seemed to him an island in the sea of snow and the Barstons'
orchard looked like a great mass of seaweed.
Soon he tired of daydreaming and stared stonily out of the window. When
Christmas had still been weeks away, he had been able to tell himself
that it might never come. But now that only a few days remained before
Christmas, there was no more hope. This was the last trip the school bus
would be making until after New Year's, for the Christmas vacation was
beginning and in just three days Gram and Gramps' children and
grandchildren would arrive and there would be no place for an outsider.
It would have been far better, he thought bleakly, if he had never come
to Bennett's Farm and probably it would be better if he left now. But
although Bud's imagination could whisk him anywhere at all, the harsh
realities of life as he had lived it sobered him. He could dream of the
French Foreign Legion, the carefree existence of a cowboy, the
adventurous career of a seaman or the unhampered life of a trapper in
the arctic north, but he knew in his heart his dreams would never come
true. Twelve-year-old boys had run away from the orphanage, but none had
stayed away for more than three days before they had returned of their
own accord or had been brought back by the police. A youngster traveling
alone without resources had less than one chance in a thousand of
remaining undetected, and Bud knew it.
Besides, he was stubborn and unwilling to back away from any situation.
He would face the assembled Bennetts and do the best he could. In one
way or another, he had faced giants before.
To take his mind away from the ordeal ahead of him, Bud turned back to
the hunt for Old Yellowfoot and the day Gramps had been stricken in the
kitchen.
He had been frightened then, too, but not with the stark fear he had
known the day he and Gramps had hunted for grouse and Gramps had become
ill while they were in the woods. That day Bud had been alone, but now
there was Gram. Things might still go wrong now, but not altogether
wrong if she was there.
He remembered how Gram had walked calmly over to Gramps as soon as he
was stricken and said quietly,
"You're tired, Delbert. Now you just sit right there and take it easy."
Then she had gone to the telephone and, after she had spoken to Dr.
Beardsley, returned to sit beside Gramps. Only her eyes had shown the
torment she was enduring. Bud had hovered in the background, not knowing
what to do, but ready to do anything. Gramps raised his head again and
there was that terrible convulsive cough, but afterward he breathed more
easily. The blue color that had invaded his face began to fade. He
started to sweat and Gram wiped his face gently.
"Gosh blame nonsense," Gramps gasped.
"Of course," Gram said. "That's just what it is. You sit there anyway."
"Why?"
"Maybe because I like your company and you have been gone all day."
Only later had it occurred to Bud that she was deliberately resorting to
subterfuge to make him sit still until Dr. Beardsley arrived. Gramps
would never have accepted a doctor otherwise. As it was, he gave an
outraged growl when Dr. Beardsley finally came.
"What the blazes do you want?" Gramps grumbled.
Dr. Beardsley said calmly, "To see you, Delbert, and I don't have all
night. Open your shirt."
Dr. Beardsley had hung out his shingle in Haleyville when he was
twenty-two. He was seventy-two now, and there was little in his half
century of practice that he hadn't dealt with. He had learned long ago
that he would be obeyed if he expected obedience and tolerated nothing
else.
"While you're about it," the doctor said, "roll up your sleeve."
Grumbling, Gramps did as he was told. Dr. Beardsley took his blood
pressure and thrust a thermometer between Gramps' lips. When Gramps made
a face, he said,
"That's a thermometer, Delbert, not a stick of peppermint. Don't try to
bite it in half."
While Gramps mouthed the thermometer, Dr. Beardsley applied a
stethoscope to his chest, then to his back. He removed the thermometer
and, after he read it, he washed it at the sink and dipped it in a
sterile tube before putting it back in its case.
"I suppose you were hunting today?" he asked Gramps.
"You know anybody who wasn't?" Gramps said.
"I know some who shouldn't have been, and I know at least one who isn't
going again until next year. His name's Delbert Bennett."
"Blasted nonsense!" Gramps snorted. "You doctors ever talk anything
'cept nonsense?"
"Seldom," Dr. Beardsley admitted cheerfully, "but it just so happens
that I'm talking sense at present. It isn't too serious, but it will be
if you don't take care. The truth is your heart isn't as young as it
used to be. With reasonable luck it will last you another twenty years,
and I fully expect you'll grow more cussed every year. But right now it
needs rest, which means that you're going to take it easy for the next
six months. In addition to your regular night's sleep, lie down for at
least three hours every day. We'll see after that."
"I never heard so blame much foolishness!" Gramps tried to roar, but he
was too weak and could only blink indignantly at Dr. Beardsley.
Gram said quietly but firmly, "He'll do as you say, Doctor."
"Clobber him if he doesn't."
"I will."
Dr. Beardsley packed his stethoscope and sphygmomanometer back in his
bag and wrote a prescription, which he handed to Gram.
"There's no emergency about this; the youngster can bring it when he
comes home from school tomorrow. After that, see that he takes his
medicine according to the directions that will accompany the
prescription and refill it before it runs out."
"Medicine!" Gramps said. "You pill peddlers can't think of anything else
when you don't know what to do."
"He'll take the medicine, Doctor," Gram promised.
Dr. Beardsley said, "I leave you in care of your boss, Delbert," and
went out into the night.
That had been that; hunting Old Yellowfoot was over for the season.
Gramps grumbled and growled, but he took his medicine and accepted his
three hours of daily rest. Bud shouldered as many of the chores as he
could.
Then the school bus stopped, and as Bud trudged up the drive, he told
himself sullenly that at least he was beholden to nobody for he had paid
his way. But in his heart he knew it wasn't as simple as that, and that
he would gladly work as many hours a day as he could stay awake to help
Gram and Gramps.
For the past week the kitchen had been a heaven of tantalizing odors.
Bushels of cookies and rows of fruit cakes had emerged from the great
oven. Gram and Helen Carruthers had been busy from daylight until after
dark. Gram was taking another tray of cookies from the oven when Bud
came in and she smiled at him. Helen Carruthers, a tall, graying woman
who seldom smiled, was mixing something in a pan. She nodded at Bud and
told him to help himself.
Bud grabbed a handful of cookies and went to his room to change his
clothes. As he went out to the barn, Shep came running to meet him and
inside he found Gramps sitting on a bale of hay. The barn had become
Gramps' refuge. The old man nodded glumly.
"Dogged if I know how she does it," Gramps said plaintively. "I'm
supposed to take that stuff Doc Beardsley gave me, and it's a wonder it
don't kill a body, every four hours. So every four hours, no matter how
busy she is, Mother's right on deck with it. Pah! A man can't be himself
any more."
"You should have your medicine, Gramps."
"Medicine, yes, but that ain't any medicine. Now you take sassafras root
and slippery elm bark; that was medicine when they was boiled together
by somebody who knew what he was doing." Gramps fell into a glum
silence. Then he said, "Anyhow, they didn't get Old Yellowfoot."
"How do you know?"
"Everybody'd know if they got a buck that big. He'll be waiting for us
next year."
"That's good!" Bud said with feeling.
"Ain't it," Gramps said sourly. "It'd be a heap better if next deer
season wasn't such a passeling ways off. I felt in my bones that this
was our year to get Old Yellowfoot, and we'd of had him if it hadn't
been for this blasted nonsense. Oh well, we'll be howling a long spell
if we howl about it. Want to help me fetch the Christmas tree tomorrow?"
* * * * *
The next day they set off across the snow with Shep frolicking beside
them. Bud carried an ax and a rope. Gramps led the way to a young
hemlock that, because it grew in the open, was evenly formed on all
sides and sloped to a nearly perfect top. Bud felled it, then hitched
the rope around its trunk and slid it home across the snow. Under
Gramps' direction he sawed the chopped end off squarely and nailed a
wooden standard across the trunk. Gram and Helen Carruthers took over as
soon as Gramps and Bud had carried the tree into the living room and
stood it in a corner. The tree had to be moved this way and that, seldom
more than two inches in any direction, until Gram and Helen were finally
satisfied and the top could be secured with string.
Even while he was helping with the Christmas preparations, Bud felt
detached. He was convinced that they were being made solely for the
Bennetts' children and grandchildren, in whose eyes he would be no more
than an interloper. And so Bud walked grudgingly forward when the first
of the real family arrived, forcing himself not to surrender to an
impulse to run. As soon as he had mumbled "Pleased t'meetcha," he fled
to the barn.
By Christmas morning the house was filled with Bennett relatives and
more would be there in time for dinner. It was still dark when Bud
awakened, and he slipped quietly out of bed and into his clothes. Then,
shoes in hand, he padded softly down the stairs. He wanted to escape
from the house and be out with the stock. Also, Gramps needed rest, and
if he were not disturbed, he would sleep late enough so that Bud could
finish the chores. Otherwise, Gramps would insist on helping. Bud knew
by the light seeping through the crack under the kitchen door that
somebody had preceded him. It was Gram.
"Allan," she said, "it's only half-past five."
She must have been up for a very long time. Now she was filling the last
of a row of pies. As he watched her, Bud could not help thinking of the
feast to come--roast turkey, chicken, duck and goose; sweet and white
potatoes; mince, pumpkin and apple pie; salads and cooked vegetables;
cake and ice cream. But he refused to look into the dining room, where
the big table had been extended to its full length and been flanked by
many small tables. There would be more than thirty at Christmas dinner,
and there was room and food for all of them.
Bud was just as careful to avoid the parlor where gifts were piled in
little mountains beneath the tree. He thought fleetingly of the sewing
kit he had put under the tree for Gram and the book called _Africa's
Dangerous Game_ for Gramps. Without resentment, he reflected that there
would be nothing for him.
He put on his shoes and took his jacket and cap from the closet, and was
about to go out when he saw that he was being rude to Gram. Even if
Christmas meant nothing to him, it meant a great deal to her. And so he
turned and wished her a Merry Christmas as heartily as he could.
"Why bless you, Allan. And a very Merry Christmas to you," she said,
hugging and kissing him. Even though he had no claim on Gram, it looked
as if she had not rejected him completely, and he felt a little better.
He left the house and stopped on the back porch to hug Shep, whose warm,
wet tongue seemed to wash away some of Bud's loneliness. Together they
made their way through the snow to the stable where the four cows, warm
in their stanchions, blew softly through their nostrils and turned their
gently welcoming eyes on Bud. Some farmers claimed cows were glad to see
you only because you gave them food, but Bud knew better, especially on
this Christmas morning.
He forked hay into the mangers, measured grain into the feed boxes and
drew his stool up beside the fractious Cherub. It seemed a long while
ago and scarcely credible that he had once been afraid of her.
Bud milked the four cows deliberately, working as slowly as possible so
as to delay his return to the house in which he had become an alien.
Then he fed the horses, took care of the chickens and peered out of the
barn at the winter landscape which was gradually becoming lighter.
Although he had already cleaned it once, he cleaned the cow stable
again, carefully sifting anything that even remotely resembled refuse
from the fresh straw he had put down and carrying the refuse out to the
litter pile behind the barn.
He lingered on in the barn until he knew that if he did not return to
the house Gram or Gramps would come out to find out what had happened to
him. They would want to know what was the matter, and he was determined
not to spoil their happiness at Christmas by letting them know how
miserable he was.
As soon as he was inside the kitchen, Bud took off his work shoes and
put on the pair he wore to school. It was an involuntary and almost
unconscious gesture. He and Gramps always came to the table in the shoes
they wore in the barn, and as long as they were clean, neither of them
gave it a second thought. But now the house was full of strangers.
Only Gram seemed to notice his entrance and she came into the kitchen
from the dining room where the others were and started to cook his bacon
and eggs.
"Land sake, Allan, you were a long while at the chores," she said.
Bud stayed in the kitchen with her, hoping that he would be able to eat
there alone. But when his breakfast was ready, she carried the plate
into the dining room and Bud set his jaw and followed.
He had no sooner sat down than Gramps came in. He nodded at the table in
general and then turned to Bud.
"Did you do the morning chores, young feller?"
Bud said, "Yes," in a very small voice.
"Did you get into that little house, too?"
"Little house?"
"The one next the chicken house."
"No."
"You'd best kite along and get it."
Bud left the table, glad to get away, but burning with humiliation. The
little house that Munn Mackie had hauled in with his truck had nothing
in it. At least Bud thought it had nothing in it. But having been too
proud to ask about it in the beginning or since, he wasn't sure now. In
spite of all his precautions, he had come close to saddling Gramps with
a chore that he, Bud, ought to have done without Gramps' having to ask
him.
Bud came to the little house and, seeing a white envelope tied with a
red ribbon to the door latch, stood dumfounded. "_Merry Christmas_" was
written across the envelope and the card inside it read:
_Merry Christmas to our boy, Bud-Allan.
Gram and Gramps_
Bud opened the door and gasped. Last night after he had gone to bed
somebody must have strewn fresh straw on the floor of the little house.
There was a drinking fountain, a mash hopper, a grain feeder and a
container for oyster shell. A regal young cockerel strutted around six
pure-white pullets.
Bud entered the little house and pulled the door shut behind him,
latching it so no one could intrude on this wonderful moment. His heart
seemed to be beating in his throat and tears had sprung to his eyes. Now
for the first time in his life he knew what Christmas could mean.
He caught up the cockerel and, as he stroked it, looked around at the
pullets and thought of the flock they would become.
Bud was sure he had always wanted White Wyandottes like these.
chapter 8
Gramps took a turn for the better soon after the Christmas guests
departed, but his improvement was not an unmitigated blessing. The
better he felt, the more his enforced confinement chafed. Sores that
were opened because he had to stop hunting Old Yellowfoot after only one
day were rubbed raw because he could not go into the winter woods at
all. There was little he could have done there if he had gone, but he
still fretted to go.
He read and reread _Africa's Dangerous Game_, the book Bud had given him
for Christmas, and criticized each chapter as he read it. The book was
the abridged journal of an obscure professional hunter, and Gramps had
no sympathy at all for the hardships the author had suffered or the
perils he had faced. After all, Gramps said, he didn't have to go
looking for rogue elephants, man-killing lions or short-tempered
buffalo. And since he had gone after them of his own free will, he
should have known about the perils he would have to face before he had
ever started out. Of course he could expect trouble--what hunter
couldn't?--but the book would have been far more interesting if he had
given more space to hunting and less to the unendurable agonies that had
beset him. In fact, Gramps thought the long chapter in which the hunter
crossed the desert might better have been condensed into a single
sentence reading, "Don't cross this desert unless you carry plenty of
water."
Although the stature of the hero of _Africa's Dangerous Game_ dwindled
with each perusal, reading was a way to help ease the long hours when
Gramps could do little. And so Bud brought home books from the school
library. Usually he chose books with outdoor themes, and instead of
taking them to his room, he purposely left them on the kitchen table
where Gramps would see them. Gramps was always volubly critical and
often openly scornful of the books Bud brought home for him, but he read
them all.
When he was not reading or helping with the chores if Bud had not
managed to get them all done, Gramps devised endless cunning schemes for
getting the best of Old Yellowfoot next season. For Old Yellowfoot, his
one failure, galled Gramps every bit as much as Sir Lancelot would have
been galled had he been unhorsed by a downy-cheeked young squire. The
fact that illness had given Gramps only one day to hunt Old Yellowfoot
did not worry him. All that mattered was that Old Yellowfoot still wore
the rack of antlers that Gramps had sworn to hang in the living room.
Although the next deer season was still months away, Gramps gave his
campaign all the care and attention an able general would lavish on a
crucial battle. He carried a map of Bennett's Woods in his head and time
after time his imagination took him through every thicket in which the
great buck might hide. He pondered ways to drive him out and the various
countermoves Old Yellowfoot might make to try to elude him. Gramps made
lists, not only of the ways in which Old Yellowfoot could be expected to
behave differently from young and relatively inexperienced deer, but
also of his individual traits.
One evening in early April Bud read one of the lists that Gramps had
left on the kitchen table:
Old Yellowfoot knows more about hunters than they do about him.
He will not be spooked and he cannot be driven.
Don't expect to find him where such a buck might logically be
found, but don't overlook hunting him there. He does the
unexpected.