Yellowfoot will be hanging out in Dockerty's Swamp. You'd best get your
own rifle in working order."
Bud said, "I already have."
Gram was more observant. "You're late, Allan," she said.
"I stayed to talk with Mr. Demarest," Bud said, in what he hoped was a
casual tone. "He brought me home."
"What's the trouble?" she said, and Gramps looked up sharply.
"There's no trouble," Bud said.
"You can tell me, Allan. We're here to help you."
"If you're in a jam, Bud, we're on your side," Gramps said. "What'd you
do? Sock the principal?"
"Honestly there's no trouble," Bud said. "Mr. Demarest and I talked
about agriculture college."
"How nice," Gram said. "Every one of our boys and girls has gone to
college. Now the twelfth will go, too."
"No he won't," Bud said. "Mr. Demarest said I hardly need a degree in
agriculture if I'm going to stay here and take over Bennett's Farm. He
said I can learn what I must know about poultry husbandry and berry
culture as I go along."
"You're a right handy young feller at a lot of things," Gramps said.
"But you're 'bout the poorest liar I ever laid eyes on. Joe Demarest
never told you that."
"Well," Bud stammered, "not exactly. We had quite a talk."
"About what?"
"College."
"You make nine times as many circles as Old Yellowfoot with fifteen
hunters hot on his tail," Gramps said. "He told you to go to college,
didn't he?"
"Yes," Bud admitted. "But I'm not going."
"Why not?"
"I don't want to waste that much time. I can pick up what I must know as
I go along."
"That is about the foolishest notion I ever heard," Gramps declared. "In
my time I've met lots of men who didn't know enough, but offhand I can't
remember any who knew too much. Sure you're going. May be you can't live
like a millionaire's son on what we got in the bank, but you can get
through."
"I can't take your money!" Bud blurted.
"Pooh," Gram sniffed. "What's money for? Of course you'll take it and
we'll be mighty proud to have a college graduate running Bennett's Farm.
Won't we, Delbert?"
"Yeah," said Gramps who had begun to oil his rifle again. "Now you'd
best get out of your school duds. I fed and bedded your hifalutin'
chickens though I'm sort of uneasy around that one high-steppin'
rooster. He's got so much blue blood that most any time at all I expect
him to whip out one of those fancy glasses on sticks. That rooster sure
ought to have one. He figures I'm not fit to be in the same chicken
house with him. You beat it along now, Bud. I didn't milk the cows."
"Take a couple of cookies with you," Gram said.
Bud grabbed a handful of cookies and went up to his room. As he went
about changing into work clothes, Bud kept his jaws clamped tightly.
Gram and Gramps were wonderful, but they were so hopelessly out of touch
with the world that they understood neither the value of money nor why
Bud couldn't take the savings they had accumulated almost penny by penny
over nearly half a century. They still added to it, but still almost
penny by penny, and there was not even a possibility of sudden wealth.
Anyway, Bud said to himself, he had another year of high school before
he could even hope to enter college. Perhaps something would turn up
before then. But in his heart he knew nothing would and he decided to
say no more about college. There was no point in arguing with Gram and
Gramps.
As Bud milked the cows, took care of the stock and ate the evening meal
with Gram and Gramps, he all but forgot his lost hope for a college
education. Tomorrow's hunt for Old Yellowfoot was too exciting for him
to brood over what could not be helped.
The tinny clatter of his alarm clock jarred him out of deep sleep the
next morning well before the usual time. Bud shut the alarm off, leaped
to the floor, and padded across it to revel for a moment in the frigid
blast that blew in his open window. With snow on the ground and weather
cold enough to keep it from melting without being too cold for comfort,
it was a perfect day for hunting deer.
When he returned to the kitchen after doing the morning chores, Gram was
making pancakes and cooking sausage and Gramps was sitting in a chair.
"Why didn't you call me?" he growled. "We'd have been in the woods
sooner if I'd helped with the chores."
"Now don't be grouchy," Gram said. "Old Yellowfoot's been roaming about
Bennett's Woods for a good many years. I think he'll last another
fifteen minutes."
"A body would figure I'm a crippled old woman," Gramps said. "Maybe you
should ought to wrap me up in cotton and put me to bed so I won't get
scratched or something. Pah! I never did see the beat of such a
business!"
"If you're feeling as mad as all that," Gram said sharply, "you won't
have to shoot Old Yellowfoot. Just bite him and he'll die from
hydrophobia."
Bud giggled and Gramps couldn't help chuckling.
"Of all the dang fools in the world, people are the dangdest," he said.
"I put myself in mind of Charley Holan, who said he'd be the happiest
man in Dishnoe County if he just had a good brood sow. He got the sow
and then he needed a place to keep it. So he said he'd be the happiest
man ever if he had a place to keep it. He got one and found he needed a
boar. Charley got the boar and first thing you know he was overrun with
pigs. They did poorly that year, it didn't even pay to haul 'em to
market. So Charley says he'd be the happiest man in Dishnoe County if
he'd never even seen a pig. And this is the first season in the past
three I've ever been able to hunt Old Yellowfoot. We'll tag him 'fore
the season ends, Bud."
"I hope so, Gramps," Bud said.
"Dig in. It takes a pile of Mother's pancakes and a heap of sausage to
see a man through a day in the deer woods."
After breakfast they stepped into the cold predawn blackness. Shep,
tied as usual while deer season was in swing, came to the end of his
rope, whined, pressed his nose against their hands and pleaded as usual
to be taken along.
Gramps stopped just inside Bennett's Woods, almost in sight of the barn.
It was still too dark to shoot, but they often saw deer from the barn
and they could expect to see deer from now on. It was true that Old
Yellowfoot had never been seen so near the farm but that was no sign he
never would be.
They went on as soon as they were able to sight clearly on a target a
hundred yards away. Their jackets were tightly buttoned and their
earmuffs pulled down against the frosty air. A doe faded across the
trail like a gray ghost, leaving sharply imprinted tracks in the snow. A
little farther on they saw a small buck. Then a doe and fawn ran wildly
through the woods, and Gramps halted in his tracks.
Bud stared. Since he had come to Bennett's Farm he had seen many deer,
and many of them had been running. But he had never seen any of them run
like this.
"That pair's scared," Gramps said. "In all my born days I haven't seen
ten deer run that fast, and the last one had wolves on its trail."
"Could wolves be chasing these?" Bud asked.
Gramps shook his head. "As far as I know, there hasn't been a wolf in
Bennett's Woods for twenty-six years. Me and Eli Dockstader got the last
one, and there's nothing else I can recall offhand that could start a
couple of deer running that way and keep 'em running. Still, it has to
be something."
Off in the distance, rifles began to crack as hunters started sighting
and shooting at deer. Gramps and Bud paid no attention, for if other
hunters could see them, they must be ordinary deer.
When they reached Dockerty's Swamp, where Gramps thought they might find
Old Yellowfoot, Bud said, "Let me go down and track him through, Gramps,
and you take it easy."
"Poof!" the old man said. "If Old Yellowfoot's in there, there's just
one man got a chance of putting him out and that's me. Doc Beardsley
said I could come deer hunting, didn't he? 'Sides, did you ever know a
deer hunter--I'm talking of deer hunters and not deer chasers--who took
it anything 'cept easy? The slower you go, the more deer you see."
"That's so," Bud admitted.
"Kite round and get on your stand," Gramps ordered. "I'll be through by
and by."
He disappeared and Bud circled the swamp to the brush-grown knoll that
deer chose as an escape route when they were driven out of Dockety's
Swamp. Rifles, some of them close and some distant, cracked at sporadic
intervals as other hunters continued to find and shoot at deer. Bud
waited quietly, with a couple of chickadees that were sitting nearby on
a sprig of rhododendron for company.
Before long he saw something move down the slope. Bud stiffened, ready
to shoot. It could only be a deer. But at the moment it was too far away
and too well hidden by brush for him to tell what kind of a deer. Then
it came on up the slope and Bud saw that it was a very good ten-point
buck, but he refrained from shooting. The ten point was a nice trophy
but he was not Old Yellowfoot.
Then nine does came by in no hurry, but without lingering as they walked
through the sheltering brush into the forest beyond. They were followed
by two smaller bucks, and then by another doe. Two and a half hours
after Bud had taken up his stand, Gramps reappeared. Bud saw with relief
that the old man did not look tired or even winded. Doc Beardsley had
known what he was talking about when he had said Gramps was able to hunt
deer this season.
"There were plenty of deer in the swamp, but Old Yellowfoot wasn't
among 'em," Gramps said. "We'll try Dozey Thicket."
But Old Yellowfoot was not in Dozey Thicket or Hooper Valley or Cutter's
Slashing or Wakefoot Hollow. Nor did they find Old Yellowfoot the next
day, although they saw at least three bucks with imposing racks of
antlers.
On Monday Bud had to return to school and Gramps hunted alone. All week
long he had no success, but when Bud came home Friday, Gramps was
waiting for him in the kitchen. There was an air of triumph about him
and a hunter's gleam in his eye.
"Found him, Bud," he said as soon as Bud came through the door.
"No!"
"Sure 'nough did! He's gone plumb out of Bennett's Woods into that footy
little thicket above Joe Crozier's place. I saw his track where he came
to the top of the hill and went back again, but I didn't hunt him 'cause
I was afraid I might spook him. But two of us can get him right where he
is."
Saturday morning, Bud and Gramps waited for dawn on the ridge
overlooking Joe Crozier's thicket. When daylight came, they sighted
their rifles on a rock about a hundred yards away, and for a moment
neither spoke.
Crozier's thicket had at one time been a fine stand of hardwoods. Joe
Crozier's father had cut the larger trees and buzzed them up for
firewood, and the thicket had grown back to spindly young saplings. It
was just the place a wise buck like Old Yellowfoot would choose as a
refuge during hunting season, for nobody would ever think of looking for
him there. But it was also a place where experienced hunters who did
stumble onto his refuge would surely kill him.
"Let's go down," Gramps said softly.
Side by side they descended the hill, but when they were still forty
yards from Crozier's thicket, they stopped. There was a patch of dark
gray there that might have been a protruding knob of a tree or a
boulder, but it wasn't. Old Yellowfoot, who knew the odds but was not
about to give up, began to try to sneak away.
He was as huge as ever and he had lost none of his cunning. But his left
antler was now only a single straight spike and his right one a snarled
welter of many points.
Bud almost cried with disappointment, for he knew how Gramps had dreamed
of the royal trophy Old Yellowfoot's antlers would make. And now he had
overtaken Old Yellowfoot only to find him in his decadence. Never again
would Old Yellowfoot be a worth-while trophy for anyone. He had
succumbed to age.
As Bud was about to speak to Gramps, the old man said serenely, "Nature
got to him before we could and I reckon that's as it should be. He was
just a little too good to hang on anybody's wall. Let's go see Mother."
* * * * *
A week later, Bud and Gramps went into Bennett's Woods to bring out a
load of firewood. Bud drove the team, Gramps sat on the bobsled seat
beside him and Shep tagged amiably behind. They were half a mile from
the farmhouse when the horses stopped of their own accord and raised
their heads to stare. Looking in the same direction, Bud saw the black
buck.
More darkly colored than any other deer Bud had ever seen, the buck was
standing rigidly still in a little opening between two clusters of
stunted hemlocks. His antlers had become magnificent. The black buck's
head was high, and his eyes wary and his nostrils questing. A second
later he glided out of sight into the nearest hemlocks.
For a moment Bud and Gramps sat enthralled, scarcely believing what they
had seen. Then Gramps sighed and said, "Nothing's ever really lost, Bud.
That's as good a head as Old Yellowfoot ever carried. Next year we'll
hunt the black buck."
chapter 10
The spring sun was warm on Bud's back as he bent over the freshly tilled
garden plot. He plucked a single strawberry plant from the tray beside
him, trimmed off a precise third of its roots with a pair of Gram's old
scissors and cut off a broken leaf. Then he scooped out a hole big
enough to let the remaining roots fan out. Strawberries must be planted
not too deep and not too shallow, Mr. Demarest had said, but at exactly
the right depth. Although there were several systems for establishing a
strawberry bed, Mr. Demarest favored starting with the plants one foot
apart in rows three feet apart. This made for large fruit, he said; and,
once the plants had matured so that they formed a matted row eighteen
inches or two feet wide, there would still be enough space to weed,
mulch and cultivate them.
The strawberry plant firmly imbedded, Bud was using a twelve-inch stick
to measure the distance to the next one when Gramps came up behind him
and said, "You're a thirty-second of an inch off."
Bud looked around and grinned. Gramps had been caustic when Bud had
asked him if he could rent a patch of ground for a strawberry bed.
According to Gramps, the farm was used to good old-fashioned crops like
potatoes, corn, beans and oats, and wasn't likely to take kindly to
anything so newfangled as strawberries. Anyhow, Gramps had wanted to
know, who in his right mind would think of planting cultivated berries
when you could go out in the fields and pick all the wild ones you
wanted?
When Gram had reminded Gramps of the high price Pat Haley paid for
cultivated berries, Gramps had replied that it was not his fault if
fools and their money were soon parted. But if Bud wanted a strawberry
patch, and if he wanted to do all the work of plowing and preparing the
plot himself, he wouldn't stop him. But he couldn't in all conscience
charge him rent because, as anybody could see, there would never be any
profits. And if there were any, he could always reconsider.
Gramps became even more eloquent when Bud said that he wanted to plant a
raspberry and a blackberry patch as well as soon as he had the money to
buy plants. There were hundreds of raspberry tangles and blackberry
thickets in Bennett's Woods, Gramps had pointed out, and anyone too lazy
to go out in the woods and pick his own raspberries or blackberries
would never earn enough money to buy cultivated ones. What was the world
coming to, anyhow? In his day they had taught common sense instead of
foolishness in school.
But actually the old man was delighted because Bud wanted to stay on and
eventually take over Bennett's Farm. Bud knew that secretly Gramps
approved of the new venture and was being caustic because he didn't want
to inflate Bud's ego. Gramps was too realistic to stand in the way of
young blood and young ideas. He knew that it is inevitable for the young
to take over when the old can no longer carry on--just as Old Yellowfoot
had relinquished his crown to the black buck. Bud had already proved
that purebred chickens would outproduce a mongrel flock, and Gramps had
replaced his flock with White Wyandottes like Bud's. Although Gramps had
never thought of growing cultivated berries, he saw its potential and
looked on Bud's new venture as a forward step that the young, not the
old, should take.
"How many of those plants you got, Bud?" Gramps asked as he inspected
the row Bud had planted so far.
"Two hundred."
"What'd you pay for 'em?"
"Forty dollars."
Gramps whistled. "Twenty cents each for those piddling little plants?"
"I could have had good plants for less," Bud said, "but Mr. Demarest
recommended these. They're bred especially for this climate and soil,
and they're everbearing."
Gramps chuckled. "I mind the time Mother and me picked your first pen of
chickens. We might have had some real good ones for half what yours
cost. But Mother said 'Delbert Bennett! If we're going to give that boy
chickens for Christmas, let's give him the best or none!' Now danged if
they ain't running all over the farm."
"Are you sorry?" Bud queried.
"Oh, I could have done the same thing," Gramps said casually. "Matter of
fact, I was thinking about it. Will say, though, that the more you put
in at the beginning the more you're like to take out at the end, and Joe
Demarest usually knows what he's talking about. I expect your berries
will do right well if drought don't get 'em, or flood rains don't wash
'em out, or somebody's cattle don't trample 'em, or any of a couple
dozen other things don't happen to 'em."
Gramps grinned, and then he said, "How long do you figure on being busy,
Bud?"
"I'm not sure," Bud said. "I may be busy all morning." Two hundred
strawberry plants were not so many, but Mr. Demarest always made much of
the importance of doing things the right way, and this was the first
time Bud had done anything like this on his own. He was determined to
plant them properly even if it took all day.
"Shucks," Gramps said. "I got me another trout spotted."
Bud glanced up eagerly. "You have?"
"Sure have," Gramps said. "He lives two pools below the one where we saw
the otter playing. He ain't as big as Old Shark, but he's big enough."
At first Bud was about to heel in the remaining strawberry plants and
finish the next day. Then he thought again. The plants had cost almost
all the money he had been able to save and, far more important, he had
set out to accomplish something. Gramps was practically retired now and
he could do about what he pleased. But Bud couldn't.
"I'd like to, Gramps," he said reluctantly, "but I've got to get the
rest of these planted."
There was a brief silence before Gramps said, "Remember when we finally
caught up with Old Yellowfoot but didn't shoot him because his antlers
were no longer worth it? And remember the black buck we ran across while
we were fetching a load of wood a while back?
"The more I think about him, the more I think he has a better rack of
antlers than Old Yellowfoot ever had. I got to get me one really good
head 'fore I hang up my rifle, and that's the one. We'll line our sights
on him next season sure, Bud."
Bud kept his head down so Gramps could not see his face. He could not
harm the black buck, but neither could he hurt Gramps. He had hoped the
old man would forget the black buck, but from the beginning he had known
that was a forlorn hope. Gramps forgot nothing connected with Bennett's
Woods.
"What did you say, Bud?" Gramps asked.
"Why, sure we'll go deer hunting."
Gramps said, "We'll do more than that. We'll hunt the black buck and
we'll get him. Well, seeing that you're so all-fired busy, I might as
well start puttering about myself. Maybe I can even make Mother think
I'm working for a change."
The old man left, and Shep rose from the grass in which he had been
lying down to tag behind him. All at once Bud felt that he knew why he
wanted to stay on Bennett's Farm. Even though few people can write great
poetry, compose deathless music, paint immortal pictures, the creative
urge could find its expression on the farm. Gram in her flawless
kitchen, Gramps among his crops or in the woods and fields he loved so
dearly and understood so well, were truly creative and therefore truly
happy. So was Mr. Demarest, the underpaid, overworked agriculture
teacher at Haleyville High.
Bud did not understand the whys and wherefores, but he knew that he
wouldn't change places with anyone on this bright spring day. Planting
strawberries might not be the ultimate in human achievement, but Bud
knew that it suited him.
Then he frowned. Before preparing his strawberry bed, he had read all
the books he could find on the subject and had talked at length with Mr.
Demarest. According to the directions, the plants had to be set out
precisely one foot apart in rows three feet apart. It was all very well
to go by the book, but conditions vary even from field to field, and Bud
realized that he did not know enough to adapt the method of planting to
make it ideal for the special conditions of his strawberry bed. The more
he knew about farming, the more keenly he felt his ignorance. But he had
almost abandoned his dream of getting a degree in agriculture. Even so
he was determined to learn anyhow. If he couldn't go to college, he
could at least get the textbooks used there and teach himself. That
would be hard, but if it was the only way, he would do it. He loved
Bennett's Farm too much not to give it the attention it deserved.
Shep wandered back from wherever he had left Gramps and threw himself
down in the grass to watch Bud, who looked at him affectionately. Shep
had been his first friend when he came to Bennett's Farm and his true
friend since. Shep had no pedigree, but a loving heart, and unswerving
loyalty counted for a great deal, too.
"Only half a dozen more, Shep," Bud said. "Then I'll water them and
we're through."
Shep wagged his tail lazily and grinned with his panting jaws. When Bud
finished planting, Shep paced alongside him as he went to the barn for
the hose.
Bud had chosen his strawberry patch partly for its location, for it
caught the morning sun but was sheltered by a grassy knoll from the
blazing heat of the midsummer afternoon sun. Wild strawberries had grown
there plentifully, too, and it was near enough to the barn so that the
farm's hundred-and-fifty-foot hose could be attached to the barn spigot
and reach all corners of the bed.
The plants needed water now to help them overcome the shock of
transplanting, and Bud watered them carefully, using a fine spray to
keep from washing the loose soil away and at the same time giving each
plant enough water to soak thoroughly both the roots of the plant and
the earth about it. He had almost finished when Shep began to bark.
Bud looked around to see Sammy Toller, whose farm was a mile and a half
north of Gramps', coming from the barn toward him. A small but
tremendously energetic little man, Sammy was usually the epitome of
good humor. Now his jaw was set, and his eyes smoldered and he did not
even appear to notice the freshly planted berries.
"Is Delbert about?" Sammy asked.
"He's here somewhere, Mr. Toller," Bud said. "I'll find him as soon as
I've rolled up this hose."
"Can you leave the hose for now?" Sammy asked. "This is pretty
important."
Shep trailed along as they walked back to the barn, and Bud shut off the
water at the spigot. They found Gramps working the newly spaded family
garden with a hand rake. He looked around and said amiably,
"Hi, Sammy."
"'Lo, Delbert. Got a few minutes?"
"Sure thing. What's up?"
"I'd druther take you to my place so you can see for yourself."
"Can I go along?" Bud asked.
"Sure," Gramps said, "but scoot along and tell Mother where we're
going."
After racing into the kitchen and back, Bud climbed into the cab of
Sammy's pickup truck with Sammy and Gramps, Shep leaped into the rear.
Sammy eased the truck down the drive into the road and turned north
toward his own farm. Ordinarily Sammy was loquacious but he said
nothing as they jogged along.
Sammy's house was a mile from the highway and his closest neighbor was
half a mile away, which made his one of the most isolated farms in the
Haleyville district. Otherwise it was very much like the surrounding
farms, with a substantial house and the usual barns and outbuildings.
Chickens were wandering about and a little group of Shropshire
sheep--Sammy was trying to build up a registered flock of them--was
huddled together in a pen near the barn. As they drove up, Sammy's dog,
a farm collie like Shep, acted as if he was about to exterminate them
until Shep walked stiffly forward. Then the two dogs sniffed noses,
wagged their tails and went off for a romp.