which the forest had been cleared from only the lower two-thirds. There
was a long-abandoned apple orchard about a hundred yards from where the
forest began, and a crow in one of the trees cawed lazily as they
approached.
After Sammy had led them around the orchard, Bud stopped in his tracks
at the sight of eighteen sheep strewn over the field between the orchard
and the forest. All of them were horribly bloated and mangled.
"I turned 'em out yesterday morning," Sammy said, "and I sure never
heard a thing to make me s'pose they were getting murdered. When they
didn't come home last night I hunted 'em, and this is what I found 'bout
an hour ago."
The two dogs trotted forward and sniffed at the first of the dead sheep.
Neither gave any sign that anything was amiss. Gramps stood a moment,
studying the dogs, and then he went to look at one of the sheep.
"Dog work," he said.
"How do you know?" Sammy said.
"Wolves kill clean and eat what they kill. They don't murder just for
cussedness and they don't mangle. What's more, these were wild dogs."
"What makes you so all-fired sure?"
"Were you here all day yesterday, when those sheep must have been
killed?"
"Yep."
"But you heard nothing?"
"Nary a whisper."
"Tame dogs you'd have heard. They haven't the sense to keep their mouths
shut on a job like this. Wild ones know that the less noise they make,
the longer they live."
Now Bud remembered the doe and fawn that he and Gramps had seen during
the last deer season when he and Gramps had been hunting Old
Yellowfoot. Gramps had said that something was chasing them. There must
have been wild dogs in Bennett's Woods even then, and no wonder the doe
and fawn had been running as though they were possessed.
"What can we do?" Sammy asked.
"Anything we try will take a heap of doing," Gramps said. "These wild
dogs know more than the smartest trap-pinched fox you ever saw. Still,
we'd best do all we can to stop 'em. Most of the time they hunt in the
woods, but there's no telling when they'll come again or who they'll
hit."
"How does a body go about stopping 'em?" Sammy asked.
"If it was most anything 'cept wild dogs I could tell you. A fox sticks
pretty much to his own beat and habits. So does a deer, bear, cat or
'most anything else. But wild dogs haven't any pattern. The most we can
do is, first of all, set traps. I doubt if it'll work 'cause the pack
that killed these sheep haven't been back to eat off 'em. I don't think
they'll decoy to bait either. We might bump into 'em by rambling round
with deer rifles."
Sammy Toller said grimly, "Soon's I take you home, I aim to start
rambling with my deer rifle."
Sammy took Bud, Gramps and Shep home and then roared back up the road at
forty miles an hour, an unheard-of speed for Sammy. Gramps was serious
and sober and Bud wondered. Dogs were dogs; did running wild make them
so very different?
"Are these wild dogs really bad?" he asked Gramps.
"Didn't you see Sammy Toller's dead sheep?"
"Yes, but wasn't that unusual?"
"Not a bit. I'd rather face a pack of timber wolves than a bunch of wild
dogs any day. Where a wolf will kite off and keep on kiting, a dog will
plan. He'll run just far enough to get out of a man's sight. Then he'll
figure some way to fool him and nine times out of ten he'll do it. Just
a minute."
Gramps went to the telephone, and as soon as he had finished telling
Pete Nolan, the game warden, about the wild dogs, the old man turned to
Bud and said, "Let's you and me mosey out in the woods, and we'll pack
rifles."
With Shep keeping pace, they sauntered into Bennett's Woods. A doe that
was heavy with fawn crept off, but a strutting cock grouse scarcely
bothered to move out of the way. Turkeys slunk away from their hidden
nesting sites, and from a knoll a buck with grotesque knobs of antlers
watched and stamped a threatening forefoot.
They found no sign of the pack in Bennett's Woods that day, but not long
afterward Pete Nolan came upon six of the pack harrying one of Tommy
Keeler's heifers and shot two of the wild dogs before the others fled.
Jess Limley got another and Sammy Toller shot two when the pack had
returned for another attack on his sheep. By the time the hunting season
rolled around again, it was generally agreed that there were at least
ten dogs in the pack and it was certain that they were still prowling
the woods.
chapter 11
Leaves crisp with frost rustled beneath Bud's pacs as he strode on
through the woods. His shotgun was half raised, but his mind was not on
the grouse that, any moment now, might rocket up from the copse of brush
he was approaching.
He sighed. It had been a busy summer and not entirely a good one. There
had been a good crop of young chickens, but a mysterious malady had
killed a third of them. Neither he nor Gramps had been able to discover
what it was. Gramps thought the trouble was that the White Wyandottes
were less hardy than crossbreeds. Bud was sure Gramps was mistaken,
although none of his books gave a clue as to what was wrong. More keenly
than ever, Bud felt his lack of knowledge and the need to acquire more.
During the spring and summer he had not worried much about hunting for
the black buck. Autumn and the deer season had seemed very far away
then. But now the season was here, and Gramps' anticipation mounted
daily.
Since school had reopened, Gramps had made as intensive a study of the
black buck and his habits as he had of Old Yellowfoot and his. At least
three times a week and sometimes more often, Gramps went into Bennett's
Woods to observe the buck. By now, Gramps knew the buck's favorite
haunts, his drinking places, when he liked to rest and when he foraged.
Twice Gramps had been within rifle shot, by which the old man concluded
that the black buck was not as cunning as Old Yellowfoot. Still, the
black buck would be no easy game, and he had an even bigger rack than
Old Yellowfoot's at its best. To hang that rack on the living-room wall
would be the crowning achievement of Gramps' career as a hunter and
fisherman. Between them, Gramps had made up his mind, he and Bud would
hang it there.
It occurred to Bud there in the autumn woods that if Gramps became ill
again, he wouldn't be able to go on hunting the black buck. Bud still
felt that a bond existed between him and the black buck, that his
destiny and the buck's hung on the same thread, so that Bud's good
fortune in being at Bennett's Farm would end if anything happened to the
buck. But Bud realized at once that he would rather face the end of the
buck and of his own happiness than another of Gramps' attacks.
Just as he came to that conclusion, the grouse rose in a thunder of
wings. Bud raised his gun and knew as he shot that the bird he was
aiming at was out of range. Then he heard Gramps' gun boom twice and saw
two grouse plummet into the leaves.
"Dreaming today?" Gramps called. "As Pete Henderson said to his boy,
Ben, 'I've taught you all I know and you still don't know nothing.' That
was as neat a straightaway shot as I ever saw."
"I wasn't ready."
"We'll teach a few grouse to wait until you are," Gramps said. "I swear
to gosh, Bud, you act like you got a girl on your mind."
Gramps went forward to pick up his grouse. He held them by the legs and
their mottled plumage rippled in the faint breeze. Gramps, who had seen
half a thousand grouse, looked for a moment at these two as though they
were the first. Then he walked to and sat down on a mossy log.
"Guess I'm getting old," he remarked. "I doubt if I'll be hunting
Bennett's Woods more than another forty or fifty years."
Bud said nothing as Gramps laid his grouse carefully in the leaves
beside the log and ejected the two spent shells from his double-barreled
twelve shotgun. The limit for grouse was four, but Gramps believed that
two was enough for any hunter.
After they had sat together on the log for a while, Gramps said, "I ran
across Old Yellowfoot day before yesterday and all he's got this year is
two spikes. I swear he knows it, too, and that spikes ain't legal. Stood
no more than twenty yards away, chewing his cud like any old cow and
hardly giving me a second look. He'll be safe unless one of those
trigger-happy hunters who'll shoot at anything runs across him, and I
doubt if one of those can find him. He hasn't lost his brains just
'cause the rest of him started downhill."
"He's earned his right to peace."
"'Peace' is a word with a lot of stretch, Bud. Take people now. Some
get it one way and some another, and some never get it. Heinrich
Umberdehoven can't have any peace 'thout he's working, because only when
he's working is there any hope of earning another dollar or two. Rudy
Bursin, he don't have any peace unless he's loafing, and he'd rather be
known as the Haleyville town bum than work. Sammy Toller never gets any
peace and I don't know why unless it's 'cause he's always deviled by
notions. When his sheep petered out, he figured to go in for cattle
feeding. If that don't work, he'll try something else. If it does, he'll
be fretted trying to make it bigger and better. Old Yellowfoot might
have peace if by that you mean he's safe from hunters. But I think he'd
rather be hunted."
"Why?"
"He's old, and the way he lives it ain't nice to get old. His bones will
ache, he'll feel the cold, he'll have a rough time finding enough to eat
in winter, and by and by he'll just naturally lay down and die. It won't
be because he has to, but because his life will not be worth living any
more. While he was being hunted he was in his prime, and he never gave a
darn anyhow because he knew he could get away from any hunter. He did it
for a good many years, and I think he got as much fun out of fooling
hunters as they did out of hunting him."
For the first time it occurred to Bud that hunting could be a two-way
street and that the hunted sometimes took as keen a delight in eluding
their pursuers as the hunters in pursuing. "It makes sense," he said
after he had thought it over.
"It is sense," Gramps said, "'less you get some poor little scared thing
too young to know what it's all about, and those you oughtn't to hunt
anyhow. But I'm sort of glad we didn't get Old Yellowfoot."
"Why?"
"He had the biggest rack I ever saw and I figured it'd be the biggest I
ever would see. But the black buck beats him, and it ain't right for one
person to kill two big deer. One's a trophy but two's hoggishness. If
you get the buck you want, and the black buck is the one I want, leave
the next big one for somebody else."
A fuzzy caterpillar, driven by some unseasonal urge, started crawling up
the log on which they were sitting. Gramps pointed at the caterpillar,
which was black at both ends and brown between.
"We're in for some early bad weather," he said.
"How do you know?" Bud asked.
"The longest black's on the fore end of that caterpillar, and that
always means the fore end of the winter will be long and hard."
Bud pondered this piece of information. Gramps' lore had proved valid so
often in the past that Bud knew better than to dismiss what the old man
was saying about caterpillars as so much local superstition. Shortly
after Bud had come to the farm, Gramps had told him that, when swallows
flew near the ground, a storm was in the making. Bud hadn't taken much
stock in that until he learned in school that the low-pressure area that
precedes a storm drives insects down near the earth and so the swallows
follow them. Therefore, when swallows fly close to the ground, a storm
does usually follow.
"You aim to get yourself a couple of grouse?" Gramps asked.
"I don't think so," Bud said.
"Something is chewing on you," Gramps said. "What is it?"
"Nothing," Bud said, turning his face away because he could not look at
Gramps and tell an untruth.
"You ain't going to stop hunting?" Gramps asked.
"Two grouse are plenty for the three of us."
"I hope you don't feel like hanging fire when we go after the black
buck."
"I'll hunt him with you," Bud promised.
"Then we'll get him." Gramps seemed relieved. "Well, let's mosey home
and see how Mother's doing."
* * * * *
In his first free period the following Monday, Bud sat in the
principal's outer office at Haleyville High School. After five minutes
Mr. Thorne's secretary told him to go in. Bud, who had always been at
ease with Mr. Thorne, was nervous.
"I'd like permission to be excused from school for as much of the deer
season as necessary, sir," he said stiffly.
"Want to get yourself a buck, eh?"
"Well, partly."
"Do you think that hunting is more important than your academic career?"
"No, sir."
"Then what is it?"
"There's a big buck in Bennett's Woods," Bud blurted out. "Gramps--Mr.
Bennett, that is--has always dreamed of killing just such a deer. It's
sort of like a dream he's always had. Gramps had been sick and he isn't
exactly young. No one can be sure he'll be able to hunt next deer
season. He has to get the black buck this year. He thinks I can help
him."
"In other words you want to stay out of school for an indefinite period
to help Delbert Bennett get this buck. Well, I think it can be
arranged." Then, before Bud could thank him, Mr. Thorne went on. "In
fact, I think it will be a very important part of your education. You
may not see what I mean now, but maybe you will later."
Gramps, who was splitting wood when Bud got home that afternoon, yelled
"Hallelujah!" when he heard the good news and threw a stick of firewood
in the air. "The black buck's as good as ours," he said.
* * * * *
Not long afterward the school bus was crawling up the highway behind the
snowplow that was clearing four inches of new snow that had added itself
to the four inches that had fallen yesterday. Bud was staring out the
window, almost oblivious to Goethe Shakespeare Umberdehoven who sat
beside him as usual. He saw little since wind-blown sheets of snow
obscured everything more than twenty yards from the highway, but he was
thinking of the caterpillar that had crawled up the log when Gramps
scored his double on grouse. Bud had been a little skeptical when Gramps
had predicted a harsh, early winter from the caterpillar's markings, but
now it looked as if they were in for the earliest and harshest winter in
ten years.
When Get Umberdehoven asked if he was going deer hunting, Bud said
"Yeah" without turning away from the window.
"You don't seem so excited about it."
"Why don't I?" Bud snapped.
"Always before when deer season came you couldn't hardly sit still. Now
you act like you'd rather not go."
"Oh shut up!" Bud said. Then, feeling remorseful, he turned to face Get.
"Are you going deer hunting?"
"Everybody goes the first day and we got to get a deer because if we
do"--Bud waited for what he knew was coming next--"we can sell another
pig."
"I'm going to stay out and hunt for as long as I want to," Bud said
loftily. "I'll hunt the whole season if I feel like it."
"I wish I could," Get said. "School, it's hard for me. But if I don't
go, I fall behind, and if I fall behind . . ." He shrugged eloquently.
Bud thought of Mr. Thorne's saying that he thought it would be a very
important part of Bud's education to hunt the black buck, but he still
had no idea what Mr. Thorne really meant. There were a lot of things he
did not understand, Bud decided as the bus stopped in front of the
Bennetts' driveway.
"Good luck," he said to Get to make up for having snapped at him.
"Yeah," Get said listlessly.
Bud left the bus and made his way through the eight inches of fluffy
snow that blanketed the driveway. The snow was loose and easy to plow
through. But still it would either keep the more timid hunters out of
the woods entirely or make them concentrate in the fringe areas so that
there would be fewer hunters in the deep woods.
Shep came to meet him as Bud stomped the snow from his overshoes and
took them off on the porch, and for a moment Bud wished he could change
places with Shep, who wasn't allowed to go out into the deer woods
during the season. Then he opened the door and went into the kitchen.
A heavenly smell from the loaves of freshly baked bread that Gram was
tumbling out of baking pans filled every corner of the kitchen and
overflowed into the nearby rooms. Gramps sat at the table fussing with
some minor adjustment of his deer rifle.
"All set, Bud?" he said, grinning.
"All set."
"Good. Tomorrow we get on his tail! Give us four days together, just
four days, and you and me'll tag that black buck."
Gram said, "Oh, Delbert. You'd think that buck was more important than
the President of the United States."
"Right now, and as far as I'm concerned, he is, Mother. 'Sides, who'd
want the President's head hanging on his setting-room wall?"
Gram appealed to Bud. "That's all he's been talking about, just that
black buck. And if he's been over his rifle once today, he's been over
it a hundred times."
"Got to have it right, Mother," Gramps said. "We'll get one chance and
no more. If we miss when the chance comes, we'll have only ourselves to
blame."
"After all this fuss and bother you'd just better get him," Gram said
dryly. "There'll be no living with you the rest of the winter if you
don't. I'd give you a slice of butter bread, Allan, except that it's
still too hot."
"I'm not hungry," Bud said. "I'll change my clothes and do the chores."
"I'll give you a hand," Gramps offered.
"No, you stay right here."
Bud went to his room, glad to escape. If only a miracle would occur. If
only the snow would melt and the leaves would appear and deer season
would be over with the black buck still in Bennett's Woods. There would
be no miracle, Bud knew. There was just one thing he could do if the
black buck came in range--shoot straight. Gramps wanted the head to hang
in the living room and Bud would do his best to see that it hung there.
It made no difference whether he or Bud shot the buck, since they would
be working as a team.
Bud lingered at the chores, and for one of the very few times since he
had come to live with the Bennetts, he had almost no appetite for
supper. Gram looked at him with concern, but Gramps was too excited to
notice.
"He won't be in the hills, Bud, with this snow," Gramps was saying. "He
and all the other deer with sense, which means all the other deer, will
be down in the valley swamps and thickets. If this snow deepens, and I
think it will, the deer will yard in for another week or ten days. Do
you know where we'll find that black buck?"
"Where?" Bud tried to inject enthusiasm into his voice.
"Hagen's Flat or Dockerty's Swamp," Gramps said. "I'm putting my money
on Dockerty's Swamp. Not in twenty years have I put a buck out of there
that I wanted to shoot, but I never lost the feeling that that's where
my real luck lies. Yep, we'll find the black buck in Dockerty's Swamp."
The next morning, fortified with one of Gram's substantial breakfasts,
and each with one of her ample lunches in his hunting jacket, Gramps and
Bud left the house with Gram's warning not to overdo ringing in their
ears. Bud glanced at Shep, whose feelings were hurt because he was tied
up so he couldn't follow them into the woods.
The day grew lighter slowly and from far off came an occasional rifle
shot or volley of shots as hunters began to encounter deer. Bud had been
right the day before in thinking that the snow would keep most of the
hunters in easily accessible areas, for most of the shooting was going
on near the main highway. There were almost no shots from the deep
woods but, as Gramps had predicted, that was where the deer were.
First they saw a herd of fourteen does and fawns that had been driven
down from the hills by the stormy weather. Then there was a buck, a ten
point with a very respectable rack of antlers. Either Gramps or Bud
could have shot him before he glided out of sight in a rhododendron
thicket. Next they saw a herd of nine in which there were two bucks.
They parted at Dockerty's Swamp. Gramps went down to track through the
swamp while Bud took his stand on a knoll up which any deer driven from
the swamp would be sure to run. The snow had stopped falling, but heavy
clouds lingered in the sky and it would begin again. Now and then Bud
saw a deer flitting across one of the few open spaces in Dockerty's
Swamp, and he knew that the swamp must be almost overrun by deer seeking
a refuge from the snow. But no deer came up the slope and before long it
was clear that they preferred to take their chance in the swamp rather
than to go back into the hills.
Bud had been at his stand a little less than an hour when he saw a deer
running easily in the open country at the far edge of the swamp. Even if
it had not been black, Bud would have known from its mighty rack of
antlers that it was the black buck.
Bud raced down the slope, stopping to whistle when he reached the edge
of the swamp. Then, receiving no answer, he went a short distance into
the swamp and whistled again. This time there was a reply, and Bud found
Gramps leaning against a dead stub.
"What in tunket are you doing?" he said angrily. "You should know better
than to leave a deer stand."
"He went out the other side!" Bud said.
"The black buck?"
"Yes!"
"Come on!"
Bud led to where he had seen the black buck disappear and Gramps looked
once at the tracks.
"It's him," he said, "and danged if he hasn't outsmarted us. He figures
he knows as much about snow as we do, and I reckon he's right. Anyhow,
he's going back into the hills."
They began to climb, and the snow became deeper and the drifts more
frequent. Two-thirds of the way up Hammerson's Hill, Gramps turned to
Bud.
"Give me an hour and come through on the track."
After a timed sixty minutes, Bud went ahead, following the buck's
tracks. Before long he found Gramps, who had made a wide circle,
standing beside a huge boulder. The tracks of the black buck, who had
slowed from a run to a walk, still led on.
"I thought he came through here and he did," Gramps said. "But he came
maybe ten minutes 'fore I got here. Ha! He thinks he's outsmarted us by
taking to the hills, but could be he's tricked himself."
"How has he tricked himself?" Bud asked.
"Longer shooting," Gramps explained to Bud. "If we find where he's
dipped into a gully, we have a good chance of catching him going up the
other side."
They followed the tracks until two hours before dark. Whenever they came
too near for comfort, the black buck would run a little way, but most of
the time he was satisfied to walk. Then they found that he had given a
mighty leap a full twenty feet to one side of his line of travel and
begun to run continuously. The tracks of four wild dogs came from the
opposite direction and joined those of the black buck where he had
veered off.
Not speaking to save his breath for speed, Gramps followed the tracks.
It was almost dark when he and Bud came to a place where the tracks
separated, with the wild dogs' going off in one direction and the buck's
in another.
"They smelled us coming and kited off," Gramps said. "But they'll be
back.
"We'll start earlier tomorrow, Bud," the old man said as they turned to
go home.
chapter 12
The next morning, when Gramps and Bud returned to the black buck's
track, the light was too dim for shooting and even for adequate
tracking. A brisk little wind sent snow devils whirling before it, and
the wind had blown most of the night, reducing the sharply imprinted
tracks the black buck had left the day before to shallow depressions in
the snow. The clouds were darker than yesterday and snow drifted down
from them and mingled with the snow devils.
The valley below them looked as black as though it was still midnight
there, and above it, where Gramps and Bud were standing, the snow glowed
weirdly in the pale light. Bud shivered, but he was grateful, too, for
the very elements seemed to have conspired to save the fleeing black
buck. Even Gramps couldn't hope to win against such odds as these.
Bud grew more and more uneasy as he stood there helplessly, not knowing
what to do. Gramps seemed baffled, too, reluctant either to go on or to
turn back. The old man raised his rifle, sighted at the black trunk of a
birch tree about fifty yards away and then lowered his rifle
uncertainly.
"He could be thirty yards away and the size of an elephant, and I still
couldn't get my sights on him," Gramps said quietly. "That's what comes
of selling a wise old buck short. He knew what he was doing when he came
into the hills. He figured we were after him down in the swamp and was
sure of it when we got on his tail. But he also knew there'd be more
snow and he counted on it to cover his tracks."