by Gary Paulsen
But this was different.
This, he thought, was his lamb—a lamb he had been supposed to care for—and it had died and needed to be covered.
The ewe had followed him into the willows and he pushed her away from the rocks that covered the body, tried to get her to go back to the herd. But she wouldn’t leave. She kept working back around him to get to the rocks, smelling the dead lamb through them.
Finally he left her there but he kept looking back at her, standing over the small pile of rocks, until the willows covered her and he couldn’t see her and then he thought of her. He stood, wondering what to do next and thought he should unpack the trailer but he kept thinking of the ewe and it bothered him so that he went back across the stream to check on her. She was still there, standing with her head down, her nose smelling the rocks that covered the lamb. She looked up at him and bleated when he walked up to her.
“Yeah—I know. I feel bad too—but you have to leave it now.” He tried to push her away again but once more she evaded him and at last he decided to let nature take its course. Short of dragging her away and tying her to a tree he didn’t see how to stop her.
At the camp he reached into the wagon to pull out the first box and there was a sudden high-pitched barking from the direction of the herd. He turned to see Billy on the far side of the sheep, dancing around something on the ground and he thought, oh, great, another snake, and he turned to see if Speck was handy but she was away and gone back up the canyon a quarter mile or more so he turned and started to run.
Keep, he thought, his breath coming in cutting rasps—keep a horse to hand.
Chapter Twelve
IT WAS NOT A SNAKE.
He could tell well before he arrived at the clearing, his breath tearing at his lungs, his legs wobbly—he could tell by the smell.
It was a skunk.
The sheep had wandered on a skunk or it had come upon them. How it happened didn’t matter. What mattered was that it was a skunk and that Billy was close to it.
The sheep had moved away except for one ewe that kept rubbing her face on the ground and snorting to clear her nose out. In the middle of the cleared space—almost the same size as the snake had caused—stood a skunk on all fours, its tail raised but not fully ready to spray. Billy stood with his shoulder hair up, his tail plumed and his teeth bared. The stink was everywhere.
When the dog saw John coming he took it as encouragement. He feinted once to the left and then dodged right and tore into the skunk.
“Billy!”
The reaction was immediate. The skunk instantly raised further until its back legs were off the ground, pulled its tail up over the top, and caught Billy head-on with a vaporous cloud.
The stink drove John back but it didn’t slow Billy down even momentarily. Caught square in the face, half blinded, he continued his attack and snatched the skunk up, shaking him so that John could hear the bones crunch.
“Billy—drop it!”
And he did, finally, drop the skunk. But not until it had sprayed itself empty and not until it was broken and dead and by that time Billy was drenched and running in circles rubbing his head and face on the ground to clear his eyes and get rid of the stink.
“Oh …” John had been too close and caught the edge of the spray and it was in his clothes.
He found a stick and hooked the dead skunk and dragged it down the canyon away from the sheep—though they had moved well away from the smell on their own.
Then he came back to Billy.
“We’ve got to get some of that off you. Come on.”
Billy hung back but at length followed and John led him down to the stream and walked in, fully clothed.
“Come on—now.”
Billy’s tail went down but he came until he was standing in the belly-deep water next to John and he continued to stand quietly while John used his hands to cup water and tried to wash the stink out of him.
It didn’t work very well and soon the smell seemed to be smeared all over the dog, all over John, all over the world.
At last he gave up and let Billy go back to the herd. The dog shook the water off and rubbed in the dirt some more, then went to work on the far side of the herd and John looked down to see that he was completely soaked, smelled worse than before, and somehow—spitting and gagging—he had apparently gotten it inside his mouth.
Everything, he thought, for the rest of my life will taste like this—forever. He let his eyes find the sun—not two hours had passed since the snake had hit the lamb.
The first day wasn’t half over, not even started, and he was a mess and just when he wondered what could happen to make it worse he heard a short yip-yip of pain and looked up at the herd to see Pete running on three legs around the back side of the herd, headed toward the wagon.
John ran from the stream toward the wagon and arrived—soaking wet, stinking, his hat gone somewhere—just after Pete.
He knelt next to the dog, raised the right leg, and the dog screamed. Not the leg, he thought, lower—the foot.
He turned the pad back up carefully and stopped. Half the pad on one of the toes was torn almost completely away, hung by a shred of skin. He must have stepped on a broken shard of rock or flint, something very sharp. The dog squirmed and whined in pain when the flap of skin and flesh wiggled and John fought a rising sick feeling in the middle of his stomach. The dogs, he thought—the dogs were everything. He couldn’t do this without the dogs. He might not be able to do it anyway, but without the dogs he didn’t stand a chance and now Pete was crippled. Just like that. Torn like that.
What could he do?
He had to help Pete. Somehow fix the foot and help him but it was so bad—the damage looked so awful. How could he get the flap back in place and hold it?
He tied Pete to the same twine he’d tied the lamb to, then dug around again in the medicine box. There were liniments and salve and some bandages and an elastic kind of covering bandage called Vet-Wrap. There were also some bottles of a blue-colored disinfectant.
So.
He brought a cup of water from the stream and washed the wound. Then he raised the bottle and poured some of the blue medicine into the cut.
Pete screamed and jerked and snapped at the bottle.
“Sorry, sorry.” John spoke in a low voice, tried to sound confident—which was more than he felt.
He took a gauze pad from a small container in the box and put it on the torn pad, then wrapped the whole thing with the Vet-Wrap, which had a stickiness to it that held it in place. When it was done he leaned back and looked and almost smiled.
On the end of Pete’s leg there was a large pink balloon—the Vet-Wrap was pink—that made it look like he’d stepped in six or seven pounds of sticky bubble gum. Pete stood with a forlorn look on his face, the foot raised.
“Well—maybe it’ll work.” John rubbed the dog’s ears and turned to himself.
He still smelled like the bad end of a skunk and was soaked.
“So I’ll do my laundry,” he said to Pete.
He stripped to the skin, emptied his pockets—a billfold with nothing but some pictures, one of his mother, one of his father, and three dollars, a pocketknife, and a fingernail clipper. He hated long fingernails.
With his clothes emptied and the belt stripped out he walked naked into the stream, sat down and washed them and himself without soap as best as he could. Then he hung the clothes on nearby willows to dry, found his other shirt and jeans in the wagon and started to put them on.
He was just jamming the second leg into the stiff jeans when his thinking was stopped, and almost his heart, by a high-pitched scream. He knew the sound, had heard it before—it was either a bobcat or mountain lion, he couldn’t tell which. But it didn’t matter. It came from up the side of the canyon, above the sheep, and he looked up to see roughly six thousand sheep coming straight at him at a dead run.
But there’s no room, he thought—not for all of you to be in camp. We just don’t have the ro
om …
And they were over him. He stood and braced his legs and they tried to go around him. But they were panicking and wide-eyed, snorting snot, bleating, and many of them ran into him and he knew he could never stand. He’d never heard of anybody being killed in a sheep stampede but he didn’t want to try to be the first.
He saw that Pete had run under the wagon and he made a dive for the small space, bounced off woolly backs, went down, staggered back up and scrambled in next to Pete, around in back of the wheel while the sheep ran over and around everything else.
“My clothes …”
When the mass of running sheep hit the willows they went down and John’s clothes went with them, churned into the ground by thousands of feet.
In less than a minute it was finished. All the sheep and lambs had crossed the stream and the front of the herd was grazing peacefully on the opposite side of the canyon from the scream.
There was no second scream. John crawled out from under the wagon. It was probably a bobcat—the lions were usually higher—and if so there was little danger. Lions killed sheep but the smaller bobcats would only take lambs when they were very small and alone. They almost never bothered adult sheep or protected lambs. It was probably just marking its territory.
But the damage was done.
The camp was a shambles—or actually, he thought, it looked very neat. Almost swept. The box of medicines had been tipped and everything scattered and driven into the dirt. The steps were carried off the wagon and broken apart, the boards thrown every which way. He found his shirt and pants after some searching and almost threw the shirt away. The pants, being heavier material, had come through with just a few small cuts. The shirt was of thinner cloth and was literally in shreds. But he had brought only three work shirts for the whole summer, and one lined jacket, three pairs of pants, so he decided to keep the shirt. For rags, if nothing else.
His saddle had been on the ground next to the wagon and it had been tossed sideways but he’d always kept it oiled and pliable and the leather was tough. It had not been hurt.
The wagon had remained upright and everything inside it was all right.
“It could be worse,” he said, and looked around to see that Pete had torn the bandages off his foot, had chewed through the twine holding him to the wagon, and was limping back to the herd to help the other three dogs.
“Pete—come here!”
The dog stopped, looked at John, wagged his tail, looked at the sheep, then back at John once more, then back to the sheep and he limped again toward the herd.
And John couldn’t stop him.
He stood, holding his rags, the camp in a shambles and he couldn’t stop the dog and realized he had no control.
Over anything.
Chapter Thirteen
THE DAY PASSED, somehow, with nothing truly getting done.
He found some saddle oil in a box in the trailer and cleaned and oiled his saddle and put it under the wagon. Then he started to unload and rearrange the inside of the wagon so that he could sleep there for the night and he found a needle and thread and he tried to patch his shirt and pants and in some way the whole day went that way. One thing to another until it was dark and he really couldn’t see that anything was done. Even the wagon wasn’t squared away. The bunk was clear, but the rest of it was still a shambles and when dark came he lighted the lantern, hung it from the bow holding the canvas up, and sat in the yellow glow and ate a can of cold beef stew with a metal spoon. He caught himself starting to wipe the spoon on his pants leg, smiled, and went outside and washed it in the stream, using sand to clean it and rinsing it when it was spotless.
He went to bed not so much because he was tired as to get away from the day, his first day, and he was nearly asleep when he remembered he hadn’t put down dog food. He climbed out barefoot and put a pan down, kicking himself mentally for being so stupid. All four of the dogs were there to eat, sitting watching him, waiting for the food, and he relighted the lantern and used the light to examine Pete’s foot.
The pad had already worked back into place and seemed to be sticking there, healing in. It was impossible, but it was there. He touched it and Pete jerked his paw away, went back to eating, and when he was done he returned to the herd at a run. He still limped, but he was moving better and John went back to sleep wondering how it could begin to heal that fast.
The first smash of thunder awakened him, seemed to come from inside his mind. It was close, so close he could smell the stink of burned air and he was sitting up, awake, before he realized what had done it.
He knew mountain thunder was worst—because you were right inside it, right in the clouds. And he’d heard it before. But it still surprised him, to be in the middle of a storm.
Lightning came fast for seven or eight minutes, seemed to smack back and forth across the valley, from peak to peak and into the trees and was followed instantly and almost continuously by the thunder and made it so bright he could almost have read.
And loud. It actually thunders, he thought, jumping for the end of the wagon and opening the door to watch.
He could see the sheep in the constant blue light and they were afraid—were milling and bleating, though he couldn’t hear them well. The dogs were working the edges of the herd restlessly except for Jenny.
He couldn’t find Jenny.
“Jenny!” He called her name several times but she was nowhere near the herd—only three dogs were there.
Then she showed.
She was under the wagon and came out slowly, her tail down, her ears laid back.
“Jenny—what’s the matter?”
She was terrified of the thunder, stiff with fear.
“Well—it is scary, isn’t it?” It was starting to rain and she looked so bedraggled, so afraid and lonely that he smiled.
“Why don’t you come on in?”
He motioned with his hand and she was inside the trailer in part of a second, almost knocking him down.
She jumped on the cot, curled up about halfway up from the bottom, and tucked her nose under her tail.
“I see,” he said. “You must have done this with Tink.” He smiled. “Well, I guess its all right …”
John slid inside the bag, scrunching his legs past the sleeping dog, and blew the lantern out by raising the globe and blowing across the top. But the light from the lightning kept a dim blue glow going inside the trailer for a long time and just when it seemed to be stopping, the lightning cutting back, the rain started.
It was not hard at first, but grew in intensity until it drummed on the waterproof tarp so that he could not hear himself think. He sat up, lighted the lantern, but everything—for a change—seemed to be all right. The tarp was not leaking except for a small drip around the chimney hole but that was nothing. Even as he watched, the yellow light making shadows jump, the rain and noise let off and the storm moved off up the canyon, back up into the mountains.
Where it belongs, John thought, blowing the lantern out again and lying back in the bed.
He closed his eyes and waited for sleep but it didn’t come. Something was working at him, bothering him, and he couldn’t pin it down. Something about the storm.
He waited, letting his mind wander, but nothing came and, finally, his eyes closed and he went to sleep with his hand on Jenny’s forehead.
Chapter Fourteen
JOHN’S EYES were open and he was sitting up but he couldn’t think why he was awake.
It was pitch-dark and totally silent. Even the sheep were quiet, down for the night. John found his digital watch and pushed the illuminating button.
Three in the morning.
No sound, not even night sounds. Jenny had been asleep and when he raised up she did the same, raised her head and looked at him.
“The storm is over,” he said. Way off, now that he was awake, miles away in the mountains he heard faint rumbling. “Why am I awake?”
Jenny moved from the bed, stretched, and went to the door of the trai
ler.
“Back to work, eh?” He dropped his feet to the floor and padded to the small door, let her out, and stood for a moment on the steps, listening, waiting.
For what?
There was nothing wrong. Overhead the sky was brilliantly clear. While there was no moon the stars splashed across the sky and gave enough light so that he could see the sheep, bedded, sleeping, or watching him. Jenny trotted off silently to the edge of the herd and sat, watching.
Waiting.
For what? It was there, something was there but he couldn’t for the life of him think of anything wrong, anything that needed doing.
He shook his head, shrugged, and returned to the trailer. The night was cold—he had seen his breath when he was standing on the steps—and his sleeping bag was still warm. He zipped it up to his shoulder and lay, still awake, thinking.
Something.
Something bothered him. Was it the sheep? The dogs? No … it was all right. Everything was all right.
It was just the day, he finally decided. It had been a rough first day and the hangover from it was bothering him. Maybe tomorrow would be better and he could settle in.…
He closed his eyes and sleep started to come and just there, just between being awake and being asleep—he almost thought he was dreaming it—he heard a faint sound.
Nearly thunder.
Maybe that was it. It was so warm in the bag and he was so sleepy and the sound was so faint he thought it was more of the storm up in the mountains, the far-off rumbling of clouds bumping in the peaks. What had his father said that time?
Oh, yeah, the devil bowling. The thunder was the devil bowling up in the mountains. It was something his grandfather had said and before him, his great-grandfather. The thunder was the devil bowling up in the peaks but there was something else, something to do with the sound he was hearing.
It was getting louder now, still faint, but growing. A larger hissing to it, and a rumble—something to do with a thing his father had said about the mountains.
