by Gary Paulsen
For one, almost two minutes.
Then in a slightly different location, not far from the first, the sheep started milling and running in circles and John kneed Speck around and let her go and two coyotes—probably the same first two—were taking another ewe. They had been after her lamb but she had tried to protect it and they had taken her instead.
This time Speck was on them sooner, and so was Jenny, coming from slightly around the herd, and the ewe suffered almost no damage except for a couple of cuts in her shoulder. John could see the blood in the moonlight and dismounted to make certain she wasn’t hurt badly but as soon as his feet hit the ground he heard commotion from a new place—clear across the herd—and he clambered back on Speck, only half mounted when she leaped into a full run.
He grabbed her mane, pulled himself the rest of the way up, and they arrived just in time to see Peg get a chunk off the end of the tail on a coyote that had grabbed a lamb and was trying to carry it off.
Four, John thought, maybe five or six. But probably four.
A small breather—Speck actually had time for one long pull of air, let it half out—and there was a new blatting of sheep and lambs and they set off again.
It was, John thought, going to be a long night.
Chapter Seventeen
IT WAS ALSO a damaging night. By dawn there were three ewes and two lambs dead—all had died of wound shock—and two other ewes he didn’t think would make the day. They had tears around their rear ends and they were both down and quiet. Not a good sign.
As soon as it was full day the coyotes made off and he returned to camp, saddled Spud—Speck had run all night and he let her off to rest—and used his rope to pull in the two ewes that were still alive.
He treated them as best he could with salve and pine tar and tied them down in the shade of the willows. Then he ate a surprise can of beef stew—he thought it would be chili this time—and thought of what to do next.
He needed the rifle.
Most of all, he needed that. The coyotes would come back again and again and if they thought he couldn’t do anything—which he couldn’t—they would work in the daylight as well. He needed some way to stop them. He needed the rifle.
When he was done eating he took his boots off and stripped to his shorts and went again to the streambed. He started at the wagon and worked downstream carefully, studying the gravel bottom inch by inch.
It did no good. He went to the snag that had held his bedding and well beyond, then turned and came back but there was no sign of the rifle.
“Well—that’s it.” He put his clothes back on and turned to look at the next problem.
The wagon.
It lay on its side in the stream. It seemed to be a broken thing but when he looked more closely at it there wasn’t any severe damage. The curved hoops that had held the canvas top in place were made of thin pipe and they had bent but they could be straightened again.
The problem was that the wagon had rolled over. He’d have to bring it back upright somehow and then pull it out of the stream.
For a moment he couldn’t think how to get it upright. He moved into the stream again—he was getting sick of taking his boots off and putting them back on—and heaved on the wagon but it didn’t move. The sand-and-gravel bottom seemed to suck it down and even when he used a heavy tree limb the flood had brought down for a lever the wagon didn’t budge.
He moved to the bank again, let the sun dry his feet, and studied the wagon. If he could move it sideways, pull it from the side …
He saw the answer. He could use Speck and Spud to pull it back on its wheels from the side.
He went into the willows. The harnesses were damp but had dried enough to stiffen slightly and he worked them with his hands to loosen them a bit. The collars were still soaked but they would work.
He caught Speck—Spud was already on a long picket—and harnessed them. Speck jumped around a bit until she remembered she’d worn the harness to pull the wagon for three days. Spud just looked around at the straps and chains and seemed to shrug.
How to hook them to the side of the wagon was the hard part.
The tongue and doubletree were still attached to the front of the wagon and John went back into the stream and looked at them. The doubletree—the crosspiece the horses actually pulled on—was held to the tongue and wagon by a single drop-pin. It was wedged in but he used a rock from the stream bottom and pounded it out. This gave him the doubletree and the two singletrees to use to hook to the horses.
He brought their trace chains back to the hooks on the doubletree and hooked the two horses up without a tongue between them and left the doubletree lying on the ground.
The horses had been cow pony—trained to stand anytime their reins were left to hang and they waited, swishing their tails to keep the flies moving.
John uncoiled his lariat and threw the end over the top of the wagon. On the backside he pulled the rope down and tied it through a hole in the boards on the side of the wagon. The boards were bolted in place and strong but time had opened small holes here and there as they shrunk or worked at each other and he found a hole just big enough for the rope end.
With the rope over the wagon and tied to the side it ended just at the shoreline.
He picked up the doubletree and pulled backward on it.
“Back, back.” He tried to make his voice low, the way his father’s voice would sound. The horses seemed to respond better to a low voice—or maybe just to his father’s voice.
Spud and Speck backed in tiny little steps, fidgeting at the chains hanging by their legs as they worked backward.
He let them make their own way, pulling and saying “Back, back” in the low voice until at last they had come far enough. The hole through the middle of the doubletree was just over the rope and he pushed the end through and tied it.
“There,” he said, standing. “Now we snort and go.”
He went to the front of the horses and brought them forward slowly until the rope was snug, hanging in the air from the wagon up to the doubletree.
He’d seen his father use a team of horses once when he was very small to pull some tree roots out of the ground and he remembered it now. His father had stood off to the side of the team a bit, not in front and not behind where he could get caught by the end of the chain—in John’s case the rope—if the pull snapped it.
John moved to the side, held Speck’s bridle strap in his hand and clicked with his tongue.
“Come on, pick it up …”
The two horses pulled against the rope, took it tighter and tighter until it seemed to pull them backward but the wagon didn’t move.
“It’s supposed to come up,” John mumbled. “Just come right up.”
He clicked his tongue again, pulled on Speck’s bridle and the rope grew tighter still, almost hummed.
And the wagon still didn’t move.
“Well, all right.…” He moved to the rear of Speck and slapped her on the rump.
It was nearly the last thing he did on earth.
The slap wasn’t hard but it frightened and startled Speck. She lunged forward, offsetting the doubletree, jerking it sideways. The trace chains flipped into Spud’s legs and he lunged forward. His sudden movement worsened Speck’s fright and in half a second the two of them were nearly crazy, slamming against their harnesses, heaving, driving their back feet into the ground, pulling in an instant jerk that put over a ton of weight on the rope.
Everything happened at once.
There was a great sucking sound and the wagon came up, jumped up off its side upright. But even that didn’t release enough of the pressure. The horses were still jerking, lunging forward and all the force of their pull came down to the one small board the rope was tied to on the wagon.
It gave. Almost in the same split second as the wagon came up to its wheels the board cracked loose with a sound like gunfire.
John had his back to the wagon still, watching the horses half falling aw
ay from their hooves, when he heard the crack. He started to turn, just barely moved to turn and heard a wild, whistling sound and thought the board, the rope and board have broken loose and they’re coming at me.
But there was no time to move, to react.
The board hit him across the back of his shoulders like a sledgehammer. He saw something, a spray, out of his nostrils, saw it spray from the wind leaving his lungs because of the force of the blow, saw it as he went down and thought, funny, funny how that sprayed and I didn’t even know it was coming.
Funny …
All fuzzy and funny how that happened and he was on his knees and then on his face and all the time he thought how funny and fuzzy it was, the spray.
Then he was looking at the dirt and he wasn’t thinking anything.
Chapter Eighteen
NOW, HE THOUGHT—just that. Now.
Now what? Now to see if I’m really alive. That’s next. He tried to think.
He had never really lost consciousness. He knew/felt the horses near him, knew the wagon was upright, heard the sheep in the distance, the rambling gurgle of the stream going by just to his rear.
But his shoulders, his neck, the lower part of his head were alive with pain; throbbing, pounding.
And he could not get air. He pulled, heaved, but it didn’t come until just before he passed out a small trickle of air came down, sweet as sugar, and he followed that with another and another and the world stopped swimming.
He raised his head, rolled onto his back.
“God …”
New pain pushed out of his shoulders, down his back.
In stages, slowly, he sat up—grunting with the effort—then over onto his hands and knees, up on his knees and, finally, onto his feet.
Not two minutes had passed since he’d slapped Speck on the rear. Two minutes and a life, a whole life. Had the board caught him six inches higher it would certainly have broken his neck.
And I’d be dead, he thought. Just like that. I would be dead.
He shook his head, took a step. It was wobbly—he nearly fell—but he made it and he took another and felt things loosening up.
He leaned on Speck, patting her neck. Peg and Billy had heard the commotion and had come running from the herd to check on it but went back to the sheep as soon as they saw everything was apparently all right.
They watch, John thought. They watch all things all the time. He hung on Speck’s collar for a full minute and felt his strength come back. He left the horses for a moment and went to the stream and splashed water in his face, drank a little.
“So—what have we got?”
He moved to the wagon. It was on its wheels, sitting in the shallow water. The board had snapped out of place just as it came vertical and left it standing. Other than the broken side board he didn’t see any real damage.
He moved to the side and looked at where the board had come out, found that it would be easy to cover with a piece of tarp or jam the board back in place, and turned to go back to the horses and bring them around to hook them up and pull the wagon out when something caught his eye.
It was a glint of black metal, down in the water, and he leaned closer to it and found himself looking at the rifle.
It was half buried in gravel, under the water.
“How …”
He remembered the wagon going over. The rifle had been leaning against the high side wall and it must have been flipped over against the tarp as the wagon moved, then fallen down through the opening and been under the wagon when it went over.
“It’s no wonder I couldn’t find it.”
He pulled it out of the water, tipped it so the water could run out of the barrel.
It was a mess. Sand and mud came from the barrel and it seemed to have gotten up inside the lever-action housing as well. But there didn’t seem to be any major damage. Where the rifle had fallen there had been soft sand and the weight of the side of the wagon coming down on it had merely pushed it down into the sand and not broken anything.
Still, he wouldn’t know until he could take it apart and clean it.
That would come later. Now he had the wagon to handle.
And he ran into a snag.
He moved to get the horses and Speck followed easily enough but Spud rebelled. When he got to the edge of the stream he stopped, dead, and didn’t want to budge.
“Oh, come on, I’ve ridden you across streams before.…” But even as he said it he knew it wasn’t true. The truth was he rode Speck almost all the time and he couldn’t honestly remember a time when he had actually ridden Spud into water.
Some horses were like that—were afraid of the water. Cawley told him once it was because they saw the sky in the water, the reflection, and they thought they would fall forever but he’d had a few beers when he said it so John didn’t know.
He did know that some horses didn’t like to go in water and he led Spud again and again to the edge of the water, taking him back in a circle and bringing him down to the water again and each time he stopped.
Speck was in place by the tongue of the wagon and she watched with interest, whickering now and then to them, shaking her head and whether it was this or just John trying again and again Spud finally agreed to do it.
He stepped off the bank carefully, slowly, one foot high out over the water. He brought the foot down hard, clearly thinking the water would be very deep and he would be swimming.
When it stopped in only three or four inches and hit the bottom it jarred Spud’s whole body but he still couldn’t believe that the water wasn’t deep.
He followed John slowly, taking great high steps and slamming his feet down into the water until John—who was by now completely soaked from the splashing—had him in position. John was laughing so hard by this time, he had to stop.
“You look ridiculous.…”
Finally he had the doubletree back in place and hooked the horses to the wagon and then it proved to be surprisingly easy.
They just walked out of the water—Spud still taking giant steps—and pulled the wagon up into position.
“Up,” John said, walking next to them, “farther up.”
He pulled the wagon well away from the stream, onto a bit of high, flat ground near some aspens. Then he unhooked the horses, picketed Spud again so he could get to him in a hurry and let Speck run and went to work.
First things first, he decided, and the first thing had to be the sheep. The coyotes would come again tonight, if not sooner—they would stay around the herd and hit as soon as they thought they could get away with it—and he had to handle them.
That meant the rifle and he spread a piece of tarp on the ground and sat to work. It was slow because he had the wrong tools. He had a pair of pliers from the tools in the wagon and a screwdriver-shaped blade on his knife and with these two tools he dismantled the rifle as best he could.
He took the lever off, opened the end of the magazine housing and took the spring and plunger out of the tube—water poured out as it had from the barrel—and he removed every part that he could with his limited tools.
Each piece he placed carefully on a piece of tarp on the ground, in the order that he removed them, trying to keep everything straight in his mind.
Then he used the torn corner of a T-shirt to dry each piece and when that was done he looked for oil.
There was none, but he had Vaseline for the dogs’ feet or any other wounds and he placed a thin film of Vaseline on each piece to stop any rust. He used a string to pull a piece of shirt with grease on it through the barrel several times until it shone like a mirror.
When everything was dry and greased he started to rebuild the rifle and did well until he was nearly done and saw a small piece of metal with a screw that had been hidden under a fold of the tarp.
“What …?
It was a piece of the ejector that was screwed into the side of the receiver. He had to remove the bolt and lever and put the small piece in or the spent cartridge cases would
n’t eject.
Finally it was done. It had taken him most of the day but except for some scratches in the blueing the rifle looked almost as good as new.
He worked the lever a few times, easing the hammer down with his thumb, and everything seemed to work right.
Now, he thought, to check it out.
He didn’t have a lot of cartridges to waste but he decided to use one to test the rifle.
He pushed the shell into the magazine from the side, then levered it up into the barrel just to make certain everything worked well and fed the shells correctly.
Across the stream, about fifty yards away, there was a mound of dirt left by a badger looking for a place to den up.
John squatted by the wagon and propped the rifle on the tire. He cocked the hammer, took half a breath, let it out and squeezed the trigger.
The recoil slammed back into his shoulder and the crack was stunningly loud in the narrow, quiet confines of the valley. It echoed and reechoed off the sides and filled the whole canyon with sound.
Hundreds of sheep ran, this way and that, and the dogs worked to settle them in. All except for Peg. She came running to John and sat next to him, shaking, and he remembered how much she was afraid of gunfire.
“It’s all right, all right.…” He petted her, ruffled her ears, and after a moment or two she went back to the herd.
John looked at the target. The bullet had hit within an inch and a half of where he’d been aiming and blown the back of the mound of dirt apart. His father had taught him to shoot, showing him how to hold and squeeze and anytime you could put a bullet within an inch of where you were aiming it would get the job done. John had started to get into shooting the year before, almost too much. He’d spent most of the money he earned on shells and worked day after day on sighting and squeezing until his father had stopped him one morning.
“A rifle is just a tool,” his father had said. “So you can throw rocks harder than you normally can. Don’t ever forget that. It’s not anything—just another tool. Like a wrench or a hammer.”
