Outlaw Red

by Jim Kjelgaard

  *

  Sean opened his eyes and tried hard to stand up because he thought he heard Billy Dash calling him. He arose on rubbery legs which, as soon as he braced them, melted down to nothingness and sent him sprawling across the slatted side of the wooden crate. The big Setter lapsed back into the unconsciousness out of which he had valiantly forced himself.

  Totally unprepared for the crate’s falling, Sean had made no effort whatever to do anything about it. Striking the road, he had been flung violently against the heavy floor boards, and had been only vaguely aware when the crate tumbled down into the rhododendrons. Instead of breaking, the tough, resilient stalks had bent to admit and then fold around the crate. Now it was hidden. No casual passerby, traveling up the road, could tell by looking that the crate had fallen off at this point. It would take the trained eye of a woodsman to detect it.

  A second time Sean stirred, and then raised a sick head to look dazedly at the surrounding brush. A rhododendron, bending under the weight of the crated dog, had thrust a slim branch within the crate and the dangling, long leaves brushed Sean’s ear. He shook his head to relieve the tickling, and when he did, the motion brought extreme dizziness. The spell passed and he felt better.

  He panted heavily, his jaws wide and tongue dangling its full length. A raging thirst consumed him. Worst of all, he was completely bewildered.

  He remembered being on the truck, with a man who would attend his every want close at hand, and now he was here. Without knowing why, Sean realized that this should not have happened. Many times he had ridden on the truck and in the station wagon. Always he had arrived safely, gone through whatever ritual he was supposed to perform, and returned safely to Danny’s clearing. Feeling helpless and terribly alone, Sean whimpered softly.

  Then his native intelligence and the resourcefulness bequeathed to him by Big Red asserted itself. He was all alone and abandoned, but it was not in him to give way to hopelessness. His nose told him that there was no man around. He himself must do something about this and do it soon.

  The crate lay on its side, tilted against the boulder that had finally halted its downward plunge. Sun filtered through the slats to dapple Sean’s rich fur. He stood up, but when he did his back and shoulders touched the slats on the upper side. He held his aching head low to keep from bumping it again.

  The door, he knew, was at one end. But he was still dazed and sick, so that not at once could he determine which end. Sean lowered a probing nose and pushed at what he thought was the door. When it did not open, he pushed harder.

  Puzzled and exasperated, he accidentally rose up higher than he had intended to. In all his experience he had known just one way to get into and out of a crate—through the door. Yet, when he raised himself to his full height, his shoulders pushed against the upper slats and he felt them yield.

  Sean stood a moment, not at once sure of the full significance of such a thing. But there was something about the yielding slats that gripped his attention. Again, very cautiously, he pushed his shoulders against the loose slats. Again they yielded.

  The crates were made to hold the biggest, strongest, and wildest dog. But they had not been made to endure a fall from the back of a speeding truck and a tumble down a boulder-studded slope. The crate, in falling, had split one of the supports that held the slats. The screws that clamped the slats down had loosened. Sean pushed again, felt the slats rise, and pawed frantically against their loose ends. Roughly, heedless of the fact that he was further hurting his already bruised head, he shoved it through, pulled with his front feet and pushed with his rear ones until he had scrambled over the side of the crate to freedom.

  Within itself it was a minor act, yet it showed the Setter’s inheritance. In spite of his sheltered life and his almost complete dependence on human beings, Sean had just proven that he had an all-important talent which could be called upon when problems confronted him. He had the ability to think for himself.

  Now that he was free, some of his waning confidence returned. Gone was the sensation that he had been wholly abandoned and was helpless because of it. Since he was an animal, concerned only with the present and never worried about the future, Sean knew only that he was terribly thirsty.

  He was also still weak and wobbly. Partly because it was easier to travel downhill, and partly because his good sense told him that he would be more likely to find water in that direction, he started down through the rhododendrons. Unskilled at this sort of travel, he slowed his beginning run to a trot and then to a walk. It was better to go slowly than to become constantly entangled in the rhododendrons.

  Coming to the bottom of the valley, and finding it dry, Sean continued to obey the instinct that told him he would find water sooner by traveling downhill than he would by climbing up. A mile and a half from where he had wriggled out of the crate he finally discovered the water that he had been looking for.

  Two large boulders, their ancient sides covered with moss and lichens, stood side by side at the base of a steep little down-slope. Between them, a crystal-clear spring bubbled out of the valley’s floor and formed a small pool. A few small trout, flitting shadows in the water, fled frantically at Sean’s approach. The big dog stood a moment, licked his chops hungrily, and sprawled full length to lap up prodigious draughts of the ice-cold water.

  He raised his head, and water dripped from both sides of his open mouth to tinkle musically back into the spring. A pert blue jay, half-hidden by the green leaves of a white oak, peered curiously at him. The jay voiced a couple of experimental squawks, hoping for sport. When Sean paid no attention to him, the jay ruffled his feathers angrily. He squawked again, louder. Still unable to draw Sean’s attention, he flew indignantly away.

  Wholly absorbed in his own problems, Sean had neither eyes nor ears for anything else. He stepped into the water, feeling a delicious thrill as it lapped around his legs and plastered his fur down. Sean lay down, so the icy water could flow over his back. Three times he clamped his jaws, and then stopped panting.

  Sean was not a fragile human being, but a tough, hardy animal. Hurt, he would either die quickly or recover quickly. Only in exceptional cases, when everything is very favorable, can animals undergo a long period of convalescence.

  The cold water restored Sean’s sense of balance and banished his weakness. When he emerged from the pool his head throbbed faintly, but that was all.

  Now he should begin to find a way out of his predicament. He shook his wet fur, paced restlessly back and forth, and again whimpered uneasily. A dismal loneliness recurred; he hadn’t the least idea as to what to do next. Even Big Red, with all his woods wisdom, would have found it hard to discover an answer to this riddle.

  Sometimes, when they were hunting and more often when they were just rambling, Red and Danny became separated. But almost never was Red taken anywhere in a car, and so he knew every inch of the Wintapi. Consequently, if for any reason he was unable to pick up Danny’s trail, and follow him home, he knew the way himself. But Sean did not know the way home. Since leaving the Pickett clearing the truck had traveled about a hundred and sixty miles, and Sean had no idea where he was.

  He made his forlorn way back to the crate and lay down beside it. Darkness descended, bringing with it all the alien scents and sounds that only deep night in the wilderness produces. A prowling lynx, come to hunt rabbits in the rhododendron thicket, smelled the dog and faded silently away on its oversized paws. At the same time Sean smelled the lynx. He knew from its scent that it was afraid of him, and running away.

  Stabbing the night with its headlights, a car went up the lonely road. Sean raised his head, but not with any special hopefulness. He knew by its sound that the car was not the one from which he had fallen. It never occurred to him that anyone save the truck driver would come searching for him.

  Sean could not know another and very important fact: the truck driver had made a mistake. Ten miles farther on, and seven miles from Tom Jordan’s place on the Pococimo Road, the truck’s
wheels had thrown up a boulder that thumped heavily against the under-carriage. The driver remembered the incident and the place, and when it was discovered that Sean was missing he had decided that the sound he had heard must have been the crate falling. Though a frantic search for Sean had been organized, no searcher had yet come within eight miles of the place where the dog actually was.

  Gray morning floated like a mist over the wilderness and still Sean waited near the wrecked crate. Briefly he left to get another drink of water, then in a flurry of panic returned to the crate, the one familiar thing he knew. But another spur was goading him now.

  He had eaten nothing in almost thirty-six hours; Danny did not feed his dogs before starting them out on a long trip because, if they were fed, danger of trip-sickness increased. Had Sean arrived at Tom Jordan’s when he was supposed to, he would have eaten well. But he hadn’t, and now he was famished.

  The morning was half gone when he left the crate for the last time. He walked purposefully, unswervingly, with no intention of coming back. If anyone was coming to get him, they would have done so before this.

  The big Setter lacked the faintest idea of where he was going. He only knew that somehow he must find and give himself over to a human being. He started directly into the wilderness.

  He did not travel in a circle, as a lost man might have done. Though he had been sheltered and protected all his life, by every natural instinct he was still closer to elemental things than the keenest man ever can be. Though they were dormant in Sean, all the senses of his wild ancestors were still with him, and he instinctively traveled as a wild dog would have traveled.

  A buck deer, browsing among some oaks, snorted and stamped his hoof as Sean approached, then whirled and fled with his upraised white tail marking his line of flight. Sean’s tongue lolled, and an Irish Setter grin showed on his face. In spite of gnawing hunger, he was thoroughly enjoying this, his first real run in the woods.

  Suddenly Sean halted, nose quivering and mouth drooling as a sudden delicious odor wafted to his nostrils. Forty feet ahead a mother grouse and her brood of half-grown, bob-tailed young were dusting themselves in an old ant hill. Sean stood still, body tense and one fore paw curled up from the ground. Involuntarily, he had snapped into a perfect point. But Sean knew nothing about holding a point. After a few seconds he broke and charged the brood.

  The grouse rose on drumming wings and sped away. Eagerly, nostrils working and tail waving, Sean snuffled thoroughly the places where they had been. Only after three-quarters of an hour did he pace on.

  He was among beech trees now, gray-trunked giants much like the beeches of the Wintapi. Sean swerved, attracted by a colorful something high on the trunk of one of the beeches. It was a cluster of beefsteak mushrooms, still tender and so fresh that, in the shady grove, dewdrops still clung to them.

  Sean reared against the trunk, sniffed at the mushrooms, and dropped back to study them further. His head was bent to one side, his ears cocked questioningly. Again he reared, took a bit of mushroom in his mouth, tasted it with his tongue, and swallowed it. The taste was not at all unpleasant, so Sean took a large mouthful. He ate all the mushrooms he could reach and looked longingly at those he could not.

  They were by no means a satisfying meal, but they blunted the keenest edges of his appetite. Sean trotted on. He stopped to drink from another sparkling little trout stream, and then, just before the twilight shadows began to lower, he raised a happy head.

  From somewhere in the distance, far-off and faint but unmistakable, came the odor of man. Sean increased his trot to a delighted gallop. For endless hours he had been lost and desperately lonely. Now, at last, he would find the companionship he craved. He came to a clearing in the forest, and halted.

  About five acres in all, the clearing was one of three that were separated by thin belts of trees. In the center was an unpainted cabin, much like the one Danny and Ross had lived in before their lodge was built. Near the cabin was a ramshackle barn that was slowly falling apart under the combined and endless impact of sun, wind, rain, and snow. Grouped in a corral adjoining the barn were thirty-five sheep, their wool matted with burrs and leaves. There were also a black and white cow and a brown horse.

  Sean hesitated because it was his nature to hesitate. No Irish Setter is vicious, and all of them like humans, but they react to people differently. Some fling themselves gaily upon whoever comes, some are reticent and must be sure of a welcome before they will make friends with strangers. Sean was of the latter temperament.

  For a moment he stood within the forest’s border, then took a step into the clearing. He saw a man dressed in faded blue jeans and a checkered shirt come out of the cabin and stand on the porch. Sean flattened his ears and wagged his tail to show that he had only the most amiable of intentions. The man went back into the cabin, reappeared almost immediately, and walked slowly in Sean’s direction.

  The dog could not know that this was the cabin and clearing of Jake Busher, or that Jake had good reason to fear and hate most things that came out of the forest into his clearing. Working hard to build up a flock of sheep, one of the few money crops that would flourish on his thin acres, Jake had already seen almost half his flock pulled down and killed by four-footed raiders. Now he saw only another pirate, coming to claim more tribute.

  Sean advanced another step, his ears still flattened and the tip of his tail wagging appeasingly. There was a sudden crashing back in the forest as a lightning-riven limb fell from its parent tree. Startled, Sean turned to look.

  The fact that he was looking away from the man rather than toward him probably saved Sean’s sight. Jake Busher’s shotgun roared, and like hot, angry bees, lead pellets snicked into Sean’s neck and shoulder. He leaped convulsively, whirled, and streaked back into the shelter of the forest. The shot gun blasted again.

  The second shot did little harm. Sean was so far away that no pellet did more than penetrate his thick fur and sting a little.

  4. Slasher

  EVEN WHEN HE was hidden by the friendly forest, Sean did not stop running. This was a new and terrible experience. Of the thousands of people he had seen, at dog shows and at the Haggin estate, almost all had stopped to admire him. Never before in his whole life had any human being hurt him or tried to hurt him.

  His neck and left shoulder seemed on fire where the leaden pellets had buried themselves. He lifted his left front paw from the ground and raced along on three legs. This eased the pain, but did not stop it. However, Sean was not the kind of dog to let his hurts panic him or make him race away in wild hysteria.

  His first and instantaneous reaction had been to put a safe distance between himself and Jake Busher. As soon as he had done so he circled to bring himself in a position where he could test the winds. This was an instinctive act; a knowledge of how to do such things was born in Sean. No animal could successfully fight an enemy without knowing where that enemy was, what he was doing, and, if possible, what he planned to do next.

  Sean slowed to a limping walk, and crept into a patch of thick laurel. A brown weasel, a foot of whip-thin muscle and fury, snarled silently at him and glided like a snake beneath a moss-grown log. Sean paid no attention as he passed. Before he did anything else, he must find out what had happened to Jake Busher and whether or not Jake was pursuing him.

  The intertwined leaves of the laurel formed an almost sun-proof canopy above him, but Sean could thread a hidden way among the crooked stalks. He emerged from the laurel onto an aspen-covered little rise and ran across that as fast as three legs could take him. The aspens were open and he must not be seen. He ran down the other side of the rise and into another laurel patch.

  Gradually he circled on a course that took him almost directly back toward Jake Busher’s clearing. He cut around so that he was running almost parallel to his former trail, then slowed to a walk. Every few minutes he halted and did not move until the shifting breezes brought him the exact story of what lay ahead. Presently he found the scent of t
he clearing in his nostrils.

  This was like the game he had played with the mouse, only now Sean’s life was at stake if he lost. The dog could do nothing except depend on his own wits and inborn knowledge. These told him that a moving thing was easy to see but a motionless object, even if it could be seen, was always hard to identify. Sean halted in a thick copse of saplings and lay perfectly still. He was within one hundred yards of the trail he had made when he fled from Jake Busher, and less than fifty yards from the edge of the clearing.

  Sean read the story with his nose. Jake Busher had followed him a ways; the scent of Jake’s tracks was mingled with the odor of Sean’s trail. But Jake had gone back to the cabin and was there now. His scent told Sean that much-and no more.

  The big Setter lay still for a long while. The fact that Jake was in his cabin did not necessarily mean that he would stay there.

  Night had fallen when Sean left the vicinity of the clearing to make his way back into the forest. Highly intelligent, quick to respond to influences about him, he had learned a very harsh lesson the hard way. From now on he must be wary not only of Jake Busher, but of all men whom he did not know. Never again must he trust himself within reach of a stranger. At the same time he retained a great curiosity about Jake Busher and the clearing, and had a compelling desire to know more of them. But right now there were other things to do.

  His neck and shoulder throbbed painfully, felt hot, and the wounds had made him feverish. However, now that he had satisfied himself about his enemy’s whereabouts, it was time to go. Sean was too close to the clearing, and entirely aware of the fact that Jake Busher might find him again. What he wanted was some safe retreat where he could be alone.