by Fred Gipson
Swinging that chopping axe was sure hard work. The sweat poured off me. My back muscles ached. The axe got so heavy I could hardly swing it. My breath got harder and harder to breathe.
An hour before sundown, I was worn down to a nub. It seemed like I couldn’t hit another lick. Papa could have lasted till past sundown, but I didn’t see how I could. I shouldered my axe and started toward the cabin, trying to think up some excuse to tell Mama to keep her from knowing I was played clear out.
That’s when I heard Little Arliss scream.
Well, Little Arliss was a screamer by nature. He’d scream when he was happy and scream when he was mad and a lot of times he’d scream just to hear himself make a noise. Generally, we paid no more mind to his screaming than we did to the gobble of a wild turkey.
But this time was different. The second I heard his screaming, I felt my heart flop clear over. This time I knew Little Arliss was in real trouble.
I tore out up the trail leading toward the cabin. A minute before, I’d been so tired out with my rail splitting that I couldn’t have struck a trot. But now I raced through the tall trees in that creek bottom, covering ground like a scared wolf.
Little Arliss’s second scream, when it came, was louder and shriller and more frantic-sounding than the first. Mixed with it was a whimpering crying sound that I knew didn’t come from him. It was a sound I’d heard before and seemed like I ought to know what it was, but right then I couldn’t place it.
Then, from way off to one side came a sound that I would have recognized anywhere. It was the coughing roar of a charging bear. I’d just heard it once in my life. That was the time Mama had shot and wounded a hog-killing bear and Papa had had to finish it off with a knife to keep it from getting her.
My heart went to pushing up into my throat, nearly choking off my wind. I strained for every lick of speed I could get out of my running legs. I didn’t know what sort of fix Little Arliss had got himself into, but I knew that it had to do with a mad bear, which was enough.
The way the late sun slanted through the trees had the trail all cross-banded with streaks of bright light and dark shade. I ran through these bright and dark patches so fast that the changing light nearly blinded me. Then suddenly, I raced out into the open where I could see ahead. And what I saw sent a chill clear through to the marrow of my bones.
There was Little Arliss, down in that spring hole again. He was lying half in and half out of the water, holding on to the hind leg of a little black bear cub no bigger than a small coon. The bear cub was out on the bank, whimpering and crying and clawing the rocks with all three of his other feet, trying to pull away. But Little Arliss was holding on for all he was worth, scared now and screaming his head off. Too scared to let go.
How the bear cub ever came to prowl close enough for Little Arliss to grab him, I don’t know. And why he didn’t turn on him and bite loose, I couldn’t figure out, either. Unless he was like Little Arliss, too scared to think.
But all of that didn’t matter now. What mattered was the bear cub’s mama. She’d heard the cries of her baby and was coming to save him. She was coming so fast that she had the brush popping and breaking as she crashed through and over it. I could see her black heavy figure piling off down the slant on the far side of Birdsong Creek. She was roaring mad and ready to kill.
And worst of all, I could see that I’d never get there in time!
Mama couldn’t either. She’d heard Arliss, too, and here she came from the cabin, running down the slant toward the spring, screaming at Arliss, telling him to turn the bear cub loose. But Little Arliss wouldn’t do it. All he’d do was hang with that hind leg and let out one shrill shriek after another as fast as he could suck in a breath.
Now the she bear was charging across the shallows in the creek. She was knocking sheets of water high in the bright sun, charging with her fur up and her long teeth bared, filling the canyon with that awful coughing roar. And no matter how fast Mama ran or how fast I ran, the she bear was going to get there first!
I think I nearly went blind then, picturing what was going to happen to Little Arliss. I know that I opened my mouth to scream and not any sound came out.
Then, just as the bear went lunging up the creek bank toward Little Arliss and her cub, a flash of yellow came streaking out of the brush.
It was that big yeller dog. He was roaring like a mad bull. He wasn’t one-third as big and heavy as the she bear, but when he piled into her from one side, he rolled her clear off her feet. They went down in a wild, roaring tangle of twisting bodies and scrambling feet and slashing fangs.
As I raced past them, I saw the bear lunge up to stand on her hind feet like a man while she clawed at the body of the yeller dog hanging to her throat. I didn’t wait to see more. Without ever checking my stride, I ran in and jerked Little Arliss loose from the cub. I grabbed him by the wrist and yanked him up out of that water and slung him toward Mama like he was a half-empty sack of corn. I screamed at Mama. “Grab him, Mama! Grab him and run!” Then I swung my chopping axe high and wheeled, aiming to cave in the she bear’s head with the first lick.
But I never did strike. I didn’t need to. Old Yeller hadn’t let the bear get close enough. He couldn’t handle her; she was too big and strong for that. She’d stand there on her hind feet, hunched over, and take a roaring swing at him with one of those big front claws. She’d slap him head over heels. She’d knock him so far that it didn’t look like he could possibly get back there before she charged again, but he always did. He’d hit the ground rolling, yelling his head off with the pain of the blow; but somehow he’d always roll to his feet. And here he’d come again, ready to tie into her for another round.
I stood there with my axe raised, watching them for a long moment. Then from up toward the house, I heard Mama calling: “Come away from there, Travis. Hurry, son! Run!”
That spooked me. Up till then, I’d been ready to tie into that bear myself. Now, suddenly, I was scared out of my wits again. I ran toward the cabin.
But like it was, Old Yeller nearly beat me there. I didn’t see it, of course; but Mama said that the minute Old Yeller saw we were all in the clear and out of danger, he threw the fight to that she bear and lit out for the house. The bear chased him for a little piece, but at the rate Old Yeller was leaving her behind, Mama said it looked like the bear was backing up.
But if the big yeller dog was scared or hurt in any way when he came dashing into the house, he didn’t show it. He sure didn’t show it like we all did. Little Arliss had hushed his screaming, but he was trembling all over and clinging to Mama like he’d never let her go. And Mama was sitting in the middle of the floor, holding him up close and crying like she’d never stop. And me, I was close to crying, myself.
Old Yeller, though, all he did was come bounding in to jump on us and lick us in the face and bark so loud that there, inside the cabin, the noise nearly made us deaf.
The way he acted, you might have thought that bear fight hadn’t been anything more than a rowdy romp that we’d all taken part in for the fun of it.
SIX
Till Little Arliss got us mixed up in that bear fight, I guess I’d been looking on him about like most boys look on their little brothers. I liked him, all right, but I didn’t have a lot of use for him. What with his always playing in our drinking water and getting in the way of my chopping axe and howling his head off and chunking me with rocks when he got mad, it didn’t seem to me like he was hardly worth the bother of putting up with.
But that day when I saw him in the spring, so helpless against the angry she bear, I learned different. I knew then that I loved him as much as I did Mama and Papa, maybe in some ways even a little bit more.
So it was only natural for me to come to love the dog that saved him.
After that, I couldn’t do enough for Old Yeller. What if he was a big ugly meat-stealing rascal? What if he did fall over and yell bloody murder every time I looked crossways at him? What if he had run off wh
en he ought to have helped with the fighting bulls? None of that made a lick of difference now. He’d pitched in and saved Little Arliss when I couldn’t possibly have done it, and that was enough for me.
I petted him and made over him till he was wiggling all over to show how happy he was. I felt mean about how I’d treated him and did everything I could to let him know. I searched his feet and pulled out a long mesquite thorn that had become embedded between his toes. I held him down and had Mama hand me a stick with a coal of fire on it, so I could burn off three big bloated ticks that I found inside one of his ears. I washed him with lye soap and water, then rubbed salty bacon grease into his hair all over to rout the fleas. And that night after dark, when he sneaked into bed with me and Little Arliss, I let him sleep there and never said a word about it to Mama.
I took him and Little Arliss squirrel hunting the next day. It was the first time I’d ever taken Little Arliss on any kind of hunt. He was such a noisy pest that I always figured he’d scare off the game.
As it turned out, he was just as noisy and pesky as I’d figured. He’d follow along, keeping quiet like I told him, till he saw maybe a pretty butterfly floating around in the air. Then he’d set up a yell you could have heard a mile off and go chasing after the butterfly. Of course, he couldn’t catch it; but he would keep yelling at me to come help him. Then he’d get mad because I wouldn’t and yell still louder. Or maybe he’d stop to turn over a flat rock. Then he’d stand yelling at me to come back and look at all the yellow ants and centipedes and crickets and stinging scorpions that went scurrying away, hunting new hiding places.
Once he got hung up in some briars and yelled till I came back to get him out. Another time he fell down and struck his elbow on a rock and didn’t say a word about it for several minutes—until he saw blood seeping out of a cut on his arm. Then he stood and screamed like he was being burnt with a hot iron.
With that much racket going on, I knew we’d scare all the game clear out of the country. Which, I guess we did. All but the squirrels. They took to the trees where they could hide from us. But I was lucky enough to see which tree one squirrel went up; so I put some of Little Arliss’s racket to use.
I sent him in a circle around the tree, beating on the grass and bushes with a stick, while I stood waiting. Sure enough, the squirrel got to watching Little Arliss and forgot me. He kept turning around the tree limb to keep it between him and Little Arliss, till he was on my side in plain sight. I shot him out of the tree the first shot.
After that, Old Yeller caught onto what game we were after. He went to work then, trailing and treeing the squirrels that Little Arliss was scaring up off the ground. From then on, with Yeller to tree the squirrels and Little Arliss to turn them on the tree limbs, we had pickings. Wasn’t but a little bit till I’d shot five, more than enough to make us a good squirrel fry for supper.
A week later, Old Yeller helped me catch a wild gobbler that I’d have lost without him. We had gone up to the corn patch to pick a bait of blackeyed peas. I was packing my gun. Just as we got up to the slabrock fence that Papa had built around the corn patch, I looked over and spotted this gobbler doing our pea-picking for us. The pea pods were still green yet, most of them no further along than snapping size. This made them hard for the gobbler to shell, but he was working away at it, pecking and scratching so hard that he was raising a big dust out in the field.
“Why, that old rascal,” Mama said. “He’s just clawing those pea vines all to pieces.”
“Hush, Mama,” I said. “Don’t scare him.” I lifted my gun and laid the barrel across the top of the rock fence. “I’ll have him ready for the pot in just a minute.”
It wasn’t a long shot, and I had him sighted in, dead to rights. I aimed to stick a bullet right where his wings hinged to his back. I was holding my breath and already squeezing off when Little Arliss, who’d gotten behind, came running up.
“Whatcha shootin’ at, Travis?” he yelled at the top of his voice. “Whatcha shootin’ at?”
Well, that made me and the gobbler both jump. The gun fired, and I saw the gobbler go down. But a second later, he was up again, streaking through the tall corn, dragging a broken wing.
For a second, I was so mad at Little Arliss I could have wrung his neck like a frying chicken’s. I said, “Arliss! Why can’t you keep your mouth shut? You’ve made me lose that gobbler!”
Well, Little Arliss didn’t have sense enough to know what I was mad about. Right away, he puckered up and went to crying and leaking tears all over the place. Some of them splattered clear down on his bare feet, making dark splotches in the dust that covered them. I always did say that when Little Arliss cried he could shed more tears faster than any crier I ever saw.
“Wait a minute!” Mama put in. “I don’t think you’ve lost your gobbler yet. Look yonder!”
She pointed, and I looked, and there was Old Yeller jumping the rock fence and racing toward the pea patch. He ran up to where I’d knocked the gobbler down. He circled the place one time, smelling the ground and wiggling his stub tail. Then he took off through the corn the same way the gobbler went, yelling like I was beating him with a stick.
When he barked treed a couple of minutes later, it was in the woods the other side of the corn patch. We went to him. We found him jumping at the gobbler that had run up a stooping liveoak and was perched there, panting, just waiting for me.
So in spite of the fact that Little Arliss had caused me to make a bad shot, we had us a real sumptuous supper that night. Roast turkey with cornbread dressing and watercress and wild onions that Little Arliss and I found growing down in the creek next to the water.
But when we tried to feed Old Yeller some of the turkey, on account of his saving us from losing it, he wouldn’t eat. He’d lick the meat and wiggle his stub tail to show how grateful he was, but he didn’t swallow down more than a bite or two.
That puzzled Mama and me because, when we remembered back, we realized that he hadn’t been eating anything we’d fed him for the last several days. Yet he was fat and with hair as slick and shiny as a dog eating three square meals a day.
Mama shook her head. “If I didn’t know better,” she said, “I’d say that dog was sucking eggs. But I’ve got three hens setting and one with biddy chickens, and I’m getting more eggs from the rest of them than I’ve gotten since last fall. So he can’t be robbing the nests.”
Well, we wondered some about what Old Yeller was living on, but didn’t worry about it. That is, not until the day Bud Searcy dropped by the cabin to see how we were making out.
Bud Searcy was a red-faced man with a bulging middle who liked to visit around the settlement and sit and talk hard times and spit tobacco juice all over the place and wait for somebody to ask him to dinner.
I never did have a lot of use for him and my folks didn’t, either. Mama said he was shiftless. She said that was the reason the rest of the men left him at home to sort of look after the womenfolks and kids while they were gone on the cow drive. She said the men knew that if they took Bud Searcy along, they’d never get to Kansas before the steers were dead with old age. It would take Searcy that long to get through visiting and eating with everybody between Salt Licks and Abilene.
But he did have a little white-haired granddaughter that I sort of liked. She was eleven and different from most girls. She would hang around and watch what boys did, like showing how high they could climb in a tree or how far they could throw a rock or how fast they could swim or how good they could shoot. But she never wanted to mix in or try to take over and boss things. She just went along and watched and didn’t say much, and the only thing I had against her was her eyes. They were big solemn brown eyes and right pretty to look at; only when she fixed them on me, it always seemed like they looked clear through me and saw everything I was thinking. That always made me sort of jumpy, so that when I could, I never would look right straight at her.
Her name was Lisbeth and she came with her grandpa the day he visited
us. They came riding up on an old shad-bellied pony that didn’t look like he’d had a fill of corn in a coon’s age. She rode behind her grandpa’s saddle, holding to his belt in the back, and her white hair was all curly and rippling in the sun. Trotting behind them was a blue-ticked she dog that I always figured was one of Bell’s pups.
Old Yeller went out to bay them as they rode up. I noticed right off that he didn’t go about it like he really meant business. His yelling bay sounded a lot more like he was just barking because he figured that’s what we expected him to do. And the first time I hollered at him, telling him to dry up all that racket, he hushed. Which surprised me, as hard-headed as he generally was.
By the time Mama had come to the door and told Searcy and Lisbeth to get down and come right in, Old Yeller had started a romp with the blue-ticked bitch.
Lisbeth slipped to the ground and stood staring at me with those big solemn eyes while her grandpa dismounted. Searcy told Mama that he believed he wouldn’t come in the house. He said that as hot as the day was, he figured he’d like it better sitting in the dog run. So Mama had me bring out our four cowhide bottom chairs. Searcy picked the one I always liked to sit in best. He got out a twist of tobacco and bit off a chew big enough to bulge his cheek and went to chewing and talking and spitting juice right where we’d all be bound to step in it and pack it around on the bottoms of our feet.
First he asked Mama if we were making out all right, and Mama said we were. Then he told her that he’d been left to look after all the families while the men were gone, a mighty heavy responsibility that was nearly working him to death, but that he was glad to do it. He said for Mama to remember that if the least little thing went wrong, she was to get in touch with him right away. And Mama said she would.
Then he leaned his chair back against the cabin wall and went on telling what all was going on around in the settlement. He told about how dry the weather was and how he looked for all the corn crops to fail and the settlement folks to be scraping the bottoms of their meal barrels long before next spring. He told how the cows were going dry and the gardens were failing. He told how Jed Simpson’s boy Rosal was sitting at a turkey roost, waiting for a shot, when a fox came right up and tried to jump on him, and Rosal had to club it to death with his gun butt. This sure looked like a case of hydrophobia to Searcy, as anybody knew that no fox in his right mind was going to jump on a hunter.
