Old Yeller

by Fred Gipson

  I hollered at Old Yeller. “Bring ’em on, Yeller,” I said. Then I turned and headed for a big gnarled liveoak tree that stood in a clear patch of ground down the draw apiece.

  I’d picked out that tree because it had a huge branch that stuck out to one side. I went and looked the branch over and saw that it was just right. It was low, yet still far enough above the ground to be out of reach of the highest-cutting hog.

  I climbed up the tree and squatted on the branch. I unwound my rope from where I’d packed it coiled around my waist and shook out a loop. Then I hollered for Old Yeller to bring the hogs to me.

  He did what I told him. He brought the fighting hogs to the tree and rallied them in a ring around it. Then he stood back, holding them there while he cocked his head sideways at me, wanting to know what came next.

  I soon showed him. I waited till one of the pigs came trotting under my limb. I dropped my loop around him, gave it a quick yank, and lifted him, squealing and kicking, up out of the shuffling and roaring mass of hogs below. I clamped him between my knees, pulled out my knife, and went to work on him. First I folded his right ear and sliced out a three-cornered gap in the top side, a mark that we called an overbit. Then, from the under side of his left ear, I slashed off a long strip that ran clear to the point. That is what we called an underslope. That had him marked for me. Our mark was overbit the right and underslope the left.

  Other settlers had other marks, like crop the right and underbit the left, or two underbits in the right ear, or an overslope in the left and an overbit in the right. Everybody knew the hog mark of everybody else and we all respected them. We never butchered or sold a hog that didn’t belong to us or marked a pig following a sow that didn’t wear our mark.

  Cutting marks in a pig’s ear is bloody work, and the scared pig kicks and squeals like he’s dying; but he’s not really hurt. What hurts him is the castration, and I never did like that part of the job. But it had to be done, and still does if you want to eat hog meat. Let a boar hog get grown without cutting his seeds out, and his meat is too tough and rank smelling to eat.

  The squealing of the pig and the scent of his blood made the hogs beneath me go nearly wild with anger. You never heard such roaring and teeth-popping, as they kept circling the tree and rearing up on its trunk, trying to get to me. The noise they made and the hate and anger that showed in their eyes was enough to chill your blood. Only, I was used to the feeling and didn’t let it bother me. That is, not much. Sometimes I’d let my mind slip for a minute and get to thinking how they’d slash me to pieces if I happened to fall out of the tree, and I’d feel a sort of cold shudder run all through me. But Papa had told me right from the start that fear was a right and natural feeling for anybody, and nothing to be ashamed of.

  “It’s a thing of your mind,” he said, “and you can train your mind to handle it just like you can train your arm to throw a rock.”

  Put that way, it made sense to be afraid; so I hadn’t bothered about that. I’d put in all my time trying to train my mind not to let fear stampede me. Sometimes it did yet, of course, but not when I was working hogs. I’d had enough experience at working hogs that now I could generally look down and laugh at them.

  I finished with the first pig and dropped it to the ground. Then, one after another, I roped the others, dragged them up into the tree, and worked them over.

  A couple of times, the old hogs on the ground got so mad that they broke ranks and charged Old Yeller. But right from the start, Old Yeller had caught onto what I wanted. Every time they chased him from the tree, he’d just run off a little way and circle back, then stand off far enough away that they’d rally around my tree again.

  In less than an hour, I was done with the job, and the only trouble we had was getting the hogs to leave the tree after I was finished. After going to so much trouble to hold the hogs under the tree, Old Yeller had a hard time understanding that I finally wanted them out of the way. And even after I got him to leave, the hogs were so mad and so suspicious that I had to squat there in the tree for nearly an hour longer before they finally drifted away into the brush, making it safe for me to come down.

  TEN

  With hogs ranging in the woods like that, it was hard to know for certain when you’d found them all. But I kept a piece of ear from every pig I marked. I carried the pieces home in my pockets and stuck them on a sharp-pointed stick which I kept hanging in the corn crib. When the count reached forty-six and I couldn’t seem to locate any new bunches of hogs, Mama and I decided that was all the pigs the sows had raised that year. So I had left off hog hunting and started getting ready to gather corn when Bud Searcy paid us another visit. He told me about one bunch of hogs I’d missed.

  “They’re clear back in that bat cave country, the yonder side of Salt Branch,” he said. “Rosal Simpson ran into them a couple of days ago, feeding on pear apples in them prickly-pear flats. Said there was five pigs following three sows wearing your mark. Couple of old bar’ hogs ranging with them.”

  I’d never been that far the other side of Salt Branch before, but Papa told me about the bat cave. I figured I could find the place. So early the next morning, I set out with Old Yeller, glad for the chance to hunt hogs a while longer before starting in on the corn gathering. Also, if I was lucky and found the hogs early, maybe I’d have time left to visit the cave and watch the bats come out.

  Papa had told me that was a real sight, the way the bats come out in the late afternoon. I was sure anxious to go see it. I always like to go see the far places and strange sights.

  Like one place on Salt Branch that I’d found. There was a high, undercut cliff there and some birds building their nests against the face of it. They were little gray, sharp-winged swallows. They gathered sticky mud out of a hog wallow and carried it up and stuck it to the bare rocks of the cliff, shaping the mud into little bulging nests with a single hole in the center of each one. The young birds hatched out there and stuck their heads out through the holes to get at the worms and bugs the grown birds brought to them. The mud nests were so thick on the face of the cliff that, from a distance, the wall looked like it was covered with honeycomb.

  There was another place I liked, too. It was a wild, lonesome place, down in a deep canyon that was bent in the shape of a horseshoe. Tall trees grew down in the canyon and leaned out over a deep hold of clear water. In the trees nested hundreds of long-shanked herons, blue ones and white ones with black wing tips. The herons built huge ragged nests of sticks and trash and sat around in the trees all day long, fussing and staining the tree branches with their white droppings. And beneath them, down in the clear water, yard-long catfish lay on the sandy bottom, waiting to gobble up any young birds that happened to fall out of the nests.

  The bat cave sounded like another of those wild places I liked to see. I sure hoped I could locate the hogs in time to pay it a visit while I was close by.

  We located the hogs in plenty of time; but before we were done with them, I didn’t want to go see a bat cave or anything else.

  Old Yeller struck the hogs’ trail at a water hole. He ran the scent out into a regular forest of prickly pear. Bright red apples fringed the edges of the pear pads. In places where the hogs had fed, bits of peel and black seeds and red juice stain lay on the ground.

  The sight made me wonder again how a hog could be tough enough to eat prickly-pear apples with their millions of little hair-like spines. I ate them, myself, sometimes; for pear apples are good eating. But even after I’d polished them clean by rubbing them in the sand, I generally wound up with several stickers in my mouth. But the hogs didn’t seem to mind the stickers. Neither did the wild turkeys or the pack rats or the little big-eared ringtail cats. All of those creatures came to the pear flats when the apples started turning red.

  Old Yeller’s yelling bay told me that he’d caught up with the hogs. I heard their rumbling roars and ran through the pear clumps toward the sound. They were the hogs that Rosal Simpson had sent word about. T
here were five pigs, three sows, and a couple of bar’ hogs, all but the pigs wearing our mark. Their faces bristled with long pear spines that they’d got stuck with, reaching for apples. Red juice stain was smeared all over their snouts. They stood, backed up against a big prickly-pear clump. Their anger had their bristles standing in high fierce ridges along their backbones. They roared and popped their teeth and dared me or Old Yeller to try to catch one of the squealing pigs.

  I looked around for the closest tree. It stood better than a quarter of a mile off. It was going to be rough on Old Yeller, trying to lead them to it. Having to duck and dodge around in those prickly pear, he was bound to come out bristling with more pear spines than the hogs had in their faces. But I couldn’t see any other place to take them. I struck off toward the tree, hollering at Old Yeller to bring them along.

  A deep cut-bank draw ran through the pear flats between me and the huge mesquite tree I was heading for, and it was down in the bottom of this draw that the hogs balked. They’d found a place where the flood waters had undercut one of the dirt banks to form a shallow cave.

  They’d backed up under the bank, with the pigs behind them. No amount of barking and pestering by Old Yeller could get them out. Now and then, one of the old bar’ hogs would break ranks to make a quick cutting lunge at the dog. But when Yeller leaped away, the hog wouldn’t follow up. He’d go right back to fill the gap he’d left in the half circle his mates had formed at the front of the cave. The hogs knew they’d found a natural spot for making a fighting stand, and they didn’t aim to leave it.

  I went back and stood on the bank above them, looking down, wondering what to do. Then it came to me that all I needed to do was go to work. This dirt bank would serve as well as a tree. There were the hogs right under me. They couldn’t get to me from down there, not without first having to go maybe fifty yards down the draw to find a place to get out. And Old Yeller wouldn’t let them do that. It wouldn’t be easy to reach beneath that undercut bank and rope a pig, but I believed it could be done.

  I took my rope from around my waist and shook out a loop. I moved to the lip of the cut bank. The pigs were too far back under me for a good throw. Maybe if I lay down on my stomach, I could reach them.

  I did. I reached back under and picked up the first pig, slick as a whistle. I drew him up and worked him over. I dropped him back and watched the old hogs sniff his bloody wounds. Scent of his blood made them madder, and they roared louder.

  I lay there and waited. A second pig moved out from the back part of the cave that I couldn’t quite see. He still wasn’t quite far enough out. I inched forward and leaned further down, to where I could see better. I could reach him with my loop now.

  I made my cast, and that’s when it happened. The dirt bank broke beneath my weight. A wagon load of sand caved off and spilled down over the angry hogs. I went with the sand.

  I guess I screamed. I don’t know. It happened too fast. All I can really remember is the wild heart-stopping scare I knew as I tumbled, head over heels, down among those killer hogs.

  The crumbling sand all but buried the hogs. I guess that’s what saved me, right at the start. I remember bumping into the back of one old bar’ hog, then leaping to my feet in a smothering fog of dry dust. I jumped blindly to one side as far as I could. I broke to run, but I was too late. A slashing tush caught me in the calf of my right leg.

  A searing pain shot up into my body. I screamed. I stumbled and went down. I screamed louder then, knowing I could never get to my feet in time to escape the rush of angry hogs roaring down upon me.

  It was Old Yeller who saved me. Just like he’d saved Little Arliss from the she bear. He came in, roaring with rage. He flung himself between me and the killer hogs. Fangs bared, he met them head on, slashing and snarling. He yelled with pain as the savage tushes ripped into him. He took the awful punishment meant for me, but held his ground. He gave me that one-in-a-hundred chance to get free.

  I took it. I leaped to my feet. In wild terror, I ran along the bed of that dry wash, cut right up a sloping bank. Then I took out through the forest of prickly pear. I ran till a forked stick tripped me and I fell.

  It seemed like that fall, or maybe it was the long prickly-pear spines that stabbed me in the hip, brought me out of my scare. I sat up, still panting for breath and with the blood hammering in my ears. But I was all right in my mind again. I yanked the spines out of my hip, then pulled up my slashed pants to look at my leg. Sight of so much blood nearly threw me into another panic. It was streaming out of the cut and clear down into my shoe.

  I sat and stared at it for a moment and shivered. Then I got hold of myself again. I wiped away the blood. The gash was a bad one, clear to the bone, I could tell, and plenty long. But it didn’t hurt much; not yet, that is. The main hurting would start later, I guessed, after the bleeding stopped and my leg started to get stiff. I guessed I’d better hurry and tie up the place and get home as quick as I could. Once that leg started getting stiff, I might not make it.

  I took my knife and cut a strip off the tail of my shirt. I bound my leg as tight as I could. I got up to see if I could walk with the leg wrapped as tight as I had it, and I could.

  But when I set out, it wasn’t in the direction of home. It was back along the trail through the prickly pear.

  I don’t quite know what made me do it. I didn’t think to myself: “Old Yeller saved my life and I can’t go off and leave him. He’s bound to be dead, but it would look mighty shabby to go home without finding out for sure. I have to go back, even if my hurt leg gives out on me before I can get home.”

  I didn’t think anything like that. I just started walking in that direction and kept walking till I found him.

  He lay in the dry wash, about where I’d left it to go running through the prickly pear. He’d tried to follow me, but was too hurt to keep going. He was holed up under a broad slab of red sandstone rock that had slipped off a high bank and now lay propped up against a round boulder in such a way as to form a sort of cave. He’d taken refuge there from the hogs. The hogs were gone now, but I could see their tracks in the sand around the rocks, where they’d tried to get at him from behind. I’d have missed him, hidden there under that rock slab, if he hadn’t whined as I walked past.

  I knelt beside him and coaxed him out from under the rocks. He grunted and groaned as he dragged himself toward me. He sank back to the ground, his blood-smeared body trembling while he wiggled his stub tail and tried to lick my hog-cut leg.

  A big lump came up into my throat. Tears stung my eyes, blinding me. Here he was, trying to lick my wound, when he was bleeding from a dozen worse ones. And worst of all was his belly. It was ripped wide open and some of his insides were bulging out through the slit.

  It was a horrible sight. It was so horrible that for a second I couldn’t look at it. I wanted to run off. I didn’t want to stay and look at something that filled me with such a numbing terror.

  But I didn’t run off. I shut my eyes and made myself run a hand over Old Yeller’s head. The stickiness of the blood on it made my flesh crawl, but I made myself do it. Maybe I couldn’t do him any good, but I wasn’t going to run off and leave him to die, all by himself.

  Then it came to me that he wasn’t dead yet and maybe he didn’t have to die. Maybe there was something that I could do to save him. Maybe if I hurried home, I could get Mama to come back and help me. Mama’d know what to do. Mama always knew what to do when somebody got hurt.

  I wiped the tears from my eyes with my shirt sleeves and made myself think what to do. I took off my shirt and tore it into strips. I used a sleeve to wipe the sand from the belly wound. Carefully, I eased his entrails back into place. Then I pulled the lips of the wound together and wound strips of my shirt around Yeller’s body. I wound them tight and tied the strips together so they couldn’t work loose.

  All the time I worked with him, Old Yeller didn’t let out a whimper. But when I shoved him back under the rock where he’d be out of th
e hot sun, he started whining. I guess he knew that I was fixing to leave him, and he wanted to go, too. He started crawling back out of his hole.

  I stood and studied for a while. I needed something to stop up the opening so Yeller couldn’t get out. It would have to be something too big and heavy for him to shove aside. I thought of a rock and went looking for one. What I found was even better. It was an uprooted and dead mesquite tree, lying on the back of the wash.

  The stump end of the dead mesquite was big and heavy. It was almost too much for me to drag in the loose sand. I heaved and sweated and started my leg to bleeding again. But I managed to get that tree stump where I wanted it.

  I slid Old Yeller back under the rock slab. I scolded him and made him stay there till I could haul the tree stump into place.

  Like I’d figured, the stump just about filled the opening. Maybe a strong dog could have squeezed through the narrow opening that was left, but I didn’t figure Old Yeller could. I figured he’d be safe in there till I could get back.

  Yeller lay back under the rock slab now, staring at me with a look in his eyes that made that choking lump come into my throat again. It was a begging look, and Old Yeller wasn’t the kind to beg.

  I reached in and let him lick my hand. “Yeller,” I said, “I’ll be back. I’m promising that I’ll be back.”

  Then I lit out for home in a limping run. His howl followed me. It was the most mournful howl I ever heard.

  ELEVEN

  It looked like I’d never get back to where I’d left Old Yeller. To begin with, by the time I got home, I’d traveled too far and too fast. I was so hot and weak and played out that I was trembling all over. And that hog-cut leg was sure acting up. My leg hadn’t gotten stiff like I’d figured. I’d used it too much. But I’d strained the cut muscle. It was jerking and twitching long before I got home; and after I got there, it wouldn’t stop.