Hamish had also noticed Ben’s brow working overtime and decided to switch subjects. As Smudge got Ben smiling again Hamish said cheerily, “So who’s hungry?”
Smudge’s tail whapped her brother and Sholto in the back seat, and she gave Hamish a quick lick on his fuzzy cheek.
The truck passed through a smaller version of the entrance gate, and clanged over another row of metal cow guards. As they entered the clearing Ben realized he had also been wrong about the size of the barn and the farmhouse. They were both huge. The red post and beam barn was three stories tall and the all-glass entrance to the log and stone farmhouse was almost as high. The circular driveway brought them under a timber portico that connected to the biggest house Ben had ever seen.
As they rolled to a stop one of the giant front doors opened and a young woman stepped out. She was wearing camouflage pants and an army-green thermal top, and she waved enthusiastically at them. Sholto was up and scratching at the rear door, and Hamish asked Ben to reach back and let her out.
Ben didn’t know the old dog could move so fast. She wobbled and faltered a few times when she hit the icy driveway but quickly got her feet under her and shot across the walkway to the porch. The woman knelt as Sholto got close and they fell into a pile when the wagging dog hit her.
“Know each other?” Ben asked.
“Aye, I suspect so,” Hamish said with a laugh.
The pups’ tails were thumping against the back of his seat and Ben said, “Sure, go say hi,” but then shouted after them, “Then come back and help carry stuff!”
He turned and Hamish was giving him a strange look.
“You’re a right odd little fucker, you know that?” he said, and didn’t wait for an answer as he got out of the truck. He nodded to the house and added, “And when you meet her don’t bloody stare.”
Ben whispered, “Wait, don’t stare at what?” but Hamish had already shut his door.
As Ben was grabbing his pack from the back seat the woman came up behind him. “Hey there young man,” she said as she put a hand on his shoulder. Ben turned and was pulled into a crushing hug. She pushed him back to arm’s length and said, “God you look just like your dad. I’m Christa.”
Ben held out his hand and she smiled as she shook it. He said, “I’m Ben, Ben Hogan, ma’am. Thanks for letting me and my pups come here. Your house is ginormous, I mean awesome.”
“Drop the ma’am shit son. How’s your family?” Christa asked.
“They’re fine, ma’… um, they all send their love. Mimi said I’m supposed to tell you thanks from her, too.”
Ben gave her a quick look over. Christa was about his mom’s height but maybe a little younger. She was good looking, with dark features and long black hair that was braided and pulled back into a ponytail. She was slim, but based on her shoulders and arms, and that hug, he thought she must be pretty strong.
“Well you’re very welcome, and I already got a kiss from these two fools,” she said, looking down at the pups who were standing in front of them and wagging in sync. “Your Mimi said they’re a handful,” Christa said, “But they don’t look so bad to me.”
“Spot, Smudge, this is Christa,” Ben said, and as the pups took a step forward he had a flash of worry that they were going to reach out and offer to shake her hand but they settled for a slight tandem head bow.
Christa laughed and grabbed an ear on each dog. “Okay, Spot and Smudge,” she said, “Come on in, supper’s waiting.” She headed towards the back of the truck and yelled, “You need some help, Skippy McArsemuncher?”
“Stow that shite warrant officer Boucher,” Hamish said with a smile as he tossed her a heavy duffle bag. He shut the tailgate and said, “C’mon Sholto, let’s get you your last meal.”
“Stop that,” Christa said, trying to catch the shepherd’s wagging tail, “It’s not funny, and you’ll go long before she does.”
Ben and Christa shouldered their bags and followed behind Hamish towards the house.
Ben noticed Christa walked with an odd gate. She had a little limp and walked with her feet slightly apart.
As they chatted Christa caught him avoiding looking at her. She leaned forward and with her free hand smacked Hamish on the back of the head as she said, “You told him not to stare, didn’t you, you old bawbag? His sister and now him, what is it with you Jocks and your sick humor?”
Hamish hunched and caught his hat as it fell, expecting another blow. He was laughing but didn’t look back as he led them across the porch.
When they entered the house Christa dropped the duffle bag and turned to face Ben. She pulled up her camouflage pant legs to expose titanium shins and ankles that fit into normal tennis shoes.
Ben stared as Spot and Smudge leaned in and gave her prosthetics a sniff.
Spot reached out and tapped a paw at her ankle, her shin, and then her knee. He looked at his sister, tipped his head, and then looked up at Christa.
“If you want to go any higher I’ll expect some wine first,” she said to the black dog. She dropped her pant legs and as she straightened up she said, “You weren’t kidding Hamish, they are a curious pair.”
Turning to Ben, Christa added, “Just a little something I picked up overseas. Most women fawn over new shoes, well I get to buy all new legs. Any questions?”
“Incredible,” was all Ben could come up with.
Chapter 23
The next morning Ben rummaged through one of the duffle bags they’d left in the front hall and returned to Christa’s side at the kitchen stove.
“This what you wanted?” he asked as he looked down into the gently bubbling pot she was stirring. It looked like she was getting ready to fry chicken, but it smelled like Mimi’s bathroom.
Christa took the small yellow bricks from Ben and said, “Perfect, thanks.”
Lined up on the counter next to the stove were a dozen unlabeled mason jars filled with various liquids and thick pastes. He selected a white one, gave it a sniff, smiled, and raised his eyebrows at her.
As she carefully slipped the beeswax cakes into the pot she said, “Coconut oil. I’m making foot wax…my secret recipe.”
“Uh huh,” Ben said with a nod.
He returned to the large fieldstone hearth and picked up his bowl of oatmeal and half-eaten banana. The pups and Sholto were munching away happily at their bowls in the corner. Spot and Smudge had never had venison and both agreed with Sholto they were little cubes of meaty heaven.
Next to Ben was a two-foot tall brain teaser puzzle he had taken from a narrow table on the far wall where several of them were neatly arranged. They were beautifully crafted of carved wood and chrome metal, and some had intricate ropes and ornately tooled leather pieces. They all had a common theme in that the object was to manipulate the puzzle to remove parts that were trapped within the structure. Hamish often sent smaller versions of these puzzles to the Hogan-Walker houses for birthdays and Christmas, and Ben thought it was cool to see the originals.
Smudge thought it was cool, too. She stopped chowing long enough to nudge Spot and they looked at the puzzle next to Ben on the hearth. The first night the pups had their new paws Mimi had given Smudge a smaller copy of this same puzzle to test out her dexterity. She’d solved the puzzle in just a few minutes while her brother played with, and solved, a Rubik’s cube. Spot had teased his sister into bending the chrome ring with her paws, and she had folded the strong ring almost in half. The chrome ring on the puzzle next to Ben was three times the size of the one Smudge had bent, and with a snort Spot challenged her to try to fold that one.
As Christa stirred the pot she watched the curious kid and his dogs looking at the puzzle. She noticed Ben was also drawn to the fireplace’s large andirons.
She said, “Those were a gift from Hamish to my parents. They were made in Glasgow.”
The large black iron figures were shaped like sitting dogs. They looked just like his pups and were about the same size.
Nestled among the many ov
erlapping frames on the wide mantle was a picture Ben had seen before. A very young Mimi and Papa were sitting behind a team of dogs on a sled, and a brown-bearded Hamish was standing next to them holding Ben’s five year old mom.
A box frame next to the picture also caught Ben’s eye. In it was a photo of Sholto and Christa standing next to a stiff looking woman in a pillbox hat. Christa was wearing a dress uniform brimming with medals and there wasn’t even a hint of gray in Sholto’s muzzle. She also wore a desert camo service vest that looked like a beefier version of the pups’ vests. Mounted on a field of blue velvet next to the photo was a round bronze medal with the cursive words ‘For Gallantry’. Below the medal was a small brass plate engraved with ‘SHOLTO’.
Christa watched as Ben took it down and showed it to his dogs. She caught his eye and smiled, but turned away without saying anything. Ben put it back up on the mantle.
Ben and the pups had explored the ranch house and were awed by its scale. It was just so big, and seemed to go on and on. His wise-ass family had told him the ranch house was, “A nice little place.” Ben thought even if they had tried to accurately describe it they couldn’t have done it justice.
The fireplace was three stories tall and was flanked by windows that spanned the entire rear of the main part of the house. The house sat on a rise, and beyond the wrap-around back deck Ben could see the river and the big red barn. Behind the house and the barn was a meadow of snow and a tree covered valley that stretched away to the mountains in the distance.
He stood in the center of the house with the pups for a full five minutes staring up at the complex framework of soaring timbers. The vertical logs were huge and rough-hewn, and met framing that was cut square and formed a grid to supported the massive ceiling beams.
There was another whole wing of the house connected to the front hallway that seemed to be newer. It had more bedrooms, including several with bunks. The wing also had a rec room, large laundry room, supply room with a big generator, and a garage with five large doors. All of the rooms had big windows, and most connected to the wide back deck.
Hamish walked down the stairs and into the kitchen. He was pulling on a sweater as Christa was answering Ben’s questions, “It was just a small hunting lodge when my crazy great grandmother came here. She was a tough old bird, and as her logging business grew she kept buying more of the surrounding forest land, and so did my grandparents, and then my parents when they took over. Mom and Dad aren’t really into skiing or fishing but our guests sure are, and we just seem to always be adding on to our little shack here to make room for them. Sometimes this place feels more like a hotel than a house.”
Hamish poured himself a coffee. He tipped his cup towards Christa and said, “Her poor parents had to retire and move south because this disappointment has continually refused to provide them with grandchildren, thusly breaking their fragile hearts. Their tears kept freezing up here so they had to move to Florida.”
“This from a man with no children,” Christa said to Ben.
“That I claim as mine,” Hamish said as he put on his tam, “Right, let’s get to work.”
As they put their coats on and followed him out onto the deck Christa said, “Now we lease the southern half to the logging companies, except for this valley of course where we train the dogs. The northern half we recently trusted to the national park service where the forests and mountains function as our new wolf sanctuary.”
Ben and the pups shared a look, and an animated secret chat as they walked down the deck stairs behind Christa and Hamish.
“Excuse me, Christa,” Ben said, “did you just say you had a wolf sanctuary?”
Chapter 24
Ben grabbed a stack of empty five gallon pails from the back of the pickup truck and followed Hamish onto the covered front porch of the huge red barn. Much like the ranch house’s construction, the barn’s frame was a mix of round logs and square timbers. The broad porch was supported by foot-wide hewn posts set on fieldstone pillars. The top of each tall post had curved braces pegged to equally large timbers that made up the interior framework of the barn. Ben and pups couldn’t help but stare at the way everything fit together, it was like a huge version of one of his uncle’s puzzles.
Ben mimicked Hamish and stomped the snow off his boots on a metal grate set in the porch floor before they stepped into the barn.
Spot and Smudge had been following behind them and Hamish hadn’t notice them until they were inside. He said, “Leave them here.”
Ben motioned for the pups to hang back.
Ben had always thought Papa’s barn back home was big, but it seemed like a dozen would fit inside Christa’s barn. It was absolutely huge, and warm, bright, and super clean. The thick support posts from the porch continued in rows down the center, dividing the barn into large bays. The same post outlined its many garage doors, and the large transom windows above them. Curved wooden braces connected the posts to a grid of rafters. They supported a wide central loft and the pitched roof where the morning sun streamed in shafts through windows set high above the loft. There where heaters hung from chains on every other support beam, and big dome-shaped work lights dropped down from the high rafters.
In the first few bays were a half dozen shiny, new looking snowmobiles and a quad with huge tires. There was a workshop with large islands of equipment for metal and woodworking, a long metal workbench, and a wall of rolling tool cabinets. Ben noticed that everything in the shop was immaculately clean and organized as well.
They passed shelves stacked with dry dog food bags, and then several large empty chain link kennels. The middle bays of the barn held what looked to be a dozen dog sleds of different sizes. Ben took a detour around one of them.
“Whoa,” he said, running his hand down its sleek black side. He noticed the handlebar was being repaired and had thin strips of a shiny woven fabric hanging from it.
He asked, “Kevlar?”
Hamish smiled and scratched his head under his tam, “Aye,” he said, “What do you know about Kevlar?”
“Mimi got me a phone case made out it and we looked up how they make it, with all the layers and binder and stuff,” Ben said, “Very cool.”
“You and Mimi looked it up?” Hamish said, looking down at Ben.
“Yeah,” Ben said, looking back at the door where the pups were standing, “She’s, you know, cool like that.”
They continued on to the far side of the barn where there was a back door and a large fieldstone fireplace with firewood stacked in tidy rows on the floor below timber stairs that led to the loft. There was also a large pegboard with packs, leather harnesses, and a bunch of other gear Ben couldn’t identify.
Next to the door was a stainless steel vat mounted above a gas fire ring. Various small game hung next to it, mostly rabbits. Some just had the heads removed and others had been gutted and skinned, and there was a long tray on the floor to catch the drippings.
Hamish removed his work gloves and put them in his mouth. He ran his hand up the side of the vat and then tested the manhole sized lid for heat before lifting it off. He nodded to a small crate and Ben used it as a stool so he could lean over the top of the drum. It was half full of brown liquid and the contents were steaming slightly. It smelled like soup.
Hamish took the largest ladle Ben had ever seen from a hook on the wall and stirred the chunky mixture before he carefully scooped some into one of the pails. Hamish handed the ladle to Ben and nodded at the two remaining empty pails. Ben filled them as Hamish walked around an exam table to a shelf that held cans of lard and various large white plastic tubs. He pulled down one of them and spun the lid off, and then scooped equal amounts of powder into the pails as Ben continued to fill them.
Hamish put his gloves back on, grabbed one of the pails and said, “Okay, ready to meet these backwards bloody weegies?” as he walked through the rear door of the barn.
Ben grabbed the buckets he had filled and followed Hamish into the corral behind the barn.<
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Eight identical looking fluffy gray and brown medium sized dogs immediately went nuts. They barked and yapped, and wagged, and leapt against their chains.
“No way,” Ben said as he put down his buckets and went up to the first dog, letting him smell the back of his hand. He bent down, and as the dog jumped up to deliver a face full of licks he said, “These guys are rockin, Unc. So cool!”
“Well they think so,” Hamish said, “Ben, say gud morgen to the Norwegian Elkhound. Normally loyal, protective, and thrice stronger than their size should allow. They never quit, and can smell a moose at seven clicks. But this useless lot are the biggest group of chancers, scunners, and numptys as ever wagged or woofed. That girl there sniffing your giblets is T’nuc. She’s the head idgit.”
“Can the pups meet these guys?” Ben asked as he playfully pounded on the sturdy dog’s side.
“Sure, but these dogs can be a might…” Hamish didn’t get to finish as Ben had already whistled once and the pups came barreling through the back barn door.
And then something happened Hamish had never seen before.
Their greeting had started off normal enough. Hamish watched as Spot and Smudge ran to each Elkhound to say hello with the standard dog head butting and rear sniffing. The sled dogs were only slightly bigger than Ben’s pups, and most of that was fur.
Ben was making the rounds as well. He was patting and scratching each dog and kneeling in front of them to check out the names on their collars.
Satisfied all was okay Hamish grabbed a bucket of the game soup, but as he walked around the circle filling bowls he couldn’t take his eyes off Spot and Smudge. They had finished their hellos and were standing in front of T’nuc, wagging slowly in sync and taking turns gently head butting and delivering subtle body language cues.
T’nuc watched intently and from time to time would respond with similar gestures. That alone was only a little odd, but what really gave Hamish pause was the rapt attention of the rest of the pack.
The Glasgow Gray: Spot and Smudge - Book 2 Page 12
