Big Red Read online

  Ross turned to watch. “Why’n’t you let him go after that little old squirrel?”

  “Can’t have him doin’ it,” Danny said stubbornly. “I don’t want him chasin’ those kinds of varmints. Red, you come back here!”

  The squirrel scampered up the tree and disappeared in its topmost branches. With a final, wistful look toward them, Red came trotting in to grin sheepishly at Danny. Danny shook a finger at him.

  “Red, doggone you! If you go off chasin’ varmints thataway I’ll … I dunno what I will do to you! How’m I goin’ to make him stop, Pappy?”

  “Give him a lickin’,” Ross suggested.

  “I can’t. Red’s not the kind of dog you can lick.”

  “Well, all I know is that if I had a hound chased things I didn’t want him to chase, he’d get a hidin’ that’d teach him not to. What’s the matter with lettin’ him chase them little varmints anyhow?”

  “I don’t want him to chase those kinds of varmints,” Danny said desperately.

  “You’re teachin’ him. Teach him your way.”

  Ross set off through the beech woods toward the creek, and Danny followed looking miserably at his father’s back. The only kind of hunting Ross understood was that kind where you went out to kill something for practical use. But Ross had never been to a New York dog show, or talked dog with a man like Mr. Haggin. He was a good dog man, but with all his knowledge he just didn’t understand that using a dog like Red for varmints would be like using one of Mr. Haggin’s finely bred saddle horses to do a mule’s work. Nor did he seem to know that it was impossible to take a stick or club and bludgeon every dog to the will of its master. Red was no ordinary dog. He was sensitive, high-strung, and a whipping would only make him hate or fear the person who gave it to him.

  Danny shook his head. Red, being what he was, just naturally had to hunt partridges, and Ross would never understand that either. A partridge dog would be worse than useless if he left the hunt to chase whatever else crossed his path.

  There was a rustling ahead, in a little patch of ferns, and Red sprang joyously forward to dive into them. Ross broke into a little trot, and when Danny came up beside him he was looking at the brown entrance of a burrow in the center of the ferns. Red was digging with his front paws in the mouth of the burrow, and a little geyser of dirt spouted out on either side.

  Ross said scornfully, “Your New York dog’s tryin’ to dig hisself out a woodchuck now, Danny. Talk to him, and tell him real gentle-like what a naughty boy he is!”

  * * *

  Chapter 5

  Red’s Education

  danny shifted his feet uncomfortably, and looked from the growing pile of dirt behind Red to Ross. The big setter, shoulder-deep in the hole, came to a turn and swerved to dig in this new direction. Danny reached down to twine his fingers in Red’s collar, and drew him out of the hole.

  “Come out of there,” he said as roughly as he could.

  The big dog stood panting as he gazed eagerly back down the hole. He made a little lunge as though to get back in, and Danny took a firmer grasp on his collar. Red bent his head, snuffling at the hot scent of the woodchuck in the hole. He whined eagerly. Ross’s frozen face melted.

  “Don’t look so miserable about it,” he said. “All the dog needs is some more teachin’. Any tenderfoot dog worth its salt is goin’ to chase any kind of varmint. But, what a varmint dog this’n’ll make!”

  Danny gulped wretchedly. “What should I ought to do about it, Pappy?”

  “I’d give him a hidin’,” Ross suggested seriously. “Now if’n he had a coon up a tree, I’d say let him go to it for all he’s worth. But a varmint dog can’t stay at dens, and dig into every one he runs over. It takes too much time. He’s got to have a mind to stop it.”

  “But you can’t give Red a lickin’!” Danny said desperately. “He’s too smart and sensitive. Given I licked him he—he’d have no trust in me any more.”

  “Do tell!” Ross scoffed. “The dog was never born as didn’t need to have sense licked into him at least once! But, as I said before, it’s your dog. Bring him along and we’ll get on with our fishin’.”

  Danny tugged on Red’s collar, and the big setter strained backward toward the woodchuck hole. Danny dragged him from it, with Red protesting every step of the way, and when they had gone a hundred feet farther set him free. Red mounted an ant hill, and waved his plumed tail gently as he stared back toward the enticing den. Then he bounded to a moss-covered stump and smelled eagerly at it. Danny watched worriedly. A partridge dog had always to work within range of the hunter with him. And, of course, he must learn that partridges were the only game he could hunt. A dog that chased off after everything that crossed its path would be worse than useless.

  But how to break him of this penchant for chasing varmints? Ross scoffed at the notion that a whipping would hurt him, but Danny knew better. Red had depths of feeling and sensitivity that he had seen in no other dog, and he was proud. He wouldn’t bear the lash any more than would a proud man. Danny looked worriedly at Ross’s back. Taking care of a highly bred dog brought perplexing problems.

  A small buck with ragged shreds of velvet clinging to his nearly matured antlers stepped from behind a beech tree and stood looking at them. Ross halted. The wind shifted, carried to the buck the scent of human beings, and with a rasping snort and a mighty leap he hoisted his white tail over his back and bounded away. Ross lifted the fishing rod he carried and with the imaginary gun followed the buck’s course. He turned to grin.

  “I could of had him. I could of had him three-four times while he tore through the trees that-away.”

  “Reckon you could, Pappy,” Danny agreed. He had seen Ross bring down a buck running through slashings and a hundred yards away.

  But he was studying Red, and heaved a great sigh of relief when the big setter betrayed no more than a passing interest in the buck. Deer scent, he knew, was the most pungent and exciting of any scent. Probably the hardest part of training any dog was to teach it not to run deer, and a dog that would run them was almost incurable. Danny had known of deer-running hounds to follow eagerly a scent two days old. But most hounds took naturally to running deer, and most setters would do so only if their interest in deer was deliberately encouraged.

  Two hundred yards farther on they flushed a doe and her adolescent fawn, and Red merely looked at them. He fell in beside Danny, and Danny reached gratefully down to stroke his ear.

  They came to a sunlit meadow with a tangle of blackberry briers at one end and lush wild hay carpeting the remainder. Smokey Creek brushed the far side of the meadow and broadened into a long pool deep at the upper end and shallow at the lower. The shiners Ross wanted swarmed in the pool, and there were a few big bass there. Trout occasionally came into the pool, but preferred the more secluded and shadier portions of the creek.

  Red left Danny’s side and darted swiftly forward. He paused to look back, then advanced another ten feet. Ross stopped perplexedly, studying the dog as he lifted one forefoot and held his tail stiffly behind him. Danny exulted, and some of the anxiety that had sat so heavily upon him since he had discovered Red’s bent for chasing varmints departed. He knew these signs. Red was on partridges now, and if he was somewhat clumsy about it he still was not doing badly for a dog that had had no training. Danny laid the rod and can of bait he carried on the ground, and stooped to pick up a stone. He walked quietly forward, grasped Red’s collar, and cast the stone into the small patch of blackberries at which he was pointing.

  A partridge thundered up and soared across the meadow into the beech woods. Red whined, and twisted under Danny’s restraining hand as he strove to follow. He reared with his front feet pawing the air. Danny held him.

  “Easy,” he murmured. “Don’t get excited.”

  The big setter dropped back to earth and stood watching the place where the partridge had disappeared. As soon as Danny let him go, he raced out to cast around in circles and look for another bird. Danny
watched him leaping high in the tall grass so he could both see and scent, and turned to Ross with shining eyes.

  “He had a partridge that time!” he ejaculated.

  “I see he did.” Ross looked disapprovingly at the ranging dog. “That’s bad, Danny. A varmint dog shouldn’t hunt nothin’ but varmints. He sure oughtn’t to go chasin’ off after birds.”

  Danny said nothing.

  Red came bounding back, and splashed shoulder-deep into the pool to lap thirstily at its crystal-clear water. He lay down to cool himself. A school of suckers moved sluggishly away from him, and a half dozen shiners darted erratically toward the bank, where they fell to nosing about the flat rocks that dotted the pool’s bottom. Ross strung up his rod, baited the hook, and cast. Almost as soon as the line settled into the water a gentle tugging told of a bite. Ross struck, and his four-ounce rod curved slightly as he played a shiner in to the bank and slipped it into the live-bag that he had tied to a willow root beside the pool.

  Red splashed out of the pool, stretched in the sun at Danny’s feet, and went to sleep. Danny strung his own rod, cast, and almost immediately caught a fat chub. He put it in the live-bag, re-baited his hook, and caught another. There was no sport in catching chubs and shiners, but fish was the basis of almost every scent that he and Ross used on their far-flung trap-lines when winter came, and they took a major portion of their livelihood from trapping. For two hours they fished, until the live-bag was swarming with shiners.

  Then, instead of the gentle tug that told of a shiner nibbling, Danny’s line started straight across the pool. He let it go, feeling through the line and the wand-like rod that a big fish was on this time. The line stopped moving, and Danny waited tensely with two feet of slack looping from the reel.

  “You better draw your line in,” he warned Ross. “I got a bass out there fiddlin’ with my bait, and he feels like a big’un. Given I ketch him, we won’t eat side meat for supper.”

  Again the line began to move, and Danny struck hard. Out in the black pool, where the taut line dipped into the water, there was a swirling little ripple. Far out, a gleaming, bronze-black bass broke water and splashed back in as he strove to shake the hook. He bore toward the bottom, and Danny paid out more line as he let him go. The rod, one that Ross himself had made, bent almost double. Danny elevated the tip, to let the fighting fish tire itself against the spring, and stripped in ten feet of line as the bass surged toward the bank. Red rose, and stood watching.

  “Hang on!” Ross yelled. “He’s a nice ’un!”

  “I’m a-tryin’ to,” Danny panted.

  The bass turned back into the pool, and Danny paid out the line that he had retrieved. Again the fish broke water, rising high above the surface and falling back into it. He began to run in little circles that grew shorter as he became more tired, and Danny played him toward the bank. Slowly he fought the bass into the shallows, and Ross waded out to stand knee-deep in the water. He ran his fingers down Danny’s taut line, fastened them in the bass’s gills, and lifted him triumphantly free of the pool.

  “Four pounds!” he gloated. “Danny, I disremember any such bass taken from Smokey Creek before.”

  “He sure is purty,” Danny agreed. “And he’ll go plenty good for supper, huh?”

  “You bet,” Ross agreed. “What say we catch a half dozen more shiners and go home. It’s nigh on to evenin’ time.”

  They fished ten minutes, added six more to the bag of shiners, and dismounted their rods. The sun was sinking in the west, and a golden aureole glowed on the summits of the tallest mountains. Far back in the forests a fox yelled, and the wan, sad cry of a mourning dove came from the nearby beeches. But aside from that the forest was strangely hushed. Red ranged ahead of them as they walked homeward, sniffing at likely cracks and crevices wherever he found them, and when they passed the woodchuck hole he sniffed long and deeply at it. But few of the wilderness creatures were moving.

  They came to the fence, and Danny lifted it to let Red crawl under. Ross climbed over, and Danny was about to do so when a rabbit burst from a bunch of thistle and went bounding across the pasture.

  With a wild yell, Red was after it. The rabbit lengthened out, his white tail twinkling as he called on every bit of speed he possessed. Red flew, tail close to the ground and head up as he strove to overtake this enticing quarry. Chained to their kennels, the four hounds bayed loud encouragement. Even Asa, the mule, overcame his customary indifference to everything sufficiently to raise his head and watch.

  Danny yelled, “Red, come back here! Come back!”

  The big setter paid no heed, but bounded on after the fleeing rabbit. A half jump ahead of the dog, it flashed beneath a rock pile and disappeared. With his hind-quarters in the air and his front ones close to the ground, Red pawed futilely at the rocks. Danny ran up, grasped his collar, and jerked him roughly aside.

  “You, Red! I dunno what I will do with you, anyhow!”

  Ross walked up. “Goll ding it, I said I wouldn’t meddle in the way you teach your dog. But he sure needs a hidin’. You let him sniff into dens and holes thataway, and he ain’t never goin’ to be no good for anything.”

  “Pappy, I won’t whip that dog!”

  Ross shrugged.

  Red looked happily up, tongue lolling, tail wagging, and a bright, devilish gleam in his eye. Danny’s heart melted. Red was smart, with all the heart and courage that anyone could ask for or expect to find in a dog. There must be some method, other than whipping, to wean him away from this sort of chasing and make him hunt partridges only. Danny gritted his teeth. It was up to him to find that method. He pulled Red into the house.

  Ross took their catch of shiners into the shed, and began to prepare the trap-line scents that only he could make properly. Red went out to lie down on the porch. Danny skinned the bass, split it, and removed the heavy spinal bone. He laid the two halves in a pan of cold water and added a little salt. Red pushed the door open with his nose and came back in. Danny looked fondly at him.

  “Rabbit-chaser,” he murmured. “Darn old rabbit-chaser. When you goin’ to get some sense into you?”

  Red thumped the floor with his tail while Danny took the two halves of bass and laid them in a hot skillet. He sliced potatoes in another skillet, and put them on the stove to fry while he set the table. His hands covered with fish scales, Ross entered and washed. He took his home-made violin from its case, drew the bow across it a couple of times, and sat on a chair to coax from it the haunting strains of “Johnny O’Dare.” Danny sang softly with him,

  “Johnny O’Dare the moon is glowin’,

  The silver clouds in the sky are showin’,

  And I sit alone but alone am knowin’,

  You’ll come home to me Johnny O’Dare.”

  He grinned. The day was gone, and with it all the doubts and perplexities it had brought. He, Ross, and Red were alone with plenty to eat and a song in their hearts. It was enough. Danny put the cooked food on the table, and Ross returned the violin to its case. Both sat down to eat.

  “What we goin’ to do tomorrow, Pappy?” Danny asked.

  “Mr. Haggin asked me to fetch him twenty-four quarts of blackberries,” Ross said. “I better get at that come mornin’; he’ll pay fifteen cents a quart. After that I won’t be able to take any side jobs on account there’s trap-lines that ain’t staked out and I feel a ache for a varmint hunt. How would you like to chop down and trim a few trees for wood?”

  “Sure. Fine.”

  Ross took a great forkful of the bass. “This is mighty tasty fish, Danny. By the way, do you consider that we should ought to let that Red dog run along when I take the hounds on a varmint hunt? Ol’ Mike could teach him some tricks, and he’s smart enough to pick up where Mike leaves off.”

  Danny choked on the food in his mouth. “I, I just don’t favor the notion of Red’s runnin’ with hounds.”

  Ross looked at him, a little resentfully. “Well, it’s your dog.”

  Danny went out to
sit on the porch, while Red sat beside him and poked his nose into Danny’s cupped hand. This was mighty serious. Ross had his heart set on making Red a varmint dog, and Red just couldn’t be a varmint dog. It was in him to hunt birds, nothing else. Danny’s right arm stole out to encircle the big setter’s neck.

  “You got to be a bird dog,” he said. “You chase them little varmints because it’s fun, but at heart you’re a bird hunter. I sure wish Pappy’d understand. How we goin’ to make him?”

  Ross was already in bed when Danny re-entered the cottage and sought his own cot. And, though Danny was up with the sun, Ross had risen, prepared his own breakfast, taken his picking pails, and departed for the blackberry thickets. Danny milked the cow, fed Asa and Red, ate a great heap of pancakes, and took a razor-keen double-bitted axe from its rack in the closet. He went outside, strung Asa’s leather and chain harness on the boney old mule, and hooked a long chain into the singletree that dragged behind. Asa followed indifferently when Danny started toward a stand of yellow birch that had grown up in the beeches. Mr. Haggin, who owned most of the beech woods as well as the great Wintapi estate, didn’t want any other trees cut as long as there was scrap wood like yellow birch around.

  Red ranged before them, sniffing at likely thickets and bits of brush along the way. He came to a stiff point beside a clump of laurel, and held it while Danny flushed two partridges. Red made an eager little jump forward, and stopped. Danny forgot to breathe. The dog was smart, plenty smart, and getting the idea that it was not right to chase the partridges he pointed. Danny frowned. If only he would get the same idea about varmints! But how to teach him without resorting to violent methods?

  “I think you’re doin’ it out of devilishness alone,” Danny murmured, more to himself than to the dog. “Doggonit, Red, why can’t you stop?”

  A hundred feet farther on Red had an ecstatic time chasing a chipmunk that was rooting in the fallen leaves for beechnuts, and a little beyond he tore through the woods after a fleeing rabbit. Danny swung his axe and lopped down the thick weeds that had grown up beside the trail. Shouting at Red, as he had proven yesterday, did no good. Maybe, after all, he would have to use the choke collar and drag rope. He came to the stand of yellow birch, hitched Asa to one, and set to work felling the slender little trees.