And Condors Danced (18 page)

She began to daydream, picturing the huge birds coming in, one after the other, to land with a great rush of wind and rustle of enormous feathers while she and Matt crouched behind the ferns only a few feet away—picturing the dance, with the gigantic birds bobbing and weaving in a stately minuet, their great red heads held high and their tremendous wings outstretched—picturing birds as tall as she was, taller even, with huge curved beaks and wise and kindly eyes. She was still picturing when Tiger barked sharply, Chloe sidestepped in alarm, and Carly came back to reality to find herself almost to the cemetery gate and directly opposite a big eucalyptus tree that grew up out of the roadside ditch. Leaning against the tree, with a big red kite swinging from one hand, was Henry Babcock.

Carly reined Chloe to a stop, and as the mare sidled uneasily, she looked down at Henry and he looked back. For what seemed like forever they went on silently staring. It seemed that Henry didn’t want to be the first one to speak.

“This is ridiculous,” Carly said at last. “Hello, Henry Quigley Babcock. Cat got your tongue?”

“Hello yourself, Mehitabel Hartwick,” Henry said with a wicked grin.

“Yes.” Carly nodded, smiling calmly. “Mehitabel. There’ve been a lot of Mehitabels in the Carlton family. I like being a Mehitabel.”

“I’ll bet,” Henry said. “Then why do you call yourself Carly?”

“Because Aunt M. says one Mehitabel at a time is enough. She was the one who started calling me Carly.”

“Guess your folks thought she’d leave you lots of money if they named you after her. Only thing is, she’s not going to have a red cent to leave anybody if she doesn’t get some sense into her head.”

Carly knew what Henry meant. He meant Aunt M. should get some sense into her head and sell her land to his grandpa. It was a subject that she wasn’t going to get into. Not with old Henry Babcock, anyway. “Guess you’re going to the High Table,” she said, changing the subject. The High Table was a stretch of flat country between two ridges. The fact that there were no trees on the high flat land, and an almost unfailing ocean breeze, made it a favorite kite-flying spot.

Henry glanced down at his kite. “Yeah. Me and Bucky. He was supposed to meet me here half an hour ago.” He motioned up the valley with one thumb. “You see him, tell him to get a move on.”

It was definitely more of an order than a request, and all at once Carly felt the familiar fever in her eyes and cheeks. Without intending to she jerked on the reins so that Chloe tossed her head and danced sideways. Tiger moved in closer and began to growl.

“All right, Henry Babcock. I’ll tell Bucky. And while I’m telling things, maybe I’ll tell him that I know who threw the firecrackers at the Presbyterians. And I might even tell him that I know who paid the hotel clerk to keep mum about it. Shall I tell him that, Henry Babcock?”

For just a moment Henry looked stunned and Carly had to struggle against a triumphant smile that wanted to spread across her face. But then he shrugged and curled one side of his mouth in a scornful grin. “You can say whatever you want to. I don’t care one way or the other. Nobody in this town’s going to listen to a Hartwick telling tales about a Quigley, now, are they, Carly Hartwick?”

Chloe was dancing again and Tiger was crouched down, rear end in the air, yipping angrily in Henry’s direction. “Come on, Tiger,” Carly said. “He’s not worth biting. Here, Tiger! Come!” She loosened the reins and started off up the road at a trot. She had gone only a few yards when she heard Henry scream.

Her first thought was that Tiger had bitten him, even though he’d never bitten anyone in his entire life, but then she saw that Tiger was right there by Chloe’s hind feet. And back near the eucalyptus tree Henry was backing across the road, staring toward the bushes that grew beside the cemetery fence. Coming up out of the bushes was—a coyote.

Carly knew what it meant immediately, and Henry clearly did too. No coyote would come out onto the valley road in broad daylight when humans were around. Not unless it was mad. Then Henry screamed again and the wild-eyed, wet-jawed animal began to run, with a strange stiff-legged gait, directly toward him.

Then everything seemed to happen at once. Henry went on screaming and someone else screamed, too, a strange rasping voice that turned out to be Carly’s own. “Run, Henry. Run,” the voice shrieked. Chloe reared and plunged. And then, as if from out of nowhere, something charged down the road and into the coyote with such force that in the collision both animals rolled down the slope into the ditch. Then Henry was running toward Carly and she kicked her foot out of the stirrup and he got his into it, and struggled onto Chloe’s back behind the saddle. Chloe was running then and Henry was hanging on to Carly so hard that she could barely breathe and yelling in her ear to go faster.

She must have known immediately that it was Tiger. Her eyes and mind must have known from the first instant that Tiger had attacked the mad coyote. But fear, or shock, or Henry’s screaming in her ear, must have kept her mind from turning the knowledge into understanding until they had gone a long way down the road. But all at once she was whispering, “Tiger!” and then screaming it, and pulling Chloe to a stop so quickly that Henry was thrown forward, almost knocking her out of the saddle. Leaning out around him she looked back just in time to see Tiger rounding the corner at top speed. In a moment he was alongside wagging his tail and prancing with excitement.

He looked so pleased with himself and so proud of what he had done, and from up there on Chloe’s back he seemed to be perfectly all right. It wasn’t until they reached the ranch house that they noticed the small bloody wound on his front leg.

T
HEY SHUT TIGER
up in an empty chicken run. Carly wanted to wash his leg and paint it with Sears, Roebuck Microbe Killer or soak it in Epsom-salts water, but Nellie and Charles wouldn’t let her.

“You mustn’t touch him,” they said. “Promise you won’t touch him or let him touch you. Promise, Carly.”

They were all in the kitchen by then—Nellie and Lila and Charles and, of course, Carly and Henry Babcock. Charles kept trying to take the bottle of Microbe Killer away from Carly, but she wouldn’t turn loose of it.

“I have to,” she yelled at them. “I have to. If we do it soon enough, maybe it will help.”

But they all went on saying she couldn’t. And Nellie kept telling them to lower their voices down so Mama wouldn’t hear, and Henry kept asking someone to take him home to Citronia.

Henry’s face was tear-streaked and his mouth quivered when he talked, and he seemed so unlike himself that it was hard to remember that he was Henry Babcock Quigley. First he asked if he could ring up and ask his grandpa to come and get him, but when they reminded him that there was no telephone service in the valley, he began to ask to be taken home. “I want to go home,” he said over and over. “Please somebody take me home.”

But Father had Prince and the surrey and Arthur had gone into town on Comet, so that left nothing but the mules and either a buckboard or the old road cart and, of course, Chloe. Charles didn’t want to use the buckboard. Although he and Henry would be safe enough up in the wagon, a mad coyote might very well attack the mules. Critters with hydrophobia would attack anything, no matter how big, Charles said, and the Hartwicks just couldn’t afford to risk losing a mule. At last it was decided that Charles would take Henry home on Chloe and then go on to the sheriff’s.

“And the vet’s too,” Carly pleaded. “You’ll ask Doc Booker to come, won’t you? He’ll know what we should do for Tiger. Won’t he, Nellie? He’ll be able to give him the Pasteur treatment, won’t he?”

Nellie said she didn’t know what the veterinarian could do, but Charles promised to see him anyway. “Don’t w-w-worry, Carly,” he said as Henry climbed up behind him on Chloe's back. “I’ll see the d-d-doc. He’ll p-p-probably come right out and take c-c-care of Tiger.”

After they’d gone, Carly went out and sat by the chicken run and talked to Tiger. She had to promise first, on her word of honor, to stay at least two feet back from the fence, and even after she’d promised, Nellie kept coming out on the back porch and checking to see that she wasn’t forgetting. So she sat on an apple crate just outside the fence and talked to Tiger and waited and watched for the veterinarian to arrive.

Carly kept telling him what a good dog he was, and what a grand thing he’d done, and how much she loved him, but it was hard to tell how much he understood. He listened to what she was saying with his head cocked on one side, and wagged his tail hopefully, but when she stopped talking he began to whine and stood up on his hind legs and scratched at the chicken wire gate with both front feet.

It was all so cruel and unfair. Tiger had been tied up now and then to keep him from following people, but he was never shut up in a chicken pen except when he’d been bad. Like once when he’d dug out Nellie’s iris bulbs, and another time when he’d chewed up one of Father’s rubber boots. And now when he’d been a hero and saved Henry Babcock from the mad coyote, he’d been shut up again, just as if he’d done something to be punished for. It was all so unfair that it made Carly want to scream and kick things—or open the gate and pick Tiger up and comfort him no matter what anybody said. She wanted to terribly—but all she did was sit there and watch for Charles and Doc Booker.

By nine o’clock the sun was beating down on the chicken run and on Carly, too, and after a while Nellie came out carrying the big old straw hat she wore for gardening. Tiger, who had stopped scratching and was lying down with his chin on his front paws, got excited all over again when he saw Nellie, as if he thought she might be coming to forgive him for whatever he’d done wrong. He began to tear around the narrow pen in tight little circles, yipping excitedly, stopping every now and then to see if Nellie and Carly were watching. Nellie stood beside Carly for several minutes and then she put the hat on Carly’s head and patted her shoulder and went back into the house. Just before she went, Carly heard her catch her breath in a strange way, but she went off then so quickly that Carly wasn’t sure whether it had been a sob or only a sigh.

Carly was still sitting on the apple crate when someone said, “What’d he do this time?” and there was Matt standing right behind her. She’d forgotten so completely about Matt and the exploring trip that for just a moment she couldn’t think what he was doing there. But then she remembered and started telling him the whole story, and before she’d hardly finished he said, “Lordy,” and took off at a run. Carly ran after him and rounded the corner in time to see him jumping up on Rosemary.

“Where you going?” Carly yelled, and Matt yelled back, “To get my grandpa.” And he swatted Rosemary with the ends of the reins and took off at a rocking gallop.

Dan Kelly, Carly thought. Of course, Dan Kelly. And for just a minute the terrible weight of pain and fear that she’d been struggling against lightened a little and she drew a deep shivery breath and felt her lips twitch in an almost smile. Of course Dan Kelly. Nobody in the whole valley, maybe even in all of Santa Luisa, knew as much about animals as Dan Kelly. Why hadn’t she thought of it before?

Matt must have galloped poor Rosemary all the way to Grizzly Flats, because it was barely an hour later when he and Dan pounded down the driveway on Wilbur, one of Dan’s long-legged old mules. Wilbur was all lathered up and puffing hard. Dan got a little leather case out of the saddlebag, and then he told Carly to take Wilbur out on the driveway and walk him around to cool him down.

“Your sister got a fire going in the range?” he asked, and headed for the back door without waiting for an answer. “Go on,” he yelled over his shoulder as he went up the stairs. “Take that mule out and walk him and don’t come back until I come get you.”

“You’re not going to hurt him, are you?” Carly called, running after him.

Dan smiled. “No more than I have to, lass. I’m going to cauterize the wound.”

“I’ll help,” Carly said.

“No, lass. Matt will help me. You get on with cooling down old Wilbur. Off with ye, now. Scoot!”

Carly did as she was told. She walked Wilbur until he was good and dry, and as she walked she thought and worried and listened, but for a long time she heard nothing at all. Then there was one sharp, short yelp and soon afterward Matt came running to say that it was all over.

“Will he be all right now?”

Matt sighed. “Dunno for sure,” he said. “Grandpa says it would have been better if it’d been done sooner. Like right after he was bitten. Grandpa says he saved a horse once by cauterizing the wound. A mad dog jumped out of some bushes and bit this Morgan gelding he was riding before he realized what was happening. He had his rifle along, so he shot the dog and got right off and started a fire. Had the wound cauterized inside of half an hour, and that horse never got hydrophobia. Grandpa says he saved that horse’s life for sure and all the thanks he got was just about getting his head kicked off when he did it.” Matt shook his head. “Not Tiger, though. Didn’t even try to bite. He seemed to know we were trying to help him.”

Carly looked up at the sky. The sun was almost directly overhead. It had been four, maybe five, hours since Tiger was bitten. Still looking up into the soft blue sky, Carly silently said, “Let it be soon enough. Dear God, please let it be soon enough for Tiger.”

Nellie gave Dan and Matt some lunch in the kitchen and Carly came in and tried to eat, too, but she wasn’t hungry. Matt must have known that she didn’t feel like going exploring, because he never even mentioned what they’d been planning to do. After they’d eaten, Dan and Matt got on Wilbur and left for Grizzly Flats and Carly went back out to the apple crate by Tiger’s pen.

I
T WAS MIDAFTERNOON
before Charles returned from Santa Luisa. He was still riding Chloe and went directly to the barn. Carly was running after him when she met Nellie, who was hurrying toward the barn from the house, drying her hands on her apron. While Charles unsaddled the tired mare, fed her, and started rubbing her down, he told them what had happened.