Old Yeller (7 page)

W
ith 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. There 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 the 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.

I
t 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.

That threw a big scare into Mama. I argued and fussed, trying to tell her what a bad shape Old Yeller was in and how we needed to hurry
back to him. But she wouldn’t pay me any mind.

She told me: “We’re not going anywhere until we’ve cleaned up and doctored that leg. I’ve seen hog cuts before. Neglect them, and they can be as dangerous as snakebite. Now, you just hold still till I get through.”

I saw that it wasn’t any use, so I held still while she got hot water and washed out the cut. But when she poured turpentine into the place, I couldn’t hold still. I jumped and hollered and screamed. It was like she’d burnt me with a red-hot iron. It hurt worse than when the hog slashed me. I hollered with hurt till Little Arliss turned up and went to crying, too. But when the pain finally left my leg, the muscle had quit jerking.

Mama got some clean white rags and bound up the place. Then she said, “Now, you lie down on that bed and rest. I don’t want to see you take another step on that leg for a week.”

I was so stunned that I couldn’t say a word. All I could do was stare at her. Old Yeller, lying way off out there in the hills, about to die if he didn’t get help, and Mama telling me I couldn’t walk.

I got up off the stool I’d been sitting on. I said
to her, “Mama, I’m going back after Old Yeller. I promised him I’d come back, and that’s what I aim to do.” Then I walked through the door and out to the lot.

By the time I got Jumper caught, Mama had her bonnet on. She was ready to go, too. She looked a little flustered, like she didn’t know what to do with me, but all she said was, “How’ll we bring him back?”

“On Jumper,” I said. “I’ll ride Jumper and hold Old Yeller in my arms.”

“You know better than that,” she said. “He’s too big and heavy. I might lift him up to you, but you can’t stand to hold him in your arms that long. You’ll give out.”

“I’ll hold him,” I said. “If I give out, I’ll rest. Then we’ll go on again.”

Mama stood tapping her foot for a minute while she gazed off across the hills. She said, like she was talking to herself, “We can’t use the cart. There aren’t any roads, and the country is too rough.”

Suddenly she turned to me and smiled. “I know what. Get that cowhide off the fence. I’ll go get some pillows.”

“Cowhide?”

“Tie it across Jumper’s back,” she said. “I’ll show you later.”

I didn’t know what she had in mind, but it didn’t much matter. She was going with me.

I got the cowhide and slung it across Jumper’s back. It rattled and spooked him so that he snorted and jumped from under it.

“You Jumper!” I shouted at him. “You hold still.”

He held still the next time. Mama brought the pillows and a long coil of rope. She had me tie the cowhide to Jumper’s back and bind the pillows down on top of it. Then she lifted Little Arliss up and set him down on top of the pillows.

“You ride behind him,” she said to me. “I’ll walk.”

We could see the buzzards gathering long before we got there. We could see them wheeling black against the blue sky and dropping lower and lower with each circling. One we saw didn’t waste time to circle. He came hurtling down at a long-slanted dive, his ugly head outstretched, his wings all but shut against his body. He shot past, right over our heads, and the
whooshing
sound his
body made in splitting the air sent cold chills running all through me. I guessed it was all over for Old Yeller.

Mama was walking ahead of Jumper. She looked back at me. The look in her eyes told me that she figured the same thing. I got so sick that it seemed like I couldn’t stand it.

But when we moved down into the prickly-pear flats, my misery eased some. For suddenly, up out of a wash ahead rose a flurry of flapping wings. Something had disturbed those buzzards and I thought I knew what it was.

A second later, I was sure it was Old Yeller. His yelling bark sounded thin and weak, yet just to hear it made me want to holler and run and laugh. He was still alive. He was still able to fight back!

The frightened buzzards had settled back to the ground by the time we got there. When they caught sight of us, though, they got excited and went to trying to get off the ground again. For birds that can sail around in the air all day with hardly more than a movement of their wing tips, they sure were clumsy and awkward about getting started. Some had to keep hopping along the
wash for fifty yards, beating the air with their huge wings, before they could finally take off. And then they were slow to rise. I could have shot a dozen of them before they got away if I’d thought to bring my gun along.

There was a sort of crazy light shining in Old Yeller’s eyes when I looked in at him. When I reached to drag the stump away, he snarled and lunged at me with bared fangs.

I jerked my hands away just in time and shouted “Yeller!” at him. Then he knew I wasn’t a buzzard. The crazy light went out of his eyes. He sank back into the hole with a loud groan like he’d just had a big load taken off his mind.

Mama helped me drag the stump away. Then we reached in and rolled his hurt body over on its back and slid him out into the light.

Without bothering to examine the blood-caked cuts that she could see all over his head and shoulders, Mama started unwinding the strips of cloth from around his body.

Then Little Arliss came crowding past me, asking in a scared voice what was the matter with Yeller.

Mama stopped. “Arliss,” she said, “do you
think you could go back down this sandy wash here and catch Mama a pretty green-striped lizard? I thought I saw one down there around that first bend.”

Little Arliss was as pleased as I was surprised. Always before, Mama had just sort of put up with his lizard-catching. Now she was wanting him to catch one just for her. A delighted grin spread over his face. He turned and ran down the wash as hard as he could.

Mama smiled up at me, and suddenly I understood. She was just getting Little Arliss out of the way so he wouldn’t have to look at the terrible sight of Yeller’s slitted belly.

She said to me: “Go jerk a long hair out of Jumper’s tail, Son. But stand to one side, so he won’t kick you.”

I went and stood to one side of Jumper and jerked a long hair out of his tail. Sure enough, he snorted and kicked at me, but he missed. I took the hair back to Mama, wondering as much about it as I had about the green-striped lizard. But when Mama pulled a long sewing needle from her dress front and poked the small end of the tail hair through the eye, I knew then.

“Horse hair is always better than thread for sewing up a wound,” she said. She didn’t say why, and I never did think to ask her.

Mama asked me if any of Yeller’s entrails had been cut and I told her that I didn’t think so.

“Well, I won’t bother them then,” she said. “Anyway, if they are, I don’t think I could fix them.”

It was a long, slow job, sewing up Old Yeller’s belly. And the way his flesh would flinch and quiver when Mama poked the needle through, it must have hurt. But if it did, Old Yeller didn’t say anything about it. He just lay there and licked my hands while I held him.

We were wrapping him up in some clean rags that Mama had brought along when here came Little Arliss. He was running as hard as he’d been when he left. He was grinning and hollering at Mama. And in his right hand he carried a green-striped lizard, too.

How on earth he’d managed to catch anything as fast running as one of those green-striped lizards, I don’t know; but he sure had one.

You never saw such a proud look as he wore on his face when he handed the lizard to Mama.
And I don’t guess I ever saw a more helpless look on Mama’s face as she took it. Mama had always been squeamish about lizards and snakes and bugs and things, and you could tell that it just made her flesh crawl to have to touch this one. But she took it and admired it and thanked Arliss. Then she asked him if he’d keep it for her till we got home. Which Little Arliss was glad to do.

“Now, Arliss,” she told him, “we’re going to play a game. We’re playing like Old Yeller is sick and you are taking care of him. We’re going to let you both ride on a cowhide, like the sick Indians do sometimes.”

It always pleased Little Arliss to play any sort of game, and this was a new one that he’d never heard about before. He was so anxious to get started that we could hardly keep him out from underfoot till Mama could get things ready.

As soon as she took the cowhide off Jumper’s back and spread it hair-side down upon the ground, I began to get the idea. She placed the soft pillows on top of the hide, then helped me to ease Old Yeller’s hurt body onto the pillows.

“Now, Arliss,” Mama said, “you sit there on
the pillows with Old Yeller and help hold him on. But remember now, don’t play with him or get on top of him. We’re playing like he’s sick, and when your dog is sick, you have to be real careful with him.”

It was a fine game, and Little Arliss fell right in with it. He sat where Mama told him to. He held Old Yeller’s head in his lap, waiting for the ride to start.

It didn’t take long. I’d already tied a rope around Jumper’s neck, leaving the loop big enough that it would pull back against his shoulders. Then, on each side of Jumper, we tied another rope into the one knotted about his shoulders, and carried the ends of them back to the cowhide. I took my knife and cut two slits into the edge of the cowhide, then tied a rope into each one. We measured to get each rope the same length and made sure they were far enough back that the cowhide wouldn’t touch Jumper’s heels. Like most mules, Jumper was mighty fussy about anything touching his heels.

“Now, Travis, you ride him,” Mama said, “and I’ll lead him.”

“You better let me walk,” I argued. “Jumper’s
liable to throw a fit with that hide rattling along behind him, and you might not can hold him by yourself.”

“You ride him,” Mama said. “I don’t want you walking on that leg any more. If Jumper acts up one time, I’ll take a club to him!”

We started off, with Little Arliss crowing at what a fine ride he was getting on the dragging hide. Sure enough, at the first sound of that rattling hide, old Jumper acted up. He snorted and tried to lunge to one side. But Mama yanked down on his bridle and said, “Jumper, you wretch!” I whacked him between the ears with a dead stick. With the two of us coming at him like that, it was more than Jumper wanted. He settled down and went to traveling as quiet as he generally pulled a plow, with just now and then bending his neck around to take a look at what he was dragging. You could tell he didn’t like it, but I guess he figured he’d best put up with it.

Little Arliss never had a finer time than he did on that ride home. He enjoyed every long hour of it. And a part of the time, I don’t guess it was too rough on Old Yeller. The cowhide dragged smooth and even as long as we stayed in the
sandy wash. When we left the wash and took out across the flats, it still didn’t look bad. Mama led Jumper in a long roundabout way, keeping as much as she could to the openings where the tall grass grew. The grass would bend down before the hide, making a soft cushion over which the hide slipped easily. But this was a rough country, and try as hard as she could, Mama couldn’t always dodge the rocky places. The hide slid over the rocks, the same as over the grass and sand, but it couldn’t do it without jolting the riders pretty much.

Little Arliss would laugh when the hide raked along over the rocks and jolted him till his teeth rattled. He got as much fun out of that as the rest of the ride. But the jolting hurt Old Yeller till sometimes he couldn’t hold back his whinings.

When Yeller’s whimperings told us he was hurting too bad, we’d have to stop and wait for him to rest up. At other times, we stopped to give him water. Once we got water out of a little spring that trickled down through the rocks. The next time was at Birdsong Creek.

Mama’d pack water to him in my hat. He was too weak to get up and drink; so Mama would
hold the water right under his nose and I’d lift him up off the pillows and hold him close enough that he could reach down and lap the water up with his tongue.

Having to travel so far and so slow and with so many halts, it looked like we’d never get him home. But we finally made it just about the time it got dark enough for the stars to show.

By then, my hurt leg was plenty stiff, stiff and numb. It was all swelled up and felt as dead as a chunk of wood. When I slid down off Jumper’s back, it wouldn’t hold me. I fell clear to the ground and lay in the dirt, too tired and hurt to get up.

Mama made a big to-do about how weak and hurt I was, but I didn’t mind. We’d gone and brought Old Yeller home, and he was still alive. There by the starlight, I could see him licking Little Arliss’s face.

Little Arliss was sound asleep.