The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Black FawnThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The Black FawnAuthor: Jim KjelgaardRelease date: March 5, 2011 [eBook #35493]Most recently updated: January 7, 2021Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Greg Weeks, Ross Cooling and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Canada Team athttp://www.pgdpcanada.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLACK FAWN ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: The Black FawnAuthor: Jim KjelgaardRelease date: March 5, 2011 [eBook #35493]Most recently updated: January 7, 2021Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Greg Weeks, Ross Cooling and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Canada Team athttp://www.pgdpcanada.net
Title: The Black Fawn
Author: Jim Kjelgaard
Author: Jim Kjelgaard
Release date: March 5, 2011 [eBook #35493]Most recently updated: January 7, 2021
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Greg Weeks, Ross Cooling and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Canada Team athttp://www.pgdpcanada.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLACK FAWN ***
THE LAND IS BRIGHTTHE LOST WAGONBIG REDREBEL SIEGEFOREST PATROLBUCKSKIN BRIGADECHIP, THE DAM BUILDERFIRE HUNTERIRISH REDKALAK OF THE ICEA NOSE FOR TROUBLESNOW DOGTRAILING TROUBLEWILD TREKTHE EXPLORATIONS OF PERE MARQUETTETHE SPELL OF THE WHITE STURGEONOUTLAW REDTHE COMING OF THE MORMONSCRACKER BARREL TROUBLE SHOOTERLION HOUNDTRADING JEFF AND HIS DOGDESERT DOGHAUNT FOXTHE OKLAHOMA LAND RUNDOUBLE CHALLENGESWAMP CATWILDLIFE CAMERAMANWOLF BROTHERRESCUE DOG OF THE HIGH PASS
Evening shadows lowered like a cool, dark wing folding gently over the day, but the coming of night brought no change in the refrain that over and over again kept running through Bud Sloan's brain.
"I must not let them know I'm afraid. I must remember my manners. I must not let them know I'm afraid! I must remember my manners! I must not . . ."
He clenched his teeth as though somehow that would clamp down on the unwanted words and shove them back into the dark recesses where they belonged. But they were in his brain, not his mouth, and clenching his teeth only seemed to make the refrain ring all the more loudly. He opened his mouth and said before he could stop himself,
"I must not . . ."
"You must not what?" Gram Bennett asked.
She sat at the side of the little table in the kitchen and not at the great one in the dining room as when all the Bennetts' eleven children were home. Then Gramps sat at the head of the table and Gram at the foot. But the little table was big enough now that there were only three of them for most meals.
"Nothing." Bud choked. "I—I was just thinking out loud."
"You needn't be afraid to speak up, Allan. If there's something you must not do, you have only to say so."
Gram spoke very gently, but Bud squirmed. He did not wriggle on his chair for he had learned to hide as well as he could what he really felt. To show your feelings was to show your weakness, and there was always somebody ready to pounce on a weakness. He should have known better than to talk out loud.
"Tell us, Allan," Gram coaxed.
"There's nothing to tell," he said, looking down at his plate and feeling his cheeks flush.
He had come to live with Gram and Gramps only yesterday morning and it seemed an eternity since the bus driver had stopped on the blacktop road and pointed out the rutted drive leading to the Bennetts' huge old farmhouse.
"That's it, son," he had said.
With his little bundle of belongings wrapped in a spare shirt and tucked under his right arm—the orphanage did not furnish suitcases when they farmed you out—Bud started up the drive with his head high and with what he hoped was a fearless, manly tread. But his insides felt like jelly that has stood too long in a warm place and his feet seemed to weigh five hundred pounds each. If he had been sure no one was looking, he would have burst into tears. He could not be sure, and not for an instant must he forget that weakness made him an easy prey for whoever saw it. He did not think of running.
Bud was twenty yards from the house when Gramps Bennett came around one corner. Bud stopped in his tracks and grasped his bundle so tightly that his knuckles whitened.
At first glance Gramps seemed to be a huge man, but after a second look you saw that he merely seemed huge because he was short. He stood five feet six in his work-scuffed brogans, faded blue jeans and an equally faded denim work shirt. He seemed to be almost as big around as he was tall. Hamlike hands hung from his shirt sleeves, a short, thick neck rose from the collar. A stubby white beard almost hid Gramps' lips and he had an aquiline nose, piercing eyes and a leonine mane of white hair. Gramps' voice sounded like a lion's roar as he said,
"You the boy from the orphanage?"
"Yes, sir," Bud said, still trying to conduct himself as a man should.
"Got a name?" Gramps asked caustically.
"Yes, sir," the boy said. "Bud Sloan."
"Bud, eh? I've heard worse names. Come meet Gram."
Without another word or a backward look and with astonishing agility for his bulk, Gramps turned on his heel and led the way to the kitchen door at the back of the house. There was also a front door, but that was for company use.
Bud felt better when he saw four cattle in a pasture near the barn. Two horses raised inquiring heads over the bars of the paddock, pigs grunted in their sty and chickens, ducks and turkeys roamed at will around the farmyard. Then a big and furry farm collie came trotting slowly toward the house.
Bud almost smiled. He had always understood animals. He did not know why, unless it was because they always accepted him for what he was and never cared where he came from or who supported him. His most cherished memory of the orphanage was a pet kitten he had had there. His first heartbreak had come when that kitten had been killed by a passing car. Seeing the animals here seemed somehow to remove half his burdens.
Bud turned for a last look at the dog before Gramps opened the door and he entered the kitchen to meet Gram.
"Why, Allan! How wonderful you're here at last!"
Bud writhed. For although his proper name was Allan, he hated it.
Gram was taller than Gramps, and slim. Her hair was gray. Sixty years and eleven children had left their mark on her face and work-worn hands, but her tread was lithe and easy as she advanced on Bud. When she stooped to enfold him in her arms, she seemed taller than the Eiffel Tower. Gram planted a resounding kiss on his cheek.
"Welcome, Allan, and may you be happy with us!"
Bud sputtered and squirmed away from Gram. It was the first time he could remember being kissed and he considered it a degrading experience. He looked up to see Gramps regarding him balefully.
"You told me your name was Bud," Gramps snorted.
"It is!"
"Pooh," said Gram. "It's Allan written on the card and it's Allan I'll call him. Have a tart, Allan."
She gave him a crisp-baked tart filled with jelly. Bud meant to refuse it, for he neither asked for nor wanted favors. But a boy's hunger asserted itself and he accepted it, mumbled his thanks and began to eat it, looking around the kitchen as he did.
He noticed only that it was much smaller than the kitchen at the orphanage and that the huge, old-fashioned wood-burning range, the wooden cupboards, the pantry off the kitchen and the worn furniture and scuffed linoleum looked shabby in comparison with the antiseptic, modern appointments of the orphanage kitchen.
Bud finished the tart and, stealing a glance into the adjoining living room, saw a mounted buck's head peering glassily back at him. Hastily he wiped his hands on his trousers and looked away.
"Do you think you'll like it here?" Gram asked.
"Yes, ma'am," Bud said dutifully.
"Will you have another tart?"
"No, ma'am."
"Yes, ma'am. No, ma'am," Gramps mimicked. "That all they taught you to say at that there orphanage?"
"No, sir."
"Well, if you've had all you want to eat, Bud," Gramps said, looking meaningfully at Gram as he emphasized the nickname, "we might as well put you to work."
"Now, Delbert," Gram said, "I say that boy ought to rest his first day with us."
"And I say he ought not," Gramps said firmly. "He might as well get the idea why he's here from the first, and why he's here is to work. Come on, Bud."
Bud said nothing as he turned to follow Gramps out of the kitchen, but he was not worried. He had known he was coming to work. Tales from other farmed-out youngsters had drifted back to the orphanage and some of them were not pretty tales, but anything was better than continuing as an object of charity. He was a man and he could stand on his own two feet. Although he might not like what came, he could face it.
He felt a little better when they came onto the back porch. The big dog that had been ambling toward the house when he arrived was now lying on the stoop. It rose, wagged its tail amiably and touched Bud's hand with a moist muzzle. No matter what happened, Bud thought, it couldn't be all bad now that he had a friend.
Gramps did not stop or look back until they came to a broad cultivated field in which orderly rows of fledgling crops had been so carefully planted and so precisely spaced that they formed an exact pattern. The dog, who knew that he was not to walk on cultivated ground, sat down at the edge of the field. Bud asked his name.
"Shep," Gramps said, and then he pointed to the field. "Do you know what those are?"
"No, sir."
"Beans," said Gramps, and the tone of his voice showed pity for anybody unable to identify a growing bean. "Now stoop down here 'longside me."
Bud did as he was told and Gramps caught a bean, which had broad leaves and a fragile stem, between his forefingers and held it gently.
"Have yourself a real good look."
Bud concentrated on the bean until a full minute later when Gramps said,
"Know what it looks like?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good. Now, everything in this field that ain't a bean is a weed. Every weed steals from the beans just like a bank robber steals from a bank."
"I don't understand you, sir," Bud said.
"Think, boy, and quit calling me sir," Gramps said impatiently. "What makes the beans grow big and strong, if not the goodness of the earth? And what else do the weeds live on? For every weed that steals the earth's richness, the beans suffer accordingly."
"That's wonderful!"
Gramps looked at him oddly, but Bud was too surprised and delighted to notice. He had never thought of nature in such terms and itwaswonderful. Gramps got down on his hands and knees and, supporting himself on both knees and with his left hand, deftly used his right hand to pluck a small weed from among the growing beans. He held the weed up for Bud to look at.
"There you are. A pigweed, and a month from now it would be waist high to you. Its roots would be so big and grown so deep that when you pulled it out a half dozen beans would come with it. Now, between the rows we can hoe 'em out or cultivate 'em. But we can't use either a hoe or cultivator on the rows themselves, and I guess even you can see why."
"Yes, sir."
Gramps' tone remained caustic but Bud refused to be ruffled. He would earn his own way and the right to hold his head high.
"Sure you know what a bean looks like?" Gramps asked.
"Yes, sir."
"Then I want you to work down all these rows and pick the weeds out from the beans."
Bud got down on his hands and knees and started on the first row. He was more interested than he had thought he could be, for what otherwise would have been an onerous task took on new meaning in the light of what Gramps had told him. He was not just pulling weeds; he was destroying robbers bent on stealing for themselves the goodness from the earth that properly belonged to the growing beans.
When he thought he was surely at the end of the row, he looked up to find that he was less than halfway down it. Then another sight caught his eyes.
Beyond the barn and the pasture, where the cattle now stood lazily in the shade of a single tree and chewed placid cuds, the unbroken green border of the forest began. The trees were cutover hardwoods for the most part, but here and there a pine rose above them and an occasional gaunt stub towered over even the pines. Bud looked and wondered and promised himself that, as soon as he could, he would go into the forest and see for himself what was there. But now there were weeds to pull.
After what seemed an eternity, he reached the end of the first row and turned back on the second one. He did not look up again, for he felt guilty about stopping work. He tried to forget the ache in his bent back and the strain on his legs, for he knew he must work. When at last he came to the end of the second row and turned back on the third, he heard Gram saying,
"I've brought you a drink, Allan. Real, honest-to-goodness ice-cold lemonade. Come have some."
Bud rose to his knees, trying hard not to wince, and saw Gram, who was wearing a faded gingham dress and a sunbonnet that had gone out of style a quarter of a century ago. She was carrying a pail from which the handle of a tin dipper protruded and in which chunks of ice tinkled. Cold droplets clung to the outer surface of the pail.
Gram smiled as Bud came forward, and he looked at her warily. There was no telling what might happen when people smiled. But thirst triumphed over caution. He filled the dipper, drained it, and filled it and drained it again. Ice-cold lemonade was delicious in any case and it seemed twenty times better from a tin dipper.
"More?" Gram said.
"No thank you, ma'am."
"How is it going?"
"Very well, ma'am."
"Don't you work too hard," she said, and went off to offer some lemonade to Gramps.
Bud went back to his weeding, crawling slowly along the lines of beans with his eyes fixed on their lower stalks. Anything that was not a bean must be a weed, Gramps had said, and Bud acted accordingly. By now the romance of what he was doing had faded, but he kept on, determined to pay his own way.
A sudden bellow from Gramps was as startling as the wail of a fire engine. "Hey, Bud. Don'cha eat at noon?"
Bud rose and turned to face the old man, who said, "Don't the sun tell you it's noon?"
"No," Bud said.
"When the sun's where she is, and when she don't cast 'nough shadow to hide a grasshopper, it's noon."
Bud pondered this new and fascinating bit of lore. He looked at the sun and tried to fix its position indelibly in his mind so that forever afterward he would know when it was noon. Though the sun had never told him anything before, from now on it would.
"Let's move!" Gramps bellowed.
Bud followed. Shep, who had devoted the cool portion of the morning to sniffing out various creatures in their lairs and had then gone to lie in the tall grass when the sun became hot, joined them. Bud and Gramps washed at the old hand pump beside the stoop, rubbed their hands and faces dry with a rough towel that hung over the pump and went into the kitchen.
Bud sank wearily into his chair and it seemed to him that he had never before known how good it could be just to sit down. But he had worked too hard not to be even hungrier than usual, and he could not ignore the smell of the food on the table.
Gram's lunch began with pork chops and mashed potatoes and ended with a delicious chilled product of the kitchen's major concession to modern living, a big refrigerator.
There was no time for conversation or anything else except eating. Gramps emptied his plate first, pushed it back and sighed contentedly. A moment later when Bud had drained his final glass of milk, Gramps said,
"How about getting back to work?"
"Yes, sir."
"Delbert," Gram said sharply, "that boy should rest."
"Pshaw. He'll rest better after he works harder. How 'bout it?"
"Yes, sir," Bud said without enthusiasm.
The morning had been hard and the afternoon was torture. But Bud stayed grimly with the weeds until the sun lowered and Gramps called to him that it was time for supper. Bud was almost reeling with fatigue and he was grateful when Gramps pumped a basin of water for him to wash in. Although he happily stuffed himself with Gram's supper, only his resolution to show no weakness kept him from dozing once supper was over.
Evidently as brisk as he had been in the early morning, Gramps bounced from his chair. "If you're done, Bud, how 'bout giving me a hand with the milking?"
"Delbert," Gram said, "you're a . . ."
"I'm a what?" Gramps asked innocently.
"A Simon Legree. You're working that youngster a sight harder than you ever worked yourself."
Gramps said piously, "The Lord said there shall be a day and there shall be a night. Man shall work for as long as day shall last. Right offhand, I can't rightly recall if He said anything 'bout working nights, but I expect He didn't know much about farmers or He would have. Anyhow, those cows got to be milked."
"Until now you've managed very nicely to milk them yourself."
"But now I got a boy to help me with all the chores I used to do," Gramps said. "C'mon, Bud."
Bud trailed the old man to the barn where Gramps flicked on the switch that lighted it. The first thing Bud noticed was the barn's odor, pungent and sweet, with only a faint suggestion of rancidness.
Locked in their stanchions, the four cows were either nibbling grain from the boxes that stood beside each of them or lustily chewing hay. Bud stood back. Pulling weeds had been strange enough. The cows in their stanchions were as alien as visitors from another planet.
Gramps went to the end of the stable, opened a small door and disappeared through it. He returned with two milking pails. He kept one and thrust the other at Bud, who took it although he hadn't the faintest notion of what he was supposed to do with it.
"Ever do any milking?" Gramps demanded.
"No, sir."
"You'll never learn any younger. I'll show you."
He pulled a stool up beside a placid red and white cow that was so used to being milked that she did not even move when Gramps began to strip her udders. It looked easy. But when Gramps rose and motioned for Bud to take his place, the best Bud could do was to coax a trickle from one teat and a few drops from another. Gramps watched for a moment without comment and went to milk another cow.
Bud continued the uneven struggle but there was less than an inch of milk in the bottom of the pail when Gramps returned. He watched a moment and said,
"Let me do it."
Bud was thankful, but he tried hard not to show that he was as he surrendered the milking stool and let Gramps sit down. Milk hissed and foamed into the pail as Gramps took every last drop of milk from the cow's swollen udders. Bud went with him to the little room at the end of the stable and, feeling guilty and ashamed, watched him pour the milk into a can that stood neck-deep in cold water.
Back in the house he fell asleep as soon as his head struck the pillow. He was too tired to notice the room or anything except that he was in bed.
He seemed scarcely to have fallen asleep when he felt someone shaking him awake. Bud opened his eyes to see the murky dawn at the windows and Gramps standing over him.
"Come on," Gramps said. "We don't lay abed on farms."
Bud waited until Gramps had gone, for now that he was awake, it didn't seem possible that he could hurt in so many places and all at the same time. Then he climbed stiffly out of bed and dressed. When he walked downstairs to breakfast, his head was high and his step was as firm as he could make it.
The second day was a repetition of the first, except that when the beans were finished, Gramps set him to weeding onions. But more and more often Bud raised his head to look at the surrounding forest, and he renewed his promise to himself to find out what lay behind those trees at the edge of the forest.
Bud looked resentfully down at his empty pie plate and, as much as he wanted to, he could not look up again.
"I guess," Gram said, "that a body needn't tell all he knows and is a fool if he does. Whatever it is you mustn't do, don't do it. I'm sure Delbert will do the milking tonight. Why don't you go for a walk in the woods?"
He sprang up with renewed energy and went outside. Shep rose to tag along with him and together they entered the cool forest.
Bud walked slowly. He did not know how to interpret the things he saw and heard around him, but he did not doubt that all of it was wonderful. He jumped when an owl cried, was frightened for a moment when a dead snag crashed with an unearthly noise and laughed when a jay shrieked. His confidence mounted so that when he heard two sharp, blasting snorts, he continued to advance.
Two minutes later he stopped in his tracks. Not twenty feet away, its wobbly feet braced to keep it from falling, a tiny fawn no more than two hours old stared at him in wide-eyed wonder.
The fawn trembled on legs so new and untried, and so slender that they seemed scarcely able to support his jack-rabbit-sized body. His ears were ridiculously long and his staring, fascinated eyes were all out of proportion to his tiny head. The white stripes and spots that mark the young of all white-tailed deer stood out against an undercoating of hair that was abnormally dark; on the neck and shoulders it was nearly black.
The gentle Shep wagged his tail and took a step nearer this tiny wild baby. Raising a front foot, the fawn tapped a hoof no bigger than a twenty-five-cent piece and looked back over his shoulder at the laurel copse where the doe had left him. Scenting the approach of a dog and a human being, she had fled. The little buck should have stayed in hiding, but his natural curiosity had overridden the doe's warning not to move.
For a moment Bud was too bewildered and delighted to think clearly. Then he was lifted on a cloud of ecstasy and sympathy. He was sure the fawn had been abandoned by his father and mother or that they were dead. Like Bud, the little buck was left to shift for himself in a cheerless and friendless world, and Bud felt that he was forever bound to this tiny deer. There was a bond between them that nothing else could share and nothing could ever break. As long as either endured, Bud decided, each would love the other because each understood the other. They were brothers.
"Hi, little guy," Bud said softly.
Shep, tail wagging, head bent and ears tumbled forward, stayed beside him as he took the fawn in both arms. Soft as a cloud, the fawn surrendered to his embrace and gravely smelled his arm with a nose as delicate as an orchid.
"Don't be afraid," Bud crooned. "You won't be hurt. Nothing will ever hurt you."
He spoke almost fiercely, mindful of his own many hurts, and stared into space as he cradled the fawn. Shep sat near, his jaws parted and beaming approval as only a dog can. Bud's heart spiraled upward. Now, at last, he had found a true friend.
He was unaware of passing time or of long evening shadows. He only knew that he wanted to stay with this little black buck forever.
"What'd you find, Bud?"
Bud had not heard Gramps Bennett come up behind him. A terrible vision of the glass-eyed buck's head in the farm living room arose in Bud's mind and he looked about wildly for a place in which to hide the fawn. But it was too late to hide it, and he turned slowly, so as not to startle the little buck, and said truculently,
"Shep found this little lost deer."
"Well, now," Gramps said, ignoring Bud's belligerent tone, "doggone if he didn't. Cute little feller, too, and he's sure taken a shine to you."
Gramps stooped beside the pair and stroked the fawn softly. Bud stared at him, for Gramps was no longer the tyrant who acted as if Bud were a machine for getting beans weeded and cows milked.
"Its . . . Its . . .," Bud tried to get out.
And then he could not explain. How could he describe all the terror, all the loneliness and all the fear that he had felt to one who had never known these things? Bud gritted his teeth and looked stubbornly away.
"Its what?" Gramps asked.
"Its father and mother have run away and left it," Bud blurted out.
"Let me put you straight on that, Bud. Its mother ran away when she smelled or saw you and Shep coming. Fathers of baby deer like this, well, they just don't care much for their young 'uns."
Bud was astonished. "You mean it had no father?"
Gramps said solemnly, "I haven't seen any fawn-carrying storks round here for might' nigh two years. This baby had a father all right, maybe Old Yellowfoot himself."
"Who's Old Yellowfoot?"
"If you'd been round here for two months 'stead of just a couple days, you'd never ask that," Gramps said. "Old Yellowfoot's nothing 'cept the biggest and smartest buck ever left a hoofprint in Bennett's Woods or, as far as that goes, in Dishnoe County. Why, Boy, Old Yellowfoot's got a rack of antlers the like of which even I never saw, and I've been hunting deer in these parts for, let's see, it's lacking two of fifty years."
"You . . ." Bud hugged the fawn a little tighter. "You shoot the deer?"
Gramps said seriously, "You look at that fawn, then you look at me, and you ask in the same tone you might use if you thought I was going to murder some babies, 'You shoot the deer?' Well, I don't shoot the deer. I could, mind you, 'cause next to lacing your own shoes, just about the easiest thing round here is shooting a deer. But I don't even hunt the deer. I hunt Old Yellowfoot and some day, so help me, his head'll hang 'longside the one you saw in the sitting room."
"I could never like it!" Bud said.
Gramps remained serious. "You say that, but you don't know what you're talking 'bout 'cause you never tried it. You see this baby and he sure is cute as a button—he's going to be a black buck when he grows up—but right now he hasn't the sense of a half-witted mud turtle. That's not to be wondered at. He hasn't had time to learn sense and, if he had any, he wouldn't let you handle him like he was a puppy. You think he's so pretty, so nice, so friendly, and you're right. You think also he's a deer, and he sure is. You go astray when you think anybody who'd shoot this fawn, a deer, is more brute than human and you're partly right. But, Boy, there's as much difference 'twixt this baby and Old Yellowfoot as there is between a sparrow and an ostrich!"
Interested in spite of himself, Bud asked, "What's the difference?"
"The difference? Old Yellowfoot ain't as smart as the men that hunt him. He's a darn' sight smarter. Hunt him high and hunt him low, and if you get one look at him, in cover too thick for shooting or so far off that it's useless to shoot, you can call yourself a hunter. Hang his head on the wall and you're in a class with the best. Old Yellowfoot's educated and he got his education the hard way. Hunters gave it to him. For the past five years, fifty hunters I know of have had him marked. Nobody's brought him in, and that says enough. But maybe, come deer season, you and me will nail him. What say?"
Bud stirred uneasily, for this was something new to him. In every crisis of his life he had found the love and affection he craved in animals. It was unthinkable to hurt, let alone to kill, a bird or beast. He asked finally, "How long have you been hunting Old Yellowfoot?"
"Ever since he's sported the biggest rack of antlers of any buck I know. That's five years."
Bud breathed a little easier. Gramps had hunted the big buck for five years; it was highly unlikely that he would kill him the sixth year. When Bud remained silent, Gramps asked again,
"What say? When the season rolls round, are you and me going to hunt Old Yellowfoot?"
Bud said reluctantly, "I'll go with you. I'll carry your gun."
"Pooh!" Gramps snorted. "In the first place it ain't a gun. It's a rifle. What's more, you'll be carrying your own. Seven boys and four girls Mother and me raised on this farm. Every one hunted, and when they left the farm, they left their rifles and shotguns. One of 'em's sure to suit you."
Bud thought of a beautiful dapple-gray toy horse with a real leather saddle and bridle that he had seen in a store window when he had been six. He had wanted that horse more than he had ever wanted anything and every night he had prayed for it. But after his birthday had come and gone and his letters to Santa Claus been unavailing, he had concluded that dreams never come true and from then on had stifled his desires.
Now, listening to Gramps, Bud wanted a gun of his own more than he had wanted anything since the dapple-gray toy horse. He was not sure just what he would do with a rifle, except that he would never kill anything, but that did not lessen the glory of having one of his own like Daniel Boone, Jedediah Smith, Kit Carson, Buffalo Bill and a host of other heroes.
"Gosh," Bud said at last.
"I know what you mean," Gramps said, "and it's time we were getting back. Mother will fret if we're away too long."
Bud stooped and gathered the black fawn in his arms. It was as wispy as it looked and seemed to have no weight as it snuggled contentedly against him.
Gramps said, "We'll leave him, Bud."
"Leave him?"
It was a cry of anguish. The thought of abandoning the little buck, already once abandoned, was unbearable. He had forged a true bond with another living creature that had nobody except him. He couldn't leave it.
"We'll leave him," Gramps repeated firmly. "He belongs in the woods."
"Hunters will kill him!"
Gramps smiled. "Come deer season, that little guy won't have aught except buttons. Next year he'll be a spike—that's a buck with no tines on his antlers—or maybe a forkhorn—that's a buck with one tine. He's safe for a while. If he's smart and lucky, maybe he's safe for a long while."
"He'll die with no one to look after him!"
"He has somebody to look after him. Maybe his pappy don't pay him any heed but, though she run off and left him when you and Shep came, his mammy sure thinks a heap of her son. There are those who say she'll never come back now that he's been handled and has human scent on him. If ever they say that to you, you tell 'em, 'Hogwash.' She'll be back."
Bud hesitated. All his life he had searched for something, and now that he had found the fawn, he was being asked to leave it. Rebellion mounted within him.
"On second thought," Gramps said disinterestedly, "fetch him along if you've a mind to. His mammy'll be sorehearted for a time when she comes back for him and he ain't here, but she'll get over it."
Bud gasped. The mother he had never known was a hundred different people, most of them imaginary. He had never known exactly what she was like, or even what he wanted her to be like. But if he ever found her, he knew how she would feel if he were taken away.
"We'll leave him," he said.
He put the fawn down, and the little black buck minced a few steps and jerked his tail playfully. As he watched, Bud knew that the bond between him and the fawn would remain. They were blood brothers even if their form and species were different.
Reluctantly he fell in beside Gramps and, with Shep tagging at their heels, they started back toward the farmhouse. Bud turned to look again at the fawn. He thought he saw the doe emerge from a thicket and return to her lost baby, but he realized at once that he was imagining what he wanted to see. Then they rounded a bend and the next time Bud looked back he could not see the fawn at all. He stifled an almost overpowering urge to run back to the fawn.
"His mother will really come back to care for him?" he asked Gramps.
"Don't you fret, she'll come back and like as not she's there now. Do you like to fish for trout, Bud?"
"I don't know. I've never tried it."
"What did you fish for?"
"Nothing. I just never fished."
"Imagine that," Gramps said happily. "You'll start, with me tomorrow morning. I'll show you the biggest gosh-darned brown trout as ever sucked a fly off Skunk Crick, and ain't that a heck of a name for a crick? But this trout, he's named right good. Old Shark, they call him, and he's busted enough leaders and rods to stock a good-sized tackle store. Wait'll you see him."
The way Gramps spoke of Old Yellowfoot, the great buck, and Old Shark, the great trout, drove the black fawn from Bud's thoughts. He fought against it, but he could not help a warm feeling toward this man who spoke of wild creatures, or at least of mighty wild creatures with near reverence and who believed that, if you were going to kill, or try to kill them, you should pit yourself against a worthy opponent.
What had happened to the old farmer who had seemed able to think only of starting the day at dawn with milking his four cows and of ending it after dark with milking the same cows? Then Bud's conscience smote him.
"We can't fish tomorrow!"
"And why not?"
"I came here to work."
Gramps said dryly, "The work is always with us, and sometimes it seems like Old Shark's always been with us, too. But while the work won't end, Old Shark will if I lay another fly into him. Or maybe you'll do it?"
Bud started to speak and stopped. Many a time during his years in the orphanage he had watched prospective parents come and go, and he had yearned to go with some of them. Then, along with most of the others who had passed the age of seven without being adopted, he had finally realized that nobody wanted him. Nor would anybody want him until he was old enough to work. And if he did not work, how could he justify his existence?
"What were you going to say?" Gramps asked.
"I'm not afraid to work."
"'Course you ain't. Nobody worth his salt is afraid to work, but there's a time for work and," Gramps paused as if for emphasis, "there's a time for fishing. Tomorrow we'll milk the cows, turn 'em out to pasture, and go fishing."
"Yes, sir."
"Call me Gramps," Gramps said.
"Yes, Gramps," Bud said warily. He was bewildered by the idea of going fishing when he should be working. Where was the trap, he wondered?
They came to the house, went around to the kitchen door, and Shep went to his bed on the back porch. The kitchen was brightly lighted, and Bud thought he saw Gram back hastily away from the door, as though she had been watching for them. But when they entered, Gram was sitting at the table knitting. Near her, at Bud's place, was a tall glass of cold milk and a huge cut of strawberry pie. Gram looked over her glasses and frowned at Bud but she spoke to Gramps.
"Delbert, you were a long while bringing Allan back."
"Now, Mother," he said, "it's been nigh onto fourteen years since anybody saw a man-eating lion in Bennett's Woods."
"Hmph!" Gram snorted. "It might not be so funny if that boy had strayed into the woods and got lost."
"But he didn't get lost," Gramps said reasonably. "Bud and me, we met out in the woods and had us a good long talk."
Something in Gramps' voice turned Gram's frown into a smile.
"Well, you're both here now and I suppose that's what matters. Allan, sit down and eat your pie and drink your milk."
"I'm really not hungry," Bud protested.
"Pooh! All boys are hungry all the time. Sit down and eat."
"Yes, ma'am."
He sat down, took a long drink of the cold milk, ate a fork full of pie and found that he was hungry after all. Looking around Gram's kitchen as he ate, he thought of the one at the orphanage where, in spite of the thousands of dishes he had wiped there and the bushels of potatoes he had peeled, he had never been invited to sit down to a glass of cold milk and a cut of pie. It was a very disquieting thing, and his wariness mounted. He looked furtively around again for a trap, but Gram had returned to her knitting and Gramps was delving into a leather-covered case.
Gramps' case was a homemade thing divided into a number of small compartments. One by one, he took from their respective compartments an assortment of varicolored objects and arranged them on a piece of newspaper. They looked like insects but were made from tiny bits of feathers and wisps of hair. Each one was arranged about a hook. The biggest was not large and the smallest was so tiny and so fragile that it looked as if the merest puff of wind would whirl it away. Bud looked on agog.
"Dry flies," Gramps said. "I don't know what he'll take, but we'll try him first with a black gnat."
"Yes, sir."
"Call me Gramps," the old man growled.
"Yes, Gramps."
This time it slipped out, naturally and easily, almost warmly, for the flies were so interesting that Bud forgot everything else. Although he had never been fishing, he had always believed that you fished with a stout pole, a strong hank of line, a hook and worms for bait. But these dry flies were plainly conceived by one artist and tied by another. It was easy to see that only an artist could use them properly. Gramps took one of the smaller ones between his thumb and forefinger, and the fly seemed even smaller in comparison with the hand holding it.
"Yup, I think a number-fourteen black gnat is what he'll hit, which proves all over again what a darn' old fool I am. Saying aforehand what Old Shark will hit is like saying it will rain on the seventh of May two years from now. Might and might not, and the chances are three hundred and sixty-four to one it won't. Have a look, Bud."
Bud took the delicate mite in his own hand and held it gingerly. The longer he looked, the more wonderful it seemed.
"Where do you get them?" he asked.
"I tie 'em. Got good and tired of using store-bought flies that won't take anything 'cept baby trout or those just out of a hatchery that haven't any sense. Let's see it, Bud."
Gramps returned the fly to its proper place and Bud was half glad and half sorry to give it up. He was afraid he might damage the fly, but at the same time he yearned to examine it at length. He stole a glance at Gramps' huge hands and marvelled. It was easy to believe that those hands could guide a plow, shoe a horse, fit a hoe and do almost any job that demanded sheer strength. But it seemed incredible that they could assemble with such perfection anything as minute and fragile as a dry fly.
Suddenly, and surprisingly, for he was no more aware of being tired than he had been of being hungry, Bud yawned. Gram looked up.
"You'd best get to bed, Allan. Growing boys need their rest as much as they do their food."
"Good idea, Bud," Gramps said. "If you and me are going to get the milking done and hit Skunk Crick when we ought, we'll have to roll out early."
Bud said good night and went up the worn stairs to his room. For a moment he stared out of the window into the night, yearning toward the little black buck and worrying about how it was faring. It seemed impossible for anything so small and helpless to survive. But he was not as desperately worried as he had been, for Gramps had said that the doe would return to take care of it. And Bud knew that in Gramps he had at last found somebody he could trust.
Leaving his bedroom door open to take advantage of a cool breeze blowing through the window, Bud stretched luxuriously on the feather-filled mattress and pulled the blankets up to his chin. Gram's voice came up the stairway.
"Well, Delbert?"
"He came round," he heard Gramps say. "He came round lot sooner'n I figured. Found himself a fawn, he did, cutest little widget you ever laid eyes on and almost black." There was a short silence and Gramps finished, "He thought it was 'nother orphan."
"So?"
"So tomorrow morning Bud and me are going to fish for Old Shark."
"How will he tie that in with being worked like a Mexican slave his first two days with us?"
Gramps said, "You take a skittish, scared colt out of pasture and put it to work, you work it hard enough so it forgets about being skittish and scared. And Mexicans aren't slaves, Mother."
"You, Delbert!"
"It worked," Gramps said.
Gram sniffed, "So'd Allan, and no wonder. You wouldn't go down and pick a boy, as any sensible man would have done. You wrote a letter saying we'll give bed, board and schooling to a strong, healthy boy who's capable of working. Send the boy! I hope Allan didn't see that letter!"
"It's no mind if he did, and why do you suppose I wrote in 'stead of going in? Think I wanted that horse-faced old bat who runs the place to have fits?"
"Miss Dempster is not a horse-faced old bat!" Gram said sharply.
"She'd still have fits if she had to figure out anything not written down in her rule book, and it says in her book that older orphans are for working only. Anyway what does it matter? Ain't we got a young'un round the place again?"
"Yes!" Gram sighed. "Thank Heaven!"
Bud heard the last of this conversation only dimly, for sleep was overcoming him. He was even more vaguely aware of someone ascending the stairs, pausing beside his bed and planting a kiss on his cheek. Then he was lost in a happy dream of a mother who loved and cherished him and whom he loved and cherished.