The Orchard Keeper(35)

The cottonwoods at the creek loomed up stark and pale out of the darkness; he crossed a low wreck of barbed wire, heard again the resonant creak of the rusty staples in the checked and split cedar post as the boy crossed behind him. They were in the woods above the creek then, rattling through the stiff frosted leaves.

Lady’s sharp trail-call still broke excitedly off to their right. They moved out under the dark trees, through a stand of young cedars gathered in a clearing, vespertine figures, rotund and druidical in their black solemnity. When the man reached the far side, the woods again, he stopped and the boy caught up with him.

Which way is she going? He was trying not to sound winded.

The man paused for just a moment more. Then he said, Same way he is—motioning loosely with his hand. His back melted into the darkness again. The boy moved after him, keeping his feet high, following the sound of the brittle leaves. Their path angled down toward the creek and he could hear at intervals the rush of water, high now after the rain, like the rumble of a distant freight passing.

Watch a log, the man called back to him. He jumped just in time, half stumbled over the windfall trunk, lost his balance, ricocheted off a sapling, went on, holding his head low, straining to see. Trees appeared, slid past with slow gravity before folding again into the murk beyond. They were climbing now, a long rise, and when he came over the crest he caught a glimpse of the figure ahead of him, framed darkly for an instant against the glaucous drop of sky. Below him he could make out the course of the creek. They dipped into a low saddle in the ridge, rose again, and the man was no longer there. He stopped and listened. Lady’s clear voice was joined by another, lower and less insistent. She was much closer now, quartering down, coming closer. He could follow her progress, listening between the explosions of his breath. Then she stopped.

There was a moment of silence, then the other dog yapped once. Sounds of brush crashing. Two wild yelps just off to his right and then a concussion of water. A low voice at his side said: He’s got her in the creek, come on. The man started down the side of the hill, the boy behind him, and out onto a small flat set in the final slope to the creek and dominated by a thick beech tree. Something was coming down from the ridge above them and they halted. A long shadow swept past in a skitter of leaves and on toward the creek bank. There was one short chopped bark and then a splash. They followed, sidling down the slope and out along the bank where the water gathered a thin membranous light by which they could see, directed by frantic surging sounds and low intermittent growls, some suggestion of figures struggling there, and the new dog striking out in the water now to join them. The fight moved down, out in deep water and under the shadow of the far bank. The snarls stopped and there was only the desperate rending of water.

A light blinked through the trees to their right, went out, appeared again, bobbing, unattached and eerie in the blackness. They could hear the dry frosted crack of sticks and brush, muted voices. The light darted out, peered again suddenly down upon them, sweeping an arc along the edge of the creek.

Howdy, a voice said.

Cas?

Yeah … that you, Marion?

Bring that light; they’re in the creek.

They came down the slope, four dismembered legs hobbling in the swatch of light as they descended.

Thow your light, Sylder said.

They came alongside, dispensing an aura of pipesmoke and doghair. The shorter one was working the beam slowly over the creek. Whereabouts? he said.

Down some. Howdy, Bill.

Howdy, the other said. In the glare emanating from the flashlight their breath was smoke-white, curling, clinging about their heads in a vaporous canopy. The oval of the flashbeam scudded down the glides against the far bank, passed, backed, came to rest on the combatants clinching in the icy water, the coon’s eyes glowing red, pin points, his fur wetly bedraggled and his tail swaying in crestfallen buoyancy on the current. The big dog was circling him warily, trudging the water with wearying paws and failing enthusiasm. They could see Lady’s ear sticking out from under the coon’s front leg, and then her hindquarters bobbed up, surging through the face of the creek with a wild flash of tail and sinking back in a soundless swirl.

Cas swung the beam to shore, scrabbled up a handful of rock and handed the light to the other man. Hold it on him, he said. He scaled a rock at the coon. It cut a slow arc in the beam and pitched from sight with a muffled slurp. The big hound started for shore and Lady’s tail had made another desperate appearance when the second rock, a flitting shadow, curving, flashed water under the coon’s face.

He turned loose and struck out downstream, stroking with the current. The big dog, on the other bank now, had set up a pitiful moaning sound, pacing, the man with the light calling to him in a hoarse and urgent voice, Hunt im up, boy, hunt im up. He turned to the men. He’s skeered of rocks, he explained.