Old Yeller (5 page)

“Do what?” I asked.

“Steal that bait of ribs,” she said. “I saw him get a bunch of eggs, too. From one of our nests.”

I stopped then and looked straight at her and she looked straight back at me and I couldn’t stand it and had to look down.

“But I’m not going to tell,” she said.

I didn’t believe her. “I bet you do,” I said.

“No, I won’t,” she said, shaking her head. “I wouldn’t, even before I knew he was your dog.”

“Why?”

“Because Miss Prissy is going to have pups.”

“Miss Prissy?”

“That’s the name of my dog, and she’s going to have pups and your dog will be their papa, and I wouldn’t want their papa to get shot.”

I stared at her again, and again I had to look down. I wanted to thank her, but I didn’t know the right words. So I fished around in my pocket and brought out an Indian arrowhead that I’d found the day before and gave that to her.

She took it and stared at it for a little bit, with her eyes shining, then shoved it deep into a long pocket she had sewn to her dress.

“I won’t never, never tell,” she said, then whirled and tore out for the house, running as fast as she could.

I went down and sat by the spring awhile. It seemed like I liked Bud Searcy a lot better than I ever had before, even if he did talk too much and spit tobacco juice all over the place. But I was still bothered. If Lisbeth had caught Old Yeller stealing stuff at the settlement, then somebody else might, too. And if they did, they were sure liable to shoot him. A family might put up
with one of its own dogs stealing from them if he was a good dog. But for a dog that left home to steal from everybody else—well, I didn’t see much chance for him if he ever got caught.

After Bud Searcy had eaten a hearty supper and talked awhile longer, he finally rode off home, with Lisbeth riding behind him. I went then and gathered the eggs and held three back. I called Old Yeller off from the house and broke the eggs on a flat rock, right under his nose and tried to get him to eat them. But he wouldn’t. He acted like he’d never heard tell that eggs were fit to eat. All he’d do was stand there and wiggle his tail and try to lick me in the face.

It made me mad. “You thievin’ rascal,” I said. “I ought to get a club and break your back—in fourteen different places.”

But I didn’t really mean it, and I didn’t say it loud and ugly. I knew that if I did, he’d fall over and start yelling like he was dying. And there I’d be—in a fight with Little Arliss again.

“When they shoot you, I’m going to laugh,” I told him.

But I knew that I wouldn’t.

I
did considerable thinking on what Lisbeth Searcy had told me about Old Yeller and finally went and told Mama.

“Why, that old rogue!” she said. “We’ll have to try to figure some way to keep him from prowling. Everybody in the settlement will be mad at us if we don’t.”

“Somebody’ll shoot him,” I said.

“Try tying him,” she said.

So I tried tying him. But we didn’t have any bailing wire in those days, and he could chew through anything else before you could turn your back. I tied him with rope and then with big
thick rawhide string that I cut from a cowhide hanging across the top rail of the yard fence. It was the same thing in both cases. By the time we could get off to bed, he’d done chewed them in two and was gone.

“Let’s try the corncrib,” Mama said on the third night.

Which was a good idea that might have worked if it hadn’t been for Little Arliss.

I took Old Yeller out and put him in the corncrib and the second that he heard the door shut on him, he set up a yelling and a howling that brought Little Arliss on the run. Mama and I both tried to explain to him why we needed to shut the dog up, but Little Arliss was too mad to listen. You can’t explain things very well to somebody who is screaming his head off and chunking you with rocks as fast as he can pick them up. So that didn’t work, either.

“Well, it looks like we’re stumped,” Mama said.

I thought for a minute and said, “No, Mama. I believe we’ve got one other chance. That’s to shut him up in the same room with me and Little Arliss every night.”

“But he’ll sleep in the bed with you boys,” Mama said, “and the first thing you know, you’ll both be scratching fleas and having mange and breaking out with ringworms.”

“No, I’ll put him a cowhide on the floor and make him sleep there,” I said.

So Mama agreed and I spread a cowhide on the floor beside our bed and we shut Old Yeller in and didn’t have a bit more trouble.

Of course, Old Yeller didn’t sleep on the cowhide. And once, a good while later, I did break out with a little ringworm under my left arm. But I rubbed it with turpentine, just like Mama always did, and it soon went away. And after that, when we fed Old Yeller cornmeal mush or fresh meat, he ate it and did well on it and never one time bothered our chicken nests.

About that time, too, the varmints got to pestering us so much that a lot of times Old Yeller and I were kept busy nearly all night long.

It was the coons, mainly. The corn was ripening into roasting ears now, and the coons would come at night and strip the shucks back with their little hands, and gnaw the milky kernels off
the cob. Also, the watermelons were beginning to turn red inside and the skunks would come and open up little round holes in the rinds and reach in with their forefeet and drag out the juicy insides to eat. Sometimes coyotes would come and eat watermelons, too; and now and then a deer would jump into the field and eat corn, melons, and peas.

So Old Yeller and I took to sleeping in the corn patch every night. We slept on the cowhide that Yeller never would sleep on at the house. That is, we did when we got to sleep. Most of the night, we’d be up fighting coons. We slept out in the middle of the patch, where Yeller could scent a coon clear to the fence on every side. We’d lie there on the cowhide and look up at the stars and listen to the warm night breeze rustling the corn blades. Sometimes I’d wonder what the stars were and what kept them hanging up there so high and bright and if Papa, way off up yonder in Kansas, could see the same stars I could see.

I was getting mighty lonesome to see Papa. With the help of Old Yeller, I was taking care of things all right; but I was sure beginning to wish that he’d come back home.

Then I’d think awhile about the time when I’d get big enough to go off on a cow drive myself, riding my own horse, and see all the big new country of plains and creeks and rivers and mountains and timber and new towns and Indian camps. Then, finally, just about the time I started drifting off to sleep, I’d hear Old Yeller rise to his feet and go padding off through the corn. A minute later, his yelling bay would lift from some part of the corn patch, and I’d hear the fighting squawl of some coon caught stealing corn. Then I’d jump to my feet and go running through the corn, shouting encouragement to Old Yeller.

“Git him, Yeller,” I’d holler. “Tear him up!”

And that’s what Old Yeller would be trying to do; but a boar coon isn’t an easy thing to tear up. For one thing, he’ll fight you from sundown till sunup. He’s not big for size, but the longer you fight him, the bigger he seems to get. He fights you with all four feet and every tooth in his head and enough courage for an animal five times his size.

On top of that, he’s fighting inside a thick hide that fills a dog’s mouth like a wad of loose sacking. The dog has a hard time ever really biting
him. He just squirms and twists around inside that hide and won’t quit fighting even after the dog’s got enough and is ready to throw the fight to him. Plenty of times, Papa and I had seen a boar coon whip Bell, run him off, then turn on us and chase us clear out of a cornfield.

It was easy for me to go running through the dark cornfields, yelling for Old Yeller to tear up a thieving coon, but it wasn’t easy for Old Yeller to do it. He’d be yelling and the coon would be squawling and they’d go wallowing and clawing and threshing through the corn, popping the stalks as they broke them off, making such an uproar in the night that it sounded like murder. But, generally, when the fight was all over, the coon went one way and Old Yeller the other, both of them pretty well satisfied to call it quits.

We didn’t get much sleep of a night while all this was going on, but we had us a good time and saved the corn from the coons.

The only real bad part of it was the skunks. What with all the racket we made coon fighting, the skunks didn’t come often. But when one did come, we were in a mess.

Old Yeller could handle a skunk easy enough.
All he had to do was rush in, grab it by the head and give it a good shaking. That would break the skunk’s neck, but it wouldn’t end the trouble. Because not even a hoot owl can kill a skunk without getting sprayed with his scent. And skunk scent is a smell that won’t quit. After every skunk killing, Old Yeller would get so sick that he could hardly stand it. He’d snort and drool and slobber and vomit. He’d roll and wallow in the dirt and go dragging his body through tall weeds, trying to get the scent off; but he couldn’t. Then finally, he’d give up and come lie down on the cowhide with me. And of course he’d smell so bad that I couldn’t stand him and have to go off and try to sleep somewhere else. Then he’d follow me and get his feelings hurt because I wouldn’t let him sleep with me.

Papa always said that breathing skunk scent was the best way in the world to cure a head cold. But this was summertime, when Old Yeller and I didn’t have head colds. We would just as soon that the skunks stayed out of the watermelons and let us alone.

Working there, night after night, guarding our precious bread corn from the varmints, I came to
see what I would have been up against if I’d had it to do without the help of Old Yeller. By myself, I’d have been run to death and still probably wouldn’t have saved the corn. Also, look at all the fun I would have missed if I’d been alone, and how lonesome I would have been. I had to admit Papa had been right when he’d told me how bad I needed a dog.

I saw that even more clearly when the spotted heifer had her first calf.

Our milk cows were all old-time longhorn cattle and didn’t give a lot of milk. It was real hard to find one that would give much more than her calf could take. What we generally had to do was milk five or six cows to get enough milk for just the family.

But we had one crumpled-horn cow named Rose that gave a lot of milk, only she was getting old, and Mama kept hoping that each of her heifer calves would turn out to be as good a milker as Rose. Mama had tried two or three, but none of them proved to be any good. And then along came this spotted one that was just raw-boned and ugly enough to make a good milk cow. She had the bag for it, too, and Mama
was certain this time that she’d get a milk cow to replace Rose.

The only trouble was, this heifer Spot, as we called her, had been snaky wild from the day she was born. Try to drive her with the other cattle, and she’d run off and hide. Hem her up in a corner and try to get your hands on her, and she’d turn on you and make fight. Mama had been trying all along to get Spot gentled before she had her first calf, but it was no use. Spot didn’t want to be friends with anybody. We knew she was going to give us a pile of trouble when we set out to milk her.

I failed to find Spot with the rest of our milk cows one evening, and when I went to drive them up the next day, she was still gone.

“It’s time for her to calve,” Mama said, “and I’ll bet she’s got one.”

So the next morning I went further back in the hills and searched all over. I finally came across her, holed up in a dense thicket of bee myrtle close to a little seep spring. I got one brief glimpse of a wobbly, long-legged calf before Spot snorted and took after me. She ran me clear to the top of the next high ridge before she turned back.

I made another try. I got to the edge of the thicket and picked me up some rocks. I went to hollering and chunking into the brush, trying to scare her and the calf out. I got her out, all right, but she wasn’t scared. She came straight for me with her horns lowered, bawling her threats as she came. I had to turn tail a second time, and again she chased me clear to the top of that ridge.

I tried it one more time, then went back to the house and got Old Yeller. I didn’t know if he knew anything about driving cattle or not, but I was willing to bet that he could keep her from chasing me.

And he did. I went up to the edge of the thicket and started hollering and chunking rocks into it. Here came the heifer, madder than ever, it looked like. I yelled at Old Yeller. “Get her, Yeller,” I hollered. And Yeller got her. He pulled the neatest trick I ever saw a dog pull on a cow brute.

Only I didn’t see it the first time. I was getting away from there too fast. I’d stumbled and fallen to my knees when I turned to run from Spot’s charge, and she was too close behind for me to be looking back and watching what Old Yeller was
doing. I just heard the scared bawl she let out and the crashing of the brush as Old Yeller rolled her into it.

I ran a piece farther, then looked back. The heifer was scrambling to her feet in a cloud of dust and looking like she didn’t know any more about what had happened than I did. Then she caught sight of Old Yeller. She snorted, stuck her tail in the air and made for him. Yeller ran like he was scared to death, then cut back around a thicket. A second later, he was coming in behind Spot.

Without making a sound, he ran up beside her, made his leap and set his teeth in her nose.

I guess it was the weight of him that did it. I saw him do it lots of times later, but never did quite understand how. Anyway, he just set his teeth in her nose, doubled himself up in a tight ball, and swung on. That turned the charging heifer a flip. Her heels went straight up in the air over her head. She landed flat on her back with all four feet sticking up. She hit the ground so hard that it sounded like she ought to bust wide open.

I guess she felt that way about it, too.
Anyhow, after taking that second fall, she didn’t have much fight left in her. She just scrambled to her feet and went trotting back into the thicket, lowing to her calf.

I followed her, with Old Yeller beside me, and we drove her out and across the hills to the cow lot. Not one time did she turn on us again. She did try to run off a couple of times, but all I had to do was send Old Yeller in to head her. And the second she caught sight of him, she couldn’t turn fast enough to get headed back in the right direction.

It was the same when we got her into the cowpen. Her bag was all in a strut with milk that the calf couldn’t hold. Mama said we needed to get that milk out. She came with a bucket and I took it, knowing I had me a big kicking fight on my hands if I ever hoped to get any milk.

The kicking fight started. The first time I touched Spot’s bag, she reached out with a flying hind foot, aiming to kick my head off and coming close to doing it. Then she wheeled on me and put me on top of the rail fence as quick as a squirrel could have made it.

Mama shook her head. “I was hoping she
wouldn’t be that way,” she said. “I always hate to have to tie up a heifer to break her for milking. But I guess there’s no other way with this one.”

I thought of all the trouble it would be, having to tie up that Spot heifer, head and feet, twice a day, every day, for maybe a month or more. I looked at Old Yeller, standing just outside the pen.

“Yeller,” I said, “you come in here.”

Yeller came bounding through the rails.

Mama said: “Why, Son, you can’t teach a heifer to stand with a dog in the pen. Especially one with a young calf. She’ll be fighting at him all the time, thinking he’s a wolf or something trying to get her calf.”

I laughed. “Maybe it won’t work,” I said, “but I bet you one thing. She won’t be fighting Old Yeller.”

She didn’t, either. She lowered her horns and rolled her eyes as I brought Old Yeller up to her.

“Now, Yeller,” I said, “you stand here and watch her.”

Old Yeller seemed to know just what I wanted. He walked right up to where he could almost touch his nose to hers and stood there,
wagging his stub tail. And she didn’t charge him or run from him. All she did was stand there and sort of tremble. I went back and milked out her strutted bag and she didn’t offer to kick me one time, just flinched and drew up a little when I first touched her.

“Well, that does beat all,” Mama marveled. “Why, at that rate, we’ll have her broke to milk in a week’s time.”

Mama was right. Within three days after we started, I could drive Spot into the pen, go right up and milk her, and all she’d do was stand there and stare at Old Yeller. By the end of the second week, she was standing and belching and chewing her cud—the gentlest cow I ever milked.