The Fox and the Hound (2 page)

Although there was no scent of the quarry, there was the scent of an automobile, Copper could easily smell the odor of the rubber tires, gasoline, and oil as well as the individualistic metal odor of a machine. As he had to track something, and there was nothing else to track, he began tracking the car.

Following the car was fairly simple, although the hot road hurt his pads. Copper soon found that enough of the scent had blown off the road and clung to the grass along the edge for him to follow it there. The grass was still partly damp and its many blades offered a perfect trap for the scent particles. Even better, the sun was making the scent rise so it floated a few inches above the ground and the hound did not have to drop his head.

After a time he came on the man scent again by the side of the road. It was quite clear, although not fresh. It led into the woods, and Copper started after it eagerly, jerking on the leash. The Master pulled him up and he and the leather-smelling man bent down to look at something. Copper hurried over. They had found a white object that smelled heavily of tobacco but had so little of the man scent that Copper turned away in disgust to get back to the trail. The Master seemed delighted, and from the way he encouraged him, Copper strained forward happily.

Working along the side of a hill, they came on a mass of sharp-edged rocks lying in the full glare of the sun. Here Copper could not find a trace of the trail. He worked up and down the slope, dragging the Master after him, trying desperately to own the line. He did not give his urinating signal, for he knew that here the man had not simply disappeared - the scent had not abruptly ended, but petered out on the hot, bare rocks. It must be here somewhere if he could only find it.

The Master pulled him off the rocks and for the first time since starting out, unsnapped the leash from his collar as a signal he was to stop tracking. Copper lay down thankfully, licking his bleeding pads, for the rocks were sharp. He was still unhappy over the lost line and prepared to try again after a rest.

The men left him and walked slowly across the rocks. They seemed to find something. Painful as it was, Copper limped over to them and hopefully stuck his nose in the place where the Master was pointing. He was ordered back. He continued to sniff, but there was nothing there, and after a second curt command he returned to the soft earth.

The men climbed the rockslide, stopping frequently, while Copper watched them in agony. He could not understand how they could smell the line when he could not. At the top of the slope, the Master called him. To avoid the rocks, Copper loped around the slide and joined the men. The tracking leash was snapped into his collar, and the Master repeated, "Go on, boy. Go find 'em."

Copper cast around and, sure enough, there was the scent again. How the Master had found it he could not imagine, nor did he try. Human beings had strange powers no dog could understand. Trained never to give tongue while following a man, he could not suppress an eager whine. Then they were off again, the big hound pulling on the leash until the Master cursed him, but Copper was too excited at hitting the line again to pay any attention.

The scent was gradually growing stronger now. It was not too old. As Copper was forging ahead, he was abruptly pulled up short. The men were looking upward. Copper glanced up but could see nothing. The men talked in low voices, and then the Master ordered him on again.

The scent was good now. The eager hound forced his way through laurel tangle and greenbrier so thick the men could hardly follow. They reached a gully in the woods, and Copper smelled water at the bottom. He started down; but the scent was very bad indeed, for there was no circulation of air in the shielded gully to lift the scent above the ground, and Copper was forced to keep his nose almost in direct contact with the earth.

He had raised his head to blow dust from his nose, when suddenly he stopped dead. Ignoring the trail, the hound care- fully tested the air. Yes, there it was. The man close - so close the hound could air-scent him. At the same instant, the hound knew the quarry was dead, The heavy, sweet-sick smell of death was strong. There was also blood.

Paying no attention to the trail now, the hound plunged down the steep bank, the men sliding after him on their buttocks. At the bottom of the gully ran a clear stream. Thirsty as he was, the hound did not stop to drink. He splashed through the water and up the opposite bank, the men cupping up quick handfuls of water as they followed. As they climbed, a frenzied rustling came from the bushes ahead. Half a dozen black shapes flushed, and beat their way upward on huge, sooty black wings, leaving a carrion reek as they rose. Copper ignored them. He strained forward, took one strong sniff, and then sat down. The quarry was here.

The Master unsnapped the leash and the men moved forward toward the body. A droning mass of blowflies rose above the corpse for a moment, then settled back Copper smelled the blood, smelled the birds, and identified the body as the quarry he had been following. Then he smelled something else that made him bound to his feet: a savage, feral scent that made the black hairs of his neck stand up and sent shivers of fear and excitement through his body. Bear!

Regardless of the men, Copper bounded forward and began feverishly to cast around. It was bear, all right. There was blood on his paws and he had been in a frenzy of rage; Copper could tell by the special quality of the scent. His conviction was confirmed when he hit a spot where the bear had urinated in his excitement. The urine was heavily charged with the odor only a furious animal emits.

As he was no longer tracking a man, Copper felt himself justified in giving tongue, and his deep bay rolled out, first in a long howl and then in short, gasping cries. Instantly the Master was by his side. Copper showed him where the line was; but the Master, instead of instantly winding the scent, went back and forth in an exasperating way until he found something to look at on the soft earth. The Master's inability to scent a perfectly clear line, as well as his tendency to stand for a long time staring at pointless marks on the ground, was his most irritating quality, and Copper had never grown entirely reconciled to it. The Master called over the leather-smelling man and they both looked at the ground and talked, while Copper went nearly mad with impatience. Finally the tracking leash was snapped on and he was told to go ahead.

It was no use. The bear had traveled much faster than the man and hadn't dragged his feet as the man had. Copper could only just own the line. After a short time, the Master pulled him off, and even Copper had to admit it was a wise decision. That bear was gone. By the time Copper could have puzzled out the faint trail, the bear would have been too far away to make the hunt worthwhile; besides, neither man had a gun. Copper knew that men always carried guns when they went bear hunting.

After a long, dull journey they returned to the cabin and the cars. While the men, as they always did, talked and talked interminably, Copper slept, licked the cuts on his paws, and slept again. He was intensely relieved when he was ordered back to the car and they started home.

For the next few days nothing happened. Copper, like the other dogs, was bored and restless. He amused himself by lying in front of his barrel and checking the various odors that the breeze brought him. He could just make out the cabin at the foot of the little rise where the kennels were, but beyond that the world fuzzied into a black-and-white haze, although he could barely distinguish a moving figure if it wasn't too far away. Everything looked black and white to Copper even though he could tell a considerable number of shades of gray by their comparative brightness. Copper did not depend much on his eyes, which he knew were unreliable and which had often caused him to make shameful errors. If the Master changed his clothes, Copper would often bark at him until the Master spoke so he could recognize the voice. This was very humiliating, but even while Copper was cringing in disgrace, he liked to get a good sniff in to make quite sure the figure standing over him was indeed the Master.

If his eyes were weak, his nose was quite another thing. Lying on the hill, Copper could tell fairly well what was going on in the world about him. At every moment dozens of distinct odors were pouring into his nostrils; the great majority of them the hound ignored as meaningless. Flowers, grass, trees, the other dogs, activities in the cabin - these meant nothing to him. A distant herd of deer passing through the woods, a stray dog, a human stranger, even a pheasant, goose, rabbit, or raccoon caused his nostrils to twitch as he took pains to separate the important scent from the mass of other odors. He could also tell when it was going to rain by the moisture in the wind, and distinguished between day and night by the different quality in the air almost as much as he did by eyesight.

A few mornings later, he was awakened by the ringing of the telephone in the cabin. It was still pitch black even though Copper could smell the dawn not too far away; it always began to cool slightly before dawn. The other dogs moved restlessly and mumbled annoyance at the insistent ringing, but Copper lay awake listening. When the phone rang at night it usually meant a job to do. Perhaps he would be called on again to the further humiliation of the Trigg,

The phone stopped ringing. Then lights went on in the cabin. Even the other dogs knew what that meant, and their chains rattled as they shook themselves and came out of their kennels to stretch, yawn, and relieve themselves. Copper smelled coffee, and was almost sure there was a job on. The Master never made that coffee smell this early unless he was going out.

The cabin door opened, emitting a flood of light, and the Master came out. The wind was blowing to the dogs and Copper could smell his leather hunting boots and the heavy jacket he wore when he started on jobs. Alas, there was no scent of the tracking belt that meant Copper alone was going. But there would be tracking.

The rest of the pack were beginning to leap at the ends of the chains and scream with excitement. The chorus varied from the hard chop of the two gray-and-white treeing Walkers to the deep, sonorous bay of the trail hounds. The Master shouted, "You, Chief! Strike! Ranger! Hold that noise!" The dogs sub- sided.

With the swift efficiency of long practice, the Master hitched 'up the dogs' trailer to his battered car while the pack watched anxiously. Then he came up the hill. The dogs groveled, barked, whined, and stood on their hind legs in an agony of anticipation while he made his choice. To Copper's inexpressible delight, he was selected. The Master also took Red, a young heavy-coated July hound, and Ranger, a buckskin Plott who was known as a fighter. Then he took that damned chief. Chief was a big hound weighing nearly as much as Copper. He was more catfooted than the bloodhound, faster and more belligerent. He was black-and-tan with a white-tipped tail. Because of his habit of skirting, he not infrequently hit by chance on the line that Copper was patiently working out, gave tongue, and took the pack away on it. This was one of the reasons the bloodhound hated him.

Lastly, the Master selected Buck, a long-legged Airedale, and Scrapper. Scrapper's ancestry was uncertain. He had some bull- dog, some Doberman, and perhaps a little Alsatian. The inclusion of these two catch dogs meant they were going after dangerous game. Like all the hounds, Copper feared and disliked the catch dogs. He had discovered from painful experience that the catch dogs when excited were more likely to attack the hounds than the quarry. The hounds were put together in the trailer, but the catch dogs were kept in separate compartments.

The white sun was rising in the grayish-black sky as they started. Copper didn't like riding in the trailer; it swayed too much and made him sick, so he lay down and tried to sleep, only growling a little when the other hounds fell across him in their excitement at going out on a job. The ride was not too long, and they made good time because the highway was almost deserted at this hour except for a few night-running trucks that gave off a stench of diesel oil as they passed. They reached a small town, and the car slowed down. A car was parked in the silent street, and the headlights were rapidly switched on and off as they approached it. Though Copper could see the car through the trailer's wire mesh, he could not identify it even after the Master pulled up alongside and stopped. He did know the man who got out - not immediately, but after he had talked to the Master for a few seconds Copper could smell him. This man always smelled of a special grease he used on his gun. There was no doubt about it now: they were going after some potentially dangerous animal. The grease-smelling man appeared only before such hunts.

The two men finished talking and, getting back in the cars, started off. Again Copper dozed. When he awoke, the cars were climbing up a steep grade. The air was fresher, colder, and thinner. Scenting conditions were so good that in spite of the stink of the exhaust Copper could smell pines and even some animal scents, especially deer. The cold air of the mountains made him feel better, and he stood up, swaying in rhythm with the motion of the car.

The cars pulled off on grass and stopped, while the Master came around to let them out. The captives went crazy with excitement, ricocheting off the sides of the van and throwing themselves against the door. The Master had to press the door in with the full weight of his body to get enough play to release the catch. The hounds poured out in an excited stream, and the Master waited while they relieved themselves and checked the new scents. Then he let out the catch dogs, one after another. There was a little trouble between the fighting dogs and the hounds, but the Master was watching closely and at the first growl he spoke so sharply that the dogs avoided each other,