Chapter II: Part 2

Gingerly, hoping Gramps would carry it for him but taking it up himself when Gramps told him to, Bud tried to place his hand exactly as it had been when Gramps showed him how to balance a fine fly rod. After a little experimentation he found the proper grip, but his hand remained stiff on the butt. After looking appealingly at Gramps, who saw the look but pretended not to, Bud clenched his teeth and grimly resolved to carry through. Gramps went out first and Bud wondered how he would open the door after Gramps had closed it but Gramps stopped and held it open.

"'Bye, Mother."

"Have a good time," Gram called. "Good-by, Allan."

"Good-by, ma'am."

To Bud's relief Gramps continued to hold the door open as if he had something else to say to Gram. Thus the first major hurdle was taken; Bud was out of the kitchen without either breaking his rod or anything else. Then, apparently forgetting what he intended to say, Gramps let the door close.

Shep rose to join them when they emerged onto the porch, but Gramps ordered him back. Ears drooping and looking abused, Shep sat down in front of the door and watched. When they were fifty yards away, he barked hopefully.

"It'll do you no good," Gramps said firmly. "Can't have a dog along when you're trout fishing," he said to Bud.

"Why?"

"He scares the trout."

"How can a dog scare trout?"

"'Cause trout are scary, Bud. A shadow'll send 'em scooting and a dog can cast a shadow."

When they started down the path Bud had followed the night before, Bud's interest mounted. The black fawn lived there. Maybe he would see it again today. But as they walked along, resentment welled up in him, too. Gramps' rod was disjointed, which made it easy to carry. Bud's, however, had been left jointed so that he had constantly to be alert for every branch, every bush, and even every twig on every branch and bush. Bud thrust the tip of his rod into a hemlock tree and the rod bent alarmingly. Gramps, striding ahead, did not even bother to look around. Disgruntled, Bud disengaged his rod and hurried to catch up. He would have liked to carry a disjointed rod, too, but he didn't know how to take his apart and he wouldn't ask Gramps to show him.

Ten minutes later he was glad that Gramps was so eager to fish for Old Shark that he thought of nothing else. He was finding his rod easier to handle and he stopped gripping it desperately. He was becoming accustomed to its feel and balance, and beginning to understand it. And he hadn't called for help.

As they neared the thicket where the black fawn lived, Bud grew excited. But just before they came to it, Gramps swerved from the path into the woods. Bud kept his thoughts to himself. As much as he wanted to see the black fawn again, he wasn't going to ask Gramps to go out of the way for him.

The trees among which they threaded their way were mostly second-growth yellow birch but now and then there was a grove of aspens, a solitary black cherry or a copse of laurel and rhododendrons. It was such hard work to keep from tangling his rod in the twigs and branches that Bud almost bumped into Gramps before he was aware that the old man had stopped.

Gramps stood absolutely motionless and, without speaking, pointed. About a hundred yards away, a very dark-colored doe was leaping toward a copse of sheltering rhododendron. Behind her, matching his mother's every leap, ran the little black buck.

Now, Bud knew the fawn had not been abandoned. Just as Gramps had promised, his mother had come back to look for him and he was in safe care. And between last night and this morning, he had learned to use his legs. Not again, or at least not easily, would any human lay hands on him. The doe and fawn disappeared, and Gramps turned to Bud.

"There's your pal. After seeing his mammy, I know where he gets his color."

"Yes." Bud's eyes danced.

"I figured she'd take him away from that tote road after you and Shep found out where he was."

"Tote road?"

"The path we followed used to be a road. The lumbermen who cut the pine and hemlock that was in here made it and a hundred more like it."

"Why do they call them tote roads?"

Gramps shrugged. "I reckon 'cause they toted things back and forth on them."

"Were you here when the lumbermen came?"

"Saw the tail end of it but took no part. I wasn't much bigger'n that little black fawn. Been here ever since."

"When they cut the forests . . ." Bud began.

"We'd best get moving," Gramps said.

Gramps swerved at right angles to the direction they had been following and Bud wondered. Had Gramps brought him this way so Bud could see for himself that the black fawn was safe? If he had, what lay behind it? Bud was forced to concede that, if Gramps had deliberately set out to find the doe and fawn, he had shown wonderful woodcraft. Never once had he faltered or been at a loss as to the route to follow. He had known exactly where to find the doe and her baby.

Ten minutes later they reached Skunk Creek, a beautiful little woodland stream with pools of various sizes and depths and with sparkling riffles. Except for the larger pools, some of which were forty feet wide, the stream was less than a dozen feet wide. Most of Skunk Creek was bordered with willows and other trees, but the pool to which Gramps led Bud had almost no growth on the near bank and only scraggly willows on the far bank. Gramps laid his tackle on a moss-grown rock and turned to Bud.

"This ain't where Old Shark lives, but it's a darn' good place to show you how to lay a fly on the water. Let's have your rod."

Bud surrendered his rod. With skill honed to a razor's edge by vast experience, Gramps strung line through the guides, whipped the rod back and forth and paid out line from the reel as he did so. As he was keeping the line in the air, he said,

"See that little hunk of grass, maybe thirty-five feet out and a little up? I'll aim for it."

The rod described a graceful backward arc and an equally perfect forward sweep. The line glided forth as though it was not a flexible object at all, but a solid thing that Gramps was somehow shooting from the tip of his finger. The extreme tip of the line settled perfectly over the bit of grass. Gramps twitched it free, retrieved his line, and turned to Bud.

"Got it?"

Bud was flabbergasted.

"Try it and find out," Gramps said.

Bud took the rod, now strung and with a bit of line the length of the eight and a half foot rod dangling from the tip. But where the rod was a live thing in Gramps' hands, in Bud's it unaccountably went dead. He whipped it back, then forward, and the dangling line splashed at the very edge of the pool.

"You forgot to pay out line," Gramps said patiently. "You didn't use your reel. Let me show you."

He took the rod a second time, and once again laid the line smoothly on the water. Although Gramps had named no target, Bud knew that he was laying the line on the water exactly where he wanted it. Gramps returned the rod and Bud tried again. He remembered to pay out line as he cast, but the line slapped the water only about a dozen feet from shore and a full eight feet downstream from the target Bud had selected.

"You're throwing it," Gramps said, "and you're throwing with your whole arm. Here." He pressed the upper part of Bud's right arm against his ribs. "That's as much as you need and use your wrist. Let the rod work for you; don't you do everything."

Forty minutes later, although he couldn't come close to Gramps' distance or, unless the wildest luck was on his side, lay the line within two feet of any target he picked, Bud felt that he was improving. At least he was able to lay the line on the surface instead of whipping it into the water. Gramps tied a nine-foot tapered leader, a spiderweb at the thick end and like gossamer at the thin end, to Bud's line and showed him how to attach a dry fly to it. Then Gramps put a drop of oil on the fly, greased ten feet of line, and took the rod.

"Watch."

The fly soared out, hovered over the pool, settled on it precisely as a live insect might have, and began to float downstream. Gramps pulled the fly away from a small trout that rose and handed the rod to Bud.

"Go ahead."

Bud's first cast snagged a ground-hugging bush twenty feet behind him. The next time the fly bellied back to float beside the floating line. Then he hooked the only willow growing on the near side of the pool. But all the same Bud was elated. He forgot that the object of this wonderful art was to catch fish and, trying to remember all Gramps had told him, he kept on casting and learning through trial and error. When, after another hour, he was able to make ten successive casts and lay his fly reasonably well, Gramps pronounced judgment,

"Guess we can try now."

Without another word he turned and led the way downstream. Bud followed, knowing that his casting had not won the old man's approval but that Gramps had not wholly disapproved either. Bud did not care or at least he tried not to think about it, for he had discovered another new world. In time, he promised himself grimly, he would be a dry fisherman equal--well, almost equal--to Gramps.

Ten minutes later, Gramps slowed to a turtle's pace. He stole stealthily toward a twenty-foot-wide rock ledge that overhung a deep pool. When he came to the near border of the ledge, he turned and whispered,

"Leave your tackle. We'll crawl the rest of the way."

Bud laid his rod down carefully and, dropping to all fours, crawled beside Gramps toward the water. Five feet from the edge, Gramps dropped to his belly and began to inch toward the pool.

"No fast moves and show no more of yourself than you have to," Gramps whispered.

Bud nodded and wriggled toward the water. He peered down from the ledge and saw a broad, long pool formed by the ledge and fed by rushing riffles that curled around the upstream end of the ledge. On the far side the water was relatively shallow, or perhaps it only looked shallow because there was white sand on the bottom there. Schools of shiners and minnows swam lazily in that part of the pool and the white sand was pock-marked with driftwood that had floated down in flood time and, having become waterlogged, gone to the bottom.

At first glance the water at the near edge of the white sand seemed almost black. This was partly because the white sand ended and partly because the water was deeper there. Actually, it was green-blue, and the high-riding sun bored well into it.

Presently Bud saw a school of fish almost directly beneath him. The fish ranged in length from about five to nearly eighteen inches, and they lay very still in what appeared to be a quiet pocket of water, the biggest fish at the head of the school and the smallest at the end. Farther out, Bud saw more fish. The deepest part of the pool was too deep for the sun to penetrate it, and its invisible depths were tantalizing. Toward the foot of the pool, just before it was gathered in by the riffles that drained it, the trunk of a leaning sycamore jutted out about six feet over the water. The water near the sycamore was sun-sprayed, too. Bud saw flat stones on the bottom away from the bank, but in closer the bottom was in shadow and he could see nothing.

"The fish 'neath us are trout," Gramps whispered. "Those farther out are suckers and mullets. The shallows 'cross the pool are loaded with minnows and shiners. Down there Old Shark hangs out 'neath that sycamore trunk." He spoke as reverently as a fanatic Moslem referring to Mecca.

"Stay here and watch. Don't move. You do, you'll send every trout in the pool kiting under the ledge."

Gramps wriggled backward and disappeared. A few minutes later Bud saw him near the foot of the ledge standing behind a rock spire that hid him from the pool and at the same time gave him freedom of action. Gramps made a perfect cast. The fly floated lazily toward the leaning sycamore and gathered speed as the water became swifter.

Old Shark rose and Bud saw him, a great, dark shadow that left the shaded bank and rose into the clear water upstream from the leaning sycamore. Old Shark did seem more like a shark than a trout as he paused within an inch of the fly and then sank back into the shadows from which he had come.

Almost unable to tear his eyes from Old Shark's lair, Bud's attention was distracted for a moment by a ripple in the water beneath him. It was a grasshopper struggling toward the ledge; before it reached safety, a twelve-inch trout from the school rose and took it.

Twenty minutes later Gramps called,

"Your turn. Take it slow and crawl away, mind you."

Bud took his place behind the spire of rock and cast. He knew how clumsy he was in comparison with Gramps, but he didn't care, for now he knew why Gramps spoke so reverently of Old Yellowfoot and Old Shark.

When Bud's second turn was over, he went back to where Gramps was sitting well back on the ledge.

"We didn't get him," Gramps said, but if he was disappointed he did not show it. "There's always another day and we'll come again. Reckon we'd better go in after this last try, though. Mother's all alone."

Bud stayed where he was and watched Gramps walk down to cast. A grasshopper the old man's feet had disturbed came to rest on Bud's left arm. He clapped his right hand over it and held the grasshopper until Gramps shrugged, reeled in and indicated that he was finished by hooking his fly in the cork butt of his rod.

Then, taking up his own rod, Bud strung the grasshopper on over the fly and crept across the ledge. He eased his grasshopper onto the water near the school of trout and a trout, which might well have been the one that had taken the other grasshopper, darted upward and sucked in the grasshopper. Bud struck, and his rod bent and his line grew taut as the hooked trout tried frantically to escape.

"Keep the tip up! The tip up, Bud!" Gramps shouted.

With a heave that bent his rod double, Bud jerked the trout from the water and sent him ten feet back on the ledge, where he lay flapping. Bud raced back to get his catch.

"You did it!" Gramps shouted deliriously. "You did it! Your first trout on a dry fly!"

"I caught him on a grasshopper," Bud panted.

"What'd you say?" Gramps asked blankly.

"I caught him on a grasshopper."

"A hopper?"

"Yes."

"Surely you're not going to keep him?"

Bud looked at the ground without replying.

"Well," Gramps said with an effort, "I guess that's your business."

Without another word the old man turned to start homeward. Bud followed, miserable in the knowledge that he had betrayed Gramps. But even though it was abominable to take a trout on anything except a dry fly, he couldn't have done otherwise. Gram had asked them to bring her one trout.

* * * * *

They took old shark on their seventh trip to the ledge. Gramps did it with a cunningly placed midge. Bud knew he would never forget the battle that followed or the plucking of Old Shark from shallow water when Gramps had finally worked him there.

They bore their prize proudly home, showed it to Gram. Then, in Gramps' asthmatic pickup truck--a vehicle that, until now, Bud had not even suspected was on the farm--they carried the trout to Pat Haley's store at Haleyville. Old Shark was a sensation and Pat Haley began at once to freeze him in a block of ice.

"What now?" Bud asked, as he and Gramps started home.

"Find us another big trout."

"I mean, what about Old Shark?"

"Oh, him. Even if he had any flavor and wasn't tougher'n a shoehorn, he's too much for us to eat. Nobody else'll want him for the same reasons." Gramps drove in silence for a while and then said, "Tell you what we'll do. When Pat's finished and everybody who wants a look at Old Shark has had it, we'll send him down to the orphanage. They don't often have trout there."

chapter 4

As he walked toward the road with a lunch pail dangling from one hand, it seemed to Bud that the driveway--endlessly long when he had labored up it that first day, with a chip on his shoulder and fear in his heart--had shrunken miraculously. He glanced quickly behind him to see if he was being watched and, seeing nobody, bent down to loosen the laces of the shiny black school shoes Gram had bought him in Haleyville. Then he straightened up and walked on, trying to manage a natural gait. But it was hopeless because after the conquest of Old Shark he had stopped wearing shoes. The soles of his feet had become so calloused that he could even run over the sharp stones around Gramps' gravel pit. Now, at the end of the summer, it had been so long since he had worn shoes that he felt as if he were dragging a ball and chain on each foot. His shoes pinched, too, but you could not go to school barefooted, not if Gram Bennett had anything to say about it.

The summer had been so wonderful that, looking back now that it was ending, every minute seemed precious. It had taken Bud a month to realize that there was actually only a bare minimum of work to be done and that Gram and Gramps had planned it that way. They had labored prodigiously to rear and educate seven sons and four daughters and, now that the children were grown up and had their own families, the old people had made up their minds to do the things they had always wanted to do. For Gramps that meant hunting and fishing; Gram wanted nothing more than to make other people happy. There was money in the bank and very little labor was needed to provide for the two old people even now that they had taken a hungry orphan into their home.

Bud reached the blacktop road and waited for the bus to take him to the Haleyville Consolidated School, where he was to enter the eighth grade. He had concealed it from Gram and Gramps, but he dreaded starting out in a new school. As he stood there waiting, he tried to ease his troubled mind by concentrating instead on one of the high points of the summer.

He had cast a dry fly beneath a hollow stump beside a pool thickly bordered by a jungle of willows. The fly had gone truly and he had taken a fourteen-inch brook trout. Gramps had not been effusive, but it had meant a great deal to hear him say,

"Some day you'll be a fisherman, Bud."

Bud knew that although he might have learned to cast a dry fly, a single season or a dozen seasons do not necessarily produce a dry fly fisherman. There were very few masters of the art. Still, Gramps' approval was the next thing to achieving knighthood.

Sometimes with Gramps and sometimes alone, Bud had gone to see how the black fawn was faring. Although the fawn and doe had widened their range somewhat, they were still in the same general area. Now they were much more difficult to approach, but Bud had seen them enough times to know that the fawn was doing well. The knowledge that the fawn was flourishing made Bud less uneasy about his own good fortune, for since that first meeting, he had never stopped believing that a bond existed between himself and the fawn. Bud's luck had taken its turn for the better as soon as he found the little black buck and he was sure that misfortune would overtake him again if harm ever befell the fawn.

Bud had discovered the ruffed grouse, known locally as "pat'tidges," the thickets where foxes hunted and the places where black-masked raccoons washed their food. He had come to understand what sportsmanship means as opposed to hunting, and instead of recoiling when Gramps asked him to go grouse hunting, he had accepted eagerly and was looking forward to the opening day of the season.

Finally, he had found a dream of his own.

Gramps had a half-dozen turkeys, as many geese, a few ducks and a large flock of mongrel chickens that ranged from fussy little bantams to huge dunghill roosters. The flock was allowed to wander at will and to interbreed freely. According to the articles in the farm journals Bud had found stacked in the little closet off the living room, that was not the proper way to raise chickens. Although purebred fowls cost much more in the beginning, the returns were said to repay the initial investment many times over if the flock was correctly fed and housed. So far Bud had not broached the subject with Gram or Gramps because it was useless to talk about a project until you had the means to carry it out. Nevertheless, he had privately decided that, if and when he got both the money and Gram and Gramps' permission, he would buy a pen of purebred chickens and try to build up a flock.

That was for the future, but this was now, and when he saw the school bus approaching, Bud drew a deep breath. Then he clenched his teeth and boarded it.

The trip to Haleyville was over before he thought it could be, and the children assembled in little groups in front of the school. Bud went up alone to the entrance to the building and stood by himself with his back against the wall pretending to lounge nonchalantly. He was the only one who did not seem to know exactly where to go or what to do. Bells rang at intervals and the crowd of boys and girls thinned until the only ones left were Bud and a tall man who was obviously a teacher.

When Bud told him he was in the eighth grade, the teacher led Bud down several long corridors and past rows of closed doors with frosted glass panes in them. Finally he paused before one of the doors and, opening it, propelled Bud through ahead of him. A man with the physique of a wrestler but with gentle eyes looked around.

"I have one of your lost sheep, Mr. Harris," Bud's escort said.

"Come in and join the class, sheep," Mr. Harris said, smiling.

The class tittered and Bud writhed. The only refuge he knew was defiance.

"Don't call me names!" he shouted. "I'm not a sheep!"

"You're not very polite, either," Mr. Harris said without raising his voice. "What is your name?"

"Bud."

"Is that all your name? Just Bud?"

The class tittered again and Bud's mortification mounted as he choked out,

"Bud Sloan."

Mr. Harris consulted his class roll. "It says here you're Allan Sloan."

"I don't care what it says!" Bud shouted again. "My name's Bud!"

All at once he found himself sitting on the floor. Lights danced in his head. He blinked owlishly, and as if from a great distance, he heard Mr. Harris say,

"Get up, Allan. Your seat is the third one in the first row. Take it."

Bud walked to his seat and the class was subdued. Bud sat in sullen silence for the rest of the morning. When noon came, he ate a lonely lunch and when the dismissal gong sounded at the end of the day he was the first to rise.

"You're to stay after school, Allan," Mr. Harris said.

Scowling, Bud sat down again and watched his classmates whoop out to freedom. As though he had forgotten all about Bud or perhaps because Bud was too insignificant to notice, Mr. Harris methodically and calmly put his desk in order. Finally he looked up and said,

"Come on."

Mr. Harris led the way out through the rear entrance and Bud gulped as they neared the parking lot. He would have run if his legs would have obeyed him, but since they would not, he got into Mr. Harris's car. They started up the road toward the Bennetts' farm, and after they were out of town, Mr. Harris said,

"You needed that cuffing I gave you."

Bud said nothing as Mr. Harris continued, "You had it coming and you know it. I know exactly what you were thinking and why. Stop thinking it.

"Let me tell you about another boy," Mr. Harris said, "another orphan. He was farmed out when he was just about your age, and he went to a new school exactly as you did. Inside, he was frightened as a rabbit with five dogs and nine cats backing him into a corner, but he was afraid to let anyone else know that. The teacher reprimanded him and he shouted at him. Then, because he was convinced that only tough guys can get along, he hit the teacher with a chair. The boy was twelve when it happened. He was eighteen when he finally got out of reform school, and it was a reform school even if they called it a training school for boys."

Bud said nothing and Mr. Harris went on, "It's a true story, as I should know. The boy's name was Jeffrey Chandler Harris, who now teaches eighth grade at Haleyville Consolidated School. I've wished many a time that that teacher had had sense enough to clobber me when I most needed it."

Before Bud could recover or reply, Mr. Harris eased his car to a stop in front of the drive leading to Gram and Gramps' house and was holding out his hand.

"Friends?"

"Friends," Bud said, and shook hands.

* * * * *

The autumn days were literally golden days. Gold leaves clung to the aspens and birches and to some of the maples. Goldenrod bloomed. A golden moon shone down on a field where golden pumpkins lay among shocked corn. The sun rose golden every morning and set in a golden blaze every night.

Most of the crops were harvested and the fields lay bare. The cellar beneath the farmhouse was bursting with the fruits and vegetables that could be stored, and every shelf was filled with jars in which Gram had canned those that could not be stored. Split and neatly corded wood was stacked up to the roof of the woodshed and now the wood boxes on the back porch and in the kitchen were kept heaping full.

The warmth the kitchen range radiated was welcome these days, for even at high noon there was a sharp tang in the air. The cattle preferred the sunny to the shady parts of the pasture and a box, which had a hole cut in it and with a cloth hung over the hole, covered Shep's bed on the porch.

After their first encounter Bud and Mr. Harris had understood each other and Bud brought home a very creditable first report card. That afternoon he raced up to his room to exchange school clothes for work clothes and ran back down the stairs, stopping in the kitchen only long enough to gobble the cookies and drink the milk Gram had ready for him.

"I have to hurry and help Gramps get everything caught up so we can go grouse hunting," he explained when Gram remonstrated.

"Oh. That's real important. Scoot, now."

Bud drank the last of his milk and ran out. In the corn field Gramps had the team hitched to the light box wagon and was walking beside it and lifting ripe pumpkins into the box, starting and stopping the horses with his voice alone. Bud raced toward Gramps, and Shep came leaping to meet him. As he petted the big furry dog, Bud looked toward the autumn woods and for an instant he thought he had caught a glimpse of the black fawn melting away into the trees.

For Bud the fawn was outside the laws of nature, but with the taking of Old Shark he had learned the difference between sport for sport's sake and killing for killing's sake. Actually, as Gramps had explained, it was not only fair, it was wise to harvest some creatures. Old Shark, for instance, had been a ravenous old tyrant who had consumed vast amounts of food, including smaller trout; now that he was gone, the trout left in the pool would have a better chance. Gramps had made Bud see that it was, in fact, kind to harvest the surplus game crop because there is enough food for only a limited number of wild creatures. The rest must die, and the ways of nature are almost always crueler and more prolonged than death at the hand of a hunter.

Bud thought that the swift-winged grouse were among the most fascinating of wild creatures. He almost never saw them until they thundered into flight, a thing that never failed to startle him. They were birds of mystery to him and he could not help being excited because he and Gramps were going to hunt grouse when the season opened. Safe in its case in Bud's room was a trim little double-barreled twenty-gauge shotgun, and as soon as the last of the crops was in, Gramps had promised to show him how to use it.

Shep bounced ahead to frolic around Gramps, and Gramps stopped work as Bud came up to him.

"Hi, Bud."

"Hello, Gramps. I hurried so I can help load the rest of the pumpkins."

"Well now, that's right decent of you. But you won't be sorry. A man ain't lived 'til he's helped load and haul punkins. Did you ever stop to consider what a remarkable thing a punkin is? You can look at 'em and tell what the weather's been by the looks of the punkin, so they're a weather table. You can just about tell the season by the looks of a punkin, so that makes 'em a calendar. You can bounce one off somebody's head and knock him sillier'n the cow that jumped over the moon and still not hurt him, so they're a weapon. You can turn 'em into goblins on Halloween, and you can eat 'em. Yep. A punkin's a right remarkable outfit."

"How are they most remarkable?" Bud asked.

"In punkin pie. Let's get to work."

When they had loaded the wagon, Gramps unwrapped the reins that had been around the wagon's center post, drove to where the great, outer cellar doors yawned wide, and two by two they carried the pumpkins into the cellar. Then, while Bud stabled and cared for the horses, and pitched hay down the chute for the cows, Gramps milked.

That night, after the evening meal, Bud gave himself to the complexities of English, arithmetic and American history while Gram knitted and Gramps pored over the latest issue of _The Upland Gunner_. Bud's eyes stole from his textbook to the magazine in Gramps' hands, and although he made a prodigious effort to return to the conjugation of irregular verbs, he found it a hopeless task. He raised his eyes again to the magazine, which had a gorgeous front cover showing a woodcock in flight, two English setters on perfect point and a hunter who was obviously about to add the woodcock to his bag.

Gramps spoke from behind the magazine, "That was a mighty fine report card you fetched home, Bud."

"Thanks, Gramps."

"You fetch home reports like that, and you'n me will have a whack at Old Yellowfoot sure after we're done with the grouse."

Without bothering to find out how Gramps had managed to peer through the magazine and discover that he was not studying, Bud returned to his textbook. Gramps had given him the incentive he needed at the moment, but on a farm everybody has his tasks and Bud knew without being told that his chief one was to get everything he could from his school work.

When Bud came home from school the next day, Gramps was sitting on the back porch with the twenty-gauge shotgun, Bud's gun, across his knees. Nearby was a wooden cleaning rod, some strips of white cloth, a can of nitro solvent and a can of oil. As though such an occupation was too commonplace to call for any explanation, Gramps said,

"Best get moving."

"Moving?"

"Now doggone! You didn't think I'd take you grouse hunting 'thout you know which end of the gun the shot comes out of, did you?"

Bud changed his clothes in frantic haste, gulped down the milk Gram had waiting and caught up some cookies. Gramps looked at him reprovingly as he burst out the back door.

"You ain't going to a fire. Slow and easy's the way you take her when you're hunting. Come on."

He led the way to a windmill behind the barn. Before the farmers along the road had organized to form their own water company, the windmill had pumped all the Bennetts' water. The wind furnished power when it blew. When it did not, a gasoline engine operated the pump. Even though there was another supply of water now, Gramps had not let the windmill deteriorate in case it should be needed again.

While Bud had been at school, Gramps had hung cans by eight-foot cords from each of the vanes of the windmill and hooked up power belts so the engine would turn the windmill. A hundred feet away he had also put up two wooden standards that looked like sign posts and covered them with newspapers. Two boxes of shotgun shells were laid out on the engine mount. Gramps picked up one.

"Some people practice shoot on live pigeons," he said. "I don't hold with that 'cause I don't hold with killing anything for no good reason. Some shoot at tin cans tossed in the air, but that's no way to learn 'cause tossed cans just ain't fast enough. Some shoot clay pigeons, which is all right if you got the money. I have my own way. Now you know about choke?"

"Yes, Gramps."

"Tell me."

"The left barrel of this gun is full choke, which means that it has a narrower opening than the right and will shoot a closer pattern, but it also has a longer range. It's to be used for birds flying a considerable distance away."

Gramps nodded and took two shells from the box. "Load her."

Bud flipped the lever that broke the barrels and slipped a shell into each. He tried to do it very calmly, but in spite of himself his hands shook. He had broken the barrels a hundred times before and in imagination he had loaded the gun and sighted on a speeding bird a thousand times. But this was the first time he had ever held the gun armed with live ammunition. He did not forget to check the safety, and Gramps noticed but said nothing.

The old man said, "So you can see for yourself what pattern means, and the difference between a full and modified choke, shoot your left barrel into the left paper and the right into the right."

Bud braced the gun stock against his shoulder, sighted on the right-hand paper, braced himself, and pulled the trigger. The gun's blasting roar was much louder than anything he had expected, but the recoil was almost negligible. He shot the left barrel with more confidence.

"You flinched on the first but held steady on the second," Gramps pronounced. "Now let's see what happened."

They walked forward and Bud studied both papers. The one to the left shot with a full choke bore a roughly circular pattern of evenly distributed pellets that had gone through the paper and imbedded themselves in the wood backing. The target shot with the modified barrel was pock-marked with such a wide circle that it was obvious not all of them could have struck the paper.

"Understand?" Gramps queried.

"I understand."

"Then we'll get on, and since anybody who'd shoot a bird on the ground would catch a trout on a grasshopper, like a certain party did on Skunk Crick, we shoot 'em on the wing. Just a minute."

Gramps started the gasoline engine. The windmill vanes began to whirl and the dangling cans, gaining momentum, strained at the ends of their strings. Taking the shotgun, Gramps fired one barrel, then the other, and two of the whirling cans leaped wildly. He gave the shotgun and a pair of shells to Bud.

Bud shot, but although he knew he was on target, he missed the can at which he had aimed. He shot again and again until he had scored twenty-three consecutive misses. Then, all at once, he found the feel and balance of his gun. It was no longer a separate thing but a part of himself. With Gramps' coaching him on leading, or shooting ahead of the target, he scored two hits, missed three and scored ten straight.

"You're real good at shooting tin cans on the wing," Gramps pronounced. "Now we'll see how good you are on grouse. Saturday's the day, Bud."

chapter 5

The friday after the target practice the sky was overcast when Bud came home from school and the wind was variable. There was a wintry tang in the air. The day that Bud had thought would never come was tomorrow.

Less than half aware of what he was doing, or of how he was doing it, Bud helped with the nightly chores and made no serious mistakes simply because by now he could do them by rote. He returned to earth long enough to enjoy Gram's excellent supper and afterward tried to concentrate on his school books, which might as well have been written in Sanskrit. Finally he gave himself up to dreaming.

Shotgun in hand, he was walking slowly through crisp autumn woods. A grouse, a wary old cock bird that had been taught by experience how to avoid hunters, rose in front of him. The grouse flew into a rhododendron thicket and, keeping brush between Bud and himself, was seen only as a hurtling ball of feathers and at uncertain intervals. Bud, the master sportsman, made a swift mental calculation of the bird's line of flight, aimed where he knew it would reappear and scored a hit so perfect that even Gramps was impressed. With complete nonchalance befitting a hunter, Bud retrieved his trophy and said casually, "Not a bad grouse."

"And not a bad hunter!" Gramps ejaculated. "I've been practicing on these babies for more than forty years, and I never saw a finer shot!"

"Hadn't you better go to bed, Allan?" Gram asked, bringing him back to reality.

"You said," Gramps chuckled, "that you've been practicing on these babies for more than forty years and never saw a finer shot. What were you shooting at, Bud?"

Bud wriggled in embarrassment, knowing that he had once again invited disaster by revealing his thoughts. But it was no longer the risk that it would have been a few short months ago, for neither Gram nor Gramps had shown any sign of wanting to exploit his weaknesses. He grinned and said sheepishly,

"I must have been thinking out loud."

"You're tired," Gram said soothingly. "Now you just run along."

He said good night and for a moment before crawling into bed stood at the window. Then he caressed the cased shotgun, got into bed and pulled the covers up. Five minutes later wind-driven snow began to rattle crisply against his bedroom window.

It was a magic sound that seemed to bring Bennett's Woods and all they contained into Bud's bedroom. He imagined he saw the black buck, a well-grown fawn now, pawing snow aside to get at the vegetation beneath, while his mother flirted coyly nearby with Old Yellowfoot. Cottontail rabbits played on the snow and sharp-nosed foxes sought them out. Blue jays huddled on their roosts and dreamed up new insults to scream at the world. Tiny chickadees, tiny puffs of feathers never daunted by even the bitterest winter weather, chirped optimistically to one another in the night.

Bud's imagination always returned to the grouse that left their three-toed tracks, like small chicken tracks, clearly imprinted in the new snow as they sought out the evergreen thickets where they would be sure of finding food and shelter from the first biting blast of winter. Bud followed the tracks. The grouse burst out of their thickets like feathered bombs and each time he choose his bird and never missed.

It occurred to him suddenly that, even though no hint of daylight showed against his window, he must have overslept. Bud sprang hastily up and consulted the battered clock on his dresser to find he had been in bed for only an hour. And so he returned to more dreams of grouse.

Always he found them by first locating their tracks and following them into the thicket. Grouse after grouse fell to his deadly aim while Gramps, who couldn't even hope to match this kind of shooting, finally stopped trying and stood by admiringly. Then without any warning, Bud was confronted by a gigantic cock grouse whose head towered a full two feet over his own. Bud halted in his tracks, first astonished and then afraid. When he turned to run, the grouse ran after him, snapped him up in its bill, and began to shake him as Shep shook the rats that he sometimes surprised around the barn. As the giant grouse shook him, it said in a thunderous voice that Bud had already shot nine hundred grouse, far more than any one hunter should ever take, and now he must face his just punishment.

Bud awoke in a cold sweat to find Gramps shaking his shoulder. "Time to move," Gramps said, and left.

Bud shook off the remnants of sleep as only a youngster can and remembering the snow that had rattled against his window during the night, rushed across the floor to look out. The barn roof was starkly white in the early morning gloom, and the earth was snow-covered. Bud ran to the chair beside his bed where he stacked his clothing and dressed hurriedly, aware of the cold for the first time. He pulled on and laced his rubber-bottomed pacs, and then took up his shotgun affectionately and ran down the stairs.

As anxious as he was to be in the woods, it never occurred to Bud that he was free to surrender to anxiety and be on with the hunting. It was right to anticipate but not to fret because first the stock had to be tended and fed. The farm creatures were utterly helpless and dependent, and the humans whose chattels they were had a responsibility to them. Bud came into the kitchen where Gram was busy and said cheerfully,

"Good morning, ma'am."

"Good morning, Allan."

As he was putting on a jacket so he could rush out and help Gramps with the morning chores, Bud stopped with his arm half in and half out of the sleeve. Gram's face was wan and her smile was tired, and sudden fear leaped in Bud's heart. Nothing could possibly go wrong with Gram, but obviously something had gone wrong. Bud said because he had to say something,

"I'm going out to help Gramps."

"Wait just a minute," Gram said as though she had just made up her mind, "I'd like to talk with you."

"Yes?" Bud said uncertainly.

"Will you watch over Gramps very carefully today, Allan?"

Bud was speechless, for Gramps was like one of the great white oaks that grew in Bennett's Woods, or one of the granite boulders that reared their humped backs on the hills. He watched over everything and everybody. With Gram, he made the Bennett farm a happy fortress where people could live as people were meant to live. Being asked to watch over Gramps made Bud feel small and incompetent.

"Is Gramps sick?" he asked.

"No," and he knew that she was speaking only half the truth. "It's just that he isn't as young as he used to be and I don't like to see him go in the woods alone."

"Perhaps we should stay home?"

"Oh no!" Gram said vehemently. "That would be far worse than going. Gramps was never meant for a rocking chair. Just watch over him."

Bud threw his arms around her. He was a little surprised, now that they stood so close together, to discover that he did not have to rise at all to kiss her seamed cheek. He had always thought of Gram as being far taller than he, but now he knew she wasn't at all.

"Don't you worry, Gram. I'll take care of him."

"Now I just knew you would!" There was a sudden, happy lilt in Gram's voice and her weariness had disappeared.

Bud kissed her again and went into the snowy morning, and if some of his zest had evaporated, something better had taken its place. He had known almost from the beginning how desperately he needed Gram and Gramps, and his greatest fear had been that, somehow, he would be separated from them. The thought of parting from them had worried him endlessly, and he had schemed to make himself indispensable. But there seemed to be no way, for he was not indispensable; he wasn't even important. Now, miraculously, the way had opened. Without understanding just how it had been brought about, Bud knew that Gram and Gramps needed him, too, and the knowledge gave him new stature and strength, and broke the final barriers that had held him aloof. It was impossible to remain distant when Gram's very heart cried out to him.

The brisk wind whirled little snow devils across the yard and the barn roof was covered with snow. Shep came out of the partly open door to meet him, and Bud stooped to ruffle his ears. The collie remained by his side as Bud entered the barn, which was warm from the heat given off by the animals' bodies.

As he was milking Cherub, the only cow of the four that would kick if she caught the milker off guard, Gramps looked up and said happily, "It's a great day for it."

"It looks that way, Gramps," said Bud, his apprehension lessening in the face of Gramps' enthusiasm. "I'll get to work."

He got his own pail and started milking Susie, thinking of the time when milking had seemed an art so involved that only a genius could master it. Now Bud could match Gramps' milking skill. He rose to empty his full milk pail into the can standing in the cooler. In another hour or so, Joe Travis would be along to collect it with his truck and carry it to the creamery at Haleyville. Household milk for both drinking and churning was always saved from the last pail. Gram still poured milk into shallow pans in the cool cellar, and separated milk from cream by skimming off the cream with a great spoon when it rose to the top of the pan.

Coming back to milk the last cow, Bud stood aside so Gramps could pass with his brimming pail and said,

"If you want to finish Clover, I'll take care of the horses and chickens."

"Hop to it," Gramps said cheerfully. "Though I'd like to get going there's no tearing rush. Those grouse are going to stay where it's warm."

Breathing a silent prayer because his ruse had worked--it was easier to milk another cow than to fork down hay for the horses and care for the poultry--Bud went to the horse stable. Tied to mangers, the two placid horses raised their heads and nickered a soft welcome when he entered. Bud filled the mangers with hay, gave each horse a heaping measure of grain, filled their water containers, groomed them and went on to the poultry house.

The turkeys, geese and ducks had long since gone to one of the freezing lockers Pat Haley kept in the rear of his store, where, dressed and plucked, they awaited the various winter holidays and the homecomings of the Bennetts' children and grandchildren. Most of the chickens remained alive, however. A few were still on the roosts, and in the dim light, none was very active.

As Bud filled the mash and grain hoppers and checked the supply of crushed oyster shell, he daydreamed about the flock he hoped to have. Instead of these mongrel chickens, he visualized an evenly matched, evenly colored flock. This morning he favored Rhode Island Reds, but sometimes he was for White Leghorns, or Anconas, or one of the many varieties of Plymouth Rocks or White or Buff Wyandottes. Bud had not yet decided whether it was better to breed for eggs or meat, or to choose a species of fowl that would supply both. But he did know that he wanted chickens. Although he never saw himself reaping great wealth from them, in his imagination he often heard himself assuring Gram and Gramps that the egg money, or the broiler money, depending on the breed he happened to fancy at the moment, was ample to pay all the current bills and leave a substantial reserve.

He finished and he had no sooner shut the henhouse door than he ceased being a poultryman and became a hunter. The light was stronger now, the new snow was soft beneath his pacs and the wind was cold enough so that the season's first snow would not melt. The snow gave a special glamour to the forthcoming hunt, for in all the hunting stories Bud had liked the hunters had worked on snow. Moreover, the snow and the cold wind would keep the grouse concentrated in or near their evergreen thickets, and since Gramps knew every thicket in Bennett's Woods, the shooting would be fine.

Gramps was at the table paying no attention to what he ate or how he ate it. Gram started to fill Bud's plate as he came in, and she looked at him meaningfully: he was to watch over Gramps and Gram knew that he would. But all she said was,

"Get them while they're hot, Allan."

"Sure, Gram," Bud said cheerfully.

As he was about to stuff two pancakes rolled around two strips of bacon and doused with syrup into his mouth, Gramps stopped with the food halfway from his plate.

"What'd you call Mother?"

"Gram," Bud said, and now it seemed that he had never called her by any other name.

"Why of course, Delbert," Gram said. "Where have your ears been?"

"Wish I knew," Gramps said, and resumed eating.

They finished, pushed their plates back, and Bud donned a belt-length wool jacket over his wool shirt. He stuffed the pockets full of shotgun shells, caught up his shotgun and kissed Gram again.

"'Bye. We'll bring you back something nice."

"Just bring yourselves back safely, and have a good time."

They left the house, and when Shep fell in beside them, Gramps did not order him back. Bud said nothing. He had learned long ago why Shep scared trout, for the smallest shadow that fell across their pool would send trout scurrying for the shelter of overhanging banks or into crannies beneath rocks. It stood to reason that Shep would also frighten grouse, but that was a different matter. When Bud and Gramps approached, the grouse were sure to be frightened anyway and a dog prowling about was as likely to offer shots by sending grouse rocketing skyward as he was to frighten them out of range.

Bud stole a sidewise glance at Gramps and saw nothing amiss. But he was troubled by Gramps' silence until the old man spoke,

"When'd it happen, Bud?"

"When did what happen?"

"You called Mother 'Gram.' You kissed her when we left."

"Well," Bud said, and then he came out with it, "I've wanted to do it for a long time."

"A body ought to do what he wants more often," Gramps said. "Maybe it'd make a heap of people feel a heap better a lot sooner. Do you like it here with us?"

"Oh, yes!"

"So'd our young'uns, but after they grew up, they couldn't wait to leave. That's right and as it should be; the old have no call to tell the young what they must do. What are you aiming to be when you grow up?"

"I haven't thought."

"Don't you want to do anything?"