The Black Fawn Part 16

"Did you do the morning ch.o.r.es, young feller?"

Bud said, "Yes," in a very small voice.

"Did you get into that little house, too?"

"Little house?"

"The one next the chicken house."

"No."

"You'd best kite along and get it."

Bud left the table, glad to get away, but burning with humiliation. The little house that Munn Mackie had hauled in with his truck had nothing in it. At least Bud thought it had nothing in it. But having been too proud to ask about it in the beginning or since, he wasn't sure now. In spite of all his precautions, he had come close to saddling Gramps with a ch.o.r.e that he, Bud, ought to have done without Gramps' having to ask him.

Bud came to the little house and, seeing a white envelope tied with a red ribbon to the door latch, stood dumfounded. "_Merry Christmas_" was written across the envelope and the card inside it read:

_Merry Christmas to our boy, Bud-Allan.

Gram and Gramps_

Bud opened the door and gasped. Last night after he had gone to bed somebody must have strewn fresh straw on the floor of the little house.

There was a drinking fountain, a mash hopper, a grain feeder and a container for oyster sh.e.l.l. A regal young c.o.c.kerel strutted around six pure-white pullets.

Bud entered the little house and pulled the door shut behind him, latching it so no one could intrude on this wonderful moment. His heart seemed to be beating in his throat and tears had sprung to his eyes. Now for the first time in his life he knew what Christmas could mean.

He caught up the c.o.c.kerel and, as he stroked it, looked around at the pullets and thought of the flock they would become.

Bud was sure he had always wanted White Wyandottes like these.

chapter 8

Gramps took a turn for the better soon after the Christmas guests departed, but his improvement was not an unmitigated blessing. The better he felt, the more his enforced confinement chafed. Sores that were opened because he had to stop hunting Old Yellowfoot after only one day were rubbed raw because he could not go into the winter woods at all. There was little he could have done there if he had gone, but he still fretted to go.

He read and reread _Africa's Dangerous Game_, the book Bud had given him for Christmas, and criticized each chapter as he read it. The book was the abridged journal of an obscure professional hunter, and Gramps had no sympathy at all for the hards.h.i.+ps the author had suffered or the perils he had faced. After all, Gramps said, he didn't have to go looking for rogue elephants, man-killing lions or short-tempered buffalo. And since he had gone after them of his own free will, he should have known about the perils he would have to face before he had ever started out. Of course he could expect trouble--what hunter couldn't?--but the book would have been far more interesting if he had given more s.p.a.ce to hunting and less to the unendurable agonies that had beset him. In fact, Gramps thought the long chapter in which the hunter crossed the desert might better have been condensed into a single sentence reading, "Don't cross this desert unless you carry plenty of water."

Although the stature of the hero of _Africa's Dangerous Game_ dwindled with each perusal, reading was a way to help ease the long hours when Gramps could do little. And so Bud brought home books from the school library. Usually he chose books with outdoor themes, and instead of taking them to his room, he purposely left them on the kitchen table where Gramps would see them. Gramps was always volubly critical and often openly scornful of the books Bud brought home for him, but he read them all.

When he was not reading or helping with the ch.o.r.es if Bud had not managed to get them all done, Gramps devised endless cunning schemes for getting the best of Old Yellowfoot next season. For Old Yellowfoot, his one failure, galled Gramps every bit as much as Sir Lancelot would have been galled had he been unhorsed by a downy-cheeked young squire. The fact that illness had given Gramps only one day to hunt Old Yellowfoot did not worry him. All that mattered was that Old Yellowfoot still wore the rack of antlers that Gramps had sworn to hang in the living room.

Although the next deer season was still months away, Gramps gave his campaign all the care and attention an able general would lavish on a crucial battle. He carried a map of Bennett's Woods in his head and time after time his imagination took him through every thicket in which the great buck might hide. He pondered ways to drive him out and the various countermoves Old Yellowfoot might make to try to elude him. Gramps made lists, not only of the ways in which Old Yellowfoot could be expected to behave differently from young and relatively inexperienced deer, but also of his individual traits.

One evening in early April Bud read one of the lists that Gramps had left on the kitchen table:

Old Yellowfoot knows more about hunters than they do about him.

He will not be spooked and he cannot be driven.

Don't expect to find him where such a buck might logically be found, but don't overlook hunting him there. He does the unexpected.

If the weather's mild, look for him in the heights, especially Hagerman's k.n.o.b, Eagle Hill and Justin's Bluff.

If there's plenty of snow, he'll be in the lowlands. (Though I've yet to find him in Dockerty's Swamp during deer season, Bud and me will look for him there.)

Old Yellowfoot's one of the very few deer I've ever run across who's smart enough to work against the wind instead of running before it. I'm sure he does this the better to locate hunters.

Hunt thickets close to farms. I've a hunch he's hung out in them more than once while we looked for him in the deep woods.

He will never cross an open s.p.a.ce if he can help it, and he always can.

Then glancing once more at the list, Bud returned to his own figuring.

He frowned and nibbled the eraser of his pencil as he looked at the sheets of paper scattered on the table in front of him, and finally arranged them in a neat sheaf and started over them again.

He knew pretty well what Gram and Gramps had paid for his pen of White Wyandottes, and the price was high. They were the best chickens that could be bought and, in terms of what they would bring in the market, the c.o.c.kerel was worth any two dozen run-of-the-mill chickens and each of the pullets was worth any dozen. But expensive as the White Wyandottes had been, so far they had been anything but a bonanza.

Fed according to a formula worked out by Bud and the agriculture teacher at the Haleyville Consolidated School, the pullets had averaged more eggs for each bird than the pullets in Gramps' flock, and the cost of feeding them had been less. But Bud's pleasure at this proof that scientifically fed chickens did more for less money was somewhat diminished by the fact that until the past few weeks his chickens had produced only undersized pullets' eggs. When he accepted such eggs at all, Pat Haley would never pay more than twenty-seven cents a dozen.

Gram used the surplus eggs in cooking, and Bud had taken his pay in feed rather than cash. He still owed Gramps sixty-nine cents for feed, and even though Gramps had told him not to worry, Bud couldn't help it, for after wintering his flock he was sixty-nine cents in debt, and now there were fresh problems.

Since it was unthinkable to let his aristocrats mingle with the farm flock, a run was necessary. Bud could cut the supporting posts in Bennett's Woods, but wire netting cost money. Besides, there would be no more income from egg sales for some time, for now that the six pullets had begun to lay normal-sized eggs, every one of the eggs had to be h.o.a.rded against the time when one or more of the six turned broody. To prove that there was more profit in better chickens, Bud had to increase his flock. The arguments for incubators as opposed to the time-honored setting hen were reasonable but it was out of the question for Bud to buy even a small incubator. And so, although he could expect no income from egg sales, at least for a while, he was still faced with the problem of building a run and of feeding his flock.

It was true that the future looked bright. Something like half the chicks hatched would probably be c.o.c.kerels and the other half pullets.

The rooster Bud already had would serve very well for several years more and the little house could comfortably accommodate him and about twenty hens. If the overflow were sold . . .

"What's the matter, Bud?" Gramps interrupted. "You look as though you just dug yourself a fourteen-foot hole, crawled in, and pulled the hole in on top of you."

Bud shook himself out of the reverie into which he had lapsed and looked up to see Gramps standing across the table. Bud grinned. There was something like the old sparkle in Gramps' eye and his chin had its old defiant tilt.

"I owe you sixty-nine cents for chicken feed, Gramps," Bud said, looking back at his figures.

"Serious matter," Gramps said gravely. "But I promise not to have the sheriff attach your flock if you pay in the next day or so. If you're dead set on having that worry off your mind, why don't you sell some eggs?"

"I'm saving them for hatching."

"Can't save your eggs and pay your debts, too," Gramps pointed out. "How many you got laid by?"

"Forty-four."

"Pat Haley'll buy 'em, and now that your hens have started laying something bigger'n robin's eggs, he'll pay better. You can pay me off and still have forty, fifty cents for yourself."

Bud looked at the old man. Sometimes he knew how to take Gramps, but this time he wasn't sure. "I have to save them," he said.

"You don't have to do anything of the kind," Gramps said. "If you're saving eggs it's 'cause you want to, and if you want to, it's 'cause you got something in mind. You aim to hatch those eggs?"

"Yes. I think the little house will hold maybe twenty hens and a rooster."