bellowing. The rescue turned out to be quite a job. What happened was that after the affront of our not coming to get her immediately, when we finally did arrive to save her, she wouldn’t budge. Itwas one of those soft winter, late mornings with the clouds low and smooth when sound carries and there is no wind and the temperature is about fifty degrees. The hillside was like an auditorium with wonderful acoustics and Matthew and Bat and me as the characters in some comic farce.
First we pried up two pipes and tried to get her to step out front end first and then the back end. The mule, however, was not interested. She had developed the ability to concentrate all the weight of her nearly thousand-pound bulk in one leg at a time so that not even Matthew’s inordinate strength could budge her. So back to the pry bar we went, and while we were heaving at the next pipe nearest her hindquarters, she turned her huge old head around until her sighted eye was aimed at us. And as if that was not enough to supervise the operation properly, she cocked one ear around to be sure she was taking everything in.
As we pried with the bar, I began to see the morning’s hunt over and over, and then the scene at the rock when the dogs had killed the doe. And although I am probably imagining it, I seem to remember that the day grew a little colder and the clouds a little closer. And I was glad when Bat finally stepped out of the cattle guard, and we could lead her home and I could walk down the hill to the Corn House and Gretchen’s grilled cheese sandwiches.
That should have been the end of it. But no one would let it alone. After all the versions of the greatdog hunt had been told, and everyone had laughed at Bat’s antics, we still didn’t know where the dogs had come from or how they had lived before they started killing livestock. Or how they had learned to run down wild deer, being just farm dogs. The questions lingered like the dirty snow from the winter the likes of which we had never seen before either.
Spring came. Things worked back toward normal. Leonard went around the neighborhood plowing gardens with Bat and, to my disgust, I was back at school. One day when Leonard wasn’t using her, Bat, who was still living at Silver Hill, went for a ramble up the summerhouse lane. My mother saw her going and called the Jameses. Sally, who had the same opinion of Bat as she had of me, reluctantly agreed to find Matthew. Later that morning, he walked up the lane and brought the old mule back.
When I got home from school that day, I went to find Matthew and see if anything was happening. “C’mon, Charlie, let’s walk up the summerhouse lane. I got something to show you.” Bat was out for the second time that day and we let her come ambling along behind us.
Halfway up, the lane cut through a bulge in the land, leaving four-foot banks on either side. A dismembered deer carcass lay there, skewed and weathered. You could see tooth marks on the long bones.
We stood silent for a moment, looking at it, withme holding on to Matthew’s sleeve again with old Bat right behind us, ears cocked.
“Leonard found a carcass like this over at Joe Stephens’s farm last week. Do you see what happened, Charlie?” he asked.
But I didn’t, not at first.
“There was a drift here between the banks,” he said. “They run her up the lane, and when she hit the deep snow, she went down, and they caught her. Just like us, that doe didn’t know nothing about no winter and deep snow. I don’t reckon we’ll ever find out where they come from, but that’s how they learned to run down a deer. It was the snow what taught ’em.”
And suddenly I could see it in my mind’s eye: the tan bitch waiting at the foot of the lane, taking up the chase as the deer went by; and the other three, winded, beginning to flag; and her barking the sight chase, the deer running hard; and the final surge as the deer hit the drift and went down; the bitch reaching for
First we pried up two pipes and tried to get her to step out front end first and then the back end. The mule, however, was not interested. She had developed the ability to concentrate all the weight of her nearly thousand-pound bulk in one leg at a time so that not even Matthew’s inordinate strength could budge her. So back to the pry bar we went, and while we were heaving at the next pipe nearest her hindquarters, she turned her huge old head around until her sighted eye was aimed at us. And as if that was not enough to supervise the operation properly, she cocked one ear around to be sure she was taking everything in.
As we pried with the bar, I began to see the morning’s hunt over and over, and then the scene at the rock when the dogs had killed the doe. And although I am probably imagining it, I seem to remember that the day grew a little colder and the clouds a little closer. And I was glad when Bat finally stepped out of the cattle guard, and we could lead her home and I could walk down the hill to the Corn House and Gretchen’s grilled cheese sandwiches.
That should have been the end of it. But no one would let it alone. After all the versions of the greatdog hunt had been told, and everyone had laughed at Bat’s antics, we still didn’t know where the dogs had come from or how they had lived before they started killing livestock. Or how they had learned to run down wild deer, being just farm dogs. The questions lingered like the dirty snow from the winter the likes of which we had never seen before either.
Spring came. Things worked back toward normal. Leonard went around the neighborhood plowing gardens with Bat and, to my disgust, I was back at school. One day when Leonard wasn’t using her, Bat, who was still living at Silver Hill, went for a ramble up the summerhouse lane. My mother saw her going and called the Jameses. Sally, who had the same opinion of Bat as she had of me, reluctantly agreed to find Matthew. Later that morning, he walked up the lane and brought the old mule back.
When I got home from school that day, I went to find Matthew and see if anything was happening. “C’mon, Charlie, let’s walk up the summerhouse lane. I got something to show you.” Bat was out for the second time that day and we let her come ambling along behind us.
Halfway up, the lane cut through a bulge in the land, leaving four-foot banks on either side. A dismembered deer carcass lay there, skewed and weathered. You could see tooth marks on the long bones.
We stood silent for a moment, looking at it, withme holding on to Matthew’s sleeve again with old Bat right behind us, ears cocked.
“Leonard found a carcass like this over at Joe Stephens’s farm last week. Do you see what happened, Charlie?” he asked.
But I didn’t, not at first.
“There was a drift here between the banks,” he said. “They run her up the lane, and when she hit the deep snow, she went down, and they caught her. Just like us, that doe didn’t know nothing about no winter and deep snow. I don’t reckon we’ll ever find out where they come from, but that’s how they learned to run down a deer. It was the snow what taught ’em.”
And suddenly I could see it in my mind’s eye: the tan bitch waiting at the foot of the lane, taking up the chase as the deer went by; and the other three, winded, beginning to flag; and her barking the sight chase, the deer running hard; and the final surge as the deer hit the drift and went down; the bitch reaching for
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