Alexander the Coppersmith had come again! In a flurry of fleeting flashes I remembered the wild 10,000 minutes we had had that other summer—especially one exciting, nerve-tingling adventure I’d never be able to forget as long as I lived.
Honestly, that mongrel of a city-bred dog wasn’t afraid of the most dangerous danger there ever was! He had even tackled headfirst a snorting, blindly mad, shorthorn bull, actually sinking his sharp teeth into the bull’s nose and holding on for dear life. The worried, wild-eyed bull, trying to get Alexander the Coppersmith to let go, had swung around and with a mighty bellow and shake of his head had tossed that copper-colored dog toward the sky.
But that’s another story. Right now I have to tell you about a pig-stealing, colt-killing wildcat, which right that very second Circus’s new black-and-tan pup was trailing out near Old Red Addie’s gate—one of whose piggies would never again lie in the straw with its mother.
Ichabod seemed to have only one thing on his mind. He didn’t even notice Alexander the Coppersmith but was following his snuffling nose all around the gate, where I knew there was chocolate-colored pig’s blood and where last night I had seen two green eyes reflecting light from my flashlight and a gray-brown shadow slinking along the garden fence toward the twin pignut trees and the orchard below them.
Right that second, Alexander was standing straight-nosed and stiff-legged, looking toward the gate where Ichabod was worrying his way through a tangle of scents, trying to decide which direction Old Stubtail had gone.
To make things more interesting and noisy, Mixy, who had been lazing on our sloping outside cellar door, woke out of her middle-of-the-morning nap and came as far as the board walk to see what kind of animal had just come plopping out of the car with my city cousin, Wally.
She was probably recalling that other time Alexander had come to our house: the Thanksgiving Day when he had chased her wildly across the barnyard with a turkey tumbling after. Or Mixy might have been remembering fights she had had with different neighborhood dogs.
Anyway, all of a sudden Alexander spied Mixy and started toward her, while she stood stiff-backed and bristling, eyeing him. In a second now, I thought, there would be action.
And there was. A copper-colored city dog made a copper-colored dash at a country cat.
Mixy crouched, flattened her ears, and stood her ground. The second Alexander got to where she was, she thrust out a fierce, fast right front paw with sharp talons on it and slashed and slashed and slashed again, letting loose a jumble of yowls and hisses and wild meows all mixed up with Alexander the Coppersmith’s gruff, excited, angry barks and yelps.
The fight was so fierce and so fast that you couldn’t tell which animal belonged to the cat family and which to the dog.
Dad, Dragonfly, Circus, Poetry, Wally, and I were in the fight, too—with our voices, that is. Wally was yelling, “Sic ’em!” The rest of us were rooting for Mixy, except for Dad. He was ordering them both to stop.
I was proud of Mixy and the way she stayed right in the middle of that hissing, spitting, yowling, tooth-and-claw, cat and dog fight.
All of a sudden, though, she must have decided she had had enough or had done enough to her enemy. As quick as scat, she turned herself into a streak of black and white lightning, shooting across the barnyard to the hole just below the window of the barn, where she would be safe—if she got there first.
She did get there first and was safe, and I was again proud that she knew when to quit and run away. She’d live to fight another day.
I expected Wally’s mongrel to stay at the small hole into which Mixy had disappeared and bark and bark and bark and pant and try to squeeze himself in after her. But he didn’t. Instead, he gave several gruff, disgusted, halfhearted barks in Mixy’s direction. Then he swung his copper-colored body around and came trotting back toward the iron pitcher pump where we all were, his tongue hanging out, his sides heaving a little with panting, and with a proud grin on his face that seemed to say, “There! I saved all your lives! I just licked the fur off a savage black and white cat that might have killed all of you! I drove her into a hole under the barn, and she’s scared to even stick her nose out!”
The proud expression on his face was the same kind he got when he chased a car down the road.
Just then, from near the pignut trees, Ichabod’s dog voice cried, “Come on, you, and help me! While you’ve been wasting your time on a worthless house cat, I’ve been untangling the trail of a pig-stealing, colt-killing wildcat! Woo-o-o-o! Woo-o-o-o!”
Well, when Circus’s cute little hound let loose that long, high-pitched tremolo from the twin pignut trees, it brought all of us to life.
“He’s found the trail again!” Circus cried, and away he galloped, past the toolshed and the chicken house on his way to catch up with his excited black-and-tan, which already was halfway to the orchard fence.
Alexander the Coppersmith had come to life even more excited than the rest of us. The second he heard Ichabod’s baying, he took one quick stiff-legged, straight-nosed look toward the running hound with an expression on his face that seemed to say that up to now he hadn’t even noticed there was another dog around. He’d been busy saving our lives.
Then, just as if Ichabod’s bawling was a stick somebody had thrown into a creek, expecting him to swim out and bring it back, he was off in a streak of speed to join in the fun or whatever it was that was going on.
“Attaboy!” Wally cried to his mongrel. “Go get him!”
At the orchard fence there was a patch of grass and weeds and wild raspberry bushes that made good cover for quail and that nearly always, in the winter especially, was a shelter for rabbits. There Ichabod ran into trail trouble again. I could tell by the way he was acting that he was trying to decide whether the wildcat had gone through the fence or had followed the fencerow to Poetry’s dad’s woods in the direction of the mouth of the branch where, yesterday, I’d seen his fierce face for the first time.
Any second now, Alexander the Coppersmith would get to where Ichabod was circling and zigzagging around, trying to find what he had lost, and then what would happen?
I let out a yell for him to stop, to come back, because I knew Alexander didn’t have the least idea what a wildcat smelled like or how to follow a cold scent forward or backward. Not knowing how serious things were—a stolen pig, three lambs killed on Harm Groenwald’s farm, a brand-new baby colt lying by the swimming hole with its heart and liver eaten out—he’d probably think Ichabod’s bawling and strange circlings and zigzaggings were some kind of game that country dogs play.
And then he was there and all over everywhere, getting in Ichabod’s way, biting at him playfully and barking as if what few wits he had had turned into a Sugar Creek cyclone.
He was like a car that didn’t have good brakes. In a fast charge at Ichabod, he whammed into his shoulder with his own shoulder and bowled him over. The two of them landed scratchety-sizzle in a tangled-up scramble in the raspberry bushes. And that’s when Ichabod’s voice changed into a series of short, sharp, more-than-ever-excited barks. For a second I thought he had lost his temper and that there was going to be a fierce dogfight there in the bushes.
But I was wrong. Instead, a brown flash of bunny shot out into the open and raced hippety-hop down the fence row toward Poetry’s dad’s woods. Ichabod and Alexander both gave chase with a bedlam of dog voices, which was enough to scare the poor rabbit even worse than Peter Rabbit had been scared in the story where Mr. McGregor was after him with a garden rake.
Seeing the rabbit flying in long leaps ahead of the also-flying, barking dogs, Circus let out a yell. “Hey, Ichabod! Stop! That’s a rabbit! Come back here!”
To the rest of us he complained, “He’s going to be hard to teach! I’ll have to give him another switching!”
With that he stooped, quickly picked up a branch Dad had pruned from the peach tree by the fence, and was off on a fast run toward the fence way down at the end of our pasture.
By now both dogs were running excitedly back and forth, trying to find a place where they could get through the fence. The smart bunny had already squeezed through and was safe somewhere in Poetry’s dad’s woods.
Finally, both dogs heard Circus’s angry voice, and both dogs started back toward where we were.
I felt sorry for little Ichabod, because the history of my own life had some switchings mixed up in it. And if there is anything that hurts me worse than getting a switching myself, it’s to see somebody’s pet switched or even scolded—a hound especially, because he always acts so sad and crouches low and looks up at you with every wrinkle on his long face seeming to say, “Please, Mister. I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was wrong to do it. Please.”
The closer Ichabod got to Circus, the sadder he looked. By the time he was within ten feet, he was actually crawling. Then he stopped and looked up with sad brown eyes, every movement saying, “I’m sorry … please …”
I took one look at Circus’s set face and knew he was thinking hard and wishing he didn’t have to do what I also knew he had to do. Nobody could train a hound not to chase rabbits or get sidetracked, unless the hound knew for sure his master wouldn’t stand for it.
I hadn’t known that Little Jim, the littlest member of the gang, was anywhere around until all of a sudden from behind us I heard his tearful voice almost screaming, “Don’t! Don’t, Circus. Don’t! He doesn’t know any better. He—”
“That’s why I’m punishing him,” Circus called back grimly, “so he will know.”
Then Circus said something I didn’t understand at the time but which later I did. He looked around at all of us with kind of sad eyes himself. “I’m giving him a licking not to punish him for being bad but to make him a good trailer. I have a good plan for him, and I have to help him find out what it is.”
The switching Circus gave his cute little black-and-tan hound pup was about the easiest switching a dog ever got. With one hand he held onto Ichabod’s collar, and with the other he swung the switch … one … two … three … four. Circus actually switched Ichabod harder with his voice, saying crossly, “Rabbits are out! Do you understand? Out! When you’re on a coon or a fox or a wildcat trail, you’re not to let yourself get sidetracked! Understand?”
Then all of a sudden Circus flung his switch to the ground, dropped to his knees, pressed his cheek against his hound’s head, hugged him close, and begged, “I’m sorry, pal! Please don’t hate me for it! But I had to do it, even if it was bad company that got you started. Bad company, do you hear? Don’t ever let any other dog lead you astray!” Circus glared angrily at a fidgety Alexander the Coppersmith, not more than ten feet away.
Wally overheard that and exclaimed, “Don’t you dare call my dog bad company! He’s a good dog!”
You never saw a dog change his attitude so quickly. All in a second, Ichabod was happy again, nuzzling his face up to Circus’s and wagging his long tail. It seemed the dog was trying to say to Circus, “Don’t feel bad. I’ll forgive you …” And I noticed there were tears in Circus’s eyes as there had been in his voice when he had apologized to Ichabod.
I couldn’t help thinking about Alexander, wondering if anybody had a good plan for his life and if his life would ever be worth anything. I’d tried so hard to teach him a few dog manners the other time Wally had come to spend 10,000 minutes at our house.
There certainly was a difference in the way those two canines were getting trained and also in the way they came back from chasing the rabbit. Ichabod had returned to his master with a sad face, acting sorry for what he had done wrong, whatever it was. Wally’s mongrel had raced back proudly, his long tongue hanging out, a grin on his whiskered face as if to say, “There! I chased another wild animal away, clear down to the woods. I’ve saved all your lives again!”
Wally, seeing what Circus had done, must have thought he ought to give Alex a little training, too. He picked up the switch Circus had tossed away and started after his dog, scolding and saying, “Come here, you rascal! Rabbits are out! Understand? Out!”
But there wasn’t any change in the attitude of Alexander the Coppersmith. Instead of coming humbly to his master to find out what he’d done that he shouldn’t have, he stood stiff-legged and straight-nosed, gave two or three short gruff, disgusted barks, tossed his head, whirled all the way around, and ran off toward the pignut trees. There he stopped and looked back.
“Come here, you rabbit chaser!” Wally yelled crossly and with the switch in his hand started on the run toward him.
It was a very interesting sight to watch-Alexander the Coppersmith standing stiffly, looking down the incline at us, his beady eyes on Wally and the switch, and Wally, red-haired and freckled and flush-faced, hurrying toward him, shouting, “Don’t you dare run away! Do you hear me? Don’t you dare!”
But his mongrel dared. He wheeled about, looked in our direction again, and bounded away with Wally right after him.
“Wait!” Circus called to Wally. “I’ll get him for you.” He quickly stooped and picked up an old stick. Then he yelled a cheerful yell toward the pignut trees and tossed the two-foot-long stick as far as he could in the direction of the orchard fence where the raspberry bushes were, calling at the same time, “Go get it!”
That was a game Alex understood. We’d played it with him many a time the week he’d spent here last year. Every time we tossed a stick anywhere, even out into the water, he’d race after it, catch it up in his happy mouth, and come flying back to us.
Now there was a copper streak of dog shooting across the stretch of pasture, and in seconds Alex was back where we were, holding the stick in his mouth.
“Don’t you touch him with that switch!” Circus ordered Wally. “It’s been too long since he chased the rabbit. He wouldn’t understand anything you’d do to him now. Besides you might want him to chase rabbits. A good rabbit dog is worth money.”
And that was that.
Dad called then from the gate near Addie’s pig house. “You boys seen anything of a missing pig? One of the baby pigs is missing!”
I’d almost forgotten Dad. My mind had been tangled up with everything else.
In a little while we were where he was, showing him the chocolate-colored dried blood. We told him about Dragonfly’s dead colt down by the swimming hole, the savage wildcat I’d seen eating a bunny yesterday when I’d been fishing at the mouth of the branch, and the excitement of last night at the chicken house.
I could see Dad’s jaw muscles tensing and knew he was getting stirred up inside. We were really in a situation. Circus’s dad was gone to Parke County with his hounds to help the farmers over there catch a sheep-killing predator, and all of a sudden we find that Old Stubtail is back in our own territory again, killing right and left. Something would have to be done.
We’d have to get a phone call through to Dan Browne as quick as we could and get him back here with the dogs.
Dad got his thoughts interrupted right then by the sound of a long, high-pitched tremolo from down near the raspberry bushes. It was Ichabod again. He was zigzagging around where he and Alexander the Coppersmith had had their tangled-up scramble and where the rabbit had its nest and out of which it had exploded like a rocket and gone hippety-hop down the fencerow.
Ichabod was making such a noisy noise and seemed so extra excited that I guessed he had found Old Stubtail’s trail again and was untangling it.
Wally had a different idea. As soon as he heard Ichabod’s baying, he said to Circus, “Lot of good it did to give him a lickin’! There he goes again after another rabbit.”
But there Ichabod didn’t go—not on another rabbit trail, anyway. He whisked through an opening in the fence and was off at a gallop right down through the center of the orchard, his nose to the ground every few feet, his musical tremolo singing out on the warm, sunshiny air every few seconds.
“Come on!” different ones of us yelled to the rest of us. “Let’s follow him!”
Dad stopped all of us with his gruff voice, ordering, “Wait, boys. A wildcat would tear your hound to shreds if he brought him to bay. Call off your dog, Circus!”
Circus had a different idea. “But the trail’s hot! It’s fresh! The time to chase him to his den is now! It might be a week before we’ll run onto another hot track like this one.”
Well, Dad wasn’t used to having a boy anywhere near my age talk back to him, so he used a very strong dadlike voice when he ordered Circus, “Call him off! You don’t want your hound killed! I’ll go in and get your father on the phone right away and tell him Old Stub-tail’s back here and to come on home fast.”
I could see Circus didn’t want to obey some other boy’s father. Still, he did try to by calling Ichabod and whistling for him.
But Ichabod also had a different idea. Already he was far down at the other end of the orchard. I could see him at the woven wire fence down there, squeezing through into Poetry’s dad’s woods.
“We’ve got to stop him!” Circus said grimly.
I could tell from the expression on his face that he believed my dad. It’d never do to let an innocent hound pup get into a fang-fight with a wildcat. Ichabod would be torn to pieces. The teeth I’d seen on Old Stubtail yesterday were big enough, sharp enough, and strong enough to bite right through the head of a dog the size of Ichabod.
All of us except Alexander the Coppersmith started on the run after Circus to try to help him stop his hound from getting killed. The only reason Alexander didn’t start was that already he was down where Ichabod was, running wild all around in front of and behind and in the way of him, as if he was trying to get attention. Or maybe he wanted to make us think it was his own nose that was doing all the trailing. I knew that excitable city dog didn’t have the least idea what was going on.
What I didn’t know was that, in less than a half hour, Alexander the Coppersmith was going to see his first wildcat and find out that chasing a black and white house cat into a hole under a barn was a lot different from suddenly happening upon a twenty-eight toothed, sharp-taloned, savage-tempered really wild wildcat.