And Condors Danced (19 page)

He and Henry had made it back into Santa Luisa, he said, past the cemetery and the place where Henry’s red kite was still lying in the middle of the road, without seeing any sign of the coyote. He’d left Henry off at Citronia, and then ridden on to the sheriff's office, and Sheriff Simms had asked him a lot of questions, and then he’d called up some of his deputies. Before Charles left, the sheriff and Ralph Rasmussen and Josh Higgins had started off armed with rifles to search the area around the cemetery.

After that Charles had gone on to Doc Booker’s, but the veterinarian had been out at the Robinsons’ place taking care of a sick cow. Charles had waited awhile and then he’d gone on out toward the Robinsons’ and met the vet on his way back into town. By then it was almost noon and Doc Booker said it would be almost another hour before he could grab a bite to eat and get out to the Carlton ranch.

“He s-s-said there wasn’t anything m-m-much he could do for Tiger,” Charles said in his tight, stuttery voice. He thought for a while and then went on. “S-s-said if he’d been right there when it h-h-happened, he might have tried cauterization or amputation, but he didn’t see the p-p-point so many hours afterward. He asked me if I knew for s-s-sure that my pa would be willing to p-p-pay for a trip out to our place to try to s-s-save a little dog, when it might all be w-w-wasted effort anyway.”

Then Nellie told Charles about what Dan Kelly had done and how Dan had also said that cauterization sometimes worked if it was done soon enough, but it wasn’t for sure.

“But what about the Pasteur treatment?” Carly said. “It’s for sure, isn’t it? Did you ask Doc Booker about the Pasteur treatment?”

Charles nodded. “I asked. D-d-doc said it was only for humans. S-s-said vets didn’t do it and he’d never heard of giving the sh-sh-shots to any animal, leave alone a little m-m-mutt dog.”

Carly stared at Charles with hot eyes. Then she whirled around and started back toward the chicken run. After a few steps she stopped and turned back. “I hate him!” she screamed. “I hate him. I hate Doc Booker.”

She was still sitting on the box a little later when she heard the sound of a horse and carriage in the driveway and caught a glimpse of two familiar people and an unfamiliar horse. It was Aunt M. and Woo Ying, all right, and Aunt M.’s surrey, but the horse was a beautiful dapple-gray.

She ran to meet them and they all went into the kitchen out of the hot afternoon sunshine and talked in low voices so as not to bother Mama. Carly and Nellie started telling about everything that had happened, but they soon found out that Aunt M. and Woo Ying already knew about Henry and the coyote and what Tiger had done. Aunt M. had found out about the coyote from Alfred Bennington Quigley himself.

It seemed that Alfred Quigley had arrived at Greenwood on foot a little before noon. He had come, he said, to borrow some of Aunt M.’s nerve medicine because his grandson had nearly been bitten by a mad coyote. Henry was all right, Alfred Quigley said, but Henry’s mother, Alicia, was having hysterics. But then he asked Aunt M. if she knew how Carly was, and Aunt M. told him that as far as she knew her great niece was just fine, but if Alfred knew any reason why she might not be he’d better spit it out before she shook it out of him. So he told her all about what had happened.

“Seemed right unsettled, Alfred did,” Aunt M. said. “Nervous-like. Almost human. Wouldn’t be surprised if the real reason he came was to be sure I knew.”

“That was good of him,” Nellie said.

“Humph!” Aunt M. tossed her head. “Not overly. Considering there’d have been a telephone to tell both of us about the danger to our loved ones if he hadn’t kept the lines from going up the valley.”

Then, while Woo Ying was getting the nerve medicine, Alfred Quigley had asked if there was anything he could do, and Aunt M. said yes, he could lend her a horse because her mare was out at the ranch and she had no way to get out there. So Mr. Quigley said he thought he could take care of that and he went on home. And a few minutes later the Quigley hired man had shown up leading one of the Quigley grays.

Aunt M. wanted Carly to come home with her to Greenwood, but Carly didn’t want to go. Finally they left without her and she went on sitting on the apple crate next to Tiger’s pen until twilight, when Father came home from Ventura. Nellie came out to meet him, and after they’d talked he came over to the chicken run and stood beside Carly for a long time before he said anything. Then he put his hand on her shoulder and said, “I’m very proud of you, daughter, and of Tiger.”

When Tiger heard Father say his name, he got up and moved quickly to the gate and stood there looking hopeful.

“Whatever happens,” Father went on, “you’ll always know that Tiger was a real hero, and true heroes are very rare. Emerson says, ‘Heroism feels and never reasons and therefore is always right,’ and that applies exactly to what Tiger did today.”

Carly didn’t answer. She wanted to say that she didn’t care if Tiger was a hero or not, she just wanted him to be all right. But all she did was nod, and when Father took her by the shoulders and lifted her up off the apple crate, she whispered good night to Tiger and let herself be led back into the house.

C
ARLY WENT ON
living at Greenwood. She didn’t want to, but everyone, Aunt M. as well as all the Hartwicks, insisted. But on Saturdays as well as two or three weekday afternoons after school, she rode out to the ranch to visit Tiger in his pen.

It seemed so ridiculous that she still wasn’t allowed to touch him. “He’s not going to bite me,” she told Nellie. “Look how’s he’s acting. You know a dog that acts like that is not going to bite anyone.”

But Nellie would only shake her head. “It’s not just biting,” she said. “So little is known about hydrophobia. The microbes might be in his saliva long before he shows any symptoms. And just a little lick on your finger could…” She grabbed Carly and hugged her fiercely and then turned around quickly to hide the tears in her eyes. So Carly ran after her and hugged her back and promised again to stay two feet back from the wire fence.

Charles had fixed up the old chicken shed at the end of the run for a shelter for Tiger, and after a while he built one for Carly too. Carly’s wasn’t much more than a lean-to with three side walls, but it shielded the apple crate from the sun, and a little later from the rain. It came in especially handy in December when the rainy season began in earnest.

Tiger was always glad to see her when she came visiting—or almost always. Once in a while he had a sulky spell when she first arrived and would only sit in the corner of his pen with his back to her. But he kept glancing back at her with his head low and his eyes rolled up accusingly, and after a few minutes he would cheer up and come to the gate bouncing and wagging his tail as usual. Sometimes he said hello by running in tight circles and other times he would go through all his tricks one after the other. He sat up and rolled over and played dead dog and danced on his hind legs and in between every trick he stopped to watch Carly and see if she might be so pleased that she would forgive him and let him out of prison. And over and over again she tried to explain to him why she couldn’t.

Carly knew now exactly why she couldn’t and what a terribly long time it would be before there was any possibility that she could. Soon after Tiger had been shut up, she had gone to the Santa Luisa library and read everything she could find on hydrophobia. She knew now that the incubation period, the time that elapsed between the bite and the beginning symptoms of the disease, could be anywhere from a month to six months. So it would be a long time, six months at least, before Tiger could be pronounced out of danger.

She also had read about the terrible course of the disease and the fact that no one, no person and no animal, had ever survived once the symptoms had begun. Once the disease started, the end was very near, because death invariably came after three to five days of terrible suffering. But as long as there were no symptoms, no strange, frightened, and restless behavior, no hanging jaw and wet dripping mouth, there was still hope. There were, Carly told herself, several reasons to hope.

The first was the cauterization that Dan Kelly had done. If it was done soon enough the burning could kill the terrible poison before it could begin to spread through the body.

The second reason to hope was a secret. Woo Ying had told her the secret, even though Aunt M. had told him not to. The secret was that Aunt M. was trying to find a regular doctor who would give Tiger the shots that had been developed by the French scientist Louis Pasteur. Aunt M. had tried a doctor in Ventura and had been turned down, but she had not given up and was waiting to hear from another in Los Angeles. It would be very expensive, but Woo Ying said that Aunt M. would find some way to pay for the treatment if she could find a doctor who would take a little dog as a patient. But Aunt M. didn’t want Carly to get her hopes up before it was certain, so she had made Woo Ying promise not to tell. But he had forgotten his promise when he found Carly crying in the garden one day, and he’d told her all about it. And then he begged her not to tell that he’d broken his promise, because if she told Aunt M., the yelling wouldn’t stop for a whole year. “Maybe two year,” he said. “Aunty yell at Woo Ying for two year if you tell.” So Carly had promised she wouldn’t.

The last reason to hope was, perhaps, not a very good one. At least no one else seemed to think it was. But Carly thought there might be some reason to hope that the coyote had not had hydrophobia after all. The thing was, they had never found him. Even though the sheriff and his deputies had searched and searched, they had never found the coyote either living or dead. So there was just a slight chance, Carly reasoned, that he’d had some other disease that made him braver and meaner than coyotes usually were, and after he’d bitten Tiger he’d gone off into the hills somewhere and gotten well.

So the weeks crept by. Weeks of going to school and living at Greenwood but spending every spare minute at the ranch visiting Tiger and watching him—watching and worrying and counting the dangerous days. The wound on Tiger’s leg from the cauterization, so much bigger and more noticeable than the bite had been, healed over and the white hair grew down around it until it could hardly be seen. Six weeks went by and then eight and it was Christmastime and Tiger was still living in his pen and looking and acting just the same as he always had.

Christmas was strange and sad that year. At Greenwood Aunt M. had the biggest tree ever, and she and Woo Ying made as big a fuss as usual about presents and Christmas cookies and all kinds of special things to eat. There was a tree at the ranch house, too, but it wasn’t the same as other years, with Tiger still in danger and locked in his prison, and Mama still not well enough to come downstairs for Christmas dinner.

Carly, with Aunt M.’s help, had made Mama a beautiful new bed jacket covered with lacy ruffles. But when everyone went up to her room to watch her open her presents, she was tired from all the excitement and hardly looked at the jacket when Carly unwrapped it for her.

Then January came, and even though it was a long time yet before the six months were up, Carly couldn’t help feeling more hopeful. He was such a little dog. Surely the poison, if it was there, would have reached his brain by now and the disease would have begun. As the cool, clear days of January crept by and Tiger went on being his funny, bouncy, begging, accusing, and forgiving self, Carly began to feel more and more hopeful that he was going to be all right.

But one Sunday morning in mid-January something was different. When Carly came out for a short visit before breakfast, Tiger was lying, as he often did, in the corner of his pen. But when she called to him he stayed where he was and she noticed then that he was licking the side of an old chicken-feed pan. He licked and licked at the pan and then he licked his own feet and then the pan again and Carly had to call him several times before he got up and came to the gate.

She didn’t mention the difference to the rest of the family. It probably didn’t mean anything, and she didn’t want them to think it did. When she came back again briefly just before leaving for church, he had stopped licking and was pacing up and down at the far side of the pen. He stopped when she talked to him and came to the gate, but as she walked away she looked back and saw him pacing again, his head and tail low and his funny eyebrows doing their sad, worried wiggle.

In church that day and again in her bed at Greenwood that night she prayed longer and harder than she had ever prayed before. She couldn’t sleep and after a while she didn’t even try anymore, because every time she closed her eyes she could see Tiger’s pleading, worried eyes. At last she got up and went to sit on the window seat, wrapped in her old bunny-rabbit quilt.

It was a clear, cold night with a tiny crescent moon and millions of stars, and then, while she watched, a star fell, arching across the sky like a fiery arrow. Like an arrow—or perhaps like an omen, or even a promise. Perhaps a promise from God that Tiger would be all right. Soon afterward she felt herself relaxing and slipping toward sleep, and she went back to bed and slept until sunrise.

But the next morning when Lila arrived at Greenwood she was in the surrey instead of the cart, and Father was with her. Carly was waiting on the veranda and she stayed where she was as he came up the path, with an aching rage beginning to roar up out of some terrible depths, drowning her heart and mind.

Tiger was dead. Father had shot him. She heard that much before she ran away shrieking with pain and anger. They tried to stop her, Aunt M. and then Woo Ying, but she pushed them aside and went on running, up the stairs and down the hall to her room. She threw herself down on the bed and the strange sounds that were coming up out of her throat went on and on, deafening, strangling sounds that rasped her throat and throbbed in every part of her body.

Some time later Aunt M. was sitting on the edge of the bed, not touching or speaking but just sitting there quietly, and the howling pain had shriveled to a wavering moan that came and went as thought returned and with it all the sad and terrible questions. How had they known it was hydrophobia? Could they really have been sure so soon? Why had they done it without telling her? What if it they had been wrong and it had only been another sulking spell or the beginnings of some curable sickness like distemper? And then back to all the other old and hopeless what-ifs. What might have happened if she’d only thought of going for Dan Kelly sooner? And what if she hadn’t stopped to talk to Henry that day by the cemetery? What if, what if, what if?