The Healer (13 page)

"I could have told you when you went by the woods back it makes something wrong. With the werewolffen, you must be taking care. Still, the fault is with me sending you out at night."

"I never thought they'd try to kill me."

"Perhaps they did not mean to kill. The black dog would have jumped on you and maybe bitten but not to kill. With the wolf, I am not knowing. Perhaps with him is a power we are not understanding. Yet with them it is something of a game—as with you. You are going on their ground and they must drive away anything that does that, but it is not like you was another dog or a coyote. They know that."

"Maybe it was a game to them, but it sure wasn't to me," said Billy slowly recovering.

"Such games are dangerous. Two dogs will play together, grab up a dead stick, pretend it is alive, shake it, growl, drop it, give a poke with one paw to make it roll, and shake it again. Now they pretend you are another dog come on their range and it is such another game of make-believe for them. But for you it is too dangerous. Go only to the woods in the daytime and always have the hatchet."

Billy promised and meant every word of it.

March had come. Clouds of starlings, moving north from their winter quarters, turned the bare tree branches black with their thousands of bodies and kept up a constant chattering. The chickens were nesting in the barn, and Billy was kept busy finding their nests and collecting the eggs. Green shoots of skunk cabbage appeared in the springhouse stream, and in the evenings the piping of the spring peepers was as loud as the cricket chorus in the fall. Rivulets from the melting snow and spring rains turned every depression into a bog and the farmers had begun their plowing, the silver-steel blades of the plows neatly turning over the red-brown earth.

The first herbs were beginning to appear. The roots of the skunk cabbage were collected and made into a salve to rub on cuts and bruises. Aconite, easily found because of its golden petals, was gathered and the roots ground and soaked in rain water to make a narcotic that would ease pain. Since in too great a dosage, the aconite was a deadly poison, Abe Zook handled the preparation of this dangerous herb himself. Billy, however, was given a root to wear around his neck, as this was the famous wolfsbane which protected the wearer from werewolves. Later, Billy was sent to gather the honey-colored spicewood to keep fleas and ticks out of the barn, and still later, to look for the pure white bloodroot blossoms. Zook made a tonic from the roots which, he assured Billy, was a valuable aid to digestion, but the boy hated to destroy the beds of delicate, fragile flowers. He felt less guilty about collecting the small, green, umbrellalike mayapples, as they covered hundreds of square yards on the ridge and were not as pretty. Abe Zook called them mandrake and made a powerful laxative from them, although here too he had to be careful, for the mayapples could be poisonous if taken in too strong a dose.

Several times, while on his collecting trips, Billy knew that he was being followed by Wolf and Blackie. Instead of being nervous, they seemed to despise him. There was a gash through the woods, made by a pipeline, and after crossing it, Billy would sometimes sit down and wait for the two animals to appear, crossing the open space. Unless he was careful about the wind, they would air scent him, and even when the wind was in his favor, they could tell when the scent grew warm that he was nearby and waiting for them. Then they would leave the trail and swing around to get downwind of him. Billy felt that they were playing games with him and grew restful. He wanted to make friends, and if they had shown any signs of growing tamer, he would have been delighted, but the two canines were not becoming friendly. Rather, they seemed to regard him with contempt and enjoyed annoying him as Grip did. But although the raven was not powerful enough to be a threat, Wolf and Blackie were.

Yet it was the very fact that they were powerful and cunning that attracted Billy to the two animals. At first, he had been well content to play with Grip or hunt with Dracula, but now he wanted companionship. Perhaps he could have found it with some of his schoolmates, but the gulf between him and the Pennsylvania Dutch youngsters was too great and besides, Billy was still not ready to drop his fear and suspicion of other boys. The canines were not humans; he did not need to dread their ridicule or contempt, yet they were vastly superior to the farm animals or even to Wasser, who presented no challenge. He had come to depend on them so much that a day passed without their presence seemed a day lost. To Billy, the animals possessed all the attributes he wanted in companions —strength, intelligence, and the fascination of the unknown—and none of the drawbacks. He was not fond of group sports, the chatter of boys his own age seemed to him largely pointless, and he liked to keep to himself. Even so, he was lonely, and with the two canines he hoped to have the companionship he craved, without the disadvantages he connected with other youngsters.

Abe Zook had told the boy to get a couple of young crows for a hunter who wanted them as decoys. Billy finally located a crow's nest by the edge of a pasture. He had a lot of trouble telling the difference between a crow's nest and the collection of twigs and leaves squirrels make in the trees as sleeping porches, but finally he was lucky enough to see the mother crow leave a nest. Climbing up, he found the eggs. Abe Zook had told him not to take the nestlings until they were fully feathered and out of the down, so he went once a week to check the nest and see how the babies were coming. While he was returning from one of these expeditions, he heard a blue jay screaming and knew Wolf and Blackie were following him. He had passed a swamp maple and noticed that the tree was a good one for climbing. Now he backtracked and, climbing the tree, settled himself on a branch to wait.

He sat there so long that the boy began to grow restless and decided the canines had either stopped following him or had detected the trick. Then he saw Blackie moving along his trail, nose down, with Wolf following at a discreet distance. Billy had long suspected that Blackie did most of the trailing, and this surprised him for he had supposed that the coyote, being a wild animal, would have a better nose. He was beginning to come to the conclusion that although Wolf had better sight than Blackie, the dog had a better sense of smell. Either that, or she enjoyed trailing more than did the coyote.

When Blackie reached the tree, she hesitated. Here the trail was doubled, which puzzled her, and after going forward a few paces, she could tell that one trail was going forward and one backward—the scent of one grew stronger as it approached the tree and the other weaker. Billy had gone 'coon hunting with Wasser and Abe Zook and he knew that when a 'coon doubled back like this, Wasser would go immediately to the nearest trees and smell the trunks to see if the 'coon had climbed. He had expected Blackie to do the same and had swung himself up by a limb to leave no scent on the trunk, but Blackie paid no attention to the tree; she devoted all her attention to the ground. Billy decided that Blackie had never hunted 'coon, and after a moment's reflection realized that of course this was the case as there would be no one to shoot the 'coon out of the tree for her. Blackie began to whine in puzzled irritation and Wolf moved up to help her. He snuffed a few times and then darted forward and stood poised, looking ahead. Abruptly he wheeled, ran back and circled through the underbrush, looking for a possible ambush. Neither animal thought of looking up.

Blackie finally decided to work out the trail and started on with Wolf right behind her. They were both under the tree and the temptation was too much for the boy. He suddenly shouted, "Boo!" as loudly as he could.

Both animals seemed to go straight up in the air. Then they ran around in frenzied circles, trying to find where the voice had come from. They started to run back the way they had come and Billy shouted, "Boo!" again. The animals fell over each other with surprise, while Billy howled with laughter. This time Wolf looked up and saw him. After one curious glance, the coyote departed with the bewildered Blackie after him.

Billy repeated this adventure with great delight to Abe Zook, but the braucher was not amused. "You push too fast without thinking a little. No animal likes being laughed at. This hurts their feelings. Laughing at them wasn't needful any."

Billy looked so upset that Abe Zook added, "Ach, it's even made for the time the black dog tried to jump you. But another time, do not hurt their feelings."

Billy found that the two canines had become very cautious now when they trailed him. The boy was steadily growing more skillful in wildcraft, and he learned about them while they were learning about him. He discovered that as long as he kept still and stood among trees that broke up the pattern of his body, neither Wolf nor Blackie could see him at all; so after crossing a field, he would stop at the edge of the first woods and watch for his pursuers to expose themselves in the open. Then he would call to them goodnaturedly. The animals clearly felt chagrined, but they did not seem resentful at having been caught. It was part of the game.

When Billy knew he would be gone all day, he took a sandwich with him and once, not feeling particularly hungry, he left part of it on the log where he had been sitting. When he returned that way, he found it was gone. A squirrel or a crow might have taken it, but after that, he got in the habit of leaving slices of bread on his trail. They always disappeared and Billy was quite sure that Blackie was eating them. After a rain he could see her tracks where he had left the food, but apparently Wolf would never touch his offerings. Blackie was less suspicious; also some memories of being fed by humans lingered in her mind. She seemed to crave the vegetable food, which the coyote could do without.

Both animals were growing tamer now, and even Wolf did not run the moment he saw the boy. Blackie would stop when Billy called to her and wait until the food was laid out. She would not come to it as long as Billy stood there, but when he had withdrawn a few yards, she would approach slowly, grab the bread, and run a few paces away to eat it. Then came a day when even Wolf accepted a slice and Billy felt very proud indeed.

Still, the boy was not prepared for the miracle that happened late that spring. He had been digging jack-in-the-pulpit roots that Abe Zook wanted, to treat a patient suffering from a bad case of bronchitis. The roots, taken raw, could burn out the lining of your throat, but the braucher dried them over a fire and only used a small dose. Billy was rubbing the dirt off a freshly dug root when he heard a slight noise and, looking up, saw Wolf and Blackie watching him.

At first he thought they had meant to sneak up on him from behind, but no, they were standing in the open, regarding him with frank interest. On impulse, Billy called, "Here, Blackie, come here, girl!" and held out his hand. To his astonishment, the dog crawled toward him, whining. A little alarmed, Billy grabbed up the trowel he had been using, but Blackie refused to run. She cringed and rolled over to expose her jugular vein, the ultimate sign of submission. Billy lowered the trowel and spoke softly to her. Blackie whined in response. Then he approached her slowly. At the last moment, Blackie panicked and, jumping to her feet, ran a few paces back. She would let him come to within three feet of her but no closer. Yet when he finally despaired of touching her and turned away, she followed him crying, only to jump away again when he came toward her. Wolf remained where he was, watching this strange procedure with his head cocked on one side, ready to run if the boy come too near to him, yet not really alarmed.

From then on, the two animals made no more attempts to trail the boy as though he were an enemy but came to him joyfully, whether or not he had food. True, they would not allow him to touch them; Blackie maintained her three-foot escape distance, while Wolf stayed a good twenty feet away. Once Billy took Abe Zook with him to observe the miracle he had wrought, but the animals would not even reveal themselves as long as the man was there.

"They really do come right up to me," Billy assured the old man. "They're afraid of you."

"You are too much for those creatures," said the braucher, and Billy noticed that for the first time he did not call them werewolffen. "You are a good much brave. I hope no harm comes of it."

June came, and Billy was at last free of school. Autumn seemed an eternity away. He looked forward to a whole summer of spending most of his waking hours in the woods. He saw Wolf and Blackie almost daily now, and several times Blackie had almost let him touch her. Then one evening when he returned from a collecting trip, he found Abe Zook sitting quietly by the cold fireplace and knew instantly that something was wrong.

"Boy, I am sorry to tell you this but I knew it would come. There have been big sheep killings. Nelson Burkholder lost forty sheep in one night. There have been others, many others. Not only sheep, but cattle also. Calves have been killed and even cows. They have been hamstrung and left to die."

Billy stared at him. "It wasn't Wolf and Blackie. I see them all the time. They stay in the woods."

"In the daytime, yes, but what at night? No, boy, it is true. I have been asked to put out traps for them, but I know your feeling for them so I have said no. Now the farmers have gone to the game warden. I know what he will do. He will use poison. It cannot be helped. They are wild animals doing much damage and must be destroyed. I am sorry, but so it is."

Billy felt as though the end of his world had come. Lying in bed that night, unable to sleep, he wanted to die before his friends could be killed.

For the next few days Billy hardly spoke to his uncle, and Abe Zook made no attempt to force himself on the boy. He knew the death of the werewolffen was inevitable, but he also knew that Billy's mind had become bound to the animals. The old braucher was not as superstitious as he seemed, yet in a way he did believe in occultism. Perhaps it was because he wanted so strongly to believe in a supernatural control of human events that a world in which there was no magic did not seem worth living in. Although, when his charms did not work, he was quite prepared to use trickery to impress his neighbors, still he was convinced that there were certain forces that only a braucher could understand. In some way the boy's soul had become linked to the coyote and the dog, and Zook knew that their death would sever this link and might affect the boy's reason. Because of this mystic bond, he himself would not injure the animals, but the old man knew that the farmers who were losing stock would band together to kill the predators, and he hoped to prepare Billy for the blow.