“I am no gentleman, sir,” he said. “Two hours behind my time and nothing to show. Except these,” he pulled up a woolly pants leg to reveal two long blood crusted furrows up his calf.
“I am not normally profane, Rabe, but this damned bird has confounded me to a point past caring. The bird is from hell. It is an agent of the devil. I know it is from hell because I have just visited there. The beast gave me a guided tour.
“I have been up trees and through underbrush a hog wouldn’t have. I am mud all over. There are three acres of briars in my backside that I hope will kill the red ants which set up a fort in my breeches.
“He took me into a hornet’s nest, Rabe. I am as lumpy as a bride’s biscuits. I crossed the creek twice, falling through the ice each time. No spot on my body is dry or without wound. My internal organs will never be right again. I saw him three times, all out of range, of course. Go kill him, Rabe. I have been in hell.”
“Then the heat of that place is greatly exaggerated, professor,” said Canon with a smile. “You have ice in your beard.”
Canon laughed, but he noticed as the professor stripped off his gear that his gunpowder was still dry. Not bad for going twice into the creek, thought Canon. He hoisted his shotgun and stepped away in the direction from which the professor had returned.
Three hours later, a chagrinned Canon stepped back into camp as sunset washed the woods in red gold. He was not so jaunty now. He was disgusted. Canon did not think he would kill the bird the first day. But he had thought to learn the bird’s parameters and weaknesses. He found neither.
The professor attempted to put on an air of disappointment. “I heard no shot, sir,” he said. “I fear it did not go well for you. Tell me about it.” Then he let go one of his rare smiles.
“Professor, that is one bad bird,” said Canon. And the two men began to commiserate.
For three days, they took lessons in humility from a twenty-five pound fowl. Though each killed game when he walked west, the eastern province belonged to Old Scratch. When feathers flew there, they all flew in the same direction.
Scratch knew what he was doing, though all was by instinct. He had lived through many a close call, from predators with weapons ranging from fangs, claws and talons to shotguns. There were numerous scars on the skin under his feathers, some shotgun pellets under that skin. But for each narrow escape there had been a lesson learned.
If it were possible to watch Old Scratch dismay a hunter, it would be easy to believe the bird possessed a genius intellect. Sometimes circling, sometimes moving parallel, sometimes showing himself at a safe distance, Scratch always led the hunter, be it man or mountain lion, away from his brood and into terrain of his choosing.
He had watched the tall white animals since the first morning. Scratch knew these were the most dangerous of predators. They possessed a thunderous roar that belched smoke and flame. And their invisible claws were able to reach incredible distances. In his younger days, he had twice been clutched by those deadly claws. Had been knocked spinning by them, horribly hurt, and had only escaped by limping into thick underbrush that was luckily near. The claws were poison, too, for he had lain weak and sick for long periods, barely able to forage.
But he had learned to judge safe distance from the white animals, just as he knew the safe distance from things that flew, slithered or pounced. Always he drew predators away from his brood. Now, even after three roosts, the strange creatures had still not admitted Scratch’s mastery over them. Strutting proudly, Scratch gobbled a challenge into the winter dawn for the fools to come after him once more.
The professor flung his tin camp coffee cup at wakening dawn. “Rabe,” he said, “today’s our last hunting day. One of us must kill that bird.”
“Professor, I’m not happy about failing, either. But let’s give that wily bastard credit. You’ll get him next year.”
“No. No, I won’t, Rabe. He won’t be around next year.” The professor took a long, slender salt-and-pepper checked feather from his coat pocket and handed it over. “This is one of his feathers. I saw him lose it first hunt this year when he flew away from me,” he said.
Canon studied the feather, then nodded grimly.
“He’s sick,” he said.
“Old age, more than anything,” said the professor. “Some sort of infection in his internal organs, I reckon, from old wounds. But he’ll weaken quickly. And I don’t want him to end his days as a meal for a skunk, or defenseless against a young Tom that couldn’t even look at him today.
“If I have to, I’ll shoot him off the roost.”
Normally, no self-respecting hunter would shoot a sleeping quarry. But Canon nodded agreement. “From what I know of the disease, it doesn’t transmit,” he said, “but I agree, professor. Scratch ought to go out the easy way.
“If one of us doesn’t get him today, I’ll take him in the morning, off the roost.”
It was part of the hunt to know the general area in which a turkey roosted, just like it was permissible to use a turkey call to open the stalk. Turkeys usually respond to a gobble call, but only the youngest and most foolish Toms would fly or run up to a call without first investigating from safe distance. It was part of the sport.
But the sport had turned serious for the two men. The professor walked into the woods. He returned at noon, looked at Canon, shook his head. Without a word, Canon began the last honorable hunt for Old Scratch.
The woods smelled of winter. Deep inside gigantic oak and hickory, slumbering sap emitted the thinnest of odors, thin as the sunlight filtering down through skeletal limbs from a high, cloudless gray-blue sky.
Canon’s waning determination to take the bird resurged. He had felt a conflict of emotions on the previous day. Though he had wanted to kill the bird to demonstrate his skill to the professor, a part of him had been reluctant. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to deprive the man of a hunt that so frustrated him but that he obviously relished.
He realized the professor would not have sent for him if old Scratch was not dying. Canon also knew none of it mattered much insofar as taking Old Scratch. Canon had done the things that had brought down other turkeys which had reputations similar to that of Scratch. But the damned old bird was far better than anything Canon had sought with a gun.
There was no pattern to his movements, no weakness to be exploited. At the end of the previous day, Canon realized that he probably wasn’t going to be able to outsmart Old Scratch. He still felt so. But he had to try.
Four hundred paces into the forest, Canon found a monstrous, lightning-blasted oak. It had to be a hundred feet tall, he thought. A huge rent had been torn in it years ago by the savage strike. A man on a horse could fit inside it. Canon sat just inside one edge of the opening. Eyes closed, he took deep breaths, tasting the air. He was rewarded only with the lightly lingering malodorous spoor of skunk, hours old. Disgusted, he spat.
He pulled from his pocket his wooden gobbler call. Chopping the hinged lid sideways across the resonator, he produced the garbled yelping challenge of a young Tom. As expected, from the distance came Scratch’s answering war call. “Come on and fight,” said Scratch. “Come on.”
Silently as a wraith, Canon moved left on moccasined feet. Papery leaves rustled no more than if rattled by a small wind. It took him fifteen minutes to travel seventy yards. Kneeling ever so gently in swampy underbrush, Canon barked a low gobble from the box.
Directly behind him, possibly twenty yards, possibly fifty, Scratch loosed a gobble that caused Canon to whirl, gritting his teeth. Where was the blasted bird? In the tangled brambles? In the huckleberry bushes, thick as hedge?
Canon moved to his right, sacrificing some silence for swiftness. Still, a red Indian might not have heard him. But Scratch did and went trotting away. Canon could hear him plainly and could discern the general direction.