Dub’s Misadventures: The fourth book in the Wolf series

Dub’s Misadventures

The fourth book in the Wolf series

Dr. A.W. Sibley

Brighton Publishing LLC

435 N. Harris Drive

Mesa, AZ 85203

www.BrightonPublishing.com

ISBN13: 978-1-62183-401-4

Copyright © 2017

eBook

SMASHWORDS EDITION

Cover Design: Tom Rodriguez

All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction based upon real life experiences. The characters in this book are fictitious and the creation of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to other characters or to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Preface

As the saying goes, ‘into every life some rain must fall’. The manner in which a person faces those rainy days pretty much determines how successful that person is at achieving happiness. It is wiser and better to face each new day as if it were simply another mountain to climb, river to swim, or barren desert to cross: one day at the time and with an optimistic attitude.

In times of adversity, it is my belief that life can still be unbelievably sweet. That is, provided sufficient time is spent in wild, lonely country devoid of human presence. The companionship of a devoted dog and horse can only add to the sweetness. Solitude, with just the sounds of nature can bring ease to a tortured soul. Reality can be dealt with more easily away from the distractions of ‘civilization.’

Introduction

The story starts with Dub waking from a dream that began at the end of A Wolf in God’s Country. He is still on his eleventh birthday trip, fall 1944. He is waiting for his wolf dog, Ring, to return from leading bloodhounds away from him and his filly, Honey Gal.

The Lord Is My Shepherd

A Psalm of David

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:

he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul:

he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness

for his name's sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the

shadow of death,

I will fear no evil: for thou art with me;

thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence

of mine enemies:

thou anointest my head with oil;

my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me

all the days of my life:

and I will dwell in the house

of the LORD forever.

Chapter one

After waking up, I pulled the bridle off Honey Gal so she would be free to graze. I sat back down by the willow tree where I had been dozing and confided to my filly, Honey Gal, I just had the most wonderful dream.

She cut me off, I know, you talked the whole blessed time you were dreaming, so I know all about it. Just be sure to remember it in detail, I have a feeling that dream just may be something big in your life.

I wondered what my faithful filly meant but I didn’t let it worry me. My concern lay elsewhere. The sun was moving too fast to suit me. Where in the ever loving, blue-eyed world was my foolish wolf? He should have joined us by now. Or maybe not, how long had I been asleep?

Slowly, my brain lost some of its fuzziness and I remembered some of what had been happening. Ring had led bloodhounds away from me and Honey Gal. Obviously, he had done a good job because I hadn’t heard the hounds in a long time.

Presently, Honey Gal stopped cropping grass to throw her head up and whicker. Even I heard them then, the sound of hounds running a hot trail, coming through the forest from the west. I hadn't placed the faith in a bloodhound's nose that I should have.

I jumped up and quickly put the bridle back on Honey Gal so we could move out in a hurry if need be. There was no doubt, there were two hounds running by sight, because they were giving voice every time their feet hit the ground. In addition to the hounds we now heard someone urging them on. Memory kicked in finally: the guys on the ridge-point over on the Louisiana side of the Sabine River were still there. With the wind out of the north, we heard them plainly, Get 'um, Bell! Get 'um Jim!

That scared me so bad my heart sank into my feet. Not so with Honey Gal, she got mad. She lost her cool and if I hadn't had a hold of the reins, she would have bolted up the river right toward the running hounds. That shook the rest of the fuzziness from my brain and I went to scrabbling for my .22 rifle because I didn't think anybody had the right to run me and my animals into the ground. We hadn't done anything wrong. Almost everything we did was what we thought was right by the rules in the Bible.

Before I even got my gun out, we heard one dog’s scream cut off right in the middle of a plea for help. The second dog never made another sound, the deep forest was quiet as the grave; not even a crow broke the silence. Pretty soon one of the men on the ridge blew a cow horn, calling their dogs in. Man, whoever blew the calling horn was a bust—I could blow my fist louder than that. Wisely, the handlers went back to shouting repeatedly, Come in, Bell! Come in, Jim!

Honey Gal snorted the minute she sighted Ring trotting down to the river for a cooling drink. He took his time but after a brief swim, he eventually came over and joined us. The horn blew again and again followed by, Come in, Bell! Come in Jim! The call for Jim and Bell continued, gradually moving away upriver.

While we sat under the old willow tree, I felt oddly wrung out and tired, as if I had run miles. From where Ring lay grooming his paws, he finally said plain as dirt, Jim ain't coming no more, and Bell ain't neither.

That was all right with me. The hounds shouldn’t have been trailing us. But, were they truly trailing us? I was all mixed up in my thinking. My dream was mixed in with my awake thoughts. In the dream, the hounds were trailing a deer. One thing I was sure of: we weren’t guilty of anything that justified bloodhounds!

If memory served me correctly, the whole deal about the bloodhounds had begun while we were visiting with Cousin Tuck and Cousin Hazel. They must have created an uproar because I hadn’t headed straight home from their house. Maybe they checked with Mom and Dad and found out that I hadn’t made it home yet. No need to worry about any of that, we were headed toward home now.

After a conference, we agreed to go southwest toward the broken skyline where fall colors of orange and yellow were showing. We moved at Honey Gal's running walk down a faint trail that thankfully, didn't show any sign of human traffic. The trail went around a good sized lake and we had traveled for about a mile before I recognized the lake. Some friends of ours lived on the far bank. Since we were this close, it would be a shame if we didn’t check in with them.

***

Upon arrival we saw they were doing something at a rack out behind their house. Ring began to bristle up and show his teeth, then he cut across in front of Honey Gal like he didn't want us over there. By the time we got Ring out of the way I realized what my friends were doing. They were trying to butcher a hog. When I approached, I was introduced to some friends of theirs who were obviously going to help. We visited a little bit which consisted mostly of me answering questions about how Alf, Mother, Dad, and our family were doing.

They also had some questions about butchering a hog. I answered, From the looks of things here I already figured there might be some problem. They were about to make a mess of things, it was plain as the nose on my face they didn't have any idea what they were doing. They were going to scald that hog. They already had a big wash pot full of boiling water and were prepared to pour it over the hog. I must have had a shocked or blank look on my face because the visitor attempted to enlighten me. The way one does this is to pour this boiling water over the hog and then scrape the hide off.

I explained, If you do put boiling hot water over the hair on that porker, then you will sure have to scrape the hide off because that hair will set and the only way to get it off is to shave it off. I wanted to ride on off but the Good Lord made me take pity on them so I pitched in to help. I ground tied Honey Gal and made Ring set down by her to watch what was coming off.

One large woman looked in my direction with disgust. I overheard her tell her friend, I'll bet that uppity white trash don't know doodle from squat.

My friend retorted, Hush yo’ mouth, ol’ Alf done taught him all there is to learn about all there is! Alf been livin’ with the Sibley family since before that boy was born so he’s passed on loads of knowledge.

I had no way of knowing if the disgusted woman knew who Alf was or not. I didn’t have time to explain, I was more concerned with a small problem. They had some little kids who wanted to play with Ring but he had bristled up and started to growl. One of the men asked if Ring might bite and I told him Ring was half wolf and had been mistreated by some folks, and of course, that might make him be dangerous. Wisely, they made the kids back off. I could see it eased Ring's mind.

I put in and showed them how to have the water at just the right temperature and then to dip the hog in the water before scraping the hair off. One of the men was obviously not a country boy. He wanted to know why in the world we didn't just skin the critter. He probably thought he had stuck his foot in the fire because my friend flew off the handle, Ain't ya’ll got no sense? If you mess with that hide, ya’ll got me to answer to!

So I showed them how to scrape and get started cutting the meat up and what part was what, what to do to make it ready to eat. How to fix the feet to cook, then they didn't know what to do with the head, and so on. Actually, the whole crowd acted ignorant when it came to butchering a hog.

I suppose I stuck my foot in my big mouth. I asked, Why in the ever loving world did you all move out here in the deep woods not knowing a blessed thing about nothing?

One of them explained, We lived in that New York town and they ain't many hogs nor coons there.

I said, This ain't the first time I been here and I knew I never seen ya’ll, but I know these folks who live here and they ought to know something!

Surprise! I was at the wrong house. My friends actually lived about a mile farther on around the lake. They were visiting their new neighbors and didn't feel inclined to give any advice unless it was asked for.

The New York man was embarrassed, I wanted to ask for help but didn't want to appear too stupid to our new neighbors here.

When I started to show them how to clean and process the head, I had another shock. I saw Dad's mark on the ears, a split and under bit in the right and over half crop on the left. I stepped back and pointed to the ears. My old black friend almost fainted, he whispered, That's your Dad's mark, ain't it? I just nodded and went ahead and showed them how to save the brains to cook with eggs and several other ways to serve.

I knew that they hadn't the faintest idea what a marked ear meant. But if they were going to live where hogs had free range, they needed to know the laws. I set in to explain it but my friend took it on himself to tell them they had stolen a hog and the law was pretty severe with folks coming into the countryside and stealing people's hogs.

I kept my mouth shut and let him rag them a while about going to jail. After I figured he had enough fun at their expense, I said, I know you folks didn't know any better. If you had told my Dad you had hungry little kids he would have gladly given you the hog. Now you all go on and enjoy the pork, I'll tell Dad and you'll never hear any more about it.

I never did tell Dad anything even though that sure was a big fine meat hog they purloined.

They were kind of worried about being so far from a grocery store or where they could buy supplies, so they were just going to live on pork. I explained to them that they couldn't make it on that kind of diet, especially the little kids. They knew that but they had lived in town all their life and had always bought everything at a store. It was a good thing they had forethought enough to buy some books on wild edible plants. We got the books down and I pointed out some local plants like wild onion and dandelions that I ate while camping. I also told them how to make stir fry.

We moved around the side of the lake and picked a bucket full of plants that they could eat if prepared properly. They got excited when I told them about hickory nuts. Then I had to find a tree and show them how to crack the nuts open and dig out the kernel. The three young’uns went stark raving crazy over hickory nuts.

I kind of got into the spirit of the hunt and whistled Ring to go with us. I made Honey Gal stay put, but I slipped her bridle so she could graze. That bunch of people got all excited when they saw me take the bridle off.

The newcomer said, Boy, you crazy and want to walk home? Where you live, anyway?

I told them I lived at a place called Negreet. That led to another question about where Negreet was located and another about what the name meant. Since the folks seemed to really be interested, I told them about how far it was to Negreet and a little about its history.

Alf told me that Negreet got its name from the Spanish word for black which is negrito. That label was started and passed down through the years because of the abundance of black haw trees growing along the banks of the bayou where the original settlement was located. I don’t know how Alf knows some of the things he tells me, but he is one of the smartest people in this country.

In answer to his question about Honey Gal, I said, She'll be right close to where I threw her bridle down; I leave my poke on her so she thinks I still need her. When I said poke the kids went into gales of laughter, so I had to explain what a poke was.

We moved on around the side of the lake past where we gathered the wild onions and I showed them some more hickory trees that we called pignuts and how to crack the nuts. Of course, they wanted to know more and I thought about the chinquapin trees and their mast. We dropped on down close to the water and found a good line of old chinquapin trees with lots of ripe nuts. I showed the barefoot kids how to dig a hole in the dirt to stand in so they didn’t get crippled by the thorns. In their haste, they learned the hard way that you have to peel the nut out of the burr before trying to eat it. They went wild over chinquapins too. The two women had tagged along with the young’uns and they ate more than their fair share. Anyway, we had a good time while I tried to show them how to sort of live off the land and still have a more balanced diet.

Ring and I strolled on back to Honey Gal and put her bridle back on. An older girl, who had been rendering out hog fat, had a big bag of hot cracklings waiting for us. She insisted we had to take the cracklings which was fine with us. I saw Ring start to slobber and I felt like drooling myself. I mentioned again for them to enjoy the pork and not waste a minute worrying about the law.

We said goodbye to our new friends and took the first fair trail we found to the south. Actually, we didn't care where it led, all we wanted was a quiet place where we couldn't hear dogs barking and we could settle down for a few days. I needed a rest because I felt kind of sick inside.

I put Honey Gal to her smooth running walk and Ring out front to watch for rattlesnakes, because we were definitely in rattlesnake country. We continued down the river on the Louisiana side, through some beautiful hardwood country with trees that literally towered out of sight. It was always twilight under their spreading branches. We heard the mutter of huge old horned owls even at midday when we invaded their domain. I felt a chill and Honey Gal shivered beneath me every time we heard one of those old owls. We broke out into sunlight none too soon for me and my filly.

That night it was cool enough for me to get in my sleeping bag and snuggle up close to the wolf. I slept like a log, and felt much better. Food was not a major concern, we had cracklings and we still had food that Cousin Tuck had given us to see us on home. It had been accompanied by that stern warning from Cousin Hazel that the sheriff just might come after us with hounds.

After several days of leisure travel, we came upon a lightly traveled little dirt road one evening. About a hundred yards down the road, I knew where we were headed; this road led to the home of Henry Wason, a boy in my class at school.

We cut across their pasture and jumped Honey Gal over the snake rail fence and trotted on up to their house. Henry was out cutting some fire wood with one of his brothers. I got off my horse, ground tie her and made Ring set down by her. Henry and his family had a bunch of pot-licker hounds that came out to challenge Ring. Henry didn't even have to say anything, when they got within twenty feet of Ring he raised up a little and snarled. The whole mess ran screaming back to the house. But anyway, I helped Henry get his load of fire wood in the living room. When Mrs. Wason saw it was me, she put in for me to spend the night. Since the sun was well on its way down and it looked to be fairly cool, I told her I'd study on it. I didn't mention that I felt sort of punk, anyway.

Henry wanted me to help finish planting some turnips. So we strolled on out to the garden where I noticed they had a good crop of potatoes that hadn't been dug. We finished planting the turnips and were heading back to the house when Henry began hollering. Honey Gal had drug her reins and followed us out to the garden. Ring was still setting right where I had left him. I was surprised that he let her leave. The little wench stood there pawing the potatoes up and eating them just as fast as she could dig them out of the ground.

Ring looked so guilty that I thought maybe he had put her up to the mischief. Henry was having a walleyed fit, Dad's going to be after me for what that fool colt did.

Well, now wasn't the time and place to explain to him that she wasn't a colt, she was a filly.

Henry said, Put that pesky horse in the stall and give her some hay and grain before she gets me in trouble!

I did that little chore and Honey Gal lit into the grain like she was starving. I knew that Mrs. Wason didn't allow any dogs in the house so I put Ring in the stall with Honey Gal.

Henry laughed, That horse will kill that dog before daylight.

I said, He might kill her, but they have spent many a night together and loved it. Of course, Henry had been to our place lots of times and knew all about them, he was just joshing me.

Several members of the family weren’t home but Mrs. Wason had enough supper on the table for about twelve people. Mr. Wason returned thanks and then we ate one of the best meals I ever had. We had baked potatoes and several kinds of fried meat including fried guinea fowl. I thought that if the Wasons ate like this all the time then I might spend more time with them. Maybe that explained why Henry was the same age as me but about twice my size.

Mr. Wason kept asking me questions like where I had been, how long I had been traveling and where I was headed.

I gave him an answer that I thought might make him happy, Oh, I been just riding around, studying the local flora and fauna and enjoying the fruit of my labors.

The nice old man looked sort of baffled and I interpreted the look Henry gave me to mean—Dub, when we go to bed I'm going to get you for that. But I wasn't making fun of his Dad, I just didn't feel it was really any of his business.

***

After Mr. Wason mulled that over in his mind, it hit him, Dub, I can't make the figures come out right in my mind, ain't you been gone from home a long time? I saw your mother up at Dan’s grocery store and she told me you were missing and they wanted to get in touch with you. And I promised her faithfully that if I heard anything I'd let her know.

I said, Well, this is my promised vacation and Dad said I could be gone for two or three weeks. Which wasn't the exact truth but it was close. I had to do some tall talking but I promised that we would hit straight toward home in the morning. Henry didn’t bring it up in front of his dad but I knew he couldn’t wait to find out how I got away with skipping school.

We had a good night's rest and I had a good long visit with my friend Henry. For breakfast, I had all the fried eggs and bacon I could hold and got squared off to leave. One of Henry's sisters was in the same class with one of my sisters. On the way to the school bus stop she informed me about all the ‘latest news’ she intended to tell my sister.

When they caught the bus I said goodbye to the whole Wason clan and took off down the dirt road like I meant to go straight home. I figured Mr. Wason would watch me out of sight, so I turned north up the gravel road toward Mr. Howard’s ranch. We just piddled along all morning with Ring out front and if Honey Gal wanted to eat a bite of grass, I let her. It was a real easy going morning and I needed it, my chest hurt. Ring knew something wasn't right, he didn't venture more than ten feet from me.

We decided to get off that particular gravel road; it wasn't yet noon and folks I knew in two cars had stopped to visit a spell. That was a tad too many people running the roads to suit us. Honey Gal and I were uneasy about the wolf on that road because I bet some of them fools were going thirty-five miles an hour. I guess maybe there was a fire somewhere and they were needed.

We detoured and almost didn’t clear the end of Bar Lake. During a rest break, we decided to spend the night there in the big woods on the end of a high ridge covered with hickory trees. The sunset was spectacular so we paused before doing the camp chores and enjoyed the sight that Honey Gal said was made for us alone.

Chapter Two

The change of seasons added spectacular color to the foliage on the hills far across the Sabine River. In addition, there were green open glades and splashes of red rocks interspersed among hardwoods and long leaf pine. In the sky, a vivid display of high clouds reflected the sun’s rays. Along our ridge, the changing leaves on the tall sycamore trees and the smaller maple trees took on a golden glow. We watched as a purple haze moved in and hung low between the river and the hills. Somehow I felt we had witnessed a special sunset the good Lord had made just for the wolf, the filly and me. The air was growing noticeably cooler with the dry odor of the deep forest. The whole serene effect was spoiled by the scream of a dad-burn bald eagle answered by the squall of a big cat deep in the river bottom.

We found some huge beech trees with ripe beech mast that was falling.

There was a tight little place to spend the night, back under one of the beech trees. Ring and I tried it on for size and found we could both scoot back far enough to get out of any heavy weather we might encounter. We ate so many beech nuts that I didn't need to cook any supper. Honey Gal was stuffing her gut when Ring and I hit the sack. We slept the sleep of the just and woke up bright and early, feeling a little better. We ate some cracklings for breakfast, and loaded up my poke after the beast of burden wallowed and shook herself dry.

We hit the trail for the back side of the Grover Ranch when Ring threw his head up in full alert. Ring bolted off down the side of the ridge we were climbing, so I put Honey Gal to his trail as fast as she could navigate the hillside. We ran and slid about a quarter of a mile before we broke out into a pasture fenced with barb wire. It was a big pasture, looked to be about a mile across. When we cleared the timber and brush Honey Gal alerted me to a bunch of horses running pell-mell across the meadow. Ring never did bark but he was growling something fierce and he was so mad he wanted to attack something. I got him shut down and looked around to find what had him so upset. Some of the horses had wheeled to run back toward us but one mare was loudly whickering and running back and forth. I ground tied Honey Gal and took Ring with me to find out what was happening. We spotted two wolves that had a colt down. The colt was still flopping around but the end was foretold. The bigger of the wolves had the colt by the throat and in a few minutes we saw blood spurt up in the air. The poor little fellow was dead in a few seconds. That mare continued to scream and run at the wolves but she never did get very close, I guess she was too scared of them.

I left Ring to watch the two wolves while I ran back to Honey Gal and got my .22 rifle. I had some long rifle hollow point shells in my pocket and had no doubt I could shoot one of the killers right in the left eye. I returned as fast as I could and hunkered down by Ring. We crawled through the bottom strands of barb-wire and worked our way on our