John finally went back to work sluicing the placer. He was bent over the Long Tom, which is a box designed to catch gold, when he felt something behind him. Next thing he knew, one of Joe's monsters had his arm half torn off. He heard Joe, up in the woods, calling the dog off. Bleeding though he was, he managed to place a shot in the animal's leg. He said it made his own arm quite hurting when he saw the creature hop off into the woods on three legs . . .
The years rolled by. Our community built up some. A few new people drifted into the country, and some of the old timers left or died. Big John stayed on.
He wasn't so husky as he used to be, and he'd mellowed up some, most likely as an accommodation to the fact that he was no longer the "bull of the woods". Oh, he still held plenty of authority, but the fires of youth were dimming and his arm was still somewhat crippled. He was pretty much of a bully, though. I remember the time the new people came into the country from outside somewhere.
The man had TB and was on his last legs. Guess they figured the high mountain air would be good for him. His wife was quite a good-looking woman; reminded me somewhat of May. Same chestnut-colored hair, and dimples; a little older than May, though, and not so frisky. They had a boy about school age, I imagine. Looked just like his mother, same kind of hair, even the dimple.
Big John was kind of rough on the new people, whose name was Smith. He didn't figure a man who couldn't work deserved any grocery credit. The first winter they stayed was a mean one. Smith died. Some of us chipped in to help out the widow and her boy. The boy was a mighty nice little fellow and we all liked him. Seemed like, though, the boy's mother was never happy after her husband died; she used to mope around and told me more than once that life wasn't worth living.
Big John made a pass or two at her but she paid no attention to him. One day we found her body a mile below camp in Canyon River.
Big John, as I said, seemed to mellow up some. Maybe he felt guilty, but anyway he took the boy to his cabin to live with him. He seemed fond enough of him and was always sending out to town to buy him some pretty toy. But the boy never seemed to take much to Big John. Maybe it was Big John's rough voice and what he'd been. The boy never seemed to trust him.
We didn't hear from Dog Joe for nearly a year, but we heard rumors that he was down on the brakes of the Salmon. Next spring, though, just as John was showing the boy how to pan colors from the sand, he showed up again.
"I looked up," he said, "and there was that crazy Dog Joe again. This time he had a whole pack of animals with him. I swear there were ten. Maybe more. I didn't have no gun on me so I couldn't do nothing. Dog Joe kept staring at the boy, looked like he'd never seen a boy before. He even tried to speak. First time I heard Dog Joe try to talk in years. He didn't leave till I went to the cabin and got out my rifle. Then the crazy fool waved at the boy and disappeared like usual."
I suspected what Big John hadn't begun to guess long before it happened. Dog Joe was longing for the thing he'd missed all these years. He wanted something to love; he wanted to be loved by someone. And the boy may have reminded him of May; there was certainly a resemblance. It was a dangerous situation.
It became a daily occurrence for Dog Joe to come down from the hills to watch little Pete. Big John fired rounds of ammunition at Joe but never a one of his bullets so much as grazed him. Once Joe left a piece of "jerky" venison on John's doorstep on which was crudely lettered the words BILLY BOY.
Big John was getting more nervous every day. He offered rewards for the capture of Dog Joe, dead or alive. But maybe the community was getting fed up with Big John; or perhaps no one picked up the reward because they feared the wild man..
Then it happened. Big John left the boy alone for a couple of hours. When he got back to his cabin the boy was gone. He grabbed his rifle and started out alone after Dog Joe. He came back a week later, as I knew he would, empty-handed.
We heard rumors the next year of Dog Joe and little Pete. A prospector form the Salmon claimed he saw them with the savage pack of dogs. Said the boy looked healthy enough but wild like Dog Joe.
"They was chasing deer up Packer's Gulch near Indian Creek," the prospector said. "He's got the little feller so's he can run like a deer hissef. They was both talkin' that mixture of man an' dog language. Made my blood curdle, it did."
The next summer we got another report. Dog Joe was said to be working placer on Crooked River, not twenty miles from our camp. Well, I figured I knew what was behind that. Dog Joe loved that boy fiercely. He'd begun taking chances. He'd decided he needed money badly. Maybe so he could buy the boy nice things, or so he could send Pete to school. As wild as Joe had become, I believe he remembered some of his earlier life. He wanted to give Pete a chance. That'd be the only reason he'd dare to work a claim so close to Big John.
Big John had a friend named Harry Tolt. Tolt was something of a gunman, a nasty little fellow with a hair-lip. He'd come out from Chicago, not a real westerner, not even a specially good shot; he was the kind that liked to shoot at close range into a man's back.
Well, Tolt and Big John teamed up. I suppose John hired the gunman. Without much talk about it, they armed themselves with Lugers and knives and took off for Crooked River.
John had it all figured out, how they were going to do it. They took along strychnine for the dogs. Fixed the poison up in some fresh deer meat. They didn't try to get very close to where Dog Joe was working; they handled the stuff with gloves and left it along a place where they figured the beasts were likely to run. Then they camped out near the spot and waited.
CONTINUED