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| Outlaw |
I don’t remember when the old hound wasn’t around. He was that old. Jess called him Outlaw…raised him from a pup. In his day he was a big powerful trailing hound with a voice they talked about all across the county.
I remember those nights in the Big Piney River valley when old Outlaw struck a hot trail and all the talk around the campfire would stop In the silence, the lonesome bawl of the legendary hound floated over the hills, distinct from the baying of the other dogs, so powerful and strong it sent a shiver down my backbone.
Maybe you wouldn’t call it music, but Jess and the other men knew it as such. All I know is, the voice of old Outlaw was different than any fox along the river had ever heard before. I remember that year as I grew older and winter came on, how the aging hound became stricken with disease. He didn’t eat much and he lay around most of the time growing thinner and lazier by the day. He was beginning to lose his teeth when Jess brought Outlaw to the vet.
“How old is this hound, Jess?” the veterinarian asked, shaking his head as he looked him over.
“Right at fourteen years, I reckon,” the old woodsman answered.
With sympathetic eyes, the doctor looked into the weathered face of the hunter He knew Jess and he knew his advice wouldn’t be easy to swallow.
“He’s old and sick, Jess,” the vet told him. “Maybe if he was younger I could help some, but at this age there’s nothing I can do. He’ll just go downhill and sooner or later you’ll need to put him to sleep to keep him from suffering.”
Jess took it hard but he never let it show. The ring of old-timers who looked forward to those late winter fox hunts with such jubilance now prepared for a hunt with sadness. Jess had announced it would be old Outlaw’s last chase. It was cold that night and some said they could feel snow in the air. Fallen leaves lay along the old logging road that led down the river and they crackled beneath the shuffling feet of the hunters. It was just like always before, with most of the men joking abut someone else’s dog or telling some wild story about the past deer season. Only Jess was quiet.
Everyone acted like nothing was different, but there was a strained atmosphere that night. Grandpa had instructed me to not ask any questions and that was a tough job for a 13-year-old boy. But I tagged along quietly behind him and Jess, heart saddened and feet heavy.
Old Outlaw walked beside Jess for a long while, unlike the times in years before when he was the first hound on the trail. The other dogs had headed for the river upon being released. Jess’ other hound, a young pup, kept returning to the group as if urging old Outlaw to join him.
But the big hound stayed by the side of his lifelong friend and master, his muzzle ever far from the old woodsman’s hand.
No one seemed to notice when he left us, but as we grouped around the fire on the river’s edge, I noticed that Outlaw was gone. The other hounds had a chase going back to the south and most everyone assumed he had joined them. But as the first chase faded farther away, there came a long deep bawl from the low ridge to the east witch paralleled the river. There was no mistaking that voice.
Suddenly the talking stopped and most of the men rose to listen one last time to those clear, long, drawn out notes. I stood too with those chills playing up and down my spine again like always before. Jess’s young dog joined Outlaw for awhile, but as the chase left us and crossed the river downstream, the young dog returned to the fire, apparently somehow aware that this trail belonged to Outlaw alone.
Across the river, the pursuit turned upstream again and Outlaw’s voice became strong as he moved near us. I wondered how that voice could remain so clear and deep and strong while the old hound became weak and fail with age. Most of the men couldn’t believe that those aging legs could carry the big hound as far as the chase had led him, but the voice never wavered and Outlaw forged on, hot on the trail of another fox. Jess moved out away from the fire and stood alone, his hands thrust down into the pockets of his overalls, his mind way up on that ridge with his dog. I was glad that the darkness prevented everyone from seeing his face… and mine.
But then the chase turned away, high into the hills across the Big Piney, westward into the vast timbered expanses of the National Forest. We listened in the stillness as the old hound’s deep, bellowing voice became harder and harder to hear, eventually silenced by the distance.
Outlaw never returned that night. He must have sensed it would be his last chase. Oh, I knew that dogs couldn’t think or reason but I liked to imagine the big hound knew it was better that way, better especially for the old man who loved him so much.
Some of the men figured he had caught up with big old red wolf that they said roamed those river hills and some said maybe he trailed a mountain lion to his doom But I don’t know, I wonder if he didn’t just keep running until those tired old legs would carry hi no farther.
Age my have stopped those old legs and stilled his strong heart, but nothing could have stilled his voice. On a cold, clear winter night it echoes across the valleys of my memory and I can see old Jess standing there in the edge of the firelight saying good-bye to his old friend.
Occasionally, hunters along the lower Piney claim they hear an extra voice in with their hounds on a cold winter night… a voice deep and clear, which seems to fade away into the timbered hills to the west. And one old trapper who travels the river in the midst of the winter, swears that on a still night, if you stand quiet and listen hard, you can hear the far away baying of a hound… a hound with a voice of pure gold, beginning and ending deep in the wilderness across the Big Piney where the spirits of old fox hunters are listening still.
