Gary Paulsen: Brian's Hunt

All the time he was talking he was preparing himself, kneeling by the dog, threading the fish line through the needle in the firelight — in itself no mean feat — and hoping his talk would soothe the dog.

“I’m going to clean the wound with a little water,” he said, dipping water from the lake. He knew it wasn’t hygienic but the wound was full of dirt and grass and the water was cleaner than that. He thought of boiling it but then he would have to wait for it to cool and that would take too long. The dog was steady now but might not hold for a long time.

He washed the wound with water as best he could, splashing it gently until the water ran clear without blood or dirt and then folded the flap of skin back up over the wound opening and was dismayed to find that it was too small to cover the space.

It lacked a quarter inch all around, seemed to have shrunk. He would have to pull it and stretch it back while he sewed.

He winced, thinking how it would feel to do it to himself — first stretch his skin and then pull a large needle with fish line through it, again, and again. The dog had remained quiet while he washed and pulled the flap back over — quieter than Brian would have believed — but he did not believe she would lie still for what was coming.

“It’s more of a problem than I thought,” Brian said. “Maybe going to hurt a little more. .” Later, much later, he would remember talking to the dog that first night as if she were a person and would not think it odd, never thought it odd. He talked to all animals, deer, birds, wolves, sometimes even fish. But only the dog seemed to understand, seemed to know what he meant.

Well, he thought, here goes, and he pulled the flap, had to tug it sharply into place and took the first stitch with the needle, surprised at how hard he had to push to get the needle through the skin. It was almost like cured leather and he had to exert way more force than he thought the dog would tolerate, just for the first edge. Then he had to pull and tug the flap of skin into position and push the needle through the second edge, again, having to push very hard to get even the sharp needle through the hide, then pull the two edges together with the string and tie a first knot to hold it, then move a quarter inch — which seemed about right — and push-pull it through again. .

And again.

And again.

And talking all the while, waiting for the dog to come around and hit him.

“You’re such a tough dog. I couldn’t take this, I know. You must have good genes, tough genes, a tough mother and a tough father, to take this pulling and pushing and poking and just keep taking it and taking it. . ” His voice even and smooth, trying to calm the dog, ease her mind.

And not once did the head come around. Only at first, when Brian jerked the string to pull the two edges together, was there a reaction, a low, deep rumble from the dog’s chest and the head coming up, but it was not a growl so much as a moan and the head never came around, the teeth never bared. The dog just looked at him, looked right in Brian’s eyes in the firelight, a look of understanding, of complete and utter trust, and then the head went back down and there were no more rumbles, no more moans, no more glances. She lay there with her eyes closed, content to let Brian work. Almost relaxed.

Thirty-two stitches Brian sewed, each one knotted in place, twenty across the top and twelve down the front side, all about a quarter inch apart, all tightly sewn and pulling the flaps together, and then it was done.

He had a small first-aid kit in the canoe and he took out the disinfectant bottle. It was not enough to have washed the wound but he trickled it in a line along the sewn-up seam edges and it must not have been painless as the bottle said because the dog rumbled again, though she didn’t open her eyes or change her breathing.

Then it was done.

Brian cleaned the needle and put the kit away in the canoe, washed the blood from his hands in the lake, found more wood for the fire and built the flames up.

The dog stayed where she was, four or five feet from the fire, and rested. Soon Brian could hear the sound of her snoring over the crackle of flames.

Brian squatted by the fire and let his mind float free, glad the dog was so friendly, glad he hadn’t been bitten.

He looked to the east and thought he could see a glow. Maybe a couple of hours to daylight and then. . what?

Try to figure it out, he thought. The dog was clearly not wild, clearly friendly to people, had heard-smelled-felt that Brian was out in the lake sleeping in his canoe, had awakened him by whining.

Clearly wanted help.

But where had she come from? There was no collar on her, Brian had checked that right away, and it was a her, not a him, Brian had also seen that, but she wasn’t just a loose, wild dog.

She must have come from a trapper’s camp somewhere, maybe a Cree camp, perhaps near, perhaps far. She must belong to somebody. But Brian had seen or heard absolutely no sign at all of any people anywhere within miles, and if there had been a camp or people he would know. Animals in the bush react to people, “feel” differently if there is anyone about, and he had not “felt” that difference. Nor had he seen tracks, smudges in the grass, had not smelled smoke.

Nobody was close.

And yet, here was the dog. Obviously a person dog, a dog that wanted to be with humans, a dog that couldn’t hunt for herself well — she looked thin — and needed to be with people yet had, for some reason, left her people?

No sense there, Brian thought. He put more wood on the fire and studied the dog in the brighter light.

The dog slept soundly, snoring gently, the wounded side moving up and down. Brian liked the sound of her breathing and he thought of never having had a dog. There had always been some reason his parents wouldn’t let him have one. They were too dirty. They shed hair. His mother had allergies. He wasn’t responsible enough to take care of a puppy. Lord. Back there. His parents. He shook his head — had that ever been real, that life? That whole silliness?

He watched the wound move with the dog’s breathing.

The wound came from a fight with someone or something. It was a slash wound, not from a fall or hitting a stick.

How had it happened?

A fight with another dog? He had considered that possibility while working on the dog. It had been in a major battle with another dog and had been driven out — but Brian wasn’t sure if that sort of thing happened outside Jack London novels and he had come to realize that much of what Jack London wrote about the bush was utter nonsense. He might have been a tough man, and he might be a good writer, but he’d also been a hammer-drunk and there was a lot of silliness in what he said about wilderness.

Besides, most people wouldn’t let a fight get that far out of hand. A dog that was ripped up that badly couldn’t do much work for a while and trapper dogs were used for work, packing, pulling toboggans. And he didn’t think a dog that liked people as much as this one seemed to would leave just because of a fight.

So something else.

But nothing else made sense. The dog wouldn’t leave her home unless she was driven out and the wound was serious enough. .

Wolves? Brian’s thinking rolled free. Perhaps the dog was out away from camp, hunting or something, and ran into a pack of wolves. Say they hit her, wound her and in panic she doesn’t run home, back to her camp, but runs off, maybe confused, bewildered until she comes to the lake and finds Brian sleeping in his canoe. .

No. If wolves had hit her — and David Smallhorn had told him that sometimes they killed small dogs and ate them — she would either have run back into camp or the wolves would have finished her, eaten her. No dog in the world could outrun or outfight a wolf pack.