THE LONG JOURNEY HOME
Part 2
The pup was found out within a week of its birth. It grew well with the milk Belle provided and the meat scraps the two men brought by. It was because of the pup that Ben Pruitt let the doors of the trailer open. She didn’t gain her freedom though. Ben was careful to snap a long chain to the trailer axle and then to the new collar Belle wore. “She’ll be alright there. I don’t think she’ll want to go anywhere with that pup hang’n round.” Ben continued to the second man, who stayed hidden from Belle on the far side of the trailer. “How long we s‘posed to keep her out here?”
“Maybe a year,” the hidden man answered. “Preston wants to be sure she’s not being looked for. We’ll take her up to the dog camp this winter. Guess we’ll take the pup too.”
At twelve weeks Belle had regained her strength and the pup was eating with her now, not from her. March had its chilly days, but spring was just ahead, Belle could tell. When the pup went exploring, especially at dusk, Belle laid on the sandy yellow clay before her, resting her head on her extended front legs, looking into the mesquite. She couldn’t see the long bottom of Bent Pine or hear empty cotton wagons as they rattled by with her eyes and ears, but when she closed her eyes, vivid images comforted her as if she were home under the rails of the barn lot.
For several more months, well into the summer, Belle and the pup lead a fairly solitary life out on the prairie. The pup played as pups do, pulling on Belle’s ear until she had enough. She’d then growl lightly and toss her head away as mothers do, and the pup would run off to seek some high adventure. Belle made a home as best she could. She dug a deep hole under the trailer to keep her and the pup cool in the midday heat, and free from the deer flies at night. Home it wasn’t, but home it was.
After a time, the two men, Ben and the second man, stopped coming. They were replaced by one man, a man different from any Belle had heard or seen before. His skin was dark, but not like the dark-skinned men at Bent Pine. He was lighter, colored like the strong-smelling leaves she had seen in Kentucky hanging in the open slatted barns. He wasn’t a mean man. He did not have the strange character of Ben Pruitt, and he spoke words she had never heard before. “Buenos dias madre. ¿Cómo están tú y el pequeño hoy?” And he would laugh and chuckle and always pitch Belle a strip of red meat marbled within and out. Often, especially as fall began to show, he took the pup for walks through the bramble and laughed out loud where Belle could hear back at the trailer. “Vaya. mi pequeño. ¡¡No sabes que no puedes atrapar esas codornices!! jajaja”
By mid-September the pup knew to acknowledge the ‘bob-white’ whistles that attracted his mother’s attention. He’d raise his head from his paws if he was resting or stop suddenly in his tracks if he was up and about. In either instance, when the whistles shot out across the prairie, he’d turned his head toward the whistle and cock it to one side as if to say, “umm, interesting.” By October he knew what caused the whistle, Brown Man had shown him.
Randall didn’t miss Belle immediately. He had left on a Monday and, not being able to drive the icy roads, didn’t return until after dark on Wednesday. Cattle kept him busy Thursday morning but sometimes during the unloading and sorting he missed Belle for the first time. She should have been lying at the sorting gate, nipping at the heels of the new calves. Pups, he thought, she must have had her pups. He walked to the barn loft and looked in the corner, no Belle. He looked in the tack room, and under the silo slab, no Belle. She hadn’t eaten from her feeder and her lick seemed untouched. Something wasn’t right. He asked the hands, “When did y’all last see Belle?” No one had an answer he could depend on.
That night when the white glow of the January moon lit up the skies, Randall rang the brass bell mounted on a tall pole at the end of the porch. Used for emergencies, the bell pealed out across the bottom and echoed to the river and back. Again, Randall pulled the cord, this time more urgently. To him this was an emergency. The two farm hands came out of the bunkhouse rubbing their eyes.They asked, “What’s wrong?” Headlights began to flicker from trucks and cars that had begun to wind their way up from the main road. They all eventually assembled at the main house. Everyone was repeating the hired hands’ question. When a sizable group had gathered and Randall was sure all his neighbors had ample time to arrive, Randall started where all could hear. “I haven’t seen Belle since last Sunday afternoon. I don’t know if she is lost or hurt or….” He stopped briefly and then continued. “If anyone sees her, please let me know, I would greatly appreciate it.” He had planned to say more but at the time the words seemed sufficient.
Everyone knew that when Randall greatly appreciated something, his generosity wasn’t far behind. “I’ll be looking, Mister Randall,” said one.
“I’ll sure let you know if I see her,” said another.
Randall thanked them one after another, but it wasn’t those in attendance Randall noticed. It was those who were not in attendance that Randall noticed. And Randall noticed everyone a little differently than he had before. As the weeks and months went by, hopes of finding Belle drifted away like the oak and beech leaves behind the barn lot in a fall wind.
William Preston’s portfolio simply showed his ownership of Preston Packing Company. You’d have to dig deeper into PPC’s holdings to see that it was PPC that owned the half a million acres of native prairie that stretched well up into the panhandle and bled over into Oklahoma. It was PPC that owned sixteen feedlots and six packing facilities. William Preston was clever to distance himself from any liability or misfortune. And so it was, that from a safe distance William Preston had Belle chained to the rear of an open horse trailer some eleven hundred miles from Bent Pine out on the great southern plains west of Abilene. The lengthy chain allowed her to reach a water pail filled with stale water dipped from a cattle trough every day or so. It was also every day or so that she was brought a pan of meat scraps and bone, courtesy of PPC.
Ben Pruitt sent word to Will Preston that they had the prized brood bitch he requested. Now it became a waiting game, waiting for the field trial world’s rumor mill to drift westward. Preston would wait to hear if anyone was suspected of theft, or did Randall simply think Belle had been met by some accidental calamity. Perhaps she had been run over and died in a roadside ditch, or she may have been tangled in a fall while exploring the river’s edge. Preston was cautious and stayed clear of Pruitt and his hostage.
Among with the vast property holdings of William Preston was a dog camp south of Guymon but still in Texas. Through PPC, Preston supported a kennel of several hundred pointers. Depending on the time of year, as many as thirty or so bitches whelped an average size litter of six pups each. That same number of pups, less the physically culled, those with towed-in paws and such, or those deaf from inbreeding, were flocked in the fall. Grouped in packs of six to ten, the pups were released across the prairie in front of the observing eyes of Preston’s experienced dog handlers mounted on horseback. The handlers looked for dogs that showed the most natural ability, both physically and mentally. Only the pups that hunted to the front strongly and swiftly were considered. Only the top three or four of the couple hundred pups flocked were kept and carried over into their derby year; all, so a wealthy man could boast of the best bird dog in the country. And this, though it mattered not to Belle, was the ‘Why’.
About the Author : Danny Bardwell
Visit authors website | View more articlesDanny Bardwell is a construction superintendent who builds large commercial buildings in the Baton Rouge / New Orleans area. For peace of mind and escape from the stress of building, Danny raises and trains pointers with his thirteen year old grandson, Lane.
Danny is a story teller at heart, and often when relaxing he is inspired by some little event or phrase. Lane appears in most of Danny's stories. His stories have appeared in local publication as well as national circulations such as Sporting Classics Magazine.
About the Artist : Kate Hall
Visit artist websiteKate Hall is an outdoor artist who resides on an Angus cattle farm in Tennessee, where she began hunting at an early age. During her 13 years as a flight attendant, Kate visited 27 countries and all 50 states. She now spends her time traveling across the country in search of rising trout and upland birds with her husband and their English Setter. In his first two seasons they hunted on public lands in MT, KS, SC, AL, NC, KY and TN for quail, ruffed grouse, sharptail grouse, woodcock, pheasant, prairie chickens, and hungarian partridge. Upland hunting has enriched Kate's life and influences much of her colored pencil work.
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The Long Journey Home
It would have been different had Belle been at home. She would have found a safe warm spot near the hay loft. Randall would have looked in on her throughout the day, more than likely bringing her bits of leftover bacon and biscuits and making sure the pups had a clean place to be whelped. She was royalty at Bent Pine and didn’t kennel with the other dogs. She had the run of the plantation. Her favorite place to lie, be it summer or winter, was under the rail fence of the barn lot. There, she was shaded in the summer by huge spreading oak and beech trees. In the winter she was warmed by the sun shining through those same trees then leafless and unable to fend off the warm welcomed rays. She laid under the bottom rail that was positioned just right to offer a scratch to her long back whenever she chose to do so. It was perfect. The spot seemingly offered a respite, though actual work didn’t exist for Belle. Maybe she enjoyed the spot for reflection, that now, she had aplenty. From her favorite spot she could view anything approaching the main house, as well as view over a mile of cleared bottomland, a bottom that stretched eastward to the Black Warrior River and south for three miles farther than Belle could see from the rails even on a clear day.
The Conflict
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