In his ignorance, Orph ran them after deer, which startled them. They pursued single file, strung out over a fifth of a mile, with the spotted dog, who was the fastest, soon taking the lead. As the quarry cut and angled, the dog with the best possibility of interception would veer off and the other three would swing in behind it. Once, on level ground along a stream course, the spotted dog boxed a doe against a high deadfall, between two rock walls. The doe tried to scramble up, but fell back. The spotted dog seized a rear leg. She kicked him off and whirled. He jumped, snapping for her lips. She reared, flailed at him with hard, sharp hooves.
One thudded painfully into his shoulder, the other split the skin of his muzzle and broke off a tooth. He rolled over, momentarily dazed.
The doe leapt across him and bounded out of the box and was gone. After half a dozen futile coursings, Orph didn't try again.
They spent most of their time seeking food, like every other creature in the woods. They ate squirrels and frogs, nesting animals and fledgling birds. Orph learned: He stalked his first porcupine alone, while the others circled nervously, harrying it with barks but holding back; the animal flared its quills, which doubled its size, but Orph kept after it in dancing lunges, suppressing the sense of wrongness that prevented him from a solid bite and made him want to draw away, and then the porcupine's tail flicked against his foreleg and set it afire. Quills bobbed from the leg, hurting him fiercely. He retreated. The other three dogs followed with relief. He dropped down and chewed at the quills with small hard bites. The porcupine watched the dogs several minutes, backed away, waited, then turned and waddled off. Orph had to chew into the meat of his leg before he could pull the last of the barbs out. He was sick for two days.
They ate groundhog when they could cut one off from its burrow. Orph took the animals head-on while the black went for their backs, the belly if Orph flipped them over, and the bitch and the spotted dog tried for legs or the rump.
Their territory shifted as they ranged out of it, abandoned old runs and marked new boundaries. They were most active in the early morning and evening hours. In midday they rested in shade and groomed themselves, or each other, and sometimes they would wrestle or chase each other in play.
Nights, they turned, pressing down grass for a bed, and slept close to one another, waking at intervals to lift their heads and listen and take the air. Orph slept restlessly, rising to pad about and probe for menace, and at first the other dogs sprang up in alarm when he stood, but they accustomed themselves to his movements before long and didn't pay them much attention.
When they ran across human scent they turned away from it, unless there were strong traces of food; then, if they were hungry, they would follow it and eat at a camp if they found it empty, or nose out buried or abandoned scraps at an old one.
Chapter 6
THEY met in a dilapidated barn on a farm thirty miles outside Covington. The barn leaned, and was braced against collapse with a couple of whole tree trunks, to which bark still adhered and from which the long stubs of old branches projected. A section of the high roof had fallen in. The barn hadn't sheltered animals in years, there were car parts and rusted appliances around, confused heaps of junk. It smelled dry and dusty.
They'd trickled in starting at seven A.M. in panel trucks, station wagons, pickups, sports cars and sedans, avoiding a single large convergence of vehicles, which would have been noticed and might have drawn attention from the law. The license plates were largely local, but New York was represented, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. One guy had come from Ohio. A carload of sports had driven up from Virginia.
The dogs had been brought in the panel trucks and station wagons, locked in wire cages. There were upwards of a hundred men.
A single electrical cord ran the length of the barn, tacked to a central beam. There were simple porcelain fixtures and bare bulbs. A 200-watt floodlight was mounted in the center, above an area of freshly raked dirt.
One of the farmer's sons, in peaked hat and coveralls, sold beer out of ice-filled tubs for a dollar a can. His mother stood behind a plank table selling sandwiches from platters covered with waxed paper for a dollar and a half. It was only coming on nine, but three cases of beer had been finished already, and a few men were swigging from pint bottles. Tobacco smoke hung beneath the harsh lights.
Buddy Stokes arrived swaggering and loudmouthed. He knew Digger would take Murphy's Dragon, and he'd decided this was the make or break and borrowed another $3000 from the bank on a fraudulent Home Improvement loan. He wanted to rile the gentry, piss the good old boys enough to put up the salad. And he did, got it matched by the time the pit was up.
The pit was twelve feet square, its walls waist-high panels of plywood hinged for easy setup and knockdown, stained with old brownish blood.
It belonged to a guy from Mount Vernon. They put it together over the raked dirt, directly beneath the floodlight.
Stokes had a total of $7000 riding. If he went bust-but he wouldn't, he knew he wouldn't-it'd be back to the bush league until he could build the roll up again, two or three years. But if Digger topped, there was $14,000 in the kit. That would be enough to finance him to Florida in November, and Texas in December, the big time, the high rollers run. Figure $4000 for expenses, which left ten. Play it safe in Florida. Pit Digger for five. If he lost, still five left for Texas. But if he won, $15,000 in the pocket, and Texans, grab your asses. Between today and the Florida match, he figured Digger'd pretty much have it. Retire him with honor, keep him around a year or two for stud, then out to the rosebush. Some guys sold their old dogs to grubbers for a few hundred bucks. Stokes respected his animals too much.
When they got old or crippled, he put them down himself, with one clean shot, and gave them to the rosebush. The rosebush was Stokes' prize, a great, sprawling mountain of summer fire, one of the wonders of the neighborhood. It had thrived on the numberless kittens and the few dogs he'd fed it.
If he got to Texas, he was going to fight Buddy's Bad Boy and back him with the whole $15,000. Boy was Digger's son, out of a good bitch from Syracuse, the toughest, meanest, sonofabitchin' bone cracker of a dog Stokes had ever seen. Stokes suspected early on that he had a genuine all-time champion on his hands and he'd put everything he had into the dog's training. He wasn't disappointed. He'd fought Boy only once, over in Concord, at a small meet, wanting to test him without attracting much attention. God Almighty, Stokes had never even heard of anything like he'd seen that day. Boy was a goddamn meat grinder just spit the pieces of that other dog all over the pit then looked around for something else to destroy. Got a lot of play in the sportin' magazines, which Stokes hadn't wanted (no sense letting the opposition know what they'd be up against), but the reports were mostly hearsay and Stokes didn't pit him again, ignored the inquiries he received.
Let the speculation build. Unless Boy went against a boar grizzly in Texas, he'd mop up anything they threw at him and Stokes would come out with $30,000; more if he could get odds, which might be possible, since hardly anyone had seen Boy's stuff. He'd be on the way then.
The referee hadn't shown up and men were grumbling and growing surly.
There were arguments, some shouting. Various people volunteered to referee, but were accused of having bet too much to judge fairly.
Willis Quigley, slight, with a thin moustache and a large diamond on the ring finger of each hand, proposed that a coin toss between the men who were pitting animals in the second match determine the referee of the first, a toss between the owners in match three to determine the referee of match two, a man from the fourth to judge the third, and a man from the first to judge the fourth. This was agreed to be a fine solution and the selections were made quickly.