The Preposterous Adventures of Swimmer (2 page)

Swimmer was not hungry, but he figured he ought to eat all he could while he had the chance. “How about some fish?”

He was surprised and momentarily delighted when Clarence brought him a mountain trout only a few hours out of the hatchery. “Hey, let me sit up front with you and eat it,” he begged. “I can't see the country stuck back here.”

Clarence sighed. “Sorry, old pal. You're to stay in the cage, and I'm to keep it and the van locked at all times. Those are Doc's orders. And don't get any bright ideas about running away. Just remember you're civilized. You belong with Doc.”

“Aw, fiffle! Then how about taking off this crazy bell for a while? I'm nearly out of my ratted mind with it.”

“You never complained about the bell before.”

“I'm complaining about it now! All it does is tinkle, tinkle, tinkle—”

“Swimmer, you know I can't remove the bell without ruining the harness. That's silver chain.”

His spirits fell as the van got under way again. The bell was a danger. How he was going to get rid of it he didn't know, but first he had to break out of the cage, and the fastenings were giving him trouble. As he struggled with them he heard thunder overhead, then the sudden slash of rain. A strange uneasiness came over him.

The rain increased and became a steady downpour as the van wound upward into higher country. It was spring, and through a partially open window came the rich smells of a blossoming earth and occasionally the loved sound of rushing waters. Swimmer was aware of these, but he was robbed of all joy by a growing apprehension. Something was wrong. He forgot the fish entirely.

Suddenly he turned from the fastenings and examined the cage door, shaking it in the hope that the lock hadn't caught. But the lock was secure, and the key was in Clarence's pocket.

The feeling of wrongness grew. Swimmer whirled back to the fastenings, and the van shook as the night seemed to explode with swirling wind and rain. All at once, in a sureness of danger closing upon them, he hurled himself against the wire and cried shrilly, “Stop, Clarence! Stop! Stop the van!”

The loosened wire gave under his frenzy of motion, and he burst out of the cage like a ball, spun about, and leaped forward to the driver's seat.

A startled Clarence had time only to gasp, and instinctively he pressed the brake. That alone saved them. A second later and a couple of feet beyond, the van would have been crushed by the tons of rock that came sliding down the high slope on the right. Clarence jerked the wheel, and the van skidded on the wet paving and turned completely around. There was a moment when the swinging headlights edged a plunging boulder and a falling tree, then the van struck the guardrail on the other side of the road and stopped abruptly. He sat clutching the wheel, dazed.

“Are—are you all right, Clarence?” Swimmer said worriedly.

“I—I think so. Lordy, what a close one!” Suddenly Clarence sat up. “Hey—what—how—how did you know something was going to happen?”

“I just knew.” Swimmer could have told him that even a one-eyed newt would have felt the approach of danger.

“How did you get out of your cage?”

“I just got out. I had to. This is good-by, Clarence. I'm leaving.”

Even as he spoke, Swimmer was hurrying to the rear door of the van. It was locked, but he knew that from inside the van only a quick upward jerk of the handle was needed to release the lock, and the door would swing open.

“No!” Clarence cried, lurching to his feet. “No! You can't do that! Swimmer, listen to me. You're not wild anymore. You'll die out there. Honest—”

Swimmer had already grasped the handle. He threw his weight against it. There was a click, and the door swung open a few inches into the wind. Instantly he sprang for the ground several feet away.

But a devil rode the wind that night. Halfway through the opening Swimmer felt the sudden shift and tried to twist away. He did not quite make it. The door slammed against a leg and held him dangling a moment as pain shot through the leg. When he dropped to the ground the leg was numb.

For uncertain seconds he crouched beside the van, shocked and trembling. Then he became aware of the sound and scent of the stream somewhere beyond the guardrail. Slowly, almost fearfully, he began limping through the blackness toward it.

2

He Follows a Trail

T
he creek was far down a rocky slope, and it was high and roaring from the spring rains. In the mountain dark, with one leg useless, Swimmer reached it only with the greatest difficulty.

Before his capture he would have plunged happily into the wildest water and found it great sport to battle the current. But now, even though he couldn't see the stream, its very thunder terrified him. He sank down in the brush near the water, shaken and uncertain. This was home country, but he had never expected to feel so lost in it.

Once, as he was trying to decide what to do, he thought he heard Clarence calling. The sound was so very faint against the water's roar that he wasn't sure, but it brought a terrible longing just to see Clarence again and feel his comforting presence. He turned, almost ready to try the long climb back. But pain shot through his leg as he started to move, and he sank down again, shivering in the rain.

He had never been cold like this. Never in his life. Not even that time in his pup days when he had played tag under the ice with his family and some of the neighboring otter folk. What was wrong?

At last he realized that Clarence had spoken the truth about being civilized. He had been cooped up too long in that dratted steam-heated lab. Now he was so soft he couldn't even take a little spring rain. It was disgusting.

And to make it really rough, he probably had a broken leg.

With the thought that his injured leg might actually be broken, Swimmer's already sodden spirits began to sink still lower. How was he going to swim and catch food? How was he going to travel to different feeding grounds? And with dogs and wildcats to worry about, how could he protect himself?

As he considered these awful realities, he began to feel very sorry for himself. No matter how he looked at it, he was surely doomed. If he didn't die speedily of double pneumonia, he would have a lingering death from starvation, with his broken leg paining like fury to the last horrid minute.

“Oh, poor me,” he whimpered. “Why did I ever leave Clarence?”

He was at rock bottom now and could sink no deeper. So, having enjoyed for a moment the very depths of despair, he wanted no more of it. It was time to climb out.

“Aw, fiffle,” he muttered. “I've swallowed too much education, but I've still got a little frog sense. Anybody with half a grain of it ought to be able to beat the odds against him. Now, let's see …”

He still had one good swimming foot. It wouldn't push him fast enough to catch trout, but he could limp around and find crawfish and frogs. As for his bad leg, it had been injured on the lower part, so at least he could hold it off the ground when he walked and not have to drag it. If he was careful for a couple weeks, maybe it would mend.

What should he do in the meantime?

It struck him all at once that he had sort of upset Doc Hoffman's applecart by running away. Old Doc was going to be lost without his trained slave to show to the world, and furious to boot. In a matter of hours, sure as anything, there would be a big otter hunt on. Doc had money to burn. He would get men by the dozen.…

This chilling probability brought Swimmer to his feet. It was still raining, and the darkness had grayed only a trifle, but he knew he shouldn't waste any more time.

He began limping to the edge of the torrent. His intention was to follow the bank, find a quiet stretch where he could safely enter the water, then drift downstream. But he had taken only a few steps through the brush when a frightening thing happened.

The silver harness holding his bell caught on something sharp, and for long frantic seconds he was trapped. It was almost dawn when he finally freed himself and discovered that the sharp thing was a piece of rusted barbed wire. It was dangling from an overgrown fence.

Fuming, Swimmer tried desperately to squirm out of the dangerous harness. It was impossible. Had there been only the single chain about his neck that held the bell, he could have managed it easily. But there was a second chain behind his shoulders, and the two were linked tightly together. To get out of the dratted thing he would simply have to have help.

He crawled glumly under the fence and began limping downstream, the silver bell tinkling merrily with every painful movement. Since there was nothing he could do about the hateful sound, he tried to ignore it as he studied the creek. In the dawn mist the water didn't look quite so evil as the thunder of it in the dark had indicated. He crept down to the water, then hesitated while he tried to find the courage to enter it.

So much time had passed since he had been in a stream like this that for a moment Swimmer knew the old terror he had felt as a pup—the terror every pup feels before its mother forces it to swim. In the next breath fear was replaced by icy shock as he drove himself into the mist-laced current.

He gasped and grunted, sure that it would be the death of him. But after the first few minutes it didn't seem so bad. Then suddenly, for a little while, it was quite wonderful, and he found himself barking and chuckling happily, his injury nearly forgotten. Suddenly he glimpsed what he thought was a startled fish trying to dart away from him, and he made the mistake of trying to catch it. Such blinding pain shot through his leg that he was momentarily helpless.

He swam weakly to the farther bank and crawled out in a protected spot beneath an overhanging rock. Gradually the pain quieted. In its place came hunger.

His hunger increased through the morning, then grew teeth as he searched frantically along the bank, turning over small stones and driftwood in a hunt for something edible. Longingly he thought of the uneaten trout Clarence had brought him. It would have taken several trout that size to satisfy him now, but all he could find was one tiny frog that was hardly worth the painful effort of catching it.

“Aw, blatts!” he muttered finally, in weary disgust. “What am I going to do?”

He wasn't exactly frightened, but it was sort of jolting to realize that he was about as helpless as a month-old pup. What
was
he going to do?

Almost desperately he looked up at the wise old trees leaning overhead, something his mother always did when she wanted information. Had the trees seen others of the otter folk come this way? Did they know what he wanted to know? They did, and they told him—not with speech, but with a sort of flowing of knowledge they shared with all the wild who would listen.

Swimmer listened. It came to him that every stream too close to man has barren areas and that he was on the edge of them now. He must leave and cross the ridge to another creek. Others of his kind had been doing it for years. He might even find their trail.

Save for the rain, which had died to a misty drizzle, Swimmer might have missed the trail entirely. For the rain, instead of washing out a scent, holds it for a while and even makes it stronger.

Later that day, halfway across a sloping meadow where cows were grazing, he caught the first faint familiar scent of his own kind. It was so very faint in the deep grass that he was unable, in his present ignorance, to guess how long ago it had been made. But it hardly mattered. The otter folk were few in number, and it filled him with a great joy to know that some of them—several members of the same family, it seemed—were somewhere near.

He sprang forward, his miseries momentarily forgotten in his eagerness to get over the ridge and find the new creek. Then he realized he had been foolish to cross the meadow in daylight. All the cows were staring at him, attracted by the tinkling of his bell. The two nearer ones were actually coming to investigate.

It was too late to hide, so he put all his effort into reaching the woods ahead. Even when he was safe, with dense thickets behind him, he limped on. The lessons of the dim past were coming back to him. Where there were cows, he remembered, a dog was usually near.

Several times he was tempted to stop and search for crawfish where small springs oozed from the ground. Caution drove him on. The otters ahead of him hadn't stopped. Perhaps they hadn't needed food, but more likely there were dangers near they didn't care to risk so far from water.

Darkness caught Swimmer near the top of the ridge. Almost mechanically he kept on for a while. When he finally stopped, it was because he had lost the trail and was too weary to search for it.

In his misery it seemed he had been climbing forever. Had it been this way in the past? Had his family changed streams and gone great distances and even crossed mountains to find new water?

But of course they had, as he now remembered. Only, it had been such fun in those days. They had always been playing and exploring, following an endless route around an area that must have been thirty miles across. In spite of the dangers it had been wonderful—until that blatted old snake-eyed trapper came with his net.…

Swimmer was having a horrid dream about that trapper when he was abruptly awakened by the yapping of a dog.

As his head jerked up he was shocked to discover that it was now bright daylight. How could he have slept so late? It was disgusting. No wild otter with the brains of a newt would have allowed himself to be caught out like this so far from water.

The dog yapped again, closer. Swimmer's impulse was to run, until he remembered his bell and realized the tinkling of it would give him away the moment he moved. From the yapping he decided that it was probably a small dog, one of those troublesome little busybodies of the kind that had belonged to the trapper.

He didn't know it was part of a hunting team until he saw the two does drifting past, as silently as shadows. At the sight of him the older doe paused briefly. Between them there was a quick exchange of thought.