The Hessian by Howard Fast

Author:Howard Fast [Fast, Howard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: War, Political Science, Public Affairs & Administration, General
ISBN: 9781317456469
Google: QMvKBgAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 28022020
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1972-06-17T00:00:00+00:00

8

The Dog

SALEM ALAN was a Vermont man, who had paused in his wandering on the Ridge because he took a fancy to one of the five Bullett sisters. He was one of those tall, lean, laconic men who cloak dullness in silence, and because he was shiftless and indifferent to most of our “virtues,” he was looked down upon, regarded as a thief—for which there was no evidence—and as a poacher, for which there was evidence enough. No one knew very much about his background; he had no kin in the neighborhood; and he said little about anything and nothing about himself. He built a shack in the woods on North Mountain, and he lived on game and what he could get for beaver pelts, when he found them. Then he married Nancy Bullett and they lived on game; and then he fathered five kids who lived as best they could. He never bathed, and generally he was as gamy as a bear a month dead. I was led to his shack once when three of his children were sick, and the smell and condition of the place beggars description.

The only thing he was fond of was his Pennsylvania rifle, and rumor had it that he had murdered someone in Vermont for the gun and then fled the country; but in all probability, he had probably stolen it, since such a gun was worth ten pounds sterling, and Salem Alan had never had more than ten shillings in his hand or pocket at one time. The only thing he appeared to know anything about was hunting, and along with his red setter, Duklik, after the local Indian chief, he could be found anywhere and everywhere, prowling after game. In good times, he killed deer; in bad times, I have heard, his family would eat squirrels and even fieldmice and weasels and crow.

I must mention that he also knew how to train a dog, and Duklik was the best hunting dog on the Ridge, and thereby he came into the business of the Hessian. But I am not much of a believer in accidents, and if it had not been Salem Alan, it would have been someone or something else.

He and his dog meandered through the woods, up from the great swamp for perhaps a mile to the edge of Raymond Heather’s place, and there along the line of the stone wall that was Heather’s boundary. The land on the other side of the stone wall was Manor land, held in claim by some absentee landlord in England, but since the war began, in claim of the Commonwealth of Connecticut; so Salem Alan was within his right to hunt there. He stated later that his dog was on deer scent, but that was simply to elevate the character of the dog, since the dog abandoned the scent he was on to circle a spot on the woods side of the stone wall.

Annie, Raymond’s little girl, just past four years old, had

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