Old Yeller by Fred Gipson Read Free Book Online Page A

corn patch. We went to him. We found him jumping at the gobbler that had run up a stooping liveoak and was perched there, panting, just waiting for me.
    So in spite of the fact that Little Arliss had caused me to make a bad shot, we had us a real sumptuous supper that night. Roast turkey with cornbread dressing and watercress and wild onions that Little Arliss and I found growing down in the creek next to the water.
    But when we tried to feed Old Yeller some of the turkey, on account of his saving us from losing it, he wouldn’t eat. He’d lick the meat and wiggle his stub tail to show how grateful he was, but he didn’t swallow down more than a bite or two.
    That puzzled Mama and me because, when we remembered back, we realized that he hadn’t been eating anything we’d fed him for the last several days. Yet he was fat and with hair as slick and shiny as a dog eating three square meals a day.
    Mama shook her head. “If I didn’t know better,” she said, “I’d say that dog was sucking eggs. But I’ve got three hens setting and one with biddy chickens, and I’m getting more eggs from the rest of them than I’ve gotten since last fall. So he can’t be robbing the nests.”
    Well, we wondered some about what Old Yeller was living on, but didn’t worry about it. That is, not until the day Bud Searcy dropped by the cabin to see how we were making out.
     
    Bud Searcy was a red-faced man with a bulging middle who liked to visit around the settlement and sit and talk hard times and spit tobacco juice all over the place and wait for somebody to ask him to dinner.
    I never did have a lot of use for him and my folks didn’t, either. Mama said he was shiftless. She said that was the reason the rest of the menleft him at home to sort of look after the womenfolks and kids while they were gone on the cow drive. She said the men knew that if they took Bud Searcy along, they’d never get to Kansas before the steers were dead with old age. It would take Searcy that long to get through visiting and eating with everybody between Salt Licks and Abilene.
    But he did have a little white-haired granddaughter that I sort of liked. She was eleven and different from most girls. She would hang around and watch what boys did, like showing how high they could climb in a tree or how far they could throw a rock or how fast they could swim or how good they could shoot. But she never wanted to mix in or try to take over and boss things. She just went along and watched and didn’t say much, and the only thing I had against her was her eyes. They were big solemn brown eyes and right pretty to look at; only when she fixed them on me, it always seemed like they looked clear through me and saw everything I was thinking. That always made me sort of jumpy, so that when I could, I never would look right straight at her.
    Her name was Lisbeth and she came with her grandpa the day he visited us. They came riding up on an old shad-bellied pony that didn’t look like he’d had a fill of corn in a coon’s age. She rode behind her grandpa’s saddle, holding to his belt in the back, and her white hair was all curly and rippling in the sun. Trotting behind them was a blue-ticked she dog that I always figured was one of Bell’s pups.
    Old Yeller went out to bay them as they rode up. I noticed right off that he didn’t go about it like he really meant business. His yelling bay sounded a lot more like he was just barking because he figured that’s what we expected him to do. And the first time I hollered at him, telling him to dry up all that racket, he hushed. Which surprised me, as hard-headed as he generally was.
    By the time Mama had come to the door and told Searcy and Lisbeth to get down and come right in, Old Yeller had started a romp with the blue-ticked bitch.
    Lisbeth slipped to the ground and stood staring at me with those big solemn eyes while her grandpa dismounted. Searcy told Mama that he believed he wouldn’t come in the house. He