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"Here!" I said, offering my wallet
to him again."No!" he snapped, stepping back. "I've changed my mind, I
don't want to know. How much further are you going?" "About ten miles," I
said. "Well, go. Just go! And for God's sake, don't tell anyone you've seen me!"
With that, he turned and strode purposefully back to his car; lights flashing, he did a
U-turn across the median and with a screech of tires took off like a scalded cat away from
me in the opposite direction.
The following morning I crunched
through the freshly-fallen snow over to the kennel to check on my charges. Gordon had
instructed me to wait for the arrival of the whipper-in before exercising them, so all I
could do was look at them through the wire mesh of the run. They were all ready and eager
for their morning exercise, tails wagging and heads cocked to one side, waiting for me to
let them out. |
Curse the whipper-in, I thought. They needed exercise, but
without help to control them they might get lost. Oh well, at least I can feed them. Lying
in the barn close to the kennels were two dead calves that had been dropped off by the
farmer next door to provide some free food for the hounds. I poked at one of them with the
toe of my boot - it was as stiff as a board and covered in straw. I searched around the
kennels for skinning knives, but could come up with nothing more effective than a hoof
pick. I went over to the house and managed to find a blunt carving knife and an old
Gillette razor blade. Armed with my skinning tools, I returned to the kennels where all
the hounds were clamouring impatiently at the wire netting. Squatting down, I seized the
calf by a foreleg and gingerly made an incision with the razor blade into the frozen hide;
I freed a flap of skin and pulled it back, sawing away with the ancient carving knife. A
freezing draft whistled through gaps in the sliding doors of the barn which hit me in the
small of the back as I bent over, chilling me to the bone. From the drifts outside the
doors the snow blew in in little gusts, laying a fine icy powder over me and the black and
white hide of the calf. I got into a mechanical rhythm of saw and pull, saw and pull and
the skin came away from the carcass with agonizing slowness. |
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Two long hours later I had finished and I
straightened up slowly with aching back and sore, bleeding fingers. Kicking the hounds
back, I opened the door and threw the carcass into the kennels; with ferocious growls, the
hounds fell upon it and it disappeared under a wave of black, tan, and white. I couldn't
believe it. Two hours of backbreaking work vanished before my eyes as within seconds the
hounds consumed the whole thing - all that was left was the skull that two big dogs
angrily fought over. Cold and weary, I stumbled back to the house where I consoled myself
with a hot bacon-and-egg breakfast. |
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