CHAPTER 1
TOM
“Get down! They’re coming!”
Johnny White barely whispered the warning, but Tom Fletcher instantly ducked his head behind a tree root and pressed himself flat to the forest floor. A flapping of wings beat up into the treetops, and a few leaves rustled as a creature crashed against a branch, then the dark woodland inhaled all sound with one giant breath and held it, leaving only the light air of a summer night, the gentle gray of a thin moon, and silence.
Next to Tom, hidden away in the moon shadows, Johnny pressed his pale face down into the leaf mold. No one would see his black hair against the night and the shadows of the birch trees. They had better not see it. If Tom and Johnny were seen … if Johnny was recognized …
Tom pulled his woolly hat farther down over his ears and waited. Stupid blond hair. He should have put camouflage paint on his face, but there hadn’t been time to get any.
His keen ears scanned the woodland again. An owl let out the faintest whisper of a hoot, telling its chicks to be quiet. From the bank across the clearing, a few short grunts let Tom know that the badgers were shuffling around just inside the entrance of their sett, thinking about venturing out. Two of them tonight: the old boar and the heavily pregnant sow. His favorites.
And then the tiny crack of a dry holly leaf snapped halfway down the hill. Footsteps kicked leaves, and the damp scent of decay floated up on the breeze.
“Is the shotgun loaded?” Johnny barely breathed out the words.
Tom nodded. “Yeah. But there’s loads of them. One warning shot won’t—”
“Sssh!”
Tom was silent for long enough to hear the pounding of his own heart. Why had the forest gone so quiet? Once the men got up here, they’d hear his heartbeat and they’d find him. Why couldn’t something squawk or cry out or flap around? Why had everything become so unnatural?
Three sets of footsteps tramped up the slope toward the clearing. The tiny pattering dots of a terrier’s paws jogged beside them. And then the sliding, scraping rakes of bigger paws, straining at collars, scrabbling toward their prey.
They came into the clearing. Seven shadowy shapes.
Three men armed with spades and shovels, a terrier small enough to scramble down a badger sett, two squat fighting dogs ready to set upon whatever poor badgers the terrier flushed out, and a much bigger dog—a Rottweiler, or something like it—with a chain for a collar.
Johnny tugged at Tom’s jacket. They had to get out of here. Those dogs would smell them, and they wouldn’t care what kind of animal they were sinking their teeth into, as long as it had flesh.
But Tom shook his head. He couldn’t go now, not when he knew what was about to happen. He had to at least try and stop it—that was the point of bringing the shotgun.
If he fired a shot …
He reached around to get hold of the shotgun. Small twigs snapped off a bush, crackling out into the still air.
The dogs’ heads shot up.
“What’s that?” one of the men hissed.
They listened for a couple of seconds.
“Nothing. An animal. Let’s get Julie down to work.”
The tallest man leaned down to unclip the terrier.
Tom cursed himself for not having got the gun to his shoulder before the men had arrived. Now he’d have to wait until the dogs were distracted, which meant he’d have to wait until they’d flushed out a badger and started fighting it.
Johnny trembled beside him. When he’d found Tom at school and told him that some of the men from the Sawtry buildings were baiting badgers, he’d been boasting like crazy about how he was going to hunt them down and “give ’em as good as they gave.” “It’s sick!” he’d said. “Sending them dogs in, tearing animals apart just for fun. It’s sick. Someone’s gotta stop ’em.”
But out here, he seemed hardly able to move.
For a second, the moon flashed out from a thinning gap in the clouds. The terrier shot forward as the leash came away. It scrambled down into the earthy entrance of the badger sett and disappeared.
Tom heard the growls of the badgers. If it has to be one, he prayed, please let it be the old boar. He was a fearsome creature, and he’d at least have a chance of fighting for long enough that Tom could get a shot fired in time to save him.
But it was the snarling of the pregnant sow that he heard loudest, as the terrier’s hindquarters came powering backward up the tunnel and out into the clearing. The dog was dragging the badger by the scruff of her neck, and the badger was roaring in anger. As soon as they broke out into the open air the badger began to swing her head around, snapping her jaws around the terrier’s legs, biting at its sides. But she was heavy, her pregnant belly holding her down.
“Get some light on ’em!”
One of the men switched on a bright light, directing the beam toward the fight. A laugh rang out as the terrier began shaking its head, trying to force the breath out of the badger.
“Go on, let Tyson go!”
Another leash unclipped. A bigger dog hurled itself into the fight.
Tom could stand no more. He grabbed the shotgun and yanked it up to his shoulder, not caring how much noise he made.
Johnny leapt up and pelted away into the darkness, crashing through the bushes.
Tom let loose both barrels of the gun.
His aim was wild against the glare of the light and the shots thumped into trees, but the deafening crack of the gun made the men yell startled curses. One of them ran forward to grab the terrier, kicking away, pounding his foot into the snarling fight until the animals broke apart and the barks of the terrier rose shrieking over the echoes of the gunshots.
“Run!” The man with the terrier rushed out of the clearing, but the others ignored him and stayed, standing over the panting body of the badger, gazing around into the night.
Tom kept his head low, watching them. The shorter of the two had a tough face with a double chin. The taller, with a fat paunch and dark hair, had eyes as silver-cold as knife blades.
“It ain’t gamekeepers,” said Cold Eyes. “There ain’t keepers here.”
“Let Elvis go,” said Double Chin. “He’ll flush ’em out.”
“Go on, then.”
Tom was on his feet and running before he heard the rush of the dog’s paws, but he knew it was the Rottweiler, unchained. It didn’t waste breath barking, simply bounded toward the sound of him sprinting away through the undergrowth.
He felt no fear. Tom knew this landscape better even than the sounds of the midnight woods: this was his farm, his work, and his life. He broke from the edge of the woods out into the fields and made for the stream at the bottom of the hill, slinging the gun over his shoulder as he ran. His legs were strong and fast: he had a head start, just enough of one, if nothing hampered him.
Behind, he heard the thudding of the dog’s paws against the black grasses. Not far now. Not far. And then he was at the shallow stream, splashing through the widest point, running a few steps along the bank and back into the stream again, back out, back in, back out. He heard the dog splashing, stopping, listening, and he leapt out of the stream, hared across a narrow strip of grass, and vaulted over the fence into the lane.
His bike was where he’d left it; he pedaled away into the night, gripping the handlebars with a fury that kept him pedaling at top speed long after there was any further danger of being caught by the dog. He would go back there in the morning, just to check if the badger had survived, but in his heart he knew that she hadn’t stood a chance.
And the baiters would be back. Tom knew how men like that operated—how violent and brutal they were, intent on finding ways to carry out their disgusting sport. He could call the police, but it would only be Tom’s word against theirs—Johnny would never get involved.
The baiters would be back, and they’d kill more badgers unless he could take away the cover of darkness and shine bright lights onto their horrible cruelty.
I’ll find some way of stopping them, he thought as he wrenched the bike up the drive to the farmhouse, his wheels spinning against the gravel. I’ll catch them and I’ll let them see that I caught them, and that it’s my badgers on my farm that I’m protecting.
And then I’ll make them pay.
copyright © 2015 by Ruth Hatfield
