The Adventures of Silk and Shakespeare Read Free

head to Tal. “Powerful grateful,” he murmured, a murmur that would carry to the furthest peaks. “Reckon I owe you. This child surely does owe you.”
    Tal was daubing on the fur. It stopped the flow right off. He wished he could stanch Hairy’s grateful, sheepdog glances. He turned the head sideways to inspect the gunshot wound, and get away from those eyes.
    After a moment, Tal said, “You’d best not be so grateful. Seems I blew your ear off.” That explained all the blood—nothing would bleed like an ear. Tal started in with the belly fur on the remaining stub of ear. He ought to wash it out, he knew, but he was worried about the amount of blood this fellow was losing—Hairy’s patriarchal beard was getting crimson with it. The wounds could be washed later.
    “Powerful grateful,” murmured Hairy at a soft roar. “Eternally grateful.”
    “Doesn’t your ear hurt?” said Tal, a little sharply.
    “No,” allowed Hairy, rubbing his nose. “But my nose hurts. Never woke up that way before.” He flicked his glance up at Tal and back down. “Not meaning to be offensive,” he said. “This child is powerful grateful to ye.”
    “All right,” said Tal, “you’ll live.” In fact, Tal wasn’t so sure—Hairy’d lost a lot of blood.
    Tal got to his feet and offered his hand. “Tal Jones,” he said, sticking out his hand.
    Hairy was on his knees but he took the hand. “Ronald,” he said.
    Ronald. Giant Hairy—Hairy Giant—was Ronald. Hairy was struggling to his feet, and Tal nearly got pulled over.
    When Hairy got onto two legs, like a human critter, Tal grasped how big he was. Not only tall but broad. And thick. To weigh him, you’d have to hang him, like beef.
    Tal himself was slight in every way—not quite to middling height, reedy of build. People told him that his shock of buckeye-colored hair and green eyes were cute, especially in summer when his freckles set them off. They also told him he might grow some more. He hated both remarks—you didn’t tell men such things, and Tal was a sixteen-year-old man.
    “I own to the name my blessed parents gave me,” said Hairy. “Ronald Dupree Smythe, rhyming with scythe.” The huge voice made Tal feel like an aspen quaking in the breeze. “But I prefer the title given by my colleagues, my fellow hunters of the beaver. Shakespeare.” Said with a glint of pride.
    Shakespeare? “How come?” Tal didn’t want to say the name. His recollection of the Bard of Avon was memorizing lines by sing-song and reciting them in chorus with his father.
    The giant pondered Tal’s expression, of voice and of face. “That will come when we’re better acquainted,” Hairy said, smiling down at Tal. “You may call me what you want for now.”
    Tal didn’t think it would be Ronald or Shakespeare, but could he call the fellow Hairy? Hairy reached down for Tal’s rifle, still lying on the ground.
    “What’s this?” the big man said. The gun looked like a wiping stick in his big hand. He fingered the orange and blue silk handkerchief.
    “This dainty was the last thing I saw before you shot me,” Hairy went on. “A flash of orange, and then a roar.” He bared his boulder teeth, and clacked them once. “What a roar!” He shook his head, maybe clearing his ears, then challenged Tal with a hard eye. “How come you got an orange silk hanky tied on?”
    Tal flushed, and flushed some more. “Well,” he said, reaching for his rifle. “Well…” He covered his flag, his banner, with his hands.
    Hairy nodded. He smiled a smile as wide and deep as a canyon. “Never you mind. Let’s get that bear skinned out.”
    “By God,” roared Hairy gently, “you have shot the grizzly bear. You slew the mighty silvertip—he of the sharp claw, the prodigious paw, and the powerful jaw. You are the conqueror of Old Ephraim, the beast that strikes terror into the heart of ’ary a mortal man.” He grinned an immense grin at his little St. George.
    Hairy, who had been