Jim Kjelgaard Quotes

Slowly, deliberately, the dog turned from the black wolf and walked toward the man. He was a dog, and dogs chose men.

Facts are fine, fer as they go, but they're like water bugs skittering atop the water. Legends, now - they go deep down and bring up the heart of a story.

Courage alone was keeping the animal on its feet.

Fire nibbled anxiously at the kindling, then took a big bite and flame crackled.

He had wished for a dog, and as though some good fairy had waved a magic wand, there was a dog.

Three hundred yards away, a mule deer that had already browsed its fill and been to water, rested in the shelter of a dry wash. Long-eared jack rabbits went about their various affairs. Gophers ventured a few yards from their dens, then squeaked and scurried back. A heavy-bodied rattlesnake, just emerged from its winter’s den, coiled near a clump of cholla cactus and waited for a pack rat to venture from its spiny nest.

Born to hunt, and to be the companion of some human being who liked to hunt, he had all the fine instincts of a hunter. But it was Sean’s misfortune that he had also been born with an almost perfect body. His head seemed molded by some master artist. His spine and back and massive chest were ideally formed, and his tail was a graceful brush that dropped in precisely the right curve. Sean was a show dog. Far too valuable to risk in the wilderness, he was fast making his mark in the world of dog shows.

You, Dog. Youah all dog. Seems mighty funny to keep you in a piddlin’ little cage, and just use you fo’ getting’ blue ribbons and little cups when you could be a huntin’ dog. Seems might funny. Still, I s’pose it’s impo’tant, else, Danny and Mistah Haggin wouldn’t do it. But fo’ the life of me I can’t figgah it.

It seemed that, right here, he had most of the things he’d ever wanted: a horse, a dog, a comfortable camp, and freedom to do work he liked. He wouldn’t ask for another thing.

It was a large, tawny hound, smoke-gray in color. One of its dangling ears had been ripped and was almost healed. Tom looked wonderingly at it. Its outward confirmation was similar to the Plott hounds that made up old Bill’s pack, but it was not a Plott hound. Its jowls were very heavy, and overhung the lower jaw in leathery folds. On the sad-looking face, tan relieved the hounds smoky-gray color.

the older men who had asked neither favors nor assistance from anyone. They had settled their own problems in their own way or died trying, and if they died, no survivor had ever looked to the law for redress. Andy

Stealing goods from a town store would be a criminal offense and provoke righteous indignation. Stealing muskrats from his swamp would be just another example of what the hillmen were always doing to each other and provoke, at the very most, a sympathetic chuckle. Even

He had been born with a quivering bump of curiosity that stopped throbbing only when it was satisfied,

I was just being civil," the waiter retorted sulkily. The

Drifting out of the black sky, it was a far-carrying and haunting cry. The first hairy man who heard that sound had tilted his head to search out its source, and it has touched a sensitive chord in human beings ever since. It was the voice of freedom unlimited, the incarnation of nature itself, the sound and song of fond dreams: the cry of the northbound wild geese.

He understood the hills, and all about them. He read furtive rustlings in the brush as understandingly as residents of Stauffer read their newspapers. He knew the winter’s den from which the she-bear, walking lean from her winter’s hibernation, took her cubs to meet the world. He could interpret the cries of the hawk, the screams of the jay. The pitch and tone of the wind, the sound of the rain, the formation of the clouds, the actions of birds, all told him secrets hidden from most men.

It was the biggest and most magnificent horse Jed had ever seen. He knew horses. Son of an indifferent mother and a father who vanished shortly after he was born, victim of paralysis in his childhood, he had spent all his life doing cores for Raglan and other stockmen in the hills. He had never earned more than ten dollars a month, but he had dreams and ambitions. If he could get only ten acres of land for himself, he would somehow or other procure a mare and make a living raising horses. That, for Jed, would be all he wanted of happiness.

The new day and a gentle wind arrived together. For a time, the breeze practiced caution, plucking tentatively at this or that, as though teaching itself what to do with a strength as yet unfamiliar and untried. Then, as the dim gray light in the early morning sky flexed its own sinews and found force within them, the wind rushed at the tules and set them dancing.

Occasionally, the ripples on the surface was shattered or crossed by a curling V-wake that marked the watery trail of a swimming muskrat. At the far north end of the lake, a lithe doe, who had left her dappled fawn hidden in a thicket, sipped, raised a nervous head to look, and lower in to sip again. As though his last dark deed, the murder of a nesting mallard, could not abide the light, a snake-thin mink looked for a den in which he might lie up and found one in a hallow stump. Two crows, busily trying to pick up a dead fish that floated with white belly upward, cawed their disappointment or rising excitement as their fortunes waned or rose. Saucy, red-winged blackbirds tilted on bending rushes and whistled defiance to the rest of the world.

The dog’s story was just another tragedy among innumerable similar cases that are seldom brought to light because the principals involved cannot tell their own stories.

A dog show is illustrative of man’s achievement, and blue ribbon is more than a bit of silk. It’s a mark, Danny, one that never can be erased. The dog that wins it will not die. If we send Boy to the show, and he comes back as best of breed, then that’s something for all future dog lovers and dog owners to build on. Don’t you see? A hundred years from now someone may stand on this very spot with a fine Irish setter, and he’ll trace it lineage back to some other very fine setter, perhaps to Boy. And he will know that he has built on what competent men have declared to be the very best. He will know also that he, too, can go one step nearer the perfection that men must and will have in all things. It did not start with us, Danny, but with the first man who ever dreamed of an Irish setter. All we’re trying to do is advance one step farther and Boy’s ribbon, if he wins one, will simply be proof that we succeeded.

cleanly as the plow wounded it, and the scorching sun burned a healing scab over the wound. Keeping intent eyes on both mules and waiting for the fly to bite, Joe was not one man but two. One of them felt a soul-filling