Mulak Reader - The Fella in the Red Hat

I love this story. It appeared in The Drummer, and then was reprinted by that magazine a few years later when they did a salute to Burton Spiller. 

Maybe I was assuming too much when I created a character for the young Burton Spiller—his anti-heroic style of writing had a profound effect on the genre, and he has been called the poet laurite of outdoor writing. The average reader—even of outdoor stories—wouldn’t know that. In researching the story, I talked to Tap Tapply, an outdoor legend in his own right who had been a hunting companion to Spiller. I treasure the letters I have from Mr. Tapply in regard to getting the Spiller character correct.

The Fella in the Red Hat

The sleigh bells on the door struck up a clamor as the pair of men entered the store, accompanied by a cold blast of November wind. The first man waved an answer to the greetings from those seated around the stove. His name was Burt.

"That coffee smells good already, Barney." he spoke to the storekeeper as he emptied and hung up his canvas shooting coat.

A small balding man looked up from filling a percolator, past Burt to where the second man still stood at the open door, peering out into the gathering darkness. 

"Gene!" the storekeeper called sharply, "I ain't heatin' the outdoors, for cryin' out loud."

          After a moment, an English setter entered the store and Gene closed the door behind him. The dog went directly to the stove and accepted the greeting pats of the two men sitting there. Then, after walking several small circles, he lay down heavily on the worn wooden floor.

          From his game pocket, Gene took three grouse and placed them next to those of his hunting partner on the wide ledge by the window, then he hung his shooting jacket over Burt's. He grinned as he addressed the storekeeper's permanent scowl.

"Better that the dog keeps you waiting a mite, Barney, than to start doing his business here in the store."

          (If you've been to northern New England, you'll know the way Gene spoke that sentence: it sounded more like "Betta thet the daag keeps you waitin' a mite, Ba'ny, then t' staat doin' his business hea' in the stoaa." All five of the men spoke with what other people referred to as a Yankee accent.)

          Next to the stove, Herb leaned forward until the front legs of his chair touched the floor. He examined the row of birds on the window ledge from over the tops of his spectacles. He shifted his chew before he spoke. 

"It appears that you fellows had quite a day of it."

          Burt nodded.

"We did take a few..." He pulled a chair close to the stove and sat between Herb and Doc Wood. "But that's not the half of it."

          Gene reached for a tin of Edgeworth from the tobacco shelf. "The birds we took aren't so much the story. It was that fellow in the red hat that we ran into. That was strange."

A cash register sat on the counter, its perpetual "No Sale" sign and yawning cash drawer as much a part of the scene as the shaded hanging lamps and stacks of canned goods on the shelves. Gene tossed a pair of coins into the open drawer.

          Barney said, "Pipe tobacco is seven cents, Gene. It has been since last spring." He closed the lid on the percolator and set it on the stove.

          "Christmas!” Gene tossed a second penny into the drawer. “This is getting to be an expensive habit."

          Without smiling, Barney observed, "I see milk prices are up again."

Gene, a dairy farmer, grinned to himself as he filled his pipe.  He sat on the edge of the wood box, with his setter at his feet.

          "What's this about a strange fellow?" Doc Wood spoke to Burt as he folded the newspaper he had been studying. His flannel shirt seemed incongruous with his gray suit jacket and well-groomed appearance until one noticed he also wore briar pants and rubber-bottomed pacs.

          "Yes, I guess he was strange..." From his shirt pocket Burt removed a flattened package of cigarettes and stared at it absently for a moment. "A nice enough fellow, but the whole day was a strange one." He slid his finger into the opening and tore through the top of the pack, offered a cigarette to Doc Wood, and took the last for himself.  "Let me tell you about it - I want you fellows to understand that this is no bull..."

          "Pshaw!" Herb spit into the label-less tin can he carried when he chewed indoors. "Here we go again: the only difference between a fairy tail and one of Burt's stories is that the one starts off with 'Once upon a time' and the other starts with 'This ain't no bull'."

          There was good humor in Herb's voice, and Burt chuckled with the others. After a moment, Burt began, "Gene and I were supposed to make a day of it, but he had the vet up looking at the herd this morning, so Count and I poked around a bit in the alders below the farm."

          At the sound of his name, the setter near the stove looked up, then rested his head back on his forepaws. His shape and lines were classic, and even in repose he seemed graceful. Gene reached down and scratched the dog's ears as Burt continued.

          "The first I saw of him was that red hat... Never saw red that bright before—like fire, almost."  Burt leaned forward and lit his cigarette from the match that Doc offered. "I was just going into the woods—it must have been about ten - when that red hat caught my eye up the road, then him and his setter came out of the fog. The fellow walked right up to me like I should have been expecting him—Stuck out his hand: 'Mister Spiller,' he says, 'I was afraid I'd missed you.' I was flabbergasted—I didn't know him from Adam."

          "A bird hunter?" Doc Wood asked.

          "He appeared to be: He had a good-looking setter with him and he had a nice little double under his arm." Burt winked broadly as he added, "I should have figured right then that the fellow had no sense at all: He was carrying a twenty bore."

          Gene grinned. He was the only one of the four hunters who used a twenty-gauge gun.

          "I figured one of you fellows must have sent him down to find me, but he said no... Said that he'd traveled a long ways to hunt with me and Count. He had on his hunting clothes and looked normal enough... except for that red hat."

          "He knew both you and Gene's dog here by name?" Barney squinted one eye as he spoke.

          "He did. Told me his name—darned if I can remember it—and said that he was a writer. I could tell by his accent that he wasn't from these parts. I still couldn't place him, but he wanted to hunt with me in particular—me and Count, here. The dogs seemed to tolerate each other, so I told the fellow I'd be pleased to have him along if that's what he wanted, but that I'd be hunting with Gene after lunch. 'Sure, sure,' he says. 'I can only stay a few hours, anyway.'"

          The squint on Barney's face intensified. "This is the same fellow who came a long ways to hunt with you? He can't stay more than an hour or two?"

          Burt shrugged. "It didn't make sense to me, either. Anyhow, we walked down to the brook crossing and started in. Nearly right off the dogs moved a bird from the hemlocks in there... An easy enough shot, left to right. When I took the bird, the fellow in the red hat says to me, 'I thought you only shot birds over points?'"

          There were snorts of amusement from the listeners. "I hear tell of partridge shots that’re that good," Herb pronounced the word 'paa-chige'. "Never can seem to meet up with them, though—Seems they've either moved out of state or kicked the bucket a few years back."

          Gene laughed. "Barney would have to quit stocking shells if all he sold depended on birds killed over points."

          The storekeeper sat with arms folded, scowling. "I just might stop selling 'em anyways if you an Burt don't stop wasting my time with these cock 'n bull stories of yours."

          "Cock 'n bull!" Burt feigned incredulousness. "I know I might have told a few stories in my time..."

          "A few! Now there's an understatement."

          "... but what makes this one so tough is that it's true." Burt paused a moment before continuing the narrative. "We worked that whole area down there, but the dogs couldn't seem to hold any of the birds... You know how skittish they can be in a quiet fog like we had this morning... And as soon as the dogs would get birdy, we'd hear the grouse roaring out fifty yards in front of us. The one bird that did come my way is still flying, for all the good my two shots did."

          Herb nodded. "There's a lot of space around 'em."

          "The fellow in the red hat was getting curt with his setter—He wanted to show her off a bit, I guess, but the birds weren't cooperating." Burt shook his head, remembering. "Why, I told him, you can't blame a dog for bumping a jumpy bird." Burt thought for a moment, then added, "This fellow had a few funny ideas—First there was that business of me only taking birds over points, then I had to tell him a dog only shows you where the grouse are... He doesn't hypnotize them, for goodness sake."

          Doc Wood sat back in his chair, having arrived at a conclusion.  "Probably a quail hunter. Remember when Barney's brother-in-law came up from Carolina to hunt with us? He thought the dog should point every bird, too."

          Burt considered this for a moment. "That brother-in-law was a feather merchant—No offense, Barney—but you could tell right off he was a phony. I don't believe he's much of a quail hunter back in Carolina, either." Across from Burt, Barney nodded his head in agreement. "But this fellow in the red hat this morning knew the game, all right. Just the way he moved through the woods and handled his dog made it plain he was a grouse hunter.

          "Well, we finished working out that brook bottom and came out onto Potter Road. The fellow checked his watch..." Burt brightened and clapped his leg. "Another strange thing about him: He was wearing his watch strapped to his wrist like a bloody Englishman. Well, he said he only had an hour or so left before he had to go. I figured we'd hunt up behind the old Pratt place... that would put us back out onto Brickyard Road about the time I told Gene I'd meet him.

          "Up until then, neither dog showed us much... Not that his female setter was all that bad, you understand, but the birds were so skittish that even Count couldn't handle 'em." Heads nodded around the stove. The friends had all hunted behind the dog Burt would later call the one best he had ever known. 

"At the end of the old orchard up there, his dog hit as classic a point as you could ever hope to see. Count came up and backed, and it was prettier than that picture there..." Burt indicated the Arnott reproduction on the Peters Cartridge Company calendar behind the counter. "I waited for the fellow to go in and take the shot seeing as how I already had a bird, but he waved me ahead. That grouse held until I got out in front of his setter—That's how well his dog had him pinned. It was an easy going away shot, but the fellow carried on like I'd just won the war." Burt mimicked the man's clipped speech: "'Burton Spiller actually shot a grouse over my setter.'"

          Herb spit a brown stream into his makeshift spittoon. "You mean there's somebody else who calls partridge 'grouse'?"

          "I guess the fellow had some sense after all." Burt grinned. 

"Within a few minutes, Count found the bird's partner. Doc, if you thought this fellow might have been a four-flusher, you should have seen him handle that shot. The bird flew right at him—you know how that can fluster the best of 'em—but he just turned around and took the bird going away." Burt was on his feet, demonstrating how the stranger had ducked away from the close passing grouse, then turned to take the shot.

"His dog made a pretty retrieve from some thick juniper, too." He paused a moment. "Another strange thing about this fellow: He sat down and dressed out that bird just as soon as his setter brought it to him. That's it—The bird on the left there." Burt pointed to a hen grouse on the window ledge. The bird had some oak leaves protruding from its open body cavity.

          "Why didn't he keep the bird after going to all the trouble of dressing it out?" The beginnings of disbelief had crept into Herb's tone.

          "He did... At first." Burt held up his hands. "But hold your horses, I'm coming to that part."

          "Coffee's ready." Barney sniffed the steam coming from the pot, then went to the counter and passed out five well-used coffee mugs. Doc Wood held out his cup for a tentative sample.

          "Well..." Barney looked expectantly at Doc. "How is it?"

          "It could use a little... something." Doc held up a finger, mocking seriousness. "And I think I've got the something it needs." He produced a pint bottle from his jacket pocket.

          "Ah-ha." Gene smiled. "I've always respected Doc's professional opinions."

          Barney poured the coffee, and Doc added a shot of whiskey to each cup. He automatically skipped Burt's. "For medicinal purposes only, you understand." He grinned, and even Burt, a tea totaler, chuckled.

          "Yes indeed," Barney lifted his cup towards Doc. "A little rye is the best thing that ever happened to a cup of coffee."

          "Especially at this time of the day." Gene nodded. "Anything more on them making Doc’s medicine legal again, Barney?"

          "Naw. Ratification has been out of the papers these past few weeks with the election coming up. Last I heard they were shy four states.  It'll be next year, more than likely." Barney was the only one among them who regularly read the newspapers during hunting season.

          "Go ahead with your story, Burt. I've got a feeling we're just coming to the good part." Herb came close to smiling. Barney straddled his chair seat with his arms crossed over the back. Doc tasted his spiked coffee, added a bit more whiskey to his cup, then offered the bottle to Herb. Only Gene sat away from the stove. From the wood box he watched the listeners rather than Burt.

          "I'm not so sure I won't have some of Doc's barley juice when all this is over." Burt ground out his cigarette under his boot, and there was a long pause before his rumbling voice continued.

"We came out and sat on the wall while we waited for Gene. The fellow in the red hat said to me, 'I came a long, long way to hunt with you, Mister Spiller,'... He was still calling me mister...'And spending some time with you has cleared up a few things I always suspected were true but wouldn't let myself believe.'"

They all smiled at Burt's imitation of the stranger's accent.

"'Why,' I told him, 'I've yet to see any bird dog that'll handle half the grouse he finds, let alone point every one in the woods. The bird is just too wary to let himself get pinned down consistently. They were that way when my father first took me hunting down Maine, and I expect they'll never change. Why, what makes grouse hunting such grand sport is that a dog can't point them every time.'"

          "Amen." Muttered Doc.

          "'And don't believe the man who tells you he only takes his birds over points... At least, not if he's speaking of grouse. A dog on point is a lovely sight, but there's lots more to the sport than that.' I told him. 'That Foster fellow down in Massachusetts thought up that clay pigeon game to practice grouse shooting, and all those long crossers and overhead shots sure aren't chances you'd get over a dog on point. When it comes to grouse, every hunter I know takes 'em as they come.'" Burt shook his head, and paused to sip his coffee.

          "Where in hell did the man get ideas like that?" Herb pronounced the word 'idea' with an r at the end.

          Burt replied slowly, with the air of a man who is listening to his own thoughts. "When I asked him the same question, he said he had read my books..."

          "Pshaw! You can't learn hell from breakfast about bird hunting from some book!" Herb sputtered.

          "A tin horn." Doc pronounced disgustedly.

          Burt was silent. His thoughts were on the collection of disconnected paragraphs in his desk drawer at home. He had never before so much as tried to write anything, but just this fall he had assembled some thoughts for an essay. He even had a title in mind: "His Majesty, the Grouse". That was the sum total of his writing "career". But, unlike his friends around the stove, he had understood the stranger's meaning clearly: The books the fellow in the red hat had spoken of were written by him, Burton Spiller. What could the man have possibly meant?

          Doc's slow blink warned of the coming barb. "I don't believe this fellow in Burt's story was a hunter at all—He sounds more like a fiddle maker who got his strings a mite too tight."

          The jibe was aimed at Burt, and he laughed along with the others.  The ribbing never ceased. Barney hastened to counter, "Or maybe a doctor treating himself for a cold."

          Doc raised his coffee mug. "Nothing wrong with that—Of course, I'm about a dozen colds ahead of myself right now."

          Gene got to his feet. "Hey, let me show you the shells he gave me to try." Gene crossed to where his shooting coat hung on the wall. Count's eyes followed him.

          "I forgot all about them, Gene." Burt's voice held renewed enthusiasm. "What was it he called them - Plastic?"

          "That's it... Don't know why, though... They seem to be made of Bakelite or some varnished stuff." Gene searched through his coat pockets. "At first I thought they were some sort of fancy European shell, but they say Peters on 'em plain as day, even though they're colored yellow..." Gene trailed off, muttering to himself as he brought forth only the familiar blue paper cases from his jacket. He searched into his pants pockets. "... If I can just find the damn things."

          "Maybe you used them." Burt suggested.

          Gene shook his head. "Five shots - five empties." He picked out several spent hulls from the handful he held. "I don't see how I could have, but I must have lost the three of them."

          Burt looked around at the expressions of amused disbelief that ringed the stove. "I saw that fellow give those yellow 20 gauge shells to Gene, and I saw Gene put them into his coat pocket there."

          Gene came back and sat on the edge of the wood box. "Burt was with that fellow in the red hat when I pulled up. The fellow knew my name, too ... called me 'Mister McCrillis' ... Burt must have told him."

          Burt shook his head solemnly. "No."

          Gene continued, the narrator now.  "Well, we chewed the fat for a few minutes, the three of us... I even asked the fellow who he was voting for tomorrow... Now listen to this—When I asked him, he said with a straight face, 'Who's running?' 'Why,' I told him, 'President Hoover and some Democrat name of Roosevelt. Where've you been? It's been near the only thing in the papers for months?' 'Well,' he said to me, 'I'd put my money on Roosevelt...'"

          "Pshaw!" There were laughs of surprise from the three listeners.  "First this fellow don't know so much as who's in the race, then he's going to bet cash money on a man who don't have a snowball's chance in hell!" Barney shook his head in unison with the others.

          "Roosevelt! Come on, Gene." Doc Wood smiled.

          "That's pretty much what I told the fellow - Hoover's a sure thing. But he said New Hampshire isn't the whole country," Gene pronounced the name of the state as three words. "And when the votes were counted Hoover would be looking for a job."

          Barney's scowl nearly disappeared as he poured more coffee. "Why didn't you bring this fellow around to the store so we could have taken him up on that bet?"

          "Hell, I'd have taken some of his money, too." Herb added.

          Burt looked from face to face as Barney refilled his mug. "You'd best tell them about the tobacco pouch, too, Gene."

          Gene spoke from behind a cloud of smoke as he re-lit his pipe. "When I took out my pipe here, the fellow was quick to offer me some of his tobacco. But then he looked at that strapped on watch on his arm—You'd think he'd seen a ghost. 'I've got to go," he says, and without so much as a good-by, he called to his dog and set off, nearly running down the road into the fog.

'I'll give you a lift.' I yelled after him, but I never heard him answer." Gene paused. "He wasn't gone more than a moment or two when I noticed his fancy tobacco pouch sitting on the fender of the Ford where he left it. Burt and I figured we'd just catch up with the fellow and give it back, so we cranked her up and headed after him..." Gene trailed off, thinking.

          "Well..." Herb grew impatient.

          "Maybe this is the strangest part of all—We hadn't gone more than a hundred yards when we found that partridge he shot, laying right in the middle of the road there. We drove at least a mile down Brickyard road, but we never saw anything more of that fellow in the red hat... What's the matter, Burt?"

          "I put that fellow's tobacco pouch in my back pocket, and it's gone now."

          Gene started to get up. "I'll go look in the Ford. Maybe it slipped out."

          Burt looked more baffled than ever. "How? I buttoned the flap."

          There was a silence.

          "Probably in the same place with Gene's yellow shells." Barney shook his head, then with a wave of his hands got up in disgust and towed his chair back toward the counter.

          "Pretty good, Burt, pretty good." Doc turned to Gene. "You fellows must have rehearsed your parts. That's a new touch."

          Gene's frown said that he wasn't used to being doubted. "Listen - This ain't some tall tale, dammit."

          "Of course it ain't." Herb took out his chew and deposited it into the tin can. "But, then again, it ain't nearly as good as that story Burt had last week about the cemetery up in the Desolation Covert. Maybe you ought to have the fellow using a gun that shoots lightning, or maybe a wolf instead of a bird dog..."

          Doc grinned openly as he got up. "Like I said before, Burt: With yarns like that, you ought to take up story telling full time."

          Gene said nothing, but Burt noticed by the way he chewed his pipe stem that he was just barely holding his Irish temper. Burt reached across and patted Gene on the arm and said privately, "Easy, boy." He winked, and Gene returned a nod, tight-lipped though his expression was.

          In his inside pocket, Doc discovered a list in his wife's handwriting and handed it over to Barney. While the storekeeper filled a box with groceries from the list, Doc began the latest traveling salesman story. Herb headed for the back room, unhitching his suspenders as he went. Gene sat in silence for a few minutes, then got up and went through the pockets of his shooting jacket once more. He shook his head 'no' in answer to Burt's questioning look.

          "I'll be stopping by the store in the morning," Announced Doc, "And I'll be happy to give anyone who's here a lift to the polls." Then he smiled and added, "That is, providing there's no more talk of the Democrats winning."

          Burt hadn't heard the pique. He sat deep in thought. The stove door clinked open as Barney added another chunk of split chestnut to the fire. Count rested his head against Gene's double where it leaned against the wood box, and his master idly rubbed the dog's ears. Herb returned, and the conversation drifted to the coming winter, then to the ongoing depression, then, inexorably, to politics. Burt remained quiet, but Gene saw his faint smile. When the moment was ripe, Burt drew out his billfold and removed all the folding money it contained.

          "About that election tomorrow," Burt's tone was casual, and he let a five dollar bill slip to the floor. "I've just got a hunch, you understand... I'll match anybody even money who'll see my bet on—what was that Democrat fellow's name again?"

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