The Boy Who Cried Wolf
Twice for a joke, and once because it was true
Page 1
High above a village in the mountains there is a green shoulder of pasture where the sheep are taken up every summer, and one year the village sent a boy of thirteen up there to mind them, because he was old enough and because everybody else was needed in the fields. The old shepherd walked him up on the first morning and showed him the water, and the fold of stones where the flock was penned at night, and the places where a lamb could get itself stuck. And then he gave him one instruction, which was that if a wolf ever came down off the rocks the boy was to stand on the big stone and shout, and the whole village would hear him and come up. Then the old man went back down the path, and the boy was alone on a mountain with two hundred sheep, and it was nine o'clock in the morning.
Page 2
By eleven o'clock he had eaten his bread. By noon he had counted the sheep four times, found the same number every time, and built a small tower out of stones. By two he had lain down flat on his back in the grass and watched the clouds go over for what felt like a week, and had discovered the central fact about minding sheep, which is that it is the most boring job in the entire world and that nothing whatsoever is going to happen. And at about three o'clock, looking down at the little village a long way below with all its people moving about in it like beetles, the boy had an idea — and the moment he had it, he knew he was going to do it.
Page 3
He got up on the big stone, and he filled his chest, and he shouted the word down the mountain as loudly as he could: WOLF. And then he shouted it again, and again — and he watched the village at the bottom come apart like a kicked anthill. People came out of doors. Somebody dropped a basket. And then they came, the whole lot of them, up that path at a run in the middle of the afternoon with their tools in their hands: the woman from the house at the end, the smith, four or five men out of the fields, and the old shepherd last, a long way behind, because he was seventy. It took them a quarter of an hour. The boy stood on his stone and watched them climb every step of it toward him, and he had never in his life felt so interesting.
Page 4
They came over the lip of the pasture at a run, out of breath, red in the face, looking everywhere at once — and there was no wolf. There were two hundred sheep grazing peacefully in the sunshine with their heads down, not one of them so much as looking up, and there was a boy on a rock laughing so hard that he had to sit down on it. Nobody else laughed. The woman from the end house put her hands on her knees and got her breath, and then she told him exactly what she thought of him, and so did the smith, and so did everybody else; and then they went back down the mountain. The old shepherd, who had taken twenty minutes to get up there, did not say anything at all. He looked at the boy for a while, and then he turned round and started back down, which was somehow worse than anything the others had said.
Page 5
He did it again eight days later, and the second time was not as good. He got up on the stone and shouted exactly as before, and the sound came down into the village square where the women were at the well and the smith was at his door; and they all looked up at the mountain — and then they looked at one another. Some of them went. The woman from the end house went, because of the sheep, and three men went with her, and they climbed the whole way up again in the heat; and found two hundred sheep grazing, and no wolf, and a boy on a rock. But half the village had not moved at all. They had heard him perfectly well. They had simply gone back to what they were doing, and that is the moment this story actually turns, and nobody up the mountain noticed it happening.
Page 6
That evening the old shepherd came up again, slowly, and helped him put the flock into the stone fold for the night, and when the hurdle was across he stood leaning on his staff and finally said something. He said that the boy had not understood what he had spent. He said that a shout from this mountain was the only thing standing between those sheep and the rocks up there, and that it was not the boy's shout — it belonged to the whole village, and the boy had spent half of it for a laugh and could not get it back. The boy said that it was only a joke and that nothing had happened either time. The old man said that was perfectly true, and that it was the last thing he would say about it, and went back down the path in the dark. And the boy sat by the fold feeling got at, the way you do when somebody has been completely right at you.
Page 7
Four days later, at dusk, the boy was bringing the flock in toward the fold when the sheep nearest the rocks all put their heads up at once, together, in a way he had never seen them do — and he looked where they were looking. There was a wolf coming down the gully. It was lean and grey and long-legged and it came down over the rocks without hurrying at all, and it was not dramatic in the least, and that was the thing that frightened him most: it came down that mountain like something going to work. The boy's mouth went completely dry. He got himself up onto the big stone with his legs shaking under him, and he filled his chest, and he shouted the word down the mountain — and this time it was true.
Page 8
Down in the village they heard him. Every single person in that village heard him perfectly clearly, standing in their doorways in the blue evening with the sound coming down off the mountain — and not one of them moved. The woman from the end house said something short about that boy and went back inside to her pot. The smith shut his door. Two men in the lane looked at each other and shrugged and walked on. They all knew exactly what it was: it was the third time, and they had climbed that mountain twice in the heat for nothing, and they were not doing it again for a joke. The only person in the whole village who did not go indoors was the old shepherd, who stood in the lane for a long moment listening to it, because something in it did not sound the same — and then he set off up the path alone, at seventy, in the dark.
Page 9
Nobody came. The boy shouted until his voice gave out, and stood on that stone and watched the path and nobody came up it. And then the wolf was in among the sheep, and after that there was nothing anybody could have done about anything. Two hundred sheep went off that pasture in every direction at once, in the dark, over ground where a sheep cannot see — up into the rocks, down the scree, into the gullies, away along the mountain and out of sight. The boy ran after them with his staff and the dog ran until it could not run any more, and it made no difference at all. By the time the old shepherd came over the lip of the pasture with his lantern there was nothing on it. The fold was empty and the gate was open and the whole mountain was full of sheep nobody could find.
Page 10
In the morning the whole village came up — all of them, at first light, without anybody having to shout anything — and they spent three days on that mountain walking the gullies and the scree and the far side of the ridge, and they got most of the flock back. Not all of it. About sixty sheep were never found at all, and every household in that village was poorer for the winter because of it, and everybody knew exactly why. Nobody shouted at the boy. That was the worst part. The old shepherd put him to work and he worked those three days like a man twice his age and said almost nothing. And he minded that flock for four more summers afterwards and never played a single trick again as long as he lived — but it did not matter how long he went on being honest, because for the rest of his life, whenever that boy called out about anything at all, there was a half-second pause before anybody moved. He had spent it. He never got it back.
About this story
- Audience: kids (ages 6–12)
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