Chapter II: Part 2

Guided by that precious instinct which is the eternal heritage of all the wood-kind, the spectre-like shape moved briskly across some gullied foot-hills, climbing, slipping, leaping, and crept through a brush-fence just as the lowering clouds opened, and the rain began to pour in driving torrents. As the water beat upon his back and plastered the hair to his lean sides, the old forager began to move faster and with less desire for concealment, for well he knew that human beings would not dare thrust their noses out on such a night. It was all his own, and he could work his will unhampered. Through coarse clumps of wire-grass and stray patches of clover he went, casting his sharp eyes neither to right nor left, for he was fully aware that his gentle prey would never wander around in an open field on such a night as this. Near a corner in the farther end of the pasture rose a great black bulk; when the lightning flashed the gray wolf could see it, and something white at its base besides. It was a straw rick, the result of last year’s wheat harvest, and it afforded some protection from the wrath of the elements. Towards this the marauder went, relentlessly, steadily. Some two rods from it he stopped, crouched, and waited. Presently a vivid glare lit up the drenched landscape, and there, huddling in the lee of the rick, was a flock of sheep, crowded together and shivering from the wet. Dense darkness followed the lightning’s flash, and under its cover the robber drew nearer, nearer, nearer. Now, through the gloom and the sheets of rain he could make out the cowering forms—for they had already scented danger, though powerless to resist it. Closer yet crept the shape of death, his empty stomach dragging the ground so low had his body sunk. The sheep pressed with short, jerky movements against their straw shelter, wild-eyed, helpless. They felt the danger, but did not know how to combat it. Then the climax came, as swiftly as a bolt from the sky. A dim shape was projected through the night; there was a bleat choked short off and a wild scurry of feet flying blindly from danger. One ewe alone remained, prostrate upon the ground, while at her soft throat keen fangs tore, and a curved red tongue lapped up the warm blood as it flowed. The gray wolf was skilled in strategy. He knew that when a sheep-dog turned traitor and began to harry the flocks, he never went beyond the throats of his victims, and took only one a night. So the killer lay and drank the rich life-current as it came; drank until even his ravenous hunger was appeased. Then gnawing tentatively at the draggled wound he had made, he arose and turned his besmeared visage towards the dark line of knobs which was his hiding-place and his home. A short time later, when the summer storm was dying away in the east and the thunder was but a growling echo, a gaunt figure entered the mouth of Devil’s Gorge and became engulfed in the black shadows which hung over it.

Five hours later the sun came up into a sky of purest blue. With it arose the hill-farmers, strong from their long night’s rest for the day of toil. One there was who mounted his piebald saddle mare, with a bucket balanced on his saddle-bow, and went to salt his sheep. At the bars one was missing; an unusual thing. He called and called again, the cry which had never failed to bring her before. But there was no answer. Then the farmer urged his horse forward and began the search. Around the field he went, and at last drew up at the straw rick. There lay the lost one, dead. He dismounted and made an examination. Her throat was wofully mangled and torn, but there was no other hurt upon her. “A sheep-dog’s gone wrong!” was the man’s audible comment, as he arose and mounted his horse again to summon his fellow-farmers.

They came to the scene of the slaughter, one and all, for sheep-raising was their most paying industry, and sheep-murder was a crime to which there was attached one penalty and one only—death. The ewe lay as the killer had left her, limbs straight and stiffened, head back, and that awful, damning wound in her white throat. One by one they came and looked, those rugged, gnarled, horny-handed hill-men. One by one they shook their heads. “A sheep-dog done it,” was the one remark; “an’ be he mine, I’ll kill ’im myself!” Then arose the question, how to detect the culprit? Each dog had followed his master and each was called up and examined, but nothing was proven. Every mouth was clean and fresh; there were no clots of wool nor blood-stained noses. And each man breathed a sigh of relief when his favorite was exonerated, for “Love me, love my dog” is never more exemplified than in the sheep-raising districts, where, with almost human intelligence, the four-footed retainers care for the flocks entrusted to their care. The meeting was preparing to break up when some one discovered a track in the rain-soaked ground. It was fully four inches across, and the claw to each toe was plainly marked. It was useless to fit a dog’s foot to that colossal track. Some strange animal had assaulted the flock, and there was not a heart but beat easier when they found this out. For a farmer to kill his dog required a sacrifice almost as great as that which Abraham made when he prepared to offer up Isaac.

So, amid wild conjectures and impossible theories, the farmers dispersed. That very night another flock was visited and one taken from it. The raider left no clue. He came, slew one sheep and drained its blood, then went his way and the darkness hid him. The farmers met again and held council. It must be a dog, they said, for it killed like a dog. Anything else would do away with half a dozen sheep, or more. But the meeting resulted in nothing, because there was nothing to do except keep a sharp lookout. The next night the same thing happened, and the next, and the next, and so on for a week. Always a different flock, but always one sheep was claimed, one only. Then it was the farmers took to sitting up of nights and gathering their flocks under shelter. This invisible scourge bade fair to devastate their folds, and strenuous action must needs be taken. That first night of watching one went to sleep at his post along towards morning, and when the call of a neighboring cock awakened him at sunrise, it was to find one of his yearlings dead not ten feet from him. The destroyer had crept in while he slept and laughed at the loaded gun across his knees, while proceeding to feast on the choicest of his flock. Then alarm changed to terror. What was this dreadful thing which came at night and which left no trace behind? No one could answer, and the deeper the mystery grew, the more the farmers quaked and wondered.

But later, upon a night when the moon was waning, another had seen a huge gray object gliding towards the lot in which his sheep were corralled. Then haste got the better of judgment, and the man fired before the marauder got within good range. The result was only a handful of coarse drab hair found upon the ground the next morning. Then hounds were brought and put upon the trail. They followed it, mouthing, to the entrance of Devil’s Gorge, and there lost the scent on the boulders and the pebbly soil. But this gave a clue to the men. Their enemy dwelt somewhere within the gloomy recesses of that mighty cleft in the hills. So thither they came, night by night, and watched the entrance of that dismal place. But when they returned, unsuccessful, to their homes in the morning, it was to discover that one of their unguarded flocks had been entered, and a member of it lifeless. So dismay seized them, for it seemed that they were helpless before the subtlety of this mysterious assassin. Their nicest plans were frustrated, and their schemes brought to naught.

Then traps were laid, cunning devices of wood, and pitfalls, screened with leaves and dry limbs. Sometimes these were found sprung, sometimes unmolested, but sprung or set, they never claimed a prey. Whatever it was that worried their sheep seemed proof against all their wiles. Still the nightly visits continued, and dead mutton lay everywhere, and the buzzards darkened the sky in their circling flight. It was as though a plague had come upon the land. Driven to desperation, the farmers took their guns and fell to patrolling the dark ravines, especially Devil’s Gorge, whither it was surely known the destroyer had at one time gone. They found nothing, though day by day they went in numbers and scoured the defiles of the knobs. That for which they sought remained in hiding, and came forth only when the generous mantle of night covered his movements.

Among the many who had suffered from the nocturnal prowler’s depredations was one of sterner mould than his fellows. A tall, bony-faced, austere man, who talked little and thought much. And his thinking led him to this. When, in the ceaseless round of slaying, three of his sheep had been taken, he mounted his horse one day without a word to any one, and rode into town. When he came back after nightfall, he brought with him a huge steel trap, big enough to hold a bear. The next morning he arose while the stars were yet shining, whistled his dog, and started on foot to Devil’s Gorge, taking the trap with him. The dog went in advance and after him the man, struggling through the damp hollow with his heavy burden over his shoulder. Day dawned on the peaks above them, and filtered faintly down into the depths through which they toiled. Suddenly the dog came rushing back to his master, his bushy tail between his legs and his whole body a-quiver from fright. The man quickened his pace and pushed forward grimly, drawing a large revolver from his pocket at the same time. Rounding a bend in the gorge, he came upon that which had sent the shepherd dog cowering back. Perched upon a large boulder was a monstrous wolf, gray and grim in the half light. Raising his arm the man fired, but the wolf leaped just before the flash and ran in the other direction. The man followed as quickly as he could, and presently saw the big form disappear in a hole up the sloping side of the cliff. The entrance of this den was worn as by the constant passing of feet, and the man felt that he had found the home of his enemy. So he set his trap, right under the lip of the crevice, cunningly hiding it with dead leaves and the rubbish of the woods, and securing the strong chain to the trunk of a dwarfed black oak. The first step the monster took on his next raid would make him a prisoner; the steel gyves would hold him fast until his foes came and killed him.

In the dead of night, when the moon had climbed the towering peak of Bald Knob, and the hill-farmers below kept silent watch for the coming of the raider, a face appeared in the cleft on the side of Devil’s Gorge. There was the craft of a lifetime in the burning eyes as they suspiciously swept the ground immediately in front of his den. There was nothing to awaken distrust except the tumbled condition of the earth, but the old wolf hesitated. Then hunger, the one law which the wood-folk know not how to disobey, drove him out. He rested one foot gingerly upon a bed of leaves, leant a little more weight to it as he prepared to draw the other one forward, and just then two bands of steel arose up out of the ground and gripped him nearly to the knee. With a deep howl of wrath and terror the old warrior fought for his freedom. Around and around he tore, gnashing with impotent teeth at that awful thing which held him like a vise. For the space of an hour he wrenched and struggled, then suddenly realizing the futility of his efforts, he crouched upon his belly to rest. It was near morning when he accepted the last resort, and began the heroic task of freeing himself.

Before sunup, the man who had set the trap came with exultation on his face, confident of victory. He found the trampled ground, the sprung trap, and fastened in it the fore foot of a large wolf with part of the leg, which had been gnawed in two just below the knee. The spoiler of the folds had baffled them to the end, but the flocks were never more disturbed.

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THE FIGHT ON THE TREE-BRIDGE

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THE FIGHT ON THE TREE-BRIDGE

THE forest lay black in the close embrace of the odorous young night. Soft, balsamic waves of air rose strata above strata, stealing between roughly corrugated boles and smooth trunks, and the satin-soft stems of the young saplings who had yet to win their spurs as knights of the wood against the mighty winds; permeating every dell and dingle, every copse and tangled covert. The nostrils which these air-waves touched tingled with delight, and the lungs which were bathed and invigorated by this life-giving essence from nature’s laboratory expanded with a conscious strength, and sent the red blood bounding from them on its ceaseless errand. The season was early summer. Beneath the interlacing boughs it was black—black as the night of Egypt’s curse. A solid bank of gloom which bore no outline and no shape. So might it have been just before God uttered his first command to things terrestrial. Here and there a tree arose above its army of fellows, and the delicate tracery of spreading branch, and even of tapering leaf, was etched upon the vastness overhead. In the sky the faithful stars were burning. Not the smallest speck of cloud veiled their earnest faces, and the mellow radiance which their united power shed fell like a blessing upon the glad earth. But the forest baffled the star rays—those gentle messengers which came so timidly upon their missions of light. The leaves at the tops of the trees gleamed glossy and green, but they were a numberless multitude of shields to the solitude below.

The forest went off to the gullied hills in one direction; in another it sloped sharply down a bluff to the river, with an accompaniment of running briers and rotting, lichen-covered stumps and an occasional fallen warrior of the wood which some storm had overcome. The river was not wide—a half-grown rabbit might have swum it with ease had the water been stagnant—but here it ran swift and deep between its high, rock-bound banks. It flowed silently, though, except for a low purling where a drift had formed and a sucking gurgle where a ledge let down the bed.

This river was a source of much worry and concern to the wood-people. All of them could swim, some well and some very badly, but more than one family circle had been bereft by reason of the treacherous stream, for in addition to the velocity with which it wound its way through the wood, shifting whirlpools lurked within it, against which the strongest swimmer’s power was as naught. There was a second forest across the river, not as large as the first, it is true, but still wide enough to shelter many a tiny dweller, as well as give him food. So when friend wanted to visit friend, or cousin to call upon cousin, there was this black, whispering barrier stretching between, mocking them with its insinuating murmurs, and seeking to lure them to its faithless and fatal bosom with low cooings and shining, siren arms. And on certain moonlit nights in spring there had been those who heard the mating call wafted through the stillness. Coming in answer, they had suddenly found themselves standing on the brink of that taunting river, while from the other shore the cry would come again, tender and appealing. Then hot blood and the madness of the season would have their way, and the young buck, belong to what family he may, would put discretion behind him and glide out into the stream with the echo of his mistress’ call as a beacon and a guide. On rare occasions one would make the passage safely. More often, as he battled with the current, snaky fingers would shoot up from beneath and grip him, whirl him around and around in maddening circles, and finally drag him down with a hiss of victory, and his lifeless carcass might have been seen afloat the next day, miles away.

All this was before the great storm. After that had come and gone things were different with the forest-people.

It was at the close of a day in mid-summer. For weeks there had been no rain. Day after day the sun had come up, had scorched and burned and seared, and had gone down. The leaves curled upon the trees; the grass blades became brittle; the rabbit runs were so hot at midday that they hurt the pads of the cottontails, and they lay panting in their burrows, waiting for night. Then it was that the wood-people blessed the river, for there was no water anywhere else. The river sank foot by foot, leaving cracked, baked stretches of yellow clay as it receded. Still it ran doggedly, and breathed defiance. It would take more than one dry summer to rob it of its terror and strength. At last there came a day which was born with portents of some awful thing to come. The sun rose hazy, like a ball of blood. The air, which had been hot, became stifling. It pressed on the chest and burned in the throat. The chipmunks and the squirrels sought their nests wildly; the birds went deeper into the forest. By noon all of the little people who had a home were in it. But so far nothing had happened. Mid-afternoon a growl of wrath came from the west, and a long, leaden band pushed its edge over the horizon. A terrible silence hung over the forest; the unnatural calm which precedes some great calamity. Then a chill breath stirred the upper leaves, followed by gusts of wind almost icy. Night came long before its time, and the sky which for weeks had been a shining surface of blinding light became a seething, tossing caldron of billowy clouds and murky vapors, and threading through all the tumbled mass was a vivid network of flame. The chariots of the storm came thundering down the slopes of the sky, and the forest shivered, and bent, and tossed its thousands of arms in agony. Thick limbs were rent from writhing, groaning bodies, and cast furiously down. Some veteran giants, weakened by the natural decay of years, mingled their death-cry with the hoarse bellow of the destroying wind and fell crashing and quivering to the earth. Then came rain, and a cessation of the demoniac fury.

It was a night which the wood-dwellers never forgot. Birds were killed by the dozens, and the lives of many of the four-footed kind were given up as well. The secret trails were obliterated and blocked, and the runways of the weasel and the rabbit became a trackless wilderness.

Long before the sun arose the next morning, an old raccoon cautiously poked his black nose out of a hole in a maple tree, near the first fork. This raccoon was the oldest and the wiliest of the wood-folk that lived in the forest. An old boar coon was he, and many years had passed over his wise little head. Once before, in his youth, such a storm as this had swept over the forest. His mother had him out teaching him how to stalk ground sparrows, and the storm came so suddenly that they had no time to reach home, so had taken shelter under a shelving rock on the bluff by the river. He had weathered that storm successfully, and in later years had paid scant heed to nature’s bursts of anger. A raccoon, of all things, was surely smart enough to keep out of the way of a falling limb. The whiskers about the muzzle of the old coon were gray; his eyes were black and beady, and some wonderment was expressed in them as he rolled them around on the once familiar scene. He had not slept the night before, for his house had shook and creaked its warnings hour after hour, and the hungry voice of the wind had howled down at him from the hole above his head. Everything was changed outside. A neighbor tree lay prostrate at the foot of his own; a broken limb sagged at the side of his door, and everywhere was disorder and destruction. A trifle dazed by it all in spite of his superior wisdom, the old fellow slid back into his den and fell to crunching the bones of a chicken he had captured two nights before.

Though the storm had hopelessly tangled the secret ways which had been nosed out and trodden with so much care, and had been the death of many of their kind, yet it had brought its blessing, too, in that it had conquered for the people of the wild their enemy, the river. It was in this way.

At a certain point on the southern bank of the river an old elm tree grew, quite near the edge of the water. The bank had crumbled and the tree had leaned, until at length its top hung almost over the center of the stream. Nothing but its great roots twined about hidden rocks kept it from falling. Directly across from the elm, close to the shore on the other bank, an ancient sycamore had stood, leaning very slightly towards the river. Now when the storm came down from the north the sycamore’s roots gave way and it swayed and fell, its top, by some strange freak, lodging in the fork of the elm, and the force of its fall wedged it in firmly and snugly. And behold! here was a bridge for the feet of the wood-folk, and they could pass high and dry and laugh down at their baffled foe.

There was but one passageway for the many members of the many tribes, and naturally trouble arose sometimes, and there were nights when the river smiled placidly and opened its arms and waited. Sometimes one victim came; sometimes two, for the bridge became the scene of many a midnight tragedy and moonlighted fray, and in the end it was the river which was the victor, after all. It did not have to seek its prey. It simply waited, and took its tribute very much as of old, though in a different manner.

So the years went by. Mates were chosen; families were born; battles were fought. The strong devoured the weak, much as the human folks do in another way. The old raccoon still lived in his maple. Though others of his kind often harbored by threes, fours, or even sixes in a single tree, this aristocrat was not sociable, and preferred a hermit existence except once a year, when the sap of spring renewed his youth and sent him a-courting. Then a sleek, mild-eyed little mate would come and keep house for him until the children were old enough to hear a dog running half a mile away. Then quite abruptly, upon the return of mother and offspring some day, they would be met by a white-fanged visage and ordered to go elsewhere for a bed.

The forest was the abode of little people. Nothing larger than the raccoon found a home there. He was practically lord of the demesne, partly because of his age and sagacity, partly because of his might as a warrior. His record was three dogs whipped in single fight. He did not fear any dog so long as the men did not come poking around with their blinding lanterns and their guns. And it might be told, further, that when he set foot upon one end of the tree-bridge, he usually went to the other end.

In a field at the edge of the smaller forest was a negro cabin, where lived the black people with a horde of tattered children and two dogs. One was a shepherd; gentle, calm-eyed, intelligent. The other was a coon-dog; little, muscular, aggressive. A coon-dog is as distinctive a breed as is the collie or the spaniel. It is true he is an ignoble mixture of many, but it takes the certain and correct blending of various strains to make a coon-dog. He must have the nose of a pointer, the speed of a greyhound, the strength of a mastiff, and the stubbornness of a bull-dog. The model coon-dog is low, short, and heavy-set; his back and sides are nearly black, and his throat, belly, and feet are a reddish brown. Such was the dog which hung about the negro cabin till hunger sent him nosing along the floor of the forest. He had trailed coons long enough to know that they never touch earth in the day, and that the scent is freshest in the early part of the night, just after a light rain. So that night in spring when the soft, balsamic odors rose strata above strata, the coon-dog, impelled by the pain in his stomach, which was like a hundred tearing claws, set off at a smart trot through the sassafras bushes and the dewberry vines, heading for the smaller forest on the southern side of the river. His keen nostrils revealed a trail before he had gone a dozen yards in the wood, and with a low whine he followed it with amazing swiftness and accuracy. In and out it led, and the smell which the traitor feet had left grew stronger. Almost the dog gave tongue, so close he knew his quarry must be, when he stopped, confused, with his fore feet resting on the slanting trunk of a tree. He had come to the bridge of the forest-people, and the hot trail led up the incline before him. Off in the shadows near to one side something called—a sharp, barking cry. The dog cocked his ears and jerked his head around, but quickly decided that he had nothing to do with whatever it was that had temporarily engaged his attention, and again turned to the bridge, restless and eager. He had never attempted its passage, but its surface was broad and the bark rough, and hunger is a stern master. Quickly he squatted and leaped, thrust out his claws so that they caught and held, and in another moment he was creeping warily up the tree with the scent still warm beneath his guiding nostrils.

But other ears had heard that low mating call which the dog had ignored. The old boar coon of the maple tree, driven by loneliness and the magic of the season, was ambling in his humpbacked, awkward way along a narrow path curving down the bluff on the northern side of the river, bent on securing a bride for perhaps the twentieth time. He stopped and listened alertly at the Circe-sound, then moved swiftly towards the tree-bridge to respond in person. With remarkable agility for his years he gained a footing on the sycamore trunk, showing his teeth with a low growl of displeasure as the strong odor of opossum told him that one had just passed that way. A few feet further on his ears detected a scratching sound on the other end of the bridge. Some impudent cousin had dared to risk his anger—for was not this his bridge when he chose to set his royal foot upon it? He would make him give way and retreat, or cast him off, for he had done the like before. On up the ghostly white trunk of the fallen sycamore he glided, his fur rising in wrath as the scratching beyond grew louder and louder and came closer and closer. Gaining the apex of the bridge first, the raccoon thrust his black muzzle over the fork where the two trees touched, and not five feet away came the coon-dog, timorously but steadily. The ring-tailed warrior did not attempt to choke the fierce snarl which rasped between his white fangs. What was this upon his bridge! A four-footed thing which disgraced his shape by living with and serving the human-people—a dog!

The intruder stopped, sank on his belly, and gave back a savage growl—his gage of battle. Below the river dimpled in the starlight and murmured joyfully along the shores. Carefully the dog inched forward, his mouth open, his upper lip curled back. The coon waited, his beady eyes watching the play of every muscle in the form of his antagonist, and the curving claws on all four feet shot out to their fullest length. These were his main defence; his teeth were secondary. Both animals were at a disadvantage. The dog was out of his element, and his footing was very precarious. On the other hand the coon, while perfectly at home, never waged his battles in a tree. When he fought it was lying flat on his back on the ground. But the guile of many years was in his sly old brain, and where the trees locked was a little hollow safely bulwarked by the peculiar way in which the branches had entwined. As the dog leaped at his throat he threw himself on his back and struck out with all four feet at once. But the starved alien knew his business well. Ignoring the stinging rents which the hind claws made, he bore the fore legs down with the force of his fall, and his jaws gained the coveted hold without which no coon can be conquered. But that was not all the battle. Fiercely the old boar wrestled, ripping the body of his foe with lightning-like movements of his strong legs, gnashing his teeth in a vain effort to use them, and struggling for breath. The dog bore his awful punishment like a martyr, lying as closely as he could so as to impede the other’s movements, but never uttering a cry of pain and wrenching and tugging at the furry throat over which his jaws had closed. In the intensity of their joint efforts neither had a thought of caution. Presently the raccoon was out of the hollow where he had lain to receive the attack; there was a slip, a scuffle, and through twenty feet of space two writhing bodies, locked so closely as to seem almost one, fell with a loud splash into the liquid depths below. And so the river received them both, and a whirlpool sucked them down.

Now the bark on the tree-bridge is almost worn away from the constant passing of little feet, which before had been afraid.

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THE GUARDIAN OF THE FLOCK

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THE GUARDIAN OF THE FLOCK

IN a ravine where men seldom placed their feet, a rod or more up a rocky, bushy hillside, in a hole almost concealed by an overhanging dewberry bush, lay a dog. A big dog. His head, huge, disfigured, terrible, rested upon the earth between his paws, and the lids had fallen over the fierce eyes, which glowed with changing lights when open. The big dog was asleep. His back-bone was a succession of knots, with small depressions between. It terminated in a tawny stump, perhaps six inches long, which stood for a tail. The bones above his hips jutted out like door-knobs; his flanks were sunk in cavernously, and palpitated with each sharply indrawn breath. There were scars on the ribbed body; old scars which had healed bare and blackly; others where the aggrieved flesh was beginning to join, and still others which showed raw and red—almost dripping, and about these tiny gnats had gathered and sat in rows at their feast, while their colorless bodies quickly took on a crimson shade. A large green fly boomed into the hole in the hill, zigzagged about over the recumbent form, and then plumped his spiked feet down in one of the rawest of the wounds. A convulsive shiver passed over the side of the dog and the green fly lost his foothold; but, not to be cheated out of his meal, he returned more cautiously, and, standing among the scant, scrubby hair at the edge of the moist fissure he stretched out his neck and thrust out his tongue. The muscles along the bruised side moved again, but more slightly, and the fly and the gnats ate and drank their fill.

The dog’s high shoulder-blades seemed ready to burst through their covering; there was a deep hollow between them. The neck was short, thick, bull-like. One ear was bleeding—the other was gone, and a tangled mass of gnarled flesh marked where it had been. About the grim muzzle were some patches of sheep wool, draggled and red.

The dog had been out nearly all night, and it was now early morning. He had travelled many miles since the sun had set the day before; ranging back and forth, skulking, hiding, waiting. Before he returned to his hiding-place he had battened on blood and fought a battle.

The dog had no name, no lineage, no friends, no home. He was simply the dog. He bore within him the strains of a badly mixed ancestry, and had been hated and cuffed since puppyhood. Hanging to the outskirts of a straying gypsy band, he had come to the neighborhood where he now abode. A farmer whose flocks were beginning to multiply swiftly saw the uncouth, bony frame and the defiant face, and thought that here was a fitting guardian for his ewes and lambs. He bought him for a fifty-cent piece and set him to watch over his sheep. But there came a night when the farmer’s allowance of food did not satisfy him; when the hard bread and cold stuff flung to him only whetted his appetite. That night he trotted to his post with guile in his heart. But hour after hour he held himself in check, though at times almost rubbing shoulders with his fleece-covered charges. It was past the turning of night, and his stomach was empty, and hurting him. The master was asleep; the night was so still; he was hungry, hungry, and had never known a law! All around him sleeping patches of white dotted the grass. He was lying down, too, but his red-green eyes were wide, for he was the guardian of the flock. There is a point that marks the limit of endurance. Directly the dog arose, swiftly, silently, stood rigid for the briefest space of time, then launched himself at the soft throat of a half-grown lamb. A stifled bleat; a struggle which ended with its inception, and the traitor lay upon his belly and lapped the warm blood and worried at the tender neck of his victim. That was the first. When the farmer came out before sunup the next morning, he found the mangled bodies of five of his lambs that had been born that spring, and he whom he had placed to watch over them gone.

In this way was the dog accursed and outlawed, and the heart of every person and thing was set against him.

He, for his part, fostered hate by day and wreaked it by night. Every step he took was fraught with danger. Men were against him, and men’s dogs were against him. He soon learned that the men carried long sticks that spat flame, and at one time when the fire jumped out, and the stick was pointed towards him, he felt a sharp pain in the fleshy part of his thigh, and blood ran down his leg. Then he grew more cautious, and ventured out only at night, when he had to smell and feel his way. He could baffle the men in the night, and his own blood-kind were a little slow in chasing him. But they had fallen upon him once unexpectedly, and he was a sorry sight when he at last broke from them and escaped to cover. His wounds upon that occasion were long in healing, for there is venom in a dog fang. He was sick for many days, and ate nothing but certain herbs which instinct told him would counteract the poison in his system. He grew well after a long period of pain and weakness, and upon his next raid he came too near the house and had one of his ears shot off by a farmer’s boy. That night he crept back without his spoil, staggering up the ravine with a red trail behind him. He scratched away the dirt on one side of his den, and laid his wounded head on the cool, black earth. This made the blood to clot, and to finally stop running, but the dog was so weak that he lay over on his side, catching his breath in jerks. Thereafter he fasted many days, because of his spent strength, but at last he essayed to crawl to the back of his hole and feebly excavate some provender which he had hidden against this very day a fortnight ago. When he had eaten, new energy began to diffuse itself through his worn body, and once more he grew well, but more ugly than ever, and in his heart was nothing but vindictive hate, and treachery, and craft. He was an outcast, hunted by every living thing that was big enough to harass and kill. He had skulked and run all his life. Now things would change. He would turn hunter, and harry and slay until they made an end of him.

The big green fly, forgetting caution in his hungry zeal, probed his lance-like tongue a little too deep in the sensitive flesh. The dog awoke and snapped viciously at his tormentor, but the pop-eyes of the fly saw the movement, and he escaped the cavernous jaws projected towards him. The dog fell to licking his new wounds. Between the hours of twelve and four of the past night he had sallied forth, and found the flock in a pen near the barn, unguarded, as he thought. To bring one down was play. He gorged himself on the blood and was turning to another victim, when a form larger than his own leaped at his throat from the shadows. The dog wheeled, and the fangs of the attacker closed in his side. For a while they wrestled silently, save for deep-throated snarls. Then of a sudden the dog broke away, leaped from the pen, and ran. The wolf-hound attempted to follow, but his feet slipped on the blood-soaked ground as he made his jump, his breast struck the top rail of the pen and he fell back, and did not make the effort again. The dog sought his den, resentful, sore, desperate. That night he slept from weariness; in the early morning the green fly woke him. In his round, ugly, disfigured head was born the thought that he would turn hunter now, and wreak vengeance on his persecutors.

Throughout the day he lay still and rested, licking his sores at intervals, and dozing from time to time. When the black night came he arose, stretched himself and yawned hugely, shook his big body vigorously and stalked forth with the fell intent in his heart to kill—kill—kill!

With his keen nostrils set to catch every odor the breeze might bring; his one macerated ear cocked for the slightest sound, he trotted down the ravine and soon emerged into the open country. He had come to know the neighborhood well. Who sat up late; who kept close watch; who slumbered careless of his stock. Past houses where lights burned in the windows, making detours to avoid possible detection, crouching low on his haunches when he heard footsteps,—the dog pursued his way through the night. Mile after mile, over fences and ditches, through the corn, along the roadside when it ran parallel with his purpose. At last he passed the boundary which had marked all of his wanderings heretofore, and as he entered this unexplored territory he moved more freely and with less caution. His trained muzzle scented a familiar smell. Through a rail fence he dragged himself, scratching his torn side cruelly on a splinter as he did so, then started down a hill-slope briskly. Soon he found them, alone, sleeping, helpless. One by one he pulled them down. As each fell, the survivors would huddle closer together, dazed and afraid. First the lambs, then the ewes, then the bucks. The blood-lust grew in the dog’s savage heart with each fresh massacre. The first four had sated his appetite and filled his maw to repletion, but his mission was to kill without mercy. His strong jaws snapped out their lives one by one, and the bell-wether went last. He was old, and had seen killers at work before. He had always kept well in the background until the bloodthirsty invader had got his fill, and gone away. To-night he had stayed on the further side of the flock, expecting the killer to leave after each victim. But he did not leave, and kept drawing nearer to him instead. The end of it was that the bell-wether ran, but there was something that ran faster than his shadow—something that pounced heavily upon his back—and then it was all over; the butchery was done.

Back over the path which he had come went the murderer. His chops were gory, his shoulders and fore legs were bloody, his whole body was streaked and splashed with the telltale red. But he did not care. Everything was against him, he was against everything. There would be no backsliding nor capitulation until death closed the scene. Back over the path which he had come he went—a fearful figure, big, deformed with wounds, drunken with blood. He held to the highway now so long as it did not run out of his course, for he was possessed of a reckless bravery which took into account neither friend nor foe. It was the still hour of the night. The hour when life ebbs lowest in the hearts of those who sleep; the hour just before the roosters smell the coming day and awake to give the alarm. He met nothing, nothing opposed him. Just when the darkness began to quiver before the bare hint of encroaching light the dog felt, rather than saw, some object moving awkwardly in the road before him. It was not large, and lay close to earth. The pads of his feet bore him noiselessly forward. The terrible jaws opened, snapped, the head was flung contemptuously to one side, there was a thud, and a dead opossum lay in a patch of huckleberry bushes by the old rock fence. In a hollow tree in the woods, not far away, some little opossums lay piled upon each other, asleep. The mother’s supply of milk had run low, and she had started in quest of food. The youngsters would sleep until hunger wakened them, and then life’s tragedy would soon be over.

The dog quickened his pace, because daylight abroad meant death for him. Through the dim first-light of the coming day he ran, easily. It is true he had covered many miles that night, but his stomach was full of the rich, hot life-blood he had drained from palpitating throats, and new strength had been imparted to him. Misty cobwebs hung about his head like a veil, gathered from his passage through the bushes and underbrush. His tongue lolled, dripping, from his deadly jaws. In this way he came to the ravine just as the gray dawn was beginning to be silvered by the rising sun.

Across the hollow from his den, on the opposite slope, where some hickorynut trees were growing, a silent figure stood with a gun in its hands. A half-grown boy had come out after squirrels, knowing that the bushy-tailed, active little creatures sought their breakfast just before sunup, when the air was fresh and moist from the night dews. He had stood still for a long time, as one must who hunts squirrels, and presently his eyes were drawn by something moving on the opposite side of the hollow. He looked and saw a large, dark-brown shape disappear, as it were, into the earth. The boy rubbed his eyes and looked again, and then he discovered the orifice under the dewberry bush. He had found the hiding-place of the scourge! A squirrel barked in a tree not ten feet away, and scampered about on a limb in plain view. The boy did not shoot. He tucked the gun under his arm instead and walked on his toes for a quarter of a mile, then he broke into a run, and arrived at home breathless a few minutes later.

The dog, with a full stomach and a contented mind, was sleeping. He had lain down with his wounded side next to earth, so that the flies could not annoy him. But into his dreams of slaughter and feasting crept some disturbing force. Something insistent, alarming, if intangible and vague. So strong was it that the dog grudgingly opened his eyes a tiny slit, and almost at the same time his ear cocked up, the end of it hanging limply, because it had been bitten through at some former encounter. The eyes opened wider, and rolled craftily towards the mouth of the lair. A second more, and the big, round head was raised quickly. There was a sudden stiffening throughout the strong, rugged frame, and the dog arose to his feet and stole forward. He crouched low, and peered out expectantly. Directly beneath him was a mixed crowd of men and dogs. All of the men carried those sticks which he had learned to dread; they were all looking towards his refuge, and some were pointing. It had come at last. He had tarried too long at his killing, and somehow the daylight had betrayed him. But not a tremor of fear passed over the dog. He merely sank to the earth, and watched.

A succession of sharp clicks came to his ear; the men swung their sticks forward and started up the slope in a body, calling the dogs with them. About half way up the hill they halted. One picked up a stone and flung it towards the hole in the hill. One of the dogs detached himself from the others and sped after it. He was a coon-dog, small and venturesome. He poked his head under the dewberry bush inquisitively. The sunlight outside was still in his eyes, and he thrust part of his body in, too, catching a scent which warranted investigation. The move was fatal. Like a bolt of lightning some curved fangs tore his throat open, and without a sound and with scarcely a struggle the coon-dog rolled back down the slope, dead at the feet of his master. Above, the dog licked his chops, and waited. The men tried to urge the wolf-hound forward, but he slunk back, afraid. Among those of his own blood-kind who had come forth to take the outcast was a half-breed—part bull, part mastiff. He was a powerful fellow, and sullen looking. His owner took him by the collar and led him up the hill a few feet, then spoke to him and pointed towards the hole. The half-breed seemed to understand, for his hackles rose bristling, and he advanced slowly and warily. Just in front of the overhanging bush he stopped, thrust his head forward, and stood as a setter stands when he holds a flock of birds. The dog inside arose, and made ready for the attack. It came speedily. Without sound or warning the half-breed leaped, and they closed. The dog had sprung forward to meet his foe, and in the fearful struggle that ensued they both appeared on the hill-side, full in the open. Urged on by the voices of the men the other dogs closed in too, and the tawny shape of the outcast became the centre of a whirling vortex of animal fury. Down the slope they all rolled together, the men cheering on their allies, and trying to find an opportunity to use their weapons. Down, down to the little stream that ran through the ravine the battle went, the half-breed never losing the throat-hold which he took at the first leap. There, on the bank of the rivulet, the tragedy was played.

The men said they had never seen such a fight.

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THE KING OF THE NORTHERN SLOPE

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THE KING OF THE NORTHERN SLOPE

ALONG a path which a man’s eye could not have seen, but which, even at night, was visible to the kind that dwell in the hills, a long, lithe object passed swiftly and without noise. It was down a knob-slope, in a diagonal course, the object came, and the night was only star-bright, for the moon was late in coming. This quiet figure, which glided serpent-like on its way, was about three feet in length; its slender, round body was covered with short, thick hair, drab and mottled brown in color, and had only a stump of a tail about three inches long. The head was bullet-round, the short, stubby ears pricked and alert, and the nose muscles distended and twitched with every cautious step. The padded feet of this night rambler were almost as noiseless as the star rays’ fall. Scarcely a leaf was overturned, scarcely a dead twig snapped. His body, curving sinuously, would not have brushed an ant from the stem of a sapling. The King of the Northern Slope was hungry, and his present errand was to the sheepfold or pigsty of the nearest farmer.

He was the biggest wild-cat in that part of the country, and his reign on the northern slope was respected and acknowledged by all the four-footed things that harbored and hunted in the hills. The mountains far eastward had dwindled away here to a chain of knobs, bisecting the country from east to west. Miniature mountains they were, indeed; wooded, rocky, untillable, and lonely. Wild-cats, foxes, and the smaller gentry of the forest, squirrels, raccoons, and opossums, lived and throve upon this chain of knobs. But gradually those that had lived on the northern slope went over the crest to the other side, and left the field to the undisputed possession of the big cat, who did not care to have his preserves poached upon by the rag-tags and bob-tails of creation. Once a year he would go questing for a mate, boldly invading the southern side of the range, and not coming back until he had found the lady of his choice. Then after a while a brood of whelps would be born in the secret lair of the King, and when these were scarcely able to fall about the floor of their birthplace in play, and bite at each other’s sawed-off tails, the King would, one fine day, hustle them and their mother, his erstwhile bride, out of his home and over the crest of the range, to fare good or ill, as luck would send. At least this was the story that the human-people told, and this much goes to support the tale, that, whereas those farmers living beyond the line of knobs to the southward lost but few hogs from nocturnal depredations, those living to the north were in nightly fear that morning would show a trail of blood from barnyard or pen. And the men-people had sat together night after night in council, with heads bobbing and tongues wagging, trying to evolve a plan whereby to capture or destroy this scourge of their fields and pastures. But they had failed. The truest nosed hounds of the various packs scattered around could not keep his trail, but would lose the scent and return crest-fallen and shame-faced. He was never seen within gunshot, and they could not find his lair. But one thing they knew—that nothing else ran at night on the northern slope.