THE OUTLAW DOGS
Not a little farm work still remained to be done;--our farm work, in
fact, was never done. For a fortnight after our return from the camping
trip, we were busy, ploughing stubble ground, drawing off loose stones
and building a piece of "double wall" along the side of the north field.
There was also a field of winter rye to be got in. The Old Squire was,
moreover, preparing to re-embark in the lumbering business at certain
lots of timber land which he owned up in the "great woods." Loggers
would be hired for this work, however, for Addison, Halstead and I
expected to attend the district school which was announced to begin on
the Monday after Thanksgiving.
It was mostly dull, hard work now, all day long, and often we were
obliged to husk corn, or dry apples, during the evening. The only
amusement for a time was one or two husking parties, and an "apple bee"
at the Murches'.
On the morning of the 30th of October we waked to find the ground white
with snow; several inches had fallen; but it went off, after a day or
two; the weather had grown quite cold, however. Ice formed nearly every
night. The cattle were now at the barns, but the sheep were still
running about the pastures and fields. On the night of the 5th of
November the upper part of the lake froze over, as well as the smaller
ponds in the vicinity. I found that the boys thereabouts knew how to
skate, and was not long in buying a pair of skates, myself. I had much
difficulty in learning to use them for several days; at length, I caught
the knack of it, and felt well repaid for a good many hard falls, when
at last I could glide away and keep up with Halse, Addison and Thomas
Edwards, who skated well. Even Theodora and Ellen could skate.
For a week that fall Lake Pennesseewassee was grand skating ground.
Parties of boys from a distance came there every evening and built
bonfires on the shore to enliven the scene.
I think that it was the third day before Thanksgiving that eight of us
went to the lake, at about four in the afternoon, to have an hour of
skating before dark. We found Alfred Batchelder there in advance of us.
As Alfred did not now speak to our boys, he kept a little aloof from us.
Near the head of the lake is an island and above it a bog. We had skated
around the head of the lake, and keeping to the east side of the island,
circled about it, and were coming down on the west side along an arm,
some two hundred yards wide, where there was known to be deep water. We
thought the ice perfectly firm and safe there, since that on the east
side of the island, over which we had just skated, had proved so. All of
us were at full racing speed, and Alfred was keeping six or eight rods
further out, but parallel with us. Suddenly we heard a crash and saw
Alfred go down. The water gushed up around him.
There was no premonitory cracking or yielding. The ice broke on the
instant; and so rapidly was he moving that a hole twelve or fifteen feet
long was torn by the sheer force with which he went against it. As he
fell through, he went under once, but luckily came up in the hole he had
made, and got his hands and arms on the edges of the ice, which,
however, kept bending down and breaking off. The breaking and his fall
were so sudden that he had not even time to cry out till he came up and
caught hold of the ice.
Instinctively we all sheered off toward the west shore at first. Then
came the impulse to save him. A peeled hemlock log lay stranded on the
shore upon rocks, with about four feet of its length frozen in the ice.
I remember rushing to this, to get it up and slide it out to him.
Finding I could not wrench it loose with my hands, I kicked it with
first one foot and then the other, and broke both my skates; but the ice
held it like a vise. Then I started on my broken skates to find a pole;
two or three of the other boys were also running for poles, shouting
excitedly.
All the while Alfred was calling despairingly to us; every time the ice
broke, he would nearly disappear under the water, which was deadly cold.
Addison who had first pulled off his skates, then thought of green alder
poles. Running to the nearest clump, he bent down and hurriedly cut off
two, each as large as a pump-brake. Before I was done kicking the peeled
hemlock log, or Halse was back from his pole hunt, Addison had shoved
one of the long alders out to Alf, who managed to clutch hold of it.
Addison had hold of the butt end, and Willis Murch, nearer the shore,
had reached out the top of the second alder to Addison. The ice yielded
somewhat and the water came up; but they all held fast. By this time the
rest of us had cut more alders, one of which was thrust out to Willis;
and then by main strength we hauled Alfred out and back where the ice
was firmer.
It is doubtful whether we should have got him out of the lake but for
this expedient; for the water was so cold and the wind so bitterly
sharp, that he could not long have supported himself by those bending
ice edges. His teeth chattered noisily when at length we hauled him
ashore; Addison's, too! Both were wet through. We started and ran as
hard as we could towards home. Two of us had to drag Alf at the start;
but he ran better after the first hundred yards; and we were all very
warm by the time we got him home.
It is often difficult to determine why the ice on some portions of a
pond should be thin and treacherous, as in the above instance, while on
other portions it is quite safe. Indeed, there is no way of determining
except by cautious inspection.
I must do Alfred the justice to record that he came around quite
handsomely to thank Addison, and then asked his pardon for the hard
words that he had used at Fair time.
The morning following is marked forever in my memory by an unexpected
trip up to the "great woods"--the result of certain disturbing rumors
which had been in circulation throughout the autumn, but of which I have
not previously spoken, since they were confined mainly to a school
district two miles to the east of the Old Squire's farm.
On that morning a party of not less than thirty men and boys, with
hounds, was made up to go in pursuit of a pack of outlaw dogs which had
been killing sheep and calves in that town and vicinity. As yet the
flocks in our own neighborhood had not been molested, but there was no
saying how soon the marauders might pay us a visit; and a public effort
had been inaugurated to hunt the pack down and destroy it.
The history of these dog outlaws was a singular one and parallels in
canine life the famous story of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." The fact that
dogs do occasionally lead double lives--one that of a docile house-dog
by day, and the other that of a wild, dangerous beast by night--is well
established. In this case a trusted dog had become not only an outlaw
himself, but drew others about him and was the leader of a dangerous
band.
A farmer named Frost, three miles from us, began to lose sheep from a
flock of seventy which he owned and which were kept in a pasture that
included a high hill and sloped northward over rough, bushy land to the
great woods. It was not the custom there to enclose the sheep in pens or
shelters, at night. They wandered at will in the pasture, and were
rarely visited oftener than once a week, and that usually on Sunday
morning. Then either the farmer or one of his boys would go to the
pasture to give the sheep salt and count them. This was the custom among
the farmers in that locality, nearly all of whom owned flocks sometimes
as small as twenty, but rarely larger than seventy-five, since sheep in
New England do not thrive when kept in large flocks.
Farmer Frost was not the only one who had lost sheep at this time. Six
other flocks were invaded, but his loss occurred first. His son Rufus,
going to the pasture to salt and count the sheep on a Sunday morning,
found that two ewes and a grown lamb were missing. Later in the day the
partially devoured remains of the sheep were found in the pasture not
far from a brook.
"Bear's work," the farmer and his neighbors said, although an old hunter
who visited the spot pronounced against the theory. But a bear had been
seen recently in the vicinity; and Monday morning the Frost boys loaded
their guns for a thorough hunt. Two traps were also set near the
carcasses, which were left as found, to lure the destroyer back.
The destroyer did not return; the traps remained as they were set; and
the youthful hunters were unsuccessful in rousing a bear in the woods.
But on the following Wednesday night a farmer named Needham, living a
mile and a half from Frost, lost two sheep, the bodies of which were
found in his pasture, partly eaten.
It chanced that Farmer Needham, or his son Emerson, owned a dog which
was greatly prized. They called him Bender. Bender was said to be a
half-breed, Newfoundland and mastiff, but had, I think, a strain of more
common blood in his ancestry, for there was a tawny crescent mark
beneath each of his eyes. Bender was the pink of propriety and a dog of
unblemished reputation.
On this occasion Bender went with the farmer and his boys to the sheep
pasture, and smelled the dead sheep with every appearance of surprise
and horror. The hair on his shoulders bristled with indignation. He
coursed around, seeking for bear tracks, and ran barking about the
pasture. In short, he did everything that a properly grieved dog should
do under the circumstances, and so far from touching or eating any of
the torn mutton, he plainly scorned such a thing.
The boys took Bender with them to hunt bears, as their main reliance and
ally, and Bender hunted assiduously. Three or four other dogs, belonging
at farms in the vicinity, were also taken on these hunts. One was a
collie, another a mongrel bulldog, and a third a large brindled dog of
no known pedigree. Still another half-bred St. Bernard dog set off with
the others, but on reaching the sheep pasture, where they went first to
get the trail and make a start, this latter dog behaved oddly, left the
others and slunk away home.
Some of the boys attributed this to cowardice, and he was hooted; others
suspected Roke, for that was his name, of having killed the sheep.
Suspicion against him so increased that his master kept him chained at
home.
No bears were tracked to their dens, and none were caught in the traps,
which were also set in the Needham pasture; but less than a week later
another farmer, this time the owner of the mongrel bulldog, lost three
sheep in one night. As previously, the sheep were found dead and partly
eaten.
If Roke's _alibi_ had not had a tangible chain at one end of it that
night, his character would have been as good as lost; for his refusal to
hunt with the other dogs and the manner in which he behaved while near
the dead sheep, had rendered him a public "suspect." When near the
carcasses he had growled morosely, and shown his teeth. When barked at
by the other dogs, he had taken himself off.
A few nights afterward Farmer Frost lost two more sheep from his flock
in the pasture, and the following night Rufus watched in the pasture
with a loaded gun, quite without results.
About that time two or three others watched in their pastures. Some shut
up their sheep. But the losses continued to occur. Within a radius of
three or four miles as many as twenty-four sheep were killed in the
course of three weeks.
None of the watchers by night or the hunters by day had, as yet,
obtained so much as a trace or a clue to the animal which had done the
killing. They came to think that it was quite useless to watch by night;
the marauding creature, whether bear, wild-cat, or dog, was apparently
too wily, or too keen-scented, to enter a pasture and approach a flock
where a man was concealed.
Rufus Frost, who had watched repeatedly, then hit on a stratagem. First
he cut off about a foot from the barrel of a shotgun, to shorten it, and
then made a kind of bag, or sack, by sewing two sheep-pelts together.
Thus equipped, he repaired to the pasture after dark, and joined himself
to the flock, not as a watcher, _but as a sheep_. That is to say, he
crept into the sheepskin bag, which was also capacious enough to contain
the short gun, and lay down on the outskirts of the flock, a little
aloof.
The sheep were lying in a group, ruminating, as is their habit, by
night. Rufus drew a tangle of wool over his head, and otherwise
contrived to pose as a sheep lying down. He assumed that when thus
bagged up in fresh sheepskin, the odor of a sheep would be diffused, and
the appearance of one so well counterfeited as to deceive even a bear.
His gun he had charged heavily with buckshot; and altogether the ruse
was ingenious, if nothing more.
Nothing disturbed the flock on the first night that he spent in the
pasture, nor on the second; but he resolved to persevere. It was no very
bad way to pass an autumn night; the weather was pleasant and warm, and
there was a bright moon nearing its full.
He had kept awake during the first night, listening and watching for the
most of the time; but he caught naps the second, and on the third was
sleeping comfortably at about two in the morning, when he was suddenly
set upon, tooth and nail, by what he believed, on first waking, to be a
whole family of bears. One had him by the leg, through the bag, shaking
him. Another was dragging at the back of the bag, while the teeth of a
third were snapping at his face. Still other teeth were chewing upon his
arm, and the growling was something frightful!
This was an alarming manner in which to be wakened from a sound nap, and
it is little wonder that Rufus, although a plucky youngster, rolled over
and over and yelled with the full power of his lungs.
His shouts produced an effect. First one and then another of his
assailants let go and drew back; and getting the wool out of his eyes,
Rufus saw that the creatures were not bears, but four astonished dogs,
standing a few feet away, regarding him with doubt and disgust.
To all appearance he had been a sheep, lying a little apart from the
others, and they had fallen upon him as one; but his shouts led them to
think that he was not mutton, after all, and they did not know what to
make of it!
Rufus, almost equally astonished, now lay quite still, staring at them.
The dogs looked at each other, licked the wool from their mouths, and
sat down to contemplate him further.
Rufus, on his part, waxed even more amazed as he looked, for by the
bright moonlight he at once identified the four dogs. They were, alas!
the highly respectable, exemplary old Bender, the collie, Tige, the
brindle, and the mongrel bulldog--all loved and trusted members of
society. Rufus was so astonished that he did not think of using his
blunderbuss; he simply whistled.
That whistle appeared to resolve the doubts of the dogs instantly. They
growled menacingly and sprang away like the wind. Rufus saw them run
across the pasture to the woods, and afterward, for some minutes, heard
them washing themselves in the brook, as roguish, sheep-killing dogs
always do before returning home.
But in this case the dogs appeared to know that they had been detected,
and that so far as their characters as good and virtuous dogs went, the
game was up. Not one of them returned home. All four took to the woods,
and thereafter lived predatory lives. They were aware of the gravity of
their offenses.
During October and early November they were heard of as a pack of bad
sheep-killers, time and again; but they now followed their evil
practices at a distance from their former homes, where, indeed, the
farmers took the precaution of carefully guarding their sheep. On one
night of October they killed three calves in a farmer's field, four
miles from the Frost farm. Several parties set off to hunt them, but
they escaped and lived as outlaws, subsisting from nocturnal forays
until snow came, when they were tracked to a den beneath a high crag,
called the "Overset," up in the great woods.
It was Rufus Frost and Emerson Needham, the former owner of Bender, who
tracked the band to their retreat. Finding it impossible to call or
drive the criminals out, they blocked the entrance of the den with large
stones, and then came home to devise some way of destroying them--since
it is a pretty well-established fact that when once a dog has relapsed
into the savage habits of his wild ancestry he can never be reclaimed.
Someone had suggested suffocating the dogs with brimstone fumes; and so,
early the following morning, Rufus and Emerson, heading a party of
fifteen men and boys, came to the Edwards farm and the Old Squire's to
get brimstone rolls, which we had on account of our bees. Their coming,
on such an errand, carried a wave of excitement with it. Old Hewey
Glinds, the trapper, was sent for and joined the party, in spite of his
rheumatism. Every boy in the neighborhood begged earnestly to go; and
the most of us, on one plea and another, obtained permission to do so.
All told, I believe, there were thirty-one in the party, not counting
dogs. Entering the woods we proceeded first to Stoss Pond, then through
Black Ash Swamp, and thence over a mountainous wooded ridge to Overset
Pond.
In fact we seemed to be going to the remote depths of the wilderness;
and what a savage aspect the snowy evergreen forest wore that morning!
At last, we came out on the pond. Very black it looked, for it was what
is called a "warm pond." Ice had not yet formed over it. The snow-clad
crag where the cave was, on the farther side, loomed up, ghostly white
by contrast.
Rufus and Emerson had gone ahead and were there in advance of us; they
shouted across to us that the dogs had not escaped. We then all hurried
on over snowy stones and logs to reach the place.
It was a gruesome sort of den, back under an overhang of rocks fully
seventy feet high. Near the dark aperture which the boys had blocked,
numbers of freshly gnawed bones lay in the snow, which presented a very
sinister appearance.
Those in advance had already kindled a fire of drift-stuff not far away
on the shore. The hounds and dogs which had come with the party,
scenting the outlaw dogs in the cave, were barking noisily; and from
within could be heard a muffled but savage bay of defiance.
"That's old Bender!" exclaimed Emerson. "And he knows right well, too,
that his time's come!"
"Suppose they will show fight?" several asked.
"Fight! Yes!" cried old Hewey, who had now hobbled up. "They'll fight
wuss than any wild critters!"
One of the older boys, Ransom Frost, declared that he was not afraid to
take a club and go into the cave.
"Don't you think of such a thing!" exclaimed old Hewey. "Tham's
desperate dogs! They'd pitch onto you like tigers! Tham dogs know
there's no hope for them, and they're going to fight--if they get the
chance!"
It was a difficult place to approach, and several different plans of
attack were proposed. When the two hounds and three dogs which had come
up with us barked and scratched at the heavy, flat stones which Rufus
and Emerson had piled in the mouth of the cave, old Bender and Tige
would rush forward on their side of the obstruction, with savage growls.
Yet when Rufus or any of the others attempted to steal up with their
guns, to shoot through the chinks, the outlaws drew back out of sight,
in the gloom. There was a fierceness in their growling such as I never
have heard from other dogs.
The owner of Watch, the collie, now crept up close and called to his
former pet. "I think I can call my dog out," said he.
He called long and endearingly, "Come, Watch! Come, good fellow! You
know me, Watch! Come out! Come, Watch, come!"
But the outlawed Watch gave not a sign of recognition or affection; he
stood with the band.
Tige's former master then tried the same thing, but elicited only a deep
growl of hostility.
"Oh, you can whistle and call, but you won't get tham dogs to go back on
one another!" chuckled old Hewey. "Tham dogs have taken an oath
together. They won't trust ye and I swan I wouldn't either, if I was in
their places! They know you are Judases!"
It was decided that the brimstone should be used. Live embers from the
fire were put in the kettle. Green, thick boughs were cut from fir-trees
hard by; and then, while the older members of the party stood in line in
front of the hole beneath the rocks, to strike down the dogs if they
succeeded in getting out, Rufus and Emerson removed a part of the
stones, and with some difficulty introduced the kettle inside, amidst a
chorus of ugly growls from the beleaguered outlaws. The brimstone was
then put into the kettle, more fire applied, and the hole covered
quickly with boughs. And now even we younger boys were allowed to bear a
hand, scraping up snow and piling it over the boughs, the better to keep
in the smoke and fumes.
The splutter of the burning sulphur could plainly be heard through the
barrier, and also the loud, defiant bark of old Bender and the growls of
Tige.
Very soon the barking ceased, and there was a great commotion, during
which we heard the kettle rattle. This was succeeded presently by a
fierce, throaty snarling of such pent-up rage that chills ran down the
backs of some of us as we listened. After a few minutes this, too,
ceased. For a little space there was complete silence; then began the
strangest sound I ever heard.
It was like the sad moaning of the stormy wind, as we sometimes hear it
in the loose window casements of a deserted house. Hardly audible at
first, it rose fitfully, moaning, moaning, then sank and rose again. It
was not a whine, as for pity or mercy, but a kind of canine farewell to
life: the death-song of the outlaws. This, too, ceased after a time; but
old Hewey did not advise taking away the boughs for fifteen or twenty
minutes. "Make a sure job on't," he said.
Choking fumes issued from the cave for some time after it was opened and
the stones pulled away. Bender was then discovered lying only a few feet
back from the entrance. He appeared to have dashed the kettle aside, as
if seeking to quench the fire and smoke. Tige was close behind him,
Watch farther back. Very stark and grim all four looked when finally
they were hauled out with a pole and hook and given a finishing shot.
It was thought best to burn the bodies of the outlaws. The fire on the
shore was replenished with a great quantity of drift-wood, fir boughs
and other dry stuff which we gathered, and the four carcasses heaved up
on the pile. It was a calm day, but thick, dark clouds had by this time
again overspread the sky, causing the pond to look still blacker. The
blaze gained headway; and a dense column of smoke and sparks rose
straight upward to a great height. Owing to the snow and the darkening
heavens, the fire wore a very ruddy aspect, and I vividly recall how its
melancholy crackling was borne along the white shore, as we turned away
and retraced our steps homeward.