BEN UNCAS’S LAST HUNT
One Saturday Anne discovered that Waddles was very low in his mind.
It was after a week when she had been busy at school, and had devoted
her afternoons and evenings to taking and developing more or less
successful dog pictures, to make the albums in aid of Mrs. Carr’s
“fund,” so that she had paid less attention than usual to the house
fourfoots.
At first Anne thought that Waddles felt neglected, and was a bit sulky;
but as petting did not mend matters, she looked about for some other
cause. It could not be that the sixlets bothered him, for they now
lived in separate quarters, and had a garden to themselves; and Mr.
Hugh had secured Tiger Lily, Dinah, and Bobwhite to add to the beagle
pack he was forming, when they should be old enough, much to the relief
of Anne’s parents; for the prospect of six puppies cutting their second
teeth upon any and everything they could seize was certainly rather
appalling.
Fortunately, neither Anne nor Tommy objected to halving the pups with
Mr. Hugh, for they could visit them at any time, and though his dogs
were obliged to obey, and to be very tidy and good, they were allowed
to spend their evenings lying in rows by the enormous fireplace in
the hall, and always sat in a group about his chair when he dined or
breakfasted alone.
Happy, having weaned the pups, had seemingly given them entirely into
the guardianship of Jack Waddles, who was so watchful and motherly in
his care of them that Miss Letty said his name should be changed to
Jane, and that he should wear a nurse’s cap and apron. But Anne, who
understood him, loved him for his gentleness, and was glad to have one
stay-at-home dog, that, though he knew and liked the hunting in a way,
did not run himself to a skeleton over it, for the cool weather had
set in, and Happy’s voice could be heard far and wide, telling of her
running ability; while upon more than one occasion she stayed out so
late at night that she did not have to get up for breakfast.
Strange to say, Waddles suddenly stopped hunting with her; of course
he was an old dog now, but why he should run one week and then stop
puzzled Anne. She felt his nose; it was moist and cool. She examined
his paws; there were neither cuts or thorns visible. His coat was
well-kept and flexible,--a rough, brittle coat tells its own tale of
illness both in dogs and horses,--likewise, his eyes were bright,
yet he ate but little, and lay all day silently guarding a large
accumulation of ungnawed bones.
“Miss Jule says ‘if a horse seems all right, yet doesn’t eat, look at
his teeth.’ Perhaps it may be the same with dogs; anyway, I will look,”
said Anne to herself.
At the first attempt Waddles resisted and growled a little; then he
changed his mind. Sure enough, the tooth back of the right canine was
not only broken, but quite loose, and the gum red and swollen.
“You poor Waddlekins! Of course you can’t chew without getting a
dreadful pain! Baldy shall pull the old thing out, and it will all be
over in a minute,” said Anne, soothingly. Waddles sat perfectly still,
looking out of the side of his eyes at his mistress. He suspected
something, and yet he had no experience in tooth-drawing to give him a
hint of what was coming.
Anne first found Baldy, then going to her father borrowed a little
pair of pincers that he had kept in a drawer by his desk, ever since
they had done duty on her easy first teeth, and would soon do the same
for Tommy. Then she called Waddles to come to the garden where Baldy
was working. After thinking for a few minutes, he obeyed, walking very
slowly on tiptoe, his gait when either suspicious or reluctant. When
Baldy tried to hold him firmly between his knees, Waddles instantly
freed himself from collar and all, with the single backward jerk of the
head for which he was celebrated; but the next moment seated himself
quietly by Anne, and without being held, allowed Baldy to pull out the
tooth.
An expression of surprise, quickly followed by one of relief, crossed
his mobile face. He choked and coughed a little, then straightway
understood the whole affair, took a drink from the birds’ bath-tub
under the big syringa bush, and walking straight back to what Tommy
called “Waddles’s bone-garden” unearthed a particularly ripe and
delicious beef rib and began to gnaw it with relish, his tooth and low
spirits having disappeared together.
The next day Waddles had a long call from Mr. Wolf, Miss Jule’s old St.
Bernard, and after the usual pleasant exchange of sniffs and other
greetings the two adjourned to the south side of the orchard wall,
which, topping a slope, commanded a wide stretch of country. Here,
lying back to back so that eye, ear, and nose might have as wide a
range as possible, they proceeded to “watch out” for game.
[Illustration]
Mr. Wolf, otherwise known as Ben Uncas, and Waddles were the leading
members of a curious sort of club that hunted fur, and, as a usual
thing, let feathers severely alone. This club now numbered six members
of various sizes and breeds, and when the queerly assorted pack started
off for a day or night outing, the House People of Dogtown, hearing the
babel of cries, said, “Ben Uncas & Co. are on the war-path!”
Until this particular season the club had consisted of the St. Bernard,
its leader, Waddles, Colin, Tip, and Quick; now Hamlet had been
initiated, and was one of the most daring members, especially in the
matter of sometimes swimming down even the web-footed muskrats, who
sought safety by taking to the water.
The animals that the club hunted ranged in size from meadow-mice,
moles, chipmunks, muskrats, rabbits, skunks, woodchucks, foxes, coons,
and occasionally a rare and wily opossum, while these native animals
were liberally punctuated by an assortment of cats. Now this matter of
cat hunting by Ben Uncas & Co. has a very dreadful sound, and requires
a word of explanation.
It had its origin in what some shiftless sort of House People called
“their tender feelings” in this way. Any number of people living in
the farms and on the country edge of the village kept cats which they
fed and housed after a fashion, but when kittens were born, instead of
humanely destroying those for which they could not care, they simply
shifted the responsibility to the poor kittens, allowing them to grow
up as best they might and provide for themselves.
Those that did not starve to death soon formed a roving band of feline
bandits of every age, sex, and colour, that haunted deserted barns,
remote haymows, and even hollow trees in the deep woods, living by
preying upon song and game birds, rabbits, and barnyard fowls.
Waddles’s fierce old enemy, Tiger, the miller’s cat, had been adopted
from this race, and so constantly had Waddles, as well as Mr. Wolf and
the smaller dogs, heard the cry of “cats!” and been called to hunt the
enemy from a chicken coop or an orchard full of nestlings, that they
regarded wildcats as lawful hunting.
One thing, however, was a proof of the wonderful intelligence of the
hunters; they knew perfectly well the difference between the pet cats
of the neighbourhood and the wild tribe, and if, as happened but
very rarely, in the heat of the run they made a mistake, after one
experience and its punishment they never again bore the victim home as
a trophy, as they would a woodchuck, muskrat, or weasel, but hid it
carefully in bushes or tall grass, and pretended that the chase was
a failure. But when the kill was satisfactory, no matter who was the
catcher, Mr. Wolf always took it home to Miss Jule, who rewarded the
hunters with petting and a plate of tidbits.
Their hunting methods were also peculiar to themselves, and the
labours were divided quite equally among the six.
Waddles and Tip, the little spaniel, had the keenest noses and the best
minds for planning strategy. Quick, the fox terrier, who was all that
his name implied, added to the endurance and bound of a collection
of steel springs, was the explorer of small holes and the pioneer of
attacks upon burrows that must be dug out or chinks between rocks that
must be explored.
[Illustration]
It was Quick, also, who spurred the flagging energy of the larger dogs
in tiresome runs, though often to their hurt, as will be seen, and had
generally managed to lead his friends into the few misdeeds of which
they were guilty. Though Mr. Wolf appeared to be the leader because
of his size and heavy weight, he was really quite subject to Quick’s
commands, and the most confiding and intimate relations existed between
the pair. They shared both bed and board, and it was a study in dog
love to see the expression of impertinence that Quick usually wore
change to one of complete adoration as he gazed up in the face of his
big friend, standing on tiptoe to lick his nose.
As to Colin, the big, blundering red setter, with the beautiful eyes
and the silky hair, his use was as general encourager when the hunt
flagged; for though in the course of a long life, and he lived into
his fifteenth year, he never caught anything wilder than a frightened
chicken or disabled rabbit, yet he was never discouraged, starting off
each day with the joy of first experience, and if the party caught
nothing, he would retrieve a stick of decayed wood, a bit of old
leather, or even a spruce cone and carry it to Miss Jule on his own
account.
Upon one occasion, being left in the rear by the others, he came upon
a wood-duck that had lain dead for some time in the pond meadow. After
rolling on it very thoroughly in the manner of dogs and wolves, to
identify themselves with their finds in the noses of other dogs, he
succeeded, after much difficulty, in bearing it home and into the
dining room during a company tea, where he laid it at Miss Jule’s
feet. He had such an expression of bringing a gift worth having upon
his face, that also wore a broad grin, that no one, even among the
guests, had the heart to scold him, but politely held their breaths and
noses while Miss Jule called Colin “a good fellow,” and escorted him
out, accompanied by the duck in a dust-pan. She also allowed him the
crowning joy of burying it, which he did as a matter of course, instead
of casting it ignobly on the refuse heap, which would have not only
hurt his feelings, but have given him the extra trouble of retrieving
it a second time, and so prolonged the odour.
When Ben Uncas & Co. hunted ground beasts their methods were wholly
different from their pursuit of tree climbers. Of ground beasts the
woodchuck and muskrat seemed the most interesting quarry, and of
climbers the breed of vagrant wildcats and the coons of Pine Ridge were
the favourites. The native tailless bob-cat or red lynx was now so rare
as to be, like the rattlesnake, almost a hearsay beast of imagination,
seen only by the people who, carrying brown jugs, took a short cut
through the Den woods on their way home from the cider-mill, and
paused to rest on the way.
There were many old fields and orchards between Happy Hall and the
Hilltop Kennels, and when Ben Uncas & Co. organized for hunting, three
years before this time, there was barely a five-acre lot without its
woodchuck family, while Waddles’s old bugaboo, the skunk, called scent
cat by its comrades through fearsome politeness, inhabited stone fences
and tumble-down cellars at will. In fact, one pair were so bold as to
raise a litter under the henhouse at Pinkie Scott’s, in order to be
conveniently near a poultry and egg market, while Pinkie petted and fed
the little things, mistaking them for queer black and white kittens,
until one evening, when Hans Sachs was with her, their mother came
back and objected. Then Pinkie’s illusion and the skunk family were
dispelled together.
Of course people trapped skunks, and they were more or less hunted by
other dogs, but to the method of Ben Uncas & Co. belonged the honour
of having freed the entire hillside of the pests, even though as
individuals they had often been obliged to retire to private life in
consequence.
Anne and Tommy had never been able to follow a skunk hunt closely
enough to see exactly how it began, but one thing was certain, it was
always Quick who, jumping upon the animal’s back, gave the sudden shake
to the neck that settled the question just as he did with a rat, at the
same time taking extra care not to be bitten; for to be bitten by a
skunk is one of the “mustn’t be’s” of dog law, and a calamity they are
careful to avoid, while they are quite reckless about the more powerful
chisel teeth of both woodchuck and muskrat.
The woodchucks were less easily exterminated even though they are
more abroad by day, for not only are their homes more difficult to
reach, but when living in a colony they usually post sentinels at the
entrances of their burrows. Several times, when the settlements in the
old fields and orchards had been scattered, new families from other
places seemed to move into the empty burrows. Then again woodchucks
hole up in middle autumn and stay wholly out of reach until spring, so
they are never driven to take the risks during the hard winter months
that drive so many of the wood fourfoots recklessly into the open for
food.
A wily old woodchuck is a hard animal to chase, clumsy though it is,
it knows so many twists and turns and paths back to its burrow. It is
a still harder one for a small dog to kill, owing to the toughness of
its skin, the layer of fat that covers its vital parts at most seasons,
and the ferocity of its attack when at bay and thoroughly aroused, its
nose being really its most vulnerable spot.
The tactics of Ben Uncas & Co. were these,--when the party started out
at random the conditions of the day for sport were usually left for
Waddles and Tip to decide, as they had the most discriminating noses of
the lot. Mr. Wolf knew the scent of wild beasts on general principles,
and Quick had cat on the brain to such an extent that if a trail ran
anywhere near a tree he would jump at conclusions, and so often went
astray.
A woodchuck chase belongs chiefly to still hunting, and requires
waiting ability. After the dogs agreed together that the scent said,
for instance, that in the upper orchard, where there was but a single
family, the old folks were out foraging, they divided, Mr. Wolf and
Quick following the trail of the elders, in a silent, leisurely way,
while Waddles, Tip, and, during the last few months, Hamlet, would
sit motionless and wait well back of the burrow openings, Waddles
generally choosing the main entrance, while Colin roved about afield,
sniffing here and there, chasing grasshoppers and playing the part of
unconcerned idler to perfection, because that was what he really was.
To Colin the hunting meant play, but to the others it was as serious a
business as if their food depended on it; hence it will be seen that
they were true sportsmen.
[Illustration: _Colin._]
If things combined rightly, after a time the more or less young cubs of
the year in the burrow would wake from their nap, and after the manner
of young things, finding their parents absent, would set about to
explore, one by one cautious heads appearing above ground. Woodchucks
are very clever about making the entrances to their homes. They are
seldom in perfectly level ground, but are protected on one side by a
hillock, old corn hill, stone heap, or at least by the mound of earth
thrown from the burrow itself, so that when the animal peers out it
cannot at once be seen from the rear.
No sooner did the young woodchucks get their heads fairly above ground,
than, spying Colin skirting the field in his gambols, their attention
was riveted and their curiosity aroused, for with these, as with many
wild things, it is difficult to say which is the stronger instinct,
caution or curiosity. In a moment more two, three, or oftentimes four
young woodchucks would be seen seated sometimes a foot away from the
hole, all backed toward it as for protection, their eyes fastened upon
the distant dog.
Often at this critical moment the old ones, sniffing danger in the
wind, would start to return, only to be met by Mr. Wolf and Quick
waiting in some likely nook, who, though they could not altogether
conquer the experienced pair, would manage to hold them at bay and make
them very late in getting home.
Meanwhile Waddles waited at his post, alert, one paw raised like his
attitude before the spring and rapid digging in mole hunting. As soon
as the cubs were well clear of the burrow, he pounced upon the bunch,
trying to land between them and the opening, giving a call to his
comrades that evidently told them what to do, for sometimes they came
tumbling up, and a general scrimmage ensued at close quarters, and at
others the bunch would scatter over the field, followed by Waddles,
while the other dogs did not come to the attack until the woodchucks
had doubled and were on the home stretch. In such cases the results
were usually two victims, one of which was generally either buried for
future use or left on the field for a second trip, while the other
was borne proudly home intact by Mr. Wolf, with head held high and
important, ambling gate. In fact, no less strong a dog could carry even
a two-months-old woodchuck, sometimes a full mile over stone fences and
other obstruction, without at least partly dragging it along the ground.
After the kill Tip, Hamlet, and Colin often lost interest and
skirmished about on their own account for a while before returning; but
Waddles and Quick invariably followed Mr. Wolf, and shared Miss Jule’s
praise, and the plate of tidbits that were a part of it.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _The Reward._]
When, however, a tree animal was scented, the hunt was both noisy
and rapid. Either Waddles or Quick would pick up the trail of one of
the bandit cats, and give tongue according to their vocal abilities,
Quick’s being a most piercing and unearthly scream. Then the oddly
assorted pack would start off, noses to the ground, barking, baying,
yelping as if Dogtown itself was hunting the great phantom cat of whom
all naughty puppies live in dread, whose grin is sometimes seen on the
full moon on foggy nights, and whose trail always either leads to water
or rises in the air.
If the cat thus pursued should happen to be at rest when the trail is
discovered, it is soon on foot again, spurred by the approaching noise.
If in the open, it makes for the nearest trees; for cats are poor long
distance runners, their specialties being leaping and climbing.
A cat of experience and steady nerve, having gained a medium-sized
tree, will retreat to the upper branches, secure a good perch, and
there sit and wait indefinitely _without looking down_, for the cat who
looks down upon a pack of jumping, yelping dogs is lost, being either
confused into letting go her grip and dropping, or else startled into
jumping squirrel-like for the branches of an adjoining tree which may
bend to the earth with her weight.
If the cat, when treed, does neither of these things, then the hunters
divide forces and prepare to wait. Mr. Wolf, seating himself a few feet
from the tree, where he can see well up into the branches (for in tree
work sight supplements scent in a great degree) begins a monotonous
and incessant barking. Quick going backward a couple of yards makes
rapid runs at the tree-trunk, managing to scramble up six or eight feet
before dropping back, or sometimes, if the branches are thick and low,
landing securely upon one of them. Tip and Hamlet wait at a little
distance in case the cat tries a long leap and run, while Waddles turns
strategist and disappears, that is, as far as the cat is concerned.
Really he is crouching close against the tree-trunk directly under the
cat’s perch, silent, with glistening eyes, and, in spite of rheumatism,
all his catapult force gathered in the muscles of his back like a bent
bow, for in every chase Waddles lives over his youth and his feud with
the miller’s cat.
On goes Mr. Wolf’s hypnotic chanting, echoed occasionally by Tip or
carried into a banshee scream by Hamlet, who finds time hanging heavy
to his impatient feet. At last the cat looks down, hesitates whether
to climb higher or risk a long jump; confused by the noise, it does
half of each, and as a result drops directly at the root of the tree.
Waddles’s back straightens,--there is one bandit cat the less. Then
the good news is passed quickly on by the gossips of Birdland, all
a-twitter in the neighbouring trees.
* * * * *
Such hunting was wearing to a heavy dog past middle age like Mr. Wolf,
and after each run that season he rested longer, and felt less appetite
for his good dinner and go-to-bed bone.
In dog friendships, like those of people, there should be a certain
amount of physical as well as mental equality, or one will lead the
other beyond his strength, and this is what Quick did to his dear
friends, as both Mr. Wolf and Waddles would often have continued to
doze under the stone wall, and let certain signs of game pass unnoticed
if Quick had not literally burrowed them out and nagged them into
action, saying, both Miss Jule and Anne suspected, many taunting things
that no old dog likes to hear from his juniors.
Miss Jule noticed that Mr. Wolf was growing rather thin, and she
tried to keep him more with her, coaxing him to lie in the hall of
afternoons, or by her desk, as he used to even in his youth, before
Quick had come to win his friendship and urge him to the hunting for
which he was not intended. But the nervous, tireless fox terrier was so
persistent, crawling and fawning before the St. Bernard, or even pawing
him awake when he slept, that the poor old fellow had little peace.
Finally Miss Jule resolved to give Quick to some children living away
in another county, who wanted exactly such an active pet, but, as it
chanced, she had put it off over long.
Early in October a heavy rain flooded the low, river meadows, and
turned the muskrat hunting-grounds of Ben Uncas and Co., that before
had been merely wet here and there, into a wide pool, where the dogs
shorter of leg than Mr. Wolf and Colin were obliged to paddle along.
There were already one or two of the muskrats’ winter homes in these
meadows. These huts looked like low stacks of coarse hay and reeds, and
the odour of the builders was sufficient to provoke the dogs to attack
them, even though the entrances ran under ground for some way before
opening under water in the river bank, something after the manner of
beaver runs, though the beaver’s house is in the water itself, not on
partly submerged meadow land. Because the muskrat is a poor runner,
it trusts itself on dry land as little as possible, and the dogs hunted
it either by digging it from its burrows, the only way in which they
had real success, or by swimming after it. This last might do well
enough as sport for water dogs on summer evenings, but it was poor work
for elderly Mr. Wolf and Colin, with the autumn chill in the air. As
for Waddles, he was wise in his own generation, and would no longer
even cross a brook where he was obliged to wet more than the tips of
his toes, and even did that with a very staccato tread. So when the
others spent afternoons splashing about the muskrats’ huts, he, dry and
comfortable, merely sat upon a low bridge close by, talked to himself,
and occasionally bayed advice. But then, Waddles was a genius.
[Illustration: _Ben Uncas._]
Miss Jule was away the first day of this unwise hunting. When she came
home she found Mr. Wolf more tired still, and she was fairly shocked to
see how lean his body was, now that the thick, long hair that had given
it bulk was pasted close by mud and water.
She had him carefully dried by the kitchen fire, well brushed out, fed
him herself with warm stew, and put him to bed in a box stall deep
with straw covered with a horse blanket for a bed, thinking to keep
him prisoner a few days for his own good and give him the necessary
exercise herself.
The next day was bright and warm for the season, and Miss Jule thought
that a sun bath on the south piazza would do Ben worlds of good. When
she went for him he whined with joy, licked her hands, and looked into
her face with old-time fervour; but when they started together toward
the house, he lagged behind, took a few steps, lay down, then struggled
to his feet and seemed to force himself to cover the distance, sinking
down on the mat his mistress placed in the porch corner with a sigh,
and closed his eyes. Miss Jule plainly saw that Ben Uncas was very ill,
and wishing to take no risks, she telephoned for a skilled veterinarian
from the town half a dozen miles away. In another hour the quick trot
of his horses’ hoofs sounded on the drive. A good veterinary surgeon
who loves his work, always comes quickly, for he knows the sorrow of
helplessly watching the pain of an animal who cannot put his needs into
the words House People can understand.
He took temperature and pulse, felt here and listened there, and said
poor Ben had distemper from wasted strength and drinking ditch water
when on the run. He said Mr. Wolf was very ill, but not, he thought,
past help. He must go back to the box stall where he could have both
air and shelter, and leaving medicine to be faithfully given, he went
away, promising to come again at night.
For a time Ben seemed brighter and walked back to the stable without
resting on the way, took a long drink of water, swallowed his medicine
without a struggle, and fell into a doze.
In the afternoon he waked, tried to drink the soup Miss Jule brought
him, and could not, neither could he swallow water, though he
gratefully licked a bit of ice his mistress gave him. Then when pain
seized him and his sunken eyes told of suffering, she put hot cloths
upon his stomach and gently rubbed his head which laid in her lap.
The surgeon came at evening, looked sober, but said to keep on with the
medicine, and that Ben would probably improve the next morning.
That night the horses in the stable saw an odd sight--fat, middle-aged
Miss Jule, buttoned to the chin in an old ulster with a crimson wool
Tam O’ Shanter cap of Letty’s fastened on askew, was sitting on an
upturned pail in the box stall beside her sick friend, while for
company, Martin, the reliable, slept on a heap of hay in a distant
corner, wrapped in a carriage robe.
Mr. Hugh had offered to stay with Ben in Miss Jule’s place and Letty to
watch with her, but a grim “No” had been her answer.
In the middle of the night Ben grew worse, and in spite of his courage
he groaned with pain, and stretched his paws to his mistress as if for
help, but could not otherwise move. She roused Martin and sent him to
telephone the doctor, but the answer came that he was out and might not
return until morning.
Miss Jule had felt from the first that Ben was fatally ill; now she
questioned herself as to how far she should allow him to suffer under
the chance that he might recover for a time, and thus spare her pain.
More time passed, again he stretched out his paws and turned a pitiful
look upon her that said, “Help me, mistress, I cannot bear the pain.”
“Yes, old fellow, missy will help you. Put your head down and I will
rub it--so. Martin, go to my locked closet and bring me the bottle
labelled chloroform. Yes, that is right; now that horse sponge there
and the bit of newspaper.” She took the bottle with a hand that shook,
poured some upon the sponge that she had thrust in a cone made of
twisted paper. Then she raised the feverish nose resting upon her knee
and gently covered it saying softly, “Good-by my Ben, good-by dear Mr.
Wolf.” That was all.
A healthy animal often struggles at the scent of chloroform, but
to the very ill it brings swift peace. Ben Uncas was in the happy
hunting-grounds which were not far away. Then brave Miss Jule broke
down and laid her head upon the tawny one and sobbed aloud. She was
sitting thus when the doctor, having received her summons on his tardy
return home, crossed the floor with rapid tread.
At first the doctor said that she should have had patience and given
the medicine a longer chance to work. But later, that she had done well
in stopping useless pain, for the sickness was typhoid distemper, and
nothing could have saved old Ben.
“I suppose that you are laughing to yourself, and thinking what an old
fool I am to care so,” said Miss Jule, leaning wearily against the door
post, a wild object with straws sticking in her hair, red-eyed and
dishevelled in the dawning light.
“I laugh at grief for a dog?” answered the doctor. “Possibly once but
not now, or ever again. Look at this,” and opening his watch he showed
her the miniature of a dog painted on the inside cover. It was the head
of a finely bred bull terrier with soft brown and white markings, and
a broad browed face, for the technical term muzzle could not be applied
to one having all the thoughtful intelligence of a human being.
“That is Jim,” said the doctor, speaking slowly, and fixing his eyes
upon the picture.
“Oh, yes, I remember him,” said Miss Jule; “he was rather small for his
breed, and lame in his left hind leg, but compact and alert. He always
used to ride about with you, and when you went indoors would sit and
wait with an expression of patience in his eyes that seemed to say that
he knew just what you were about, and that of course he expected you to
take your time, do your work thoroughly, and not hurry; but you’ve not
brought him this season, have you?”
The doctor shook his head, still keeping his eyes upon the miniature
and continued: “I reared Jim from a pup, and it seems as if there never
was a time that he was so young but what he understood what I said
almost before I spoke the words; he travelled everywhere with me, and
was a companion for work as well as play. If I went to a hotel, in a
day he knew at which floor our room was, and where the elevator should
stop. He knew my telephone call, and would bark at me when the bell
rang it. If I was at the office, he at home, I could call him to come
to me if some one lowered the receiver to his range. He could carry
numbers in his head, too, that is, as far as four; above that he was
uncertain.
[Illustration: _Jim_ (_Seeley photo_).]
“One day, three years or so ago, while I was waiting at a railway
station not far from Boston, in some strange way a train struck Jim
and hurled him upon a bank above. It may be that he refused the train
right of way; however it was, the crowd that gathered said he was done
for, and should be put out of misery. But bruised, his leg broken at
the hip, and maimed though he was when I picked him up, Jim looked at
me and I at him, and we agreed to make a fight for it. I took him into
Boston to the hospital. We won; his leg was set, and for a time it did
well, and we went about in company once more; but the fracture join was
brittle, it soon broke again, and was united with silver wire. For a
couple of years he went about, a cheerful cripple,--but at that, worth
all the other dogs in Christendom to me, and seeming to grow keener
witted as his body was more dependent.
“Then the leg began to bother him, and I tried every known expedient
short of amputation. If I had done that in time he might have lived
longer, but I hesitated, and Jim died, conscious and knowing me.
“That was more than a year ago, but I have not forgotten. There never
was but one Jim, and no other dog can be the same to me. One thing,
though, Jim has done for his fellows,--he has made me think of and
treat all dogs differently for his sake, and remembering him and what
he was, knocking about as I do, I’m fast getting to believe that dogs
are almost the only friends one has that can be quite trusted. If a man
is old or young, rich or poor, a dog sees no fault in his master.”
A man seldom has the relief of tears that helps a woman, but instead,
sorrow grasps his throat and chokes him, and there were tears in the
doctor’s voice as he closed his watch on Jim’s portrait.
* * * * *
“Do have a cup of coffee, Miss Jule, dear. You must be done up,” said
Anna Maria, who also looked awry and as if she had been up all night,
as she bustled into the stable with coffee-pot and cups on a tray,
which she set on top of the nearest feed-bin, while Martin emerged from
below, where he had been ducking his head in a pail of water in order
to appear fully awake. “And the doctor here, too; he must be faintin’,
for he was the fore half of the night at the Ridge with Squire
Burley’s old mare, the drivin’ boy says,” she added, hurrying back to
the house.
Miss Jule filled two cups, and handed one to the doctor. Anna Maria had
forgotten the spoons, so they stirred the coffee with stout straws.
Miss Jule raised the cup to her lips, and then paused, saying, “To the
friendship of two faithful dogs, Ben Uncas and Jim,” and they drank the
coffee slowly and in silence.
* * * * *
Quick was to have gone to his youthful new owners that same day, and
Mr. Hugh thoughtfully slipped over and took him away before Miss Jule
awoke from her belated sleep, so that two members of the hunting club
vanished at the same time, and it disbanded as if by mutual consent;
for Waddles and Tip at least seemed to comprehend what had happened,
and Colin, who was himself growing old, became more reliable, and
seldom left his mistress.
“Let’s go up and hug Miss Jule and tell her how sorry we are, and lend
her the sixlets for a week to ’muse her,” said tender-hearted Tommy,
when he heard the news.
“Better not,” said Anne, who understood; “if it was Waddles, I would
rather be let alone.” And when she, turning quickly, asked Waddles
the familiar question, “Where is Ben? where is Mr. Wolf?” instead of
cheering and trotting off toward the gate as usual, to meet his friend,
he never stirred, but gave her a reproachful look, and throwing back
his head, bayed dismally.