Little Old Dan Pelly occupied a position in life analogous to that of a
tragedian who aspires to play comedy rôles. By reason of early
environment, natural inclination and years of practice, he was a dog
trainer; now, in the sunset of his rather futile life, he was a cross
between a chicken raiser, farmer and dreamer of old dreams that had to
do mostly with dogs and good quail cover. In a word, old Dan was not
happy, and this morning as he sat on a fallen scrub oak tree on the
highest point on his alleged ranch and gazed off into Little Antelope
Valley, he almost wished that a merciful Providence would waft him out
of this cold world.
"The Indians had the right idea of a hereafter," mused Dan Pelly. "To
them the next world was a happy hunting ground. This world is no longer
fit for a white man to live in. It's getting too civilized. Travel as
far as you will for good trout-fishing and upland hunting and you'll
find some scrub there ahead of you in a flivver. Get out on your own
ground at dawn on the day the shooting season opens--and you'll find
empty shotgun shells a week old. Tim, old pal, the more I see of some
men the more I love you."
Tim--or, to accord him his registered name. Tiny Tim--ran his cool
muzzle into Dan Pelly's horny palm and rested it there. Just rested it
and spoke never a word, for Tiny Tim was one of those rare dogs who know
when their masters are troubled of soul and forbear to weary their loved
ones with unnecessary outbursts of affection or sympathy. He leaned his
shoulder against Dan's knee and rested his muzzle in Dan's hand as who
should say: "Well, man alone is vile. Here I am and I'll stick, depend
upon it."
Tiny Tim was an English setter and the last surviving son of Keepsake,
the greatest bitch Dan Pelly had ever seen or owned. Dan had wept when
an envious scoundrel had poisoned her the night before a field trial up
Bakersfield way. All of her puppies out of Kenwood Boy had survived, and
all had made history in dogdom. Three of them had been placed--one, two,
three--in the Derby. The other two had been the runners-up, and the
least promising of these runners-up had been Tiny Tim.
Tim had been the runt of the litter and as if his physical deficiency
had not been sufficient handicap, he had grown into a singularly
unbeautiful dog. He had a butterfly nose, one black ear, a solid white
coat with the exception of a black spot as big as a man's hand just over
the root of his tail; and his tail was his crowning misfortune. Dog
fanciers like a setter with a merry tail, but Tiny Tim carried his very
low when he ran that Derby, and he had never carried it very high since.
As if to offset the tragedy of his tail, however, Tiny Tim ran with a
high head, for he had, tucked away in that butterfly nose, a pair of
olfactory nerves that carried him unerringly to birdy ground. He could
always manage to locate a bird lying close in cover that had been
thoroughly prospected by other dogs.
Dan Pelly had sold Tiny Tim's litter mates at a fancy figure after that
memorable Derby, but for homely Tiny Tim there were no bidders; so Dan
Pelly expressed him back to the kennels. He was homely and lacked style
and dash in his bird work; he appeared a bit nervous and uncertain and
inclined to limit his range, and it seemed to Dan that as a field trial
prospect he was so much inferior to other dogs that it was scarcely
worth while spending any time or money on his education. However, he did
have a grand nose; when he grew older Dan hoped he might outgrow his
nervousness and be steadier to shot and wing; in view of his undoubted
instinct for birds, it seemed the part of wisdom to make a "plug"
shooting dog of him. Every dog trainer keeps such an animal, if not for
his own use then for the use of stout old bank presidents and of retired
brewers whose idea of the sport of hunting is to come home with "the
limit." A grand hunting dog means little in the lives of such
"sportsmen"; they want a dog that will work close to the gun, thus
enabling them to proceed leisurely, as becomes a fat man. It is no
pleasure to them to be forced to walk down a steep hill, clamber across
a deep gully and climb the opposite hill to kill a bird their dog has
been pointing for fifteen or twenty minutes. It is reserved for
idealists like old Dan Pelly to thrill to the work of a dog like that.
The dead bird is a secondary consideration.
So Tiny Tim had been sent back to the kennel, and now, in his fifth
year, he was still on Dan Pelly's hands. But that was no fault of Tiny
Tim's. And he had never again been entered in a field trial. That was no
fault of his, either. Dan Pelly had merely gone out of the dog business,
and Tiny Tim, his last dog and best beloved, was neither a field trial
dog nor yet a potterer for fat bankers and retired brewers who came down
to Dan Pelly's place for a week-end shoot in the season. No, Tiny Tim
had never achieved that disgrace. Dan Pelly had given up dog training
and dog boarding and dog raising and dog trading after his return from
that field trial where old Keepsake's litter had brought him more money
than he had ever seen at any one time before. Consequently, Tiny Tim was
Dan's own shooting dog and Dan had trained him not for filthy lucre but
for that love and companionship for a good dog which idealists of the
Dan Pelly type can never repress.
Tiny Tim had known but one master, and but one code of sportsmanship; he
responded to but one set of signals; he had never been curbed in his
range or speed; he had never been scolded or shouted at or beaten, but
he had received much of love and caressing and praise. He had been fed
properly, housed properly, wormed regularly every three months, bathed
every Saturday afternoon and brushed and combed almost every day, and as
a result he was an extremely healthy dog, albeit a small dog, even among
small, field type English setters. Dan Pelly loved him just a little bit
more because he was a runt and because, though royally bred, his bearing
was a bit ignoble.
"I'll have none of your bench type setters," Dan was wont to remark when
speaking of setters. "I could weep from just lookin' at them--the poor
boobs, with their domed foreheads and their sad, bloodshot eyes and
dribbling chops. Too heavy and slow for anybody but a fat man. An hour's
hard going of a warm day and they're done. I'll have a light, neat
little setter for a long, hard, drivin' day of it."
Dan Pelly's choice of dog was an index to his character. He, too, was a
light, compact little man, with something of a lost dog's wistfulness
about him. Dan didn't like pointers. They were too aggressive, too
headstrong, too noisy for him. The sight of a bulldog or a bull terrier
or an Airedale made him angry, for such dogs could always be depended
upon to pounce upon a shooting dog and worry him. Toy dogs depressed
him. They seemed so unworthy of human attention and moreover they had no
brains.
This morning Dan Pelly was more than ordinarily unhappy. He needed five
hundred dollars worse than he needed salvation . . .
And only the day before while he and Tim had been working a patch of low
cover just off the county road, a man in a very expensive automobile
driven by a liveried chauffeur had paused in the road to watch them.
Presently Tim had made one of those spectacular points which always give
a real dog lover a thrill. In mid-air, while leaping over a small bush,
he had caught the scent of a quail crouching close under that bush. He
had landed with his body half turned toward the bush, his head had swung
around and there he had stood, "frozen." Dan had walked up, kicked the
bird out, waited until the quail was forty yards away and fired.
Meanwhile Tim had broken point and, head up, was following the flushed
bird with anxious eyes.
As the gun barked the bird flinched slightly but did not reduce its
speed. Wings spread stiffly, it sailed away out of sight and Dan Pelly,
seeing himself watched by the man in the motor car, grinned
deprecatingly.
"Missed him a mile," he called.
"You let him get too far away before you fired," the stranger replied
with that hearty camaraderie which always obtains between lovers of
upland shooting.
"My gun is a full choke; I can kill nicely with it at fifty yards, but I
like to give the birds a chance for their white alley so I never shoot
under forty yards."
"Grand point your little setter made then. Steady to flush and shot,
too. Homely little rascal, but man, he's a dog! I must have a look at
him, if you don't mind, my friend." And he got out of the car.
"Certainly, sir. Come, Timmy, lad. Shake hands with the gentleman."
But Tiny Tim had other and more important matters to attend to. He was
racing at full speed after that departing bird. Dan whistled him to
halt, but Tim paid no attention. He crossed a gentle rise of ground and
disappeared on the other side. He was out of sight for about five
minutes; then he appeared again on the crest and came jogging sedately
back to Dan Pelly. In his mouth he held tenderly a wounded quail.
Straight to Dan Pelly he came, and as he advanced he twisted his little
body sinuously and arched and lowered his shoulders and flipped his tail
from side to side and smiled with his eyes. In effect he said: "Dan, you
didn't think you hit that bird, but I saw him flinch ever so little.
I've had a lot of experience in such matters and experience has taught
me that a bird hit like that will fly a couple of hundred yards and then
drop. So I kept my eye on this one and sure enough just as he reached
the top of that little rise I saw him settle rather abruptly. So I went
over and nosed around and picked up his trail. He had an injured
wing--numbed, probably--and he was down and running to beat the band.
It's sporty to chase a runner, because if we don't get him, Dan, a
weasel will."
The stranger looked at the bird in Tim's mouth and then he looked at Dan
Pelly. "Well, I'll be swindled!" he declared. "If I live to be a million
years old I'll never see a prettier piece of bird work than that. The
dog's human."
"Yes, he's a right nice little feller," Dan declared pridefully. "Timmy,
boy, take the bird to the gentleman and then shake hands with him."
Timmy looked at the stranger, who smiled at him, so he walked sedately
to the latter and gently dropped the frightened bird into his hand. Not
a feather had been disturbed; not a tooth had marred the tender flesh.
The stranger reached down and twigged Tiny Tim's nose; then he tugged
his ear a little, said "Good dog" and stroked Tim's head. Tim extended a
paw to be shaken. They were friends.
"Want to sell this dog, my friend?" the newcomer demanded.
"Oh, no! Timmy's the only dog I have left. He's just my little shooting
dog and I'm right fond of him. He has a disposition that sweet, sir,
you've never seen the beat of it. If I sold Timmy I'd never dare come
home. My wife would take the rolling pin to me."
"I'll give you two hundred and fifty dollars for him."
"Timmy isn't for sale, sir."
"Not enough money, eh? Well, I don't blame you. If Timmy was my dog five
thousand dollars wouldn't touch him. It was worth that to me to see him
perform. Let me see him work this cover, if you please." To Tiny Tim:
"All right, boy. Root 'em out. Lots of birds in here yet."
The dog was off like a streak. Suddenly he paused, sniffing up-wind,
swung slowly left and slowly right, trotted forward a few paces and
halted, head up, tail swinging excitedly, every muscle aquiver.
"It's dry as tinder and the birds don't lay close. He's on to some
running birds now, sir. Watch him road 'em to heavier cover and then
point."
Instead, they flushed. Tim watched them interestedly, marked where they
had settled, moved gingerly forward--and froze on a single that had
failed to flush. Dan Pelly handed the stranger his gun. "Perhaps, sir,"
he said with his wistful smile, "you might enjoy killing a bird over
Timmy's point."
This was the apotheosis of field courtesy. The stranger took the gun,
smiling his thanks, walked over to Tiny Tim, kicked out the bird and
missed him. Tim glanced once at the bird and promptly dismissed him from
consideration. He made a wide cast to come up on the spot where he had
seen the flushed covey settle.
"Point!" called Dan Pelly. This time the stranger killed his bird, which
Tim retrieved in handsome style.
"He brought the dead bird to me!" the stranger shouted. "Did you notice
that? He brought it to me!"
"Of course. It's your bird. You killed it. Timmy knows that. It wouldn't
be mannerly of him to bring it to me. I see you appreciate a good
shooting dog, sir. I suppose, living in the city and a busy man, you
don't get much afield. There's a lot of birds scattered in this cover.
Have a little shoot over Timmy. I have four birds and that's enough for
our supper. I'll sit down under this oak tree and have a smoke."
"That's devilish sporting of you, my friend. Thank you very much." And
the stranger hurried away after Tiny Tim. He was an incongruous figure
in that patch of cover, what with his derby hat and overcoat, and he
seemed to realize this, for he shed both, stuffed a dozen cartridges
into his pockets--he was far too big a man to wear Dan Pelly's
disreputable old hunting jacket--and hurried away after Tiny Tim. From
the far corner of the field Dan presently heard a merry fusillade, and
in about fifteen minutes his guest returned with half a dozen quail and
Tiny Tim trotting at his heels.
"I'll give you a thousand dollars for Timmy, my friend," was his first
announcement. "Why, he works for me as if I were his master."
"You're the first man except his master who has ever shot over him,"
Pelly replied proudly. "Sorry, but Timmy is not for sale."
"I'll bet nobody has ever offered you a thousand dollars for him. Here's
my card, Mr.-- er--er----"
"Dan Pelly's my name, sir."
"Mr. Pelly, and if you change your mind, wire me collect and I'll send a
man down with the cash and you can send the dog back by him."
Dan took the card. The stranger thanked him and departed with his quail
in his expensive car.
And this morning Dan Pelly sat at the highest point on his so-called
ranch and looked down into Little Antelope Valley and was unhappy. He
needed five hundred dollars to meet a mortgage; he could get a thousand
dollars within twenty-four hours by sending a telegram collect to the
man who had admired Tiny Tim--and he didn't have the courage to send the
telegram. In fact, he hadn't had sufficient courage to tell Martha, his
wife, of the stranger's offer. Martha was made of sterner stuff than her
husband and a terrible panic of fear had seized Dan at the mere thought
of telling her. What if she should accept the thousand dollars?
Dan loaded his pipe and smoked ruminatively. He thought of his wasted
and futile life. Twenty-five years wasted as a professional dog trainer.
Faugh! And all he had to show for it was a host of memories, sweet and
bitter; sweet as he remembered the dear days afield with good dogs and
good fellows, the thrill of many a hard-fought field trial; bitter as he
thought of dogs he had loved and which had been sold or poisoned or died
of old age or disease; bitterer still as he reflected that he and Martha
had come to a childless old age with naught between them and the county
poor farm save a thousand acres of rough sage-covered land which, with
the exception of about twenty-five acres of rich, sub-irrigated bottom
land, was worthless save as a training ground for dogs. It had numerous
springs on it, good cover and just enough scrub oaks to form safe
roosting places for quail. It was a rather decent little game preserve
and occasionally Dan made a few dollars by granting old customers the
privilege of a shoot on it. He ran about a hundred head of goats on it,
while in the bottom land he and Martha eked out a precarious existence
with a few chickens and turkeys, a few hogs, a few stands of bees, three
cows, a couple of horses and Tiny Tim. For Tim was known to a few dog
fanciers as the last of the old Keepsake-Kenwood Boy strain in the state
and not infrequently they sent their bitches to Tiny Tim's court.
Poor Martha! Hers had not been a very happy life with Dan Pelly. A dog
trainer is--a dog trainer. He can't very well be anything else because
God has made him so. And in his heart of hearts he doesn't want to be.
He trains dogs ostensibly for money but in reality because he loves them
and the job affords him a legitimate excuse to be afield with them, to
enjoy their society and that of the jovial devotees of upland
game-shooting. Dan Pelly wasn't an ambitious man. He had no desire to
dip coupons or wear fine raiment; his taste in automobiles went no
further than an old ruin he had picked up for two hundred dollars for
the purpose of carting his dogs around in the days before Martha took
over the handling of the Pelly fortunes, when Dan had had dogs to cart
around.
The crux of the situation was this. Dog trainers are so busy with their
dogs that they neglect to send out bills for board and training, and the
men who can afford to buy expensive dogs and have them boarded and
trained seldom think of their dogs until fall. Then they pay the bill
and sometimes wonder why it is so large. In a word, the income of a dog
trainer is never what one might term staggering, and it is more or less
uncertain.
Martha had grown weary of this uncertainty and when distemper for the
second time had cleaned out Dan Pelly's kennels, taking all of his own
dogs with the exception of Tiny Tim and either killing or ruining the
dogs of his customers, Mrs. Pelly felt that it was time to act. She knew
it would be years before Dan's old customers would send dogs to him
again. Friendship and a reputation as a great trainer are undoubtedly
first aids to a dog trainer's success, but men who love their dogs
hesitate to send them to a kennel where the germs of virulent distemper
are known to exist. It was up to Dan Pelly to burn his old kennels and
build new ones far removed from the location of the old. He could not
afford to do this and since Martha was desirous of seeing him engage in
something more constructive, Dan Pelly had gone out of business and
become a farmer in the trifling manner heretofore described.
Martha told him she was weary of dogs. She had shed too many tears over
dead favorites; she had assisted at too many operations for the cure of
canker of the ear, fistula, tumor and cancer, broken legs, smashed toes
and cuts from barbed wire. She was already too learned in the gentle art
of healing mange and exorcising tapeworms. She loved dogs, but to have
thirty pointers and setters set up a furious barking whenever a stranger
appeared at the Pelly farm had finally "gotten on her nerves." She
understood Dan better than he understood himself and she knew how bitter
was the sacrifice she demanded; yet she realized that she must be firm
and lead Daniel in the way he must go, else would they come to want and
misery in a day when Dan would be too old to tramp over hill and dale
training dogs. Dan had readily consented to her direction--particularly
after she had wept a little. Poor Martha!
From where he sat Dan Pelly could this morning see great activity on the
floor of Little Antelope Valley, just below him. Half a dozen men on
horseback were riding backward and forward and at least a dozen white
specks that Dan Pelly knew for hunting dogs were ranging here and there
among the low sage cover.
"The first arrivals for the Pacific Coast Field Trials, and they're out
on the grounds, looking them over and seeing how their dogs behave.
Three days from now they'll be running the Derby, and after that the All
Age Stake. Ah, Timmy lad, if we two could only go to a field trial
again! How like old times it would be, Timmy! We'd be down at the
station to greet all the gentlemen coming in for the trials, and then
we'd be crowding around the baggage car watching the dogs in their
crates bein' lifted out. And we'd be peekin' through the air-holes in
the crates to see whether they'd be setters or pointers, and if setters,
whether they'd be English or Irish. And then the banquet up at the hotel
the night before the Derby and the toastmaster rappin' for order and
sayin': 'Gentlemen, we have with us tonight one of the Old Guard, Dan
Pelly. Dan is going to tell us something about the field trials of other
days--other days and other dogs. Gentlemen--old Dan Pelly.'
"Ah, Tim my lad, we're out of it. Think, Timmy, if we two were driving
out to Antelope Valley in the morning, with you in my lap, and the
entrance fee up and me wild with excitement, if you were paired say with
a dog like Manitoba Rap or Fischel's Frank or Mary Montrose or Ringing
Bells or Robert the Devil--any one of the big ones, eh, Timmy? No,
Timmy, I wouldn't be excited. They're all great dogs. Didn't Mary
Montrose win the All America three times--the only dog in the world that
ever proved her championship caliber three times?
"But Timmy lad, you'd run circles around her. You might run with a low
head and a dead tail--though your head is high and your tail is none so
low as it was in the Derby, when you were a wee puppy and nervous and
frightened--but you'd make the judges notice you, Timmy. You'd show them
dash and range and speed and style and brains; steady to flush, steady
to shot, steady to command, no false pointing, no roading birds to a
flush if you could help it, picking up singles on ground the other dog
thought he had covered, marking where the flushed coveys settle and
picking them up again. Ah, Timmy dog, it's breaking my heart to hide
your light under a bushel basket. I owe it to you to let men that know
and can appreciate a good dog see you work. Of the hundreds of dogs I've
owned, of the thousand I've trained since boyhood, you are the king of
them all. God help me, Timmy, I gave Martha my word I'd never attend
another field trial or handle another dog in one, either for myself or
another. We're whipped, Timmy. Whipped to a frazzle."
Tiny Tim leaned a little closer and licked the palm of Dan's hand. He
was an understanding little dog. Even when Dan finally heaved slowly to
his feet and started down the hillside toward home, Tiny Tim followed at
his heels, forbearing to follow his natural instinct, which was to frisk
ahead of Dan far and wide and attend to the business for which he really
had been created.
Arrived at the house Dan encountered with a sheepish glance the
searching one of his wife.
"Where have you been, Dan?" she queried.
"Oh, takin' a little walk," he replied.
She sat down beside him on the porch and put her arm around his neck.
"Hard to be out of it, isn't it, dear?"
"It's hard to think that a dog like Timmy shouldn't have his chance,
Martha. Why not make an exception to our agreement in this one case? I'm
sure I could win the All Age Stake with him. The entrance fee is
twenty-five dollars and there'll be upwards of forty dogs entered.
That'll be a thousand-dollar purse, divided five hundred, three-fifty
and a hundred and fifty. Might win first prize and be able to pay the
mortgage. Somehow I got a notion the bank won't renew the loan."
Martha's eyes were as wistful as her husband's but hers was a far more
resolute nature. She kept her bargains and expected others to keep
theirs; she knew the weakness of Dan Pelly. If he should go down to the
field trials and enter Tiny Tim, he would meet old friends and old
customers. It was four years since he had quit the game--long enough for
men to forget those distemper germs and take another chance on Dan, for
Dan's fame as a trainer was almost national. Somebody would be certain
to ask him to train a Derby or Futurity prospect for next fall, or to
handle a string of dogs in the Manitoba chicken trials.
And Dan was weak. He was one of those men who could never quite say no
as if he meant it. Let him go down to dogdom and he would be back in the
game again as deep as ever within a year. Decidedly (thought Martha)
they couldn't afford to go over that ground again.
"Yes," Dan sighed, "it's a pity Timmy can't have his chance. He never
was a kennel-raised dog. He's been allowed to rove and roam and he's
hunted so much on his own I don't really understand why he hasn't been
spoiled. But the exercise and experience he's had in one year exceed
that of most dogs in a lifetime. He's little, but he's well muscled and
tough and can hold his speed long after other dogs have slowed up. I
wish he could have his chance, Martha."
Martha felt herself slipping, so, to avoid that catastrophe, she left
Dan and entered the house.
All day long Dan sat on the porch, glooming and grieving. Having the
field trials held practically at his own door was a sore temptation. Dan
dwelt in Gethsemane. All day he suffered until finally, being human, he
was tempted beyond his strength and fell. About four o'clock, while
Martha was busy feeding the chickens, locking them up and gathering
eggs, Dan Pelly sneaked into the house, donned his Sunday suit,
abstracted the sum of fifty dollars from Martha's cache in the tomato
can back of the jars of preserves on the back porch, cranked his
prehistoric automobile and with Tiny Tim on the seat behind him fled to
the fleshpots. He left a note on the dining-room table for Martha.
Dear Martha:
Can't stand it any longer. Timmy _must_ have his chance. It's for his
sake, dear. I've robbed you of your egg money, but I _know_ you'll have it
back tomorrow.