“JEST AN ORNERY PUP”
SOMETIMES the Ranger took the children snow-shoeing through the winter
woods. Their game was to find and name as many footprints as they
could, of the many they saw criss-crossing the snow. Sometimes they
could read a story in those footprints, like the time they followed the
delicate mouse tracks till those of a fox told the end of the story.
They soon learned to know the difference between the pointed tracks of
the deer and the manlike footprints of the mice and squirrels, raccoons
and bears. Then there were the doglike prints of the foxes and coyotes,
and the catlike marks of the wild cats,--those handsome gray striped
Bay lynxes that looked so much like big house cats except for their
tasseled ears and big feet, bobbed tails and the fur that hung down
from their cheeks in points. Once they caught a glimpse of one crouched
on the limb of a tree,--a beauty of a great, fierce cat with his round
yellow eyes.
Once they even came across the giant catlike track of a mountain lion,
and their father made them go back while he followed with his gun.
He could tell whether an animal had been walking or running, whether
it had been chasing something or was being chased, or whether it was
a deer or a doe. It made these winter walks mighty interesting to the
children.
Just before Christmas the Ranger went to the settlement on his
snow-shoes to get the mail. When he came back, out of his coat pocket
tumbled a yellow ball of fur.
“A dog!” his wife exclaimed.
“‘Jest an ornery pup,’ the grocer says. But I figured he might came in
handy with our small fry,” by which he meant the children. “They’re
missing that cub so mightily.”
“I don’t believe anything will ever crowd Fuzzy-Wuzz out of their
affections,” she smiled back.
“Well, I’ll feel safer about them, anyhow, if we have a dog about the
place.”
The children welcomed him ardently. He was a friendly, wriggling
fellow, was Wiggledy,--as they promptly named him. Just a yellow puppy,
part terrier and part something else, the Ranger thought him. But a
love-hungry heart beat in that furry chest. He was soon pals with both
children.
Young animals can generally be trained to eat out of the same dish. But
Ring-tail was a half grown cat when Wiggledy arrived, and it was too
late, so far as she was concerned, to make friends between them.
Wiggledy soon came to look upon everything the children owned as under
his especial guardianship. One day when he and Ring-tail had been shut
in the barn while the children had their lessons, he barked so hard
that their mother sent them to see what the trouble was.
They opened the barn door and called him, but he would not come.
Instead, he kept running to the rain water barrel in the far corner of
the vacant horse stall, and back again. “Hush your noise!” scolded the
little girl. But he only set his teeth in her skirt and tried to pull
her after him. At last she came with him.
Dragging her to the water barrel, he stood on his hind legs, and with
fore paws against the barrel, began barking harder than ever.
She peered within. It was dusk in that corner of the barn, and at
first she could see nothing. At last her eyes made out a movement in
the water. Peering closer, she saw, just above the water line, which
was half way down the barrel, the pointed face of the ring-tail cat.
Ring-tail often drank from the barrel, reaching down while she clung
with hind feet on the barrel rim. This time she had lost her balance
and fallen in. She was swimming feebly. A moment more and she suddenly
sank out of sight.
At his sister’s cry, the boy came running, and fished out the drowning
animal. Ring-tail’s eyes were shut and her body felt stiff and cold.
Tearfully they carried her into the cabin, where their mother gave her
a swallow of something hot and laid her behind the kitchen stove in a
warm blanket. Anxiously the yellow pup watched and waited, every now
and then giving her wet face a lick, and whimpering inquiringly.
When at last she began to move her claws feebly and to open her eyes a
crack, my! how joyously he barked.
“I vow that pup deserves a medal for life-saving,” declared the Ranger,
giving Wiggledy a ham bone.
But at that moment Ring-tail, having fully revived, snatched his bone
away.--She was certainly feeling better.