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!
[Illustration: “What was this upon his bridge!”]
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE GUARDIAN OF THE FLOCK
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE KING OF THE NORTHERN SLOPE
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.