Treve lay on the porch at the Dos Hermanos ranch house; his classic
head between his little white forepaws; his mighty gold-and-white body
like a couchant lion’s. A casual passerby would have said the dog was
asleep. A dog-student would have known better. Seldom do collies sleep
in that picturesque pose. Usually they slumber asprawl on one side.
Neither were the collie’s deepset sorrowful eyes shut. They were
looking wearily across the heat-pulsating miles of ranch land. Nor were
they alert, as when the big dog was on guard. There was perplexed worry
in their soft gaze.
Things were happening at the ranch; things Treve did not understand.
Yet his collie sixth sense told him there were change and confusion in
the air as well as in the words and voices of his two masters. These
two masters were often at odds. The dog long since had ceased to let
himself be stirred by their incessant and harmless quarrels.
But they were not at odds, nowadays. Indeed, there was a new
civility--almost a sad friendliness--in their manner toward each other.
We humans often grope for the solution to some baffling mystery which
eludes our sharpest intelligence, and whose key, could we but master
it, lies within easy reach of us. So with Treve. The key to this
disturbing new ranch development lay within six inches of his nose, in
the form of a newspaper which had fallen from the porch rocker to the
dusty floor.
Had Treve been able to read type--as he could read human nature
and weather signs and danger to the Dos Hermanos flocks--a front
page news item in that paper might have told him much. The paper
was the Santa Carlotta _Bugle_. The item had been written by the
_Bugle’s_ proprietor, himself, in his best florid style. The
proprietor, by the way, chanced to be the managing editor, the city
editor, the reportorial staff and the printer of the paper. Also the
business-and-advertising manager and office boy. The _Bugle_ was a
one-man sheet.
His front-page article ran:
“Dan Cupid has been making a spring roundup of the ranch country,
this season. We have had glad occasion to announce no less than
four engagements and two marriages, in the Dos Hermanos Valley,
during the past three months. We now take personal pleasure in
retailing the latest romance from that garden spot of our fair
state.
“Mr. Royce Mack, younger partner of the popular sheep-ranchers,
Fenno and Mack, of the Dos Hermanos Ranch outfit, is about to
marry Miss Reine Houston, the lovely and popular and talented
Fourth Grade teacher at the Ova school.
“Miss Houston’s gain is the loss of the Dos Hermanos Valley; as
the young couple plan to leave this section (which so aptly has
been termed ‘God’s Country’), and to settle in the far and effete
East, upon a well-stocked Vermont dairy farm which was recently
bequeathed, along with a considerable cash legacy, to Mr. Mack, by
his deceased maternal uncle.
“The nuptials, we understand, will occur at the bride’s parental
home in Dodge City, Kas., early next month. Miss Houston
expects to leave Ova, Friday, to go home for her final wedding
arrangements. Mr. Mack, we learn, will follow the first of the
week.”
There was more of the article, including a stanza of machine-made
poetry, with a highly original reference to two hearts that beat as
one. But no more is needed to explain the atmosphere of impending
change which had begun to grate upon the collie’s nerves.
For a long time this change had been coming. Treve had trotted across
to Ova, evening after evening, for weeks alongside of Royce’s pinto.
He had lain boredly on a rug in a stuffy little boarding house parlor,
while his master forgot him and everything else in chatting with a
plump girl who smelt annoyingly of lily-of-the-valley perfume. A girl
who said at the outset that she didn’t care much for dogs and who asked
if collies weren’t supposed to be treacherous.
Treve had known from the first that she did not like him. This
bothered him not at all. For he didn’t like her, either. Her pungent
lily-of-the-valley perfume was as distressing to his sensitive nostrils
as would be the reek of carrion to a human nose. Moreover, she was not
the type of human that dogs like. Also, she took up too much of his
master’s attention.
Intuitively, Treve realized Mack was not as fond of him as once he had
been and that the man was not the jolly chum of yore. It grieved the
sensitive collie. He sought wistfully to draw Royce’s attention more to
himself and less to this painfully-scented outsider. But it was all in
vain.
Royce Mack was blindly and deliriously in love. The world, for the
time, contained for him only one person. That person was far more
like an angel than a mere woman. And she exhaled in some occult way a
faintly angelic perfume from her garments.
Sheepishly, Mack told his partner of the engagement. Joel’s reply
was a grunt which implied nothing or anything. Fenno made precisely
the same reply, a week afterward, when news came to Royce of his
comfortable legacy of cash and of pleasant farmland in southern Vermont.
Risking monotony, Joel had achieved a third grunt when Mack went on to
inform him of the projected eastward move. This move meant a breaking
up of the partnership. Mack could not run a dairy farm in Vermont and
also a ranch in the West.
Joel came out of the silences and out of a maze of calculations long
enough to make an offer for Royce’s share of the Dos Hermanos. The
offer was as meager as was Fenno himself; but it was as reliable. Too
foolishly happy to barter, Mack closed with it. Thus, in another three
days, Joel Fenno was to become sole owner of the ranch.
Both men had evaded the question of Treve’s ownership. The collie
belonged jointly to them. Yet he was not included in the list of land,
buildings and livestock set forth in the bill of sale.
From the first, Mack had regarded the dog as his own, and had made
Treve his particular chum. Joel had scoffed at such folly, and had
pretended to hold the collie in utter contempt. But Treve had grown
to be everything to the gnarl-souled oldster. For the first time in
his sixty-odd warped years, he had learned to care about some living
creature. It was with a twinge that he saw how much fonder the dog
seemed to be of Mack than of Fenno’s unlovable self.
Now, at the possibility of parting with his loved dog-comrade, his
heart was as sore as a boil. Wherefore, as usual, he held his peace on
the theme so close to him; and he was outwardly the more savage in his
comments on Treve’s worthlessness.
Treve lifted his head from between his paws, and stared down the road
toward the coulée. His trained ears not only caught the rattle and chug
of an approaching car, but they recognized it as a car belonging to the
ranch.
Presently, the dusty runabout rounded the bend, a furlong beyond.
Royce Mack was driving it. At his side sat a plump and slackly pretty
figure in billowy white. Treve was too far away to catch the reek of
lily-of-the-valley. But he knew it would assail and torture his keen
nostrils soon enough.
The dog got to his feet, with a bark of welcome. He was about to lope
forward to meet the car and escort Mack to the house, when Joel Fenno,
hearing the bark, stumped out of the kitchen doorway behind him.
The old man had come from work, with Treve at his heels, a half-hour
early that day. Now he reappeared from his bedroom, crossly
uncomfortable in his store clothes; his neck teased by a frayed
collar-edge and further girt with a ready-made tie of awesome coloring.
If his bulls-eye emerald scarfpin had been genuine, it would have been
worth more than the entire ranch. His new boots squeaked groaningly on
the porch floor.
The collie, wondering at such change in his friend’s costume and
bearing, halted in his scarce-begun journey toward the approaching car
and stared, with head on one side.
“Sure!” growled Fenno. “Sure! Keep a-lookin’ at me, Trevy. I’m sure
wuth it. If ’twasn’t that he’s leavin’ here for good, in a day or two,
I’d ’a’ saw him in blue blazes before I’d ’a’ rigged me up like this,
on a hot week-day; jes’ ’cause he took a idee to ask her over to eat
supper with us, to-night. I feel like I was to a fun’ral, Trevy.”
As he spoke, Joel was strolling down the dusty walk, toward the
gateway, to give such sour welcome as he might to his partner’s
sweetheart. The collie abandoned his own intent to gambol ahead; and
paced sedately along at Joel’s side.
The average high-class collie has reduced snobbishness to an art.
Witness the courtesy wherewith many of them hasten to greet a
well-dressed stranger, as contrasted with their fierce rebuff of a
tramp.
Perhaps it was Fenno’s unwonted splendor of raiment which made Treve
elect to continue the gateward walk in his company, rather than dash on
ahead. Yet of late, he had more than once chosen Joel’s companionship
rather than Mack’s. As they walked, Joel continued to mutter under his
breath.
“She said she ‘wanted to meet her darling Royce’s dear old partner,’”
he sniffed. “Well, Trevy, the pleasure’s all her’n. (Not that I’m
a-grudgin’ her the treat of seein’ me.) Nothing’d do but she must come
over to supper with us, Trevy. And if Sing Lee don’t cook no better’n
he’s been cookin’ lately, she’s sure due to remember this supper for
quite a spell. She--Whatcher smellin’ at, Trevy?” he broke off.
The dog had slowed in his walk, and was moving stiff-legged. His
nostrils were sniffing the still air with queer intensity. The car was
drawing to a stop, in front of the gate, twenty feet away;--quite near
enough for the hated lily-of-the-valley perfume to reach the collie’s
acute senses.
But it was not perfume he was smelling. It was something far more
familiar and far more detested; something still too faint to reach
Fenno’s grosser powers of scent.
The noisy little car stopped. Mack, on its far side, got out and
hurried around the runabout, to help Reine Houston to the ground. He
did not even pause in his loverly haste long enough to turn off the
noisy engine; an engine whose coughing reverberations drowned all
lesser sounds.
Reine did not wait for her lover to reach her side and assist her in
the wholly simple task of opening the car door and stepping to earth.
Coming toward the gateway, from the direction of the house, were Joel
and the dog. Anxious to make a good impression on Fenno, the girl
jumped down before Mack could come around from the far side of the car.
Her plump hands outstretched in friendly greeting to Joel, she ran
forward to meet him.
There was a patch of roadside tumbleweed between the car and the gate.
The girl prepared to clear this in her stride. But she did not do so.
This because Treve suddenly abandoned his stiff-legged suspicious
advance and made one lightning bound at her.
The dog did not growl, nor did he show his teeth. But he sprang
with the incredible speed of a charging wolf. Clearing the patch of
tumbleweed by fully twenty inches, he sent his body crashing with all
its force against the white-clad girl.
He did not bite. His lowered head and much of his furry body smote her
amidships. Back she shot, under that swift impact, banging hard against
the side of the car and using up what little breath she still had in a
loud screech.
Royce Mack rounded the side of the car just in time to see the dog hurl
himself at the all-precious Reine.
With a yell of fury at such vile sacrilege to his angel, he sprang at
Treve and kicked him.
The kick struck the dog in the short ribs with an agonizing force
that doubled Treve and sent him rolling over and over in the dust.
Furiously, Mack followed him up, his boot drawn back for a second and
heavier kick. The girl did not cease from screaming as she gathered
herself up, bruised and hysterical with fright.
As his foot swung back for the kick, Royce chanced to see Joel Fenno
from the corner of his eye. The old man was also in violent action. At
sight of his partner’s activities, Mack checked himself with one foot
still in air.
Fenno, regardless of his own rheumatic limbs, was doing a vehement
dance in the center of the low tumbleweed patch. Beneath his stamping
feet writhed and twisted a fat four-foot rattlesnake.
The nasty odor of crushed cucumbers--certain sign of the pit viper--was
strong enough in the air now, for even these blundering humans to get
the scent which Treve had caught twenty feet away.
“I ain’t got my gun on me!” wheezed Joel, to his partner, as a final
drive of his heel smashed the rattlesnake’s evil, arrow-shaped head.
“But if you kick that dog ag’in, I swear t’ Gawd I’ll go in an’ git it,
an’ blow your mangy face off! I seen the hull thing. This gal of your’n
was jes’ a-goin’ to plant her foot in the tumbleweed, when I seen this
rattler h’ist up his dirty head an’ bend it back to strike her ankle.
Trevy seen it, too. An’ he pushed her out’n death’s way, when there
wa’n’t neither one of us humans near enough nor quick enough to. An’
you kicked him fer savin’ her! Lord! Kicked--kicked--_Trevy_!”
He had left the slain snake and was hustling across to the dog.
Treve had gotten gaspingly to his feet. No whimper had been wrung from
him by the anguishing pain of the kick in his tender short-ribs. No
snarl nor other sign of wrath had shown resentment at this brutality--a
brutality for which any human stranger would have been attacked by him
right murderously.
Instead, the great dog stood stock-still in the road, his glorious
coat dust-smeared, his mighty body a-tremble. His soft eyes were fixed
on the man who had kicked him--the man who had been his god--the man
whose sweetheart the collie had risked his own life to save.
This was the man to whom he had given loyal and worshipful service
since long before he could remember. And now his god had turned on
him;--had not punished him, for punishment implies earlier fault; but
had half-killed him for no fault at all.
The deepset dark eyes were terrible in their heartbreak. Royce Mack,
blinking stupidly, felt their look sear into him. Slowly he stared
from the stricken dog to the dead snake. Then his eyes fell upon Reine
Houston.
At sight of the snake, and at comprehension of what Treve had averted
from her by that wild leap, Reine collapsed, blubbering and quaking, on
the running-board of the car.
Drawn by supreme impulse, Royce turned his back on the collie and
hurried over to her. Treve was forgotten.
With babbled love words Mack sought to reassure and comfort the girl
and to learn if she were badly hurt. In this tender employment he
was interrupted by Joel Fenno’s rasping voice. The old man had been
examining Treve, with the tender touch of a nurse, and crooning softly
to the hurt collie. Now he turned grimly on his partner.
“Best boost your young lady into the car,” he snarled, “an’ trundle her
back to Ova. She ain’t li’ble to have much ap’tite left, after what’s
happened. Besides, Sing Lee’s salaraytus biscuits ain’t no good example
for a new-mown bride to take to heart for future use. More’n that,
she’s met me. That’s what she come here for, wa’n’t it? She’s met me.
Likewise, she’s saw me dance. She’s met Treve ag’n, too. Met him reel
sudden an’ personal. That’s why she’s still alive. S’pose you traipse
back to Ova with her; an’ leave me an’ Trevy to ourselves. We kind of
need to be left thataway. If you don’t mind. So long!”
His wizened hand on the dog’s ruff, he strode back to the house,
shutting the door loudly behind Treve and himself.
It was late when Royce Mack got back from Ova, that evening. Joel was
sitting up for him. Royce said nothing to his partner, but went at once
to Treve, who had come slowly forward to meet him.
His hands roamed remorsefully over the dog, and he seemed trying to
say something. Treve was looking up into Royce’s face with that same
strickenly reproachful expression that the man had not been able to get
out of his memory all evening.
“If you’re huntin’ for broken ribs or for rupture,” commented Joel
as he watched his partner’s exploring hands, “there ain’t any. Small
thanks to you; an’ by a mir’cle of heaven. Treve’s all right. Except
you’ve smashed suthin’ in the heart an’ the soul of him that you can’t
unsmash. That’s all you done.”
The old man’s toneless voice irked Mack.
“Can you blame me?” he challenged. “What else could I do? I saw him
spring at her and knock her down. I thought he was killing her. It
seemed the only way to--”
“To prove you’re a born fool?” supplemented Joel. “You didn’t need to
prove it to me. Nor, when she’s knowed you a while longer, you won’t
need to prove it to her, neither. Why would he be killin’ her? Hey?
We’ve had him all these years; an’ he never yet did a thing that wa’n’t
wiser’n the wisest thing _you_ ever did. Nor yet he never did anything
that was rotten. You might ’a’ knowed he had some reason for actin’
so. Anyhow, there’s lots better ways for a man to show he’s a dog’s
inferior, than by kickin’ him.”
“Let it go at that!” muttered Royce, sullenly; harder hit than he
cared to show, by the look in his collie chum’s dark eyes. “I’ll make
it up to him, somehow. I--”
“Make it up to him?” mocked Fenno. “How? By tellin’ him you’ve forgave
him, maybe? Or by gettin’ him a nice gold watch an’ wearin’ it for him
till he’s old enough to take care of it? ‘Make it up to him!’ _Lord!_”
Royce turned wrathfully on his expressionless partner.
“I don’t see what business it is of yours!” he snapped. “You’ve always
hated the dog. You’ve always called him worthless and said you wished
we could be rid of him. Well, you’ll be rid of him, all right. In less
than a week he and I will be out of here for good.”
“Where do you get that stuff about ‘him and you?’ _You’ll_ be gone. But
Treve’s as much mine as he’s yours.”
Royce glanced at his scowling partner in genuine surprise.
“You don’t mean to say you’re going to be cantankerous about _that_,
too?” he exclaimed. “Why, Joel, you hate the very sight of the dog!
You’ve hated him from the beginning. You’ve never had a decent word for
him. I don’t believe you ever spoke to him in his life, except to give
him some order or else to swear at him. And now you talk about his
being as much yours as mine. Well, let’s come to a showdown. What do
you want for your share in him?”
Joel made no immediate answer. He was peering through the dim
candle-light at Treve. The old man’s thin lips moved rhythmically,
as though he were chewing the mysterious cud of senility. His chin
quivered. Otherwise his leathery face was blank. It gave no sign of the
turmoil behind it.
But Treve understood. With all a collie’s strange trick of reading
human emotion behind a wordless and expressionless mask, he knew his
friend was acutely unhappy. The dog got to his feet and came over to
Fenno, pressing his furry bulk against the rancher’s lean legs and
thrusting a sympathetic muzzle into the tough palm. He whined softly,
his gaze fixed on Joel’s.
From long habit, in the presence of others, Fenno made as though to
repulse the dog’s friendliness. Then, with a little intake of breath,
he bent over the collie and caught the classic head almost roughly
between his hands.
“Treve!” he mumbled, thickly. “Trevy, you and me know all about that,
don’t we? We’re--we’re good pals, me and you, Trevy. The best pals
there ever was.”
Royce Mack looked on, dumbfounded. There was caress in Fenno’s thin
voice and in his rough grasp of the dog. Treve, too, was behaving as
though he were well accustomed to such signs of affection from the man.
“I--I thought--” began Mack, “I thought--”
“No, ye didn’t!” crossly denied Fenno, the barriers down. “You never
‘thought,’ in all your born days. If you’d knowed what it meant to
think, you’d ’a’ knowed a white man couldn’t go hatin’ Trevy, like I
made out I hated him. Nobody could. And likewise you’d ’a’ remembered
how he kept me alive that day down by Ova, when I was throwed and
crippled up and couldn’t stir to help myself; an’ how he brang water to
me; an’ how he flagged you and brang _you_ to me, besides. An’ now you
go jawin’ about takin’ him away; an’ askin’ what do I want for my share
of him. Well, I want just a even billion dollars for my share of Trevy.
I ain’t sellin’. I’m buyin’. Now whatcher want for _your_ share of him?
Speak up! If I got it, I’ll pay.”
Royce pondered a moment. He could not fathom this phase of the old man.
Then a solution came to him.
“Remember the day we got him?” asked Mack. “Remember how we made dice
marks on a lump of sugar, out to the foreman shack, to see which owned
him? He ate the sugar, and we compromised by owning him between us.
Suppose we throw dice again to see who owns him? Loser to give up all
claim to him. How about it?”
“Nope,” refused Joel, stubbornly. “Lemme buy him off’n you, Mack. I’ll
pay--”
“I’m not selling him,” as stubbornly insisted Royce, enamored of his
own sporting idea. “I’m giving you your chance. Take it or leave it.
You ought to be glad I don’t suggest we let him go to whichever of us
he chooses.”
Joel winced. Then, despondently, he clumped across the room to the
shelf where lay the parcheesi game. Choosing a cylinder cup and a
pair of dice, he came back to the table. On the way he paused to pat
furtively the collie’s silken ears.
“Best two out of three?” suggested Royce.
“Nope,” said Fenno. “One throw. When a tooth’s got to come out, a
single yank is best. You throw first.”
Royce took the dice-cup and shook it with relish. Nothing could beat
him. He knew that. In his present streak of luck, when a glorious
bride and a legacy were falling to his lot, a bout of chance with his
Jonah-like old partner could not fail to bring him success--and Treve.
Expertly he chucked the dice out on the table, in the flickering
candle-flare. Over and over the white cubes tumbled and hopped and
rolled; coming to a halt, at last, barely an inch from the table edge
and almost side by side. Both men leaned forward to read the pips on
the exposed top surfaces of the dice.
A six and a five! Eleven! Unbeatable except by a next-to-impossible
Twelve.
Joel’s face set itself like wrinkled granite. He made no other outward
sign of distress. Treve, at sound of the noisily rattling dice, had
gotten interestedly to his feet, and stood with his head on a level
with the deal table, watching.
Royce swept up the dice and tossed them into the cup; passing it across
to Fenno. With hand as steady as a boy’s, the old man accepted the cup
and sulkily he threw the two dice upon the board.
The jar of a heavy tread on the porch made both men turn their heads.
Visitors at such an hour were unheard-of. Toni, the chief herdsman,
stamped in to report the straying of a bunch of sheep that had nosed
a hole in the rotting wattles of the home fold. Instinctively the
partners glanced back to the dice.
There lay the little cubes, just under the candle’s nearest rays.
Two sixes! Twelve!
There had been fewer than nine chances in a hundred that Joel could
have made such a throw. Yet, his proverbial hoodoo was broken. Luck,
for once, seemed to have gravitated his way.
Fenno made no comment, but bent over to pat Treve with an odd new air
of personal possession, while Mack listened scowlingly to Toni’s tale
of the lost sheep.
“Suppose you and _your_ dog chase out with Toni and round ’em up?” said
Royce, at last, turning maliciously to his partner. “They’re not mine
any longer, you know. Any more than Treve is. For once I’ll have the
fun of going to bed and letting the rest of the outfit do the hustling.
Good-night.”
At dusk, three days later, the one livery car from Santa Carlotta
stopped at the ranch gate to carry Royce Mack and his belongings to the
distant railroad, whence the night train was to bear him eastward to
his bride.
Herders piled the car with luggage; then stood at the gate to say
good-by to their former boss. Joel loitered in the doorway; Treve
beside him, Fenno was frowning and fidgeting.
Royce came up to him with outstretched hand. For a moment the old man
ignored the hand. Once more his jaws were at work with senility’s cud.
Suddenly he burst forth:
“Trevy’s your’n! Take him along East with you!”
There was a world of stifled heartache and stark misery in the grouchy
old voice.
“What the blue blazes!” sputtered Royce in amaze. “D’you mean to say
you don’t want him, after all the fuss you made? He--”
“Yep!” snarled old Fenno. “I want him more’n I want my right leg. An’ I
reckon I’ll be twice as lonesome without him as I’d be without the two
of my legs. But I--I don’t want him the way I won him. I thought I did.
But I don’t. It--it sticks in my throat. He’s a square dog, Trevy is.
He ain’t goin’ to be won by no crooked trick. So I-- Oh, take him along
an’ shut up!”
Royce continued to stare in bewilderment. His owlish aspect angered
Joel.
“We shook dice for him,” expounded Fenno, sourly. “You throwed a six
an’ a five. I throwed a six an’ a one. You looked back to see who was
buttin’ into the room that time of night. I flicked the one-spot over,
an’ made it a six. Take him along. I--I-- Trevy, son,” he ended, a frog
in his throat as he laid a shaky hand on the collie’s head, “you see
for yourself, I couldn’t keep you, that way; you bein’ so clean an’
decent; an’ me cheatin’ to get you. I--”
To his astonishment, Royce Mack broke into a shout of laughter.
“When I put Reine on the Pullman to go East,” said Royce, “I told her
about our throwing dice for Treve. I was still sore over losing him.
D’you know what she said? Said she was tickled to death that I’d lost.
Said she can’t bear dogs, and that she’d never be able to endure having
Treve around after the savage way he upset her. She said she’d always
be afraid of him, and that she’d have insisted, anyway, on my leaving
him behind. That settles it.... Good-by, Treve, old friend. Good-by,
Joel. Luck to the pair of you!”
Late into the warm evening, Joel Fenno sat silent on the porch. At his
feet, in drowsy contentment, lay Treve. The old man’s face was aglow
with wordless happiness. Every now and then he would stoop to stroke
the sleeping dog. Then he would listen delightedly to the responsive
lazy thump of Treve’s tail on the boards.
Life was worth while, after all. It was great to have a chum that was
all one’s own, and to sit thus with him at the close of day. No more
bickerings, no more jawing, no more need to pretend he didn’t like this
wonderful collie of his. It was _fine_ to be alive!
“Trevy,” he exhorted, solemnly, as he knocked out his final pipe and
prepared to go indoors, “don’t you ever let me ketch you throwin’ dice
crooked. But if ever you do, don’t go blabbin’ about it. Not one time
in a trillion-an’-seven, c’d you expec’ to find a girl who’d square it
all for you, like that pudgy Reine person done for me. An’, Trevy,
lemme say ag’in, for the sev’ralth time, right here,--of all the dogs
that ever happened--you’re--you’re that dog. Now le’s quit jabberin’
an’ go to sleep!”