duke who passed his days in riotous living and his nights in carousing.
He gave over the affairs of state to two governors who were as bad as
he. With extortionate taxes and unjust fines they robbed the people
until the whole land was crying out against them.
Now one day for amusement the duke summoned an astrologer to court and
ordered him to read in the planets the fate of himself and his two
governors. When the astrologer had cast a horoscope for each of the
three reprobates, he was greatly disturbed and tried to dissuade the
duke from questioning him further.
"Such danger," he said, "threatens your life and the lives of your two
governors that I fear to speak."
"Whatever it is," said the duke, "speak. But I warn you to speak the
truth, for if what you say does not come to pass you will forfeit your
life."
The astrologer bowed and said: "Hear then, O Duke, what the planets
foretell: Before the second quarter of the moon, on such and such a day,
at such and such an hour, a devil will come and carry off the two
governors. At the full of the moon on such and such a day, at such and
such an hour, the same devil will come for your Highness and carry you
off to hell."
The duke pretended to be unconcerned but in his heart he was deeply
shaken. The voice of the astrologer sounded to him like the voice of
judgment and for the first time conscience began to trouble him.
As for the governors, they couldn't eat a bite of food and were carried
from the palace half dead with fright. They piled their ill-gotten
wealth into wagons and rode away to their castles, where they barred all
the doors and windows in order to keep the devil out.
The duke reformed. He gave up his evil ways and corrected the abuses of
state in the hope of averting if possible his cruel fate.
The poor shepherd had no inkling of any of these things. He tended his
flocks from day to day and never bothered his head about the happenings
in the great world.
Suddenly one day the devil appeared before him and said: "I have come,
my friend, to repay you for your kindness. When the moon is in its first
quarter, I was to carry off the former governors of this land because
they robbed the poor and gave the duke evil counsel. However, they're
behaving themselves now so they're to be given another chance. But they
don't know this. Now on such and such a day do you go to the first
castle where a crowd of people will be assembled. When a cry goes up and
the gates open and I come dragging out the governor, do you step up to
me and say: 'What do you mean by this? Get out of here or there'll be
trouble!' I'll pretend to be greatly frightened and make off. Then ask
the governor to pay you two bags of gold, and if he haggles just
threaten to call me back. After that go on to the castle of the second
governor and do the same thing and demand the same pay. I warn you,
though, be prudent with the money and use it only for good. When the
moon is full, I'm to carry off the duke himself, for he was so wicked
that he's to have no second chance. So don't try to save him, for if you
do you'll pay for it with your own skin. Don't forget!"
The shepherd remembered carefully everything the devil told him. When
the moon was in its first quarter he went to the first castle. A great
crowd of people was gathered outside waiting to see the devil carry away
the governor.
Suddenly there was a loud cry of despair, the gates of the castle
opened, and there was the devil, as black as night, dragging out the
governor. He, poor man, was half dead with fright.
The shepherd elbowed his way through the crowd, took the governor by the
hand, and pushed the devil roughly aside.
"What do you mean by this?" he shouted. "Get out of here or there'll be
trouble!"
Instantly the devil fled and the governor fell on his knees before the
shepherd and kissed his hands and begged him to state what he wanted in
reward. When the shepherd asked for two bags of gold, the governor
ordered that they be given him without delay.
Then the shepherd went to the castle of the second governor and went
through exactly the same performance.
It goes without saying that the duke soon heard of the shepherd, for he
had been anxiously awaiting the fate of the two governors. At once he
sent a wagon with four horses to fetch the shepherd to the palace and
when the shepherd arrived he begged him piteously to rescue him
likewise from the devil's clutches.
"Master," the shepherd answered, "I cannot promise you anything. I have
to consider my own safety. You have been a great sinner, but if you
really want to reform, if you really want to rule your people justly and
kindly and wisely as becomes a true ruler, then indeed I will help you
even if I have to suffer hellfire in your place."
The duke declared that with God's help he would mend his ways and the
shepherd promised to come back on the fatal day.
With grief and dread the whole country awaited the coming of the full
moon. In the first place the people had greeted the astrologer's
prophecy with joy, but since the duke had reformed their feelings for
him had changed.
Time sped fast as time does whether joy be coming or sorrow and all too
soon the fatal day arrived.
Dressed in black and pale with fright, the duke sat expecting the
arrival of the devil.
Suddenly the door flew open and the devil, black as night, stood before
him. He paused a moment and then he said, politely:
"Your time has come, Lord Duke, and I am here to get you!"
Without a word the duke arose and followed the devil to the courtyard,
which was filled with a great multitude of people.
At that moment the shepherd, all out of breath, came pushing his way
through the crowd, and ran straight at the devil, shouting out:
"What do you mean by this? Get out of here or there'll be trouble!"
"What do _you_ mean?" whispered the devil. "Don't you remember what I
told you?"
"Hush!" the shepherd whispered back. "I don't care anything about the
duke. This is to warn you! You know Katcha? She's alive and she's
looking for you!"
The instant the devil heard the name of Katcha he turned and fled.
All the people cheered the shepherd, while the shepherd himself laughed
in his sleeve to think that he had taken in the devil so easily.
As for the duke, he was so grateful to the shepherd that he made him his
chief counselor and loved him as a brother. And well he might, for the
shepherd was a sensible man and always gave him sound advice.
[Ilustration: THE WHITE DOGS OF ARRAN]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 5: From _Czechoslovak Fairy Tales_, by Parker Fillmore.
Copyright by Harcourt, Brace & Company.]
THE WHITE DOGS OF ARRAN[6]
FOR a long hour, on that November afternoon, my brother Ted had been
standing at the gate below the ranch house, waiting and waiting, while
the twilight filled the round hollow of the valley as water slowly fills
a cup. At last the figure of a rider, silhouetted against the
rose-colored sky, came into view along the crest of the rocky ridge. The
little cow pony was loping as swiftly as the rough trail would permit,
but to Ted's impatient eyes it seemed to crawl as slowly as a fly on a
window pane. Although the horseman looked like a cow puncher, at that
distance, with his slouch hat and big saddle, the eager boy knew that it
was the district doctor making his far rounds over the range. A swift
epidemic had been sweeping over Montana, passing from one ranch to
another and leaving much illness and suffering behind. Ted's uncle and
the cousin who was his own age had both been stricken two days before
and it seemed that the doctor would never come.
"I'm glad you are here," he said as the doctor's pony, covered with foam
and quivering with fatigue, passed through the open gate. "We have two
patients for you."
The man nodded.
"Fever, I suppose," he commented, "and aching bones, and don't know what
to make of themselves because they have never been sick before? I have
seen a hundred such cases in the last few days. It is bad at all the
ranches, but the sheep herders, off in their cabins by themselves, are
hit particularly hard."
He slipped from the saddle and strode into the house, leaving Ted to
take the tired pony around to the stables. It was very dark now and
growing cold, but he felt warm and comforted, somehow, since the doctor
had come. He heard running feet behind him and felt a dog's nose, cold
and wet, thrust into his hand. It was Pedro, the giant, six months' old
wolf hound puppy, long legged and shaggy haired, the pride of Ted's life
and the best beloved of all his possessions. The big dog followed his
master into the stable and sat down, blinking solemnly in the circle of
lantern light, while the boy was caring for the doctor's horse and
bedding it down. Ted's thoughts were very busy, now with his anxieties
about his uncle, now racing out over the range to wonder how those in
the stricken ranch houses and lonely cabins might be faring. There was
the ranch on Arran Creek--people there were numerous enough to care for
each other. It might be worse at Thompson's Crossing, and, oh, how would
it be with those shepherds who lived in tiny cottages here and there
along the Big Basin, so far from neighbors that often for months they
saw no other faces than the wooly vacant ones of their thousands of
sheep.
There was one, a big grizzled Irishman, whom Ted had seen only a few
times. Nevertheless, he was one of his closest friends. They had met on
a night when the boy was hunting, and he could remember still how they
had lain together by the tiny camp fire, with the coyotes yelping in the
distance, with the great plain stretching out into the dark, with the
slender curl of smoke rising straight upward and the big stars seeming
almost within reach of his hand in the thin air. The lonely Irishman had
opened his heart to his new friend and had told him much of his own
country, so unlike this big bare one, a dear green land where the
tumbledown cottages and little fields were crowded together in such
comforting comradeship.
"You could open your window of a summer night and give a call to the
neighbors," he sighed, "and you needn't to have the voice of the giant
Finn McCoul to make them hear. In this place a man could fall sick and
die alone and no one be the wiser."
His reminiscences had wandered farther and farther until he began to
tell the tales and legends familiar in his own countryside, stories of
the "Little People" and of Ireland in ancient times. Of them all Ted
remembered most clearly the story of the white grayhounds of the King of
Connemara, upon which his friend had dwelt long, showing that in spite
of its being a thousand years old, it was his favorite tale.
"Like those dogs on Arran Creek, they were perhaps," the Irishman said,
"only sleeker of coat and swifter of foot, I'm thinking."
"But they couldn't be faster," Ted had objected. "The Arran dogs can
catch coyotes and jack-rabbits and people have called those the quickest
animals that run."
"Ah," returned the other with true Irish logic, "those Arran dogs are
Russian, they tell me, and these I speak of were of Connemara, and what
comes out of Ireland, you may be sure, is faster and fairer than
anything else on earth."
Against such reasoning Ted had judged it impossible to argue and had
dropped into silence and finally into sleep with the voices of the
coyotes and the legend of the lean, white Irish grayhounds still running
like swift water through his dreams.
After that he had visited the lonely shepherd whenever he could find
time to travel so far. Together they had hunted deer and trapped beaver
in the foothills above the Big Basin or, when the sheep had to be moved
to new pasture, had spent hours in earnest talk, plodding patiently in
the dust after the slow-moving flock. The long habit of silence had
taken deep hold upon the Irishman, but with Ted alone he seemed willing
to speak freely. It was on one of these occasions that he had given the
boy the image of Saint Christopher, "For," he said, "you are like to be
a great roamer and a great traveler from the way you talk, and those who
carry the good Saint Christopher with them, always travel safely."
Now, as Ted thought of illness and pestilence spreading across the
thinly settled state, his first and keenest apprehension was for the
safety of his friend. His work done, he went quickly back to the house
where the doctor was already standing on the doorstep again.
"They are not bad cases, either of them," he was saying to Ted's aunt.
"If they have good care there is no danger, but if they don't--then
Heaven help them, I can't."
Ted came close and pulled his sleeve.
"Tell me," he questioned quickly, "Michael Martin isn't sick, is he?"
"Michael Martin?" repeated the doctor. "A big Irishman in the cabin at
the upper edge of Big Basin? Yes, he's down sick as can be, poor fellow,
with no one but a gray old collie dog, about the age of himself, I
should think, to keep him company."
He turned back to give a few last directions.
"I suppose you are master of the house with your uncle laid up," he said
to Ted again, "and I will have to apply to you to lend me a fresh horse
so that I can go on."
"You're never going on to-night?" exclaimed Ted; "why, you have been
riding for all you were worth, all day!"
"Yes, and all the night before," returned the doctor cheerfully, "but
this is no time to spare horses or doctors. Good gracious, boy, what's
that?" For Pedro, tall and white in the dark, standing on his hind legs
to insert an inquisitive puppy nose between the doctor's collar and his
neck, was an unexpected and startling apparition.
"That's my dog," Ted explained proudly; "Jim McKenzie, over on Arran
Creek, gave him to me; he has a lot of them, you know. Pedro is only
half grown now, he is going to be a lot bigger when he is a year old.
Yes, I'll bring you a horse right away, yours couldn't go another mile."
When, a few minutes later, the sound of hoofs came clattering up from
the stables it seemed certain that there were more than four of them.
"What's this?" the doctor inquired, seeing a second horse with
saddlebags and blanket roll strapped in place and observing Ted's boots
and riding coat.
"My aunt and the girls will take care of Uncle," the boy replied, "so I
am going out to see Michael Martin. You can tell me what to do for him
as we ride up the trail."
They could feel the sharp wind almost before they began climbing the
ridge. So far, summer had lingered into November, but the weather was
plainly changing now and there had been reports of heavy snowfalls in
the mountains. The stars shone dimly, as though through a veil of mist.
"You had better push on as fast as you can," advised the doctor as they
came to the parting of their ways. "When a man is as sick as Michael,
what ever is to happen, comes quickly." His horse jumped and snorted.
"There's that white puppy of yours again. What a ghost he is! He is
rather big to take with you to a sick man's cabin."
Pedro had come dashing up the trail behind them, in spite of his having
been ordered sternly to stay at home. At six months old the sense of
obedience is not quite so great as it should be, and the love of going
on an expedition is irresistible.
"It would take me forever to drive him home now," Ted admitted; "I will
take him along to Jim McKenzie's and leave him there with his brothers.
I can make Arran Creek by breakfast time and ought to get to Michael's
not long after noon. Well, so long!"
The stars grew more dim and the wind keener as he rode on through the
night. His pony cantered steadily with the easy rocking-horse motion
that came near to lulling him to sleep. Pedro paddled alongside, his
long legs covering the miles with untiring energy. They stopped at
midnight to drink from the stream they were crossing, to rest a little
and to eat some lunch from the saddlebags. Then they pressed on once
more, on and on, until gray and crimson began to show behind the
mountains to the eastward, and the big white house of Arran at last
came into sight.
Jim McKenzie's place was bigger than the ordinary ranch house, for there
were gabled roofs showing through the group of trees, there were tall
barns and a wide fenced paddock where lived the white Russian wolfhounds
for which the Arran ranch was famous. A deep-voiced chorus of welcome
was going up as Ted and Pedro came down the trail. The puppy responded
joyfully and went bounding headlong to the foot of the slope to greet
his brothers. It was a beautiful sight to see the band of great dogs,
their coats like silver in the early morning light, romping together
like a dozen kittens, pursuing each other in circles, checking,
wheeling, rolling one another over, leaping back and forth over the low
fences that divided the paddock, with the grace and free agility of
deer. Early as it was, Jim McKenzie was walking down to the stables and
stopped to greet Ted as, weary and dusty, he rode through the gate.
"Sure we'll keep Pedro," he said when he had heard the boy's errand.
"Yes, we've a good many sick here; I'd have sent out on the range myself
but there was nobody to spare. They tell me the herds of sheep are in
terrible confusion, and most of the herders are down. Poor old Michael
Martin, I hope you get there in time to help him. Turn your horse into
the corral, we'll give you another to go on with. Now come in to
breakfast." Ted snatched a hurried meal, threw his saddle upon a fresh
pony, and set off again. For a long distance he could hear the
lamentations of Pedro protesting loudly at the paddock gate. The way,
after he passed Arran Creek, led out into the flat country of the Big
Basin with the sagebrush-dotted plain stretching far ahead. It seemed
that he rode endlessly and arrived nowhere, so long was the way and so
unchanging the landscape. Once, as he crossed a stream, a deer rose,
stamping and snorting among the low bushes, and fled away toward the
hills, seeming scarcely to touch the ground as it went. Later, something
quick and silent, and looking like a reddish-brown collie, leaped from
the sagebrush and scudded across the trail almost under his horse's
feet.
"A coyote, out in the open in daylight," he reflected, somewhat
startled. "It must have been cold up in the mountains to make them so
bold. That looks bad for the sheep."
It was disturbing also to see how many scattered sheep he was beginning
to pass, little bands, solitary ewes with half-grown lambs trotting at
their heels, adventurous yearlings straying farther and farther from
their comrades. Once or twice he tried to drive them together, but owing
to his haste and his inexperience with their preposterous ways, he had
very little success.
"There is going to be bad weather, too," he observed as he saw the blue
sky disappear beneath an overcast of gray. "I had better get on to
Michael's as fast as I can."
He saw the little mud and log cabin at last, tucked away among some
stunted trees near the shoulder of a low ridge. It looked deceivingly
near, yet he rode and rode and could not reach it. White flakes were
flying now, fitfully at first, then thicker and thicker until he could
scarcely see. His growing misgivings gave place to greater and greater
anxiety concerning his friend, while there ran through his mind again
and again the doctor's words, "Whatever is to happen, comes quickly."
It was past noon and had begun to seem as though he had been riding
forever when he breasted the final slope at last, jumped from his horse,
and thundered at the cabin door. The whine of a dog answered him from
within, and a faint voice, broken but still audible, told him that
Michael was alive. The cabin, so it seemed to him as he entered, was a
good ten degrees colder than it was outside. Poor Michael, helpless and
shivering on the bunk in the corner, looked like the shrunken ghost of
the giant Irishman he had known before. Ted rekindled the fire, emptied
his saddlebags, piled his extra blankets upon the bed and, with a skill
bred of long practice in camp cookery, set about preparing a meal.
Michael was so hoarse as to be almost unable to speak and so weak that
his mind wandered in the midst of a sentence, yet all of his thoughts
were on the care of his sheep.
"When I felt the sickness coming on me I tried to drive them in," he
whispered, "but they broke and scattered and I fell beside the
trail--they must get in--snow coming--"
In an hour his fever rose again, he tossed and muttered with only
fleeting intervals of consciousness. Ted had found food and shelter for
his horse in the sheep shed, and had settled down to his task of anxious
watching. The snow fell faster and faster so that darkness came on by
mid-afternoon. He had tried to drive the old collie dog out to herd in
the sheep, but the poor old creature would not leave its master and,
even when pushed outside, remained whining beside the door.
"He couldn't do much anyway," sighed Ted as he let him in again. "How
those coyotes yelp! I wish, after all, that I had brought Pedro."
Michael had heard the coyotes too and was striving feebly to rise from
his bed.
"I must go out to them, my poor creatures," he gasped. "Those devil
beasts will have driven them over the whole country before morning."
But he fell back, too weak to move farther, and was silent a long time.
When he did speak it was almost aloud.
"With the cold and the snow, I'm thinking there will be worse things
abroad this night than just the coyotes."
He lay very still while Ted sat beside him, beginning to feel sleepy and
blinking at the firelight. Eleven o'clock, twelve, one, the slow hands
of his watch pointed to the crawling hours. Michael was not asleep but
he said nothing, he was listening too intently. It was after one and the
boy might have been dozing, when the old man spoke again.
"Hark," he said.
For a moment Ted could hear nothing save the pat-pat of the snow
against the window, but the collie dog bristled and growled as he lay
upon the hearth and pricked his ears sharply. Then the boy heard it
too, a faint cry and far off, not the sharp yelping of the coyotes,
though that was ominous enough, but the long hungry howl of a timber
wolf. Tears of weakness and terror were running down the Irishman's
face.
"My poor sheep, I must save them," he cried. "What's the value of a
man's life alongside of the creatures that's trusted him. Those
murderers will have every one of them killed for me."
Ted jumped up quickly and bundled on his coat.
"Where's your rifle, Michael?" he asked. "I don't know much about sheep,
but I will do what I can."
"The rifle?" returned Michael doubtfully. "Now, I had it on my shoulder
the day I went out with the sickness on me, and it is in my mind that I
did not bring it home again. But there is the little gun hanging on the
nail; there's no more shells for it but there's two shots still left in
the chamber."
The boy took down the rusty revolver and spun the cylinder with a
practised finger.
"Two shots is right," he said, "and you have no more shells? Well, two
shots may scare a wolf."
If Michael had been in his proper senses, Ted very well knew, he would
never have permitted, without protest, such an expedition as the boy
was planning. As it was, however, he lay back in his bunk again, his
mind wandering off once more into feverish dreams.
"If it was in the Old Country," he muttered, "the very Little People
themselves would rise up to help a man in such a plight. You could be
feeling the rush of their wings in the air and could hear the cry of the
fairy hounds across the hills. America is a good country, but, ah--it's
not the same!"
Hoping to quiet him, Ted took the little Saint Christopher from his
pocket and laid it in the sick man's hand. Then he finished strapping
his big boots, opened the door and slipped out quietly. Michael scarcely
noticed his going.