In the days that followed, the dog and the man were inseparable, made
much of each other, like friends reunited after a serious
misunderstanding. Under these pleasant conditions Bill experienced no
recurrence of the wild streak. In constant touch with the man, the dog
in him was always uppermost.
His thoughts revolved about the man, followed interestedly his every
action. Construction of the little pond seemed to him a foolish thing,
but he knew that there was some good reason for it. The man apparently
wasted his time on many foolish things, but always, sooner or later, an
adequate reason for them developed. So it would be with the pond.
And one hot day in early summer, the man’s wisdom was made manifest. The
heat was intense. The sun a vivid red ball in a saffron sky. Man, dog
and sheep sweltered helplessly. It was then that the man helped Bill
drive the sheep around the base of the ridge to the pond. They
floundered in the cool water to their hearts’ content all the rest of
the day.
One night at dusk a short, white-skinned man made his appearance at the
little cabin. He made much of Bill, but the latter accepted his advances
unemotionally; remained briskly, unresponsively aloof. The white-skinned
man meant nothing to him. He didn’t understand him in the first place.
And then again, he was just a bit jealous. As a friend of the master,
however, the man was, of course, to be treated with the greatest
respect.
Well he knew that to obey the frequent urge to nip the visitor’s
inexpert fingers as they rubbed his ears the wrong way, was to bring the
master’s instant displeasure. The two men talked much together. The
visitor stayed on and on and with the passing of each day the master
became more and more preoccupied and Bill grew correspondingly
depressed. He whined dismally on the ridgetop through the long, hot
nights. Something unpleasant was going to happen. And it did. On the
fourth night the bugle did not sound. Next morning, the cabin was
deserted. Bill did not know it, of course, but the man’s little
homestead lay in the center of valuable timber country; the
white-skinned man had been negotiating for its purchase and Hardin had
gone to town to consummate the deal. All he knew was that the master had
gone and that he was very, very lonesome.
All of the next day and night he circled the herd like an automaton,
time and again rushing away to the cabin, whining dismally before the
door.
He became nervous and crotchety. On the second night he picked a quarrel
with a wolverine and was severely mauled. He even disputed the right of
way with a pink-nosed porcupine and collected half a dozen barbed quills
for his pains. Most of these quills came to rest in his upper forelegs;
after much painful worrying, he pulled them out with his teeth. A
couple, however, worked into his wrinkled snout and defied his most
heroic efforts.
It may have been the lack of contact with the man; it may have been the
porcupine quills that festered and rendered him feverish with pain and
rage—most likely a combination of both—at any rate—on the third night
after the man had left—the old craving to kill came upon him in a flood
of sentient desire that would not be denied. A big ewe gave birth to a
gangling lamb in a cluster of oak scrub on the forest edge. All of his
efforts to drive her back into the herd and safety, were unavailing.
Finally, enraged, he rushed silently upon her.
Five minutes later, four dead sheep bore irrefragable evidence of his
lustful efforts. The murders done, he slunk away into the forest,
swiftly, silently, furtively, like the wolf. But—in his going was none
of the arrogant bearing of his rapacious forebear. The passion to kill
left him as suddenly as it had come. He went—tail between his legs, head
drooping, like a dog. And he knew that he might never return.