and playing polo when opportunity offered--these, with occasional rather
wild doings in London and Brighton, made up the sum of Dick Vaughan's
contribution to the world's work so far, since the period of what he
euphemistically called his retirement from the practice of pill-making.
And it must be confessed that, until some time after the establishment
of the Nuthill household in that locality, Dick Vaughan had shown no
symptom of dissatisfaction with his lot, or of desire to tackle any more
serious sort of occupation.
What was generally regarded as Dick's idleness, and, by the more rigid
moralists, as his worthlessness, was a source of some anxiety and much
disappointment to that distinguished man, his father. From the doctor's
standpoint a life given to sport meant a life wasted; and, gifted man of
science that he was, it puzzled him completely that a son of his should
have no ability as a student. Withal, he had never brought himself to
show any harshness to Dick; for, "wild" as the young man undoubtedly had
been, he was a lovable fellow, and for the doctor his fair face was a
reflection of the face of the woman Dick had never really known; of the
mother he had lost while still a child; the wife whose loss had
withdrawn Dr. Vaughan from the world of successful men and women and
prematurely whitened his hair and lined his lofty brow.
Yet in one respect the doctor had shown a certain sternness. He had told
his son, with some emphasis, that, until he accomplished some creditable
work in the world, he must never expect one penny more than his present
allowance of £150 a year. There were good horses and dogs at Upcroft,
however, and a very comfortable home. The farmers' sons of the district,
like their social superiors, mostly liked Dick Vaughan well. He need
never lack a companion in his sporting enterprises, and so far had never
felt very urgently the need of money. Indeed, the bulk of his allowance
was wasted during the trips he made to town after quarter-days. Money
was not very necessary to him at Upcroft, where most people were quite
content to "put it down to the Doctor," and all were ready to oblige
"young Mr. Vaughan."
And then had come Betty Murdoch, and a certain all-round modification of
Dick Vaughan's outlook upon life.
It happened that one reason why Betty had no other companion than Jan on
the day of her accident was the fact that the Master had an appointment
at Upcroft that morning with Dick. The Master was very good-natured in
his talk with Dick, but he was also quite firm and straightforward. Dick
rather shamefacedly pleaded guilty to having paid pointed attentions to
Betty, and admitted that he was in love with her.
"Well, there's nothing to be ashamed of in that, old chap. I'm in love
with her myself, if you come to that," said the Master, with a smile.
"If you'd said you meant nothing and were not in love with her, I--well,
I should be taking a rather different tone, perhaps. But you are, and I
knew it."
Dick's characteristic smile, the sunny, affectionate smile that won him
friends wherever he went and had given him a champion even in the tutor
he ducked, broke momentarily through the rueful expression of his face,
as he said: "Oh, there's no sort of doubt about that, sir."
"Exactly. Well, now, my friend, what I have to point out to you is this:
Betty is not only very dear to me; she is also my heir and my ward. I'm
speaking to you about it earlier than some men might have spoken,
because I don't want to cure heartaches--I want to prevent 'em. I'm
pretty certain there's no harm done as yet."
The Master managed to keep a straight face when Dick absently intimated
that he was afraid there was no harm done as yet.
"It would make Betty miserable to go against my wishes, I think,"
continued the Master, "and I don't want her to be made miserable. That's
why I'm talking to you now. She could not possibly become engaged,
except against my very strongest wishes, to a man who had never earned
his own living or done any work at all in the world. And that--well,
that--"
"That's me, of course," said the rueful Dick, cutting at his gaiters
with a crop.
"Well, so far it does rather seem to fit, doesn't it?" continued the
Master. "But, mind you, Dick, don't you run away with the idea that I
have any down on you or want to put any obstacles in your way. Not a bit
of it. God knows I'm no Puritan, neither have I any quarrel with a man's
love of sport and animals; not much. But there's got to be something
else in a real man's life, you know, Dick. Beer and skittles are all
very well--an excellent institution, especially combined with the sort
of admirable knowledge of horses and dogs, and the sort of seat in the
saddle that you have, my friend. But over and above all that, you know,
I want something else from the man who is to marry our Betty. I don't
ask you to become an F.R.S., but, begad! Dick, I do ask you to prove
that you can play a man's part in the world, outside sport as well as in
it; and that, if you're put to it, you can earn your own living and
enough to give a wife bread and butter. And if you'll just think of it
for a minute, I believe you'll see that it's not too much to ask,
either. It's what I'd ask of a man before I'd trust him to carry out a
piece of business for me; and Betty--well, she's more than any other
piece of business I can think of to me."
Dick Vaughan saw it all very clearly. He quite frankly admitted the
justification for the Master's remarks.
"And so," he added, rather despondently--"so this is my notice to quit,
eh?"
"If you took it as that, and acted on it permanently, I should think I
had greatly overrated you, my friend," replied the Master, with warmth.
"No; but, as between men, it's my notice to you that I appeal to your
sense of honor to say nothing to Betty, to go no farther in the matter,
until--until you've proved yourself as well in other ways as you've
already proved yourself over the hurdles."
"Oh, that! But, of course, I love riding, and--"
"You'll find you'll love some other things, too, once you've mastered
them, as you have horses and dogs. I can tell you there's just as much
fun in mastering men as there is in handling horses. I used to think the
only thing I could do, besides breeding wolfhounds, was to write. And I
suppose I didn't do the writing very well. Anyway, it didn't bring in
money enough for the wolfhounds and--and some other matters. So I went
out to Australia and did something else. Now I can do the writing when I
like, and--well, old Finn there is in no danger of being sold to pay the
butcher."
"Ah yes, in Australia. I wanted the governor to let me go there when I
left Rugby, boundary-riding, and that. But of course he was dead set on
the pill-making for me, then. And now--"
"Now there's been a rather empty interval of seven years. Yes, I know.
Well, you think it over, old chap. I lay down no embargoes, not I. But I
do trust to your honor in this matter--for Betty's sake--and I'm sure
I'm safe. You think it over, and come and talk to me any time you feel
like it. Be sure I'll be delighted to give any help I can. Look here!
there's a friend of mine staying at the White Hart in Lewes: Captain
Arnutt, of the Royal North-west Mounted Police. Go and look him up and
have a yarn with him about how he made his start. He nearly broke his
heart trying to pass into Sandhurst without getting the necessary stuff
into his hard head. But, begad! there isn't a finer man in the
North-west to-day than Will Arnutt. I'll write him a letter if you'll
go. Will you?"
Dick agreed readily, and as a matter of fact he lunched in Lewes with
Captain Arnutt that very day, thereby missing all the excitement over
Betty Murdoch's sprained ankle and Jan's clever rescue-work, but gaining
quite a good deal in other ways.
XV
JAN'S FIRST FIGHT
Dick Vaughan was away from home a good deal during the next few weeks,
and Jan and Finn often missed him, for his frequent visits to Nuthill
had been full of interest for them. It may be, too, that Jan's mistress
missed Dick Vaughan; but according to the Master, the young man was well
employed and by no means wasting his time. And Jan did have at least one
useful lesson in the week following Betty's accident on the Downs; and
it was a lesson which he never entirely forgot.
Jan was busily doing nothing in particular--"mucking about" as the
school-boys elegantly put it--in the little lane which forms a
right-of-way across the Downs, between the Nuthill orchard and the
westernmost of the Upcroft fields. Betty Murdoch was still nursing her
ankle; and, fast asleep in the hall beside her couch, Finn, the
wolfhound, was dreaming of a great kangaroo-hunt in which he and the
dingo bitch Warrigal were engaged in replenishing their Mount Desolation
larder. Suddenly Jan looked up, sniffing, from his idle play, and saw
against the sky-line, where the narrow lane rises sharply toward the
Downs, a gray-clad man in gaiters, with a long ash staff in his hand and
a big sheep-dog of sorts, descending together from the heights.
The man was David Crumplin, the sheep-dealer, and the dog was Grip,
whose reputation, all unknown though it was to Jan, reached from the
Romney marshes to the Solent; even as his sire's had carried weight from
York to the Border. Grip's dam, so the story went, had been a gipsy's
lurcher with Airedale blood in her. If so, his size and weight were
rather surprising; but his militant disposition may, to some extent,
have been explained. At all events, there was no sheep-dog of experience
between Winchelsea and Lewes who would have dreamed of treating Grip
with anything save the most careful respect and deference, since, while
hardly to be called either quarrelsome or aggressive, he was a noted
killer, a most formidable fighter when roused. He was also a past-master
in the driving of sheep, his coat was of the density of several
door-mats, and he had china-blue eyes with plenty of fire in them, but
no tenderness.
These things would, of course, have been ample in the shape of
credentials and introduction for any dog of ripe experience. For puppy
Jan (despite his hundred pounds of weight) they all went for nothing at
all. His salutation was a joyous, if slightly cracked, bark; a sort of--
"Hullo! a stranger! Come on! What larks!"
And he went prancing like a rocking-horse up the lane to meet Grip,
prepared to make a new friend, to romp, or do any other kind of thing
that was not serious. But, as it happened, the dour Grip was far more
than usually serious that morning. By over-severity in driving he had
lost a lamb that day in rounding up a flock across the Downs. The little
beast had slipped, under the pressure of the drive, and broken both fore
legs at the bottom of a deep pit. Grip had not made three such blunders
in his life, and the lambasting he had received for this one had bruised
every bone in his body. But for all this, he might have shown a shade
more tolerance toward Jan, since ninety-nine dogs in a hundred, even
among the fighters, will show patience and good humor where puppies are
concerned.
Jan's actual greeting of the sheep-dog was exceedingly clumsy and
awkward.
"Hullo, old hayseed!" he seemed to say as he bumped awkwardly into
Grip's right shoulder. "Come and have a game!"
That shoulder ought to have warned him. Its wiry mat of coat stood out
like quills upon the fretful porcupine. But the rollicking, galumphing
Jan was just then impervious to any such comparatively subtle indication
as this.
Grip spake no single word; but his wall-eyes flashed white firelight and
his long jaws snapped like a spring trap as Jan rebounded from the bump
against his buttress of a shoulder. When those same steel jaws parted
again, as they did a moment later, an appreciable piece of Jan's left
ear fell from them to the ground. Jan let out a cry, an exclamation of
mingled anger, pain, bewilderment, and wrath. He turned, leaning
forward, as though to ask the meaning of this outrage. On the instant,
and again without a sound, the white-toothed trap opened and closed once
more; this time leaving a bloody groove all down the black-and-gray side
of Jan's left shoulder.
At that point the sheep-dealer spoke, just a little too late.
"Get out o' that!" he said, with a thrust of his staff at Jan.
And--"Come in here, Grip," he added to his own dog. But his orders came
too late.
For his part, Jan had lost blood and realized that he was attacked in
fierce earnest. As for Grip, he had tasted blood, and found it as balm
to his aching ribs. This big blundering black-and-gray thing was no
sheep, at all events. Then let it keep away from him, or take the
consequences. Life was no game for Grip; but rather a serious routine of
work, of fighting to kill, of getting food, of resting when he might,
and of avoiding his master's ashen staff. Nothing could be more
different from Jan's gaily irresponsible and joyously immature
conception of life.
However, Jan was in earnest now; more so than he had ever been since,
more than five months earlier, he had flung his gristly bulk upon the
vixen fox who slew his sister in the cave. Some breath he wasted in a
second cry--all challenge and fury, and no questioning wonder this
time--and then, like a Clydesdale colt attacking a leopard, he flung
himself upon the sheep-dog, roaring and grappling for a hold. It seemed
that Grip was made of steel springs and india-rubber. The shock of Jan's
assault was doubtless something of a blow; for Jan weighed more than the
sheep-dog; but he tossed it from him with a twist of his densely clad
shoulders, and again as the youngster blundered past him he took toll
(this time of the loose skin on the right side of the hound's neck) in
his precisely worked jaws.
All unlearned though he was in these wolf-like (or any other) fighting
tactics, Jan presented an imposing picture of rampant fury as he wheeled
again to face his calmly resourceful enemy. David Crumplin had now
recognized the young hound as an animal of value and consequence in the
world, and in all sincerity was doing his best to separate the pair. But
the fight had gone too far now for verbal remonstrances to have any
effect, even with disciplined Grip; and as for Jan, he was merely
unconscious, alike in the matter of David's adjurations and the thrusts
and thwacks of his stave.
In the pages of a correctly conceived romance, one man (providing, of
course, that he is a hero) is always able without much difficulty to
separate two fighting dogs, even though he be innocent of doggy lore and
attired blamelessly, as judged by the illustrator's standards for
walking out with the heroine. But in real life the thing is somehow
different. Not only are two pairs of strong hands needed, but it is
necessary that the possessors of those hands should approach the fray
from opposite sides, and be nimble and strong enough to get clear away,
one from the other, when each pair has grabbed its dog. No single pair
of hands can manage it in the case of big dogs, and a man's feet are not
far enough removed from his hands to make them an adequate substitute
for a second pair of hands.
David Crumplin, having speedily given up persuasion, yelled for help,
and cursed and swore vehemently at the dogs, banging and thrusting at
each in turn, without prejudice and without effect. Much they cared for
his curses, or his ashen staff. Jan was bleeding now from half a dozen
gaping wounds; and Grip, the famous killer, was in an icy fury of wrath,
for the reason that this blundering young elephant of a puppy was
actually pressing and hurting him--the best feared dog in that
countryside. For, be it said, Jan learned with surprising quickness. He
could not acquire in a minute or in a month the sort of fighting craft
that made Grip terrible; but he did learn in one minute that he could
not afford to repeat the blundering rushes which had lost him his first
blood.
At first he strove hard to bowl the sheep-dog over by sheer weight and
strength. Then he struggled bravely to get his teeth through Grip's coat
of mail at the neck. And if all the time he was getting punishment, he
also was getting learning; as was proved by the fact that immediately
after his own third wound he tore one of Grip's ears in sunder, and, a
minute later, got home on the sheep-dog's right fore leg (where the coat
of mail was thin) with a bite which would surely mean a week of limping
for Grip. It was this last thrust that placed Grip definitely outside
his master's reach, by fanning into white flame the smoldering fire of
his nature. Indeed, for a minute or two it even made the sheep-dog
forgetful of his cunning, so angry was he; with the result that he lost
a section from his sound ear and came near to being overturned by the
impetuosity of Jan's onslaught.
And then suddenly the sheep-dog completely changed, as though by magic.
His flame died down to still, white fire; his jaws ceased to clash; his
ferocious snarl died away into deadly silence; he crouched like a lynx
at bay. At that moment Jan's number was very nearly up, for Grip had
coldly determined to kill. He had practically ceased fighting. He was
merely sparring defensively now, with bloody murder in his blue eyes,
watching grimly for his opening--the opening through which he was wont
to end his serious fights, the opening which would yield him the
death-hold.
Jan, who knew naught of death-holds, and was at this moment blind to
every consideration in life save that of combat, would assuredly yield
the fatal opening within a very few seconds; and that being so, it was a
small matter to Grip that in the mean time the youngster should rob him
of a little fur and blood and skin. No orders, no suasion, could touch
Grip now; neither could any form of attack move his anger. He was about
to kill; and, for him, that fact filled the universe.
At last the moment arrived. When the breath was out of Jan's body after
a missed rush, he stumbled badly in wheeling, and almost choked as the
spume of blood and froth and fur flew from his aching jaws. At that
psychological moment Grip, balanced to the perfection of a hair-spring,
and calmly calculating, leaped upon him from the side, and brought the
youngster's four feet into the air at one time. That was the opening,
and, in the same second, Grip's jaws sprang apart to profit by it and to
inclose Jan's throat in a final and sufficing hold.
And then, as a medieval observer might have said, the heavens opened and
a whirling vision of gray-clad muscle and gleaming fangs descended from
the high hedge-top, landing fairly and squarely athwart Grip's back. For
a moment the sheep-dog sprawled, paralyzed by this inexplicable event.
In that moment his last chance was lost. The new arrival had whirled his
huge body clear and gripped the sheep-dog's neck in jaws longer and more
powerful than those of any other dog in Sussex. Grip weighed close upon
ninety pounds; but he was shaken and battered now from side to side,
very much as a rat is shaken by a terrier. And, finally, with one
tremendous lift of the greatest neck the hound world has known, Grip was
flung clear to the far side of the lane, at the very feet of his master,
who promptly grabbed him by the collar and, as though to complete Finn's
prescription, hammered him repeatedly upon the nose with his clenched
fist.
"I'll larn'ee to answer me--by cripes, I will!" quoth David.
By this time the sorely trounced Jan was on his feet and Finn had begun
to lick his son's streaming ears. From the inside of the high hedge came
hurrying footsteps; and in another moment the Master appeared at the
white gate, twenty paces lower down the lane. David Crumplin was offered
the hospitality of the scullery for the examination of his dog, but
preferred to get Grip away with him after an admission that--
"Your puppy there will do some killin' in his day, sir, if he lives to
see it. But as for this other fellow"--pointing to Finn--"he could down
any dog this side o' Gretna Green, an' you can say as I said so. I know
most of 'em."
That was how Jan learned his first big lesson, and the good of it never
left him, and often saved his life; just as surely as his father's great
speed and strength saved it on this morning, in the very breathless nick
of time when his throat had been bared to the knife that was between
Grip's killing jaws.
In the beginning of Jan's first fight Finn had been dreaming of a hunt
in the Australian bush. Once or twice, as David Crumplin cursed and
ranted in the lane, Finn's dark ears had twitched as though in
semi-consciousness of the trouble. Later, as Jan had snarlingly roared
in his fourth or fifth attack, his sire's brown eyes had opened wide and
he had lain a moment with ears pricked and head well up, at Betty's
feet. And then with a long, formidable growl he had leaped for the
porch. Half a dozen great bounds took him through the garden. A leap
which hardly broke his stride carried him across the iron fence into the
orchard, and a score of strides from there brought him to the
hedge-side. The hedge was six feet high here. In the lane, which lay
low, it was ten feet high. There was a gate twenty yards away. Finn
scorned this and went soaring through the bramble-ends at the top of the
hedge, and thence, a bolt of fire from the blue, to Grip's shoulders.
There was that in Finn's preliminary growl which told Betty serious
things were toward. She dared not try to walk; but she shouted to the
Master, and he very speedily was in the orchard upon Finn's trail.
A Fellow of the Royal Society, with a score of letters after his name
and a reputation in two hemispheres, stitched the worst of Jan's wounds
that morning, on the couch in the Master's study. Even Dr. Vaughan could
not replace the missing section of Jan's right ear; but, short of that,
he made a most masterly job of the repairs. And all the while wise, gray
old Finn sat erect on his haunches beside the writing-table, looking on
approvingly, and reflecting, no doubt, upon the prowess of the youngster
who had caused all this pother.
XVI
GOOD-BY TO DICK
On a day in February, Dr. Vaughan and his son Dick ate their dinner at
Nuthill, and spent most of the evening there, around the hall fire. On
the flanks of the big recessed fireplace, one on either side, Finn and
Jan lay stretched, dozing happily. Jan's wounds were long since healed
now, and the rapid growth of his thick coat had already gone far toward
hiding the scars, though it could not quite mask the fact that a piece
of his right ear was missing. Jan was more than eight months old now,
and scaled just over a hundred and twenty pounds.
Late in the evening Dick Vaughan (who had honorably held to his pact
with the Master where Betty Murdoch was concerned) had a little chat
with Jan, whose ears he pulled affectionately, while the youngster sat
with muzzle resting on Dick's knee.
"Don't much like saying good-by to you, Jan, boy," said Dick Vaughan.
"Ah, well, there need not be any good-bys to-night, Dick," said the
Master. "We'll all be at the station in the morning, Finn and Jan as
well."
"Ha! that's good of you," said Dick. "But you'll never let that
youngster run five miles behind a carriage, will you? Isn't he too
gristly in the legs yet, for the weight he carries?"
The Master smiled. "Trust me for that, Dick. I've reared too many big
wolfhound pups to make that mistake. A few such road trips as that, and
Master Jan would never again show a real gun-barrel fore leg. Why, he
weighs a hundred and twenty pounds! No; old Finn will lope alongside of
us, but Master Jan can have a seat inside. I have seen some of the best
and biggest hounds ever bred spoiled for life by being allowed to follow
horses on the road in their first year. There was Donovan, by Champion
Kerry, you know. He might have beaten Finn, I believe, if they hadn't
ruined him in his sixth month, trying to harden his feet behind a
dog-cart on the great north road. The result was, when he was shown at
the Palace in his eleventh month, his fore legs had gone for ever--like
a dachshund's."
"Ah! When I get back," said Dick, musingly, you'll be pretty nearly a
two-year-old, Jan, boy."
"And if all goes well, he will be as strong a hound as any in England;
won't he, Betty? You'll see to that."
"I will if you'll help to keep us going the right way," said Betty,
smiling at the Master.
And so, directly after an early breakfast, the Nuthill party drove to
the station, with Jan on the floor of the wagonette and Finn pacing
easily beside it. There was quite an assembly on the platform of the
little station to see "young Mr. Vaughan" off. For he was bound for
Liverpool that day, where he was to meet Captain Will Arnutt, of the
Royal North-west Mounted Police of Canada, with whom he was to embark
for Halifax, _en route_ for Regina, in Saskatchewan, the headquarters of
the R.N.W.M.P., for which fine service Dick Vaughan had enlisted, after
a stiff course of training under Captain Arnutt's personal supervision.