THE WHITE DOGS OF ARRAN
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 warmed 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 woolly 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 greyhounds 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 greyhounds 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 door-step 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 to 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,
whatever 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 padded 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 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 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 them driven 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 to 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
practiced 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.
The snow had fallen without drifting much, nor was it yet very deep. He
hurried down the slope, not quite knowing what he was to do, thinking
that at least he would gather as many sheep as he could and drive them
homeward. But there were no sheep to be found. Where so many had been
scattered that afternoon there was now not one. The whole of the Big
Basin seemed suddenly to have emptied of them. Presently, however, he
found a broad trail of trampled snow which he followed, where it led
along a tiny stream at the foot of the ridge. As he turned, he heard
again that long, terrifying howl coming down the wind. The sheep,
perverse enough to scatter to the four winds when their master sought to
drive them in, had now, it seemed, gathered of their own will when so
great a danger threatened. Ted came upon them at last, huddled together
in a little ravine where the sparse undergrowth gave some shelter from
the snow. He could just see them in the dim light, their gray compact
bodies crowded close, their foolish black faces seeming to look up
piteously to him for help. They were very quiet, although now and then
they would shift a little, stamp, and move closer. The cry of the wolf
was stilled at last, but not because the fierce marauder was not drawing
nearer.
Yes, as he stood watching, there slipped a swift dark shape over the
opposite edge of the hollow and flung itself upon a straggling ewe on
the outskirts of the flock. It was followed by a second silent shadow,
and a third. The poor sheep gave only one frantic bleat, then all was
still again save for the sound of a hideous snapping and tearing, of a
furious struggle muffled in the soft depths of the snow. Ted raised the
revolver and took careful aim, he pulled the trigger, but no explosion
followed. Michael’s improvidence in letting his stock dwindle to only
two cartridges might be counted upon also to have let those two be damp.
Helplessly the boy spun the cylinder and snapped the hammer again and
again, but to no purpose.
The sheep was down now, with one of the savage hunters standing over it,
another tearing at its throat while the third was slipping along the
edge of the flock selecting a fresh victim. Ted’s weapon was useless,
yet he must do something, he could not stand and see the whole herd
destroyed before his eyes. Perhaps he could frighten them away as one
could coyotes: he was so angry at this senseless, brutal slaughter that
he lost all sense of prudence. He waved his arms up and down and shouted
at the top of his lungs. He saw the creatures drop their prey and turn
to look up at him. He ran along the slope, still shouting, then, of a
sudden, stepped into an unexpected hollow, lost his balance and fell
headlong. One of the wolves left the flock and came creeping swiftly
toward him, its belly dragging in the snow.
His cry must have carried far in the quiet of the night for it was
answered from a great way off. A deep voice broke the stillness and
another, the call of coursing hounds who have winded their quarry but
have not yet found its trail. And mingled with the barking chorus there
rose high the joyful yelp of a puppy who seeks his beloved master.
Ted, slipping in the snow, struggled to his knees and called again and
again. The stealthy, approaching shadow crept a yard nearer, then paused
to lift a gray muzzle and sniff the air. The second wolf, with
slobbering bloody jaws, turned to listen, the flock of sheep snorted and
stamped in the snow. A minute passed, then another. The boy managed to
get to his feet. Then across the edge of the hollow, white against the
dark underbrush, he saw the dogs coming, a line of swift, leaping forms,
huge, shaggy and beautiful, their great voices all giving tongue
together. Down the slope they came like an avalanche, one only
separating himself from the others for a moment to fling himself upon
Ted, to lick his face in ecstatic greeting and to rub a cold nose
against his cheek. That nimble puppy nose it was that had lifted the
latch of a gate not too securely fastened, and so set the whole pack
free. Then Pedro ran to join his brothers who were sweeping on to
battle. Wolfhounds are taught to catch, not to kill their quarry, but
the thirst for blood was in the hearts of the dogs of Arran that night.
There was only a moment of struggle, a few choking cries, and the fight
was over.
Day broke next morning, clear and bright, with the chinook blowing, the
big warm wind that melts the snows and lays the white hills bare almost
in an hour. Michael Martin, fallen into a proper sleep at last, woke
suddenly and sat up in his bunk. He startled Ted, who, rather stiff and
sore from his night’s adventures, was kneeling by the fire preparing
breakfast. The boy came quickly to his patient’s side to inquire how he
did.
“It’s better I am in body,” the Irishman answered; “indeed I begin to
feel almost like a whole man again. But—” he shook his head sadly, “my
poor wits, they’re gone away entirely.”
“What can you mean?” Ted demanded.
Michael sighed deeply.
“After you were gone last night,” he answered, “even my wandering senses
had an inkling of what a dangerous errand it was, and I got up from my
bed and stumbled to the window to call you back. Yes, the sickness has
made me daft entirely, for as sure as I live, I saw the white greyhounds
of Connemara go over the hill. But daft or no—” he sniffed at the odor
of frying bacon that rose from the hearth, “I am going to relish my
breakfast this day. Eh, glory me, if there isn’t another of the
creatures now!”
For Pedro, once more applying a knowing muzzle to the clumsy latch, had
pushed open the door and stood upon the step, wagging and apologetic,
the morning sun shining behind him. Long-legged and awkward, he stepped
over the threshold and came to the bedside to sniff inquisitively at the
little silver image that lay on the blanket. Michael could never be
persuaded to believe otherwise than that Saint Christopher had brought
him.