She had delayed, because of the dew-wet grass, in order to put on
her overshoes, and when she emerged from the house found her waiting
husband absorbed in the wonder of a bursting almond-bud. She sent a
questing glance across the tall grass and in and out among the orchard
trees.
"Where's Wolf?" she asked.
"He was here a moment ago." Walt Irvine drew himself away with a jerk
from the metaphysics and poetry of the organic miracle of blossom, and
surveyed the landscape. "He was running a rabbit the last I saw of him."
"Wolf! Wolf! Here Wolf!" she called, as they left the clearing and took
the trail that led down through the waxen-belled manzanita jungle to
the county road.
Irvine thrust between his lips the little finger of each hand and lent
to her efforts a shrill whistling.
She covered her ears hastily and made a wry grimace.
"My! for a poet, delicately attuned and all the rest of it, you can
make unlovely noises. My ear-drums are pierced. You outwhistle--"
"Orpheus."
"I was about to say a street-arab," she concluded severely.
"Poesy does not prevent one from being practical--at least it doesn't
prevent _me_. Mine is no futility of genius that can't sell gems to the
magazines."
He assumed a mock extravagance, and went on:
"I am no attic singer, no ballroom warbler. And why? Because I am
practical. Mine is no squalor of song that cannot transmute itself,
with proper exchange value, into a flower-crowned cottage, a sweet
mountain-meadow, a grove of redwoods, an orchard of thirty-seven
trees, one long row of blackberries and two short rows of strawberries,
to say nothing of a quarter of a mile of gurgling brook. I am a
beauty-merchant, a trader in song, and I pursue utility, dear Madge.
I sing a song, and thanks to the magazine editors I transmute my song
into a waft of the west wind sighing through our redwoods, into a
murmur of waters over mossy stones that sings back to me another song
than the one I sang and yet the same song wonderfully--er--transmuted."
"O that all your song-transmutations were as successful!" she laughed.
"Name one that wasn't."
"Those two beautiful sonnets that you transmuted into the cow that was
accounted the worst milker in the township."
"She was beautiful--" he began,
"But she didn't give milk," Madge interrupted.
"But she _was_ beautiful, now, wasn't she?" he insisted.
"And here's where beauty and utility fall out," was her reply. "And
there's the Wolf!"
From the thicket-covered hillside came a crashing of underbrush, and
then, forty feet above them, on the edge of the sheer wall of rock,
appeared a wolf's head and shoulders. His braced fore paws dislodged
a pebble, and with sharp-pricked ears and peering eyes he watched the
fall of the pebble till it struck at their feet. Then he transferred
his gaze and with open mouth laughed down at them.
"You Wolf, you!" and "You blessed Wolf!" the man and woman called out
to him.
The ears flattened back and down at the sound, and the head seemed to
snuggle under the caress of an invisible hand.
They watched him scramble backward into the thicket, then proceeded
on their way. Several minutes later, rounding a turn in the trail
where the descent was less precipitous, he joined them in the midst
of a miniature avalanche of pebbles and loose soil. He was not
demonstrative. A pat and a rub around the ears from the man, and a more
prolonged caressing from the woman, and he was away down the trail
in front of them, gliding effortlessly over the ground in true wolf
fashion.
In build and coat and brush he was a huge timber-wolf; but the lie
was given to his wolfhood by his color and marking. There the dog
unmistakably advertised itself. No wolf was ever colored like him. He
was brown, deep brown, red-brown, an orgy of browns. Back and shoulders
were a warm brown that paled on the sides and underneath to a yellow
that was dingy because of the brown that lingered in it. The white of
the throat and paws and the spots over the eyes was dirty because of
the persistent and ineradicable brown, while the eyes themselves were
twin topazes, golden and brown.
The man and woman loved the dog very much; perhaps this was because
it had been such a task to win his love. It had been no easy matter
when he first drifted in mysteriously out of nowhere to their little
mountain cottage. Footsore and famished, he had killed a rabbit under
their very noses and under their very windows, and then crawled away
and slept by the spring at the foot of the blackberry bushes. When Walt
Irvine went down to inspect the intruder, he was snarled at for his
pains, and Madge likewise was snarled at when she went down to present,
as a peace-offering, a large pan of bread and milk.
A most unsociable dog he proved to be, resenting all their advances,
refusing to let them lay hands on him, menacing them with bared fangs
and bristling hair. Nevertheless he remained, sleeping and resting by
the spring, and eating the food they gave him after they set it down
at a safe distance and retreated. His wretched physical condition
explained why he lingered; and when he had recuperated, after several
days' sojourn, he disappeared.
And this would have been the end of him, so far as Irvine and his wife
were concerned, had not Irvine at that particular time been called away
into the northern part of the state. Riding along on the train, near
to the line between California and Oregon, he chanced to look out of
the window and saw his unsociable guest sliding along the wagon road,
brown and wolfish, tired yet tireless, dust-covered and soiled with two
hundred miles of travel.
Now Irvine was a man of impulse, a poet. He got off the train at the
next station, bought a piece of meat at a butcher shop, and captured
the vagrant on the outskirts of the town. The return trip was made
in the baggage car, and so Wolf came a second time to the mountain
cottage. Here he was tied up for a week and made love to by the man
and woman. But it was very circumspect love-making. Remote and alien
as a traveller from another planet, he snarled down their soft-spoken
love-words. He never barked. In all the time they had him he was never
known to bark.
To win him became a problem. Irvine liked problems. He had a metal
plate made, on which was stamped: RETURN TO WALT IRVINE, GLEN ELLEN,
SONOMA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA. This was riveted to a collar and strapped
about the dog's neck. Then he was turned loose, and promptly he
disappeared. A day later came a telegram from Mendocino County. In
twenty hours he had made over a hundred miles to the north, and was
still going when captured.
He came back by Wells Fargo Express, was tied up three days, and was
loosed on the fourth and lost. This time he gained southern Oregon
before he was caught and returned. Always, as soon as he received his
liberty, he fled away, and always he fled north. He was possessed of
an obsession that drove him north. The homing instinct, Irvine called
it, after he had expended the selling price of a sonnet in getting the
animal back from northern Oregon.
Another time the brown wanderer succeeded in traversing half the length
of California, all of Oregon, and most of Washington, before he was
picked up and returned "Collect." A remarkable thing was the speed
with which he travelled. Fed up and rested, as soon as he was loosed
he devoted all his energy to getting over the ground. On the first
day's run he was known to cover as high as a hundred and fifty miles,
and after that he would average a hundred miles a day until caught. He
always arrived back lean and hungry and savage, and always departed
fresh and vigorous, cleaving his way northward in response to some
prompting of his being that no one could understand.
But at last, after a futile year of flight, he accepted the inevitable
and elected to remain at the cottage where first he had killed the
rabbit and slept by the spring. Even after that, a long time elapsed
before the man and woman succeeded in patting him. It was a great
victory, for they alone were allowed to put hands on him. He was
fastidiously exclusive, and no guest at the cottage ever succeeded in
making up to him. A low growl greeted such approach; if any one had the
hardihood to come nearer, the lips lifted, the naked fangs appeared,
and the growl became a snarl--a snarl so terrible and malignant that it
awed the stoutest of them, as it likewise awed the farmers' dogs that
knew ordinary dog-snarling, but had never seen wolf-snarling before.
He was without antecedents. His history began with Walt and Madge. He
had come up from the south, but never a clew did they get of the owner
from whom he had evidently fled. Mrs. Johnson, their nearest neighbor
and the one who supplied them with milk, proclaimed him a Klondike dog.
Her brother was burrowing for frozen pay-streaks in that far country,
and so she constituted herself an authority on the subject.
But they did not dispute her. There were the tips of Wolf's ears,
obviously so severely frozen at some time that they would never quite
heal again. Besides, he looked like the photographs of the Alaskan dogs
they saw published in magazines and newspapers. They often speculated
over his past, and tried to conjure up (from what they had read and
heard) what his northland life had been. That the northland still drew
him, they knew; for at night they sometimes heard him crying softly;
and when the north wind blew and the bite of frost was in the air, a
great restlessness would come upon him and he would lift a mournful
lament which they knew to be the long wolf-howl. Yet he never barked.
No provocation was great enough to draw from him that canine cry.
Long discussion they had, during the time of winning him, as to whose
dog he was. Each claimed him, and each proclaimed loudly any expression
of affection made by him. But the man had the better of it at first,
chiefly because he was a man. It was patent that Wolf had had no
experience with women. He did not understand women. Madge's skirts were
something he never quite accepted. The swish of them was enough to set
him a-bristle with suspicion, and on a windy day she could not approach
him at all.
On the other hand, it was Madge who fed him; also it was she who ruled
the kitchen, and it was by her favor, and her favor alone, that he was
permitted to come within that sacred precinct. It was because of these
things that she bade fair to overcome the handicap of her garments.
Then it was that Walt put forth special effort, making it a practice
to have Wolf lie at his feet while he wrote, and, between petting and
talking, losing much time from his work. Walt won in the end, and his
victory was most probably due to the fact that he was a man, though
Madge averred that they would have had another quarter of a mile of
gurgling brook, and at least two west winds sighing through their
redwoods, had Walt properly devoted his energies to song-transmutation
and left Wolf alone to exercise a natural taste and an unbiassed
judgment.
"It's about time I heard from those triolets," Walt said, after a
silence of five minutes, during which they had swung steadily down
the trail. "There'll be a check at the post-office, I know, and we'll
transmute it into beautiful buckwheat flour, a gallon of maple syrup,
and a new pair of overshoes for you."
"And into beautiful milk from Mrs. Johnson's beautiful cow," Madge
added. "To-morrow's the first of the month, you know."
Walt scowled unconsciously; then his face brightened, and he clapped his
hand to his breast pocket.
"Never mind. I have here a nice beautiful new cow, the best milker in
California."
"When did you write it?" she demanded eagerly. Then, reproachfully,
"And you never showed it to me."
"I saved it to read to you on the way to the post-office, in a spot
remarkably like this one," he answered, indicating, with a wave of his
hand, a dry log on which to sit.
A tiny stream flowed out of a dense fern-brake, slipped down a
mossy-lipped stone, and ran across the path at their feet. From the
valley arose the mellow song of meadow-larks, while about them, in and
out, through sunshine and shadow, fluttered great yellow butterflies.
Up from below came another sound that broke in upon Walt reading softly
from his manuscript. It was a crunching of heavy feet, punctuated now
and again by the clattering of a displaced stone. As Walt finished and
looked to his wife for approval, a man came into view around the turn
of the trail. He was bare-headed and sweaty. With a handkerchief in one
hand he mopped his face, while in the other hand he carried a new hat
and a wilted starched collar which he had removed from his neck. He was
a well-built man, and his muscles seemed on the point of bursting out
of the painfully new and ready-made black clothes he wore.
"Warm day," Walt greeted him. Walt believed in country democracy, and
never missed an opportunity to practise it.
The man paused and nodded.
"I guess I ain't used much to the warm," he vouchsafed half
apologetically. "I'm more accustomed to zero weather."
"You don't find any of that in this country," Walt laughed.
"Should say not," the man answered. "An' I ain't here a-lookin' for it
neither. I'm tryin' to find my sister. Mebbe you know where she lives.
Her name's Johnson, Mrs. William Johnson."
"You're not her Klondike brother!" Madge cried, her eyes bright with
interest, "about whom we've heard so much?"
"Yes'm, that's me," he answered modestly. "My name's Miller, Skiff
Miller. I just thought I'd s'prise her."
"You are on the right track then. Only you've come by the foot-path."
Madge stood up to direct him, pointing up the canyon a quarter of a
mile. "You see that blasted redwood? Take the little trail turning off
to the right. It's the short cut to her house. You can't miss it."
"Yes'm, thank you, ma'am," he said. He made tentative efforts to go,
but seemed awkwardly rooted to the spot. He was gazing at her with
an open admiration of which he was quite unconscious, and which was
drowning, along with him, in the rising sea of embarrassment in which
he floundered.
"We'd like to hear you tell about the Klondike," Madge said. "Mayn't
we come over some day while you are at your sister's? Or, better yet,
won't you come over and have dinner with us?"
"Yes'm, thank you, ma'am," he mumbled mechanically. Then he caught
himself up and added: "I ain't stoppin' long. I got to be pullin' north
again. I go out on to-night's train. You see, I've got a mail contract
with the government."
When Madge had said that it was too bad, he made another futile effort
to go. But he could not take his eyes from her face. He forgot his
embarrassment in his admiration, and it was her turn to flush and feel
uncomfortable.
It was at this juncture, when Walt had just decided it was time for him
to be saying something to relieve the strain, that Wolf, who had been
away nosing through the brush, trotted wolf-like into view.
Skiff Miller's abstraction disappeared. The pretty woman before him
passed out of his field of vision. He had eyes only for the dog, and a
great wonder came into his face.
"Well, I'll be damned!" he enunciated slowly and solemnly.
He sat down ponderingly on the log, leaving Madge standing. At the
sound of his voice, Wolf's ears had flattened down, then his mouth
had opened in a laugh. He trotted slowly up to the stranger and first
smelled his hands, then licked them with his tongue.
Skiff Miller patted the dog's head, and slowly and solemnly repeated,
"Well, I'll be damned!"
"Excuse me, ma'am," he said the next moment "I was just s'prised some,
that was all."
"We're surprised, too," she answered lightly. "We never saw Wolf make
up to a stranger before."
"Is that what you call him--Wolf?" the man asked.
Madge nodded. "But I can't understand his friendliness toward
you--unless it's because you're from the Klondike. He's a Klondike dog,
you know."
"Yes'm," Miller said absently. He lifted one of Wolf's fore legs and
examined the foot-pads, pressing them and denting them with his thumb.
"Kind of soft," he remarked. "He ain't been on trail for a long time."
"I say," Walt broke in, "it is remarkable the way he lets you handle
him."
Skiff Miller arose, no longer awkward with admiration of Madge, and in
a sharp, businesslike manner asked, "How long have you had him?"
But just then the dog, squirming and rubbing against the newcomer's
legs, opened his mouth and barked. It was an explosive bark, brief and
joyous, but a bark.
"That's a new one on me," Skiff Miller remarked.
Walt and Madge stared at each other. The miracle had happened. Wolf had
barked.
"It's the first time he ever barked," Madge said.
"First time I ever heard him, too," Miller volunteered.
Madge smiled at him. The man was evidently a humorist.
"Of course," she said, "since you have only seen him for five minutes."
Skiff Miller looked at her sharply, seeking in her face the guile her
words had led him to suspect.
"I thought you understood," he said slowly. "I thought you'd tumbled
to it from his makin' up to me. He's my dog. His name ain't Wolf. It's
Brown."
"Oh, Walt!" was Madge's instinctive cry to her husband.
Walt was on the defensive at once.
"How do you know he's your dog?" he demanded.
"Because he is," was the reply.
"Mere assertion," Walt said sharply.
In his slow and pondering way, Skiff Miller looked at him, then asked,
with a nod of his head toward Madge:
"How d'you know she's your wife? You just say, 'Because she is,' and
I'll say it's mere assertion. The dog's mine. I bred 'm an' raised 'm,
an' I guess I ought to know. Look here. I'll prove it to you."
Skiff Miller turned to the dog. "Brown!" His voice rang out sharply,
and at the sound the dog's ears flattened down as to a caress. "Gee!"
The dog made a swinging turn to the right. "Now mush-on!" And the
dog ceased his swing abruptly and started straight ahead, halting
obediently at command.
"I can do it with whistles," Skiff Miller said proudly. "He was my lead
dog."
"But you are not going to take him away with you?" Madge asked
tremulously.
The man nodded.
"Back into that awful Klondike world of suffering?"
He nodded and added: "Oh, it ain't so bad as all that. Look at me.
Pretty healthy specimen, ain't I?"
"But the dogs! The terrible hardship, the heart-breaking toil, the
starvation, the frost! Oh, I've read about it and I know."
"I nearly ate him once, over on Little Fish River," Miller volunteered
grimly. "If I hadn't got a moose that day was all that saved 'm."
"I'd have died first!" Madge cried.
"Things is different down here," Miller explained. "You don't have to
eat dogs. You think different just about the time you're all in. You've
never ben all in, so you don't know anything about it."
"That's the very point," she argued warmly. "Dogs are not eaten in
California. Why not leave him here? He is happy. He'll never want for
food--you know that. He'll never suffer from cold and hardship. Here
all is softness and gentleness. Neither the human nor nature is savage.
He will never know a whip-lash again. And as for the weather--why, it
never snows here."
"But it's all-fired hot in summer, beggin' your pardon," Skiff Miller
laughed.
"But you do not answer," Madge continued passionately. "What have you
to offer him in that northland life?"
"Grub, when I've got it, and that's most of the time," came the answer.
"And the rest of the time?"
"No grub."
"And the work?"
"Yes, plenty of work," Miller blurted out impatiently. "Work without
end, an' famine, an' frost, an all the rest of the miseries--that's
what he'll get when he comes with me. But he likes it. He is used to
it. He knows that life. He was born to it an' brought up to it. An' you
don't know anything about it. You don't know what you're talking about.
That's where the dog belongs, and that's where he'll be happiest."
"The dog doesn't go," Walt announced in a determined voice. "So there
is no need of further discussion."
"What's that?" Skiff Miller demanded, his brows lowering and an
obstinate flush of blood reddening his forehead.
"I said the dog doesn't go, and that settles it. I don't believe he's
your dog. You may have seen him sometime. You may even sometime have
driven him for his owner. But his obeying the ordinary driving commands
of the Alaskan trail is no demonstration that he is yours. Any dog
in Alaska would obey you as he obeyed. Besides, he is undoubtedly a
valuable dog, as dogs go in Alaska, and that is sufficient explanation
of your desire to get possession of him. Anyway, you've got to prove
property."
Skiff Miller, cool and collected, the obstinate flush a trifle deeper
on his forehead, his huge muscles bulging under the black cloth of his
coat, carefully looked the poet up and down as though measuring the
strength of his slenderness.
The Klondiker's face took on a contemptuous expression as he said
finally, "I reckon there's nothin' in sight to prevent me takin' the
dog right here an' now."
Walt's face reddened, and the striking-muscles of his arms and
shoulders seemed to stiffen and grow tense. His wife fluttered
apprehensively into the breach.
"Maybe Mr. Miller is right," she said. "I am afraid that he is. Wolf
does seem to know him, and certainly he answers to the name of 'Brown.'
He made friends with him instantly, and you know that's something he
never did with anybody before. Besides, look at the way he barked. He
was just bursting with joy. Joy over what? Without doubt at finding Mr.
Miller."
Walt's striking-muscles relaxed, and his shoulders seemed to droop with
hopelessness.
"I guess you're right, Madge," he said. "Wolf isn't Wolf, but Brown,
and he must belong to Mr. Miller."
"Perhaps Mr. Miller will sell him," she suggested. "We can buy him."
Skiff Miller shook his head, no longer belligerent, but kindly, quick
to be generous in response to generousness.
"I had five dogs," he said, casting about for the easiest way to temper
his refusal. "He was the leader. They was the crack team of Alaska.
Nothin' could touch 'em. In 1898 I refused five thousand dollars for
the bunch. Dogs was high, then, anyway; but that wasn't what made the
fancy price. It was the team itself. Brown was the best in the team.
That winter I refused twelve hundred for 'm. I didn't sell 'm then, an'
I ain't a-sellin' 'm now. Besides, I think a mighty lot of that dog.
I've ben lookin' for 'm for three years. It made me fair sick when I
found he'd ben stole--not the value of him, but the--well, I liked 'm
like hell, that's all, beggin' your pardon. I couldn't believe my eyes
when I seen 'm just now. I thought I was dreamin'. It was too good to
be true. Why, I was his wet-nurse. I put 'm to bed, snug every night.
His mother died, and I brought 'm up on condensed milk at two dollars
a can when I couldn't afford it in my own coffee. He never knew any
mother but me. He used to suck my finger regular, the darn little
cuss--that finger right there!"
And Skiff Miller, too overwrought for speech, held up a fore finger for
them to see.
"That very finger," he managed to articulate, as though it somehow
clinched the proof of ownership and the bond of affection.
He was still gazing at his extended finger when Madge began to speak.
"But the dog," she said. "You haven't considered the dog."
Skiff Miller looked puzzled.
"Have you thought about him?" she asked.
"Don't know what you're drivin' at," was the response.
"Maybe the dog has some choice in the matter," Madge went on. "Maybe he
has his likes and desires. You have not considered him. You give him no
choice. It has never entered your mind that possibly he might prefer
California to Alaska. You consider only what you like. You do with him
as you would with a sack of potatoes or a bale of hay."
This was a new way of looking at it, and Miller was visibly impressed
as he debated it in his mind. Madge took advantage of his indecision.
"If you really love him, what would be happiness to him would be your
happiness also," she urged.
Skiff Miller continued to debate with himself, and Madge stole a glance
of exultation to her husband, who looked back warm approval.
"What do you think?" the Klondiker suddenly demanded.
It was her turn to be puzzled. "What do you mean?" she asked.
"D'ye think he'd sooner stay in California?"