not have slain her foe; the dog does not breathe that can go to the
death-grapple with a loafer wolf in the flush of his strength; and
Shiela knew neither the amazing quickness of the wild, nor how to guard
against those slashing counter-attacks. The lobo could dodge and rip
simultaneously, using her jaws from any direction. Even when bowled over
by the hound’s unreckoning rush, she tore Shiela’s throat with a
backward thrust of her muzzle and was free in a twinkling. Badly cut in
several places, dazed by the speed of the combat, the wolfhound was soon
forced to let her go.
Shiela and Friday were fast friends, albeit the diversity of dimensions
was productive of intermittent rancor. It was Friday’s wont to rush at
her fiercely, to seize one powerful leg in his mouth and worry it,
whereat Shiela would hit him a playful pat that sent him reeling ten
yards. But Friday came of a staunch breed, and he returned to the sport
again and again. Often the wolfhound would stretch herself out on the
ground, and thus recumbent, the fox-terrier could almost reach her head.
Over Shiela would roll, lying on her back with legs in the air, while
Friday snorted and grunted valorously as he shook her by the throat or
the ear. But the fun always ended in the same way: a clumsy blow would
catch Friday full on the head and he would dash off to his master with
cries of pain.
“Steve oughtn’t for to keep her round headquarters,” the blacksmith
remonstrated to Dick. “She’s shore too big. Pore li’l Friday! When she
gits into my shop, Dick, I swan her ol’ tail is like to send my tools
flying which-ways.”
“Where’d he keep her, then? He cain’t turn her out on the range to eat
grass,” sneered Dick.
The blacksmith was silenced, but there was born in him a dislike of the
hound. It happened that, when next the terrier came yelping from play,
O’Donnell had ridden off to a tank. The blacksmith issued from the shop
and hurled a bolt at Shiela. She dodged, but did not run, and the
bristles on her neck stiffened in warning.
Aside from the manager, who spent much of the year with his family in
Denver, the blacksmith was the only married man with the Tumbling H
outfit. He had a son three years of age. Oscar was the child’s name,--a
sturdy, ruddy-cheeked youngster he was--and from the outset he was the
apple of Shiela’s eye. The boy could pull her ears or tail with absolute
impunity, and into the yawning cavity she would open to his teasing, he
would thrust a chubby fist.
“Oscar! Oscar! My baby, don’t,” his mother would cry. But Shiela was
infinitely tender with him, and the two would roll on the ground in a
tight embrace, while the child thumped a tattoo on the wolfhound’s ribs.
It befell on a morning that they indulged in this frolic until both were
in a state of unbridled excitement. Crowing with delight, the baby
staggered to his feet and tried to butt Shiela with his head. Forgetting
for a fraction of time how fragile was this cherished morsel of
humanity, the wolfhound struck out joyously with her paw, bowling him
over like a ninepin. As he went backward, the boy essayed to break his
fall on the ground by thrusting out his left arm; it doubled under him
and snapped at the elbow.
A single wailing cry brought his father running from the smithy. Oscar
lay white-faced, the wolfhound nosing him eagerly in an endeavor to stir
the baby to a resumption of play. Flinging a curse at the dog, the
blacksmith picked up his son and carried him to his mother. Ten minutes
passed, which Shiela spent in vain efforts to ascertain what kept her
playmate from her, and Peck emerged from the bunkhouse with a shotgun.
The quick-sensing Shiela disappeared without further ado around a corner
of the saddle-shed; but, as the blacksmith followed on a run,
O’Donnell’s voice stayed him.
“What’re you doing with that gun, Peck?”
“Shiela done broke Oscar’s arm, and I aim to git even--that’s what.”
“Don’t be a fool!” the boss cried sharply.
Peck faced him, his lips twitching.
“I may do more’n shoot a bitch, Steve,” he said, and his voice was calm
now.
“You don’t mean that, Peck.” The range boss continued to advance, his
eyes on the troubled eyes of the blacksmith. “Shee-la and little Oscar
have always been friends. Didn’t she pull him out of the creek only last
week? She couldn’t have smashed his arm on purpose. You can’t blame a
dog for an accident.”
The blacksmith cursed Shiela to the eightieth generation; but O’Donnell
smiled and tapped the barrel of the gun with his forefinger. There would
be no shooting of man or dog now, he knew.
“Put it away, Peck. We’ll forget all about it. I’ll ride over to Deadeye
and bring the doctor myself.”
The blacksmith wavered and obeyed.
Little Oscar was soon able to toddle about, with his arm in a cast and a
sling. But Peck’s dislike for the hound grew to hate. In the short
winter days and long winter nights he watched and brooded, waiting for
an opportunity to make her suffer. His hostility to the soft-eyed,
affectionate Shiela took the form of an intense nervous sensibility to
her every movement--one sees precisely the same symptoms in persons who
are unhappily cooped up for any length of time. Soon the bigness of the
animal grated on his nerves, so that whatever she did excited in him
childish spleen. Even when Shiela ate, Peck could not look at her
magnificent satisfaction without falling into a paroxysm of loathing.
Once he spread pieces of meat cunningly about the saddle-shed where she
was wont to loll while the child slept in the afternoons. Shiela espied
and swallowed these tidbits with much relish, and stalked away to get a
drink, feeling unaccountably thirsty. There was no water in the trough;
and that saved her life. Soon a tremor came upon the wolfhound, so that
she swayed uncertainly, her nose close to the ground, froth slathering
her muzzle.
At this moment Oscar rocketed from the bunkhouse at his usual ungainly
gallop. The boy knew exactly what to do. Had he not endured agony, too?
There was only one sure remedy for belly-pains, and it stood on a shelf
in the kitchen--he never passed the shelf without a certain creeping of
the flesh. How he forced castor oil upon the dog is one of those modern
miracles that are wrought for babes and the inebriated. At any rate,
with only one arm free, he administered a glorious dose, and, feeling
full of pity for the tortures of which she mumbled so weakly, he
followed it with generous hunks of greasy bacon purloined from the big
brown crockery jar in the pantry. Shiela became violently ill and Oscar
feared for her life.
“Dick! Dick! She sick. Hurry, oh hurry!” Oscar ran to summon help.
Shiela survived, and O’Donnell devoted the better part of a day to
impassioned dissertations on the folly of leaving strychnine baits for
coyotes round the saddle-shed.
One evening in midwinter, the range boss, Dick, the cook, and Peck sat
in the bunkhouse, as usual, trifling with a pile of dominos. Shiela lay
dozing in front of the fire. The wolfhound had shown considerable
restlessness of late and Dick had cautioned O’Donnell to chain her up.
It came Mit’s turn to play and, as he was ponderously miring himself,
the night silence was rent by the hunting cry of the loafer. So near was
it, so savagely compelling, that the men sent the benches back in amaze.
The effect on Shiela was extraordinary. She was at the door, scratching
for her liberty, whining, turning appealing eyes to O’Donnell that he
should open.
Dick gazed at the range boss and waggled his wise bald head. “You better
lock her up, Steve, or you’ll shore lose that ol’ dog.”
She was locked in the smithy the next evening, and in the morning the
shed was empty. O’Donnell was positive that the staple and chain on the
door had been secure when he left her the night before; yet now the
staple dangled free, with a splinter attached. Reflecting that the
hound’s weight made this feat possible, he ceased to speculate; and in
the blacksmith’s soul entered peace. Shiela had fled.
The Wednesday following fell blustery, with a bullying wind, and the
range boss sat late at his table, working over a cattle tally by the
light of a lantern. A timid scratching on the door-sill disturbed him,
and he listened curiously. There it was again, this time accompanied by
a plaintive whine. He reached the handle in a stride.
“Shee-la! Shee-la, old girl!” His glad cry brought Mit running. Shiela
slunk into the room and crossed to the fire, which she sniffed
doubtfully and then lay down in front of it. Down her throat and across
her left shoulder burned cherry-colored slashes. She touched her tongue
to them and began to clean her soiled coat, while O’Donnell stood
watching, lost in wonder. The wolfhound growled as he moved, but he
laughed affectionately and stooped to the fearfully lowered head.
“So you’ve come back--like the prodigal,” he whispered. “Poor, poor
Shee-la!”
“Mit,” he bawled the next instant, “kill the spotted calf, or the fatted
heifer, or whatever else will do. She’s hungry.”
Not being conversant with the tale of the erring son, the cook roared
back a request to Steve to have sense--didn’t he know there wasn’t a
calf in the pen?
“Bring some beef, then,” laughed the boss.
The animal’s eyes followed her master furtively. He noted that
flickering gleam with a pang--the fear and suspicion of the hunted in
it. So much had three days with the wild linked up the slack chain of
her blood tie. Then presently she licked his hand, and the look that
answered his was soft and appealing as of old.
“Here’s enough to choke her,” announced Mit cheerily, entering with a
slab of beef.
The hound sprang at him and the cook, taking no chances, hurled the raw
meat into the air. She caught it as it touched the floor and tore into
it with the desperate zest of the famished.
The days drifted one into another, and the Tumbling H men rose and ate
and slept, and rose again, which is the sum of many lives. Of work there
could be little until the spring rains fell. Would the good days of the
roundup never come? Oh, the sweltering hours in the saddle, and the
bellowings of mighty herds, and the choking dust of the corrals in
branding!
Shiela was carefully guarded. In the first of the mild weather she
contributed to the bustling cheer of the bunkhouse a litter of four
lusty pups. It was as much as a man’s life was worth to go nearer than
six feet to the tugging little rascals; but the boy Oscar, who did not
know this, proceeded calmly to inspect and caress them. The mother
flared in a sudden, quaping rage, but instantly sank back and became
reconciled to the extent of permitting the baby, quite undaunted by his
first reception, to stroke her progeny with his pudgy hands. She watched
him jealously.
Summer rushed upon the land, and the Tumbling H outfit got to horse and
rode forth. In November O’Donnell shipped seven thousand head of steers
to help stay the world’s maw, and in December there were four men
playing at cards again in the bunkhouse.
“Steve,”--the cook cleared his throat as he riffled the cards,--“is it
my deal? Shore. Say, Steve, one of Shiela’s pups is killing chickens.
He’d ’a got a turkey too, only I done seen him.”
“You ought for to have killed ’em all when they were teeny pups, Steve,”
broke in the blacksmith. “What was the use of keeping two? Anyone kin
see they’re more wolf than dog.”
“It’s your play,” the boss said evenly.
Shiela had the run of quarters, but her broad-jowled, heavy-shouldered
pups were chained in the smithy. Just what to do with them was a
problem. Shiela had exhibited no special affection since they were
weaned, and it needed only the merest glance to detect the bar sinister.
Had only the eyes been visible, there was that in their glint which
betrayed the wolf. Yet, in the tawny coats and a certain lithe spring in
gathering for a stride, the youngsters favored their mother.
A loafer wolf made a foray from the cañon on a Sunday night, when the
range boss and Mit played seven-up and the blacksmith poisoned life with
a concertina. He killed a milch-pen calf close to headquarters; yet so
silent was the raid that the men heard nothing of it, though Shiela
cried protests to be gone and growled at intervals. In the smithy the
pups bayed deep-voiced greetings. They leaped and snapped their teeth,
and gnawed and raved to be free. Forgetting that O’Donnell had unchained
them, Dick went to the door to still the brutes. They hurled themselves
over him.
“Here’s where the trouble starts, Shee-la,” observed her master
dubiously. She wagged her tail and looked up at him in curiosity, for
she had practically forgotten the pups.
It was a bitter winter, and the cattle sickened and died in hundreds.
The men rode range in all weathers, setting out oil-cake and salt; but
what help could be given to thirty thousand head? Carrion waxed fat. And
then, one day in Deadeye, whither he had journeyed for supplies at the
first hint of spring, the range boss stumbled on a strange tale. The
wolves were out, bolder and stronger than they had been in a generation.
They were making no stealthy, lone hunts,--a swift leap from the dark
upon a helpless thing, and then the gorge,--but waged an almost
systematic war of pillage. The leader was a shaggy veteran of speckled
gray that ran with a limp; and with him--the men of Deadeye hoped they
might perish horribly were this not so--with him there ran two
fawn-colored wolves like no lobo of the west country. They were,
perhaps, slightly shorter than a cowhorse; that is, of course, a strong
roping horse, not a stunted pony.
“Shee-la, you’ve surely done it now,” O’Donnell told her with a sigh.
She thrust her moist muzzle into his hand to be petted.
In less than seven days’ time Padden reported from a division camp that
he had come on the carcass of a freshly killed heifer near a salt
trough. The wolves had hamstrung the poor brute and had fallen to their
grim feast before life was extinct, he thought; which is not unusual.
O’Donnell vowed a war of extermination.
The mail-carrier came upon the pack casting about beside the trail, at
fault in running an antelope. They let him approach within two hundred
yards, gazing insolently, then flitted swiftly through a jungle of
mesquite trees. His story was that beside the wily gray scoundrel that
led, raced two tall creatures, half wolf, half dog, which ran with a
long, springy stride foreign to lobo locomotion.
“It’s Shiela’s pups,” the blacksmith exclaimed venomously, when the
mail-carrier related this experience at dinner.
“Yes, they’re Shee-la’s pups,” O’Donnell admitted; and, “Poor Shee-la!”
he said. Then raising his voice with decision:
“Johnson, you tell them in Deadeye that I’ll give fifty dollars each for
those pups, and fifty for the old gray fellow. Put up a notice in the
post-office. Or--wait, I’ll write one for you.”
The result of this placard was an egress from Deadeye of eight ambitious
hunters, who went their several ways, wishful to earn two months’ pay by
a lucky shot. They straggled back empty-handed at the end of a week.
While they were thus engaged, the pack ranged wide. They killed at Cedar
Creek, but were compelled to abandon their prey, and slew again before
daylight on a nester’s place on the outskirts of Deadeye. Here, too,
they let the life out of an interfering collie. Long immunity had made
them contemptuous--or was it that they gave ear to the counsels of
man-raised mates? They raided the Tumbling H headquarters in quest of
certain turkeys that were Mit’s solace in dark days, and from ambuscade
the cook slew his finest gobbler with buckshot, in a berserker effort to
shoot one lissome marauder.
Shiela and Friday led uneventful lives amid all this harrying and
turmoil of pursuit. They frisked and wrestled on the baked, cracked
ground, or basked in the sun until it grew too hot and the flies became
unbearable in attack, when they would slouch to the cool of the long
bunk-room. Shiela had forgotten all about her degenerate offspring, and
held herself fearlessly and with pride as an honest dog.
More than once she and the terrier took jaunts over the low hills toward
the cañon, in spite of the watch on her goings-out. It might be a rabbit
they pursued, or the zigzagging trail of a coyote; or it might be that
rare scent, the antelope’s. One afternoon they disported themselves,
chasing some half-wild hogs that roamed the range.
A long-snouted porker of tender years was rooting about a patch of
bear-grass, when suddenly he cocked his impudent nose and appeared to
listen intently. Shiela and Friday stopped short in a game of tag, to
watch. The pig did not turn his head, but continued to stand at
attention, his ears twitching. What could it mean? Shiela crept closer.
With a speed that left her dumbfounded, the pig sprang sidewise on to a
spot his glance had certainly not been regarding, and simultaneously
tore with his jaws at a writhing, earth-colored coil. Shiela drew off
respectfully and in trepidation, while he devoured his victim with
beautiful hog voracity. It was the dreaded rattler, which he had killed
with two lightning strokes of forefeet and jaws.
So the days passed.
In the meantime, O’Donnell had other things than Shiela or wolves to
think about. The manager had resigned, and the boss added to the
superintendence of the active work of the range, the conduct of the
business of the Tumbling H company, the sale and the shipping of
Tumbling H cattle. He was an enthusiast on improving the breed of his
cattle and horses; and his anger was deep, therefore, when late in the
autumn his men found the remains of a young stallion. He was a splendid
beast, but newly come from Kentucky, and ignorant of perils and the
necessity for perpetual vigilance. Apparently he had been cut out from
the band he lorded it over,--sheer foolhardiness, this--and, alone in
the battle against heavy odds, had been pulled down. That he died full
of fight was sufficiently evident: the battered body of an exceptionally
large young wolf lay on the ground beside his own.
Shiela sniffed at the carcass of this creature, then moved away
unconcernedly, circling for another scent; but the hide caught
O’Donnell’s gaze and held it. The coat was of a peculiar tawny hue,
running in spots to red. There was something in the lines of the body
and legs that struck a reminiscent chord in his memory. He glanced from
it to Shiela, turning the body over with his foot.
“If that isn’t one of your litter, old girl, I’m much mistaken,” he
said.
Shiela, then, must atone. With all the dogs of Deadeye to help, she
should hunt these bold ravagers. Hers was the crime; hers must be the
expiation, even at the cost of life.
“Well, old girl,” he said, as he ambled away from headquarters three
days later, with Shiela beside him, “here’s your one chance to wipe out
your little slip. A lot of us humans don’t get that, my lady. So go to
it and clear your name, Shee-la.”
There were twenty-five dogs on hand at the rendezvous, about thirteen
more than were needed, and they ranged from bloodhounds and greyhounds
to a wheezy water-spaniel, which thought he knew a scent when he struck
it, and whose master fondled the same delusion of him. His presence led
to a dispute at the outset, because the spaniel persisted in messing
about and mugging a trail, and his owner pig-headedly abetted him. The
owner was set in argument, and carried a long, smooth-bore rifle.
However, both were persuaded to go home, quite convinced that spiteful
jealousy was at the bottom of this attitude.
“So that’s Shiela?” queried a Gourd puncher. “I reckon you ought to kill
her, O’Donnell. It’s her pup and his father what’s raising all the hell.
She might run away ag’in and--”
“She’s my dog, Joe,” the boss cut in.
Hard upon his words, old Rags gave tongue and went away on a warm scent.
Luck was with the hunters. Within two miles the dogs were running free,
their noses in the air, making the ridges ring to their eager yelping;
and a wolf, a tawny, limber-limbed wolf, smashed through a tangle of
weeds and briars at the head of a gulch and streaked across the open
country. The pack laid themselves out in pursuit, Shiela and the
greyhounds running silently.
The wolfhound was well up with the leaders. A dozen strides would have
brought the quarry to bay, when a speckled gray shape burst into view
beneath her feet and departed at a tangent to her line of running,
heading for a shallow draw. Shiela and one greyhound swerved and dashed
after him. The others of the pack kept on behind the flagging fugitive.
Everything was against the gray. He was old, and the combats and the
hunts of years had stiffened his muscles. He was full fed and heavy;
slumbering, he had blundered into the chase when he could have lain low.
The two silent things behind carried in their sinewy bodies the speed
and stamina of generations of dogs whose special business in life it had
been to run. A wall of earth faced them, the bank of a dried stream, and
he must scale it in his flight. Well he knew that the race was over. He
must fight, and as well here as elsewhere. When it comes to the last
test of courage, the king of wolves is indeed a king.
A rapid glance over his shoulder showed him the greyhound almost at his
flank. He reached the bank by a desperate spurt, whirled, and with one
rending stroke, cast back the first pursuer, coughing in the throes of
death. But the shock of the charge shook him for an instant and in that
fraction of time he was unprepared to withstand the crushing velocity of
Shiela’s onslaught. On his hind legs, his worn fangs gleaming, he
received her. She went straight for his throat, and the grip being an
eminently satisfactory one, she did not release it.
[Illustration: “_On his hind legs, his worn fangs gleaming, he received
her_”]
To and fro the big gray dragged her, over and over, tearing with his
forefeet to pry her off, snapping his wide jaws in futile efforts to
seize his enemy. His hind claws ripped unavailingly along the
wolfhound’s sides; he writhed and twisted to gain an inch of freedom for
his head--only an inch, and he could reach her shoulder. Once only
Shiela growled, a deep, rumbling note of content. She knew what she had
to do, and she felt this to be the right way. Slowly her jaws tightened
and she hung to him soundlessly. The rasping snarls grew fainter; the
tremendous heavings and lurchings slackened. The old lord of the cañon
had made his last fight.
It was O’Donnell who drove her off. Blown but triumphant, he raced from
the slaughter of the first quarry, and gave a long whistle of
incredulity at sight of the slain.
“Father and son--father and son in one day,” he exclaimed. Then, “Poor
Shee-la.”
As they trotted cheerily homeward, the wolfhound kept close to
O’Donnell’s horse, and whenever she glanced up at him, frisking clumsily
the while, he grinned down at her.
“You’ve wiped out your fault, Shee-la. You’ve done more than most,” he
observed seriously, as they neared the ranch. “I thought once I’d have
to send you away. Or--or send you out on the long trail.” Shiela leaped
playfully at his horse’s bridle. “But we’ll stick together. Only,” he
drew a deep breath, “we’ll take a holiday. We’ll go back--back home to
County Mayo, old girl.”
VI
MOLLY
It may be there are persons who will scoff at the assertion that there
is more of sentiment in a cow than in any creature of four legs that
walks the earth. Cavilers, these--hard-shelled individuals who look at
the gentle bovine through the eye of commercialism, not gifted to see
beyond her barnyard activities toward the nourishment of mankind. It is
reasonably established that one may approach a horse in comradely
security, confident of fair play. The rules as to hybrids are these: you
walk up to a mule in a spirit of veneration and religious preparedness,
wearing a sickly aspect of confidence. And you quaver soothing words and
carry a club behind your back.
But toward a cow--ah, that is different. Here is a mainstay of life, a
pillar and prop of civilization. Here is--well, a cow is a cow. Why,
there was the time when three hundred furiously anxious, bawling mothers
smashed out of a stout wooden corral on the Turkey Track range and laid
a straight course across seven leagues of territory, in quest of their
helpless progeny, mercilessly cooped in cars at a railroad siding,
awaiting shipment to an Arizona butcher. They kept two well-grown men
atop a water-tank for five hours, and--but to attempt a citation of
cases would be idle. This is the simple tale of Molly.