don't like to do. I'll have to deceive the girl until after the trial.
It ain't easy. I lay awake all night last night, after I got your
telegram. It's this way, sir. I have to tell you in order for you to
understand: If I can tell the bank positively that I'll have three
thousand dollars in a month, I can renew a note I've got to renew--or
lose the place here. That's the reason I'm sellin' Drake. But if I tell
Jess now that I have sold him, even if she consents to run, the life
won't be in her to handle him. It'll take it all out of her, sir. She'll
be ashamed in the midst of all them people. She's a high-strung girl.
"And that brings me to the matter of the check you started to write," he
went on. "I don't want that check now. Ever since I was laid up Jess has
tended to things for me. You know how women are when they take charge.
If that check's in the house she's liable to find it. If I deposit it,
in a little town like this, people will find it out, and somebody'll
blab to her. You send it to me after the trial, when I'm ready to
explain to the girl without ruinin' your prospect of winnin', an'
Drake's. That's my condition."
As he went up the street toward the station, Burton heard from behind
the cottage the challenging bark of the championship hope--his dog now.
"Ferris," he said, "I believe we've got the champion this time. I think
I'll attend that trial myself."
For more than a generation, the National Championship, bird-dog classic
of America, had been run near Breton Junction where, two weeks later,
Burton got off the train and was met by Ferris.
"Your dog's here, sir," was Ferris's whispered greeting. "Wilder looking
than ever. The girl's here, too. Jim Arnold couldn't come. Laid up with
his knee."
Burton looked around. He had reached a spot where for a few weeks every
winter the bird dog is undisputed king. Down the sunlit village streets
pointers and setters were out with their handlers. They came from every
section of the country, from Canada, from England. Each dog represented
in himself the survival of the fittest. There was not one who had not
gained a victory in some trial. Now they were to try for the greatest
victory of all.
Many were already champions with majestic names--champions of the South,
the prairies, the Pacific coast. Some, younger and more eager than
others, strained at their leashes, and looked about alertly at the
passing show. Others, reserved veterans, gazed into space with the
dignified abstraction of those who have travelled far and seen the
world and tasted the vanity of all things under the sun.
On the way to the boarding-house where Ferris had engaged a place for
him, Burton came face to face with his dog. He was pulling hard at the
leash, held by the girl. She nodded and smiled quickly, wistfully, at
these men who had been to her father's house to see her father's dog.
But she did not stop or speak; for so strong was the pull of the big
pointer that she was hurried along as if a high wind were blowing her
from behind.
Old Burton stopped and looked back at them. His dog was the finest
fellow of the bunch. He would take that dog back with him, National
Champion tacked to his name. He would keep him in his own kennels, show
him to his friends, run him again next year, own him in name as well as
in fact.
As for the girl, it would be a big disappointment to her when she
learned the truth. But she was young. Young people get over things
quickly. Besides, it was her father's arrangement, not his. He wasn't
responsible.
But when at supper in the boarding-house he saw her at the other end of
the table, he was a bit sorry. This was rather too forcible a reminder
of the bargain. He noticed that the girl was browned with Southern suns,
but that she was pretty and looked thoroughbred. Also, she was very
quiet, and her manners were nice.
She was present again at the meeting of handlers and owners and club
officials, who packed the parlours and hall after supper. She was to be
the first woman who ever ran a dog in a National Championship race, he
heard somebody say. It occurred to him that she must be pretty brave,
for she didn't seem to be the pushing kind.
The order in which dogs are to run is decided by lot. He had hoped Drake
would be drawn for the first week. But in the lottery Drake came on
Friday. "Arnold's Drake," he heard the official read: "Owner, Jim
Arnold; handler, Jessie Arnold--handling for her father."
"Will you stay over, sir?" whispered Ferris.
Burton nodded.
All day long, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, in morning and afternoon
heats of three hours each, dogs were run in braces on the plantation of
Steve Earle, who was, like his father before him, one of the judges.
Gruelling heats they were that tested every nerve and fibre, run under
the eyes of judges who saw every move.
As for Burton, he went out to the testing ground but once. He was not
used to hard horseback riding, and he wanted to be fresh on Friday. But
once every day, either in the morning or the afternoon, he saw the girl
set out on her pony. She was learning the course, getting ready for her
own race.
Most of the time when she wasn't riding the course, she spent with the
dog, exercising him, all alone, on the streets of the town. Once when
Burton went out to the barn lot to look at him, where he waited, chained
to his kennel, the girl came, also. He watched her as she stooped before
the eager dog, and stroked his head.
"Tired of waiting, old man?" she asked.
Again he reared up against her and looked into her face.
"Do you--er--think he will bolt?" asked Burton as they went back toward
the house.
She stopped and looked him straight in the eyes; her own were brown,
frank, high-spirited, like a boy's.
"No!" she said bravely. "I can handle him."
"She's over-confident, sir," declared Ferris when the two reached
Burton's room. "She don't know what she's up against. She's nothing but
a kid. That dog was born a bolter, and he will die a bolter."
On Thursday morning the girl spoke to Burton as they came out of the
dining room. She was going to take Drake out to the edge of town for a
practise run, she said. Would he care to go along? He had seemed to be
so interested in Drake.
He had Ferris hire a car. One of the women of the house went with them.
In the edge of the town Jessie took the dog out and, Burton and Ferris
following, led him into a field. Here she snapped the leash.
"Go!" she cried.
He needed no such command. Like a white meteor he sped across the field
and dashed into the woods. She called him, but he did not turn. Again
and again the shrill command of her little nickel-plated whistle echoed
in fields and woods. At last, in the direction he had taken, she started
running swiftly. Behind her hurried the two men, Burton breathing hard.
"This will never do!" gasped Ferris.
"Leave it to her!" commanded Burton.
At last, on top of a ridge, half a mile away, he reappeared. Three times
shriller and shriller she blew, and now he came galloping toward them.
"Come in!" she commanded.
He came to her, and she caught him quickly by the collar.
"I told you I could handle him!" she said proudly.
But her eyes were dilated. She was quiet on the ride home. She was
silent at the table.
Ferris joined his boss when the latter went to his room. Ferris stopped
with the postmaster down the street, as he had stopped for twenty years
when he was handling other men's dogs.
Ferris was depressed. That showing, he said, was terrible. If he bolted
to-day, what would he do to-morrow, with another dog to spur him on and
the crowd to excite him. They ought to do something--warn her, advise
her.
Burton smoked away. "Suppose we just leave it to the girl, Ferris," he
said quietly.
She was gone when next morning he came down to breakfast. She had left
with the wagon that hauled her dog to the place of trial, the other
diners said. Not once during the night or the morning had she let him
out of her sight.
The crowd, all mounted, had gathered at the beginning of the course when
Burton and Ferris rode up that brilliant winter morning. And a little to
one side, standing beside a wagon in which were two dog's crates, one
containing Arnold's Drake, the other Count Redstone, his brace mate,
stood the girl.
At her side a wiry Texas pony waited patiently. In a scabbard on the
saddle was strapped a twenty-gauge shotgun.
The girl looked small, slight, and brown in her riding suit. Underneath
a roughrider hat Burton glimpsed her face as she looked off across the
fields that marked the beginning of the course. Though brave and
composed, it showed the strain she was under. In that crate nearest her,
as she thought, was the hope of her crippled father.
Burton noticed that she did not glance up at the people about her, or
speak to them. Her eyes were fixed on those sunlit straw fields, so soon
to be her battleground. He liked her silence. From the beginning she had
played the game--had asked no odds because she was a woman. He thought
of his own youngest daughter. Suppose she were standing there, as that
girl stood!
When the three judges rode up, she herself lifted the big pointer out
of the crate. Once more he reared up on her, once more her hand stroked
his head. Then, at a command of the judges, she was leading him into the
field, her pony following; at her side walked the handler of Count
Redstone, and in front of him, the Count strained at his leash.
"Are you ready?" asked the senior judge.
Count Redstone's handler, a bronzed, gray-haired veteran, said "Ready!"
as he had said it a hundred times. The girl merely looked up at the
judge and nodded.
"Let go!" ordered the judge.
Burton saw the dogs dash away. The girl, like an athlete, sprang into
her saddle. Both handlers galloped after their dogs. Behind followed the
judges, then, after an interval, the field, among them old Burton, his
heart beating fast. The fight was on--but it was more than a fight
between dogs. It was a conflict between a girl's will and the wild
heritage in a dog's nature.
The dogs have to be kept within a course some half-a-mile wide and many
miles long. If a dog gets out of the course and is lost for a length of
time--that varies according to the conception of the judges, but is
usually confined to half an hour--that dog is ruled out. This much
Burton knew. The question was whether the girl by her whistle and the
wave of her handkerchief to right and left could keep the dog within
the course. The test is, which dog will find the most birds in that
course and handle them with the greatest speed and dash.
At first the girl succeeded in handling her dog, though she had to ride
hard to do so. Far ahead of the judges she kept, a slim figure against
the hills. Now and then came the shrill of her whistle and the wave of
her handkerchief. Then it began to be rumoured among the field that she
had lost him. But not for long. On top of a hill she appeared, her right
arm thrown up high. Judges, then the field, galloped toward her. The
upraised hand meant her dog had scored--had found birds.
Burton, spurring up his horse, kept up with the crowd. There, in the
midst of a straw field, head up, tail straight out, stood the pointer.
The girl had dismounted, taken the little gun out of the scabbard, and
was advancing, slim, straight, flushed of cheek, toward him.
"Flush your birds!" ordered the senior judge.
The birds rose with a whirr; the little gun barked; the pointer dropped
to his haunches; it was perfect work.
"Go on, old man!" she ordered.
Then she was running back to her pony, which Ferris was holding for her.
Again Burton saw in her face the strain she was under. How precious was
every moment with a wild dog like this! She rammed the little gun in the
scabbard, sprang into the saddle, hardly seeming to touch the stirrups,
and was off.
Again Drake scored, then Count Redstone. Nearly an hour had flitted
away. Then Burton, loitering among the rearmost of the field, heard
rumours that something was wrong, and, anxiously spurring up his mount,
came upon a body of horsemen gathered in a patch of woods.
Out yonder in a cotton field, he could see the three judges gathered on
their horses like consulting generals on a battlefield. They had called
time, the men explained to Burton, until Jessie Arnold could find her
dog. A short distance from the judges Count Redstone was sitting on his
haunches, panting, and beside him stood his handler, dismounted. This
was giving Count Redstone a chance to rest, and the handler was taking
full advantage of it.
Some of the men, the group explained to Burton, were scouting for the
girl, among them Ferris. They were riding about the fields and woods
outside the course, looking for her dog. The rest of them had better
stay here; the judges would not allow too many helpers. The girl had
ridden up yonder creek bottom, the last they saw of her. She was going
like mad, they said.
But she was using her brains, they added. There are two kinds of
bolters--those who run away for the sheer love of running, and those who
from hilltops pick out the country that looks like containing birds,
and make for that country of their own sweet will. Arnold's Drake
belonged to the latter class. The girl was looking for him in the
"birdy" spots. But heaven only knew how far he had taken it into his
head to go! Old Burton got out his handkerchief and mopped his face.
Five minutes passed, then ten--and still Arnold's Drake was lost, and
out yonder the judges waited.
Then across the field toward the group in the woods came the girl. Off
to the side of these woods were extensive fields of broom straw that lay
outside the course. But they looked "birdy," those fields, and the girl
was making for them.
As she swept past, Burton glimpsed her face. It was tense with anxiety,
but the little mouth was set in a straight line. Her pony was flecked
with foam; his eyes were wild; and Burton heard his hoarse panting and
the pounding of his hoofs.
Careless of tree limbs, the girl swept through the woods. It came over
Burton that, in this way, and, in trying to keep up with this very dog,
her father had broken his knee. He wheeled his own horse about and tried
to follow. But she had disappeared in her mad search; even the sound of
her pony's hoofs had died away. Burton drew up his horse, and looked at
his watch. Fifteen minutes had passed, and still the judges waited.
Again Burton mopped his face with his handkerchief.
He had been an object of admiration among the men, and now they
gathered about him. The faces of them all showed with what sympathy they
were watching Jess Arnold's gallant fight. Again Burton looked at his
watch. Twenty minutes--and the judges still waited out yonder, and Count
Redstone rested.
"Can't we do something?" demanded Burton.
Not a thing, they said. Leaving out the fact that the judges would not
permit many scouters, it wasn't good for a crowd to ride over the
fields. The dog would see them, from a distant hill, perhaps, think he
was going right, and keep on. It was all over, anyway, one man ventured:
Arnold's Drake was out of the race. It was a pity, too. But for the
bolting he was a great dog. They began to talk of this race as of
something that might have been.
Then a man cried out excitedly, "Yonder she comes now! She's got him,
too! That girl don't give up--she don't know how!"
Burton saw her galloping toward them, and with her the wild dog.
"Is time up?" she panted, reining in her pony.
"Five minutes!" said Burton.
"He was on birds!" she gasped. "But he was off the course. Five minutes,
you say?"
She threw herself from the saddle. A man caught the reins of her
panting, foam-flecked pony, and she was down on the ground beside the
dog, while the others gathered about her. She had made the dog lie down.
She was stroking him.
"You devil!" Burton heard her gasp. "You darling! You beauty! You
wonder! Oh, I love you, but you don't love me--me or Dad!"
She was oblivious now of the men about her. The slim hand was stroking
the head, the long back, quietly, smoothly. "Steady!" she was pleading.
"Steady, old man. Look at me!" She had caught his head and raised his
eyes to hers. "Can't you see? Oh, you beauty--can't you see? See what it
means! Now, now--be quiet--just a minute--quiet--quiet--steady--steady!"
The frantic panting was growing less; but still the wild fire blazed in
the amber-brown eyes. Once he started to rise, but she pushed him gently
back. Again she lifted his head, and looked at him long, pleadingly.
"Can't you see?" she said. "Can't you see?"
And now there came a change, visible to Burton, and to them all. The
panting stopped altogether, the dog choked and swallowed. The pricked,
eager ears fell back gently against the long thoroughbred head. The
wildness faded out of the eyes that stared into the girl's face, and in
them came the light of love, the dawn of understanding.
"You see now, don't you?" she said quietly.
She rose to her feet. He did not move, but lay there looking up at her
humbly, wonderingly. She stood above him a moment and still he did not
move.
"Time's up!" said one of the men tensely.
She nodded to show she had heard. It was as if she might break the
spell if she spoke. The man led the pony to her. With no haste, now, she
got into the saddle.
"Heel!" she commanded.
The pointer rose and looked up at her.
"Heel!" she repeated.
When she rode out of the woods, across the sunlit fields toward the
judges, at her pony's heels trotted the pointer, obedient now, as if he
had left behind him, in that patch of woods, his wild heritage.
No man or woman who saw the work of Arnold's Drake the rest of that
morning can ever forget it. Fast as ever, yet he kept the course. Bold,
independent, aggressive, yet at every shrill whistle he turned, and
according to the wave of her handkerchief went to right or left.
Ten coveys of birds, in the hour and a half that remained to him, he
found. From terrific speed men saw him flash ten times into the
statuesque immobility of a point. They forgot even so steady and
painstaking a fellow as Count Redstone. It was the pointer who captured
their imaginations.
On Saturday night, while the crowd was at supper, the decision of the
judges, who always stopped at Freedom Hill, was telephoned in. And the
decision showed them to be dog men, not martinets--men who can overlook
a grievous fault in the face of a magnificent accomplishment and a
future full of promise.
A veteran reporter took the message, then stood in the dining-room door
a moment, his eyes twinkling at the faces turned his way.
"Champion," he said, and paused a moment, "Champion, Arnold's Drake."
But when the girl declared she must telegraph her father, old Burton
pushed through the crowd about her.
"I'll attend to that," he said.
He saw the quick friendliness in her upraised eyes. Had he not shown
faith throughout in her dog?
Out in the hall he spoke to the men: "Telephone Ferris," he said. "He's
stopping with the postmaster. Tell him to come at once."
In his own room he got out his stationery and pen and wrote, quickly, in
a bold hand that dashed across the sheet. But the excitement of it must
have told on him, for he dated the letter two days back, on Thursday.
When the door opened he looked up. There was Ferris, his face jubilant.
Behind Ferris was the girl. At sight of her old Burton did a funny
thing. He put his hand over the letter he had been writing.
"I just wanted to be sure," she said--"Dad, you know."
"I'll attend to that," he said impatiently.
After she was gone he hastily addressed the letter.
"Close the door, Ferris," he said. "You know the postmaster well, don't
you? You've known him for years. Well, tell him he won't get into any
trouble over this. Tell him it's often done. Tell him if he does get
into trouble, I'll make it all right. Tell him he'll be glad he got into
it. Tell him to stamp this letter two days back--January 27th--and mail
it to-night. Send a telegram signed 'Jessie' to old Arnold, saying his
dog--his dog, mind you--is National Champion. Hurry now!"
Late the next afternoon a crippled dog handler tore open a letter. It
had come on the same train with his daughter and with the National
Champion, who now lay before the fire. As his master opened the letter
this champion looked up, and tapped the floor with his tail.
Beside her father stood Jessie, amazed at what she saw in the letter.
Thursday morning, January 27.
DEAR SIR:
I have just seen your dog work out in a preliminary test. He's a
far worse bolter than even you had led me to believe. According to
your representation, your daughter could handle him. I find her
absolutely incapable of doing so. Under the circumstances I feel
justified in cancelling our agreement. Yours truly,
WILLIAM BURTON.
"The old quitter!" cried Arnold, his eyes blazing. "God knows I'm glad
to get my dog. Three thousand couldn't get him now. But who would have
thought----"
And eyes still blazing with anger and joy and excitement, he told the
girl at his side the bargain they had made, right in this room.
For a moment she was silent, with staring eyes; then she cried out:
"Dad--Dad--he wrote the letter that night--after Drake was made
champion. I know--I saw him doing it. He tried to hide it.... I know!"
On the train that very night, in the stateroom, Ferris spoke to his
boss.
"I know a man, sir, who owns a dog I believe will win next year."
In the deep-set eyes came a twinkle that lit them up like tiny
electrics.
"Has the man a broken leg and a daughter?"
"No, sir."
"Then buy the dog, Ferris."
IV
OLD FRANK SEES IT THROUGH
It was with grave misgiving that old Frank, Irish setter, followed
little Tommy Earle out of the precincts of the big shaded yard and into
the hot field of rustling corn, twice as tall as they. That this morning
of all mornings the boy belonged back there in the yard he knew well
enough, but all his efforts to keep him there had failed. He had tried
to divert his mind. He had loitered behind. He had glanced back
wistfully at the big white house, hoping in the absence of the boy's
father and mother to attract the attention of old Aunt Cindy the cook to
the fact that Tommy was running away.
But old Aunt Cindy was nowhere to be seen. There was no one to catch his
signals of distress. There was no one to see Tommy enter the corn. And
no one knew what he knew--that strangers were camped down there in his
master's woods. As for him, he had smelled them the night before after
everybody was asleep. He had barked a while in their general direction,
then gone down there to investigate. They had not seen him, for he had
kept out of sight. There had been two men and a woman sitting by a
small fire, an old car in the background. He had not liked their looks.
And that wasn't all. Not long ago he had seen one of the men, half
hidden in the cornfield, looking toward the house. The man had stood
there while Steve Earle, the boy's father, drove off in the car. He had
stood there while Marian Earle, the boy's mother, went off across the
orchard in another direction with a basket of fruit for a neighbour. He
had stood there until Frank, left alone with the boy, had started toward
the cornfield, tail erect, eyes fierce. Then the man had turned
hurriedly and entered the woods.
But the man was still down there. So were those other people. Frank's
nose told him that. Therefore his eyes were deep with trouble and he
followed close at the boy's heels. Tommy's objective he knew well
enough. A few days before Steve Earle had brought them both through this
very corn, into the woods, to the creek. The father had pointed out to
the boy the silvery fish darting here and there in a deep-shaded pool.
It had made a great impression. Tommy was going to see those fish now.
That Frank knew.
And he sympathized with the impulse, so far as that was concerned. Under
ordinary circumstances, he was not averse to looking at fish himself.
But now, with every step the boy took his anxiety increased. For it was
beside the pool that the strangers were camped. And it was straight in
their direction that little Tommy in his ignorance was headed.
The morning sun blazed down through the thin obstacle of the tall corn.
It flashed on the white-and-striped shirt and trousers and on the
turn-down straw hat with the blue-ribbon band. In the deep-furrowed rows
dust puffed up from under the hurrying little sandalled feet. Intent on
seeing those darting silvery fish in that deep-shaded pool, Tommy did
not once turn to look into the troubled eyes close behind him.
Within sight of the woods Frank made his last attempt. He stopped and
sat down firmly on his haunches. Then the boy turned, his face flushed
under the white hat.
"Come on, F'ank!" he said impatiently.
A gust of dry summer wind swept across the field and rattled the blades
of corn and tossed up the silvery side of the leaves in the forest.
The boy grew angry. "Come on, F'ank!" he cried.
Panting hard, saliva dripping into the dust of the corn row, Frank sat
where he was and looked everywhere but at the boy in the dignity of his
determination.