_In Which Jimmie Grimm is Warned Not to Fall Down, and
Tog, Confirmed in Bad Ways, Raids Ghost Tickle, Commits
Murder, Runs With the Wolves, Plots the Death of Jimmie
Grimm and Reaches the End of His Rope_
Jimmie Grimm's father broke Tog to the traces before the winter was
over. A wretched time the perverse beast had of it. Labrador dogs are
not pampered idlers; in winter they must work or starve--as must men,
the year round. But Tog had no will for work, acknowledged no master
save the cruel, writhing whip; and the whip was therefore forever
flecking his ears or curling about his flanks. Moreover, he was a sad
shirk. Thus he made more trouble for himself. When his team-mates
discovered the failing--and this was immediately--they pitilessly
worried his hind legs. Altogether, in his half-grown days, Tog led a
yelping, bleeding life of it; whereby he got no more than his
desserts.
Through the summer he lived by theft when thievery was practicable;
at other times he went fishing for himself with an ill will. Meantime,
he developed strength and craft, both in extraordinary degree. There
was not a more successful criminal in the pack, nor was there a more
despicable bully. When the first snow fell, Tog was master at
Buccaneer Cove, and had already begun to raid the neighbouring
settlement at Ghost Tickle. Twice he was known to have adventured
there. After the first raid, he licked his wounds in retirement for
two weeks; after the second, which was made by night, they found a
dead dog at Ghost Tickle.
Thereafter, Tog entered Ghost Tickle by daylight, and with his teeth
made good his right to come and go at will. It was this that left him
open to suspicion when the Ghost Tickle tragedy occurred. Whether or
not Tog was concerned in that affair, nobody knows. They say at Ghost
Tickle that he plotted the murder and led the pack; but the opinion is
based merely upon the fact that he was familiar with the paths and
lurking places of the Tickle--and, possibly, upon the fact of his
immediate and significant disappearance from the haunts of men.
News came from Ghost Tickle that Jonathan Wall had come late from the
ice with a seal. Weary with the long tramp, he had left the carcass at
the waterside.
"Billy," he said to his young son, forgetting the darkness and the
dogs, "go fetch that swile up."
Billy was gone a long time.
"I wonder what's keepin' Billy," his mother said.
They grew uneasy, at last; and presently they set out to search for
the lad. Neither child nor seal did they ever see again; but they came
upon the shocking evidences of what had occurred.
And they blamed Tog of Buccaneer Cove.
* * * * *
For a month or more Tog was lost to sight; but an epidemic had so
reduced the number of serviceable dogs that he was often in Jim
Grimm's mind. Jim very heartily declared that Tog should have a berth
with the team if starvation drove him back; not that he loved Tog,
said he, but that he needed him. But Tog seemed to be doing well
enough in the wilderness. He did not soon return. Once they saw him.
It was when Jim and Jimmie were bound home from Laughing Cove. Of a
sudden Jim halted the team.
"Do you see that, Jimmie, b'y?" he asked, pointing with his whip to
the white crest of a near-by hill.
"Dogs!" Jimmie ejaculated.
"Take another squint," said Jim.
"Dogs," Jimmie repeated.
"Wolves," drawled Jim. "An' do you see the beast with the black eye?"
"Why, dad," Jimmie exclaimed, "'tis Tog!"
"I 'low," said Jim, "that Tog don't need us no more."
But Tog did. He came back--lean and fawning. No more abject contrition
was ever shown by dog before. He was starving. They fed him at the
usual hour; and not one ounce more than the usual amount of food did
he get. Next day he took his old place in the traces and helped haul
Jim Grimm the round of the fox traps. But that night Jim Grimm lost
another dog; and in the morning Tog had again disappeared into the
wilderness. Jimmie Grimm was glad. Tog had grown beyond him. The lad
could control the others of the pack; but he was helpless against
Tog.
"I isn't so wonderful sorry, myself," said Jim. "I 'low, Jimmie," he
added, "that Tog don't like _you_."
"No, that he doesn't," Jimmie promptly agreed. "All day yesterday he
snooped around, with an eye on me. Looked to me as if he was waitin'
for me to fall down."
"Jimmie!" said Jim Grimm, gravely.
"Ay, sir?"
"You _mustn't_ fall down. Don't matter whether Tog's about or not. If
the dogs is near, _don't you fall down!_"
"Not if I knows it," said Jimmie.
* * * * *
It was a clear night in March. The moon was high. From the rear of Jim
Grimm's isolated cottage the white waste stretched far to the
wilderness. The dogs of the pack were sound asleep in the outhouse. An
hour ago the mournful howling had ceased for the night. Half-way to
the fish-stage, whither he was bound on his father's errand, Jimmie
Grimm came to a startled full stop.
"What was that?" he mused.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of "The Outing Magazine"_
INSTINCTIVELY, HE COVERED HIS THROAT WITH HIS ARMS WHEN
TOG FELL UPON HIM.]
A dark object, long and lithe, had seemed to slip like a shadow into
hiding below the drying flake. Jimmie continued to muse. What had it
been? A prowling dog? Then he laughed a little at his own fears--and
continued on his way. But he kept watch on the flake; and so intent
was he upon this, so busily was he wondering whether or not his eyes
had tricked him, that he stumbled over a stray billet of wood, and
fell sprawling.
He was not alarmed, and made no haste to rise; but had he then seen
what emerged from the shadow of the flake he would instantly have been
in screaming flight toward the kitchen door.
The onslaught of Tog and the two wolves was made silently.
There was not a howl, not a growl, not even an eager snarl. They came
leaping, with Tog in the lead--and they came silently. Jimmie caught
sight of them when he was half-way to his feet. He had but time to
call his father's name; and he knew that the cry would not be heard.
Instinctively, he covered his throat with his arms when Tog fell upon
him; and he was relieved to feel Tog's teeth in his shoulder. He felt
no pain--not any more, at any rate, than a sharp stab in the knee. He
was merely sensible of the fact that the vital part had not yet been
reached.
In the savage joy of attack, Jimmie's assailants forgot discretion.
Snarls and growls escaped them while they worried the small body. In
the manner of wolves, too, they snapped at each other. The dogs in the
outhouse awoke, cocked their ears, came in a frenzy to the conflict;
not to save Jimmie Grimm, but to participate in his destruction.
Jimmie was prostrate beneath them all--still protecting his throat;
not regarding his other parts.
And by this confusion Jim Grimm was aroused from a sleepy stupor by
the kitchen fire.
"I wonder," said he, "what's the matter with them dogs."
"I'm not able t' make out," his wife replied, puzzled, "but----"
"Hark!" cried Jim.
They listened.
"Quick!" Jimmie's mother screamed. "They're at Jimmie!"
With an axe in his hand, and with merciless wrath in his heart, Jim
Grimm descended upon the dogs. He stretched the uppermost dead. A
second blow broke the back of a wolf. The third sent a dog yelping to
the outhouse with a useless hind leg. The remaining dogs decamped.
Their howls expressed pain in a degree to delight Jim Grimm and to
inspire him with deadly strength and purpose. Tog and the surviving
wolf fled.
"Jimmie!" Jim Grimm called.
Jimmie did not answer.
"They've killed you!" his father sobbed. "Jimmie, b'y, is you dead?
Mother," he moaned to his wife, who had now come panting up with a
broomstick, "they've gone an' killed our Jimmie!"
Jimmie was unconscious when his father carried him into the house. It
was late in the night, and he was lying in his own little bed, and his
mother had dressed his wounds, when he revived. And Tog was then
howling under his window; and there Tog remained until dawn, listening
to the child's cries of agony.
* * * * *
Two days later, Jim Grimm, practicing unscrupulous deception, lured
Tog into captivity. That afternoon the folk of Buccaneer Cove
solemnly hanged him by the neck until he was dead, which is the custom
in that land. I am glad that they disposed of him. He had a noble
body--strong and beautiful, giving delight to the beholder, capable
of splendid usefulness. But he had not one redeeming trait of
character to justify his existence.
"I wonder why Tog was so bad, dad," Jimmie mused, one day, when, as
they mistakenly thought, he was near well again.
"I s'pose," Jim explained, "'twas because his father was a wolf."
Little Jimmie Grimm was not the same after that. For some strange
reason he went lame, and the folk of Buccaneer Cove said that he was
"took with the rheumatiz."
"Wisht I could be cured," the little fellow used to sigh.