A BREAK-UP IN ARCADIA
Jess's struggles on the day of the dingo fight naturally retarded
the healing of her wound; but, before the week was out, Bill was
able to remove his rude stitches, and the great gash showed every
sign of healing cleanly. Yet, in spite of the kangaroo-hound's
wonderful hardihood and her advantages in the matter of pure,
healing air, almost another week had passed before she was able to
move about round the camp, and a full ten days more were gone
before she cared to resume her old activities.
During all this while Finn played the part of very loyal and
watchful protector. He had much desired to follow up the trail of
the two dingoes that escaped him, but he would not leave Jess long
enough at a time to make this possible. The wild folk of the bush
situated within a mile of the camp, however, became as much
accustomed to his presence as though he were in truth one of
themselves, so thoroughly and constantly did he patrol their range
during his guardianship of the wounded hound. In this period he
learned to know every twig in that strip of country, and
practically every creature that lived or hunted there. The snake
folk, brown, tiger, carpet, diamond, black, and death adder--he
came to know them all, from a very respectful distance; and he
studied their habits and methods of progression, and of hunting,
with the deepest interest.
For instance, on one occasion, towards evening, Finn saw a
carpet-snake pin a big kangaroo-rat, close to a fallen log. With a
swiftness which Finn's sharp eyes were unable to follow exactly,
the snake twisted two coils of his shining body round the marsupial
and crushed the little beast to death. Then, slowly, and as though
the process gave him great satisfaction, the snake worked his coils
downward, from the head to the tail of the kangaroo-rat, crunching
its body flat and breaking all its joints. Then, very slowly, the
snake took its victim's head between its jaws and, advancing first
one jaw and then the other, an eighth of an inch at a time, very
gradually swallowed the whole animal, the operation occupying
altogether a full ten minutes. When the snake had quite finished,
Finn leaped upon it from his hiding-place, killing the creature
with one snap of his jaws immediately behind the head. Finn's front
teeth actually met in the tail of the kangaroo-rat, which had only
reached thus far in its progress. Indeed, the tip of the tail was
still in the snake's mouth at the time, and Finn was perfectly
aware that in this condition the big reptile was not very
dangerous. Bill was just dismounting beside the gunyah when Finn
arrived, trailing just upon twelve feet of gorged snake beside him.
But this was only one small incident among the daily, almost
hourly, adventures and lessons which came to the Wolfhound during
this period of Jess's convalescence. He actually caught a
half-grown koala, or native bear, one hot afternoon, when Jess was
beginning to stroll about the clear patch; and, finding that the
queer little creature offered no fight, but only swayed its tubby
body to and fro, moaning and wailing and generally behaving like a
distressed child, Finn made no attempt to kill it, but simply took
firm hold of the loose, furry skin about its thick neck, and
dragged it, complaining piteously, through the bush to the gunyah,
where he deposited it gingerly upon the ground for Jess's
inspection. Bill found the two hounds playing with the koala on his
return to camp that night. It was a one-sided kind of game, for the
bear only sat up on his haunches between the hounds, rocking to and
fro, and sobbing and moaning with grotesque appealing pathos, while
Finn and Jess gambolled about him, occasionally toppling him over
with a thrust of their muzzles, and growling angrily at him, till
he sat up again, when they appeared quite satisfied. Bill sat on
his horse and shook with laughter as he watched the game. He
thought of killing the bear, for there is a small bounty given on
bears' heads. But long laughter moved his good-nature to ignore the
bounty, and after a while he called Jess off, and drove the bear
away into the scrub. He did not call Finn, because that was
unnecessary. Finn withdrew immediately upon Bill's approach.
It was perhaps a week after the bear-baiting episode, when for
several days Jess had been following her man by day in the same
manner as before her hurt, that both hounds began to notice that
Bill was undergoing a change of some sort. He never talked to them
now. He took not the smallest notice of Finn, and but rarely looked
at Jess. When she approached him of an evening he would gruffly bid
her lie down, and once he thrust her from him with his foot when
she had nosed close up to him beside the fire. Jess had vague
recollections of similar changes in her man having occurred before
this time, and she had vague, uncomfortable stirrings which told
her that further change of some sort was imminent. This made the
kangaroo-hound restless and uneasy, and before long her uneasiness
communicated itself to Finn, who immediately began to think of the
worst things he knew of--men in leathern coats, iron-barred cages,
and the like. All this made the Wolfhound more shy than ever where
Bill was concerned, and more like a creature of the real wild in
all his movements and general demeanour. He slept a little farther
from the gunyah now, and relied almost entirely upon his own
hunting for food. Still, he had no wish to leave the camp, and
regarded Jess as his fast friend.
One evening the now definitely surly and irritable Bill devoted
half an hour to counting and recounting some money in the light of
the camp-fire. He had visited the station homestead that day and
drawn his pay from the manager.
"Ger-r-router that, damn ye!" he growled at poor Jess when she
crept towards him with watchful, affectionate eyes. So Jess got
out, to the extent of a dozen yards, with the mark of one of Bill's
heavy boots on her glossy flank. She bore not a trace of malice,
and would have cheerfully fought to the death for her man at that
moment; but she was full of vague distress and whimpering
uneasiness; of dim, unhappy presentiments. And in all this Finn
shared fully, though without the personal intensity which marked
Jess's feeling by reason of her great love of the man. But the
uneasiness and the presentiments were shared by the Wolfhound, and
he dreamed vividly that night of red-hot irons, the smell of
tigers, of wire-bound whip-lashes, and the panic sense of being
caged.
In the morning Bill would hardly take the trouble to prepare a
breakfast for himself, and the clothes he wore were not those that
Finn had always seen him in before. Bill presently tied up the
hanging door of the gunyah and mounted his horse. Jess and Finn
followed him as their wont was, but their hearts were sad, and
Bill's glowering looks gave them no encouragement. For almost seven
miles they followed Bill, and then, after leaping a low "dog-leg"
fence, they found themselves in the one wide street of Nargoola
township. Bill cantered slowly down the empty road till he came to
the "First Nugget Hotel," and there he drew rein and finally
hitched his horse's bridle to a verandah post. Then he strode
across the verandah and disappeared within the "hotel," and Jess
remembered--many things.
Finn remained with Jess, a few yards from the horse, waiting; but
whereas the experienced Jess lay down in the dust, Finn stood erect
and watchful beside her. He was already rather nearer to the house
than he cared about; and the air was heavy with the scent of man
and his works. Finn was acutely uncomfortable, and told Jess so as
plainly as he could, with a hint as to the advantages of returning
to the bush. But Jess urged patience, and tucked her nose under one
of her hind-legs.
Presently one or two men came straggling down the street and made
overtures to Finn, after standing and gazing upon him with admiring
astonishment, and slowly piecing together his connection with Bill
and Jess through the horse. Bush folk have a way of arriving at
their knowledge of people through horseflesh.
"My oath!" exclaimed one of the men. "He's got a touch of the
Tasmanian blood in him, all right. I guess old man Hall's pets have
been busy back in the hills there. Wonder how Bill got a-holt o'
_him_!"
And then, with every sign of deferential friendliness, the man
endeavoured to approach Finn. But though Jess lay still, showing
only pointed indifference where the men were concerned, Finn leaped
backward like a stag, and kept a good score of paces between the
men-folk and himself.
The man who made the remark about Finn and Tasmanian blood had
never seen the zebra wolf, as it is sometimes called, owing to the
stripes which often occur in its coat, or he would not have thought
of Finn in this connection. The Tasmanian wolf is a heavy, long
beast, with a truncated muzzle, short legs, a thin, taper tail, and
a very massive shoulder and neck. Wolves of this type have been
known to keep six hunting-dogs absolutely at bay, and finally to
escape from them. Their appearance is more suggestive of the
hyaena than of any such symmetrically beautiful lines as those of
Finn's graceful, racy build. But, by reason of his great height and
size, Finn was strange to the Nargoola man, and he, having heard of
old Jacob Hall's strange importations from Tasmania, at once linked
the two kinds of strangeness together in his mind, and saw only
further reason for so doing in the fact that he was quite unable to
get within a dozen paces of touching the Wolfhound.
Out of consideration for the patient Jess, Finn endured the
discomfort of waiting beside the "First Nugget" all through that
day, though he never ventured to sit down even for a moment; there
among the man-smells and the threatening shadows of the houses,
each one of which he regarded as the possible headquarters of a
circus, the possible home of a "Professor." But when evening set
in, and Jess still showed no sign of forsaking her post, Finn could
endure it no longer, and told his friend several times over that he
must go; that he would return to the camp in the bush and wait
there. The nuzzling touches of Jess's nose said plainly, "Wait a
bit, yet! What's your hurry?" But Finn was in deadly earnest now.
He refused to be restrained even by a little whimpering appeal, in
which Jess made every use she could of the craft of her sex,
showing exaggerated signs of weakness and distress. "Well, then,
why not come with me?" barked Finn in reply, fidgeting about her on
his toes. Jess pleaded for delay, and licked his nose most
persuasively. But Finn's mind was made up, and he turned his
shoulder coldly upon the bitch, while still waiting for some sign
of yielding on her part. But Jess was bound to her post by ties far
stronger than any consideration of her own comfort or well-being;
and, as a matter of fact, forty Wolfhounds would not have moved her
from that verandah--alive. Also, of course, she had not Finn's
violent distaste for the neighbourhood of man and his works. She
had never been in a circus. She had never been suddenly awakened
from complete trust in mankind to knowledge of the existence of mad
man-beasts with hot iron bars; so Finn would have told her.
In the end, Finn gave a cold bark of displeasure and trotted off
into the gathering twilight, leaping the fence and plunging into
the bush the moment he had passed the last house of the township.
Half an hour later he killed a fat bandicoot, who was engaged at
that moment in killing a tiny marsupial mouse. A quarter of an hour
after that, Finn lay down beside the ashes of the fire before the
gunyah, his kill between his fore-legs. He rested there for a few
minutes, and then, tearing off its furry skin in strips, devoured
the greater part of the bandicoot before settling down for the
night; as much, that is, as he ever did settle down, these days.
His eyes were not often completely closed; less often at night,
perhaps, than in the daytime. But he dozed now, out there in the
clear patch where the gunyah stood, free of all thoughts of men and
cages. And the bush air seemed sweeter than ever to him to-night
after his brief stay in the man-haunted township.
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