There are a thousand methods for the training of a bird dog, and each
man prefers his own. There are some dogs which need much training; there
are others which require little or none.
Reck was so nobly blooded that the instincts of his craft were deeply
bedded in him. On his first day in the alder swamps with Proutt he
proved himself to the full. Proutt was a dog beater, as all men know,
but he did not beat dogs which obeyed him, and he did not beat Reck.
This first day he was merely trying the dog.
Reck found a bird, and took stanch point, steady as a rock. It was not
yet October, the season was not yet open; and so Proutt had no right to
shoot. Nevertheless he did walk up this bird, and flushed it from where
it lay six feet before Reck’s nose, and knocked it over before it topped
the alders.
Reck stood at point till the bird rose; when its whistling wings lifted
it, his nose followed it upward, followed its fall.... But he did not
stir, did not break shot; and Proutt, watching, knew that this was
indeed a dog.
When the bird had fallen, Proutt said softly: “Reck! Fetch dead bird.”
Now, this is in some measure the test of a setter. There are many
setters which take a natural point and hold it; there are some few which
are also natural retrievers, without training. Reck had been taught by
Westley’s children to fetch sticks or rocks at command. He knew the
word.
He went swiftly forward and brought the woodcock, scarce ruffled, and
laid it in Proutt’s hand. And Proutt took the bird, and stood still,
looking down at Reck with a darkly brooding face. Considering,
weighing.... After a little he began to curse softly, under his breath;
and he turned and stamped out of the alder run, and bade Reck to heel,
and went home. And Reck trotted at his heels, tongue out, panting
happily....
There are many ways by which the Devil may come at a man. One of them is
through hatred, and another way is to put a helpless thing in that man’s
hands. If the good in him outweighs the bad, well enough; but if the
evil has ascendancy, then that man is utterly lost and damned.
Proutt hated Westley; Proutt had in his hands Reck, a dog by Westley
well-beloved. And Reck was pliant in Proutt’s hands, both because Proutt
knew dogs and because Reck was by nature tractable, eager to please,
anxious to do that which he was asked to do. The combination presented
itself to Proutt full clearly, as he walked his homeward way that day,
and it is to be supposed that he fought out what fight there was within
himself, during that long walk, and through the evening that followed.
That Proutt had some battle with himself cannot be denied. No man sets
out to destroy a soul without first overcoming the scruples which bind
him; and there were scruples in Proutt. There must have been. He loved
dogs, loved fine dogs, and Reck was fine. Yet the destruction of Reck’s
honor and reputation and life--these were the ends which Proutt set
himself to bring about--at what pain to his own heart no man may fully
guess. It can only be known that in the end his hatred outweighed all
else--that he threw himself into the thing he meant to do.
* * * * *
Reck, as has been shown, needed no training for his appointed work. Yet
Proutt kept him, labored with him daily, for close to four long weeks,
as all Fraternity men knew. None saw that training. It was known that
Proutt took Reck far over the Sheepscot Ridge, where farms were all
deserted, and no man was like to come upon him. But he had done that
with dogs before, for woodcock lay thick in Sheepscot Valley. Once or
twice men heard the barking of a dog in that valley; and there was a
measure of pain in the notes. And three times men met Proutt driving
homeward, with Reck lying weary and subdued upon the floor of the buggy,
scarce fit to lift his head. It was remarked that Proutt was more dour
and morose than ever; and Lee Motley thought the man was aging....
* * * * *
One man only, and that man Jim Saladine, caught some inkling of that
which was afoot. Jim was a deer hunter; and toward mid-October, with a
shotgun under his arm for luck’s sake, but never a buckshot in his
cartridge pocket, he went one day into the Sheepscot Valley to search
out the land. Deer lay in the swamps there; and Jim sought to locate
them against the coming season. He moved slowly and quietly, as his
custom was; ears and eyes open. And he saw many things which another man
would never have seen.
Two things he saw which had significance. Once, in a muddy patch along
the Sheepscot’s brim, he came upon a deer’s track; and other tracks
beside it. A man’s track, and a dog’s.
Jim studied these tracks. They were sadly muddled; and he could make
little of them. But he was sure of this much--that man and dog had been
attentive to the tracks of the deer. And this stayed in Jim’s mind,
because no dog in Fraternity has any business with the track of a deer,
and no man may justly set a dog upon such track.
Later that day Jim was to find some explanation for what he had seen.
Where Fuller’s brook comes into the Sheepscot, there lies an open meadow
half a mile long, and half as broad; and near the lower end of the
meadow half a dozen alders group about a lone tree in the open. Deer and
moose, coming up the Sheepscot Valley, are like to cross the stream
below and then traverse this meadow; and Jim Saladine stopped under
cover at the meadow’s head--it was near dusk--to see what he should see.
He saw what you may see any day along the Sheepscot, and what, by the
same token, you may go a weary year without seeing. He saw a deer, a
proud buck, come up from the stream and follow the meadow toward where
he lay. It passed the isolated alder clump, and something there gave it
alarm; for Jim saw its head lift--saw then the quick leap and rush which
carried the creature to cover and away....
Saw something else. Out from the alder clump burst a man, driving before
him a dog. Dusk was falling, Jim could see their figures only dimly. But
this much he saw. The man urged the dog after the deer, with waving
arms; and the dog, ever looking backward shame-facedly, trotted slowly
off upon the trail, the man still urging from behind.
They slipped into the brush where the deer had gone, and Jim caught no
further glimpse of them.
Now, Saladine was an honest man, who loved the deer he hunted; and he
was angry. But he was also a just man; and he could not be sure whom he
had seen. So it was that he kept a still tongue, and waited, and through
the weeks that followed he watched, patiently enough, for what should
come.
He meant, in that hour, to take a hand.