His Dog

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HIS DOG

by

ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE

1922

CHAPTER I. The Derelict

Link Ferris was a fighter. Not by nature, nor by choice, but to
keep alive.

His battleground covered an area of forty acres--broken, scrubby,
uncertain side-hill acres, at that. In brief, a worked-out farm
among the mountain slopes of the North Jersey hinterland; six
miles from the nearest railroad.

The farm was Ferris's, by right of sole heritage from his father,
a Civil-War veteran, who had taken up the wilderness land in 1865
and who, for thirty years thereafter, had wrought to make it pay.
At best the elder Ferris had wrenched only a meager living from
the light and rock-infested soil.

The first-growth timber on the west woodlot for some time had
staved off the need of a mortgage; its veteran oaks and hickories
grimly giving up their lives, in hundreds, to keep the wolf from
the door of their owner. When the last of the salable timber was
gone Old Man Ferris tried his hand at truck farming, and sold his
wares from a wagon to the denizens of Craigswold, the new colony
of rich folk, four miles to northward.

But to raise such vegetables and fruits as would tempt the eyes
and the purses of Craigswold people it was necessary to have more
than mere zeal and industry. Sour ground will not readily yield
sweet abundance, be the toiler ever so industrious. Moreover,
there was large and growing competition, in the form of other
huckster routes.

And presently the old veteran wearied of the eternal uphill
struggle. He mortgaged the farm, dying soon afterward. And Link,
his son, was left to carry on the thankless task.

Link Ferris was as much a part of the Ferris farm as was the
giant bowlder in the south mowing. He had been born in the
paintless shack which his father had built with his own rheumatic
hands. He had worked for more than a quarter century, in and out
of the hill fields and the ramshackle barns. From babyhood he had
toiled there. Scant had been the chances for schooling, and more
scant had been the opportunities for outside influence.

Wherefore, Link had grown to a wirily weedy and slouching
manhood, almost as ignorant of the world beyond his mountain
walls as were any of his own "critters." His life was bounded by
fruitless labor, varied only by such sleep and food as might fit
him to labor the harder.

He ate and slept, that he might be able to work. And he worked,
that he might be able to eat and sleep. Beyond that, his life was
as barren as a rainy sea.

If he dreamed of other and wider things, the workaday grind
speedily set such dreams to rout. When the gnawing of lonely
unrest was too acute for bovine endurance--and when he could
spare the time or the money--he was wont to go to the mile-off
hamlet of Hampton and there get as nearly drunk as his funds
would permit.

It was his only surcease. And as a rule, it was a poor one. For
seldom did he have enough ready money to buy wholesale
forgetfulness. More often he was able to purchase only enough
hard cider or fuseloil whisky to make him dull and vaguely
miserable.

It was on his way home one Saturday night from such a rudimentary
debauch at Hampton that his Adventure had its small beginning.

For a half mile or so of Link's homeward pilgrimage--before he
turned off into the grass-grown, rutted hill trail which led to
his farm--his way led along a spur of the state road which linked
New York City with the Ramapo hill country.

And here, as Link swung glumly along through the springtide dusk,
his ears were assailed by a sound that was something between a
sigh and a sob--a sound as of one who tries valiantly to stifle a
whimper of sharp pain.

Ferris halted, uncertain, at the road edge; and peered about him.
Again he heard the sound. And this time he located it in the long
grass of the wayside ditch. The grass was stirring spasmodically,
too, as with the half-restrained writhings of something lying
close to earth there.

Link struck a match. Shielding the flame, he pushed the tangle of
grass to one side with his foot.

There, exposed in the narrow space thus cleared and by the
narrower radius of match flare, crouched a dog.

The brute was huddled in a crumpled heap, with one foreleg stuck
awkwardly out in front of him at an impossible angle. His tawny
mass of coat was mired and oil streaked. In his deep-set brown
eyes burned the fires of agony.

Yet, as he looked up at the man who bent above him, the dog's
gaze was neither fierce nor cringing. It held rather such an
expression as, Dumas tells us, the wounded Athos turned to
D'Artagnan--the aspect of one in sore need of aid, and too proud
to plead for it.

Link Ferris had never heard of Dumas, nor of the immortal
musketeer. None the less, he could read that look. And it
appealed to him, as no howl of anguish could have appealed. He
knelt beside the suffering dog and fell to examining his hurts.

The dog was a collie--beautiful of head, sweepingly graceful of
line, powerful and heavy coated. The mud on his expanse of snowy
chest frill and the grease on his dark brown back were easy to
account for, even to Link Ferris's none-too-keen imagination.

Link, in his own occasional trudges along this bit of state road,
had often seen costly dogs in the tonneaus of passing cars. He
had seen several of them scramble frantically to maintain their
footing on the slippery seats of such cars; when chauffeurs took
the sharp curve, just ahead, at too high speed. He had even seen
one Airedale flung bodily from a car's rear seat at that curve,
and out into the roadway; where a close-following motor had run
over and killed it.

This collie, doubtless, had had such a fall; and, unseen by the
front seat's occupants, had struck ground with terrific force--a
force that had sent him whirling through mud and grease into the
ditch, with a broken front leg.

How long the beast had lain there Link had no way of guessing.
But the dog was in mortal agony. And the kindest thing to do was
to put him out of his pain.

Ferris groped around through the gloom until, in the ditch, his
fingers closed over a ten-pound stone. One smashing blow on the
head, with this missile, would bring a swift and merciful end to
the sufferer's troubles.

Poising the stone aloft, Link turned back to where the dog lay.
Standing over the victim, he balanced the rock and tensed his
muscles for the blow. The match had long since gone out, but
Link's dusk-accustomed vision could readily discern the outlines
of the collie. And he made ready to strike.

Then--perhaps it was the drink playing tricks with Ferris's
mind--it seemed to him that he could still see those deep-set
dark eyes staring up at him through the murk, with that same
fearless and yet piteous look in their depths. It was a look that
the brief sputter of match-light had photographed on Link's
brain.

"I--I ain't got the heart to swat you while you keep lookin' that
way at me," he muttered half-aloud, as if to a human companion.
"Jes' you turn your head the other way, pup! It'll be over quick,
an' easy."

By the faint light Link could see the dog had not obeyed the
order to turn his head. But at the man's tone of compassion the
great plumy tail began to thump the ground in feeble response.

"H'm!" grunted Link, letting the stone drop to the road, "got
nerve, too, ain't you, friend? 'Tain't every cuss that can wag
his tail when his leg's bust."

Kneeling down again he examined the broken foreleg more
carefully. Gentle as was his touch, yet Link knew it must cause
infinite torture. But the dog did not flinch. He seemed to
understand that Ferris meant kindly, for he moved his magnificent
head far enough to lick the man's hand softly and in gratitude.

The caress had an odd effect on the loveless Ferris. It was the
first voluntary mark of affection he had encountered for longer
than he liked to remember. It set old memories to working.

The Ferris farm, since Link's birth, had been perhaps the only
home in all that wild region which did not boast a dog of some
kind. Link's father had had an inborn hatred of dogs. He would
not allow one on the place. His overt excuse was that they killed
sheep and worried cattle, and that he could not afford to risk
the well-being of his scanty hoard of stock.

Thus, Link had grown to manhood with no dog at his heels, and
without knowing the normal human's love for canine chumship.

The primal instinct, long buried, stirred within him now; at
touch of the warm tongue on his calloused hand and at sound of
that friendly tail wagging in the dry grass. Ashamed of the
stirrings in him, he sought to explain them by reminding himself
that this was probably a valuable animal and that a reward might
be offered for his return. In which case Link Ferris might as
well profit by the cash windfall as anyone else.

Taking off his coat, Ferris spread it on the ground. Then,
lifting the stricken collie as gently as he could, he deposited
him on the coat and rolled its frayed edges about him. After
which he picked up the swathed invalid and bore him home.

During the mile trudge the collie's sixty pounds grew unbearably
heavy, to the half-drunk Ferris. More than once he was minded to
set down his burden and leave the brute to his fate.

But always the tardy realization that the journey was more
painful to the dog than to himself gave Link a fresh grip on his
determination. And at last,--a long and tiring last,--they
reached the tumble-down farmhouse where Link Ferris kept
bachelor's hall.

Laying his patient on the kitchen table, Link lighted a candle
and went in search of such rude appliances as his father had
been wont to keep in store for any of the farm's animals that
might be injured.

Three times as a lad Link had seen his father set the broken leg
of a sheep, and once he had watched the older man perform a like
office for a yearling heifer whose hind leg had become wedged
between two brookside stones and had sustained a compound
fracture. From Civil War hospital experience the father had been
a deft bonesetter. And following his recollection of the old
man's methods, Link himself had later set the broken leg of one
of his lambs. The operation had been a success. He resolved now
to duplicate it.

Slowly and somewhat clumsily he went to work at the injured dog.
The collie's brave patience nerved him to greater tenderness and
care. A veterinary would have made neater work of the
bonesetting, but hardly could have rendered the job more
effective.

When the task was achieved Link brought his patient a bowl of
cold water--which the collie drank greedily--and some bread and
meat scraps which the feverish patient would not touch.

As he worked at his bonesetting task, Ferris had more chance to
study his new acquisition. The dog was young--probably not more
than two years old. The teeth proved that. He wore a thin collie
collar with no inscription on its silver band.

Even to Link's inexperienced eye he was an animal of high
breeding and of glorious beauty. Link told himself he would
perhaps get as much as ten dollars for the return of so costly a
pet. And he wondered why the golden prospect did not seem more
alluring.

Three times in the night Link got up to give the collie fresh
water and to moisten and re-adjust the bandages. And, every time,
the sight of his rescuer would cause the dog's tail to thump a
joyous welcome and would fill the dark eyes with a loving
gratitude which went straight to Ferris's lonely heart.

In the morning the dog was prevailed upon to lap a saucer of warm
milk, and even to nibble at a crust of soaked bread. Link was
ashamed of his own keen and growing interest in his find. For the
first time he realized how bleakly lonesome had been his home
life, since the death of his father had left him solitary.

There was a mysteriously comforting companionship in the dog's
presence. Link found himself talking to him from time to time as
to a fellow human. And the words did not echo back in eerie
hollowness from the walls, as when he had sometimes sought to
ease his desolation by talking aloud to himself.

He was embarrassed by his general ignorance of dogs, and by his
ignorance of this particular dog's name. He sought to learn what
the collie had been called; by trying one familiar dog name after
another. But, to such stand-by cognomens as Rover, Tige, Fido,
Ponto, Shep and the rest, the patient gave no further sign of
recognition than a friendly wagging of his plumed tail. And he
wagged it no more interestedly for one name than for another.

So Ferris ceased from the effort, and decided to give his pet a
brand-new name for such brief space as they should be housemates.
After long deliberation he hit upon the name "Chum," as typical
of the odd friendship that was springing to life between the dog
and himself. And he planned to devote much time to teaching
the collie this name.

But, to his surprise, no such tedious period of instruction was
necessary. In less than a single day Chum knew his name,--knew it
past all doubt.

Link was amazed at such cleverness. For three solid months, at
one time, he had striven to teach his horse and his cows and a
few of his sheep to respond to given names. And at the end of the
course of patient tutelage he had been morbidly certain that not
one of his solemn-eyed pupils had grasped the lessons.

It was surprisingly pleasant to drop in at the kitchen door
nowadays, in intervals between chores or at the day's end, and be
greeted by that glad glint of the eye and the ecstatic pounding
of the wavy tail against the floor. It was still pleasanter to
see the gaze of wistful adoration that strengthened daily as
Chum and his new master grew better and better acquainted.

Pleasantest of all was it to sit and talk to the collie in the
once-tedious evenings, and to know that his every word was
appreciated and listened to with eager interest, even if the full
gist of the talk itself did not penetrate to the listener's
understanding.

Link Ferris, for the first time in his life, had a dog.
Incidentally, for the first time in his life, he had an intimate
friend--something of whose love and loyalty he waxed increasingly
sure. And he was happy.

His brighter spirits manifested themselves in his farm work,
transforming drudgery into contentment. And the farm began, in
small ways, to show the effects of its owner's new attitude
toward labor.

The day after he found Chum, Link had trudged to Hampton; and,
there, had affixed to the clapboards of the general store a bit
of paper whereon he had scrawled:

"Found-One white and brown bird
dog with leg broken. Owner can have
same by paying a reward."

On his next huckster trip to Craigswold he pinned a similar sign
to the bulletin board of that rarefied resort's post-office. And
he waited for results.

He did more. He bought two successive copies of the county's
daily paper and scanned it for word of a missing dog. But in
neither copy did he find what he sought.

True, both editions carried display advertisements which offered
a seventy-five dollar reward for information leading to the
return of a "dark-sable-and-white collie lost somewhere between
Hohokus and Suffern."

The first time he saw this notice Link was vaguely troubled lest
it might refer to Chum. He told himself he hoped it did. For
seventy-five dollars just now would be a godsend. And in
self-disgust he choked back a most annoying twinge of grief at
thought of parting with the dog.

Two things in the advertisement puzzled him. In the first place,
as Chum was longhaired and graceful, Link had mentally classified
him as belonging to the same breed as did the setters which
accompanied hunters on mountain rambles past his farm in the
autumns. Being wholly unversed in canine lore, he had, therefore,
classified Chum as a "bird dog". The word "collie", if ever he
had chanced to hear it before, carried no meaning to him.

Moreover, he did not know what "sable" meant. He asked Dominie
Jansen, whom he met on the way home. And the dominie told him
"sable" was another name for "black." Jansen went on to amplify
the theme, dictionary-fashion, by quoting a piece of sacred
poetry about "the sable wings of night."

A great load was off Link's heart. Chum, most assuredly, was not
black and white. So the advertisement could not possibly refer to
him. The reverend gentleman, not being a dog fancier, of course
had no means of knowing that "sable", in collie jargon, means
practically every shade of color except black or gray or white.

Link was ashamed of his own delight in finding he need not give
up his pet--even for seventy-five dollars. He tried to recall his
father's invectives against dogs, and to remind himself that
another mouth to feed on the farm must mean still sharper poverty
and skimping. But logic could not strangle joy, and life took on
a new zest for the lonely man.

By the time Chum could limp around on the fasthealing foreleg, he
and Link had established a friendship that was a boon to both and
a stark astonishment to Ferris.

Link had always loved animals. He had an inborn "way" with them.
Yet his own intelligence had long since taught him that his "farm
critters" responded but dully to his attempts at a more perfect
understanding.

He knew, for example, that the horse he had bred and reared and
had taught to come at his call, would doubtless suffer the first
passing stranger to mount him and ride him away, despite any call
from his lifelong master. He knew that his presence, to the
cattle and sheep, meant only food or a shift of quarters; and
that an outsider could drive or tend them as readily as could he
on whose farm they had been born. Their possible affection for
him was a hazy thing, based solely on what he fed them and on
their occasional mild interest in being petted.

But with Chum it was all different. The dog learned quickly his
new master's moods and met them in kind. The few simple tricks
Link sought to teach him were grasped with bewildering ease.
There was a human quality of sympathy and companionship which
radiated almost visibly from Chum. His keen collie brain was
forever amazing Ferris by its flashes of perception. The dog was
a revelation and an endless source of pleasure to the
hermit-farmer.

When Chum was whole of his hurt and when the injured leg had knit
so firmly that the last trace of lameness was gone, Link fell to
recalling his father's preachments as to the havoc wrought by
dogs upon sheep. He could not afford to lose the leanest and
toughest of his little sheep flock--even as price for the
happiness of owning a comrade. Link puzzled sorely over this.

Then one morning it occurred to him to put the matter up to Chum
himself. Hitherto he had kept the dog around the house, except on
their daily walks; and he had always tied him when driving the
sheep to or from pasture. This morning he took the collie along
when he went out to release the tiny flock from their barnyard
fold and send them out to graze.

Link opened the fold gate, one hand on Chum's collar. Out
billowed the sheep in a ragged scramble. Chum quivered with
excitement as the woolly catapults surged past him. Eagerly he
looked up into his master's face, then back at the tumbling
creatures.

"Chum!" spoke Ferris sharply. "Leave 'em be! Get that? LEAVE 'EM
BE!"

He tightened his hold on the collar as he gave the command. Chum
ceased to quiver in eagerness and stood still, half puzzled, half
grieved by the man's unwonted tone.

The sheep, at sight and smell of the dog, rushed jostlingly from
their pen and scattered in every direction, through barnyard and
garden and nearer fields. Bleating and stampeding, they ran. Link
Ferris blinked after them, and broke into speech. Loudly and
luridly he swore.

This stampede might well mean an hour's running to and fro before
the scattered flock could be herded once more. An hour of panting
and blasphemous pursuit, at the very outset of an overbusy day.
And all because of one worthless dog.

His father had been right. Link saw that--now that it was too
late. A dog had no place on a farm. A poor man could not afford
the silly luxury of a useless pet. With whistle and call Ferris
sought to check the flight of the flock. But, as every farmer
knows, there is nothing else on earth quite so unreasonable and
idiotic as a scared sheep. The familiar summons did not slacken
nor swerve the stampede.

The fact that this man had been their protector and friend made
no difference to the idiotic sheep. They were frightened. And,
therefore, the tenuously thin connecting line between them and
their human master had snapped. For the moment they were merely
wild animals, and he was a member of a hostile race--almost as
much as was the huge dog that had caused their fright.

A wistful whine from Chum interrupted Link's volley of swearing.
The dog had noted his master's angry excitement and was seeking
to offer sympathy or help.

But the reminder of Chum's presence did not check Link's wrath at
the unconscious cause of the stampede. He loosed his hold on the
collar, resolving to take out his rage in an unmerciful beating
should the dog seek to chase the fleeing sheep. That would be at
least an outlet for the impotent wrath which Ferris sought to
wreak on someone or something.

"Go get 'em then, if you're so set on it!" he howled at the
collie, waving a windmill arm at the fugitives. "Only I'll whale
your measly head off if you do!"

The invitation and the gesture that went with it seemed to rouse
some long-dormant memory in the collie's soul. Like a flash he
was off in flying pursuit of the sheep. Ferris, in the crazy rage
which possessed him, hoped Chum might bite at least one of the
senseless creatures that were causing him such a waste of
precious time and of grudged effort.

Wherefore he did not call back the fastrunning collie. It would
be time enough to whale the daylight out of him--yes, and to
rescue his possible victims from death--when the dog should have
overhauled the woolly pests. So, in dour fury, Link watched the
pursuit and the flight.

Then, of a sudden, the black rage in Ferris's visage changed to
perplexity, and slowly from that to crass wonderment.

Six of the sheep had remained bunched in their runaway dash,
while all the rest had scattered singly. It was after this
bleating sextet that Chum was now racing.

Nor did he stop when he came up with them. Tearing past them he
wheeled almost in midair and slackened his pace, running
transversely ahead of them and breaking into a clamor of barks.

The six, seeing their foe menacing them from in front, came to a
jumbled and slithering halt, preparing to break their formation
and to scatter. But Chum would not have it so.

Still threatening them with his thunderous bark he made little
dashes at one or another of them that tried to break away; and he
crowded back the rest.

As a result, there was but one direction the dazed sheep could
take--the direction whence they had come. And, uncertainly,
shamblingly, they made their way back toward the fold.

Scarce had they been fairly started in their cowed progress when
Chum was off at a tangent, deserting his six charges and bearing
down with express train speed on a stray wether that had paused
in his escape to nibble at a line of early peas in the truck
garden.

At sight of the approaching collie the sheep flung up its head
and began again to run. But the dog was in front of it,
whichever way the panic-stricken animal turned;--in every
direction but one. And in that direction fled the fugitive. Nor
did it stop in its headlong flight until it was alongside the six
which Chum had first "turned".

Pausing only long enough to round up one or two sheep which were
breaking loose from the bunch Chum was off again in headlong
chase of still another and another and another stray.

Link Ferris, in blank incredulity, stood gaping at the picture
before him--staring at the tireless swiftness of his dog in
turning back and rounding up a scattered flock which Ferris
himself could not have bunched in twenty times the space of
minutes. Chum, he noted, did not touch one of the foolish beasts.
His bark and his zigzag dashes served the purpose, without the
aid of teeth or of actual contact.

Presently, as the dumbfounded man gazed, the last stray was added
to the milling, bleating bunch, and Chum was serenely trotting to
and fro, driving back such of the sheep as sought to break loose
from the huddle. Terrified and trembling, but mastered, the flock
cowered motionless. The work was done.

As in a dream Link tumbled toward the prisoners. His mind
functioning subconsciously, he took up his interrupted task of
driving them to pasture. The moment he succeeded in getting them
into motion they broke again. And again, like a furry whirlwind,
Chum was encircling them; chasing the strays into place. He saw,
without being told, the course his master was taking, and he
drove his charges accordingly.

Thus, in far less time and in better order than ever before, the
flock reached the rickety gateway of the stone-strewn sheep
pasture and scuttled jostlingly in through it.

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