Chapter 8

Had Comet seen a different expression, had he received a single word of encouragement, there would have been no calamity that day. If he had trusted the man, he would have withstood the shock his nerves were about to receive. But he did not trust this pale man with the strange eyes and the hard-set mouth.

At a second command, though, he galloped swiftly, boldly into the field. Once he turned for direction and Larsen waved him on. Round and round the extensive field he circled, forgetting any feeling of strangeness, every fibre of his being intent on the hunt. Larsen, from his horse, watched with appraising eyes.

Suddenly to the young dog's nose came the smell, strong, pungent, compelling, of game birds. He stiffened into an earnest beautiful point. Heretofore, in the little training he had gone through, Thompson had come up behind him, flushed the birds and made him drop. And now Larsen, having quickly dismounted and tied his horse, hurried toward him as Thompson had done--except that in Larsen's hand was the gun.

The old-fashioned black powder of a generation ago makes a loud explosion. It sounds like a cannon compared with the modern smokeless powder used for almost a generation by nearly all hunters. Perhaps it was merely accident that had caused Larsen before he left the house to load his pump gun with black-powder shells.

As for Comet, he only knew that the birds rose with a whirr, and that then, above his head, burst an awful roar, almost splitting his ear drums, shocking every sensitive nerve, filling him with terror such as he had never felt before. Even then in the confusion and horror of the noise he turned to the man, ears ringing, eyes dilated. As for Larsen, he declared afterward, to others and to himself even, that he noticed no nervousness in the dog, that he was intent only on getting several birds for breakfast.

Twice, three times, four times the pump gun bellowed its cannon-like roar, piercing the ear drums, shattering the nerves. Comet turned. One more glance backward at a face, pale, exultant. Then the puppy in him conquered. Tail tucked, he ran away from that blasting noise.

There is this in fear, that once man or dog turns, fear increases. Witness the panic of armies, of theatre audiences when the cry of fire is given. Faster and faster from that terror that seemed following him Comet sped. Miles and miles he ran. Now and then, stumbling over briars, he yelped. His tail was tucked, his eyes crazy with fear. Seeing a farmhouse, he made for that. It was noon hour and a group of men loitered about the yard. With the cry "Mad dog!" one ran into the house for a gun. When he came out the others told him that the dog was under the porch, and must only have had a fit. And under the porch, in fact, was Comet. Pressed against the wall in the comparative darkness, the magnificent pointer with the quivering soul waited, panting, eyes gleaming, horror still ringing in his ears.

Here Larsen found him that afternoon. A boy crawled underneath and dragged him forth. He who had started life favoured of the gods, who that morning had been full of high spirit and pride, who had circled his first field like a champion, was a shrinking, cringing creature, like a homeless cur.

The men laughed at the spectacle he made. To many people a gun-shy dog is, in his terror, a sight for mirth. Perhaps he is. Certainly he is as much so as a dog with a can tied to his tail. But some day neither sight will be funny to any human soul.

As for Larsen, he kept repeating in sanctimonious tones that he had never been more astonished in his life, though to tell the truth he had never thought much of this breed of pointers. He was very sorry, he said, very sorry. But any one, peering at him from the bushes as he rode home, a dog with tucked tail at his horse's heels, would have seen a shrewd smile on his face.

And thus it happened that Comet came home in disgrace--a coward expelled from college, not for some youthful prank, but because he was yellow. And he knew he was disgraced. He saw it in the face of the big man Devant, who looked at him in the yard where he had spent his happy puppyhood, then turned away. He knew it because of what he saw in the face of Jim Thompson.

In the house was a long plausible letter, explaining how it had happened. "I did everything I could. I never was as much surprised in my life. The dog is hopeless."

As for the other inhabitants of the big house, their minds were full of the events of the season--de-luxe hunting parties, more society events than hunts; lunches served in the woods by uniformed butlers; launch rides up the river; arriving and departing guests. Only one of them except Devant gave the gun-shy dog a thought. Marian Devant visited him in his disgrace. She stooped before him as she had done on that other and happier day, and caught his head between her hands. But his eyes did not meet hers, for in his dim way he knew he was not now what he had been.

"I don't believe he's yellow--inside!" she declared and looked at Thompson.

Thompson shook his head. "I tried him with a gun, Miss Marian. Just showed it to him. He ran into his kennel."

"I'll go get mine. I don't believe he will run again."

But at sight of her small gun it all came back. Again he seemed to hear the explosion that had shattered his nerves. The terror had entered his soul. In spite of her pleading he made for his kennel. Even the girl turned away. And as he lay panting in the shelter of his box he knew that never again would men look at him as they had looked, nor life be sweet to him as it had been.

Then came to Oak Hill an old man to see Thompson. He had been on many seas, had fought in a dozen wars, and had settled at last on a truck farm near by. Somewhere in a life full of adventure and odd jobs he had trained dogs and horses. His face was lined, his hair white, his eyes piercing, blue, and kind. Wade Swygert was his name.

"I'll take him if you're goin' to give him away," he said to Thompson.

Give him away--who had been championship hope!

Marian Devant hurried out. She looked into the visitor's face shrewdly, appraisingly.

"Can you cure him?" she demanded.

"I doubt it," was the sturdy answer.

"You will try?"

"I'll try."

"Then you can have him. And if there's any expense----"

"Come, Comet," said the old man.

That night, in a neat, humble house, Comet ate supper placed before him by a stout old woman, who had followed this old man to the ends of the world. That night he slept before their fire. Next day he followed the man all about the place. Several days and nights passed this way, then, while he lay before the fire, old Swygert came in with a gun. At sight of it Comet sprang to his feet. He tried to rush out of the room, but the doors were closed. Finally, he crawled under the bed.

Every night after that Swygert got out the gun, until he crawled under the bed no more. Finally, one day the man fastened the dog to a tree in the yard, then came out with a gun. A sparrow lit in a tree, and he shot it. Comet tried to break the rope. All his panic had returned, but the report had not shattered him as that other did, for the gun was loaded light.

After that, frequently the old man shot a bird in his sight, loading the gun more and more heavily, and each time, after the shot, coming to him, showing him the bird, and speaking to him kindly, gently. But for all that the terror remained in his heart.

One afternoon Marian Devant, a young man with her, rode over on horseback. Swygert met her at the gate.

"I don't know," he said, "whether I'm getting anywhere or not."

"I don't believe he's yellow. Not deep down. Do you?"

"No," said Swygert. "Just his ears, I think. They've been jolted beyond what's common. I don't know how. The spirit is willin', but the ears are weak. I might deefen him. Punch 'em with a knife----"

"That would be running away!" said the girl.

Swygert looked at her keenly, on his face the approbation of an old man who has seen much.

That night Mrs. Swygert told him she thought he had better give it up. It wasn't worth the time and worry. The dog was just yellow.

Swygert pondered a long time. "When I was a kid," he said at last, "there came up a terrible thunderstorm. It was in South America. I was water boy for a railroad gang, and the storm drove us in a shack. While lightnin' was hittin' all around, one of the grown men told me it always picked out boys with red hair. My hair was red, an' I was little and ignorant. For years I was skeered of lightnin'. I never have quite got over it. But no man ever said I was yellow."

Again he was silent for a while. Then he went on: "I don't seem to be makin' much headway, I admit that. I'm lettin' him run away as far as he can. Now I've got to shoot an' make him come toward the gun himself, right while I'm shootin' it."

Next day Comet was tied up and fasted, and the next, until he was gaunt and famished. Then, on the afternoon of the third day, Mrs. Swygert, at her husband's direction, placed before him, within reach of his chain, some raw beefsteak. As he started for it, Swygert shot. He drew back, panting, then, hunger getting the better of him, started again. Again Swygert shot.

After that for days Comet "ate to music," as Swygert expressed it. "Now," he said, "he's got to come toward the gun when he's not even tied up."

Not far from Swygert's house is a small pond, and on one side the banks are perpendicular. Toward this pond the old man, with the gun under his arm and the dog following, went. Here in the silence of the woods, with just the two of them together, was to be a final test.

On the shelving bank Swygert picked up a stick and tossed it into the middle of the pond with the command to "fetch." Comet sprang eagerly in and retrieved it. Twice this was repeated. But the third time, as the dog approached the shore, Swygert picked up the gun and fired.

Quickly the dog dropped the stick, then turned and swam toward the other shore. Here, so precipitous were the banks, he could not get a foothold. He turned once more and struck out diagonally across the pond. Swygert met him and fired.

Over and over it happened. Each time, after he fired, the old man stooped down with extended hand and begged him to come on. His face was grim, and though the day was cool sweat stood out on his brow. "You'll face the music," he said, "or you'll drown. Better be dead than called yellow."

The dog was growing weary. His head was barely above water. His efforts to clamber up the opposite bank were feeble, frantic. Yet, each time as he drew near the shore Swygert fired.

He was not using light loads now. He was using the regular load of the bird hunter. Time had passed for temporizing. The sweat was standing out all over his face. The sternness in his eyes was terrible to see, for it was the sternness of a man who is suffering.

A dog can swim a long time. The sun dropped over the trees. Still the firing went on, regularly, like a minute gun.

Just before the sun set an exhausted dog staggered toward an old man, almost as exhausted as he. The dog had been too near death and was too faint to care for the gun that was being fired over his head. On and on he came, toward the man, disregarding the noise of the gun. It would not hurt him, that he knew at last. He might have many enemies, but the gun, in the hands of this man, was not one of them. Suddenly old Swygert sank down and took the dripping dog in his arms.

"Old boy," he said, "old boy."

That night Comet lay before the fire, and looked straight into the eyes of a man, as he used to look in the old days.

Next season, Larsen, glancing over his sporting papers, was astonished to see that among promising Derbys the fall trials had called forth was a pointer named Comet. He would have thought it some other dog than the one who had disappointed him so by turning out gun-shy, in spite of all his efforts to prevent, had it not been for the fact that the entry was booked as Comet; owner, Miss Marian Devant; handler, Wade Swygert.

Next year he was still more astonished to see in the same paper that Comet, handled by Swygert, had won first place in a Western trial, and was prominently spoken of as a National Championship possibility. As for him, he had no young entries to offer, but was staking everything on the National Championship, where he was to enter Larsen's Peerless II.

It was strange how things fell out--but things have a habit of turning out strangely in field trials, as well as elsewhere. When Larsen reached Breton Junction where the National Championship was to be run, there on the street, straining at the leash held by old Swygert, whom he used to know, was a seasoned young pointer, with a white body, a brown head, and a brown saddle spot--the same pointer he had seen two years before turn tail and run in that terror a dog never quite overcomes.

But the strangest thing of all happened that night at the drawing, when, according to the slips taken at random from a hat, it was declared that on the following Wednesday, Comet, the pointer, was to run with Peerless II.

It gave Larsen a strange thrill, this announcement.

He left the meeting and went straightway to his room. There for a long time he sat pondering. Next day at a hardware store he bought some black powder and some shells.

The race was to be run next day, and that night in his room he loaded half-a-dozen shells. It would have been a study in faces to watch him as he bent over his work, on his lips a smile. Into the shells he packed all the powder they could stand, all the powder his trusted gun could stand, without bursting. It was a load big enough to kill a bear, to bring down a buffalo. It was a load that would echo and reëcho in the hills.

On the morning that Larsen walked out in front of the judges and the field, Peerless II at the leash, old Swygert with Comet at his side, he glanced around at the "field," or spectators. Among them was a handsome young woman and with her, to his amazement, George Devant. He could not help chuckling inside himself as he thought of what would happen that day, for once a gun-shy dog, always a gun-shy dog--that was _his_ experience.

As for Comet, he faced the strawfields eagerly, confidently, already a veteran. Long ago fear of the gun had left him, for the most part. There were times, when at a report above his head, he still trembled and the shocked nerves in his ear gave a twinge like that of a bad tooth. But always at the quiet voice of the old man, his god, he grew steady, and remained staunch.

Some disturbing memory did start within him to-day as he glanced at the man with the other dog. It seemed to him as if in another and an evil world he had seen that face. His heart began to pound fast and his tail drooped for a moment. Within an hour it was all to come back to him--the terror, the panic, the agony of that far-away time.

He looked up at old Swygert, who was his god, and to whom his soul belonged, though he was booked as the property of Miss Marian Devant. Of the arrangements he could know nothing, being a dog. Old Swygert, having cured him, could not meet the expenses of taking him to field trials. The girl had come to the old man's assistance, an assistance which he had accepted only under condition that the dog should be entered as hers, with himself as handler.

"Are you ready, gentlemen?" the judges asked.

"Ready," said Larsen and old Swygert.

And Comet and Peerless II were speeding away across that field, and behind them came handlers and judges and spectators, all mounted.

It was a race people still talk about, and for a reason, for strange things happened that day. At first there was nothing unusual. It was like any other field trial. Comet found birds and Swygert, his handler, flushed them and shot. Comet remained steady. Then Peerless II found a covey and Larsen flushed them and shot. And so for an hour it went.

Then Comet disappeared, and old Swygert, riding hard and looking for him, went out of sight over a hill. But Comet had not gone far. As a matter of fact, he was near by, hidden in some high straw, pointing a covey of birds. One of the spectators spied him, and called the judges' attention to him. Everybody, including Larsen, rode up to him, but still Swygert had not come back.

They called him, but the old man was a little deaf. Some of the men rode to the top of the hill but could not see him. In his zeal, he had got a considerable distance away. Meanwhile, here was his dog, pointed.

If any one had looked at Larsen's face he would have seen the exultation there, for now his chance had come--the very chance he had been looking for. It's a courtesy one handler sometimes extends another who is absent from the spot, to go in and flush his dog's birds.

"I'll handle this covey for Mr. Swygert," said Larsen to the judges, his voice smooth and plausible, on his face a smile.

And thus it happened that Comet faced his supreme ordeal without the steadying voice of his god. He only knew that ahead of him were birds, and that behind him a man was coming through the straw, and that behind the man a crowd of people on horseback were watching him. He had become used to that but when, out of the corner of his eye he saw the face of the advancing man, his soul began to tremble.

"Call your dog in, Mr. Larsen," directed the judge. "Make him backstand."

Only a moment was lost while Peerless, a young dog himself, came running in and at a command from Larsen stopped in his tracks behind Comet, and pointed. Larsen's dogs always obeyed, quickly, mechanically. Without ever gaining their confidence, Larsen had a way of turning them into finished field-trial dogs. They obeyed because they were afraid not to.

According to the rules the man handling the dog has to shoot as the birds rise. This is done in order to test the dog's steadiness when a gun is fired over him. No specification is made as to the size of the shotgun to be used. Usually, however, small-gauge guns are carried. The one in Larsen's hands was a twelve-gauge, and consequently large.

All morning he had been using it over his own dog. Nobody had paid any attention to it, because he shot smokeless powder. But now, as he advanced, he reached into the left-hand pocket of his hunting coat, where six shells rattled as he hurried along. Two of these he took out and rammed into the barrels.

As for Comet, still standing rigid, statuesque, he heard, as has been said, the brush of steps through the straw, glimpsed a face, and trembled. But only for a moment. Then he steadied, head high, tail straight out. The birds rose with a whirr--and then was repeated that horror of his youth. Above his ears, ears that would always be tender, broke a great roar. Either because of his excitement, or because of a sudden wave of revenge, or of a determination to make sure of the dog's flight, Larsen had pulled both triggers at once. The combined report shattered through the dog's ear drums, it shivered through his nerves, he sank in agony into the straw.

Then the old impulse to flee was upon him, and he sprang to his feet, and looked about wildly. But from somewhere in that crowd behind him came to his tingling ears a voice--clear, ringing, deep, the voice of a woman--a woman he knew--pleading as his master used to plead, calling on him not to run but to stand.

"Steady," it said. "Steady, Comet!"

It called him to himself, it soothed him, it calmed him, and he turned and looked toward the crowd. With the roar of the shotgun the usual order observed in field trials was broken up. All rules seemed to have been suspended. Ordinarily, no one belonging to "the field" is allowed to speak to a dog. Yet the girl had spoken to him. Ordinarily, the spectators must remain in the rear of the judges. Yet one of the judges had himself wheeled his horse about and was galloping off, and Marian Devant had pushed through the crowd and was riding toward the bewildered dog.

He stood staunch where he was, though in his ears was still a throbbing pain, and though all about him was this growing confusion he could not understand. The man he feared was running across the field yonder, in the direction taken by the judge. He was blowing his whistle as he ran. Through the crowd, his face terrible to see, his own master was coming. Both the old man and the girl had dismounted now and were running toward him.

"I heard," old Swygert was saying to her. "I heard it! I might 'a' known! I might 'a' known!"

"He stood," she panted, "like a rock--oh, the brave, beautiful thing!"

"Where is that----" Swygert suddenly checked himself and looked around.

A man in the crowd (they had all gathered about now) laughed.

"He's gone after his dog," he said. "Peerless has run away!"

VII

THE CRISIS IN 25

He prayeth best who loveth best All things, both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us He made and loveth all.

Something was wrong with little Tommy Earle. Consequently, something was wrong with the whole Earle plantation. Frank, the Earle dog--a stately Irish setter, rich in the wisdom and devotion of the nobly bred bird dog--Frank had sensed it yesterday afternoon. The boy had not come out of the house until long after dinner. Then he had strolled off forlornly and in silence toward the garage. His frowsy head had been bowed as if he were studying his own little shadow at his feet. His wide blue eyes--they were exactly on a level with the dog's anxiously inquiring ones--had had in them a suggestion of pain and helplessness, of dependence on things bigger than himself.

He had made no outcry; Tommy was something of a stoic. In fact, he had said nothing at all. But that look had gone straight to the dog's heart. Since hunting season was over he had been self-appointed guardian of this boy. The two had come to understand one another as boys and dogs understand. There was no need of words now. Frank understood; something hurt the boy inside.

The young mother had run out, her face anxious, and had taken Tommy in out of the sun. He had not seemed to mind going in, and that would have been enough of itself. Frank had followed them up on the porch; the screen door had slammed in his face. He had strolled off, tail depressed; he had lain down in the shade of the front-walk hedge, his ears pricked toward the big white house with the columned porch. It had remained ominously silent inside. The boy had not come out again. The long June afternoon had passed brooding and vacant, as if it were Sunday and all the people on the plantation had gone to church.

Now another morning was here. But instead of the boy running out to greet it a man in a car was driving up the heavy shaded avenue of oaks that led from the big road. Frank met him as he got out of his car, looked up anxiously into his spectacled face, whiffed the strange-smelling satchel he carried, escorted him gravely up the steps. Steve Earle, the boy's father, the dog's master, shook hands with the man and led him into the house. Again the screen door banged in the dog's face.

Nose pressed against it, he watched the two men go down the wide cool hall and turn into the bedroom. He heard the spectacled man talking in there, then Steve Earle, then Marian Earle, the boy's mother, but not the boy, prick his ears as he would. He sat down on his haunches, panting and whining softly to himself. He lay down, head between his paws, agate-brown eyes deep with worry. Still no sound of the boy. He got up and fumbled at the screen door with his paw, fumbled sternly, all concentration on his task.