Part 4

At a certain point on the southern bank of the river an old elm tree grew, quite near the edge of the water. The bank had crumbled and the tree had leaned, until at length its top hung almost over the center of the stream. Nothing but its great roots twined about hidden rocks kept it from falling. Directly across from the elm, close to the shore on the other bank, an ancient sycamore had stood, leaning very slightly towards the river. Now when the storm came down from the north the sycamore’s roots gave way and it swayed and fell, its top, by some strange freak, lodging in the fork of the elm, and the force of its fall wedged it in firmly and snugly. And behold! here was a bridge for the feet of the wood-folk, and they could pass high and dry and laugh down at their baffled foe.

There was but one passageway for the many members of the many tribes, and naturally trouble arose sometimes, and there were nights when the river smiled placidly and opened its arms and waited. Sometimes one victim came; sometimes two, for the bridge became the scene of many a midnight tragedy and moonlighted fray, and in the end it was the river which was the victor, after all. It did not have to seek its prey. It simply waited, and took its tribute very much as of old, though in a different manner.

So the years went by. Mates were chosen; families were born; battles were fought. The strong devoured the weak, much as the human folks do in another way. The old raccoon still lived in his maple. Though others of his kind often harbored by threes, fours, or even sixes in a single tree, this aristocrat was not sociable, and preferred a hermit existence except once a year, when the sap of spring renewed his youth and sent him a-courting. Then a sleek, mild-eyed little mate would come and keep house for him until the children were old enough to hear a dog running half a mile away. Then quite abruptly, upon the return of mother and offspring some day, they would be met by a white-fanged visage and ordered to go elsewhere for a bed.

The forest was the abode of little people. Nothing larger than the raccoon found a home there. He was practically lord of the demesne, partly because of his age and sagacity, partly because of his might as a warrior. His record was three dogs whipped in single fight. He did not fear any dog so long as the men did not come poking around with their blinding lanterns and their guns. And it might be told, further, that when he set foot upon one end of the tree-bridge, he usually went to the other end.

In a field at the edge of the smaller forest was a negro cabin, where lived the black people with a horde of tattered children and two dogs. One was a shepherd; gentle, calm-eyed, intelligent. The other was a coon-dog; little, muscular, aggressive. A coon-dog is as distinctive a breed as is the collie or the spaniel. It is true he is an ignoble mixture of many, but it takes the certain and correct blending of various strains to make a coon-dog. He must have the nose of a pointer, the speed of a greyhound, the strength of a mastiff, and the stubbornness of a bull-dog. The model coon-dog is low, short, and heavy-set; his back and sides are nearly black, and his throat, belly, and feet are a reddish brown. Such was the dog which hung about the negro cabin till hunger sent him nosing along the floor of the forest. He had trailed coons long enough to know that they never touch earth in the day, and that the scent is freshest in the early part of the night, just after a light rain. So that night in spring when the soft, balsamic odors rose strata above strata, the coon-dog, impelled by the pain in his stomach, which was like a hundred tearing claws, set off at a smart trot through the sassafras bushes and the dewberry vines, heading for the smaller forest on the southern side of the river. His keen nostrils revealed a trail before he had gone a dozen yards in the wood, and with a low whine he followed it with amazing swiftness and accuracy. In and out it led, and the smell which the traitor feet had left grew stronger. Almost the dog gave tongue, so close he knew his quarry must be, when he stopped, confused, with his fore feet resting on the slanting trunk of a tree. He had come to the bridge of the forest-people, and the hot trail led up the incline before him. Off in the shadows near to one side something called—a sharp, barking cry. The dog cocked his ears and jerked his head around, but quickly decided that he had nothing to do with whatever it was that had temporarily engaged his attention, and again turned to the bridge, restless and eager. He had never attempted its passage, but its surface was broad and the bark rough, and hunger is a stern master. Quickly he squatted and leaped, thrust out his claws so that they caught and held, and in another moment he was creeping warily up the tree with the scent still warm beneath his guiding nostrils.

But other ears had heard that low mating call which the dog had ignored. The old boar coon of the maple tree, driven by loneliness and the magic of the season, was ambling in his humpbacked, awkward way along a narrow path curving down the bluff on the northern side of the river, bent on securing a bride for perhaps the twentieth time. He stopped and listened alertly at the Circe-sound, then moved swiftly towards the tree-bridge to respond in person. With remarkable agility for his years he gained a footing on the sycamore trunk, showing his teeth with a low growl of displeasure as the strong odor of opossum told him that one had just passed that way. A few feet further on his ears detected a scratching sound on the other end of the bridge. Some impudent cousin had dared to risk his anger—for was not this his bridge when he chose to set his royal foot upon it? He would make him give way and retreat, or cast him off, for he had done the like before. On up the ghostly white trunk of the fallen sycamore he glided, his fur rising in wrath as the scratching beyond grew louder and louder and came closer and closer. Gaining the apex of the bridge first, the raccoon thrust his black muzzle over the fork where the two trees touched, and not five feet away came the coon-dog, timorously but steadily. The ring-tailed warrior did not attempt to choke the fierce snarl which rasped between his white fangs. What was this upon his bridge! A four-footed thing which disgraced his shape by living with and serving the human-people—a dog!

The intruder stopped, sank on his belly, and gave back a savage growl—his gage of battle. Below the river dimpled in the starlight and murmured joyfully along the shores. Carefully the dog inched forward, his mouth open, his upper lip curled back. The coon waited, his beady eyes watching the play of every muscle in the form of his antagonist, and the curving claws on all four feet shot out to their fullest length. These were his main defence; his teeth were secondary. Both animals were at a disadvantage. The dog was out of his element, and his footing was very precarious. On the other hand the coon, while perfectly at home, never waged his battles in a tree. When he fought it was lying flat on his back on the ground. But the guile of many years was in his sly old brain, and where the trees locked was a little hollow safely bulwarked by the peculiar way in which the branches had entwined. As the dog leaped at his throat he threw himself on his back and struck out with all four feet at once. But the starved alien knew his business well. Ignoring the stinging rents which the hind claws made, he bore the fore legs down with the force of his fall, and his jaws gained the coveted hold without which no coon can be conquered. But that was not all the battle. Fiercely the old boar wrestled, ripping the body of his foe with lightning-like movements of his strong legs, gnashing his teeth in a vain effort to use them, and struggling for breath. The dog bore his awful punishment like a martyr, lying as closely as he could so as to impede the other’s movements, but never uttering a cry of pain and wrenching and tugging at the furry throat over which his jaws had closed. In the intensity of their joint efforts neither had a thought of caution. Presently the raccoon was out of the hollow where he had lain to receive the attack; there was a slip, a scuffle, and through twenty feet of space two writhing bodies, locked so closely as to seem almost one, fell with a loud splash into the liquid depths below. And so the river received them both, and a whirlpool sucked them down.

Now the bark on the tree-bridge is almost worn away from the constant passing of little feet, which before had been afraid.

THE GUARDIAN OF THE FLOCK

THE GUARDIAN OF THE FLOCK

IN a ravine where men seldom placed their feet, a rod or more up a rocky, bushy hillside, in a hole almost concealed by an overhanging dewberry bush, lay a dog. A big dog. His head, huge, disfigured, terrible, rested upon the earth between his paws, and the lids had fallen over the fierce eyes, which glowed with changing lights when open. The big dog was asleep. His back-bone was a succession of knots, with small depressions between. It terminated in a tawny stump, perhaps six inches long, which stood for a tail. The bones above his hips jutted out like door-knobs; his flanks were sunk in cavernously, and palpitated with each sharply indrawn breath. There were scars on the ribbed body; old scars which had healed bare and blackly; others where the aggrieved flesh was beginning to join, and still others which showed raw and red—almost dripping, and about these tiny gnats had gathered and sat in rows at their feast, while their colorless bodies quickly took on a crimson shade. A large green fly boomed into the hole in the hill, zigzagged about over the recumbent form, and then plumped his spiked feet down in one of the rawest of the wounds. A convulsive shiver passed over the side of the dog and the green fly lost his foothold; but, not to be cheated out of his meal, he returned more cautiously, and, standing among the scant, scrubby hair at the edge of the moist fissure he stretched out his neck and thrust out his tongue. The muscles along the bruised side moved again, but more slightly, and the fly and the gnats ate and drank their fill.

The dog’s high shoulder-blades seemed ready to burst through their covering; there was a deep hollow between them. The neck was short, thick, bull-like. One ear was bleeding—the other was gone, and a tangled mass of gnarled flesh marked where it had been. About the grim muzzle were some patches of sheep wool, draggled and red.

The dog had been out nearly all night, and it was now early morning. He had travelled many miles since the sun had set the day before; ranging back and forth, skulking, hiding, waiting. Before he returned to his hiding-place he had battened on blood and fought a battle.

The dog had no name, no lineage, no friends, no home. He was simply the dog. He bore within him the strains of a badly mixed ancestry, and had been hated and cuffed since puppyhood. Hanging to the outskirts of a straying gypsy band, he had come to the neighborhood where he now abode. A farmer whose flocks were beginning to multiply swiftly saw the uncouth, bony frame and the defiant face, and thought that here was a fitting guardian for his ewes and lambs. He bought him for a fifty-cent piece and set him to watch over his sheep. But there came a night when the farmer’s allowance of food did not satisfy him; when the hard bread and cold stuff flung to him only whetted his appetite. That night he trotted to his post with guile in his heart. But hour after hour he held himself in check, though at times almost rubbing shoulders with his fleece-covered charges. It was past the turning of night, and his stomach was empty, and hurting him. The master was asleep; the night was so still; he was hungry, hungry, and had never known a law! All around him sleeping patches of white dotted the grass. He was lying down, too, but his red-green eyes were wide, for he was the guardian of the flock. There is a point that marks the limit of endurance. Directly the dog arose, swiftly, silently, stood rigid for the briefest space of time, then launched himself at the soft throat of a half-grown lamb. A stifled bleat; a struggle which ended with its inception, and the traitor lay upon his belly and lapped the warm blood and worried at the tender neck of his victim. That was the first. When the farmer came out before sunup the next morning, he found the mangled bodies of five of his lambs that had been born that spring, and he whom he had placed to watch over them gone.

In this way was the dog accursed and outlawed, and the heart of every person and thing was set against him.

He, for his part, fostered hate by day and wreaked it by night. Every step he took was fraught with danger. Men were against him, and men’s dogs were against him. He soon learned that the men carried long sticks that spat flame, and at one time when the fire jumped out, and the stick was pointed towards him, he felt a sharp pain in the fleshy part of his thigh, and blood ran down his leg. Then he grew more cautious, and ventured out only at night, when he had to smell and feel his way. He could baffle the men in the night, and his own blood-kind were a little slow in chasing him. But they had fallen upon him once unexpectedly, and he was a sorry sight when he at last broke from them and escaped to cover. His wounds upon that occasion were long in healing, for there is venom in a dog fang. He was sick for many days, and ate nothing but certain herbs which instinct told him would counteract the poison in his system. He grew well after a long period of pain and weakness, and upon his next raid he came too near the house and had one of his ears shot off by a farmer’s boy. That night he crept back without his spoil, staggering up the ravine with a red trail behind him. He scratched away the dirt on one side of his den, and laid his wounded head on the cool, black earth. This made the blood to clot, and to finally stop running, but the dog was so weak that he lay over on his side, catching his breath in jerks. Thereafter he fasted many days, because of his spent strength, but at last he essayed to crawl to the back of his hole and feebly excavate some provender which he had hidden against this very day a fortnight ago. When he had eaten, new energy began to diffuse itself through his worn body, and once more he grew well, but more ugly than ever, and in his heart was nothing but vindictive hate, and treachery, and craft. He was an outcast, hunted by every living thing that was big enough to harass and kill. He had skulked and run all his life. Now things would change. He would turn hunter, and harry and slay until they made an end of him.

The big green fly, forgetting caution in his hungry zeal, probed his lance-like tongue a little too deep in the sensitive flesh. The dog awoke and snapped viciously at his tormentor, but the pop-eyes of the fly saw the movement, and he escaped the cavernous jaws projected towards him. The dog fell to licking his new wounds. Between the hours of twelve and four of the past night he had sallied forth, and found the flock in a pen near the barn, unguarded, as he thought. To bring one down was play. He gorged himself on the blood and was turning to another victim, when a form larger than his own leaped at his throat from the shadows. The dog wheeled, and the fangs of the attacker closed in his side. For a while they wrestled silently, save for deep-throated snarls. Then of a sudden the dog broke away, leaped from the pen, and ran. The wolf-hound attempted to follow, but his feet slipped on the blood-soaked ground as he made his jump, his breast struck the top rail of the pen and he fell back, and did not make the effort again. The dog sought his den, resentful, sore, desperate. That night he slept from weariness; in the early morning the green fly woke him. In his round, ugly, disfigured head was born the thought that he would turn hunter now, and wreak vengeance on his persecutors.

Throughout the day he lay still and rested, licking his sores at intervals, and dozing from time to time. When the black night came he arose, stretched himself and yawned hugely, shook his big body vigorously and stalked forth with the fell intent in his heart to kill—kill—kill!

With his keen nostrils set to catch every odor the breeze might bring; his one macerated ear cocked for the slightest sound, he trotted down the ravine and soon emerged into the open country. He had come to know the neighborhood well. Who sat up late; who kept close watch; who slumbered careless of his stock. Past houses where lights burned in the windows, making detours to avoid possible detection, crouching low on his haunches when he heard footsteps,—the dog pursued his way through the night. Mile after mile, over fences and ditches, through the corn, along the roadside when it ran parallel with his purpose. At last he passed the boundary which had marked all of his wanderings heretofore, and as he entered this unexplored territory he moved more freely and with less caution. His trained muzzle scented a familiar smell. Through a rail fence he dragged himself, scratching his torn side cruelly on a splinter as he did so, then started down a hill-slope briskly. Soon he found them, alone, sleeping, helpless. One by one he pulled them down. As each fell, the survivors would huddle closer together, dazed and afraid. First the lambs, then the ewes, then the bucks. The blood-lust grew in the dog’s savage heart with each fresh massacre. The first four had sated his appetite and filled his maw to repletion, but his mission was to kill without mercy. His strong jaws snapped out their lives one by one, and the bell-wether went last. He was old, and had seen killers at work before. He had always kept well in the background until the bloodthirsty invader had got his fill, and gone away. To-night he had stayed on the further side of the flock, expecting the killer to leave after each victim. But he did not leave, and kept drawing nearer to him instead. The end of it was that the bell-wether ran, but there was something that ran faster than his shadow—something that pounced heavily upon his back—and then it was all over; the butchery was done.

Back over the path which he had come went the murderer. His chops were gory, his shoulders and fore legs were bloody, his whole body was streaked and splashed with the telltale red. But he did not care. Everything was against him, he was against everything. There would be no backsliding nor capitulation until death closed the scene. Back over the path which he had come he went—a fearful figure, big, deformed with wounds, drunken with blood. He held to the highway now so long as it did not run out of his course, for he was possessed of a reckless bravery which took into account neither friend nor foe. It was the still hour of the night. The hour when life ebbs lowest in the hearts of those who sleep; the hour just before the roosters smell the coming day and awake to give the alarm. He met nothing, nothing opposed him. Just when the darkness began to quiver before the bare hint of encroaching light the dog felt, rather than saw, some object moving awkwardly in the road before him. It was not large, and lay close to earth. The pads of his feet bore him noiselessly forward. The terrible jaws opened, snapped, the head was flung contemptuously to one side, there was a thud, and a dead opossum lay in a patch of huckleberry bushes by the old rock fence. In a hollow tree in the woods, not far away, some little opossums lay piled upon each other, asleep. The mother’s supply of milk had run low, and she had started in quest of food. The youngsters would sleep until hunger wakened them, and then life’s tragedy would soon be over.

The dog quickened his pace, because daylight abroad meant death for him. Through the dim first-light of the coming day he ran, easily. It is true he had covered many miles that night, but his stomach was full of the rich, hot life-blood he had drained from palpitating throats, and new strength had been imparted to him. Misty cobwebs hung about his head like a veil, gathered from his passage through the bushes and underbrush. His tongue lolled, dripping, from his deadly jaws. In this way he came to the ravine just as the gray dawn was beginning to be silvered by the rising sun.

Across the hollow from his den, on the opposite slope, where some hickorynut trees were growing, a silent figure stood with a gun in its hands. A half-grown boy had come out after squirrels, knowing that the bushy-tailed, active little creatures sought their breakfast just before sunup, when the air was fresh and moist from the night dews. He had stood still for a long time, as one must who hunts squirrels, and presently his eyes were drawn by something moving on the opposite side of the hollow. He looked and saw a large, dark-brown shape disappear, as it were, into the earth. The boy rubbed his eyes and looked again, and then he discovered the orifice under the dewberry bush. He had found the hiding-place of the scourge! A squirrel barked in a tree not ten feet away, and scampered about on a limb in plain view. The boy did not shoot. He tucked the gun under his arm instead and walked on his toes for a quarter of a mile, then he broke into a run, and arrived at home breathless a few minutes later.

The dog, with a full stomach and a contented mind, was sleeping. He had lain down with his wounded side next to earth, so that the flies could not annoy him. But into his dreams of slaughter and feasting crept some disturbing force. Something insistent, alarming, if intangible and vague. So strong was it that the dog grudgingly opened his eyes a tiny slit, and almost at the same time his ear cocked up, the end of it hanging limply, because it had been bitten through at some former encounter. The eyes opened wider, and rolled craftily towards the mouth of the lair. A second more, and the big, round head was raised quickly. There was a sudden stiffening throughout the strong, rugged frame, and the dog arose to his feet and stole forward. He crouched low, and peered out expectantly. Directly beneath him was a mixed crowd of men and dogs. All of the men carried those sticks which he had learned to dread; they were all looking towards his refuge, and some were pointing. It had come at last. He had tarried too long at his killing, and somehow the daylight had betrayed him. But not a tremor of fear passed over the dog. He merely sank to the earth, and watched.