Part 8

There are few sheep in Fraternity, so the dogs are free of that temptation; but there are deer. The deer is sacrosanct, to be taken only with rifle and ball, and by a woodcraft that bests the wild thing at its own game. No dog may justly chase a deer; and a dog so pursuing is outlawed and may legally be shot by any man. Men without conscience and dogs without honor will thus pursue the deer, in season and out; nevertheless, deer running is for the dogs of Fraternity the black and shameful crime.

They were talking dogs, on a certain night in late September, in Will Bissell’s store. A dozen men were there; most of them from the village itself, two or three from outlying farms. Jim and Bert Saladine, both keen hunters of the deer, who killed their legal quota year by year, leaned side by side against the candy counter, and Andy Wattles sold them licorice sticks. Lee Motley had driven down from his farm above the Whitcher Swamp; and Jean Bubier had come in from the head of the Pond; and there was Gay Hunt; and there was George Freeland, and two or three besides. Proutt was one of these others, Proutt of South Fraternity, a farmer, a fox hunter, and a trainer of setter dogs. Finally, Nick Westley, a North Fraternity man, appointed within six months’ time to be game warden for the district; a gentle man, well liked in spite of his thankless job; a man with a sense of humor, a steady and persistent courage, and a kindly tongue.

This night, as it happened, was to be the beginning of the enmity between Proutt and Westley. One-sided at first, this ill feeling. Two-sided at the last, and bitter enough on either side. A strange thing, dramatic enough in its development, fit to be numbered among the old men’s tales that were told around the stove....

Proutt, the dog breaker, was a man who knew dogs. None denied him that. “Yes,” they would say; “Proutt’ll break a dog for you. And when he gits done with your dog, your dog’ll mind.” If you scented some reservation in word or tone, and asked a question, you got no explanation. But your informant might say casually: “Hepperton’s a good man with a dog, too. Over in Liberty. Gentles ’em.”

Persistent inquiry might have brought out the fact that Hepperton never whipped a dog; that Proutt knew no other method. Lee Motley, who loved dogs, used to tell an incident. “Went out with Proutt once,” he would explain. “After woodcock, we was. He was breaking a two-year-old. Nice a dog as I ever see. First bird, she took a nice point; but she broke shot. He had him a rawhide strap; and he called her in and I never see a dog hurt worse. And after that he, couldn’t get her out from under his legs. Ain’t been out with him since. Not me.”

Proutt was not liked. He was a morose man, and severe, and known to nurse a grudge. But he turned out dogs which knew their business, and none denied him this. So had he his measure of respect; and his neighbors minded their own affairs and kept out of the man’s harsh path.

Curiously enough, though he trained setters, Proutt did not like them. He preferred the hound; and his own dog--a lop-eared brown-and-white named Dan--was his particular pride. This pride was like the pride of a new father; it showed itself in much talk of Dan’s deeds and Dan’s virtues, so that Fraternity’s ears were wearied with the name of Dan, and it was the fashion to grin in one’s sleeve at Proutt’s tales and to discredit them.

Proutt spoke, this night, of a day’s hunting of the winter before. How, coursing the woods, he had heard a hound’s bay far below him, and had taken post upon a ledge across which he thought the fox would come. “Dan ’uz with me,” he said, in his hoarse loud voice. “I says to Dan: ‘Set’ and he set on his ha’nches, right aside me, cocking his nose down where t’other dog was baying, waiting, wise as an owl.

“I had my old gun, with Number Threes in both bar’ls; and me and Dan stayed there, awaiting; and the baying come nearer all the time, till I see the fox would come acrost that ledge, sure.

“Cold it was. Wind ablowing, and the snow acutting past my ears. Not much snow on the ground; but it was froze hard as sand. I figured Dan’d get uneasy; but he never stirred. Set where I’d told him to set; and us awaiting.

“Time come, I see the fox, sneaking up the ledge at that long, easy lope o’ theirs. Dan see him too. His ears lifted and he looked my way. I says: ‘Set.’ And he let his ears down again, and stayed still. Fox come along, ’bout five rods below us. Crossed over there. So fur away I knowed I couldn’t drop him. Never pulled; and he never saw me; and old Dan set where he was. Never moved a mite.

“After a spell, Will Belter’s hound come past; and then come Will himself, cutting down from where he’d been waiting. Says: ‘See a fox go by?’ And I told him I did. He ast why I didn’t shoot; and I says the fox was too fur off. And he says: ‘Where was your dog?’ So I told him Dan was setting right by me.”

Proutt laughed harshly, and slapped a triumphant hand upon his knee. “Will wouldn’t believe me,” he declared, “till I showed him tracks, where he wuz, and where the fox went by.”

He looked around for their admiration; but no one spoke at all. Only one or two glanced sidewise at each other, and slowly grinned. The tale was all right, except for a thing or two. In the first place, Proutt was no man to let a fox go by, no matter how long the shot; and, in the second place, Dan was known to be a surly dog, not overly obedient, unruly as his master. And, in the third place, this incident, thoroughly authenticated, had happened two years before to another man and another dog, as everyone in the store knew. Proutt had borrowed his tale from a source too close home....

So they knew he lied; but no one cared to tell him so. Only, after a little silence, Nick Westley, the game warden, said with a slow twinkle in his eye: “Proutt, that reminds me of a story my father used to tell.”

Proutt grunted something or other, disgusted with their lack of appreciation; and Westley took it for encouragement, and began to whittle slow, fine shavings from a sliver of pine which he held in hand, and told the tale.

* * * * *

“It was when he was younger,” he explained, “before he was married, while he still lived at home. But I’ve heard him tell the story many a time.

“My Uncle Jim was living then; and he and my father had a hound. Good dog he was, too. Good as Dan, I think, Proutt.

“Well, one winter morning, with six or eight inches of loose snow on the ground, they were working up some old wood in the shed; and they saw the old hound drift off into the pasture and up the hill. And after a spell they heard him yelling down by the river.

“Jim said to my father: ‘He’s got a fox.’ And father said: ‘Jim, let’s go get that fox.’ So they dropped their axes, and went in and got their guns, and they worked up through the pasture and over the hill till they located the dog’s noise, and they figured the fox would come up around the hill by a certain way; and so they posted themselves there, one on either side of the path they thought he would take. And set to waiting. And it was cold as could be, and cold waiting, and they stamped their feet a little, but they couldn’t move much for fear the fox would see them.

“So they were both well pleased when they saw the fox coming; and they both shot when he came in range, because they were cold and in a hurry and anxious to be done.

“Well, they shot into each other. Jim yelled: ‘Damn it, my legs are full of shot!’ And my father said: ‘Mine too, you clumsy coot!’ So they made remarks to each other for a spell; and then Jim said: ‘Well, anyway, there’s the fox; and I’m full of your shot, and I’m half froze. Let’s skin the darn critter and get home.’

“So father agreed; and they went at it. The old dog had come up by then, and was sitting there with an eye on the fox, as a dog will. And father took the front legs and Jim took the hind legs, and they worked fast. And they kept cussing their hurts, and the cold, and each other. But they slit the legs down, and skinned out the tail, and trimmed up the ears and all, knives flying. And when they got about done, Jim, he said:

“‘Look ahere, there’s not a bullet in this fox.’

“Well, they looked, and they couldn’t find a hole. Only there was a blue streak across the fox’s head where a bullet had gone. And that was queer enough, but father said: ‘I don’t give a hoot. There’s bullets enough in me. Skin out his nose and let’s go.’

“So they cussed each other some more, and finished it up; and Jim, he heaved the carcass out into the brush, and father slung the skin over his shoulder, and they turned around to start home.

“Well, just about then the old dog let out behind them, and they whirled around. And father always used to say that, mad as they were at each other, they forgot all about it then; and they bust out laughing. He said you couldn’t blame them. He said you never saw anything funnier.

“You see, that fox was just stunned. The cold snow must have revived him. Because when my father and Uncle Jim looked around, that skinless fox was going up over the hill like a cat up a tree--and the old dog hot on his heels.”

* * * * *

The store rocked with their mirth as Westley stopped. Lee Motley roared, and the Saladines laughed in their silent fashion, and Will Bissell chuckled discreetly behind Proutt’s back. Westley himself displayed such surprise at their mirth that they laughed the more; and fat little Jean Bubier shook a finger at Proutt and cried:

“And that will put the bee to your Dan, M’sieu Proutt. That will hold your Dan for one leetle while, I t’ink.”

Proutt himself was brick-red with fury; and his eyes were black on Westley; but he pulled himself together, and he laughed ... shortly.

His eyes did not leave Westley’s face. And Lee Motley found a chance to warn the warden a little later. “It was a good joke,” he said. “You handed it to him right. But look out for the man, Westley. He’s mad.”

Westley, still smiling, was nevertheless faintly troubled. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I did it for a joke.”

“He can’t take a joke,” said Motley.

The warden nodded, considering. “I’ll tell you,” he told Motley. “I’ll square it with him.”

“If it was me,” Motley agreed, “I would.”

Westley did not like to make enemies. And there had been only the friendliest malice in his jest. He took his measures to soothe Proutt before they left the store that night.

Westley had a dog, a setter, clean-blooded, from one of the country’s finest kennels. A New York man who had shot woodcock with the warden the year before had sent the dog as a friendly gift, and Westley accepted it in the same spirit. In its second year and still untrained, it had nevertheless won Westley and won his wife and his children. They all loved the dog, as they loved each other....

Originally this dog had been called Rex. The Westleys changed this name to Reck, which may be short for Reckless, or may be a name by itself. At any rate, it pleased them, and it pleased the dog....

* * * * *

The dog was untrained, and Westley had no time for the arduous work of training. He had meant to send Reck, this fall, to Hepperton, in Liberty; but, to make his amends to Proutt, he took the latter aside this night and asked Proutt to take the training of the dog.

On longer consideration, he might not have done this; but Westley was a man of impulse and, as has been said, he was anxious to keep Proutt as a friend. Nevertheless, he had no sooner asked Proutt to take the dog than he regretted it, and hoped Proutt would refuse. But the dog trainer only gave a moment to slow consideration, with downcast eyes.

Then he said huskily: “I charge fifty dollars.”

“Sure,” said Westley.

“He’s a well-blooded dog,” said Proutt. “I’ll come to-morrow and fetch him.”

And with no further word--they were outside the store--he drove away. Westley, watching him go, was filled with vague disquiet. He wished he might withdraw; he wished Proutt would change his mind; he wished the trainer might not come next day....

But Proutt did come, and Westley himself bade Reck into the trainer’s buggy and watched the dog ride away with wistful eyes turned backward.

Westley’s wife was more concerned than he; and he forgot his own anxiety in reassuring her.

II

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.

III

With a week of October left, Proutt took Reck home to Westley. Westley was not there, but Mrs. Westley marked Proutt’s lowering eye, and was frightened of the man, and told Westley so when he came. But Westley was well enough pleased to have Reck back again; and he bade her forget Proutt.

Proutt had been, thus far, somewhat favored by fortune. The business of his office had taken Westley away from Fraternity for two weeks at a time, so that Proutt had had full time to do with Reck as he chose. Fraternity knew nothing of what had happened, though Jim Saladine may have guessed. There was one night at Will’s store when Jim and Proutt were near fisticuffs. Proutt had brought Dan with him to the store; and Jim, studying the surly dog, asked:

“Dan ever notice a deer, Proutt?”

Proutt exclaimed profanely. “No,” he said.

“I was over in the Sheepscot, t’other day,” said Jim evenly. “See tracks where a dog had been after a deer.”

“More like it was one of these setters,” Proutt declared, watching them all from beneath lowered lids. “They’ll kill a deer, or a sheep, give ’em a chance.”

“It was hound’s tracks,” Jim persisted mildly; and something in Jim’s tone, or in Proutt’s own heart, made the trainer boil into fury, so that he strode toward Saladine. But Will Bissell came between, and the matter passed.

Proutt, before this, had taken Reck home; and the Westleys made much of the dog. Reck had affable and endearing little tricks of his own. He had a way of giving welcome, drawing back his upper lip so that his teeth showed as though in a snarl, yet panting with dog laughter all the time; and he had a way of talking, with high whines of delight, or throaty growls that ran the scale. And he would lie beside Westley, or beside Westley’s wife, and paw at them until they held his paw in their hands, when he would go contentedly enough to sleep.

They thought the dog was unhappy when he came home to them. He had a slinking, shamed way about him. At first Westley supposed Proutt had whipped him; but Reck showed no fear of a whip in Westley’s hands. After two or three days this furtiveness passed away and Reck was the joyously affectionate creature he had always been. So the Westleys forgot his first attitude of guilt, and loved him ardently as men and women will love a dog.

Westley had opportunity for one day’s hunting with him, and Reck never faltered at the task to which he had been born and bred.

He had one fault. Chained, he would bark at the least alarm, in a manner to wake the neighborhood. So Westley had never kept him chained. It was not the way of Fraternity to keep dogs in the house of nights; so Reck slept in the woodshed, and Westley knocked a plank loose and propped it, leaving Reck an easy avenue to go out or in. It was this custom of Westley’s which gave Proutt the chance for which he had laid his plans.

October had gone; November had come. This was in the days when woodcock might be shot in November if you could find them. But most men who went into the woods bore rifles; for it was open season for deer. Now and then you might hear the snapping crash of a thirty-thirty in Whitcher Swamp, or at one of the crossings, or--if you went so far--in the alder vales along the Sheepscot. And one day in the middle of the month, when the ground was frozen hard, Proutt came to Nick Westley’s home.

He came at noon, driving his old buggy. Westley was at dinner when he heard Proutt drive into the yard; and he went to the door and bade the dog trainer come in. But Proutt shook his head, and his eyes were somber.

“You come out, Westley,” he said. “I’ve a word for you.”

There was something in Proutt’s tone which disturbed Westley. He put on his mackinaw, and drew his cap down about his ears, and went out into the yard. Reck had been asleep on the doorstep when Proutt appeared; he had barked a single bark. But now he was gone into the shed, out of sight; and when Westley came near Proutt’s buggy, the dog trainer asked:

“Did you see Reck sneak away?”

Westley was angry; and he was also shaken by a sudden tremor of alarm. He said hotly enough: “Reck never sneaks. He did not sneak away.”

“He knows I saw him,” said Proutt. “He heard me yell.”

Westley asked, with narrowing eyes: “What are you talking about? Where did you see him?”

“This morning,” Proutt declared. “Scant daylight. Down in the Swamp.”

Westley stood very still, trying to remember whether he had seen Reck early that morning. And he could only remember, with a shocking certainty, that Reck had not been at home when he came out of the house to do his chores. He had called and got no answer; and it may have been half an hour before the dog appeared. It had disturbed Westley at the time; and he scolded Reck for self-hunting. But any dog will range the home farm in the morning hours, and Westley had not taken the matter seriously.