His Dog, Page 2

of owning a comrade. Linkpuzzled sorely over this.

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

  Link opened the fold gate, one hand on Chum's collar. Out billowed thesheep in a ragged scramble. Chum quivered with excitement as the woollycatapults 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 ceasedto quiver in eagerness and stood still, half puzzled, half grieved bythe man's unwonted tone.

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

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

  His father had been right. Link saw that--now that it was too late. Adog had no place on a farm. A poor man could not afford the sillyluxury of a useless pet. With whistle and call Ferris sought to checkthe flight of the flock. But, as every farmer knows, there is nothingelse on earth quite so unreasonable and idiotic as a scared sheep. Thefamiliar summons did not slacken nor swerve the stampede.

  The fact that this man had been their protector and friend made nodifference to the idiotic sheep. They were frightened. And, therefore,the tenuously thin connecting line between them and their human masterhad snapped. For the moment they were merely wild animals, and he was amember of a hostile race--almost as much as was the huge dog that hadcaused their fright.

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

  But the reminder of Chum's presence did not check Link's wrath at theunconscious cause of the stampede. He loosed his hold on the collar,resolving to take out his rage in an unmerciful beating should the dogseek to chase the fleeing sheep. That would be at least an outlet forthe 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 measlyhead off if you do!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  As a result, there was but one direction the dazed sheep couldtake--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 Chumwas off at a tangent, deserting his six charges and bearing down withexpress train speed on a stray wether that had paused in his escape tonibble at a line of early peas in the truck garden.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Link shut the gate after them. Then, still in a daze, he turned on thedog.

  "Chum," he said confusedly, "it don't make sense to me, not even yet. Idon't get the hang of it. But I know this much: I know you got tentimes the sense what I'VE got. Where you got it an' how you got it thegood Lord only knows. But you've got it. I--I was figgerin' on lickin'you 'most to death, a few minutes back. Chum. Honest, I was. I'm clean'shamed to look you in the face when I think of it. Say! Do me a favor,Chum. If ever I lift hand to lick you, jes' bite me and give mehydrophoby. For I'll sure be deservin' it. Now come on home!"

  He patted the silken head of the jubilant dog as he talked, rumplingthe soft ears and stroking the long, blazed muzzle. He was sick atheart at memory of his recent murderous rage at this wonder-comrade ofhis.

  Chum was exultantly happy. He had had a most exhilarating ten minutes.The jolliest bit of fun he could remember in all his two years of life.The sight of those queer sheep--yes, and the scent of them, especiallythe scent--had done queer things to his brain; had aroused a millionsleeping ancestral memories.

  He had understood perfectly well his master's order that he leave themalone. And he had been disappointed by it. He himself had not knownclearly what it was he would have liked to do to them. But he had knownhe and they ought to have some sort of relationship. And then at thegesture and the snarled command of "Go get them!" some closed door inChum's mind had swung wide, and, acting on an instinct he himself didnot understand, he had hurled himself into the gay task of rounding upthe flock.

  So, for a thousand generations on the Scottish hills, had Chum'sancestors earned their right to live. And so through successivegenerations had they imbued their progeny with that accomplishmentuntil it had become a primal instinct. Even as the unbroken pointer ofthe best type knows by instinct the rudiments of his
work in the fieldso will many a collie take up sheep herding by ancestral training.

  There had been nothing wonderful in Chum's exploit. Hundreds ofuntrained collies have done the same thing on their first sight ofsheep. The craving to chase and slay sheep is a mere perversion of thisolden instinct; just as the disorderly "flushing" and scattering ofbird coveys is a perversion of the pointer or setter instinct. Chum,luckily for himself and for his master's flock, chanced to run true toform in this matter of heredity, instead of inheriting his tendency inthe form of a taste for sheep murder.

  The first collie, back in prehistoric days, was the first dog with thewit to know his master's sheep apart from all other sheep. Perhaps thatis the best, if least scientific, theory of the collie's origin.

  But to Link Ferris's unsophisticated eyes the achievement was all