He stiffened into an earnest, beautiful point. He would not stir until Lancaster came up behind him and ordered him on. And Lancaster with the guide was far behind and on the other side of the swamp.
A fine sight he made in that lonely country, standing, head erect, tail straight out, sun flashing on his silken red hair. So those two men, driving in a dilapidated wagon along a sandy road in the edge of the pines, must have thought. For the driver, a burly, sallow fellow, pointed him out, pulled on the reins, and the wagon stopped. The two talked for a while in guarded tones; next they stood up on the wagon seat and looked all around; then they climbed out and came stealthily across the field. The burly man held in his hand a rope.
Instinct alarmed the dog, warned him to turn. Professional pride held him rigid, lest he flush those birds and be disgraced. Pride betrayed him. A sudden grip cut his hind legs from under him, threw him flat on his back just as the birds rose with a roar. A thumb and forefinger, clamped in his mouth, pressed on his nose like a vise. He was squirming powerfully in the sand, but a knee was on his throat and the sky was growing black.
Writhing and twisting, he was lifted to the wagon and tied in the bottom with ropes. Then pine trees were pa.s.sing swiftly overhead. One man was lashing the mule. The other was standing up, looking back.
"See anybody?"
"No."
"Reckon he"s one of them thousand-dollar dogs, Jim?"
"Reckon so! Look at him!"
All day the wagon wheels ground the sand. All day old Frank, tied in the bottom of the wagon, sullenly watched those two men in the seat. Once or twice, at the sound of other wheels approaching along the unfrequented road, they pulled aside into the woods and waited. At dusk they turned into a dirty yard. On the porch of an unpainted shack stood a woman, beyond stretched level fields of broomstraw, then the flat blue line of forest, and above the forest a dark-red glow.
They unfastened all the ropes but the one about his neck, pulled him out of the wagon, dragged him off to the log corncrib, shoved him in, untied the rope, and bolted the door. Then the burly man shoved in a pone of cornbread and a pan of water.
"You go to town to-morrow, Sam," he said as he rebolted the door. "Just hang around and listen. See if there"s any reward in the paper--big red Irish setter. His owner might telegraph the paper to-night. Sooner we make the deal, the better."
Inside the crib the captive stood listening with shrewdly p.r.i.c.ked ears while the mumble of voices died away toward the shack, steps stamped up on the porch, and the door slammed. Then he went cautiously round his prison, whiffing the sides, rearing up on the log walls. Across the rear corner was a pile of boxes. He climbed up on them. They rattled and he jumped quickly down.
But later, after all sound had ceased in the shack and the lights he had been watching through a c.h.i.n.k in the logs had gone out, he climbed carefully over behind these boxes. There was s.p.a.ce to stand in back here; the floor was of broad boards. Through the cracks he could see that the crib was set up off the ground.
He began to scratch the corner board, then to gnaw. All night long at intervals he sounded like a big rat in a barn. Sometimes he rested, panting hard, then went back to work.
At the first sound of movement in the shack next morning he leaped back over the boxes, and when the burly man opened the door to shove in bread and water he lay in the middle of the floor and looked upon his captor with sullen dignity.
That night he gnawed, and the next. But the surface of the board offered little hold for claws or teeth. Industry, patience, a good cause, do not make boards less hard, nails less maddening. He saw the third day dawn, he heard steps stumping about in the shack, he saw the other man ride into the dirty yard, and he sank down panting on his prison floor, his head between his paws, dismay in his heart.
They brought him his breakfast and there was talk before his prison.
"Two hundred dollars, h.e.l.l!" said the burly man. "Is that all they"re offering? They"ll give a thousand but what they"ll git that dog!"
"Well," said the other, "I told Fred to watch the papers, and if the reward went up to send us one. You goin" to keep him stopped up in thar?"
"No. I"m goin" to hunt him--over "bout the swamps where n.o.body"s apt to see him. Then s"pose questions is asked? We don"t read no papers. We just found a lost dog and took care of him--see?"
"S"pose he sneaks off on a hunt?"
"Don"t let him. If he tries to git out of sight, fill him full of shot."
"The whole thing"s risky, Jim."
"Well, what is it ain"t risky?"
Old Frank had always a.s.sociated with gentlemen, hunted with sportsmen.
Now he was to find what it means to be threatened, browbeaten, hara.s.sed in his work by inferiors.
On the first hunt, as soon as he got out in the field, he was yelled at. He turned in bewilderment. The men hunted on mules, their guns across the pommels of their saddles, and now they were gesticulating angrily for him to come in. He ran to them, looking up into their faces with apologetic eyes, for, however scornful he might be of them in his prison, in the field his professional reputation, his bird-dog honour, were at stake.
"You hunt close!" ordered the burly man.
After that he tried shrewdly to get away, to manoeuvre out of sight under pretext of smelling birds. But the burly man called him in, got down off his mule, cut a big stick, and threatened him. Again, an enraged yell full of danger made him turn to find both guns pointed straight at him and the face of the burly man crimson. He came in, tail tucked, ears thrown back, eyes wild.
"You look here, Jim," said the man called Sam, "you better be satisfied.
They"re offering four hundred dollars now, and that looks good to me.
It"s been more"n a week. They ain"t goin" to raise it any higher."
"They"ll give a thousand!" yelled the burly man.
"All right, Jim--I"ve warned you!"
Day after day they hunted over the same ground, along the border of a great swamp, where there were no houses, no roads, no cultivated fields.
Day after day they grew watchful, until he was almost afraid to get out of the shadows cast by the mule. His tail that he had always carried so proudly began to droop, the gallop that used to carry him swiftly over fields and hills and woodland gave way to a spiritless trot. Fields and woods stretched all about him, the sky was overhead; but he was tied to these ragged men on mules as if by an invisible rope, which to break meant death.
At intervals during the silent nights he still gnawed at his board behind the boxes, but he could not hunt all day and stay awake at night.
Sheer weariness of body and spirit made him welcome any rest, even that of his hard prison floor. And there were times when it seemed that he had never known any life but the one he was living now.
At first he had expected Lancaster to find him. He had thought of the men about the fireplace of the lodge. They would not desert him. Then as time pa.s.sed he forgot them. Only a small part of his life had they ever filled. His master and mistress and the boy, his home far away in another world--more and more these filled his thoughts and his desires.
Thus sometimes after a hunt, as he lay on the few shucks he had scratched together into a meagre bed, there came to him from the shack the smell of cooking meat; and he saw a big warm kitchen with a cat dozing by the stove, and a fat old negro mammy bending over steaming kettles and sputtering skillets. Then hungry saliva dripped from his mouth to the floor and he choked and swallowed.
Again, on chilly nights, when he glimpsed through the c.h.i.n.ks a glow in the windows of the shack, there came into his mind a roaring fire of oak logs and a big living room, with a man and a woman and a little boy around the fire, and a gun standing in the corner with a hunting coat draped over it. Then he raised his big head and looked about his prison with eyes that glowed in the dark. It was at these times that he leaped over the boxes and began to gnaw fiercely at his board.
But maybe even old Frank"s stout spirit would have broken, for hope deferred makes the heart of a dog, as well as the heart of man, sick; maybe he would have ceased to gnaw at his board behind the boxes; maybe he would have yielded to the men at last, submissive in spirit as well as in act, if he had not seen the train and the woman and the little boy.
They had taken an unusually long hunt, out of their accustomed course.
He had managed to get some distance ahead, pretending not to hear the shouts above the wind; the bird shot they had sent after him had only stung his rump, bringing from him a little involuntary yelp, but not causing him to turn. The wildness of the day had infected him. A high wind blowing out of a sunny, cloudless sky ran in waves over the tawny level fields of broomstraw, and from a body of pines to his right rose a great shouting roar.
Suddenly out of the south a whistle came screaming melodiously on the wind. He galloped at an angle to intercept it. Out of the body of pines a long train shot and rushed past, the sun flashing on its sides, its roar deadened by the roar in the pines. Just behind it, among leaves and trash stirred into life and careering madly, along he leaped on the track.
A glimpse he caught of the bra.s.s-railed rear platform, where a woman rose quickly from a chair, s.n.a.t.c.hed up a boy smaller than Tommy, and held him high in her arms. The boy waved at him, the woman smiled brilliantly, and he ran after them, leaping into the air, barking his hungry soul out.
But the waving woman and the smiling boy whirled away, and in that desolate country a big Irish setter stood between the rails, and looked with straining eyes after the vanishing rear of the northbound Florida Limited, overhung by coils of smoke.
That was what had brought him down here. Those long, flashing rails led home! He stood oblivious of everything else. He did not hear the shouts, he did not see the burly man jump off his mule, cut a stick, and hurry toward him, gun in hand.
He had endured much during those evil days. But what followed was that which neither man nor dog can ever forgive or forget. At the first blow he sprang about, mad with rage, but the man held the gun--to spring was to spring to death. He dropped down at the man"s feet and laid his head over the rail. He did not cry out. But the blows sounded hollow on his gaunt ribs, they ached sickeningly into his very vitals.
It could have had but one ending. Another blow, and he would have leaped at the man"s throat and to death. But the other man was rushing at them.
"Great G.o.d, Jim," he cried, "let up! You want to kill him?" White of face, he had grabbed the stick, and the two stood facing one another.
From the pines still rose the great shouting roar.
They came home through the dusk, a silent procession: the burly man rode in front, then the other man, and behind, with drooped head and tail, trotted old Frank. Now and then in the gathering gloom the men looked back at him, but not once did he raise his eyes to them.
"I guess I learned him his lesson, Sam."