Читать книгу Brave Dogs - Lilian Gask - Страница 3

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It had rained all day—a steady downpour—and the wayfarers hurried home to peel off their wet clothes and warm themselves by the fire.

All but one, dumb and homeless. His rough coat must stay where it was—on his back!

Down the grey streets he padded, covering the ground at a good pace, and when the last house had been left behind he stopped to draw breath and think what he would do next. A short piece of rope still dangled from his scraggy neck; the brick at the other end of the rope had been left on the bank of a pond.

A constable had pressed to see his licence, and to drown him had seemed the best way out to the scamp he had known as master. Dan Ford was ‘wanted’ on several counts, and had a horror of the law. And since his dog had refused to be lost, the only thing to do was this.

But the dog did not enjoy being drowned, and made a good bid for life. The pond had nearly won, for the rope was thick, and when he had bitten and torn it through he had barely strength left to scramble out. All night he lay where he had crawled, but when morning dawned, and the sun shone down and warmed him, he sat up, drew a deep breath or two, and was off to look for his master.

He felt sure, with the beautiful faith of a dog, that he could not have meant to harm him.

Dan was not to be found—for the very good reason that ‘the law’ had got him after all. The dog hung round his old haunts for several days, then gave it up, and turned his face toward the country, for he had been born on a farm.

Since then he had travelled many a mile; he was worn to a shadow, and his feet were sore, but the soft brown eyes in his ugly head looked out on the world with undaunted courage, despite the fact that he was hungry.

Hungry and tired. The side of a hedge had often been his night’s lodging, but now the banks were a mass of mud, and the ditches inches deep in water. He must go on. There was a light ahead, and this meant that some one lived on that hill—lights always meant men, he knew.

The squat building was an old Army hut that Sandy McKay, the new manager of the mine at Polruth, preferred to quarters in the village.

“A ‘dour’ man, McKay,” they would have told you at the mine. He was blunt of speech, his energy was amazing, and his keen blue eyes saw too far. To-night the fair, straight brows above them met in a frown—he was rating himself for his ‘saftness’ in finding the hut so dreary when quiet was what he most desired. But he was sick of the falling rain, and the moan of the sea on the rocks. He could not settle down to read; and things had gone wrong all day.

A sound outside made him look up. What was it? The wind? No—too near for that. Some one was fumbling outside the door. Some one was trying to get in!

The sound came again. He opened the door cautiously—to find himself in an impromptu shower-bath, as a dog on the threshold shook himself vigorously. Surprise kept the young man still for a moment; the next he was gently pushed on one side while the dog took possession of the hearth. With his head thrown back he gazed steadily at Sandy, who stared at him in return. Brown eyes met blue; and questions were asked and answered without any need of words.

He was to stay, and he knew it. Down he plopped by the farther side of the fire, and gave a deep sigh of relief.

“Make yourself at home, laddie,” said Sandy with a grin. “Not brought your card with you? I thought as much. Weel, I shall ca’ you Jock.”

“That’ll do fine,” said a wagging tail, and humming a few bars of Bonnie Dundee, which happened to be the only tune he knew, Sandy brought out the one dry towel he possessed and gave his visitor a good rub down.

They supped together on bread and cheese, and ‘Jock,’ taking quite kindly to his new name, feasted on the end of a leg of mutton which should have been Sandy’s dinner next day. And though the rain pattered still on the roof, the hut had become a home.

Sandy always said Jock brought him luck, and certainly things improved. The output of the mine increased, the men decided he “might be worse”; and even if things did go wrong a bit, there was always Jock to listen to what he had to say when he got home.

They were never apart, these two, when they could be together. Every morning Jock accompanied his master to the mine, the handle of a can of cold well-sweetened tea carefully held in his mouth.

Having barked “Good-bye,” he trotted to the village for yesterday’s paper, which his master found awaiting him when he came up for lunch. The men, whom he treated with a royal condescension, were much interested in his doings, but agreed among themselves that he was ‘queer.’

There was one dweller in those Cornish wilds that Jock equally feared and hated. This was a huge, bad-tempered bull, who had bitterly resented his attempts to take a short cut to a rabbit warren through his own particular field. Jock had defied him, but not with impunity. The point of one horn had made a nasty sore behind the thick hair on his side, and months after it had healed he felt twinges now and then in the scar this had left behind it.

One Sunday afternoon Sandy dressed himself in a well-cut blue serge that usually spent its time in his portmanteau. Jock knew what that meant, and groaned in spirit. They would walk toward the village, instead of to the sea, and—alas—he would first be brushed, which was always an ordeal!

He was still feeling rather hurt when presently they set out, Sandy smiling to himself as if his thoughts were pleasant.

Before long a white dress gleamed in the distance, to be lost to sight in a narrow high-banked lane that skirted the pasture lands. Jock knew what this meant too; a girl called Jean was coming to walk with them. Jock rather liked her, so he did not mind.

Sandy quickened his pace, while Jock raced on ahead, then suddenly stood still and listened. A moment, and with a bark of warning he flew toward the lane so swiftly that his feet barely touched the ground.

Jean thought he had gone mad, when, seizing her frock, he literally drove her up a flowery bank; but she understood when a few seconds later she heard a wild stampede of heavy hoofs.

The bull had broken out of his field, and but for Jock’s intervention she must have been trampled underfoot, even had he not stopped to toss her. Sandy barely escaped him by vaulting a gate, and the first thing he did when he reached that flowery bank on which Jean had tremblingly collapsed was to tell the proud Jock that no dog in the world was such “a guid beastie” as he.

Not long after this Sandy bought a little house, and the hut became littered with catalogues of furniture and bright bits of stuff for curtains.

“See here!” laughed Sandy one day, and he tapped his pocket as he spoke to make sure that his wallet was safe. “A hundred poun’s, a’ fresh frae the bank, tae fit up the wee new house!”

It was not only Jock who heard Sandy’s gay words. A friendless ‘out-of-work’ had spied the hut, and shambled up the slope on which it stood to ask for help on his way. Drawing back quietly, the hungry man watched through the crack of the half-open door while Sandy thrust the notes behind the silver frame that decked a corner of the mantelpiece. It held Jean’s photograph, and as Sandy touched it Jock growled and made for the door.

“Mustn’t be jealous, laddie,” laughed his master as he slammed it. And Jock was at peace now the door was shut, the intruder he had seen being left outside.

When tea was over Sandy thought he would see Jean again and let her know he had taken their tickets to London. He and she were to stay with his mother for three days, and spend that hundred pounds on furniture. He whistled Bonnie Dundee in great style as he swung off down the road.

Jock started with him, but altered his mind, and left him when he reached the village. He had not liked the look of that man.

So home he trotted—in time to see some one slip through the window of the hut and make off down the valley. The man had a good start, and fear lent him speed when he heard Jock barking behind him.

But he had all his wits about him and did not mean to be caught. He twisted and turned, jumped streams and waded down them to put Jock off the scent; and once, by catching at an overhanging bough while he stood knee deep in the water, he pulled himself up into the heart of a tree, where even to Jock’s sharp eyes he was invisible. Here, feeling safe, he dozed away the hours till dawn.

When the sky was all primrose and delicate green, and a blackbird called to the wood: “It’s morning!” he let himself down—to find Jock lying in wait for him, convinced that he was somewhere near.

And now the chase was the merest farce—Jock had thrown him to the ground in no time. He fell heavily, breaking his ankle beneath him, and Jock, having quenched his thirst at the stream, settled down by his side on guard.

Sandy had not reached home until late the night before, and, rather disturbed to find Jock missing, sat up some time to let him in. He gave it up at last and went to bed.

He woke at dawn with a sense of something wrong. His eyes sought Jean’s picture, and as it smiled on him he remembered, in a flash, those notes.

They were gone, like Jock! He guessed then what had happened, and soon, with a handful of men from the farm, was scouring the countryside. It was almost dusk when they heard a faint, hoarse bark from a tangle of briars by the stream.

“That’s Jock!” cried Sandy joyfully. And there he was, still on guard over his unconscious foe, in whose coat was the missing wallet.

They carried the man to the house of a kind old Cornish dame, who nursed him till he was well. Sandy would not prosecute; the theft, he said, had been partly his fault, since he had put temptation in a poor man’s way. He intended to take him on at the mine and give him another chance.

Jock often went to see him in a friendly way while the broken ankle was healing. Dogs are clever creatures, and I think he guessed just how the patient felt. At any rate, he made it his business to cheer him up by bringing him things to play with—stones from the road, an old pipe of his master’s, and once a young rabbit that he carried in his mouth without hurting a hair of its head. And when that broken ankle was healed, and a new man worked in the mines, Jock met him every evening as he had once met Sandy, before the coming of Jean.