Читать книгу Injun and Whitey to the Rescue - William Surrey Hart - Страница 5
ОглавлениеAN ARRIVAL
There was no doubt that affairs were rather dull on the Bar O Ranch; at least they seemed so to "Whitey," otherwise Alan Sherwood. Since he and his pal, "Injun," had had the adventures incidental to the finding of the gold in the mountains, there had been nothing doing. So life seemed tame to Whitey, to whom so many exciting things had happened since he had come West that he now had a taste for excitement.
It was Saturday, so there were no lessons, and it was a relief to be free from the teachings of John Big Moose, the educated Dakota, who acted as tutor for Injun and Whitey. Not that John was impatient with his pupils. He was too patient, if anything, his own boyhood not being so far behind him that he had forgotten that outdoors, in the Golden West, is apt to prove more interesting to fifteen-year-old youth than printed books—especially when one half the class is of Indian blood.
As Whitey stood near the bunk house and thought of these things, his eye was attracted by a speck moving toward him across the prairie. He watched it with the interest one might have in a ship at sea; as one watches in a place in which few moving things are seen. The speck was small, and was coming toward Whitey slowly.
From around the corner of the bunk house Injun approached. It will be remembered by those who have read of Injun that he was very fond of pink pajamas. As garments, pink pajamas seemed to Injun to be the real thing. It had been hard to convince him that they were not proper for everyday wear, but when he was half convinced of this fact, he had done the next best thing, and taken to a very pink shirt. This, tucked in a large pair of men's trousers, below which were beaded moccasins, was Injun's costume, which he wore with quiet dignity.
"What do you s'pose that is?" asked Whitey, pointing at the speck.
"Dog," Injun answered briefly.
"A dog!" cried Whitey, who, though he had never ceased to wonder at Injun's keenness of sight, was inclined to question it now. "What can a dog be doing out there?"
"Dunno," Injun replied. "Him dog." Injun's education had not as yet sunk in deep enough to affect his speech.
Whitey again turned his eyes toward the object, which certainly was moving slowly, as though tired, and, as the boys watched, sure enough, began to resolve itself into the shape of a dog. Here at last was something happening to break the dullness of the day. A strange dog twenty-five miles from any place in which a dog would naturally be.
Furthermore, when the animal was near enough to be seen distinctly, he furnished another surprise. He was entirely unlike any of the dogs of that neighborhood—the hounds, collies, or terriers. He was white, short, chunky. His head was very large for his size, his jaw undershot, his mouth enormous, and his lower lip drooped carelessly over a couple of fangs on each side. Under small ears his eyes popped almost out of his head, and his snub nose could scarcely be said to be a nose at all. From a wide chest his body narrowed until it joined a short, twisted tail, and his front legs were bowed, as though he had been in the habit of riding a horse all his life.
Injun gazed at this strange being with something as near surprise as he ever allowed himself. "Him look like frog," he declared.
"Why, it's a bulldog, an English bulldog!" exclaimed Whitey, who had seen many of this breed in the East.
"More like bullfrog," Injun maintained solemnly. "What him do—eat bulls?"
The brute's appearance surely was forbidding enough, and if Injun had been subject to fear, which he wasn't, he would have felt it now. He did not know, as many better informed people do not, that beneath this breed's fierce appearance lies the deepest of dog love for a master—and that's a pretty deep love—and that no other "friend of man" holds gentler, kinder feeling for the human race than this queerly shaped animal. And this in spite of the fact that he owes the very queerness of his appearance to man, who has had him bred in that shape, through countless generations, to the end that the poor, faithful beast may do brutal deeds in the bull ring and the dog pit.
Whitey did not know all this—that the wide jaws were designed for a grip on the enemy, the snub nose to permit breathing while that grip was held, the widespread legs to secure a firm ground hold; in short, that he was looking at an animal built for conflict, which had the courage of a lion where his enemies were concerned, and the love of a wild thing for its young where its human friends were concerned.
But Whitey knew the latter part of it—that bulldogs were friendly, and usually misunderstood, and he proceeded to let Injun in on his knowledge. "You needn't be afraid of him," he said.
"No 'fraid, but no go too close," replied the cautious Injun.
Now that this dog was in reach of humans he sat down, opened his cave-like mouth, allowing a few inches of tongue to loll out, panted, and looked amiably at the boys. He certainly was tired.
"He's not only tired, he's thirsty," said Whitey, and ran to the stable for water.
And while he was gone the bulldog and Injun looked at each other—Injun with his bronze skin, his long, straight hair, his calm face, and his steady, dark eyes. This descendant of thousands of fighting men regarded that descendant of thousands of fighting dogs. And what they thought of each other the dog couldn't tell, and Injun didn't, but ever after they were friends.
Presently Whitey returned from the stable with a pan of water, and with Bill Jordan, foreman of the Bar O, Charlie Bassett, Buck Higgins, and Shorty Palmer, all the cowpunchers who happened to be on the place. They all knew bulldogs, and they regarded the newcomer with awe and respect.
Whitey put the water before the dog, who, after favoring him with a grateful glance and a quiver of his stub tail, went to it.
"He's sure awful dry," Bill said. "Ought t' take him up to Moose Lake. Looks like that pan o' water won't even moisten him."
"Where d'ye reck'n he come from?" asked Shorty.
"Dunno."
"Mebbe he was follerin' a wagon, an' got lost," Buck Higgins suggested hopefully.
"Wagon nothin'!" snorted Bill. "Nobody in these parts'd have a dog like that, an' if they did, what would he be doin' follerin' a wagon? He ain't built to run, he's built to fight."
Where the dog had come from was something of a mystery. Neighbors were not near by, in those days, in Montana, the nearest being fourteen miles off, and the railway twenty-two, and nothing there but a water tank. There was some discussion regarding the matter which ended in a deadlock. It was certain that none of the ranchmen in the vicinity owned such a dog, and even so, or if a visitor owned him, how would he get to the Bar O? Walk, with "them legs"?
While the discussion went on, the subject of it gulped down large chunks of beef which Whitey had begged from the cook, and after that he went with the men and boys to the ranch house, where, with an apologetic leer, and a wiggle of his tail, he stretched himself on the veranda, and fell into a deep sleep. He was very grateful, but he was also very tired.
In a lonely ranch house matters are of concern which would create little comment in a city. This dog's coming was in the nature of an event at the Bar O. Bill, the foreman, and all the punchers were ready to neglect work for a considerable time and talk about it. Even Injun occasionally looked interested. But all the talk could not solve the problem of the animal's presence.
The only one who knew lay sleeping on the veranda and couldn't tell. It isn't likely that he dreamed, but if he did it might have been of being tied to the handle of a trunk in an overland limited baggage car; of the train's stopping for water at a lonely tank; of the earthy, wholesome country smell that came through the door, left open for coolness.
There had been a stirring in the grass near the track. A glimpse of an animal that looked something like a fox and something like a wolf, and wasn't either one, a wild animal that was sneaking around the train for the odd bits of food that were sometimes left in its wake. As the pungent scent of this beast reached the bulldog's snub nose, the leash that held him to the trunk became a thing of little worth. With a violent lurch he broke it, leaped from the door, landed sprawling alongside the track, and was off in pursuit of the strange animal.
Now, any one who knows how a bulldog is built and how a coyote is built can imagine how much chance the first has to catch the second. The dog followed by sight, not by scent. With his head held as high as his short neck would allow he dashed on. The coyote didn't bother very much. After getting a good start he doubled on his tracks for a little way, turned aside, and sat down. And if he wasn't too mean to laugh, he may at least have smiled as his enemy rushed forward toward nowhere.
Then that bulldog ran and ran until he couldn't run any more. Then he walked till he couldn't walk any farther. Then he slept all night, while other coyotes howled dismally near by. And in the morning he started off again, thinking he was going toward the train and his sorrowful master, really going in the opposite direction. But there was one thing that man hadn't taught him to do in all the years, and that was to quit, so he kept on. And at last, as any one will who keeps going long enough, he had to arrive somewhere and he reached the Bar O Ranch.
So you and I and the dog know how he got there, but Bill Jordan, the punchers, and the boys didn't, and presently they gave up trying to figure it out.
"'Tain't likely his owner'll show up, so he's ours," said Bill Jordan.
"He's Whitey's," Buck Higgins maintained. "He saw him first."
This law was older than any ranch house, or any cowpuncher, so it held good, and Whitey became the proud owner of the dog. The matter of his name came next in importance. Of course he had one, and he was awakened, and asked to respond to as many dog names as the party could think of. These were many, running from Towser to Nero, but they brought no response from the sleepy animal.
"Must be somep'n unusual," Buck Higgins decided, and he ventured on "Alphonse" and "Julius Cæsar," but they didn't fit.
"Well, we jest nachally got t' give him a name," said Shorty Palmer.
Again the list was gone over, but nothing seemed quite right. "Oughta be somep'n' 'propriate," said Bill Jordan. "How 'bout Moses? He was lost in th' wilderness."
"Wilderness nothin'!" objected Buck. "In the bullrushes. Them ain't prairie grass."
"Besides," said Whitey, "he ought to have a fighting name. Napoleon!"
"'Tain't English."
"Wellington."
"Too long."
As he seemed to have no choice in naming his own dog, Whitey turned in despair to Injun, who had stood solemnly by. "How about you?" Whitey asked. "Haven't you a name to suggest?"
The dog knew that he was the subject of the talk, and possibly felt that he ought to keep awake, for he sat on the veranda and blinked at the humans. Injun gazed at him stolidly.
"Huh!" he grunted. "Sittin' Bull."
"Great!" cried all the others.
This matter settled, the men went away. Sitting Bull stretched himself out on the veranda and again fell asleep, and Whitey told Injun that the dog's coming probably was a good omen. That there ought to be something doing on the ranch now.
