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TITLE: HIS DOG
AUTHOR: ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE
EBOOK: E02535 (O'Briens Book Cellar)

HIS DOG

by

ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE

1922

CHAPTER I. The Derelict

Link Ferris was a fighter. Not by nature, nor by choice, but to
keep alive.

His battleground covered an area of forty acres--broken, scrubby,
uncertain side-hill acres, at that. In brief, a worked-out farm
among the mountain slopes of the North Jersey hinterland; six
miles from the nearest railroad.

The farm was Ferris's, by right of sole heritage from his father,
a Civil-War veteran, who had taken up the wilderness land in 1865
and who, for thirty years thereafter, had wrought to make it pay.
At best the elder Ferris had wrenched only a meager living from
the light and rock-infested soil.

The first-growth timber on the west woodlot for some time had
staved off the need of a mortgage; its veteran oaks and hickories
grimly giving up their lives, in hundreds, to keep the wolf from
the door of their owner. When the last of the salable timber was
gone Old Man Ferris tried his hand at truck farming, and sold his
wares from a wagon to the denizens of Craigswold, the new colony
of rich folk, four miles to northward.

But to raise such vegetables and fruits as would tempt the eyes
and the purses of Craigswold people it was necessary to have more
than mere zeal and industry. Sour ground will not readily yield
sweet abundance, be the toiler ever so industrious. Moreover,
there was large and growing competition, in the form of other
huckster routes.

And presently the old veteran wearied of the eternal uphill
struggle. He mortgaged the farm, dying soon afterward. And Link,
his son, was left to carry on the thankless task.

Link Ferris was as much a part of the Ferris farm as was the
giant bowlder in the south mowing. He had been born in the
paintless shack which his father had built with his own rheumatic
hands. He had worked for more than a quarter century, in and out
of the hill fields and the ramshackle barns. From babyhood he had
toiled there. Scant had been the chances for schooling, and more
scant had been the opportunities for outside influence.

Wherefore, Link had grown to a wirily weedy and slouching
manhood, almost as ignorant of the world beyond his mountain
walls as were any of his own "critters." His life was bounded by
fruitless labor, varied only by such sleep and food as might fit
him to labor the harder.

He ate and slept, that he might be able to work. And he worked,
that he might be able to eat and sleep. Beyond that, his life was
as barren as a rainy sea.

If he dreamed of other and wider things, the workaday grind
speedily set such dreams to rout. When the gnawing of lonely
unrest was too acute for bovine endurance--and when he could
spare the time or the money--he was wont to go to the mile-off
hamlet of Hampton and there get as nearly drunk as his funds
would permit.

It was his only surcease. And as a rule, it was a poor one. For
seldom did he have enough ready money to buy wholesale
forgetfulness. More often he was able to purchase only enough
hard cider or fuseloil whisky to make him dull and vaguely
miserable.

It was on his way home one Saturday night from such a rudimentary
debauch at Hampton that his Adventure had its small beginning.

For a half mile or so of Link's homeward pilgrimage--before he
turned off into the grass-grown, rutted hill trail which led to
his farm--his way led along a spur of the state road which linked
New York City with the Ramapo hill country.

And here, as Link swung glumly along through the springtide dusk,
his ears were assailed by a sound that was something between a
sigh and a sob--a sound as of one who tries valiantly to stifle a
whimper of sharp pain.

Ferris halted, uncertain, at the road edge; and peered about him.
Again he heard the sound. And this time he located it in the long
grass of the wayside ditch. The grass was stirring spasmodically,
too, as with the half-restrained writhings of something lying
close to earth there.

Link struck a match. Shielding the flame, he pushed the tangle of
grass to one side with his foot.

There, exposed in the narrow space thus cleared and by the
narrower radius of match flare, crouched a dog.

The brute was huddled in a crumpled heap, with one foreleg stuck
awkwardly out in front of him at an impossible angle. His tawny
mass of coat was mired and oil streaked. In his deep-set brown
eyes burned the fires of agony.

Yet, as he looked up at the man who bent above him, the dog's
gaze was neither fierce nor cringing. It held rather such an
expression as, Dumas tells us, the wounded Athos turned to
D'Artagnan--the aspect of one in sore need of aid, and too proud
to plead for it.

Link Ferris had never heard of Dumas, nor of the immortal
musketeer. None the less, he could read that look. And it
appealed to him, as no howl of anguish could have appealed. He
knelt beside the suffering dog and fell to examining his hurts.

The dog was a collie--beautiful of head, sweepingly graceful of
line, powerful and heavy coated. The mud on his expanse of snowy
chest frill and the grease on his dark brown back were easy to
account for, even to Link Ferris's none-too-keen imagination.

Link, in his own occasional trudges along this bit of state road,
had often seen costly dogs in the tonneaus of passing cars. He
had seen several of them scramble frantically to maintain their
footing on the slippery seats of such cars; when chauffeurs took
the sharp curve, just ahead, at too high speed. He had even seen
one Airedale flung bodily from a car's rear seat at that curve, 
and out into the roadway; where a close-following motor had run
over and killed it.

This collie, doubtless, had had such a fall; and, unseen by the
front seat's occupants, had struck ground with terrific force--a
force that had sent him whirling through mud and grease into the
ditch, with a broken front leg.

How long the beast had lain there Link had no way of guessing.
But the dog was in mortal agony. And the kindest thing to do was
to put him out of his pain.

Ferris groped around through the gloom until, in the ditch, his
fingers closed over a ten-pound stone. One smashing blow on the
head, with this missile, would bring a swift and merciful end to
the sufferer's troubles.

Poising the stone aloft, Link turned back to where the dog lay.
Standing over the victim, he balanced the rock and tensed his
muscles for the blow. The match had long since gone out, but
Link's dusk-accustomed vision could readily discern the outlines
of the collie. And he made ready to strike.

Then--perhaps it was the drink playing tricks with Ferris's
mind--it seemed to him that he could still see those deep-set
dark eyes staring up at him through the murk, with that same
fearless and yet piteous look in their depths. It was a look that
the brief sputter of match-light had photographed on Link's
brain.

"I--I ain't got the heart to swat you while you keep lookin' that
way at me," he muttered half-aloud, as if to a human companion.
"Jes' you turn your head the other way, pup! It'll be over quick,
an' easy."

By the faint light Link could see the dog had not obeyed the
order to turn his head.  But at the man's tone of compassion the
great plumy tail began to thump the ground in feeble response.

"H'm!" grunted Link, letting the stone drop to the road, "got
nerve, too, ain't you, friend? 'Tain't every cuss that can wag
his tail when his leg's bust."

Kneeling down again he examined the broken foreleg more
carefully. Gentle as was his touch, yet Link knew it must cause
infinite torture. But the dog did not flinch. He seemed to
understand that Ferris meant kindly, for he moved his magnificent
head far enough to lick the man's hand softly and in gratitude.

The caress had an odd effect on the loveless Ferris. It was the
first voluntary mark of affection he had encountered for longer
than he liked to remember. It set old memories to working.

The Ferris farm, since Link's birth, had been perhaps the only
home in all that wild region which did not boast a dog of some
kind. Link's father had had an inborn hatred of dogs. He would
not allow one on the place. His overt excuse was that they killed
sheep and worried cattle, and that he could not afford to risk
the well-being of his scanty hoard of stock.

Thus, Link had grown to manhood with no dog at his heels, and
without knowing the normal human's love for canine chumship.

The primal instinct, long buried, stirred within him now; at
touch of the warm tongue on his calloused hand and at sound of
that friendly tail wagging in the dry grass. Ashamed of the
stirrings in him, he sought to explain them by reminding himself
that this was probably a valuable animal and that a reward might
be offered for his return. In which case Link Ferris might as
well profit by the cash windfall as anyone else.


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