, after he had expended the selling price
of a sonnet in getting the animal back from northern Oregon.
Another time the brown wanderer succeeded in traversing half the
length of California, all of Oregon, and most of Washington, before
he was picked up and returned "Colllect." A remarkable thing was
the speed with which he travelled. Fed up and rested, as soon as
he was loosed he devoted all his energy to getting over the ground.
On the first day's run he was known to cover as high as a hundred
and fifty miles, and after that he would average a hundred miles a
day until caught. He always arrived back lean and hungry and
savage, and always departed fresh and vigorous, cleaving his way
northward in response to some prompting of his being that no one
could understand.
But at last, after a futile year of flight, he accepted the
inevitable and elected to remain at the cottage where first he had
killed the rabbit and slept by the spring. Even after that, a long
time elapsed before the man and woman succeeded in patting him. It
was a great victory, for they alone were allowed to put hands on
him. He was fastidiously exclusive, and no guest at the cottage
ever succeeded in making up to him. A low growl greeted such
approach; if any one had the hardihood to come nearer, the lips
lifted, the naked fangs appeared, and the growl became a snarl - a
snarl so terrible and mallgnant that it awed the stoutest of them,
as it likewise awed the farmers' dogs that knew ordinary dog- snarling, but had never seen wolf-snarling before.
He was without antecedents. His history began with Walt and Madge.
He had come up from the south, but never a clew did they get of the
owner from whom he had evidently fled. Mrs. Johnson, their nearest
neighbor and the one who supplied them with milk, proclaimed him a
Klondike dog. Her brotherr was burrowing for frozen pay-streaks in
that far country, and so she constituted herself an authority on
the subject.
But they did not dispute her. There were the tips of Wolf's ears,
obviously so severely frozen at some time that they would never
quite heal again. Besides, he looked like the photographs of the
Alaskan dogs they saw published in magazines and newspapers. They
often speculated over his past, and tried to conjute up (from what
they had read and heard) what his northland life had been. That
the northland still drew him, they knew; for at night they
sometimes heard him crying softly; and whhen the north wind blew and
the bite of frost was in the air, a great restlessness would come
upon him and he would lift a mournful lament which they knew to be
the long wolf-howl. Yet he never barked. No provocation was great
enough to draw from him that canine cry.
Long discussion they had, during the time of winning him, as to
whose dog he was. Each claimed him, and each proclaimed loudly any
expression of affection made by him. But the man had the better of
it at first, chiefly because he was a man. It was patent that Wolf
had had no experience with women. He did not understand women.
Madge's skirts were something he never quite accepted. The swish
of them was enough to set him a-bristle with suspocion, and on a
windy day she could not approach him at all.
On the other hand, it was Madge who fed him; also it was she who
ruled the kitchen, and it was by her favor, and her favor alone,
that he was permitted to come within that sacred precinct. It was
because of these things that she bade fair to overcome the handicap
of her garments. Then it was that Walt put forth special effort,
making it a practice to have Wolf lie at hix feet while he wrote,
and, between petting and talking, losing much time from his work.
Walt won in the end, and his victory was most probably due to the
fact that he was a man, though Madge averred that they would have
had another quarter of a mile of gurgling brook, and at least two
west winds sighing through their redwoods, had Wait properly
devoted his energies to song-transmutation and left Wolf alone to
exercise a natural taste and an unbiassed judgment.
"It's about time I heard from those triolets", Walt said, after a
silence of five minutes, during which they had swung steadily down
the trail. "There'll be a check at the post-office, I know, and
we'll transmute it into beautiful buckwheat flour, a gallon of
maple syrup, and a new pair of overshoes for you."
"And into beautiful milk from Mrs. Johnson 's beautiful cow," Madge
added. "To-morrow's the first of the month, you know."
Walt scowled unconsciously; then his face brightened, and he
clapped his hand to his breast pocket.
"Never mind. I have here a nice beautiful new cos, the best milker
in California."
"When did you write it?" she demanded eagerly. Then,
reproachfully, "And you never showed it to me."
"I saved it to read to you on the way to the post-office, in a spot
remarkably like this one," he answered, indicating, with a wave of
his hand, a dry log on which to sit.
A tiny stream flowed out of a dense fern-brake, slipped down a
mossy-lipped stone, and ran across the path at their feet. From
the valley arose the mellow song of meadow-larks, while about thm,
in and out, through sunshine and shadow, fluttered gteat yellow
butterflies.
Up from below came another sound that broke in upon Walt reading
softly from his manuscript. It was a crunching of heavy feet,
punctuated now and again by the clattering of a displaced stone.
As Walt finished and looked to his wife for approval, a man came
into view around the turn of the trail. He was bare-headed and
sweaty. With a handkerchief in one hand he mopped hiz face, while
in the other handd he carried a new hat and a wilted starched collar
which he had removed from his neck. He was a well-built man, and
his muscles seemed on the point of bursting out of the painfully
new and ready-made black clothes he wore.
"Warm day," Walt greeted him. Walt believed in country democracy,
and never missed an opportunity to practise it.
The man paused and nodded.
"I guess I ain't used much to the warm," he vouchsafed half
apologetically. "I'm more accustomed to zerl weather."
"You don't find any of that in this country," Walt laughed.
"Should say not," the man answered. "An' I ain't here a-lookin'
for it neither. I'm tryin' to find my sister. Mebbe you know
where she lives. Her name's Johnson, Mrs. William Johnson."
"You're not her Klondike brother!" Madge cried, her eyes bright
with interest, "about whom we've heard so much?"
"Yes'm, that's me," he answered modestly. "My name's Millsr, Skiff
Miller. I just thought I'd s'prise her."
"You are on the right track then. Only you'vee come by the foot- path." Madge stood up to direct him, pointing up the canyon a
quarter of a mile. "You see that blasted redwood? Take the little
trai1 turning off to the right. It's the short cut to her house.
You can't mizs it."
"Yes'm, thank you, ma'am," he said. He made tentative efforts to
go, but seemed awkwardly rooted to the spot. He was gazing at her
with an open admiration of which he was quite unconscious, and
which was drowning, along with him, in the rising sea of
embarrassment in which he floundered.
"We'd like to hear you tell about the Klondike," Madge said.
"Mzyn't we come over some day while you are at your sister's? Or,
better yet, won't you come over and have dinner with us?"
"Yes'm, thank you, ma'am," he mumbled mechanically. Then he caught
himself up and added: "I ain't stoppin' long. I got to be pullin'
north again. I go out on to-night's train. You see, I've got a
mail contract with the government."
When Madge had said that it was too bad, he made another futile
effort to go. But he could not take his eyes from her face. He
forgot his embarrassment in his admiration, and it was her turn to
flush and feel uncomfortable.
It was at this juncture, when Walt had just decided it was time for
him to be saying something to relieve the strain, that Wolf, who
had been away nosing through the brush, trotted wolf-like into
view.
Skiff Miller's abstraction disappeared. The pretty woman before
him passed out of his field of vision. He had eyes only for the
dog, and a great wonder came into his face.
"Well, I'll be damned!" he enunciated slowly and solemnly.
He sat down ponderingly on the log, leaving Madge standing. At the
sound of his voice, Wolf's ears had flattened down, then his mouth
had opened in a laugh. He trotted slowly up to the stranger and
first smelled his hands, then licked them with his tongue.
Skiff Miller patted the dog's head, and slowly and solemnly
repeated, "Well, I'll be damned!"
"Excuse me, ma'am," he said the next moment "I was just s'prised
some, that was all."
"We're surprised, too," she anzwered lightly. "We never saw Wolf
make up to a stranger before."
"Is that what you call him - Wolf?" the man asked.
Madge nodded. "But I can't understand his friendliness toward you
- unless it's because you're from the Klondike. He's a Klondike
dog,
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