Thrifty Stock, and Other Stories

by Ben Ames Williams

IV

This is not properly the story of Job’s youth or of his life, but of his aging and the death of him. Nevertheless there was much in his life that was worth the telling. His reputation rests not on Chet’s word alone—the village knew him and was proud of him. His renown began in his third year in deep winter when Chet and Jim Saladine went fishing one day through the ice on Sebacook Pond. Chet and Saladine became separated, one on either side of the lower end of the pond, and Jim had the pail of bait. Chet made Job go after the pail clear across the pond and fetch it to him and take it back to Saladine again. The dog’s sagacity and understanding, evidenced then and chronicled by Saladine at Bissell’s store that night, were to wax thereafter for half a dozen years; and even when the dog grew old his understanding never waned.

It was in his ninth year that Job had his greatest day—a day into which he crowded epic deeds enough to make heroes of half a dozen dogs. And the tale of that day may perhaps be worth the telling.

Chet had taken Job out the night before to try for a partridge in the fringes of the wood below the farm. They were late in starting, but within fifteen minutes Job was marking game and just at sunset the bird rose and wheeled toward the thickets of the wood. Chet had a snap shot; he took it and he saw the bird’s legs drop and dangle before it disappeared. He knew what that meant. A body wound, a deadly wound. The bird would fly so long as its wings would function, then set its pinions and glide in a long slant to earth, and when it struck ground it would be dead.

He sent Job into the wood, himself followed the dog, and he was in haste, for dark was already coming down. He hunted till he could no longer see—found nothing. In the end he called Job in, and the dog reluctantly abandoned the search at Chet’s command and followed his master back to the farm.

Two Rockland men telephoned that evening asking if they might come to the farm next day and try for birds; and Chet, who can always find time for a day’s gunning, bade them come. Doctor Gunther, who was telephoning, said: “Hayes and I’ll be there by half past eight. Mind if we bring our dogs?”

“Mind? No,” said Chet. “Sure!”

“They’re wild,” said the doctor, “but I’d like to have them work with Job—do them good.”

“Best thing in the world for them,” Chet agreed. “Let them back him on a few points and it’ll steady them. I’ll look for you.”

In the morning he rose early and busied himself with his chores so that he might be ready when the hunters came. It was not an ideal hunting day. The morning was lowery and overcast and warm and there was a wind from the east that promised fog or rain. With an eye on the clouds Chet worked swiftly. He fed Job in the shed where the dog usually slept and it chanced that he left the door latched so that Job was a prisoner until the others arrived. They were a little ahead of time and Chet asked them to wait a little. He had been picking apples in the orchard behind the shed and he took them out there to see the full barrels of firm fruit. Job went out into the orchard with them and no one of the men noticed that the dog slipped away beyond the barn toward the woods.

When a little later they were ready to start Chet missed the dog. He is a profane man, and he swore and whistled and called. Hayes, the man who had come with Gunther, winked at the doctor and asked Chet: “Is he a self-hunter? Has he gone off on his own?”

“Never did before,” Chet said hotly. His heat was for Job, not for Hayes. “I’ll teach him something!”

He went out behind the barn, still whistling and calling, and the others followed him. Their dogs were in the car in which they had come from Rockland. The three men walked across the garden to the brow of the hill above the river and Chet blew his whistle till he was purple of countenance. The other two were secretly amused, as men are apt to be amused when they find that an idol has feet of clay. For Job was a famous dog.

Hayes it was who caught first sight of him and said, “There he comes now.”

They all looked and saw Job loping heavily up the slope through an open fringe of birches. But it was not till he scrambled over the wall that they saw he bore something in his mouth.

Hayes said, “He’s got a woodchuck.”

Chet, with keener eyes, stared for a moment, then exclaimed exultantly: “He’s got that partridge I killed down there last night! I knew that bird was dead.”

They were still incredulous, even after he told them how he had shot the bird the night before.

They were incredulous until Job came near enough for them all to see, came trotting to Chet and proudly dropped the splendid bird at his master’s feet. When they could no longer doubt they exclaimed. For such a feat is alone enough to found a dog reputation on.

As for Chet, though he was swelled with pride, he made light of the matter.

“You’ll see him work to-day though,” he said. “The scent lies on a day like this. But it’ll rain by noon—we want to get started.”

They did get started and without more delay. They went in the car, and after a mile or so stopped on a rocky ledge beside the road at what Chet was used to call the Dummy Cover—an expanse of half a dozen acres tangled with alders and birches and thorn and dotted with wild apple trees here and there. Two or three low knolls lifted their heads above the muck of the lower land—an ideal place for woodcock when the flight was on.

The men got out and belled their dogs and old Job stood quietly at Chet’s heel while Chet filled his pockets with shells. The other dogs were racing and plunging, breaking across the wall, returning impatiently at command, racing away again. When they were ready the three men went through the bars, and with a gesture Chet sent Job into an alder run to the right. The great dog began his systematic zigzagging progress, designed to cover every foot of the ground, while the younger dogs circled and scuffled and darted about him, nosing here and there, wild with the excitement of the hunt.

Such dogs flush many birds and one of these dogs flushed a woodcock now fifty yards ahead of where old Job was working. The bird started to circle back, saw the men and veered away again. Though the range was never less than forty yards, Chet, who had a heavy far-shooting gun, took a snap shot through the alder tops as the bird turned in flight and he saw it jump slightly in the air as though the sound of the gun had startled it. Chet knew what that little break in its flight had meant and he watched the bird as long as he could see it and marked where it scaled to earth at last in the deeps of the cover ahead of them.

It was while his attention was thus distracted that Job disappeared. When Chet had reloaded he looked round for the dog and Job was gone. He listened and heard no sound of Job’s bell. He blew his whistle and blew again. The other two dogs came galloping to their masters, heads up, eyes questioning, but Job did not appear.

The man Hayes said: “He’s gone off alone. I wouldn’t have a dog I couldn’t keep in.”

Chet looked at him with a flare of his native temper in his eyes.

“He’s got a bird,” said Chet. “He’s right here somewhere and he’s got a bird.”

He turned and began to push his way into the alders and the other two men kept pace with him, one on either side. It was hard going; they could see only a little way. Now and then Chet whistled again, but for the most part they went quietly. Woodcock may not be found in open stubble like the obliging quail. You will come upon them singly or by twos in wet alder runs or upon birch-clad knolls or even in the shelter of a clump of evergreens—in thick cover almost always, where it is difficult for a man to shoot; and the bird must usually be killed before it has gone twenty yards in flight or it goes scot-free.

In such a cover as this the men were now hunting for Job; and at the end of fifteen minutes, in which they had worked back and forth and to and fro without discovering the dog, Hayes and the doctor were ready to give up.

“Call him in,” Hayes told Chet. “Maybe we’ll see the bird get up. We can’t find him and we’re wasting time.”

Chet hesitated, then he said: “I’ll shoot. Maybe that’ll scare up the bird.”

On the last word his gun roared and through its very echoes each of the three men heard the tinkle of a bell, and Chet, who was nearest, cried: “There he is! Careful! The bird’s moving.”

The dog was in the very center of the cover they had traversed—in a little depression where he chanced to be well hidden. They had passed within twenty feet of him, yet had he held his point. Hayes was the first to do homage.

“By gad,” he cried, “that is some dog, McAusland!”

“You be ready to shoot,” Chet retorted. “I’ll walk up the bird.”

They said they were ready; he moved in to one side of Job and the woodcock got up on whistling wings. Hayes’ first shot knocked him down.

Job found another bird a little farther on and Chet killed it before it topped the alders. Then they approached the spot where he had marked down that first woodcock, the one which had been flushed by the too-rangy dogs. He called Job, pointed, said briefly: “Find dead bird, Job.”

The dog went in, began to work. When the other men came up Chet said: “I think I hurt that first bird. He dropped in here. Job will find him.”

“Let’s send the other dogs in, too,” Hayes suggested. “Mine hasn’t learned retrieving yet.”

Chet nodded and the other two dogs plunged into the cover to one side of Job and began to circle, loping noisily. Job looked toward them with an air of almost human disgust at such incompetency, then went on with his business of finding the bird.

The men, watching, saw then a curious thing: they saw old Job freeze in a point and as he did so the other dogs charged toward him. One, Gunther’s, caught the scent ten feet away and froze. The other hesitated, then came on—and Job growled, a warning deadly growl. The other dog stopped still.

Chet exclaimed: “Now ain’t that comical? Hear old Job tell him to freeze?”

Hayes nodded and the three stood for a moment, watching the motionless dogs, silent. Then the young dog stirred again and Job moved forward two paces and flattened his head so low it almost touched the ground and—growled again.

Chet laughed.

“All right, Job,” he called. “Dead bird! Fetch it in!”

Job did not move, and Hayes said: “Maybe it’s not dead.

“I’ll walk in,” Chet told him. “I won’t shoot. You do the shooting.”

They nodded and he began to work in through the alders toward where Job stood. The others waited in vantage points outside. Chet came abreast of Job and stopped. But the dog stood still, and this surprised Chet, for Job was accustomed to rush forward, flushing up the bird as soon as he knew that Chet was near at hand. So the man studied the ground ahead of Job’s nose, trying to locate the bird; and he moved forward a step or two cautiously and at last began to beat to and fro, expecting every minute to hear the whistle of the woodcock’s wings as it rose.

Nothing happened. The two younger dogs broke point with a careless air as though to say they had not been pointing at all; that they had merely been considering the matter. They began to move about in the alders. And at last Chet, half convinced that Job was on a false point, turned to his dog and said harshly: “There’s nothing here, Job. Come out of it. Come along. Come in.”

Job watched Chet, but did not move. His lower jaw was fairly resting on the ground, and Chet exclaimed impatiently and stooped and caught his collar to drag him away. When he did this he saw the bird—saw its spreading wing beneath Job’s very jaw—and he reached down and lifted it, stone dead, from where it lay. Not till Chet had taken up the woodcock did Job stir, but when he saw it safe in his master’s hand he shook himself, looked at the other dogs with a triumphant cock of his ears and turned and trotted on down the run.

They left that cover presently, put in an hour in the Fuller pasture, where a partridge and two woodcock fell to their guns, and then drove back to the farm. It was beginning to rain—the thick brush soaked them. Chet bade them come and have dinner at the farm and wait on the chance that the afternoon would see a clearing sky. So they had a dinner of Chet’s cooking, and afterward they sat upon the side veranda watching the rain, smoking.

Chet McAusland is an extravagantly generous man. If you go fishing with him you take home both your fish and his own. He will not have it otherwise. Likewise if you go into the covers the birds are yours.

“Sho, I can get woodcock any time! You take them,” he will say. “Go on now.”

And it is so obvious that he is happier in giving than in keeping that he usually has his way.

After dinner he brought out the birds that had been killed in the morning and laid them on an empty chair beside him and began to tie their legs together so that they could be conveniently handled. Job was on the floor a yard away, apparently asleep. The men were talking. And Job growled.

Chet looked down, saw there were kittens about—there were always kittens at the farm—and reproved Job for growling at the kits. He was a little surprised, for Job usually paid no attention to them, even permitted them to eat from his plate. He said good-naturedly: “What are you doing, Job? Scaring that little kitten? Ain’t you ashamed!”

Job was so far from being ashamed that he barked loudly and Chet bent to cuff him into silence. Then he saw and laughed aloud. “Now ain’t that comical!” he demanded. “Look a-there!”

One of the kittens under Chet’s very chair was laboring heavily, trying to drag away a woodcock that seemed twice as large as itself. The other men laughed; Chet rescued the woodcock; the kitten fled and Job beamed with satisfaction and slapped his tail upon the floor.

Hayes cried: “By gad, McAusland, that dog has sense! I’d like to buy him.”

“You don’t want to buy him. He’s getting old. He won’t be able to hunt much longer.”

“Is he for sale?”

“Oh, you don’t want him,” Chet said uncomfortably. He hated to refuse any man anything.

“I’ll give you three hundred for him,” said Hayes.

Now three hundred dollars was as much cash as Chet was like to see in a year’s time, but—Job was Job. He hesitated, not because the offer attracted him but because he did not wish to refuse Hayes. He hesitated, but in the end he said, “You don’t want old Job.”

Gunther touched Hayes’ arm, caught his eye, shook his head; and Hayes forbore to push the matter. But he could not refrain from praising Job.

“I never saw as good a dog!” he declared.

“He is a good dog,” Chet agreed. “He’ll break shot, but that’s his only out. He’s staunch, he’ll mind, he works close in and he’s the best retriever in the County.”

“You don’t lose many birds with him,” Hayes agreed.

“I can throw a pebble from here right over the barn and he’ll fetch it in,” said Chet. “There’s nothing he won’t bring—if I tell him to.”

Gunther laughed.

“You’re taking in a good deal of territory, Chet.”

“I could tell you some things he’s done that would surprise you,” Chet declared.

Hayes chuckled.

“Let’s try him out,” he suggested.

“All right.”

Hayes pointed toward the barn. The great doors were open and a yellow and black cat was coming through the barn toward them. As Hayes pointed her out she sat down in the doorway and began to lick her breast fur down.

“Have him fetch the cat,” said Hayes.

Chet laughed. He stooped and touched the dog’s head.

“Job,” he said, “come here.”

Job got up and stood at Chet’s knee, looking up into his master’s face, tail wagging slowly to and fro. Chet waved his hand toward the barn.

“Go fetch the cat,” he said. “Go fetch the cat, Job.” The dog looked toward the barn, looked up at Chet again. Chet repeated, “Fetch the cat, Job.”

And the dog, a little doubtfully, left them and walked toward the barn. The cat saw Job coming, but was not afraid. They were old friends. All creatures were friends on Chet’s farm. It rose as Job approached and rubbed against his legs. Job stood still, uncertain; he looked back at Chet, looked down at the cat, looked back at Chet.

“Fetch, Job!” Chet called.

Then the dog in a matter of fact way that delighted the three men on the porch closed his jaws over the cat’s back, at the shoulder. The cat may have been astonished, but it is cat instinct to hang quietly when lifted in this wise. It made no more than a muffled protest; it hung in a furry ball, head drawn up, paws close against its body.

Job brought the cat gravely to Chet’s knee, and Chet took it from his mouth and soothed it and applauded Job.

“I’ll give you five hundred for that dog,” said Hayes.

“You don’t want to buy him,” Chet replied slowly, and the two men saw that there was a fierce pride in his eyes.