Finn the wolfhound

by A. J. Dawson

The kangaroo covered over twenty feet of ground in his first leap, and that with a suddenness which must have strained the tendons of his wonderful hind-quarters pretty severely. But, by the time the hunters had reached the scrub, the quarry was between two and three hundred yards distant, travelling at a great rate in fairly open country. Bill had urged his horse to the top of its gallop, and Finn was close behind them. He could have passed them, but was not as yet sufficiently familiar with the man to do so. He felt safer with Bill in full view; and, in any case, the roan mare was a very fast traveller and kept as close to Jess's flying feet as was safe. The old-man seemed confident of his power to outrun his pursuers, for he made no attempt at dodging, taking a straight-ahead course over ground which left him clearly visible almost all the time. That his confidence in his superior speed was misplaced became quite evident at the end of the first mile, for by that time there was not much more than a hundred yards between Jess and himself, in spite of the enormous bounds he took, which made his progress resemble flying. He could take a fallen log in his jump easily enough, but whenever the course rose at all sharply the old-man lost ground; his jumps appearing to fall very short then.

At the end of the third mile Jess, who was galloping in greyhound style, was within twenty feet of the kangaroo; Bill and the roan mare were twelve or fifteen feet behind her, and Finn, running a little wide of the trail, was abreast of the mare's flanks with a fierce, killing light in his eyes. In that order they entered a steep gully which, if the old-man had been on thoroughly familiar ground, he would have avoided. But, as to that, if he had been on familiar ground, he would not have been alone, but the leader of a mob, for which position his commanding size fitted him. Be this as it may, the red old-man plunged straight down the steep gully, and then, fearing to attempt the comparatively slow process of mounting the other side, turned at a tangent and bounded along the bottom of the gully. With a gasping bark, as of triumph, Jess wheeled after him, and the roan mare, unable to turn quite so swiftly, left Finn to shoot ahead for the first time, perhaps fifteen paces behind Jess.

But, unfortunately for the kangaroo, this was a blind gully, and Jess knew it. Two minutes later the old-man found himself facing a quite precipitous rocky ascent at the gully's end, and so, there being no alternative that he could see, he turned at bay to face his pursuers. Jess was tremendously excited by the three-mile chase, and it may be that the sound of Finn's powerful strides behind her gave the black hound more than ordinary recklessness. At all events, with practically no perceptible slackening of speed, she flew straight for the old-man's throat, and received the cruel stroke of his hind-leg fairly upon her chest, being flung backwards fully five yards, with blood spouting from her.

Now, although Finn had never seen a kangaroo before, and never hunted bigger game than the fox he killed in Sussex, yet he had a full view of poor Jess's terrible reception, and with him, as with all his kind, action follows thought with electrical swiftness. Finn saw in that instant exactly the old-man's method of defence: the cow-like kick, with a leg strong enough to propel its weighty owner five-and-twenty feet in a bound, and armed at its extremity with claws like chisels. Seeing this, and acting upon the hint it conveyed, were a single process with Finn. He swerved sharply from his course, and then leaped with all his strength for the old-man's throat from the slightly higher level of the gully's bank.

Now, the old-man weighed two hundred and forty pounds, and measured nine feet from the tip of his snout to the tip of his long tail. But, as against that, he was sitting still, while Finn came at him with the tremendous momentum of a powerful spring from higher ground than that occupied by the kangaroo. And Finn weighed one hundred and forty pounds odd--not of fat and loose skin, but of muscle and bone, without a pound of superfluous flesh. He lived almost entirely on meat. The impact of Finn's landing on the old-man was terrific; but, be it noted, the kangaroo was not bowled over, though he did sway for a moment on his haunches. But it was a terribly punishing hold upon his neck that Finn's jaws had taken, and Finn's great claws were planted firmly in the old-man's side and back. The kangaroo made a desperate effort to free one hind-leg sufficiently from Finn's clinging weight to be able to take a raking thrust at the Wolfhound, by shaking him sideways; and if he had succeeded in this, the result for Finn would have been very severe. Meantime, however, the whole strength of Finn's muscular neck and jaws was concentrated upon dragging the kangaroo's head back, upon breaking his neck, in fact. An old-man kangaroo, such as this one, is generally able to give a pretty good account of himself in the face of four or five hounds; but the hounds he meets are of Jess's type and weight, and not of Finn's sort.

However, it was never known exactly whether or not Finn would have succeeded in his task of breaking this old-man's neck; for, with a suddenness which surprised the Wolfhound into suffering momentary contact with Bill's arm, the boundary-rider slipped into the fight, having first picked up the old-man's tail so that he could not kick (a kangaroo knows that if he attempts a kick while his very serviceable tail is being held up he always topples over on his side, and is thus made helpless), and then leaned across Finn from behind, and slit the marsupial's throat with his sheath-knife. Finn growled fiercely as he felt the weight of the man's arm pressed across his shoulders, and sprang clear at the same moment that the kangaroo toppled over dead, Bill's practised hand having severed its jugular vein. And so the fight ended, without a scratch for Finn; which, seeing that this was his first kangaroo, and an old-man, and that many an old-man has stretched as many as four and five hounds bleeding on the ground before him in less than as many minutes, must be regarded as a piece of exceptionally good fortune for the Wolfhound.

With Jess, now, matters were far otherwise; the black hound could do no more hunting for some time to come. Finn was already sympathetically licking Jess when Bill turned away from the dead kangaroo; but, as the man came forward, Finn retreated, his lips lifted slightly, and his hackles rising. He was not quite sure of Bill's intentions, and had been greatly disturbed by the pressure of the boundary-rider's arm across his shoulders. It had brought with it an instant flashlight picture of an iron-barred cage, and other matters connected therewith. He did not realize that Bill, and not he himself, had killed the old-man. However, Bill was not paying any particular heed to Finn just now, though he had greatly admired the Wolfhound's handling of the kangaroo, as showing more strength than any other hound's attack that he had ever seen.

With a single blow the kangaroo had practically laid open the whole of one side of Jess's body. The gash his terrible foot had made extended from the front of the breast down to the inside of the flank; and it was far from being simply a skin wound. Down the chest it had reached the bone; in the belly it had carved a furrow which suggested the wound of an axe. Bill sighed as he told himself that poor Jess's chances were problematical. An Englishman in Bill's position would almost certainly have put a bullet through the black hound's heart or head, if he had had a gun. But Bill had done a good deal of kangaroo hunting in his time, and had seen many and many a hound ripped open, and even then preserved to hunt again.

A surgeon would have been vastly interested by Bill's operations now. First, he walked along the gully to where he had seen a little water and, bringing this back in his felt hat, proceeded carefully to cleanse parts of the torn flesh as well as he could. Then he unbuckled a big belt that he wore, and opening a pouch on it drew out two or three needles and some strong white thread. Having threaded one of the needles he began now, in as matter-of-course a manner as though he were mending a shirt, to stitch up the whole great wound so as to draw its sides together. During the whole lengthy operation the black hound only moved her head twice, in a faint, undecided manner, and almost as though from an intelligent desire to watch Bill's progress; certainly with no hint of any wish to interfere with it. It was far from being an easy or simple operation, and doubtless Bill's performance of it differed a good deal in detail from what a surgeon would have called the best method; but the thing was done, and done thoroughly.

Then Bill filled a pipe and smoked it for a time, while watching the filmy eyes of his hound. Presently he rose and brought more water in his hat. This he held under Jess's muzzle in such a position as to enable her to loll her tongue in it, and lap a little. The gratitude which shone in her eyes was very touching and unmistakable. Bill waited for another quarter of an hour, and then he stooped over the black hound and raised her bodily in his arms with great care, and much as a German nurse carries a baby. In this position, and stopping occasionally for short rests, Bill carried Jess the whole way back to the camp, a distance of about three and a half miles. (The course taken by the kangaroo had been a curve which ended rather nearer to the gunyah than it began.) Finn followed, twenty paces behind the man, with head and tail carried low. He was conscious that Jess was sorely smitten.