Finn the wolfhound

by A. J. Dawson

After Bill's departure, the crows were the first to descend upon the camp; and they soon had the meat left for Finn torn to shreds and swallowed. Then they swaggered impudently about the fire, picking up crumbs, a process they were in the habit of attending to daily during Finn's absence. The presence of these wicked black marauders gave courage to the waiting dingoes, and they determined to proceed at once with the business in hand: the examination of the dying kangaroo-hound of which they had heard. As for the huge spectral wolf, it was evident that he had no real connection with the camp. Indeed, the bigger of the three dingoes told himself, with a regretful sigh, that this great grey wolf had in all probability dispatched the kangaroo-hound at an early stage of the night, and had been sleeping off the first effects of his orgy, when they first saw him lying near the camp-fire. At all events, the wolf had disappeared.

The three dingoes advanced, still exhibiting caution in every step, but marching abreast, because neither would give any advantage to the others in a case of this sort. When they got to within five-and-twenty paces of the shelter, poor Jess winded them, and it was borne in upon her that the hour of her last fight had arrived. She knew herself unable to run a yard, probably unable to stand; and the dingo scent, as she understood it, had no hint of mercy in it. With an effort which racked her whole frame with burning pain, the helpless bitch turned upon her chest and raised her head so that she might see her doom approaching. She gave a little gulp when her eyes fell upon the stalwart forms of no fewer than three full-grown dingoes, stocky of build, massive in legs and shoulders, plentifully coated, and fanged for the killing of meat. Their eyes had the killing light in them too, Jess thought; and a snarl curled her writhen lips as she pictured her end, stretched helpless there under the bark shelter. Well she knew that even three such well-grown dingoes as these would never have dared to attack her if she had been in normal condition.

Very slowly the three dingoes approached a little nearer in fan-shaped formation, and, with a brave effort, Jess succeeded in bringing forth a bark which ended in something between growl and howl, by reason of the cutting pain it caused her. The three dingoes leaped backward, each three paces, like clockwork machinery. Jess glared out at them from under her thatch of bark, her fangs uncovered, her nose wrinkled, and her short close hair on end. The dingoes watched her thoughtfully, pondering upon her probable reserves of strength. Then, too, there was her shelter; that was endowed with some of the mysterious atmosphere which surrounds man. But the biggest of the dingoes had once stolen half a sheep from a shepherd's humpy, and no disaster had overtaken him. He advanced three feet before his companions, and that spurred them to movement. Again Jess essayed a bark; and this time the predominant note in her cry was so clearly one of anguish that the three dingoes took it almost as an encouragement, for Nature had not endowed them with a sense of what we call pity for weakness or distress. They thought Jess's cry was an appeal for mercy, and mercy was foreign to their blood. As a fact, poor Jess would rather have died a dozen deaths than call once upon a dingo for mercy. It was the pain in her lacerated body, resulting from the attempt to bark, that had introduced that wailing note into her cry. And now, as the dingoes drew nearer, inch by inch, the black kangaroo-hound braced herself to die biting, and to sell her flesh as dearly as might be.

As the snout of the foremost dingo, the largest of the three, showed under the eave of Jess's shelter, she managed to hunch her wounded body a little farther back against the side of the gunyah, meaning thereby to draw the dingo a little farther in, and give herself a better chance of catching some part of him between her jaws. With a desperate effort she drew back her fore-legs a little, raising herself almost into a sitting position against the side of the gunyah. The faint groans that the pain of moving forced from her were of real service to her in a way, for they made the foremost dingo think she was in her death agony, and gave a sort of recklessness to his plunge forward under the thatch. He meant to end the business at once and slake his blood thirst at the hound's throat. Well he knew that hounds do not groan before a dingo's onslaught unless their plight is very desperate.

In the instant of the big dingo's plunge for Jess's throat, several things happened. First, Jess's powerful jaws came together about the thick part of the dingo's right fore-leg, and took firm hold there, while the snarling and now terrified dingo snapped at the back of her neck, the rough edge of the bark thatch on the middle of his back producing in him a horrible sense of being trapped. That was one thing that happened in that instant. Another thing was that the two lesser dingoes between them produced a yelp of pure terror, and, wheeling like lightning, streaked across the clear patch to the scrub, bellies to earth, and tails flying in a straight line from their spines. And the third thing that happened in that instant was the arrival at the end of the gunyah of Finn. The arrival of the Wolfhound was really a great event. There was something elemental about it, and something, too, suggestive of magic. The Wolfhound had caught his first glimpse of the two lesser dingoes as he reached the far side of the clear patch, and, for an instant he had stood still. He was dragging a young wallaby over one shoulder. Then it came over him that these were enemies attacking his crippled friend Jess. He made no sound, but, dropping his burden, flew across the clearing with deadly swiftness. As he reached the end of the gunyah, a kind of roar burst from his swelling chest and, in that instant, the two dingoes flung themselves forward in flight, Finn after them. Five huge strides he took in their rear; and then the power of thought, or telepathy, or something of the sort, stopped him dead in the middle of his stride, and he almost turned a somersault in wheeling round to Jess's assistance.

As Finn plunged forward again toward Jess, the big dingo succeeded by means of a desperate wrench in freeing his leg from the kangaroo-hound's jaws, and with a swift turning movement leaped clear of the shelter. Then the big dingo of the back ranges found himself facing Finn, and realized that he must fight for his life.

The dingo has been called a skunk, and a cur, and a coward, and by most other names that are bad and contemptuous. But the dingo at bay is as brave as a weasel; and no lion in all Africa is braver than a weasel at bay. Finn had brought himself to a standstill with an effort, a towering figure of blazing wrath. He had made one good kill that morning, his blood was hot; the picture of these dogs of the wild kindred attacking his helpless friend had roused to fighting fury every last little drop of blood in his whole great body. Rage almost blinded him. He flung himself upon the big dingo as though he were a projectile of some sort. And then he learned that the creatures born in the wild are swifter than the swiftest of other creatures. He had learned it before, as a matter of fact; he had seen a striking illustration of it only a few days before, when the kangaroo stretched Jess helpless on the ground at a single stroke. Finn only grazed the dingo's haunch, while the dingo slashed a three-inch wound in his right shoulder as he passed. Even while Finn was in the act of turning, the wild dog's fangs clashed again about his flank, ripping his skin as though it were stretched silk.

It may be imagined that Finn's wrath was not lessened, but his blind rage was, and he pulled himself together with a jerk, a cold determination to kill cooling his brain like water. This time he allowed the dingo to rush him, which the beast did with admirable dexterity, aiming low for the legs. Finn plunged for the back of the dingo's neck, and missed by the breadth of two hairs. Then he pivoted on his hind-legs and feinted low for the dingo's legs. The dingo flashed by him, aiming a cutting snap at his lower thigh--for the wild dog was a master of fighting, and worked deliberately to cripple his big opponent and not to kill him outright--and that gave Finn the chance for which he had played in his feint. Next moment his great fangs were buried in the thickly furred coat of the dingo's neck, and his whole weight was bearing the wild dog to earth.

His legs lost to him, by reason of Finn's crushing weight, the frenzy of despair filled the dingo, and he fought like ten dogs, snarling, snapping, writhing, and scratching, all at the same time. Despite Finn's vice-like hold, the dingo did considerable execution with his razor-edged fangs in the lower part of the Wolfhound's fore-legs. But his race was run. Finn gradually shifted his hold, till his front teeth gripped the soft part of the dingo's throat, and then he bit with all the mighty strength of his great jaws, closer, closer, and closer, till the red blood poured out on the ground and the struggles of the wild dog grew fainter and fainter. Finally, Finn gave a great shake of his head, lifting the dingo clear of the ground, and flinging him back upon it, limp and still.

For two whole minutes Finn glared down at the body of the dingo, while licking the blood from his own lips, and working the torn skin of his body backward and forward as though it tickled him. Then he turned to look to Jess. And then an extraordinary thing happened; the sort of thing which does not happen save in the life of a dingo; the thing, in short, that couldn't happen, but that just is, sometimes. That dingo's glazing eyes opened wide, and looked at Finn's back. Then the slain dingo (Finn had almost torn out its throat) dragged itself to its feet and staggered off like a drunken man toward the bush. A feeble snarl escaped from Jess, whose head faced this way. Finn, who had been licking her, wheeled like a cat, and in that amazing moment saw the dingo he supposed he had killed staggering towards the scrub thirty paces distant. Five seconds later the still living dingo was on its back, and its throat was being scattered over the surrounding ground. In his fury Finn did actually tear out the beast's jugular vein, practically severing the head from the trunk, smashing the vertebrae, and tearing open the chest of the dead creature as well.