Finn the wolfhound

by A. J. Dawson

Black-tip and half a dozen of his comrades seized upon the carcase of the tyrant and dragged it away down the trail. I cannot say what was done with the remains of Lupus, the terrible son of Tasman; but Finn and Warrigal saw them no more, and for three days after that night of the slaying of Lupus, the bush-folk saw nothing of the Wolfhound. They saw Warrigal hunt alone each evening and, doubtless with thoughts of Finn in their minds, they respected her trail, and sought no speech of her, tempting though the sight of the Mount Desolation belle was to the young bucks of the pack. These young bloods, by the way, began to mutter now of the desirability of banding together to beard old Tasman in his den, and rid themselves of the shadow and tradition of tyranny, as well as its actuality. But the counsel of the elders strongly favoured delay. "Let us wait and see what the Great One will do when he is healed of his wounds," was what they thought, and, after their own fashion, said to the ambitious youngsters.

[CHAPTER XXVIII]

DOMESTIC LIFE IN THE MOUNTAIN DEN

If a man succeeded in getting himself as much chopped about as Finn had been since the evening of his departure from the boundary-rider's gunyah and the severance of his connection with the world of men-folk, he would require weeks of careful nursing and doctoring before he could be said to have recovered. Fortunately for the people of the wild, who have neither nurses nor doctors, and whose ways of life do not permit of prolonged periods of rest, recovery from wounds is not so serious a business with them as it is with us.

When the Wolfhound and his admiring mate between them had thoroughly licked and cleansed his numerous wounds, he stretched himself deliberately across the rear corner of the den, and there lay, sleeping soundly, until the next morning was well advanced. His body was lacerated by the wounds of three considerable fights: the fight with Black-tip and his friend; the sufficiently violent struggle with the mother-kangaroo; and lastly, the most serious fight of the Wolfhound's life, which had ended in the death of Lupus. But even the ten hours which Finn gave to sleep--he opened his eyes two or three times during that period, but did not move--brought a wonderful change in the aspect of these numerous wounds. They had advanced some distance in the direction of healing already. Now they were submitted to another thorough licking. Then Finn crept out into the sunlight beside the cave's mouth, and slept again, fitfully, till evening came. Then he sat up and licked all his wounds over again with painstaking and scrupulous care. They were healing nicely, and the healing process made Finn as stiff and sore as though he had had rheumatics in every joint in his body. So he crept painfully into the den again, and lay down to sleep once more, while Warrigal, with a friendly, wifely look at her lord, went out hunting.

In this way three full days and nights passed, and on the fourth night Finn killed for himself--a small kill, and not far from home, but a kill, none the less, that required a certain agility, of which he already found himself quite capable. In the matter of strength and vital energy the Wolfhound had immense reserves to draw upon--greater reserves, really, than any of the wild folk possessed; for, in his youth, he had never known scarcity of food, or lack of warmth, or undue exposure; and, on the contrary, his system had been deliberately built up and fortified by the best sort of diet that the skill and science of man could devise. Finn could not have stood as much killing as a dingo, and still have lived; for the dingo is as hard an animal to kill as any that walks upon four legs. But, as against that, the Wolfhound could have stood a far greater living strain than any dingo. He had more to feed upon in himself. For actual toughness under murderous assault a dingo could have beaten Finn; yet in a test of staying power, an ordeal of long endurance, the Wolfhound would have won easily, by reason of his greater reserve of strength and vitality.

From this point onward, Finn's wounds troubled him but very little, and in the healing air of that countryside they soon ceased to be apparent to the eye. An ordinary dingo would assuredly have been obliged to fight many fights before obtaining ascendancy over the Mount Desolation pack; but the mastery fell naturally to Finn without calling for any effort upon his part. He had slain the redoubtable old leader and tyrant of the pack. He had soundly trounced one of the strongest among the fully-grown young dingoes, Black-tip, and killed another in single-handed fight against two. Now, he administered condign punishment to two or three young bucks who ventured to attempt familiarity with Warrigal, but for fighting he was not called upon. Most of the pack had taken good measure of his prowess on the night of the slaying of Lupus, and that was enough for them, so far as mastery went. Further, the pack found Finn a generous leader, a kingly sort of friend; slow to anger, and merciful even in wrath; open as the day, and never, in any circumstances, tyrannical or aggressive. Then in the matter of his kills, Finn was generosity itself. As a hunter of big game he was more formidable than any three dingoes, and, withal, never rapacious. Three portions he would take from his kill; one to satisfy his own hunger, one for Warrigal to satisfy her hunger upon, and a third to be set aside and taken back to the den against the time when Warrigal should care to dispose of it. For the rest, be his kill what it might, Finn made the pack free of it.

But no sort of temptation seemed strong enough to take the Wolfhound near to the haunts of men. It came to be understood that Finn would not touch sheep, and, reasoning it out amongst themselves, the rest of the pack accepted this as a prohibition meant to apply to all of them; so that Finn's mastership was an exceedingly good thing for the squatters and their flocks all through the Tinnaburra. But a full-grown kangaroo, no matter how heavy and strong in the leg, never seemed too much for Finn; and so, all dingoes liking big game better than small, it came about that every night saw the Mount Desolation dingoes hunting in pack formation at the heels of the great Wolfhound. They scorned the lesser creatures whose flesh had fed them hitherto, and expected to taste wallaby or kangaroo flesh every night. Finn thoroughly enjoyed the hunting, and did not care how many fed at his kill, so that his mate and he had ample.

Once, the two youngest members of the pack, puppies quite new to the trail, were attacked and driven from the remains of a big kill the leader had made by an outlier, a strange dingo from some other range. The youngsters, bleeding and yelping, carried their woes to the scrub below the mountain, and within the hour Finn learned of it. Followed by Black-tip and one or two others of the more adventurous sort, he set out upon the trail of the outlier, now full fed, ran it down at the end of four or five miles' hard galloping, pinned the unfortunate creature to the earth and shook it into the long sleep, almost before they had come to a standstill together. This was true leadership the pack felt, a thing Lupus would never have done; something to be placed to the great Wolfhound's credit, and not forgotten. The mother of the whelps that were attacked, a big, light-coloured dingo, with sharp, prick ears, was particularly grateful to Finn.