Presently, flinging himself at his master’s feet, the dog lay there, moaning and sobbing, his swift tongue caressing the man’s dusty shoes, his furry body quivering from nose to tail in hysterical bliss. There he lay while Trent leaned over and laid both calloused hands on his head, stroking him and talking to him in the pleasant, slow tones the collie loved.
“Buff!” muttered the man, swallowing hard. “Buff! Why, I didn’t think anyone on earth cared that much about anything! Come up here, old friend! You’re shaking as if you had ague. How did you find me? Have you been waiting at home for me ever since? Or have you been living with—with her?”
Buff, his paroxysm spent, crouched at Trent’s feet, his silken head pressed against his master’s knee, his upraised eyes scanning the man’s face in adoration. From time to time he shivered and moaned.
He had come to the end of the trail—the gloriously happy end of the horrible long trail. And he understood now why his queer sixth sense had summoned him hither, from the far-off farm where for weeks he had lived so placidly. The master-call had come to him. He had obeyed it. For it had been stronger than he.
And it had led him to his god. That was all Buff knew or cared to know.
And now, still talking to his dog, still petting him, Michael Trent took up again his homeward trudge. But there was life in his step. Fatigue seemed to have fallen away from him. The ludicrous worship of a dog had somehow made life over and had changed depression to hope.
Following his old custom—immemorial among lonely men who own dogs—Trent talked to Buff as they went along, as though to another human—knowing the collie could not get the sense of one word in ten, yet glad to have this vent for his own yearning for expression.
“The start of it all is pretty hazy to me, Buff,” he rambled on, in the soft monotone that was music to the dog. “I saw Hegan and Gates in the doorway. One minute I was fighting with them. The next minute I was in the smelly fo’cas’le of a tramp steamship. I was sick. And I was aching all over. I had been shanghaied. The next three months were unadulterated hell. We were bound for Honolulu by way of the Horn, Buff. And the crew was only one degree better than the captain and the mate. Let’s let it go at that.
“A chap named Carney and I got to be pals. We broke ship together at San Francisco on the way back. And we made most of the transcontinental trip on brake beams. Brake beams aren’t flowery beds of ease, Buff. Keep off them. Carney had got a bit of the story about me, from a man who was the mate’s pal between voyages. It seems a fellow who was in prison down at Logan with Gates and Hegan helped them engineer my shanghaiing. He told them where to take me. And they loaded me on a launch of his, down the river to the harbour and sold me to the captain. He was just weighing anchor. And he was short-handed.
“Hegan and Gates were planning to keep me out of the way and to let my stock starve and my crops go to wrack—as most likely they have, for nobody was likely to get to our out-of-the-way farm in time to prevent it. Then they were going to lay low for a few months, and after that they were coming back to Boone Lake and set fire to the house and barns. Most likely they’ve done it before now. Nice home-coming, hey, Buff? We’re dead broke, most likely, you and I. But we’ve got each other, anyhow. And that’s more than I dared hope for.”