Buff: A Collie, and Other Dog-Stories

by Albert Payson Terhune

For perhaps half a mile the dog continued his progress, at first in mad eagerness, but presently in growing indecision and irresolution.

At last he stopped, sniffed the air through vertically lifted nostrils, then trotted back to Klyda. Head a-droop, tail dragging, every line of his grand body expressing the utmost miserable dejection, he crept up to Klyda and crouched before her, his head on her foot. He shuddered, as if in pain; and then whimpered softly, lifting his head for a moment and peering to the northeast.

He had failed. He had awakened with the sudden knowledge of his master’s peril. He had followed the urge of the call. And all at once he had realised that for some reason he could not hope to lead his mistress to the man who so sorely needed her aid. Perplexed, heartsick, he had crawled back; helpless to do more.

Again, Klyda’s brother scoffed at his sister’s certainty that something was amiss with Snowden. So did all others to whom the unhappy woman told the tale. They still scoffed at the idea of any premonition on the part of the dog—but there was an awed note behind their scoffing—when, a few weeks later, a shaky scrawl was received from the absentee; a scrawl written in a base hospital:

“I am laid by the heels for a day or two by a handful of rather nasty little shrapnel-bites that Herr Fritz sprayed me with three nights ago during a reconnoitre. Nothing serious—so you’re not to worry your dear self. I’ll be as good as new in a week or two. The surgeon says so. He says I’ll be lucky if I’m able to claim a wound-chevron on the strength of such a piker injury.

“Here is a funny bit of mental delusion that may amuse you: When I toppled over and lay there in No Man’s Land,—before my men could find me and bring me in,—there was an ungodly lot of racket from the Hun batteries. It almost deafened me. But through it all I believed I could hear—as distinctly as ever I heard anything—the wild barking of old Jock.

“Wasn’t that a quaint trick for a wounded man’s brain to play? Jock has a pretty thunderous bark, but its echo could hardly travel three thousand miles and reach me above the roar of the boche batteries. Yet I heard it. It wasn’t his usual bark, either. It sounded the way it did the time Marise fell down the well, and as it sounded when the house caught fire in the night and he roused us barely in time to put out the blaze. I must have been a bit delirious, of course. But it gave me a queer homey feeling to hear the dear old fellow’s voice—even if I didn’t hear it.”

Klyda looked at the date on the letter. Then she subtracted three days therefrom and computed the time difference between her home and northern France. Then she turned to the little desk-calendar on which, superstitiously, she had marked with a cross the date of her awakening by Jock. After that she showed her brother the letter and the calendar. As I have said, he still scoffed. But there was something of awe in his manner.

It was a shock to Klyda to know her adored soldier was wounded. Yet it was also a joy to know that he was not only in no danger from his wound, but that he was kept, perforce, out of battle, for a time. This knowledge, and the relief from her weeks of foreboding, gave Klyda a curious sense of peace which had not been hers in many a day. Her spirits rebounded to a lightness which was almost hysterical. As the day wore on, her unnatural gaiety and her sense of nearness to Dick increased.

Early in the evening she left the house and strolled out into the white autumn moonlight. She was restless, and she wanted solitude and exercise. Jock rose from his bed on the doormat and ranged alongside her for the anticipated walk.

Crossing the stretch of moon-soaked turf, the two made their way towards a rustic summer-house that stood on a knoll at the far end of the grounds. Here, with Dick, they had been wont to sit, daily, to watch the sunset. And to the old trysting-place, Klyda now strolled.

Jock, like herself, had been gay all day; ever since the arrival of the pencil scrawl from Dick. It was with difficulty now that he curbed his exuberant pace to keep time with hers.