The Heart of a Dog

by Albert Payson Terhune

Of course, by day Bobby could avoid them—and he did—by lying close in his den. And at night his amazingly keen sense of smell enabled him to skirt them, out of gun-shot range, as they waited at barn door or at fold gate. But such necessity for caution played havoc with his chances for easily acquired food. And for the most part he had to fall back on rabbit-catching or to travelling far afield. This, until the thickening of foliage made his hunting excursions safer from detection by human eye.

There was sufficient reason for all this patrolling of the district. During the past few months word had seeped through the farm country that a wolf was at large in the long wolfless region; and that he was slaughtering all manner of livestock, from pullets to newborn calves.

No dog, it was argued, could be the killer. For no known dog could slay so silently and cover his tracks with such consummate skill. Nor could a fox carry away a lamb of double its own weight. The marauder must be a wolf. And old-timers raked up yarns of the superhumanly clever exploits of lone wolves, in the days when populous Midwestburg was a trading post.

The county Grange took up the matter and offered a bounty of fifty dollars for the wolf’s scalp and ears. It was a slack time on the farms—the period between woodcutting and early planting. It was a slack time in Midwestburg, too; several mills having shut down for a couple of months.

Thus, farmers and operatives amused themselves by making a try for the fifty dollars and for the honour of potting the super-wolf. It was pleasant if profitless sport for the hunters. But it cut down Bobby’s rations; until farm work and reopening mills called off the quest. Then life went on as before; after a buckshot graze on the hip had taught the collie to beware of spring guns and to know their scent.

So the fat summer drowsed along. And so autumn brought again to the northern air the tang which started afresh the splendid luxuriance of the tawny coat which Bobby had shed during the first weeks of spring.

Late in December the dog had a narrow escape from death. A farmer, furious at the demise of his best Jersey calf, went gunning afresh for the mysterious wolf. With him he took along a German police dog—this being before the days when that breed was de-Germanised into the new title of “shepherd dog.” He had borrowed the police dog for the hunt, lured by its master’s tales of his pet’s invincible ferocity.

Man and dog had searched the woods in vain all day, some five miles to north of Bobby’s cave. At early dusk they were heading homeward through a rock gulch.

The wind was setting strong from the north. Midway through the gulch the police dog halted, back abristle, growling far down in his throat. The man looked up.

As he did so, Bobby topped the cliff which formed the gulch’s northerly side. The collie was on his way to a farm in the valley beyond, which he had not visited for so long a time that its occupants might reasonably be supposed to have relaxed some of their unneighbourly vigilance. The wind from the north kept him from smelling or hearing the two in the gully a hundred feet to south of him.