Joel Fenno’s thin lips set tightly. His old eyes were slits. He was about to do the foolishest thing of his career. The saner half of him told him so and reviled him scathingly for it. But sanity went by the board, in face of that awful pleading in his belovèd dog’s eyes.
“Hold on, friend!” he interposed, as the cursing Hibben peered murderously about the floor for his lost pistol. “You’ll stop temptin’ Providence to swat this shack with lightin’, as a punishment for that string of hellfire words you’re bellerin’; and you’ll listen to me. You paid seventy-five dollars for this poor sick puppy you’re tryin’ to kill. Well, I’m buyin’ her off’n you, for seventy-five dollars. Get that? I’m buyin’ her! Now shut up an’ stand quiet-like, while I traipse indoors and git the cash for you.... I’m doin’ this out’n my own pocket!” he snarled at the thunderstruck Royce. “Not out of the partnership funds. Josh me all you like. I don’t care a hoot for your blattin’. I’ve—I’ve took a sort of fancy to the pup.”
Five minutes later Hibben was driving away; grumbling but appeased. Joel, awkward and shamefaced, was guiding Nellie’s questing nose to a saucer of bread and milk. Royce Mack was looking on, bereft of speech and incredulous. Treve, too, was looking on; a glint of utter contentment in his deepset eyes. Joel addressed his blank-faced partner, glumly:
“Now I s’pose you’ll be makin’ my life rotten by hect’rin’ me ’bout this! Well, I done it to show you there c’n be another dog on this ranch as wuthless as your mis’ble Treve. At that, I doubt if she’s as wuthless as what he is. She ain’t lived so long on the same ranch with you.”
Followed the first peaceful, not to say beautifully happy, time that Nellie had ever known. From the moment Fraser Colt had discovered her blindness—and thus her absolute uselessness—she had been kicked and maltreated and made to feel that her only use in life was to serve as a vent for her breeder’s ill-temper.
Colt had continued to feed and lodge her, only in the well-founded hope of cheating some one into buying her. He and his kennels had been permanently disqualified by the American Kennel Club for crooked dealings. So, as he was forced to go out of the dog business, anyway, he had no fear of reprisal, in selling the blind puppy to some novice.
Under decent treatment now, Nellie’s brain and spirits bloomed forth. Swift to learn and coming from a breed that has more than normal intelligence, her progress was amazing. Ever beside her, to fend off trouble and to show her the way, was Treve. With unfailing patience Treve watched over her and trained her. Joel looked on with secret admiration and patiently contributed his own quota to the wise training.
Nellie could never hope to see. But, with almost miraculous intuition she learned to find her way about. A collie’s ears and nose are more to him than are his eyes. Nellie’s absence of sight intensified tenfold her power of scent and of hearing.
She could track either of the partners for miles, nose to earth; nearly always forewarned in some occult manner to avoid obstacles in her path. She was even, in a small way, of help to Treve in rounding up sheep. And ever that strange instinct—a sort of sixth sense—developed more and more, as her brain and experience developed.