Young Royce Mack and old Joel Fenno still kept their headquarters at the lowland ranch house during the hot spell, one or both of them riding up, weekly, into the cooler hill country to inspect the flocks and to see that their three shepherds were taking best advantage of the successive grass stretches.
When it was Royce Mack’s turn to make this periodic tour of the mountain pastures, he always took with him the tawny-gold young collie, Treve. This companionship meant much to both dog and man. For the two were still inseparable chums.
Three little black collies, Zit and Rastus and Zilla, were permanently attached to the flocks; and worked, day and night, with the shepherds, in all weathers. But Treve’s actual sheepdog work was more intermittent. True, in emergencies or in times of extra toil, he was impressed into service with the sheep. But, as a rule, nowadays, he was the ranch house’s guard and the guard of the home-tract folds. He helped, also, in rounding up and driving bunches of sheep to the railroad, and the like. The routine duties fell to Zit and Rastus and Zilla.
Occasionally, for Mack’s benefit, Fenno still complained of this favoritism shown to the big dog. But, since the day when Treve saved him from death under the broiling sun, on the Ova trail, he had privily accepted the collie as a privileged member of the ranch household.
This he did in grudging fashion, as he did all things. It was an ingrained trait of old Fenno’s crusty nature to be grudging of anything and everything; from toothaches to legacies. But, to his own amaze and shame, he had become aware of an odd affection for the big young collie. This fondness he hid from Royce and from Treve himself under a guise of grumpy distaste.
So successfully did Joel mask his new liking for the dog that Mack had no suspicion his partner did not still regard Treve with the impersonal aversion which he felt toward all the world. As for Treve, the dog was as well aware of Fenno’s new attitude of mind toward him as though Joel had spent a lifetime in cultivating his society.
A collie has a queer sixth sense not granted to all dogs. But even a street puppy has the instinct to know what humans like him and what humans do not. Treve, of yore, had known that Fenno had no use for dogs in general, nor for him in particular. Since their ordeal on the Ova trail and during Joel’s brief convalescence from his hurts, the collie recognized that the old man had grown reluctantly to like him.
Formerly, Treve had obeyed Fenno, as part of his daily routine of duty. But never had he accorded to the oldster the slightest mark of personal friendliness. Nowadays, at times, he would stroll up to Joel, with wagging tail, and would thrust his classic nose affectionately into the old fellow’s cupped hand or would lay a white forepaw on his knee or come gamboling across to greet him on a return to the ranch.
Such exhibitions of good-fellowship embarrassed the crochety Joel as much as secretly they delighted him. For the first time in his sixty-odd years, a living creature was proffering active friendship to him. It did funny things to Fenno’s withered sensibilities.
When other humans were present at these manifestations, Joel would thrust the dog aside with a glower or a mutter of disgust. When no fellow-human was in sight, Fenno would look guiltily around him and then give Treve’s head a furtive pat and would whisper: “Nice doggie!” He would do this with as keen a sense of self-contempt as though he were picking a pocket.