To Royce, the old chap grumbled loudly about the folly of wasting time in such fashion. He used to scowl in disgust at Treve and make as though to repel the collie’s playful offers of friendship. Not to Royce or to any one else would Fenno have admitted that he had so far broken the crust of his own grouchiness as to entertain a genuine yearning for the comradeship of a mere dog.
Mack was deceived by Joel’s attitude of lofty contempt; even though Treve was not. The fact that Joel ignored him or glowered at him, in public, did not offset to Treve the pleasanter fact that he fed him choice bits from his own dinner plate or patted his head with awkward furtiveness when Royce’s back was turned.
One morning, as spring was dawning, the two partners sat at their sunrise breakfast, preparatory to starting out for a day of “marking,” at their Number Three camp. Treve’s usual place, at meals, was on the puncheon floor; to the left of Royce Mack’s seat at the table. This morning, the big dog was absent.
“Where’s Treve?” asked Fenno, with elaborate carelessness; adding, surlily: “It’s good to have one meal in peace, without a measly cur to take away my appetite by scratchin’ fleas and watchin’ every mouthful I eat.”
“I don’t know where he is,” Mack answered. “Around, outside, somewhere, most likely. These warm spring nights when we leave the doors open, he’s apt to trot out, as soon as he’s awake. If it takes your appetite away to have him here when we eat, I can tell him not to come in at meals. He never needs to be told anything but once.”
Royce spoke, aggrievedly. Treve was his chum, his loyal and loved comrade. It irked him to hear Fenno’s incessant grumblings at the great dog’s presence as a housemate.
“Oh, let him keep on comin’ to table if you’re a mind to!” muttered Joel, ungraciously. “If it makes a hit with you to have him spraddled out on the floor beside you when you eat an’ at the foot of your bunk at nights and traipsin’ along after you all day—why, go ahead. We settled that, long ago. I’d rather put up with it than have you sore about it or bickerin’ an’ jawin’ at me all the time, because your purp can’t be treated like he was folks. I c’n go on standin’ it, I reckon. I used to figger that this outfit was a workin’ proposition; an’ that every man and every critter on the Dos Hermanos ranch was s’posed to hustle all day and every day fer his board and keep. But if it amooses you to keep a dog that’s just a silly pet an’ to waste a lot of good work-time playin’ around with him—”
“Treve does his share of the ranch work, and more than his share!” declared Royce. “You know that as well as I do. And you wouldn’t have been here, grouching and whining, if he hadn’t saved you from dying, out on the Ova trail. Yes, and we’d have been shy forty-seven sheep, last fall, if he hadn’t herded ’em safe home here, when they got lost up on the Peak. Oh, what’s the use? We’ve been over all this a trillion times. Either say outright you don’t want him in the house at meals and at night; or else quit nagging about it.”
Joel Fenno rebuked this unwonted tirade from his pleasant-tempered partner by sinking into grieved silence. Surreptitiously, he hid under a slice of bread two tempting morsels of pork that he had been saving to give to Treve.
Seldom was the collie absent from meals, and Fenno missed him. He enjoyed feeding the big young dog on the sly, when Mack was not looking. The loveless, sour old man had never before made a pet or a chum of any dumb animal. He was unreasonably vexed that Treve should not be there to eat the bits of meat he had set aside for him.