He could tell whether an animal had been walking or running, whether it had been chasing something or was being chased, or whether it was a deer or a doe. It made these winter walks mighty interesting to the children.
Just before Christmas the Ranger went to the settlement on his snow-shoes to get the mail. When he came back, out of his coat pocket tumbled a yellow ball of fur.
“A dog!” his wife exclaimed.
“‘Jest an ornery pup,’ the grocer says. But I figured he might came in handy with our small fry,” by which he meant the children. “They’re missing that cub so mightily.”
“I don’t believe anything will ever crowd Fuzzy-Wuzz out of their affections,” she smiled back.
“Well, I’ll feel safer about them, anyhow, if we have a dog about the place.”
The children welcomed him ardently. He was a friendly, wriggling fellow, was Wiggledy,—as they promptly named him. Just a yellow puppy, part terrier and part something else, the Ranger thought him. But a love-hungry heart beat in that furry chest. He was soon pals with both children.
Young animals can generally be trained to eat out of the same dish. But Ring-tail was a half grown cat when Wiggledy arrived, and it was too late, so far as she was concerned, to make friends between them.
Wiggledy soon came to look upon everything the children owned as under his especial guardianship. One day when he and Ring-tail had been shut in the barn while the children had their lessons, he barked so hard that their mother sent them to see what the trouble was.
They opened the barn door and called him, but he would not come. Instead, he kept running to the rain water barrel in the far corner of the vacant horse stall, and back again. “Hush your noise!” scolded the little girl. But he only set his teeth in her skirt and tried to pull her after him. At last she came with him.