For consistency’s sake and for the dog’s sake Chet should still have punished Job—should still have made him understand that to break shot was iniquity. But—Chet was human and much too warm-hearted to be a disciplinarian. Perhaps he is not to be blamed for praising Job after all. Certainly the man did praise the dog, so that Job’s dog brain was given again to understand that if he chased a bird and caught it he would be applauded. The fault dwelt in him thereafter.
“I tried to break him all his life,” Chet will say. “I put a rope on him and a choke collar and I shook him up—everything I knew. It wan’t no good. But it was my fault in the beginning. I never really blamed Old Tantry—never could.”
IV
This is not properly the story of Job’s youth or of his life, but of his aging and the death of him. Nevertheless there was much in his life that was worth the telling. His reputation rests not on Chet’s word alone—the village knew him and was proud of him. His renown began in his third year in deep winter when Chet and Jim Saladine went fishing one day through the ice on Sebacook Pond. Chet and Saladine became separated, one on either side of the lower end of the pond, and Jim had the pail of bait. Chet made Job go after the pail clear across the pond and fetch it to him and take it back to Saladine again. The dog’s sagacity and understanding, evidenced then and chronicled by Saladine at Bissell’s store that night, were to wax thereafter for half a dozen years; and even when the dog grew old his understanding never waned.
It was in his ninth year that Job had his greatest day—a day into which he crowded epic deeds enough to make heroes of half a dozen dogs. And the tale of that day may perhaps be worth the telling.
Chet had taken Job out the night before to try for a partridge in the fringes of the wood below the farm. They were late in starting, but within fifteen minutes Job was marking game and just at sunset the bird rose and wheeled toward the thickets of the wood. Chet had a snap shot; he took it and he saw the bird’s legs drop and dangle before it disappeared. He knew what that meant. A body wound, a deadly wound. The bird would fly so long as its wings would function, then set its pinions and glide in a long slant to earth, and when it struck ground it would be dead.
He sent Job into the wood, himself followed the dog, and he was in haste, for dark was already coming down. He hunted till he could no longer see—found nothing. In the end he called Job in, and the dog reluctantly abandoned the search at Chet’s command and followed his master back to the farm.
Two Rockland men telephoned that evening asking if they might come to the farm next day and try for birds; and Chet, who can always find time for a day’s gunning, bade them come. Doctor Gunther, who was telephoning, said: “Hayes and I’ll be there by half past eight. Mind if we bring our dogs?”
“Mind? No,” said Chet. “Sure!”
“They’re wild,” said the doctor, “but I’d like to have them work with Job—do them good.”