“Best thing in the world for them,” Chet agreed. “Let them back him on a few points and it’ll steady them. I’ll look for you.”
In the morning he rose early and busied himself with his chores so that he might be ready when the hunters came. It was not an ideal hunting day. The morning was lowery and overcast and warm and there was a wind from the east that promised fog or rain. With an eye on the clouds Chet worked swiftly. He fed Job in the shed where the dog usually slept and it chanced that he left the door latched so that Job was a prisoner until the others arrived. They were a little ahead of time and Chet asked them to wait a little. He had been picking apples in the orchard behind the shed and he took them out there to see the full barrels of firm fruit. Job went out into the orchard with them and no one of the men noticed that the dog slipped away beyond the barn toward the woods.
When a little later they were ready to start Chet missed the dog. He is a profane man, and he swore and whistled and called. Hayes, the man who had come with Gunther, winked at the doctor and asked Chet: “Is he a self-hunter? Has he gone off on his own?”
“Never did before,” Chet said hotly. His heat was for Job, not for Hayes. “I’ll teach him something!”
He went out behind the barn, still whistling and calling, and the others followed him. Their dogs were in the car in which they had come from Rockland. The three men walked across the garden to the brow of the hill above the river and Chet blew his whistle till he was purple of countenance. The other two were secretly amused, as men are apt to be amused when they find that an idol has feet of clay. For Job was a famous dog.
Hayes it was who caught first sight of him and said, “There he comes now.”
They all looked and saw Job loping heavily up the slope through an open fringe of birches. But it was not till he scrambled over the wall that they saw he bore something in his mouth.
Hayes said, “He’s got a woodchuck.”
Chet, with keener eyes, stared for a moment, then exclaimed exultantly: “He’s got that partridge I killed down there last night! I knew that bird was dead.”
They were still incredulous, even after he told them how he had shot the bird the night before.