“If you’re askin’ my opinion,” he said, “I’ll tell you that I know they have.” He was silent. “I know that animals has the same thing we’ve got,” he continued–“that thing we call the soul–but they’ve got it in smaller proportions, so to speak. It’s easy as falling off a bucking bronc. Take old Tom out there. Take that Lady horse that got killed two years ago by rustlers–take any horse, any dumb animal–and I’ll show you in fifteen different ways that they’ve got souls.”
“How?”
The lean man glared. “Now ‘how’!” he snapped. “You give me a mortal pang. Why don’t you never use your eyes once like other and more decent folks? Get the habit. You’ll see there ain’t any difference between animals and humans, only speech, and they’ve got that!”
The large man smiled. “Let’s have it, Bob,” he invited. “Where’ll we look for it first?”
The lean man showed an impatience born of contempt. “Well,” he began, tossing away his cigarette, “in desires, first, then in their power to appreciate, and, finally, in their sense of the worth of things. They have that, and don’t you think they hain’t. But they’ve got the others, too. Animals like to eat and drink and play, don’t they? You know that! And they understand when you’re good to ’em and when you’re cussed mean. You know that. And they know death when they see it, take it from me, because they’re as sensitive to loss of motion, or breathing, or animal heat, as us humans–more so. They feel pain, for instance, more’n we do, because, lackin’ one of the five–or six, if you like–senses, their other senses is keyed up higher’n our’n.”
The Professor looked belligerent. “Get particular!” he demanded.
“I won’t get particular,” snapped the other. “S’pose you wrastle it out for yourself–same as us humans.” Evidently he was still bitter against this man. “That Lady horse o’ mine,” he went on, his eyes twinkling, addressing himself to the others, “she had it all sized about right. She used to say to me, when I’d come close to her in the morning: ‘Well, old sock,’ she’d say, throwin’ her old ears forward, ‘how are you this mornin’?–You know,’ she’d declare, ‘I kind o’ like you because you understand me.’ Then she’d about wipe her nose on me and go on. ‘Wonder why it is that so many of you don’t! It’s easy enough, our language,’ she’d p’int out, ‘but most o’ you two-legged critters don’t seem to get us. It’s right funny! You appear to get ’most everything else–houses, and land, and playin’-cards, and sich. But you don’t never seem to get us–that is, most o’ you! Why, ’tain’t nothin’ but sign language, neither–same as Injuns talkin’ to whites. But I reckon you’re idiots, most o’ you, and blind, you hairless animals, wearin’ stuff stole offen sheep, and your ugly white faces mostly smooth. You got the idee we don’t know nothin’–pity us, I s’pose, because we can’t understand you. Lawzee! We understand you, all right. It’s you ’at don’t understand us. And that’s the hull trouble. You think we’re just a lump o’ common dirt, with a little tincture o’ movement added, just enough so as we can run and drag your loads around for you. Wisht you could ’a’ heard me and old Tom last night, after you’d all turned in, talkin’ on the subject o’ keepin’ well and strong and serene o’ mind. Sign language? Some. But what of it, old whiskers? Don’t every deef-and-dumb party get along with few sounds and plenty of signs? You humans give me mortal distress!’
“And so on,” concluded this lover of animals. “Thus Lady horse used to talk to me every mornin’, tryin’ to make me see things some little clearer. And that’s all animals–if you happen to know the ‘try me’ on their little old middle chamber work.” He fell silent.
The others said nothing. Each sat smoking reflectively, gazing into the dying flames, until one arose and prepared to turn in. Stephen was the last except the Professor and the man with the scrubby beard. And finally the Professor gained his feet and, with a glance at the last figure remaining at the fire, took off his boots and rolled up in his blanket. For a long moment he stared curiously at the other bowed in thought.
“Ain’t you goin’ to turn in?” he finally inquired. “You ain’t et up by nothin’, be you?”