“Like those dogs on Arran Creek, they were perhaps,” the Irishman said, “only sleeker of coat and swifter of foot, I’m thinking.”
“But they couldn’t be faster,” Ted had objected. “The Arran dogs can catch coyotes and jack-rabbits and people have called those the quickest animals that run.”
“Ah,” returned the other with true Irish logic, “those Arran dogs are Russian, they tell me, and these I speak of were of Connemara, and what comes out of Ireland you may be sure, is faster and fairer than anything else on earth.”
Against such reasoning Ted had judged it impossible to argue and had dropped into silence and finally into sleep with the voices of the coyotes and the legend of the lean, white Irish greyhounds still running like swift water through his dreams.
After that he had visited the lonely shepherd whenever he could find time to travel so far. Together they had hunted deer and trapped beaver in the foothills above the Big Basin or, when the sheep had to be moved to new pasture, had spent hours in earnest talk, plodding patiently in the dust after the slow-moving flock. The long habit of silence had taken deep hold upon the Irishman, but with Ted alone he seemed willing to speak freely. It was on one of these occasions that he had given the boy the image of Saint Christopher, “For,” he said, “you are like to be a great roamer and a great traveler from the way you talk, and those who carry the good Saint Christopher with them, always travel safely.”
Now, as Ted thought of illness and pestilence spreading across the thinly settled state, his first and keenest apprehension was for the safety of his friend. His work done, he went quickly back to the house where the doctor was already standing on the door-step again.
“They are not bad cases, either of them,” he was saying to Ted’s aunt. “If they have good care there is no danger, but if they don’t—then Heaven help them, I can’t.”
Ted came close and pulled his sleeve.
“Tell me,” he questioned quickly, “Michael Martin isn’t sick, is he?”
“Michael Martin?” repeated the doctor. “A big Irishman in the cabin at the upper edge of Big Basin? Yes, he’s down, sick as can be, poor fellow, with no one but a gray old collie dog, about the age of himself, I should think, to keep him company.”