“Exactly!” said Massett. “And four men going without sleep for ten nights is equal to one man going without sleep forty nights, which would kill any man. Practically, Fluff has killed a man, and is a murderer, and as you are responsible for him, it is the same as if you were a murderer yourself; and as you were one of the four who did not sleep, you may also be said to have committed suicide. But we do not mean to give you into the hands of the law until we have remonstrated with you. But we feel deeply, and the more so because you could easily give us some nights of sleep in which to recuperate.”
“If you can tell me how,” I said, “I will gladly do it. I need sleep more at this minute than I ever needed it in my life.”
“Very well,” said Massett; “just get out your shotgun and show it to Fluff. When he sees the gun he will run. He will take wings like a duck, and while he is away we can get a few nights' rest. That will be something. And if we are not in good condition by that time, you can show him the shotgun again. Why!” he exclaimed, as he grew enthusiastic over his idea, “you can keep Fluff eternally on the wing!”
I felt that I needed a vacation from Fluff. I unchained him and went in to get my shotgun. Then I showed him the shotgun, and we had two good nights of sleep. After that, whenever we felt that we needed a few nights in peace, I just showed Fluff the shotgun and he went away on one of his flying trips.
But it was Brownlee—Brownlee knew all about dogs—who first called my attention to what he called the periodicity of Fluff.
“Now, you would never have noticed it,” he said one day when Murchison and I were sitting on my porch with him, “but I did. That is because I have studied dogs. I know all about dogs, and I know Fluff can run. This is because he has greyhound blood in him. With a little wolf. That is why I studied Fluff, and how I came to notice that every time you show him the shotgun he is gone just forty-eight hours. Now, you go and get your shotgun and try it.”
So I tried it, and Fluff went away as he always did; and Brownlee sat there bragging about how Fluff could run, and about how wonderful he was himself to have thought of the periodicity of Fluff.
“Did you see how he went?” he asked enthusiastically. “That gait was a thirty-mile-an-hour gait. Why, that dog travels—he travels—” He took out a piece of paper and a pencil and figured it out. “In forty-eight hours he travels fourteen hundred and forty miles! He gets seven hundred and twenty miles from home!”
“It doesn't seem possible,” said Murchison. “No,” said Brownlee frankly, “it doesn't.” He went over his figures again. “But that is figured correctly,” he said. “If—but maybe I did not gauge his speed correctly. And I didn't allow for stopping to turn around at the end of the out sprint. What we ought to have on that dog is a pedometer. If I owned a dog like that, the first thing I would get would be a pedometer.”
I told Brownlee that if he wished I would give him Fluff, and he could put a pedometer, or anything else, on him; but Brownlee remembered he had some work to do and went home.