But the talk was not always about sheep, when the folds or the pens were visited, or “Him and his dog” walked with Nutt and other shepherds over the open lands, in the wind and the weather.
One day Job had been busy sheepwashing, and the talk turned on dogs, as it often did.
“’Tis wonderful what they knows. What don’t ’em know? I says. See that Scot I had—the one afore this un. Well, I was down a-sheepwashing, same as I’ve been just. One o’ the full-mouthed sheep as we had then broke away, and went straight over river, and it ain’t very narrow there, as you minds. She got up on the further bank and stud. And Scot, he looks at me, and across at the sheep, and then at me again. I know’d, right enough, what he wanted. He wanted to go over and fetch that sheep back. But I ’ouldn’t let un, for a bit. And he kept a-looking and a-looking, same as any one might speak. So I just moved my head, like; there was no call to do no more. And off he set in the water, and swam river, ketched the sheep by the throat—oh, no, he didn’t hurt un, no fear!—dragged un to the bank, and brought un over, right enough: he did, though.”
“Well, ’twas like this,” he continued, after a laugh. “A gen’leman was a-rowing by in a boat at the time. And he comes across to our side, when he sees what Scot ‘a’ done, and he says, ‘Shepherd,’ he says, ‘I’ll have that dog off you, if you’ve a mind.’ And with that he puts three golden sovereigns on the bank at my feet, where we was busy a-sheepwashing. So I looks at the sovereigns, and then at he, and says to un, with a laugh—I says, ‘No Sir.’ Lord, how he did pray me to let un have that dog!
“Then it come about this way. That evening we was a-coming down through the village, and passed ‘The Crown’—that was, Scot and me—and there stood the same gen’leman at the door. So he comes across the road, seeing me, and he says, ‘Well, shepherd,’ he says, ‘will you part with the dog now, for, if so be as you will, I’ll make it five instead of three?’ he says. And that’s truth. And I just looked he between the eyes, like, and says, ‘Part with my dog, Sir?’ I says. ‘Why, Sir, if I wus to part with he, I’ll tell ye what he’d do—he’d pine and die—he’d just pine away and die.’ And with that I passed on, and left un. Dogs—well, sheep, if you do please to understand, is sheep; but dogs is dogs, and God Almighty do know as they be wonderful.”
“It’s not all dogs, though, that are as shepherds’ dogs, Nutt—or capable of being.”
Nutt shook his head. The two men and their dogs were on the hillside, with two hundred and fifty tegs moving before them. The sheep were walking with a wide front, but in single files, following those parallel tracks that had marked this steep hillside for centuries, to puzzle strangers.
“You can’t make a shepherd’s dog out of every dog, can you?”
“Perhaps not, in your meaning. But I do know I could train a’most any dog, if as I’d be so minded.”
Scot was on ahead, where he should be. Murphy was close to heel.