Chapter Sixteen.
The New Recruit.
The dog had been lying for hours watching the sleepers, who had lain perfectly unconscious of the presence of such a sentry and guardian, while he had crouched there with his muzzle almost touching Marcus’ breast, pricking up his ears at the slightest sound made by some nocturnal food-seeking creature, and uttering a low sigh of content as he settled himself down again.
Several times over he had heard some sound which he could not understand, and upon these occasions he sprang up, smothering the low growl that tried for exit, and seeming to understand the necessity for caution, he began to reconnoitre in the direction from which the suspicious noise had come.
Had anybody been there to watch the dog, what they had seen would have excited wonder at the amount of reason that the animal displayed; not that Lupe, big wolf-hound, one of the kind kept by the peasantry in the far-back past for the protection of their flocks, was anything exceptional, for plenty of dogs at the present time are ready to display an instinct that is almost human.
Point out some very human act, and there are plenty who will tell you either that it is the result of teaching, or that it has come naturally from the dog’s long continued intercourse with man. One ventures to think that it is something more than teaching that makes a shut-out dog wait till he sees what he considers to be a suitable stranger whom he has never seen before, and then trot up to him and begin to gambol and lead him on till the gate or door is reached, stopping short then and saying as plainly as a dog can speak in barks—not the most expressive language in the world—Open it and let me in.
Lupe was evidently a dog that could reason in his way, and attributing two of these interruptions of the night to the presence of wolves that had come prowling down from the hills, he set off cautiously, with the thick, dense hair bristling up about his neck, his armour against his deadly enemy’s teeth, and his black gums retiring to display his trap-like jaws full of glistening ivory teeth. And all the time, in spite of his efforts, there was a low, deep sound like young thunder rumbling somewhere in his chest.
But in each case, before he had gone far, Lupe’s reason told him that his natural enemies did not come prowling down from the mountains during the soft summer nights, but waited till their hunger was sharpened by the frosts of winter, and that he was over-anxious regarding the safety of those he had come so far to find, judging rightly that the sounds he had heard and magnified were only caused by some innocent little animal which did not smell in the least like a wolf. So he trotted slowly back, making sounds suggestive of mutterings against his own stupidity, and dropped quietly down once more to watch.
“Why, Serge,” cried Marcus, “how could that dog manage to find us all this distance from home?”
“I dunno,” said the old soldier, stooping down to caress the savage-looking beast in his customary way, which was to bang him heavily on both shoulders with his great, horny hand, the blows given being such as would have made an ordinary dog howl; but their effect upon Lupe was to make him half close his eyes, open his wide jaws, and loll out his long, lambent tongue, which curled up at the end; and, as it quivered in the fresh morning light, he rolled over upon his back and began patting playfully at Serge’s hand.