"The Indians had the right idea of a hereafter," mused Dan Pelly. "To them the next world was a happy hunting ground. This world is no longer fit for a white man to live in. It's getting too civilized. Travel as far as you will for good trout-fishing and upland hunting and you'll find some scrub there ahead of you in a flivver. Get out on your own ground at dawn on the day the shooting season opens—and you'll find empty shotgun shells a week old. Tim, old pal, the more I see of some men the more I love you."
Tim—or, to accord him his registered name. Tiny Tim—ran his cool muzzle into Dan Pelly's horny palm and rested it there. Just rested it and spoke never a word, for Tiny Tim was one of those rare dogs who know when their masters are troubled of soul and forbear to weary their loved ones with unnecessary outbursts of affection or sympathy. He leaned his shoulder against Dan's knee and rested his muzzle in Dan's hand as who should say: "Well, man alone is vile. Here I am and I'll stick, depend upon it."
Tiny Tim was an English setter and the last surviving son of Keepsake, the greatest bitch Dan Pelly had ever seen or owned. Dan had wept when an envious scoundrel had poisoned her the night before a field trial up Bakersfield way. All of her puppies out of Kenwood Boy had survived, and all had made history in dogdom. Three of them had been placed—one, two, three—in the Derby. The other two had been the runners-up, and the least promising of these runners-up had been Tiny Tim.
Tim had been the runt of the litter and as if his physical deficiency had not been sufficient handicap, he had grown into a singularly unbeautiful dog. He had a butterfly nose, one black ear, a solid white coat with the exception of a black spot as big as a man's hand just over the root of his tail; and his tail was his crowning misfortune. Dog fanciers like a setter with a merry tail, but Tiny Tim carried his very low when he ran that Derby, and he had never carried it very high since. As if to offset the tragedy of his tail, however, Tiny Tim ran with a high head, for he had, tucked away in that butterfly nose, a pair of olfactory nerves that carried him unerringly to birdy ground. He could always manage to locate a bird lying close in cover that had been thoroughly prospected by other dogs.
Dan Pelly had sold Tiny Tim's litter mates at a fancy figure after that memorable Derby, but for homely Tiny Tim there were no bidders; so Dan Pelly expressed him back to the kennels. He was homely and lacked style and dash in his bird work; he appeared a bit nervous and uncertain and inclined to limit his range, and it seemed to Dan that as a field trial prospect he was so much inferior to other dogs that it was scarcely worth while spending any time or money on his education. However, he did have a grand nose; when he grew older Dan hoped he might outgrow his nervousness and be steadier to shot and wing; in view of his undoubted instinct for birds, it seemed the part of wisdom to make a "plug" shooting dog of him. Every dog trainer keeps such an animal, if not for his own use then for the use of stout old bank presidents and of retired brewers whose idea of the sport of hunting is to come home with "the limit." A grand hunting dog means little in the lives of such "sportsmen"; they want a dog that will work close to the gun, thus enabling them to proceed leisurely, as becomes a fat man. It is no pleasure to them to be forced to walk down a steep hill, clamber across a deep gully and climb the opposite hill to kill a bird their dog has been pointing for fifteen or twenty minutes. It is reserved for idealists like old Dan Pelly to thrill to the work of a dog like that. The dead bird is a secondary consideration.
So Tiny Tim had been sent back to the kennel, and now, in his fifth year, he was still on Dan Pelly's hands. But that was no fault of Tiny Tim's. And he had never again been entered in a field trial. That was no fault of his, either. Dan Pelly had merely gone out of the dog business, and Tiny Tim, his last dog and best beloved, was neither a field trial dog nor yet a potterer for fat bankers and retired brewers who came down to Dan Pelly's place for a week-end shoot in the season. No, Tiny Tim had never achieved that disgrace. Dan Pelly had given up dog training and dog boarding and dog raising and dog trading after his return from that field trial where old Keepsake's litter had brought him more money than he had ever seen at any one time before. Consequently, Tiny Tim was Dan's own shooting dog and Dan had trained him not for filthy lucre but for that love and companionship for a good dog which idealists of the Dan Pelly type can never repress.
Tiny Tim had known but one master, and but one code of sportsmanship; he responded to but one set of signals; he had never been curbed in his range or speed; he had never been scolded or shouted at or beaten, but he had received much of love and caressing and praise. He had been fed properly, housed properly, wormed regularly every three months, bathed every Saturday afternoon and brushed and combed almost every day, and as a result he was an extremely healthy dog, albeit a small dog, even among small, field type English setters. Dan Pelly loved him just a little bit more because he was a runt and because, though royally bred, his bearing was a bit ignoble.
"I'll have none of your bench type setters," Dan was wont to remark when speaking of setters. "I could weep from just lookin' at them—the poor boobs, with their domed foreheads and their sad, bloodshot eyes and dribbling chops. Too heavy and slow for anybody but a fat man. An hour's hard going of a warm day and they're done. I'll have a light, neat little setter for a long, hard, drivin' day of it."
Dan Pelly's choice of dog was an index to his character. He, too, was a light, compact little man, with something of a lost dog's wistfulness about him. Dan didn't like pointers. They were too aggressive, too headstrong, too noisy for him. The sight of a bulldog or a bull terrier or an Airedale made him angry, for such dogs could always be depended upon to pounce upon a shooting dog and worry him. Toy dogs depressed him. They seemed so unworthy of human attention and moreover they had no brains.
This morning Dan Pelly was more than ordinarily unhappy. He needed five hundred dollars worse than he needed salvation . . .