“That will fetch him, sir, if he’s anywhere within a mile. Dash’d if that isn’t him coming now. See him following our tracks. Here, boy!”
As he spoke a magnificent black and tan collie raised his head from the trail and dashed up to Jack’s side, with every expression of delight and proud success.
Mr. Redgrave was one of those men to whom dogs, horses, children, and others attach themselves with blind, unreasoning confidence. Is it amiability? Has mesmerism any share in the strange but actual fascination? There were many far wiser than he unsought and unrecognized by the classes referred to. In his case the fact, uncomplimentary or otherwise, remained fixed and demonstrable. The sheep-dog in question was introduced to him by an aged Scot, who arrived one day at Gondaree followed by a female collie of pure breed and unusual beauty. Jack, always merciful and sympathetic, had comforted the footsore elder, who carried a large bundle upon his back, at which the dog cast ever and anon a wistful glance. Lowering the pack carefully to the ground before he drained the cheering draught, he wiped his lips, and, untying the knapsack, rolled out, to his host’s wild astonishment, five blind puppies!
“Ye ken, sir, the auld slut here just whelpit a week syne, maist unexpectedly to me. I was sair fashed to make my way doon wi’ sax doggies. But I pledged my word to Maister Stangrove to gang back to Juandah before shearing, and I wadna brak my word—no, not for five poond.”
“But are you going to carry the whole litter another fifty miles?”
“Weel, aweel, sir, I’ll not deny it’s a sair trial; but I brocht lassie here from the bonnie holms o’ Ettrick, where my auld bones will never lie. The wee things come of the bluid of Tam Hogg’s grand dog Sirrah. Forbye they’re maist uncommon valuable here. I never askit less than a pund for ilka ane o’ them yet, and siller’s siller, ye ken.”
“I’ll give you a sov,” said Jack, “for the black and tan pup—him with the spot between the eyes. I suppose we could rear him with an old ewe?”
“He’s the king of this lot, but ye shall have the pick of them a’ even withoot the siller, for the kind word and the good deed you’ve done to the auld failed, doited crater that ance called himsel’ Jock Harlaw of Ettrick. May the Lord do so to me and mair, if I forget it.”
The next day the old man came up, and solemnly delivered over the plump, roly-poly dogling, which, being fostered upon an imprisoned ewe, throve and grew into one of the best dogs that ever circumvented that deceitful and wicked quadruped called the sheep, the measure of whose intelligence has ever been consistently underrated.
The judicious reader will comprehend that, even on a fenced run, a good sheep-dog is valuable, and even necessary. The headlong, reckless system of driving, the cruel, needless terrorising under which “shepherded sheep” have for generations suffered in Australia may be as strongly repudiated as ever. But under certain conditions, it is well known to all rulers of sheep stations that there is no moving sheep without the aid and conversation of a dog. Therefore, though much of the occupation of the ordinary half-trained sheep-dog be gone, a really well-bred and highly-trained animal is still prized.