[XII]
THE END OF THE TIMBER WOLF
Far away to the North, where the great rocky capes point out through the sea toward the land where it is always snow and ice, there lived two shepherds whose little huts were almost the only habitations in many and many a mile of trackless forest. To be sure, they were within traveling distance of a market town. For had there been no place for trading the wonderful white wool which they sheared every spring from their sheep, there would have been no object in their living in a place so uncouth where year in and year out there were only the grandeurs of earth and sky and the thunderous roar of the seas to keep them company.
But the shepherds and their families were not unhappy, and the chances are that if you took them southward over sea and land to the great cities they would only have longed to go back to their own cloudy skies, to their wind-swept pastures, and the steep cliffs where the sea-gulls nest. And it is certainly true that their little boys and girls would never have been content to have stayed away very long from the faithful dogs, who are the most important members in a shepherd home. And it is of these dogs and what they did to the last of the wolves that the shepherds were always telling. For the memory of a brave act is slow to die; and when you add sagacity to bravery, putting wits with strength, you have something which men love to relate.
One of the dogs was Dan, and that was a suitable name, for he was what his master called "long-headed." The other was Denmark, for he was so great and powerful and possessed of so wonderful a voice and appetite, that both by power and dignity he resembled his people, the noble Danes, and no name in the world could fit him better than that of his native land.
Denmark had come to this far-away settlement when a ship from the Danish ports had gone to pieces in a storm below the cliffs. And the shepherds had taken him home. A dog that could swim ashore in such a storm as that had been, when the waves turned to ice as they dashed against the rocks, was a dog worth keeping.
But Denmark was not a shepherd dog. His shiny coat of black, his heavy build, with a neck as powerful as a young bull's, and his great square jaws made him at first sight a dog to be feared. But he was gentle and wanted to play and sport like any puppy, as soon as he had recovered from the shock of shipwreck and his icy hour in the water. But there was no one to play with in the family of the fisherman who had first rescued him from the water. And that worthy man, who was a brave and silent sort, was gone from home so long at a time that he was not sorry when the great Dane betook himself to another home.
Some children were passing the fisherman's hut one morning in early spring, on their way to gather wild flowers which grew in the crevices and little sheltered nooks of the headlands. They were laughing and chasing one another and singing. That was all the great dog wanted to hear, for he had lived a solemn and uneventful life during these weeks that he had lain around the fisherman's place. And the fisherman had not dreamed of entertaining his guest. He had not played tag in sixty years and you may be sure he was not going to begin again for the sake of a great overgrown dog.
Denmark introduced himself to the children in what he thought was a playful way; but his voice was so terrible that the children were at first terror-stricken. They had never seen any dogs except the beautiful Scottish kind which the shepherds keep. They screamed and ran in fear, taking up stones as if to throw them. But Denmark was not discouraged. At first he kept his distance, but he followed; and, once they were out on the green pastures that sloped and curved down to the steep shore, he began his most enticing efforts to please.