Forest Friends

by Royal Dixon

The children forgot all about their wild flowers then, and they romped and played for hours with the dog. Of course they took him home.

In this new home Denmark was a neighbor of Dan, the wise shepherd dog, who came to be his lifelong friend; for the shepherds did not live very far apart, and it was easy for the dogs to get together, as they always did at odd times of night and very early in the morning, when they would go far afield in a mad chase for rabbits or on the trail of a fox.

Every one had thought the two would fight when they met, but the shepherd dog only stood off on his dignity a few seconds, and then he spoke to the great Dane in the most courteous tones, which the Scotch can always employ to such effect. He well knew that he was no match for the gigantic stranger and he saw no necessity for making a fool of himself; besides he really was more than glad to find such a companion.

The comradeship of these two lasted long and only came near to its end when they cornered the great timber wolf in the sheep pen. This was Dan's crowning achievement, and no one was more proud of him than was the brave and courteous Denmark, who always gave to the shepherd dog the full credit of having planned the whole thing. To rid the countryside of this last wolf had been Dan's great desire. No one but he was really sure of the wolf's existence. The time had passed when the terrible packs of wolves descended on the sheep, and when the belated traveler over the snowy roads was in peril of his life from these stalking, famished enemies. But the shepherds were by no means sure that the wolves were entirely gone, and when they sat by the fireside telling stories of the dangers and hardships of the old days, they would always end by admitting that not yet were the terrible marauders hunted down.

Dan's back would bristle as he lay by the fire, and he would pound his tail up and down on the hearth as if he entirely agreed. Could he have spoken, he would have told them that often he had smelt the track of something that was not a bear nor a fox. Then his blood would freeze in his veins when the shepherds, talking in their slow way between sips of ale, told how powerful and ferocious the wolf can be. They knew of wolves that had snapped a dog's head nearly clean off the body with just one flash of their terrible jaws. And they agreed that a wolf could not be overpowered by any dog alone.

Dan always came to one conclusion in these recitals. If ever he could find the wolf, and could employ his friend Denmark to help him, they would show their masters that two dogs, at any rate, could get the best of the timber wolf.

It came about at last that a long, heavy winter drove the wolf to bolder and more risky operations among the sheepfolds. He ventured from the dark, forest lairs closer and closer to the sheep pens and the shepherd huts. The dogs knew this. But in the daytime the wolf was gone far beyond the barriers of the steep cliffs of the mountains. And at night the dogs could never venture far afield, for it was their duty to stay close by the barns and the pens where the sheep were sheltered.

With the coming of spring, Dan's master had to spend many a night at a pen some distance from the home. Down close to the shore he kept another flock and in it were many little lambs that were sick. For in the spring it is a common thing for the lambs that are winter-born to be stricken with a sickness which only the best shepherds can cure. Dan's master was up and about at all hours of the night, and poor Dan was greatly concerned in his efforts to keep guard over two folds. But if his dear master would take no sleep, Dan would take none. He was as wakeful and anxious as though he owned the sick lambs himself.

It was well past midnight and the air was full of the wet odors which denote the melting snows and the first coming of spring. As Dan was trotting up the path from the lower fold, a whiff of that strange and terrible odor which he knew to be the scent of the wolf, came to his sensitive nostrils. He stood still. He snuffed the ground around him, but he found no track. The wolf was near, but where?

Then a thought came to him. First, he must get Denmark. It would take him but a few moments to run across to the neighboring farm, and now was the time to put his plan into execution. He was much disturbed in his mind, however, for he had never before left his master at night. But the necessity was a pressing one.