“I mean that he can follow the trail by the scent better than any hound I ever saw, and I have seen hundreds of them.”
“Is that a mere camp story,” said I, “or do you know it of your own knowledge?”
“I know it myself, sir,” said the soldier. “I have seen him smell a man or his clothes, and then go blindfold into a whole regiment and pick out that man by his scent. I have seen him pull a lock of wool off a sheep, smell it good, and then go blindfold into the pen and pick out that identical sheep from fifty others. I have known him to smell the blanket a nigger slept in, and follow that darky four or five miles by the scent of him through cotton, corn, and woods. He is better than a dog.”
The man looked to be honest and intelligent; and while I could hardly credit such an astounding and abnormal development of the nasal power in a human being, there was nothing else to do; so I told him to take my horse and his own, ride as quickly as possible to camp, and bring old Du Chien with him.
Then we made a litter, and slowly and reverently we bore the corpse of the murdered lady along the difficult road until we reached a point to which it was possible to bring a carriage, in which we placed her in charge of the horrified neighbors, who had by this time collected at the plantation.
Captain Martas insisted on remaining with me and awaiting the coming of Du Chien.
More than two hours elapsed before the soldier whom I had sent for Du Chien, the Man-Dog, returned with that strange creature. He surely deserved his name. He must have been six feet high, but was so lank, loose, flabby, and jumbled-up that it was hard to even guess at his stature. His legs were long and lank, and his hands hung down to his knees. A bristly shock of red hair grew nearly down to his eyebrows, and his head slanted back to a point, sugar-loaf fashion. His chin seemed to have slid back into his lank, flabby neck, and his face looked as if it stopped at the round, red, slobbering mouth. His nose was not remarkably large, but the sloping away of all the facial lines from it, as from a central point, gave his nasal organ an expression of peculiar prominence and significance. When he walked, every bone and muscle about him drooped forward, as if he were about to fall face foremost and travel with his hands and feet.
Briefly I explained what had happened, and thereupon Du Chien, who seemed to be a man of few words, said: “Stay where you are, all of you, for a minute.” Then he started off at his singular dog-trot pace, and followed the edge of the water all the way around, just as I had done, lightly, but with wonderful celerity. Then he came back to us, looking much puzzled. I handed him the coarse, dirty handkerchief which I had taken from the dead woman’s mouth, and Du Chien immediately buried that wonderful nose of his in it, and snuffed at it long and vigorously. Having apparently satisfied himself, he removed the dirty rag from his face and said: “Nigger.”
“No,” said I, thinking of Celia, and looking Du Chien in his little, round, deep-set eyes; “a mulatto.”
“No,” he answered, with quiet assurance; “not mulatto; nigger; black, wool-headed, and old—a buck nigger.”