II.

In the days that followed, the dog and the man were inseparable, made much of each other, like friends reunited after a serious misunderstanding. Under these pleasant conditions Bill experienced no recurrence of the wild streak. In constant touch with the man, the dog in him was always uppermost.

His thoughts revolved about the man, followed interestedly his every action. Construction of the little pond seemed to him a foolish thing, but he knew that there was some good reason for it. The man apparently wasted his time on many foolish things, but always, sooner or later, an adequate reason for them developed. So it would be with the pond.

And one hot day in early summer, the man’s wisdom was made manifest. The heat was intense. The sun a vivid red ball in a saffron sky. Man, dog and sheep sweltered helplessly. It was then that the man helped Bill drive the sheep around the base of the ridge to the pond. They floundered in the cool water to their hearts’ content all the rest of the day.

One night at dusk a short, white-skinned man made his appearance at the little cabin. He made much of Bill, but the latter accepted his advances unemotionally; remained briskly, unresponsively aloof. The white-skinned man meant nothing to him. He didn’t understand him in the first place. And then again, he was just a bit jealous. As a friend of the master, however, the man was, of course, to be treated with the greatest respect.

Well he knew that to obey the frequent urge to nip the visitor’s inexpert fingers as they rubbed his ears the wrong way, was to bring the master’s instant displeasure. The two men talked much together. The visitor stayed on and on and with the passing of each day the master became more and more preoccupied and Bill grew correspondingly depressed. He whined dismally on the ridgetop through the long, hot nights. Something unpleasant was going to happen. And it did. On the fourth night the bugle did not sound. Next morning, the cabin was deserted. Bill did not know it, of course, but the man’s little homestead lay in the center of valuable timber country; the white-skinned man had been negotiating for its purchase and Hardin had gone to town to consummate the deal. All he knew was that the master had gone and that he was very, very lonesome.

All of the next day and night he circled the herd like an automaton, time and again rushing away to the cabin, whining dismally before the door.

He became nervous and crotchety. On the second night he picked a quarrel with a wolverine and was severely mauled. He even disputed the right of way with a pink-nosed porcupine and collected half a dozen barbed quills for his pains. Most of these quills came to rest in his upper forelegs; after much painful worrying, he pulled them out with his teeth. A couple, however, worked into his wrinkled snout and defied his most heroic efforts.

It may have been the lack of contact with the man; it may have been the porcupine quills that festered and rendered him feverish with pain and rage—most likely a combination of both—at any rate—on the third night after the man had left—the old craving to kill came upon him in a flood of sentient desire that would not be denied. A big ewe gave birth to a gangling lamb in a cluster of oak scrub on the forest edge. All of his efforts to drive her back into the herd and safety, were unavailing. Finally, enraged, he rushed silently upon her.

Five minutes later, four dead sheep bore irrefragable evidence of his lustful efforts. The murders done, he slunk away into the forest, swiftly, silently, furtively, like the wolf. But—in his going was none of the arrogant bearing of his rapacious forebear. The passion to kill left him as suddenly as it had come. He went—tail between his legs, head drooping, like a dog. And he knew that he might never return.