Tails to Wag

by Butler, Nancy

  There, in front, by the fretting waters of the Tarn, packed in a solid phalanx, with every head turned in the same direction, was a flock of sheep. They were motionless, all-intent, staring with horror-bulging eyes. A column of steam rose from their bodies into the rain-pierced air. Panting and palpitating, yet they stood with their backs to the water, as though determined to sell their lives dearly. Beyond them, not fifty yards away, crouched a hump-backed boulder, casting a long misshapen shadow in the moonlight. And be­neath it were two black objects, one struggling feebly.

  “The Killer!” gasped the boy, and, all ablaze with excitement, began forging forward.

  “Steady, lad, steady!” urged his father, dropping a restraining hand on the boy’s shoulder.

  Above them a huddle of clouds flung in furious rout across the night, and the moon was veiled.

  “Follow, lad!” ordered the Master, and began to crawl silently forward. As stealthily Andrew pursued. And over the sodden ground they crept, one behind the other, like two night-hawks on some foul errand.

  On they crawled, lying prone during the blinks of moon, stealing forward in the dark; till, at length, the swish of the rain on the waters of the Tarn, and the sobbing of the flock in front, warned them they were near.

  They skirted the trembling pack, passing so close as to brush against the flanking sheep; and yet unnoticed, for the sheep were soul-absorbed in the tragedy in front. Only, when the moon was in, Andrew could hear them huddling and stamping in the darkness. And again, as it shone out, fearfully they edged closer to watch the bloody play.

  Along the Tarn edge the two crept. And still the gracious moon hid their approach, and the drunken wind drowned with its revelry the sound of their coming.

  So they stole on, on hands and knees, with hearts aghast and fluttering breath; until, of a sudden, in a lull of wind, they could hear, right before them, the smack and slobber of bloody lips, chewing their bloody meal.

  “Say thy prayers, Red Wull. Thy last minute’s come!” muttered the Master, rising to his knees. Then, in Andrew’s ear: “When I rush, lad, follow!” For he thought when the moon rose, to jump in on the great dog, and, surprising him as he lay gorged and unsuspicious, to deal him one terrible swashing blow, and end forever the lawless doings of the Tailless Tyke.

  The moon flung off its veil of cloud. White and cold, it stared down into the Devil’s Bowl; on murderer and murdered.

  With a hand’s cast of the avengers of blood humped the black boulder. On the border of its shadow lay a dead sheep; and standing beside the body, his coat all ruffled by the hand of the storm—Owd Bob—Owd Bob o’ Kenmuir.

  Then the light went in, and darkness covered the land.

  It was Owd Bob. There could be no mistaking. In the wide world there was but one Owd Bob o’ Kenmuir. The silver moon gleamed down on the dark head and rough gray coat, and lit the white escutcheon on his chest.

  And in the darkness James Moore was lying with his face pressed downward that he might not see.

  Once he raised himself on his arms; his eyes were shut and face uplifted, like a blind man praying. He passed a weary hand across his brow; his head dropped again; and he moaned and moaned like a man in everlasting pain.

  Then the darkness lifted a moment, and he stole a furtive glance, like a murderer’s at the gallows-tree, at the scene in front.

  It was no dream; clear and cruel in the moonlight the humpbacked boulder; the dead sheep; and that gray figure, beautiful, motionless, damned for all eternity.

  The Master turned his face and looked at Andrew, a dumb, pitiful entreaty in his eyes; but in the boy’s white, horror-stricken countenance was no comfort. Then his head lolled down again, and the strong man was whimpering.

  “He! he! he!” ‘Scuse ma laffin’, Mr. Moore—he! he! he!”

  A little man, all wet and shrunk, sat hunching on a mound above them, rocking his shrivelled form to and fro in the agony of his merriment.

  “Ye raskil—he! he! Ye rogue—he! he!” and he shook his fist waggishly at the unconscious gray dog. “I owe ye anither grudge for this—ye’ve anteeci­pated me”—and he leant back and shook this way and that in convulsive mirth.

  The man below him rose heavily to his feet, and tumbled toward the mocker, his great figure swaying from side to side as though in blind delirium, moaning still as he went. And there was that on his face which no man can mistake. Boy that he was, Andrew knew it.

  “Feyther! feyther! do’ee not!” he pleaded, running after his father and laying impotent hands on him.

  But the strong man shook him off like a fly, and rolled on, swaying and groaning, with that awful expression plain to see in the moonlight.

  In front the little man squatted in the rain, bowed double still; and took no thought to flee.

  “Come on, James Moore! Come on!” he laughed, malignant joy in his voice, and something gleamed bright in his right hand, and was hid again. “I’ve bin waitin’ this a weary while noo. Come on!”

  Then had there been done something worse than sheep-murder in the dreadful lonesomeness of the Devil’s Bowl upon that night; but of a sudden, there sounded the splash of a man’s foot falling heavily behind; a hand like a falling tree smote the Master on the shoulder; and a voice roared above the noise of the storm:

  “Mr. Moore! Look, man! Look!

  The Master tried to shake off that detaining grasp; but it pinned him where he was, immovable.

  “Look, I tell yo’!” cried that great voice again.

  A hand pushed past him and pointed; and sul­lenly he turned, ignoring the figure at his side, and looked.

  The wind had dropped suddenly as it had risen; the little man on the mound had ceased to chuckle; Andrew’s sobs were hushed; and in the background the huddled flock edged closer. The world hung balanced on the pin-point of the moment. Every eye was in the one direction.

  With dull, uncomprehending gaze James Moore stared as bidden. There was the gray dog naked in the moonlight, heedless still of any witnesses; there the murdered sheep, lying within and without that distorted shade and there the humpbacked boulder.

  He stared into the shadow, and still stared. Then he started as though struck. The shadow of the boulder had moved!

  Motionless, with head shot forward and bulging eyes, he gazed.

  Ay, ay, ay; he was sure of it—a huge dim outline as of a lion couchant, in the very thickest of the blackness.

  At that he was seized with such a palsy of trembling that he must have fallen but for the strong arm about his waist.

  Clearer every moment grew that crouching figure; till at length they plainly could discern the line of arching loins, the crest, thick as a stallion’s, the massive, wagging head. No mistake this time. There he lay in the deepest black, gigantic, revelling in his horrid debauch—the Black Killer!

  And they watched him at his feast. Now he burrowed into the spongy flesh; now turned to lap the dark pool which glittered in the moonlight at his side like claret in a silver cup. Now lifting his head, he snapped irritably at the rain-drops, and the moon caught his wicked, rolling eye and the red shreds of flesh dripping from his jaw. And again, raising his great muzzle as if about to howl, he let the delicious nectar trickle down his throat and ravish his palate.

  So he went on, all unsuspicious, wisely nodding in slow-mouthed gluttony. And in the stillness, between the claps of wind, they could hear the smacking of his lips.

  While all the time the gray dog stood before him, motionless, as though carved in stone.

  At last, as the murderer rolled his great head from side to side, he saw that still figure. At the sight he leaped back, dismayed. Then with a deep-mouthed roar that shook the waters of the Tarn he was up and across his victim with fangs bared, his coat standing erect in wet, rigid furrows from topknot to tail.

  So the two stood, face to face, with perhaps a yard of rain-p
ierced air between them.

  The wind hushed its sighing to listen. The moon stared down, white and dumb. Away at the back the sheep edged closer. While save for the everlasting thunder of the rain, there was utter stillness.

  An age, it seemed, they waited so. Then a voice, clear yet low and far away, like a bugle in a distant city, broke the silence.

  “Eh, Wullie!” it said.

  There was no anger in the tones, only an incomparable reproach; the sound of the cracking of a man’s heart.

  At the call the great dog leapt round, snarling in hideous passion. He saw the small, familiar figure, clear-cut against the tumbling sky; and for the only time in his life Red Wull was afraid.

  His blood-foe was forgotten; the dead sheep was forgotten; everything was sunk in the agony of that moment. He cowered upon the ground, and a cry like that of a lost soul was wrung from him; it rose on the still night air and floated, wailing, away; and the white waters of the Tarn thrilled in cold pity; out of the lonely hollow; over the desolate Marches; into the night.

  On the mound above stood his master. The little man’s white hair was bared to the night wind; the rain trickled down his face; and his hands were ­folded behind his back. He stood there, looking down into the dell below him, as a man may stand at the tomb of his lately buried wife. And there was such an expression on his face as I cannot describe.

  “Wullie, Wullie, to me!” he cried at length; and his voice sounded weak and far, like a distant memory.

  At that the huge brute came crawling toward him on his belly, whimpering as he came, very pitiful in his distress. He knew his fate as every sheep-dog knows it. That troubled him not. His pain, insufferable, was that this, his friend and father, who had trusted him, should have found him in his sin.

  So he crept up to his master’s feet; and the little man never moved.

  “Wullie—ma Wullie!” he said very gently. “They’ve aye bin agin me—and noo you! A man’s mither—a man’s wife—a man’s dog! they’re all I’ve iver had; and noo ain o’ they three has turned agin me! Indeed I am alone!”

  At that the great dog raised himself, and placing his forepaws on his master’s chest tenderly, lest he should hurt him who was already hurt past healing, stood towering above him; while the little man laid his two cold hands on the dog’s shoulders.

  So they stood, looking at one another, like a man and his love.

  At M’Adam’s word, Owd Bob looked up, and for the first time saw his master.

  He seemed in nowise startled, but trotted over to him. There was nothing fearful in his carriage, no haunting blood-guiltiness in the true gray eyes which never told a lie, which never, dog-like, failed to look you in the face. Yet his tail was low, and, as he stopped at his master’s feet, he was quivering. For he, too, knew, and was not unmoved.

  For weeks he had tracked the Killer; for weeks he had followed him as he crossed Kenmuir, bound on his bloody errands; yet always had lost him on the Marches. Now, at last, he had run him to ground. Yet his heart went out to his enemy in his distress.

  “I thowt ’t had been yo’, lad,” the Master whispered, his hand on the dark head at his knee—“I thowt ’t had bin yo’!”

  Rooted to the ground, the three watched the scene between M’Adam and his Wull.

  In the end the Master was whimpering; Andrew crying; and David turned his back.

  At length, silent, they moved away.

  “Had I—should I go to him?” asked David hoarsely, nodding toward his father.

  “Nay, nay, lad,” the Master replied. “Yon’s not a matter for a mon’s friends.”

  So they marched out of the Devil’s Bowl, and left those two alone together.

  A little later, as they trampled along, James Moore heard little pattering, staggering footsteps behind.

  He stopped, and the other two went on.

  “Man,” a voice whispered, and a face, white and pitiful, like a mother’s pleading for her child, looked into his—“Man, ye’ll no tell them a’? I’d no like ’em to ken ’twas ma Wullie. Think an ’t had been yer ain dog.”

  “You may trust me!” the other answered thickly.

  The little man stretched out a palsied hand.

  “Gie us yer hand on ’t. And G-God bless ye, James Moore!”

  So these two shook hands in the moonlight, with none to witness it but the God who made them.

  And that is why the mystery of the Black Killer is yet unsolved in the Daleland. Many have surmised; besides those three only one other knows—knows now which of those two he saw upon a summer night was the guilty, which the innocent. And Postie Jim tells no man.

  Sources

  Excerpt from Beautiful Joe by Marshall Saunders, 1903.

  “Uncle Dick’s Rolf” by Georgiana M. Craik from The Junior Classics, Volume 8, edited by William Patten, 1912.

  “Ulysses and the Dogman” by O. Henry from Sixes and Sevens, 1914.

  “The Baron’s Wonderful Dog” by R. E. Raspe from The Surprising Adventures of the Renowned Baron Munchausen, 1811.

  “Brown Wolf” by Jack London from Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories, 1920.

  “A Yellow Dog” by Bret Harte from Barker’s Luck and Other Stories, 1896.

  “Bingo” by Ernest Thompson Seton from Wild Animals I Have Known, 1900.

  “A Dark-Brown Dog” by Stephen Crane from Men, Women, and Boats, 1920.

  “Memoirs of a Yellow Dog” by O. Henry from The Four Million, 1907.

  “The She-Wolf” by Saki (H. H. Munro) from Beast and Super-Beasts, 1914.

  “Tito: The Story of the Coyote That Learned How” by Ernest Thompson Seton from Lives of the Hunted, 1901.

  “A Fire-fighter’s Dog” by Arthur Quiller-Couch from The Junior Classics, Volume 8, edited by William Patten, 1912.

  “Scrap” by Lucia Chamberlain from The Junior Classics, Volume 8, edited by William Patten, 1912.

  “Carlo, the Soldiers’ Dog” by Rush C. Hawkins from The Junior Classics, Volume 8, edited by William Patten, 1912.

  Excerpt from Bruce by Albert Payson Terhune, 1920.

  Excerpt from Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome, 1889.

  “Philippa’s Fox Hunt” by E. Somerville and Martin Ross from Some Experiences of an Irish R. M., 1899.

  Excerpt from Bob, Son of Battle by Alfred Ollivant, 1898.