The Gray Collie 2/3
The second part of the thirty-eighth tale from The Animal Book
“So about that time he got me Artaxerxes for a chaperone, and he was a good deal of a nuisance, for the village folk disliked him from the first. When they whistled to their own dogs to get them out of his way, how could he tell they weren’t calling to him? And when he’d turn to see what they wanted, they’d think he was coming after them and run, which was nonsense.
“It was particularly hard on him now that his cat was dead. We had gotten him a new kitten, but it wasn’t broken in yet and couldn’t understand that he didn’t mean anything when he carried it around in his mouth.
“It was that evening that I saw the gray collie the first time. There were long streaks of late sunlight reaching up into the mountain, and he was so mixed up in the light and shadow that it was only by chance I saw him at all, he was so like the tree trunks and boulders, but he happened to be in a place that I knew all about because it was where Papa and I had often sat, and I knew no gray patch of anything belonged just there. It was like finding an animal in one of those old puzzle pictures, where they’re all mixed up in the branches.
“I reined up and whistled and called him every name I could think of, but he did not stir, so that I almost thought my eyes were wrong after all, but there was no mistaking those pointed ears cocked toward me. I thought he might be the sheep-killer, though he was such an aristocratic creature, for what can you expect of a dog that’s lost and hungry and unhappy? I’d probably steal something myself if I felt that way. I knew that nobody in our part of the country owned such a dog as that, and I wondered if his master were dead up there on the mountain. There are so many queer accidents—but it was the closed season. The more I wondered, the queerer it seemed.
“All of a sudden, Pixie snorted and plunged so that I was almost thrown, for I wasn’t expecting it and was leaning over with a loose rein and my arm out toward the collie. I had trusted that mare like my own sister and had believed her a sensible soul, but she never stopped until she reached the barn, sweating and trembling like anything.
“I was so out of patience that I left her at home with Artie the next time I went for the mail. I planned as I went through the woods how I would make the collie’s acquaintance and bring him home and how he and Artie would strike up a friendship. They were both such splendid fellows and so lonely. I thought a good deal about it, how I’d manage, for I knew that if I wasn’t careful, they’d be more likely to kill each other first—like Balin and Balan, you know—and make up afterward.
“I didn’t meet the collie until I was coming back. It was twilight, and the moon was rather narrow to see by. There was a rustle and snapping in the bushes at the side of the road.
“‘Nice fellow!’ I said, and I stopped. I could make out the silhouette of his ears cocked toward me and a little glimmer where his eyes were. ‘Poor old chap,’ I said, ‘did you lose your folks?’ But he wouldn’t say a word and backed off when I went toward him, so finally I went on, hoping he would follow, and he did, but slyly, so I could hardly be sure it was he, keeping beside me in the underbrush.
“I whistled and called, but it was no use. He stood there as long as I did, and I finally went on without him. But I couldn’t get him off my mind. It seemed such a wild, lonesome life for a dog that must have been brought up in a pleasant home, with regular meals and a fireplace to lie in front of, and probably a girl like me to take him walking. And it seemed as if it must be something queer and tragic to send him off that way by himself. I thought more and more how some young fellow might be lying dead up there on the mountain. I made up a whole story about it that evening. And that night I dreamed I had the collie and found a collar hidden in his ruff and was trying to read his name on it—but you know how hard it is to read anything in a dream. You look at a letter and it changes to something else or dances off to one side. Then he seemed to be telling me a long story, the way animals do in dreams, but when I woke up it turned into nonsense.’’
The End, Part Two