The Gray Collie 3/3
The final part of the thirty-eighth tale from The Animal Book
“When I came out into the open moonlight, he stood as he had before at the edge of the woods and watched me out of sight. I couldn’t believe that he was the sheep-killer, he seemed so gentle and timid, but I didn’t dare speak of him to anyone—it would have seemed like betraying a trust—for I knew that in other people’s minds, if they found out that he was there, it would lie between him and Artie, and as Artie was out of the question, they would take it out in killing the collie anyhow. I felt something the way Southern girls do in novels when they’re hiding a handsome Union soldier.
“The next evening I started as usual, but just as I got to the woods, Artie came tearing after me, dragging a yard of chain and pretending he thought I wanted him! I could have slapped him, but I took it out in being sarcastic, with words he couldn’t understand, and hitched his chain to my belt so that if he started to be impolite to the other fellow, I could have something to say about it.
“We reached the post office safely enough, but I was glad he was tight to my belt, for some rough men looked at us in that ugly, suspicious way and said ‘sheep-killer’ once or twice, and ‘loup-garou.’ So I really felt safer when we reached the woods, in spite of dreading the meeting between Artie and the collie.
“But I didn’t hear or see anything of him until we were halfway through, and then, so far off it might have been on top of the mountain, I heard him howl—not exactly a howl, but a queer cry, as if he were calling to something at a distance, kind of sorrowful, but fierce, too. It went down my back like a chip of ice—but I’d hardly heard it when Artie roared in answer, and I was being carried up that mountain at the end of his chain like a cart after a runaway horse.
“And I had thought I could hold him! Gracious! I tried to catch at the branches, but they broke. We went through a patch of blackberries, and there was a mucky little spring where I fell in the mud and scared the frogs, and I think it must have been halfway up Phelim where I finally caught tight hold of a tree trunk, and my belt broke, and Artie went on as if he didn’t know the difference.
“I don’t know how long it was before I got my breath and began to think. Then I heard them—away off at the top, the frogs singing between as peaceful as could be—but I heard that wicked snarling and knew they were at it—Balin and Balan—and that they were so well matched it was likely to be the death of both unless I could stop it. I followed the sound and climbed after, though I was all weak and trembling. You can see on my hands now how the thorns had scratched, and my clothes were heavy and sticky with mud. It seemed ages before I got there. I think I was crying.
“And because I knew, I didn’t even try to pull Artie away when he got the other fellow by the throat and held him down while he got weaker and weaker. I looked at him there in the moonlight and cried and wondered how I’d been so stupid.
“While I sat there wringing my hands and waiting for Artie to let go, some men came up, and turned a bull’s-eye lantern on me, and seemed so astonished they couldn’t do anything but swear, though each would try to shut the other up now and then, saying there ‘was a lady present.’
“One of them seemed to think it was funny and explained what they had said to each other, the way people always do for animals or babies. ‘Siberian wolf and Siberian wolfhound! Must’a seemed kin’ o’ natural for them fellers to meet up. “Beg pardon,” says the wolf, “ain’t I seen you before?”—and says the pup, “I don’t know, but you’re certainly the chap my mammy told me to lick if ever I come acrost you, and by thunder I’ll do it!” Which he did. ‘Will you be so kind, Miss, when your little terrier there has quite finished, to call him off? It’d be rayther indelicate for a stranger to interfere.’
Henrietta thoughtfully scratched the ears of the rug and ran her fingers over the rows of beautiful teeth. “This is the collie.”
She continued, “But sometimes I wonder just what he had in mind when I felt his breath on my elbow. Most people would say that he was thinking how convenient I would be some evening when no sheep was handy, but I’m not sure. At the time I supposed he was sad and lonesome and glad of my company. A wolf, after all, is a good deal of a person. He was so frightfully solitary, you see—nobody to answer his gathering cry—half a world away from his own people.”
The End