Trading Jeff and his Dog.

by James Arthur Kjelgaard.

1. THE MEETING

When the dog came to the weed-grown border of the clearing, he stopped.

Then, knowing that his back could be seen over the weeds, he slunk down so that his belly sc.r.a.ped the earth. He was tense and quivering, and his eyes bore a haunted look. But there was nothing craven in them and little fear. In all his life the dog had never feared anything except the terrible torment that beset him now.

He was of no recognizable breed, though all of his ancestors had been large dogs. There was a hint of staghound in his ma.s.sive head and in his carriage, and somewhere along the way he had acquired a trace of Great Dane. His fur was silky, like a collie's, and there was a suggestion of bloodhound in his somewhat flabby jowls. Without purpose or plan, the blood of all these breeds had mingled to produce this big mongrel.

He was so emaciated that slatted ribs showed even through his burr-matted fur. Had he eaten as much as he wanted, he would have weighed about a hundred and ten pounds, but he had had so little food recently that he was fifteen pounds lighter. Intelligence glowed in his eyes. But there was also something in them that verged on desperation.

He moved only his head and moved that slowly. This dog knew too much, and had suffered too much, to let himself be seen until he had some idea of what he was about. He was looking toward a big white farmhouse that was surrounded by a grove of apple trees. A thin plume of blue smoke rose from the chimney, and a pile of freshly-split wood lay in the yard.

Busy white hens wandered about. White and black cows and two brown horses cropped gra.s.s in a pasture. Pigs grunted in their pen and a black cat sunned itself on the door step.

The dog's attention returned to the man who was splitting more wood. He was thin, dressed in faded blue jeans and a tan shirt, and the blows of his axe echoed dully from the hills surrounding the farm house. He worked slowly and methodically. The dog drank eagerly of his scent, although he did not leave his cover, for behind him there was only a trail of torment, abuse and real danger. He had been wandering for two months and his path was a long one, but because it was also a twisted one it had not taken him too far from the place he had left. He had been in villages and towns, through farm lands and forest, and wherever he met men he had been stoned or clubbed. Three times--twice by farmers and once by a policeman--he had been shot at.

The dog could not know that this was partly because of his appearance and size. He was big and he looked wild. Had he cared to do so, he could have killed a man. But what none of his tormentors could know was that, though the dog feared little, he was almost incapable of attacking a human being. What n.o.body could know either was that, most of all, the dog was in desperate need of someone to love.

Until two months ago, everything had been different. When the dog came to live with Johnny Blazer, in the hills behind Smithville, he was so young that it always seemed he must have begun life with Johnny. It was a good life and he had never wanted any other.

Johnny's cabin was big, with a kitchen and combined living-dining room on the first floor and the entire second floor given over to many bunks.

It was necessary to have a big cabin because, in season, Johnny both guided and boarded hunters and fishermen. During the winter, he trapped furs, and when there was nothing else to do he worked at odd jobs or searched out and sold medicinal roots which he found in the hills. A lean, tight-jawed woodsman in his late thirties, Johnny had been the dog's revered master.

Because he was a dog, and thus incapable of grasping the more complex facts, the great animal did not understand that life was not the wholly carefree and happy one it seemed. He could sense that Johnny avoided the Whitneys, who--at various places in the hills--lived much as Johnny did.

Because they were Johnny's enemies, it followed that the Whitneys must be the dog's enemies too. But he had never understood what took place.

Johnny and the dog were strolling toward Smithville when a rifle cracked and Johnny took three staggering steps to fall forward. While the dog hovered anxiously near, his master tried and failed to get up. The dog knew that the scent of Pete Whitney filled the air, but there was no connection between Pete and the fact that Johnny Blazer lay wounded in the road.

For an hour the dog worried beside Johnny, whining because he could not help. Then a car happened along. The two men in it lifted Johnny into the car and were off at high speed.

The dog tried to follow, but though he could run very fast, he could not keep up with the car. Outdistanced, he panted back to the cabin because he was sure that Johnny would return there, too. He waited a week, never venturing far away and eating only what he could find or catch. Then he set out to look for Johnny.

He'd gone first to Smithville and the first person he'd met there was Pete Whitney. The dog slowed to a walk, watching Pete warily and bristling. He saw no connection between any of Pete's actions and Johnny's disappearance, but all the Whitneys were enemies. He leaped aside when Pete aimed a swift kick at his groin, then turned with bared fangs. Unarmed, Pete shrank back against a near-by building and the dog went on.

The alarm was sounded; Johnny Blazer's dog had come into town and threatened a person. For a while--Johnny had many friends in Smithville--nothing was done. But after two days, the dog was considered a menace. Mothers of small children became concerned for their safety.

The first act of most men, upon seeing the dog, was to pick up and hurl any convenient missile.

The Smithville constable, Bill Ellis, reluctantly set out to kill the animal. But two hours earlier, having satisfied himself that he would not find Johnny in Smithville, the dog had left. What he could not possibly know was that his master was dead and the official cause of his death was, "Bullet wound inflicted by a person or persons unknown."

As the dog wandered, hope faded. He could not find Johnny. But the dog had to have a master because he was unable to live without one, and now, as he lay in the tall weeds, all the deep yearnings in his heart concentrated on this man splitting wood.

He half rose, minded to walk out and meet him, but memory of the rocks and clubs that had come his way was not an easy one to banish and he settled down in the weeds again. Then an uncontrollable longing for someone to love and someone to love him overcame everything else and he left the weeds.

He walked with his tail drooping in a half circle down his rear, but he was not abject because it was not in him to be so. One or more of his many ancestors had bequeathed to him a great pride and a regal inner sense, and though he would run when a club or brick was hurled at him, he could never cringe. He carried his tail low because that was the way he carried it naturally, like a collie or staghound.

The man, setting a chunk of wood against the splitting block, had his back turned to the dog and did not at once see him. The dog waited, unwilling to intrude until he was invited to do so. The man raised his axe, brought it expertly down, and the wood split cleanly. He stooped to pick up the two pieces and when he did he saw the dog.

"You!"

Catching up one of the chunks, he hurled it with deadly aim and intent.

But even as he did this, the huge animal started to run, so that instead of striking him in the head, the chunk of wood struck his right shoulder. The dog felt quick agony that subsided to searing pain as he kept running. Twenty seconds later he heard a rifle blast, and the thump of a leaden slug that plowed into the earth six inches to one side. The rifle roared a second time, and a third. Then he was safe in the woods.

He slowed to a walk, knowing that he could not be seen now and his nose informed him that there were no other men around. For the time being he was in no danger, but he was heartsick. Again he had tried, in every way he knew, to find someone whom he might love and who in turn might love him. Once more his overtures had brought him only hurt.

The dog could not know that the farmer, seeing him suddenly, had been too startled to think. When he was finally capable of coherent thought, he decided that a wild, dangerous and doubtless rabid wolf had emerged from the forest and that its only intention could be to prey upon the locality's flocks and herds. Failing to bring it down with his rifle, the farmer got hastily on the phone to mobilize his neighbors. Within half an hour a posse was out.

However, its members were farmers and not hunters. The only hunting dogs in the area were a few fox and c.o.o.n hounds and some rabbit hounds, and they refused to interest themselves in the supposed wolf's trail. But there was also a pair of big cross-bred brindle bulls and they were urged into the woods. An hour later the dog met this pair.

Coursing a little open glade, they appeared in front of him and as soon as they saw him they stopped. The bulls weighed only about fifty pounds each, but they had had many battles and they knew how to fight. Lifting their lips in antic.i.p.atory grins, they closed in.

The dog waited, anger rising in his heart. He too knew how to fight. For the barest fraction of a minute he gauged the bulls' advance, then he attacked. He was not as swift as he ordinarily was because he had not eaten enough. But with his staghound and collie lineage, he had inherited all the fluid, rippling grace of such dogs. It was not his way to bore in, to seek a hold and keep it, but to slash and slice. He struck the first bull, cut it to the shoulder bone, and leaped clear over his enemy before there could be a return thrust. He whirled to face the second.

It came at him with a short, choppy gait, eyes half closed and mouth open as it sought any hold at all. As soon as it was able to get one, it would clamp its jaws and grind until the piece of flesh in its mouth was torn out. Then it would get another hold, and another, and literally tear its enemy apart.

The dog waited, as though he were about to meet the bull head on. But when only inches separated them, he glided to one side, ducked to get hold of a front leg, and used all his strength to throw the bull clear over his head. He turned to meet the second bull that, recovering, had come in to grab his thigh.

Twisting himself almost double, the dog slashed and bit and each time he slashed fresh blood spurted from the brindle bull's hide. The dog opened his huge mouth, clamped it over the bull's neck, and shook his adversary back and forth.

The bulls had courage, but they were cross-breeds and not the fighting bulls that will gladly die if they can take their enemy with them. They staggered twenty feet off and faced the dog warily, as though seeking some new way to attack him. He waited, ready for whatever they might do, and when he finally limped away he did so with his head turned to see if he was being followed.

He was not afraid to renew the battle, but he wanted most to be let alone by this ugly pair. In spite of all the rebuffs and even physical violence that he had met up with, however, he could not abandon the driving urge that had sent him forth. He could not live without a master. Somewhere and somehow he must find one.

He pa.s.sed from settled country into forest where there was only an occasional clearing. When two deer fled before him he gave halfhearted chase. But his shoulder still hurt and the battle had wearied him. When the deer outdistanced him, he stopped to eat a few mushrooms that grew on a stump. They were tasteless fare, but they helped still the gnawing in his belly. Near the edge of a pond, he found and ate a fish that had been hurt in battle with a bigger fish, and after that he caught a mouse. All together were mere tidbits, and the dog thought wistfully of the delicious meals Johnny Blazer used to prepare for him.

Night had fallen when he stopped suddenly, his nose tickled by the tantalizing odor of food. Mingled with it was the smell of wood smoke and a man. The dog's nose informed him that there was a creek, and he caught the faintly-acrid smell of cinders and steel that meant a railroad. The dog slowed to a walk and went closer to verify with his eyes what his nose had already told him.

There was a creek spanned by a railroad bridge. Beneath the bridge was a small, bright fire over which, on a forked stick, hung a pot of simmering coffee. Crouched beside the fire was a man, and because there is a difference in the odors of young and old, the dog knew that this was a young man.

The dog padded silently through tall, wild gra.s.s growing beside the creek. He drooled at the odor of food, but because painful experience had taught him to be very careful in all dealings with men, he did not go any nearer. He licked his chops with a moist tongue and excitement danced in his eyes. How he would love to be near that fire, partaking of the food and the caresses of the young man!

But he had better be careful.

At the same time that the dog met the farmer who hurled the block of wood at him, Jeff Tarrant was walking down a dusty road that led into the town of Cressman. Two days past his eighteenth birthday, his face betrayed his youth. Healthy as sunshine, he walked with a spring in his step and his head held high. His rather loose lips formed a grin that seemed permanently fixed. His blue eyes sparked and a shock of curly red hair that needed cutting tumbled on his head. Even if it were not for the pack he carried, he would have commanded a second glance.

The pack, made of both canvas and leather and with straps at strategic intervals, was huge. It began at Jeff's hip line, extended two inches over the top of his head, and it was bulging. Across it, in black letters as big as the pack would accommodate, was:

TARRANT ENTERPRISES Ltd.

Jeff himself had designed the pack to fit his needs, and he had done the lettering. It described him perfectly, for what n.o.body except Jeff knew was that Tarrant Enterprises was limited to whatever might be in the pack.

He walked cheerfully, for it was a cheerful day, and he gave thanks for the spa.r.s.ely-settled country and the little-traveled road on which he found himself. In the first place, this was the only kind of country in which Tarrant Enterprises, Ltd., could flourish. Secondly, the day was made for walking. When Jeff found himself on traveled roads, he was forever being offered rides, and for the sake of both courtesy and good business he always accepted. But there had been no rides today.

Descending a hill, Jeff looked down at a junction of two forested valleys, up one of which a train was puffing. He looked at it closely, while the smile in his eyes and that on his mouth seemed to grow a little more p.r.o.nounced. Railroad tracks meant towns somewhere, and the sort of business Tarrant Enterprises, Ltd., could do in towns depended on circ.u.mstance.