Part 5 (1/2)

Hardly a day pa.s.sed now that did not bring the introduction of some new interest for the black-and-gray pup. Novel experiences crowded upon him at such a rate that he was always in some way absorbed. Meals were frequent, and, of course, a matter of unfailing interest. Sleep also was frequent, as it is with all healthy young things. Given, as he was, plentiful liberty and abundance of fresh air and suns.h.i.+ne, Jan exhausted himself about once an hour, and took a nap, from which he would awake within five, ten, fifteen, or thirty minutes, as the case might be, once more charged to the throat with high spirits, energy, and puppyish abandon.

More by luck than good management, it happened in his seventh week that he killed a mouse in the stable. For some time he mounted guard over his kill, solemnly parading round and about it, emitting from time to time blood-curdling growls and snarls intended to warn the dead mouse of the frightful penalties it would incur as the result of any attempt to come to life again.

Then, the stable door having been left ajar, Jan valorously gripped the small corpse between his jaws and went swaggering off toward the house with it, questing kudos. In the garden he met Finn, who with careless good humor strolled toward him, offering a game. Jan tried his best to growl and to turn up his nose at the same time, indicating serious preoccupation with matters more weighty than play. But finding that his hold upon the mouse was gravely endangered by this process, he gave up the attempt, and swaggered on toward the front entrance, followed quizzingly by the wolfhound. Finding n.o.body in the porch, Jan fell over the step, dropped his mouse, growled fiercely, and then with a plunge regained his prize, and so, past the place where the caps and coats hung, over the mats into the hall.

Here he found Betty and the Mistress, and at their feet deposited his now rather badly mangled mouse; while Finn, like a big nurse taking pride in the escapades of her charge, stood at one side and smiled, with lolling tongue.

”Oh, what a fearsome beast it is!” laughed Betty, and ran to call the Master. Then Jan was patted and petted, and told what a fine fellow he was; what a mighty hunter before the Lord; and Finn smiled more broadly than ever. This over, Jan was taken into the kitchen to be weighed (he being now seven weeks old), and was told in an impressive manner that he was within four ounces of twenty pounds.

”Pretty nearly half-a-pound-a-day increase. You'll have to take a cure soon, my friend, if this goes on,” said the Master.

From this time onward many of Jan's games were sensibly affected by his slaughter of the mouse. He now treated the big s.h.i.+n-bones that were provided for his delectation as live game of a peculiarly treacherous sort. He stalked, tracked, hunted, and slew those bones with unerring skill and remarkable daring. Their tenacity of life was most striking.

There were times when, having slain a bone after a long chase, poor Jan would give way to his natural exhaustion and fall sound asleep with his head pillowed on one end of the apparently well-killed and harmless bone. Yet as often as not, when he would wake, perhaps a quarter of an hour later, this same bone would once more betray its desperate and treacherous vitality by means of an attempt at escape. So that even in the very moment of waking the dauntless Jan would be obliged to growl fiercely and plunge straightway into hard fighting again.

His first real bark was another dazzling experience. It came in his eleventh week, when he was as heavy as two terriers, though still somewhat shapeless, and gristly, rather than bony, as to his limbs.

Colonel Forde walked into the garden one afternoon, followed very sedately by the Lady Desdemona, now sleek and s.h.i.+ning, and more aristocratic-looking than ever. Jan was dozing in the front porch, and Finn away somewhere in the orchard. Jan sprang rashly to his feet and, losing his balance, rolled over. Rising again, with more of caution and considerable anger, he took a good look at the visitors, and glared with special severity at Desdemona, who serenely ignored his existence.

Then, bracing himself firmly against the door-jamb, Jan opened his jaws and--barked. But the novelty of the performance, superimposed upon the concussion and the exertion involved, was too much for his stability, and with one prolonged but unsuccessful effort to hold on to his dignity Jan rolled over on the side farthest from the door-jamb. It was not to be denied, however, that he had barked; and the strange sound--it was part bark, part growl, and in part a bloodhound's bay--brought Finn from the near-by orchard, and Betty Murdoch from the morning-room, and the Master from his study, and the Persian cat from her perch on the hall mantelshelf; so Master Black-and-Gray had no lack of audience, and, indeed, received an almost embarra.s.sing amount of congratulation, in the course of which he made s.h.i.+ft to get a good sniff at Desdemona's legs and satisfy himself that she was art inoffensive person.

That Desdemona was any relation of his own neither he nor she seemed for one moment to guess, though less than a couple of months had pa.s.sed since he ceased to derive his sole nutriment and support in life from this same stately hound, at whose golden-brown fore legs and low-hanging dewlap he now sniffed so curiously.

One result of her return to the sheltered life was that Desdemona looked almost twice as big and ma.s.sive as she had looked in her nursing days.

The pendulous dugs were no longer in evidence; but the rich, silky rolls about her neck lay fold in fold; the immensely long ears were veritable b.u.t.tresses to her ma.s.sy head. Her black nose gleamed like satin at the end of her long muzzle, above which lay an interminable array of deep wrinkles, radiating out and downward from her high-peaked crown. Just once the n.o.ble head was lowered--as that of an ancient Greek philosopher to an inquisitive child--and the crimson-hawed eyes directed downward as, in a calm, aloof spirit of investigation, the Lady Desdemona took note of the fussy movements of her own son.

”I don't think we have been introduced, have we?” she seemed to say. It was difficult to realize that, not many weeks before, hollow of flank, with the mother anxiety in her eyes, the same n.o.ble creature had battled and contrived to keep life in herself and in this same l.u.s.ty pup out there on the open Down, four miles and more away, among the small wild creatures and the debris of her cave home.

Among the dog-folk Nature has arranged matters in this way, wisely and kindly. Separated from her good master, Colonel Forde, for many months, or even years, Desdemona would have recognized him again without hesitation. But like every other canine mother, and like every creature of the wild, her own flesh and blood became utterly strange to her within a very few weeks, when separated from her during its first months of life. And from Nature's standpoint this is a highly necessary ordinance, since, after a few more months, Desdemona, mated elsewhere, might easily find herself called upon to rear an entirely new family in new surroundings. So it is that whilst among her kind, as among the creatures of the wild, there is nothing to prevent mother and son or daughter from becoming friends in the youngster's adult life; yet never, after the first separation, can they meet consciously as mother and offspring.

It was an interesting picture for the Nuthill folk and Colonel Forde to see Finn and Desdemona sedately strolling across the lawn together, tried friends and mates, divided sometimes by the impudent gambols and even by the mock attacks and invitations to play of their own l.u.s.ty son--the only whelp in existence, probably the only one who ever had lived, to carry in his veins in equal parts the blood of centuries of Irish wolfhound and bloodhound champions.

”Do keep them there!” cried pretty Betty Murdoch. ”I simply must have that picture; I'll fetch my camera.” And after some skilled manoeuvering to secure the son's collaboration, the promised picture was secured.

XIII

SAPLING DAYS

At the age of six months, Jan, the son of Finn and Desdemona, weighed just ninety-eight and one-half pounds, and by reason of his well-furnished appearance might easily have been mistaken by many people for a grown hound. He was not really anything like fully grown and furnished, of course, nor would be until his second year was far advanced. But the free and healthy life he led, combined with a generous and correctly thought-out diet, had given him remarkably rapid development, and the strength to carry it without strain.

At this time Jan had, in outline, a.s.sumed his adult appearance. As time went on he would increase greatly in weight, and to some extent in height and length. His body would thicken, and his frame would harden and set; his coat would improve, and his muscles would develop to more than double their present growth. But in his seventh month one knew what Jan's appearance was to be; his type had declared itself, and so, to a considerable extent, had his personality.

There was not a brown hair in Jan's coat; not one hair of any other color than black or iron-gray. His saddle and haunches were jetty black, so was the crown of his head. But his muzzle was the right wolfhound steel-gray. So were his chest, belly, and legs, though the black hairs crept fairly low down on the outsides of his thighs and hocks, the inner sides being all hard gray. The gray of his chest extended, like a ruff, right round the upper part of his neck, forming a break of three or four inches between the silky blackness of his head and saddle. And all his coat was thicker, more dense, and longer in the hair than his sire's coat, which, again, was of course much longer than Desdemona's.

Thus, in color and texture of coat Jan was neither all wolfhound nor all bloodhound. For the rest, his bodily appearance and build favored his mother's race more than his father's. The depth and solidity of his head and muzzle, the length and shape of his ears, the rolling elasticity and plenitude of his skin and the deep wrinkles it had already formed about his face, were all features true to bloodhound type, as were also the thickness and solidity of his frame, the downward poise of his head, and his deep-pouched crimson-hawed eyes.

But when one saw Jan extended at the gallop, or in the act of leaping a gate or other obstruction, one was apt to forget the bloodhound in him, and to remember only his kins.h.i.+p with Finn, the fleetest son of a fleet race of hunters. Jan had all the wonderfully springy elasticity of the wolfhound. Already he leaped and ran as a greyhound leaps and runs.

Already, too, his accuracy of balance and his agility were remarkable.