*N. B.—You may know a Red McCulloch anywhere by the ring ofwhite upon his tail some two inches from the root.
AFTER that first encounter in the Dalesman's Daughter, Red Wull, for so M'Adam called him, resigned himself complacently to his lot; recognizing, perhaps, his destiny.
Thenceforward the sour little man and the vicious puppy grew, as it were, together. The two were never apart. Where M'Adam was, there was sure to be his tiny attendant, bristling defiance as he kept ludicrous guard over his master.
The little man and his dog were inseparable. M'Adam never left him even at the Grange.
“I couldna trust ma Wullie at hame alone wi' the dear lad,” was hisexplanation. “I ken weel I'd come back to find a wee corpse on thefloor, and David singin':'My heart is sair, I daur na tell,My heart is sair for somebody.'
Ay, and he'd be sair elsewhere by the time I'd done wi' him—he! he!”
The sneer at David's expense was as characteristic as it was unjust. For though the puppy and the boy were already sworn enemies, yet the lad would have scorned to harm so small a foe. And many a tale did David tell at Kenmuir of Red Wull's viciousness, of his hatred of him (David), and his devotion to his master; how, whether immersed in the pig-bucket or chasing the fleeting rabbit, he would desist at once, and bundle, panting, up at his master's call; how he routed the tomcat and drove him from the kitchen; and how he clambered on to David's bed and pinned him murderously by the nose.
Of late the relations between M'Adam and James Moore had been unusually strained. Though they were neighbors, communications between the two were of the rarest; and it was for the first time for many a long day that, on an afternoon shortly after Red Wull had come into his possession, M'Adam entered the yard of Kenmuir, bent on girding at the master for an alleged trespass at the Stony Bottom.
“Wi' yer permission, Mr. Moore,” said the little man, “I'll wheestle ma dog,” and, turning, he whistled a shrill, peculiar note like the cry of a disturbed peewit.
Straightway there came scurrying desperately up, ears back, head down, tongue out, as if the world depended on his speed, a little tawny beetle of a thing, who placed his forepaws against his master's ankles and looked up into his face; then, catching sight of the strangers, hurriedly he took up his position between them and M'Adam, assuming his natural attitude of grisly defiance. Such a laughable spectacle he made, that martial mite, standing at bay with bristles up and teeth bared, that even James Moore smiled.
“Ma word! Ha' yo' brought his muzzle, man?” cried old Tammas, the humorist; and, turning, climbed all in a heat on to an upturned bucket that stood by. Whereat the puppy, emboldened by his foe's retreat, advanced savagely to the attack, buzzing round the slippery pail like a wasp on a windowpane, in a vain attempt to reach the old man.
Tammas stood on the top, hitching his trousers and looking down on his assailant, the picture of mortal fear.
“'Elp! Oh, 'elp!” he bawled. “Send for the sogers! Fetch the p'lice! For lawk-amussy's sake call him off, man!” Even Sam'l Todd, watching the scene from the cart-shed, was tickled and burst into a loud guffaw, heartily backed by 'Enry and oor Job. While M'Adam remarked: “Ye're fitter for a stage than a stable-bucket, Mr. Thornton.”
“How didst come by him?” asked Tammas, nodding at the puppy.
“Found him,” the little man replied, sucking his twig. “Found him in ma stockin' on ma birthday. A present from ma leetle David for his auld dad, I doot.”
“So do I,” said Tammas, and was seized with sudden spasm of seemingly causeless merriment. For looking up as M'Adam was speaking, he had caught a glimpse of a boy's fair head, peering cautiously round the cow-shed, and, behind, the flutter of short petticoats. They disappeared as silently as they had come; and two small figures, just returned from school, glided away and sought shelter in the friendly darkness of a coal-hole.
“Coom awa', Maggie, coom awa'! 'Tis th' owd un, 'isself,” whispered a disrespectful voice.
M'Adam looked round suspiciously.
“What's that?” he asked sharply.
At the moment, however, Mrs. Moore put her head out of the kitchen window.
“Coom thy ways in, Mister M'Adam, and tak' a soop o' tea,” she called hospitably.
“Thank ye kindly, Mrs. Moore, I will,” he answered, politely for him. And this one good thing must be allowed of Adam M'Adam: that, if there was only one woman of whom he was ever known to speak well, there was also only one, in the whole course of his life, against whom he ever insinuated evil—and that was years afterward, when men said his brain was sapped. Flouts and jeers he had for every man, but a woman, good or bad, was sacred to him. For the sex that had given him his mother and his wife he had that sentiment of tender reverence which, if a man still preserve, he cannot be altogether bad. As he turned into the house he looked back at Red Wull.
“Ay, we may leave him,” he said. “That is, gin ye're no afraid, Mr. Thornton?”
Of what happened while the men were within doors, it is enough to tell two things. First, that Owd Bob was no bully. Second, this: In the code of sheep-dog honor there is written a word in stark black letters; and opposite it another word, writ large in the color of blood. The first is “Sheep-murder”; the second, “Death.” It is the one crime only to be wiped away in blood; and to accuse of the crime is to offer the one unpardonable insult. Every sheep-dog knows it, and every shepherd.
That afternoon, as the men still talked, the quiet echoes of the farm rung with a furious animal cry, twice repeated: “Shot for sheep-murder”—“Shot for sheep-murder”; followed by a hollow stillness.
The two men finished their colloquy. The matter was concluded peacefully, mainly owing to the pacifying influence of Mrs. Moore. Together the three went out into the yard; Mrs. Moore seizing the opportunity to shyly speak on David's behalf.
“He's such a good little lad, I do think,” she was saying.
“Ye should ken, Mrs. Moore,” the little man answered, a thought bitterly; “ye see enough of him.”
“Yo' mun be main proud of un, mester,” the woman continued, heedless of the sneer: “an' 'im growin' such a gradely lad.”
M'Adam shrugged his shoulders.
“I barely ken the lad,” he said. “By sight I know him, of course, but barely to speak to. He's but seldom at hame.”
“An' hoo proud his mother'd be if she could see him,” the woman continued, well aware of his one tender place. “Eh, but she was fond o' him, so she was.”
An angry flush stole over the little man's face. Well he understood the implied rebuke; and it hurt him like a knife.
“Ay, ay, Mrs. Moore,” he began. Then breaking off, and looking about him—“Where's ma Wullie?” he cried excitedly. “James Moore!” whipping round on the Master, “ma Wullie's gone—gone, I say!”
Elizabeth Moore turned away indignantly. “I do declar' he tak's more fash after yon little yaller beastie than iver he does after his own flesh,” she muttered.
“Wullie, ma we doggie! Wullie, where are ye? James Moore, he's gone—ma Wullie's gone!” cried the little man, running about the yard, searching everywhere.
“Cannot 'a' gotten far,” said the Master, reassuringly, looking about him.
“Niver no tellin',” said Sam'l, appearing on the scene, pig-bucket in hand. “I misdoot yo'll iver see your dog agin, mister.” He turned sorrowfully to M'Adam.
That little man, all dishevelled, and with the perspiration standing on his face, came hurrying out of the cow-shed and danced up to the Master.
“It's robbed I am—robbed, I tell ye!” he cried recklessly. “Ma wee Wull's bin stolen while I was ben your hoose, James Moore!”
“Yo' munna say that, ma mon. No robbin' at Kenmuir,” the Master answered sternly.
“Then where is he? It's for you to say.”
“I've ma own idee, I 'aye,” Sam'l announced opportunely, pig-bucket uplifted.
M'Adam turned on him.
“What, man? What is it?”
“I misdoot yo'll iver see your dog agin, mister,” Sam'l repeated, as if he was supplying the key to the mystery.
“Noo, Sam'l, if yo' know owt tell it,” ordered his master.
Sam'l grunted sulkily.
“Wheer's oor Bob, then?” he asked.
At that M'Adam turned on the Master.
“'Tis that, nae doot. It's yer gray dog, James Moore, yer —— dog. I might ha' kent it,”—and he loosed off a volley of foul words.
“Sweerin' will no find him,” said the Master coldly. “Noo, Sam'l.”
The big man shifted his feet, and looked mournfully at M'Adam.
“'Twas 'appen 'aif an hour agone, when I sees oor Bob goin' oot o' yard wi' little yaller tyke in his mouth. In a minnit I looks agin—and theer! little yaller 'un was gone, and oor Bob a-sittin' a-lickin' his chops. Gone foriver, I do reck'n. Ah, yo' may well take on, Tammas Thornton!” For the old man was rolling about the yard, bent double with merriment.
M'Adam turned on the Master with the resignation of despair.
“Man, Moore,” he cried piteously, “it's yer gray dog has murdered ma wee Wull! Ye have it from yer ain man.”
“Nonsense,” said the Master encouragingly. “'Tis but yon girt oof.”
Sam'l tossed his head and snorted.
“Coom, then, and i'll show yo',” he said, and led the way out of the yard. And there below them on the slope to the stream, sitting like Justice at the Courts of Law, was Owd Bob.
Straightway Sam'l whose humor was something of the calibre of old Ross's, the sexton, burst into horse-merriment. “Why's he sittin' so still, think 'ee? Ho! Ho! See un lickin' his chops—ha! ha!”—and he roared afresh. While from afar you could hear the distant rumbling of 'Enry and oor Job.
At the sight, M'Adam burst into a storm of passionate invective, and would have rushed on the dog had not James Moore forcibly restrained him.
“Bob, lad,” called the Master, “coom here!”
But even as he spoke, the gray dog cocked his ears, listened a moment, and then shot down the slope. At the same moment Tammas hallooed: “Theer he be! yon's yaller un coomin' oot o' drain! La, Sam'l!” And there, indeed, on the slope below them, a little angry, smutty-faced figure was crawling out of a rabbit-burrow.
“Ye murderin' devil, wad ye duar touch ma Wullie?” yelled M'Adam, and, breaking away, pursued hotly down the hill; for the gray dog had picked up the puppy, like a lancer a tent-peg, and was sweeping on, his captive in his mouth, toward the stream.
Behind, hurried James Moore and Sam'l, wondering what the issue of the comedy would be. After them toddled old Tammas, chuckling. While over the yard-wall was now a little cluster of heads: 'Enry, oor Job, Maggie and David, and Vi'let Thornton, the dairy-maid.
Straight on to the plank-bridge galloped Owd Bob. In the middle he halted, leant over, and dropped his prisoner; who fell with a cool plop into the running water beneath.
Another moment and M'Adam had reached the bank of the stream. In he plunged, splashing and cursing, and seized the struggling puppy; then waded back, the waters surging about his waist, and Red Wull, limp as a wet rag, in his hand. The little man's hair was dripping, for his cap was gone; his clothes clung to him, exposing the miserableness of his figure; and his eyes blazed like hot ashes in his wet face.
He sprang on to the bank, and, beside himself with passion, rushed at Owd Bob.
“Curse ye for a ——”
“Stan' back, or yo'll have him at your throat!” shouted the Master, thundering up. “Stan' back, I say, yo' fule!” And, as the little man still came madly on, he reached forth his hand and hurled him back; at the same moment, bending, he buried the other hand deep in Owd Bob's shaggy neck. It was but just in time; for if ever the fierce desire of battle gleamed in gray eyes, it did in the young dog's as M'Adam came down on him.
The little man staggered, tottered, and fell heavily. At the shock, the blood gushed from his nose, and, mixing with the water on his face, ran down in vague red streams, dripping off his chin; while Red Wull, jerked from his grasp, was thrown afar, and lay motionless.
“Curse ye!” M'Adam screamed, his face dead-white save for the running red about his jaw. “Curse ye for a cowardly Englishman!” and, struggling to his feet, he made at the Master.
But Sam'l interposed his great bulk between the two.
“Easy, little mon,” he said leisurely, regarding the small fury before him with mournful interest. “Eh, but thee do be a little spit-cat, surely!”
James Moore stood, breathing deep, his hand still buried in Owd Bob's coat.
“If yo'd touched him,” he explained, “I couldna ha' stopped him. He'd ha' mauled yo' afore iver I could ha' had him off. They're bad to hold, the Gray Dogs, when they're roosed.”
“Ay, ma word, that they are!” corroborated Tammas, speaking from the experience of sixty years. “Once on, yo' canna get 'em off.”
The little man turned away.
“Ye're all agin me,” he said, and his voice shook. A pitiful figure he made, standing there with the water dripping from him. A red stream was running slowly from his chin; his head was bare, and face working.
James Moore stood eyeing him with some pity and some contempt. Behind was Tammas, enjoying the scene. While Sam'l regarded them all with an impassive melancholy.
M'Adam turned and bent over Red Wull, who still lay like a dead thing. As his master handled him, the button-tail quivered feebly; he opened his eyes, looked about him, snarled faintly, and glared with devilish hate at the gray dog and the group with him.
The little man picked him up, stroking him tenderly. Then he turned away and on to the bridge. Half-way across he stopped. It rattled feverishly beneath him, for he still trembled like a palsied man.
“Man, Moore!” he called, striving to quell the agitation in his voice—“I wad shoot yon dog.”
Across the bridge he turned again. “Man, Moore!” he called and paused. “Ye'll not forget this day.” And with that the blood flared up a dull crimson into his white face.
THE storm, long threatened, having once burst, M'Adam allowed loose rein to his bitter animosity against James Moore.
The two often met. For the little man frequently returned home from the village by the footpath across Kenmuir. It was out of his way, but he preferred it in order to annoy his enemy and keep a watch upon his doings.
He haunted Kenmuir like its evil genius. His sallow face was perpetually turning up at inopportune moments. When Kenmuir Queen, the prize short-horn heifer, calved unexpectedly and unattended in the dip by the lane, Tammas and the Master, summoned hurriedly by Owd Bob, came running up to find the little man leaning against the stile, and shaking with silent merriment. Again, poor old Staggy, daring still in his dotage, took a fall while scrambling on the steep banks of the Stony Bottom. There he lay for hours, unnoticed and kicking, until James Moore and Owd Bob came upon him at length, nearly exhausted. But M'Adam was before them. Standing on the far bank with Red Wull by his side, he called across the gulf with apparent concern: “He's bin so sin' yesternight.” Often James Moore, with all his great strength of character, could barely control himself.
There were two attempts to patch up the feud. Jim Mason, who went about the world seeking to do good, tried in his shy way to set things right. But M'Adam and his Red Wull between them soon shut him and Betsy up.
“You mind yer letters and yer wires, Mr. Poacher-Postman. Ay, I saw 'em baith: th' ain doon by the Haughs, t'ither in the Bottom. And there's Wullie, the humorsome chiel, havin' a rare game wi' Betsy.” There, indeed, lay the faithful Betsy, suppliant on her back, paws up, throat exposed, while Red Wull, now a great-grown puppy, stood over her, his habitually evil expression intensified into a fiendish grin, as with wrinkled muzzle and savage wheeze he waited for a movement as a pretext to pin: “Wullie, let the leddy be—ye've had yer dinner.”
Parson Leggy was the other would-be mediator; for he hated to see the two principal parishioners of his tiny cure at enmity. First he tackled James Moore on the subject; but that laconic person cut him short with, “I've nowt agin the little mon,” and would say no more. And, indeed, the quarrel was none of his making.
Of the parson's interview with M'Adam, it is enough to say here that, in the end, the angry old minister would of a surety have assaulted his mocking adversary had not Cyril Gilbraith forcibly withheld him.
And after that the vendetta must take its course unchecked.
David was now the only link between the two farms. Despite his father's angry commands, the boy clung to his intimacy with the Moores with a doggedness that no thrashing could overcome. Not a minute of the day when out of school, holidays and Sundays included, but was passed at Kenmuir. It was not till late at night that he would sneak back to the Grange, and creep quietly up to his tiny bare room in the roof—not supperless, indeed, motherly Mrs. Moore had seen to that. And there he would lie awake and listen with a fierce contempt as his father, hours later, lurched into the kitchen below, lilting liquorishly:
“We are na fou, we're nae that fou,But just a drappie in our e'e;The cock may craw, the day may daw',And ay we'll taste the barley bree!”
And in the morning the boy would slip quietly out of the house while his father still slept; only Red Wull would thrust out his savage head as the lad passed, and snarl hungrily.
Sometimes father and son would go thus for weeks without sight of one another. And that was David's aim—to escape attention. It was only his cunning at this game of evasion that saved him a thrashing.
The little man seemed devoid of all natural affection for his son. He lavished the whole fondness of which his small nature appeared capable on the Tailless Tyke, for so the Dalesmen called Red Wull. And the dog he treated with a careful tenderness that made David smile bitterly.
The little man and his dog were as alike morally as physically they were contrasted. Each owed a grudge against the world and was determined to pay it. Each was an Ishmael among his kind.
You saw them thus, standing apart, leper-like, in the turmoil of life; and it came quite as a revelation to happen upon them in some quiet spot of nights, playing together, each wrapped in the game, innocent, tender, forgetful of the hostile world.
The two were never separated except only when M'Adam came home by the path across Kenmuir. After that first misadventure he never allowed his friend to accompany him on the journey through the enemy's country; for well he knew that sheep-dogs have long memories.
To the stile in the lane, then, Red Wull would follow him. There he would stand, his great head poked through the bars, watching his master out of sight; and then would turn and trot, self-reliant and defiant, sturdy and surly, down the very centre of the road through the village—no playing, no enticing away, and woe to that man or dog who tried to stay him in his course! And so on, past Mother Ross's shop, past the Sylvester Arms, to the right by Kirby's smithy, over the Wastrel by the Haughs, to await his master at the edge of the Stony Bottom.
The little man, when thus crossing Kenmuir, often met Owd Bob, who had the free run of the farm. On these occasions he passed discreetly by; for, though he was no coward, yet it is bad, single-handed, to attack a Gray Dog of Kenmuir; while the dog trotted soberly on his way, only a steely glint in the big gray eyes betraying his knowledge of the presence of his foe. As surely, however, as the little man, in his desire to spy out the nakedness of the land, strayed off the public path, so surely a gray figure, seeming to spring from out the blue, would come fiercely, silently driving down on him; and he would turn and run for his life, amid the uproarious jeers of any of the farm-hands who were witness to the encounter.
On these occasions David vied with Tammas in facetiousness at his father's expense.
“Good on yo', little un!” he roared from behind a wall, on one such occurrence.
“Bain't he a runner, neither?” yelled Tammas, not to be outdone.
“See un skip it—ho! ho! Look to his knees a-wamblin'! from the undutiful son in ecstasy. An' I'd knees like yon, I'd wear petticoats.” As he spoke, a swinging box on the ear nearly knocked the young reprobate down.
“D'yo' think God gave you a dad for you to jeer at? Y'ought to be ashamed o' yo'self. Serve yo' right if he does thrash yo' when yo' get home.” And David, turning round, found James Moore close behind him, his heavy eyebrows lowering over his eyes.
Luckily, M'Adam had not distinguished his son's voice among the others. But David feared he had; for on the following morning the little man said to him:
“David, ye'll come hame immediately after school to-day.”
“Will I?” said David pertly.
''Ye will.
“Why?”
“Because I tell ye to, ma lad”; and that was all the reason he would give. Had he told the simple fact that he wanted help to drench a “husking” ewe, things might have gone differently. As it was, David turned away defiantly down the hill.
The afternoon wore on. Schooltime was long over; still there was no David.
The little man waited at the door of the Grange, fuming, hopping from one leg to the other, talking to Red Wull, who lay at his feet, his head on his paws, like a tiger waiting for his prey.
At length he could restrain himself no longer; and started running down the hill, his heart burning with indignation.
“Wait till we lay hands on ye, ma lad,” he muttered as he ran. “We'll warm ye, we'll teach ye.”
At the edge of the Stony Bottom he, as always, left Red Wull. Crossing it himself, and rounding Langholm How, he espied James Moore, David, and Owd Bob walking away from him and in the direction of Kenmuir. The gray dog and David were playing together, wrestling, racing, and rolling. The boy had never a thought for his father.
The little man ran up behind them, unseen and unheard, his feet softly pattering on the grass. His hand had fallen on David's shoulder before the boy had guessed his approach.
“Did I bid ye come hame after school, David?” he asked, concealing his heat beneath a suspicious suavity.
“Maybe. Did I say I would come?”
The pertness of tone and words, alike, fanned his father's resentment into a blaze. In a burst of passion he lunged forward at the boy with his stick. But as he smote, a gray whirlwind struck him fair on the chest, and he fell like a snapped stake, and lay, half stunned, with a dark muzzle an inch from his throat.
“Git back, Bob!” shouted James Moore, hurrying up. “Git back, I tell yo'!” He bent over the prostrate figure, propping it up anxiously.
“Are yo' hurt, M'Adam? Eh, but I am sorry. He thought yo' were going for to strike the lad.”
David had now run up, and he, too, bent over his father with a very scared face.
“Are yo' hurt, feyther?” he asked, his voice trembling.
The little man rose unsteadily to his feet and shook off his supporters. His face was twitching, and he stood, all dust-begrimed, looking at his son.
“Ye're content, aiblins, noo ye've seen yer father's gray head bowed in the dust,” he said.
“'Twas an accident,” pleaded James Moore. “But Iamsorry. He thought yo' were goin' to beat the lad.”
“So I was—so I will.”
“If ony's beat it should be ma Bob here tho' he nob'but thought he was doin' right. An' yo' were aff the path.”
The little man looked at his enemy, a sneer on his face.
“Ye canna thrash him for doin' what ye bid him. Set yer dog on me, if ye will, but dinna beat him when he does yer biddin'!”
“I did not set him on yo', as you know,” the Master replied warmly.
M'Adam shrugged his shoulders.
“I'll no argie wi' ye, James Moore,” he said. “I'll leave you and what ye call yer conscience to settle that. My business is not wi' you.—David!” turning to his son.
A stranger might well have mistaken the identity of the boy's father. For he stood now, holding the Master's arm; while a few paces above them was the little man, pale but determined, the expression on his face betraying his consciousness of the irony of the situation.
“Will ye come hame wi' me and have it noo, or stop wi' him and wait till ye get it?” he asked the boy.
“M'Adam, I'd like yo' to—”
“None o' that, James Moore.—David, what d'ye say?”
David looked up into his protector's face.
“Yo'd best go wi' your feyther, lad,” said the Master at last, thickly. The boy hesitated, and clung tighter to the shielding arm; then he walked slowly over to his father.
A bitter smile spread over the little man's face as he marked this new test of the boy's obedience to the other.
“To obey his frien' he foregoes the pleasure o' disobeyin' his father,” he muttered. “Noble!” Then he turned homeward, and the boy followed in his footsteps.
James Moore and the gray dog stood looking after them.
“I know yo'll not pay off yer spite agin me on the lad's head, M'Adam,” he called, almost appealingly.
“I'll do ma duty, thank ye, James Moore, wi'oot respect o' persons,” the little man cried back, never turning.
Father and son walked away, one behind the other, like a man and his dog, and there was no word said between them. Across the Stony Bottom, Red Wull, scowling with bared teeth at David, joined them. Together the three went up the bill to the Grange.
In the kitchen M'Adam turned.
“Noo, I'm gaein' to gie ye the gran'est thrashin' ye iver dreamed of. Tak' aff yer coat!”
The boy obeyed, and stood up in his thin shirt, his face white and set as a statue's. Red Wull seated himself on his haunches close by, his ears pricked, licking his lips, all attention.
The little man suppled the great ash-plant in his hands and raised it. But the expression on the boy's face arrested his arm.
“Say ye're sorry and I'll let yer aff easy.”
“I'll not.”
“One mair chance—yer last! Say yer 'shamed o' yerself'!”
“I'm not.”
The little man brandished his cruel, white weapon, and Red Wull shifted a little to obtain a better view.
“Git on wi' it,” ordered David angrily.
The little man raised the stick again and—threw it into the farthest corner of the room.
It fell with a rattle on the floor, and M'Adam turned away.
“Ye're the pitifulest son iver a man had,” he cried brokenly. “Gin a man's son dinna haud to him, wha can he expect to?—no one. Ye're ondootiful, ye're disrespectfu', ye're maist ilka thing ye shouldna be; there's but ae thing I thocht ye were not—a coward. And as to that, ye've no the pluck to say ye're sorry when, God knows, ye might be. I canna thrash ye this day. But ye shall gae nae mair to school. I send ye there to learn. Ye'll not learn—ye've learnt naethin' except disobedience to me—ye shall stop at hame and work.”
His father's rare emotion, his broken voice and working face, moved David as all the stripes and jeers had failed to do. His conscience smote him. For the first time in his life it dimly dawned on him that, perhaps, his father, too, had some ground for complaint; that, perhaps, he was not a good son.
He half turned.
“Feyther—”
“Git oot o' ma sight!” M'Adam cried.
And the boy turned and went.
THENCEFORWARD David buckled down to work at home, and in one point only father and son resembled—industry. A drunkard M'Adam was, but a drone, no.
The boy worked at the Grange with tireless, indomitable energy; yet he could never satisfy his father.
The little man would stand, a sneer on his face and his thin lips contemptuously curled, and flout the lad's brave labors.
“Is he no a gran' worker, Wullie? 'Tis a pleasure to watch him, his hands in his pockets, his eyes turned heavenward!” as the boy snatched a hard-earned moment's rest. “You and I, Wullie, we'll brak' oorsel's slavin' for him while he looks on and laffs.”
And so on, the whole day through, week in, week out; till he sickened with weariness of it all.
In his darkest hours David thought sometimes to run away. He was miserably alone on the cold bosom of the world. The very fact that he was the son of his father isolated him in the Daleland. Naturally of a reserved disposition, he had no single friend outside Kenmuir. And it was only the thought of his friends there that withheld him. He could not bring himself to part from them; they were all he had in the world.
So he worked on at the Grange, miserably, doggedly, taking blows and abuse alike in burning silence. But every evening, when work was ended, he stepped off to his other home beyond the Stony Bottom. And on Sundays and holidays—for of these latter he took, unasking, what he knew to be his due—all day long, from cock-crowing to the going down of the sun, he would pass at Kenmuir. In this one matter the boy was invincibly stubborn. Nothing his father could say or do sufficed to break him of the habit. He endured everything with white-lipped, silent doggedness, and still held on his way.
Once past the Stony Bottom, he threw his troubles behind him with a courage that did him honor. Of all the people at Kenmuir two only ever dreamed the whole depth of his unhappiness, and that not through David. James Moore suspected something of it all, for he knew more of M'Adam than did the others. While Owd Bob knew it as did no one else. He could tell it from the touch of the boy's hand on his head; and the story was writ large upon his face for a dog to read. And he would follow the lad about with a compassion in his sad gray eyes greater than words.
David might well compare his gray friend at Kenmuir with that other at the Grange.
The Tailless Tyke had now grown into an immense dog, heavy of muscle and huge of bone. A great bull head; undershot jaw, square and lengthy and terrible; vicious, yellow-gleaming eyes; cropped ears; and an expression incomparably savage. His coat was a tawny, lion-like yellow, short, harsh, dense; and his back, running up from shoulder to loins, ended abruptly in the knob-like tail. He looked like the devil of a dogs' hell. And his reputation was as bad as his looks. He never attacked unprovoked; but a challenge was never ignored, and he was greedy of insults. Already he had nigh killed Rob Saunderson's collie, Shep; Jem Burton's Monkey fled incontinently at the sound of his approach; while he had even fought a round with that redoubtable trio, the Vexer, Venus, and Van Tromp.
Nor, in the matter of war, did he confine himself to his own kind. His huge strength and indomitable courage made him the match of almost anything that moved. Long Kirby once threatened him with a broomstick; the smith never did it again. While in the Border Ram he attacked Big Bell, the Squire's underkeeper, with such murderous fury that it took all the men in the room to pull him off.
More than once had he and Owd Bob essayed to wipe out mutual memories, Red Wull, in this case only, the aggressor. As yet, however, while they fenced a moment for that deadly throat-grip, the value of which each knew so well, James Moore had always seized the chance to intervene.
“That's right, hide him ahint yer petticoats,” sneered M'Adam on one of these occasions.
“Hide? It'll not be him I'll hide, I warn you, M'Adam,” the Master answered grimly, as he stood, twirling his good oak stick between the would-be duellists. Whereat there was a loud laugh at the little man's expense.
It seemed as if there were to be other points of rivalry between the two than memories. For, in the matter of his own business—the handling of sheep—Red Wull bid fair to be second only throughout the Daleland to the Gray Dog of Kenmuir. And M'Adam was patient and painstaking in the training of his Wullie in a manner to astonish David. It would have been touching, had it not been so unnatural in view of his treatment of his own blood, to watch the tender carefulness with which the little man moulded the dog beneath his hands. After a promising display he would stand, rubbing his palms together, as near content as ever he was.
“Weel done, Wullie! Weel done. Bide a wee and we'll show 'em a thing ortwo, you and I, Wullie.“'The warld's wrack we share o't,The warstle and the care o't.'
For it's you and I alane, lad.” And the dog would trot up to him, place his great forepaws on his shoulders, and stand thus with his great head overtopping his master's, his ears back, and stump tail vibrating.
You saw them at their best when thus together, displaying each his one soft side to the other.
From the very first David and Red Wull were open enemies: under the circumstances, indeed, nothing else was possible. Sometimes the great dog would follow on the lad's heels with surly, greedy eyes, never leaving him from sunrise to sundown, till David could hardly hold his hands.
So matters went on for a never-ending year. Then there came a climax.
One evening, on a day throughout which Red Wull had dogged him thus hungrily, David, his work finished, went to pick up his coat, which he had left hard by. On it lay Red Wull.
“Git off ma coat!” the boy ordered angrily, marching up. But the great dog never stirred: he lifted a lip to show a fence of white, even teeth, and seemed to sink lower in the ground; his head on his paws, his eyes in his forehead.
“Come and take it!” he seemed to say.
Now what, between master and dog, David had endured almost more than he could bear that day.
“Yo' won't, won't yo', girt brute!” he shouted, and bending, snatched a corner of the coat and attempted to jerk it away. At that, Red Wull rose, shivering, to his feet, and with a low gurgle sprang at the boy.
David, quick as a flash, dodged, bent, and picked up an ugly stake, lying at his feet. Swinging round, all in a moment, he dealt his antagonist a mighty buffet on the side of the head. Dazed with the blow, the great dog fell; then, recovering himself, with a terrible, deep roar he sprang again. Then it must have gone hard with the boy, fine-grown, muscular young giant though he was. For Red Wull was now in the first bloom of that great strength which earned him afterward an undying notoriety in the land.
As it chanced, however, M'Adam had watched the scene from the kitchen. And now he came hurrying out of the house, shrieking commands and curses at the combatants. As Red Wull sprang, he interposed between the two, head back and eyes flashing. His small person received the full shock of the charge. He staggered, but recovered, and in an imperative voice ordered the dog to heel.
Then he turned on David, seized the stake from his hand, and began furiously belaboring the boy.
“I'll teach ye to strike—a puir—dumb—harmless—creetur, ye—cruel—cruel—-lad!” he cried. “Hoo daur ye strike—ma——Wullie? yer—father's——Wullie? Adam—M 'Adam's—Red Wull?” He was panting from his exertions, and his eyes were blazing. “I pit up as best I can wi' all manner o' disrespect to masel'; but when it comes to takin' ma puir Wullie, I canna thole it. Ha' ye no heart?” he asked, unconscious of the irony of the question.
“As much as some, I reck'n,” David muttered.
“Eh, what's that? What d'ye say?”
“Ye may thrash me till ye're blind; and it's nob'but yer duty; but if only one daurs so much as to look at yer Wullie ye're mad,” the boy answered bitterly. And with that he turned away defiantly and openly in the direction of Kenmuir.
M'Adam made a step forward, and then stopped.
“I'll see ye agin, ma lad, this evenin',” he cried with cruel significance.
“I doot but yo'll be too drunk to see owt—except, 'appen, your bottle,” the boy shouted back; and swaggered down the hill.
At Kenmuir that night the marked and particular kindness of Elizabeth Moore was too much for the overstrung lad. Overcome by the contrast of her sweet motherliness, he burst into a storm of invective against his father, his home, his life—everything.
“Don't 'ee, Davie, don't 'ee, dearie!” cried Mrs. Moore, much distressed. And taking him to her she talked to the great, sobbing boy as though he were a child. At length he lifted his face and looked up; and, seeing the white, wan countenance of his dear comforter, was struck with tender remorse that he had given way and pained her, who looked so frail and thin herself.
He mastered himself with an effort; and, for the rest of the evening, was his usual cheery self. He teased Maggie into tears; chaffed stolid little Andrew; and bantered Sam'l Todd until that generally impassive man threatened to bash his snout for him.
Yet it was with a great swallowing at his throat that, later, he turned down the slope for home.
James Moore and Parson Leggy accompanied him to the bridge over the Wastrel, and stood a while watching as he disappeared into the summer night.
“Yon's a good lad,” said the Master half to himself.
“Yes,” the parson replied; “I always thought there was good in the boy, if only his father'd give him a chance. And look at the way Owd Bob there follows him. There's not another soul outside Kenmuir he'd do that for.”
“Ay, sir,” said the Master. “Bob knows a mon when he sees one.”
“He does,” acquiesced the other. “And by the by, James, the talk in the village is that you've settled not to run him for the Cup. Is, that so?”
The Master nodded.
“It is, sir. They're all mad I should, but I mun cross 'em. They say he's reached his prime—and so he has o' his body, but not o' his brain. And a sheep-dog—unlike other dogs—is not at his best till his brain is at its best—and that takes a while developin', same as in a mon, I reck'n.”
“Well, well,” said the parson, pulling out a favorite phrase, “waiting's winning—waiting's winning.”
David slipped up into his room and into bed unseen, he hoped. Alone with the darkness, he allowed himself the rare relief of tears; and at length fell asleep. He awoke to find his father standing at his bedside. The little man held a feeble dip-candle in his hand, which lit his sallow face in crude black and white. In the doorway, dimly outlined, was the great figure of Red Wull.
“Whaur ha' ye been the day?” the little man asked. Then, looking down on the white stained face beneath him, he added hurriedly: “If ye like to lie, I'll believe ye.”
David was out of bed and standing up in his night-shirt. He looked at his father contemptuously.
“I ha' bin at Kenmuir. I'll not lie for yo' or your likes,” he said proudly.
The little man shrugged his shoulders.
“'Tell a lee and stick to it,' is my rule, and a good one, too, in honest England. I for one 'll no think ony the worse o' ye if yer memory plays yer false.”
“D'yo' think I care a kick what yo' think o' me?” the boy asked brutally. “Nay; there's 'nough liars in this fam'ly wi'oot me.”
The candle trembled and was still again.
“A lickin' or a lie—tak' yer choice!”
The boy looked scornfully down on his father. Standing on his naked feet, he already towered half a head above the other and was twice the man.
“D'yo' think I'm fear'd o' a thrashin' fra yo'? Goo' gracious me!” he sneered. “Why, I'd as lief let owd Grammer Maddox lick me, for all I care.”
A reference to his physical insufficiencies fired the little man as surely as a lighted match powder.
“Ye maun be cauld, standin' there so. Rin ye doon and fetch oor little frien'”—a reference to a certain strap hanging in the kitchen. “I'll see if I can warm ye.”
David turned and stumbled down the unlit, narrow stairs. The hard, cold boards struck like death against his naked feet. At his heels followed Red Wull, his hot breath fanning the boy's bare legs.
So into the kitchen and back up the stairs, and Red Wull always following.
“I'll no despair yet o' teachin' ye the fifth commandment, though I kill masel' in doin' it!” cried the little man, seizing the strap from the boy's numb grasp.
When it was over, M'Adam turned, breathless, away. At the threshold of the room he stopped and looked round: a little, dim-lit, devilish figure, framed in the door; while from the blackness behind, Red Wull's eyes gleamed yellow.
Glancing back, the little man caught such an expression on David's face that for once he was fairly afraid. He banged the door and hobbled actively down the stairs.