TO this day, when Chet McAusland tells the tale his voice becomes husky and his eyes are likely to fill—and, “It was murder,” he will say when he is done. “I felt like a murderer and that’s what I was. But it was too late then.” Sometimes his listeners are silent, appearing to agree with him. More often, those to whom he speaks seek to reassure him, for it is plain to any man that there is no murder in Chet, nor any malice nor anything but a very human large-heartedness toward every man and beast.

In Tantry’s time Chet was a bachelor living alone at his farm above Fraternity, cooking and caring for himself, managing well enough. He had been a granite cutter, a fisherman upon the Banks, a keeper of bees. Now he farmed his rocky hillside farm. He was a man of middle age—a small man with a firm jaw and a pair of bushy eyebrows and deep-set piercing eyes. When he laughed he had a way of setting his head firmly back upon his neck, his chin pressed down, and his laughter was robust and free and fine. I have spoken of his occupations; he had also avocations. All his life he had fished, had hunted, had traversed the forests far and wide. A man who loved the open, loved the woods, loved the very imprint of a deer’s hoof in the mud along the river. A good companion, open-hearted, with never an evil word for any man.

He was, as has been said, a bachelor; but this was not of Chet’s own choosing, as at least one person in Fraternity well knew. Old Tantrybogus knew also—knew even in the days when he was called young Job. He knew his mistress as well as he knew his master; knew her as truly as though she dwelt already at the farm upon the hill. Between her and Chet was his allegiance divided. None other shared it ever, even to the end.

Chet as a bachelor kept open house at his farm upon the hill and this was especially true when there was fishing or gunning to be had. A Rockland man came one October for the woodcock shooting. He and Chet found sport together and found—each in the other—a friend. The Rockland man had fetched with him a she dog of marvelous craft and from her next litter he sent a pup to Chet. In honor of the giver Chet called the dog Job. And Job—Old Tantrybogus that was to be—learned that the farm upon the hill was his world and his home.

Chet’s farm, numbering some eighty acres, included meadows that cut thirty or forty tons of hay; it included ample pasturage for a dozen cows; and it ran down to the George’s River behind the barn, through a patch of hardwood growth that furnished Chet with firewood for the cutting—a farm fairly typical of Fraternity. No man might grow rich upon its fruits, but any man with a fair measure of industry could draw a pleasant living from it and find time for venturing along the brooks for trout or through the alder runs after woodcock or into the swamps for deer, according to the season. From the wall that bounds the orchard you may look down to where the little village lies along the river. A dozen or so of houses, each scrupulously neat and scrupulously painted; a white church with its white spire rising above the trees; the mill straddling the river just below the bridge, and a store or two. Will Bissell’s store is just above the bridge, serving as market place and forum. The post office is there, and there after supper the year round Fraternity foregathers.

In Fraternity most men own dogs; not the cross-bred and worthless brutes characteristic of small towns in less favored countrysides, but setters of ancient stock or hounds used to the trail of fox or rabbit. Now and then you will see a collie or a pointer, though these breeds are rare. Utilitarian dogs—dogs which have tasks to do and know their tasks and do them.

Most men in Fraternity own or have owned some single wonderful dog of which they love to tell—a dog above all other dogs for them, a dog whose exploits they lovingly recount. And it was to come to pass that Job, better known as Old Tantrybogus, should be such a dog to Chet McAusland.

II

Your true setter is born, not made. The instincts of his craft are a part of his birthright. Nevertheless they must be guided and cultivated and developed. There are men whose profession it is to train bird dogs, or as the phrase goes, to break them. With some of these men it is a breaking indeed, for they carry a lash into the field, nor spare to use it. Others work more gently to a better end. But any man may make his dog what he will if he have patience coupled with the gift of teaching the dog to understand his wishes.

Chet decided to train Job himself. He set about it when the pup was some six months old, at a season when winter was settling down upon the farm and there were idle hours on his hands. He had kept as trophies of the gunning season just past the head and the wings of a woodcock. These he bound into a ball of soft and woolly yarn and on a certain day he called Job to his knee and made him sniff and smell this ball until the puppy knew the scent of it. Job wished to tear and rend the pleasantly soft and yielding plaything, but Chet forbade this by stern word, backed by restraining hand, till the pup seemed to understand.

Then he looped about the dog’s neck a stout cord and he held this cord in his hand, the pup at his feet, while he tossed the woolen ball across the kitchen floor. The pup turned and leaped after the ball.

Before he could make a second jump Chet said sharply, “Whoa!”

And he snubbed the cord he held so that Job was brought up short in a tumbling heap, his toe nails scratching on the floor.

Chet got up and crossed and picked up the ball; he returned to his chair, called the pup to his knee, tossed the ball again. Again Job darted after it and again Chet said, “Whoa,” and checked Job with the cord. At which the puppy, with the utmost singleness of purpose, caught the cord in his mouth, squatted on the floor and set about gnawing his bonds in two. Chet laughed at him, called him in, fetched the ball, and tried again.

After Chet had checked him half a dozen times with voice and string the pup sat on its small haunches, looked at Chet with his head on one side and wrinkled its furry brow in thought. And Chet repeated slowly over and over:

“Whoa, Job! Whoa! Whoa!”

The lesson was not learned on the first day or the second or the third. But before the week was gone Job had learned this much: That when Chet said “Whoa” he must stop, or be stopped painfully. Being a creature of intelligence, Job thereafter stopped; and when he was sure the pup understood, Chet applauded him and fed him and made much of him.

One day in the middle of the second week, Job having checked at the word of command, Chet waited for a moment and then said, “Go on!”

Job looked round at Chet, and the man motioned with his hand and repeated, “Go on, Job!”

The pup a little doubtfully moved toward where lay the woolly ball. When he was within a yard of it Chet said again, “Whoa!”

When he stopped this time he did not look back at Chet but watched the ball, and Chet after a single glance threw back his head and laughed aloud and cried to himself, “Now ain’t that comical?”

For Job, a six-months’ puppy, was on his first point. Head low and flattened, nose on a line toward the ball, legs stiff, tail straight out behind with faintly drooping tip, the pup was motionless as a graven dog—a true setter in every line.

And Chet laughed aloud.

This laughter was a mistake, for at the sound the pup leaped forward, the cord slipped through Chet’s fingers and the dog caught the woolly ball and began to worry it. Chet, still laughing, took the ball from him, caressed him, praised him and ended the lesson for that day. And by so doing he permitted the birth in Job of one fault which he would never be able to overcome. The pup supposed he had been applauded for capturing the woolly ball and that notion would never altogether die in his dog brain. Job would break shot, as the gunners say, till the end of his days.

III

By October of his second year Job was sufficiently educated to be called a good working dog. He would stop at the word of command; he would swerve to right or left at a hand gesture; he would come to heel; he would point and hold his point as long as the bird would lie. He was a natural retriever, though Chet had to correct a tendency to chop the object that was retrieved. The man did this by thrusting through and through the woolen teaching ball a dozen long darning needles. When the dog, retrieving this ball, closed his jaws too harshly these needles pricked his tender mouth. He learned to lift the ball as lightly as a feather; he developed a mouth as soft as a woman’s hand; and even in his second year he would at command retrieve an egg which Chet rolled across the kitchen floor and never chip the shell.

His one fault, his trick of breaking shot, was buttressed and built into the dog’s very soul by an incident which occurred in his first year’s hunting. He and Chet left the farmhouse one afternoon and started down through the fringe of woodland toward the river. It was near sunset. Chet had his gun, and as he expected, they found game; Chet had ample warning when he saw Job stiffen at half point, his tail twitching. He watched until the dog began to move forward with slow steps, and he said to himself, “He’s roding a pa’tridge. I knew there’d be one here.”

Job’s head was high, evidence in itself that he had located partridge rather than woodcock. Chet skirted the fringe in the open land, studying the ground well ahead of the dog, alert for the burst of drumming wings. He moved quietly and Job moved among the trees, his feet stirring the leaves. The dog was tense; so was the man. And presently the dog froze again, this time in true point, tail rigid as an iron bar.

Chet knew that meant the partridge had squatted, would run no more. Forced to move now, the bird would fly. He waited for a long half minute, but the partridge waited also. So Chet, rather than walk in among the trees and spoil his chance for a shot, stooped to pick up a stone, intending to toss it in and frighten the bird to wing.

When he stooped, out of position to shoot, he heard the drum of pinions and saw rise not one partridge but two. They swept across the open below him, unbelievably swift, and Chet whipped up his gun and fired once and then again. And never a feather fell. The birds on set wings glided out of his sight into the edge of an evergreen growth down the hill where it would be hopeless to try for a shot at them again.

And Job pursued them. As the birds rose the dog had raced forward. As they disappeared among the tops of the low hemlocks the dog went out of sight after them. Ejecting the empty shells from his gun, Chet swore at himself for his poor shooting and swore at Job for breaking shot and loudly commanded the dog to return. Job did not do so; did not even respond when Chet put his whistle to his lips and blew. So the man started after the dog, whose bell he could faintly hear, and promised to find Job and teach him a thing he needed to know. He started toward the cover, whistling and shouting for Job to come to heel.

When he was half way across the open Job did emerge from the shelter of the evergreens, and he came toward Chet at a swift trot, head held high. Chet started to abuse him. And then when the dog was still half a dozen rods away he saw that Job carried a cock partridge in his mouth. The bird, wounded unto death, had flown to the last wing beat far into the wood. And Job pursuing had found the game and was fetching it in.

For consistency’s sake and for the dog’s sake Chet should still have punished Job—should still have made him understand that to break shot was iniquity. But—Chet was human and much too warm-hearted to be a disciplinarian. Perhaps he is not to be blamed for praising Job after all. Certainly the man did praise the dog, so that Job’s dog brain was given again to understand that if he chased a bird and caught it he would be applauded. The fault dwelt in him thereafter.

“I tried to break him all his life,” Chet will say. “I put a rope on him and a choke collar and I shook him up—everything I knew. It wan’t no good. But it was my fault in the beginning. I never really blamed Old Tantry—never could.”

IV

This is not properly the story of Job’s youth or of his life, but of his aging and the death of him. Nevertheless there was much in his life that was worth the telling. His reputation rests not on Chet’s word alone—the village knew him and was proud of him. His renown began in his third year in deep winter when Chet and Jim Saladine went fishing one day through the ice on Sebacook Pond. Chet and Saladine became separated, one on either side of the lower end of the pond, and Jim had the pail of bait. Chet made Job go after the pail clear across the pond and fetch it to him and take it back to Saladine again. The dog’s sagacity and understanding, evidenced then and chronicled by Saladine at Bissell’s store that night, were to wax thereafter for half a dozen years; and even when the dog grew old his understanding never waned.

It was in his ninth year that Job had his greatest day—a day into which he crowded epic deeds enough to make heroes of half a dozen dogs. And the tale of that day may perhaps be worth the telling.

Chet had taken Job out the night before to try for a partridge in the fringes of the wood below the farm. They were late in starting, but within fifteen minutes Job was marking game and just at sunset the bird rose and wheeled toward the thickets of the wood. Chet had a snap shot; he took it and he saw the bird’s legs drop and dangle before it disappeared. He knew what that meant. A body wound, a deadly wound. The bird would fly so long as its wings would function, then set its pinions and glide in a long slant to earth, and when it struck ground it would be dead.

He sent Job into the wood, himself followed the dog, and he was in haste, for dark was already coming down. He hunted till he could no longer see—found nothing. In the end he called Job in, and the dog reluctantly abandoned the search at Chet’s command and followed his master back to the farm.

Two Rockland men telephoned that evening asking if they might come to the farm next day and try for birds; and Chet, who can always find time for a day’s gunning, bade them come. Doctor Gunther, who was telephoning, said: “Hayes and I’ll be there by half past eight. Mind if we bring our dogs?”

“Mind? No,” said Chet. “Sure!”

“They’re wild,” said the doctor, “but I’d like to have them work with Job—do them good.”

“Best thing in the world for them,” Chet agreed. “Let them back him on a few points and it’ll steady them. I’ll look for you.”

In the morning he rose early and busied himself with his chores so that he might be ready when the hunters came. It was not an ideal hunting day. The morning was lowery and overcast and warm and there was a wind from the east that promised fog or rain. With an eye on the clouds Chet worked swiftly. He fed Job in the shed where the dog usually slept and it chanced that he left the door latched so that Job was a prisoner until the others arrived. They were a little ahead of time and Chet asked them to wait a little. He had been picking apples in the orchard behind the shed and he took them out there to see the full barrels of firm fruit. Job went out into the orchard with them and no one of the men noticed that the dog slipped away beyond the barn toward the woods.

When a little later they were ready to start Chet missed the dog. He is a profane man, and he swore and whistled and called. Hayes, the man who had come with Gunther, winked at the doctor and asked Chet: “Is he a self-hunter? Has he gone off on his own?”

“Never did before,” Chet said hotly. His heat was for Job, not for Hayes. “I’ll teach him something!”

He went out behind the barn, still whistling and calling, and the others followed him. Their dogs were in the car in which they had come from Rockland. The three men walked across the garden to the brow of the hill above the river and Chet blew his whistle till he was purple of countenance. The other two were secretly amused, as men are apt to be amused when they find that an idol has feet of clay. For Job was a famous dog.

Hayes it was who caught first sight of him and said, “There he comes now.”

They all looked and saw Job loping heavily up the slope through an open fringe of birches. But it was not till he scrambled over the wall that they saw he bore something in his mouth.

Hayes said, “He’s got a woodchuck.”

Chet, with keener eyes, stared for a moment, then exclaimed exultantly: “He’s got that partridge I killed down there last night! I knew that bird was dead.”

They were still incredulous, even after he told them how he had shot the bird the night before.

They were incredulous until Job came near enough for them all to see, came trotting to Chet and proudly dropped the splendid bird at his master’s feet. When they could no longer doubt they exclaimed. For such a feat is alone enough to found a dog reputation on.

As for Chet, though he was swelled with pride, he made light of the matter.

“You’ll see him work to-day though,” he said. “The scent lies on a day like this. But it’ll rain by noon—we want to get started.”

They did get started and without more delay. They went in the car, and after a mile or so stopped on a rocky ledge beside the road at what Chet was used to call the Dummy Cover—an expanse of half a dozen acres tangled with alders and birches and thorn and dotted with wild apple trees here and there. Two or three low knolls lifted their heads above the muck of the lower land—an ideal place for woodcock when the flight was on.

The men got out and belled their dogs and old Job stood quietly at Chet’s heel while Chet filled his pockets with shells. The other dogs were racing and plunging, breaking across the wall, returning impatiently at command, racing away again. When they were ready the three men went through the bars, and with a gesture Chet sent Job into an alder run to the right. The great dog began his systematic zigzagging progress, designed to cover every foot of the ground, while the younger dogs circled and scuffled and darted about him, nosing here and there, wild with the excitement of the hunt.

Such dogs flush many birds and one of these dogs flushed a woodcock now fifty yards ahead of where old Job was working. The bird started to circle back, saw the men and veered away again. Though the range was never less than forty yards, Chet, who had a heavy far-shooting gun, took a snap shot through the alder tops as the bird turned in flight and he saw it jump slightly in the air as though the sound of the gun had startled it. Chet knew what that little break in its flight had meant and he watched the bird as long as he could see it and marked where it scaled to earth at last in the deeps of the cover ahead of them.

It was while his attention was thus distracted that Job disappeared. When Chet had reloaded he looked round for the dog and Job was gone. He listened and heard no sound of Job’s bell. He blew his whistle and blew again. The other two dogs came galloping to their masters, heads up, eyes questioning, but Job did not appear.

The man Hayes said: “He’s gone off alone. I wouldn’t have a dog I couldn’t keep in.”

Chet looked at him with a flare of his native temper in his eyes.

“He’s got a bird,” said Chet. “He’s right here somewhere and he’s got a bird.”

He turned and began to push his way into the alders and the other two men kept pace with him, one on either side. It was hard going; they could see only a little way. Now and then Chet whistled again, but for the most part they went quietly. Woodcock may not be found in open stubble like the obliging quail. You will come upon them singly or by twos in wet alder runs or upon birch-clad knolls or even in the shelter of a clump of evergreens—in thick cover almost always, where it is difficult for a man to shoot; and the bird must usually be killed before it has gone twenty yards in flight or it goes scot-free.

In such a cover as this the men were now hunting for Job; and at the end of fifteen minutes, in which they had worked back and forth and to and fro without discovering the dog, Hayes and the doctor were ready to give up.

“Call him in,” Hayes told Chet. “Maybe we’ll see the bird get up. We can’t find him and we’re wasting time.”

Chet hesitated, then he said: “I’ll shoot. Maybe that’ll scare up the bird.”

On the last word his gun roared and through its very echoes each of the three men heard the tinkle of a bell, and Chet, who was nearest, cried: “There he is! Careful! The bird’s moving.”

The dog was in the very center of the cover they had traversed—in a little depression where he chanced to be well hidden. They had passed within twenty feet of him, yet had he held his point. Hayes was the first to do homage.

“By gad,” he cried, “that is some dog, McAusland!”

“You be ready to shoot,” Chet retorted. “I’ll walk up the bird.”

They said they were ready; he moved in to one side of Job and the woodcock got up on whistling wings. Hayes’ first shot knocked him down.

Job found another bird a little farther on and Chet killed it before it topped the alders. Then they approached the spot where he had marked down that first woodcock, the one which had been flushed by the too-rangy dogs. He called Job, pointed, said briefly: “Find dead bird, Job.”

The dog went in, began to work. When the other men came up Chet said: “I think I hurt that first bird. He dropped in here. Job will find him.”

“Let’s send the other dogs in, too,” Hayes suggested. “Mine hasn’t learned retrieving yet.”

Chet nodded and the other two dogs plunged into the cover to one side of Job and began to circle, loping noisily. Job looked toward them with an air of almost human disgust at such incompetency, then went on with his business of finding the bird.

The men, watching, saw then a curious thing: they saw old Job freeze in a point and as he did so the other dogs charged toward him. One, Gunther’s, caught the scent ten feet away and froze. The other hesitated, then came on—and Job growled, a warning deadly growl. The other dog stopped still.

Chet exclaimed: “Now ain’t that comical? Hear old Job tell him to freeze?”

Hayes nodded and the three stood for a moment, watching the motionless dogs, silent. Then the young dog stirred again and Job moved forward two paces and flattened his head so low it almost touched the ground and—growled again.

Chet laughed.

“All right, Job,” he called. “Dead bird! Fetch it in!”

Job did not move, and Hayes said: “Maybe it’s not dead.

“I’ll walk in,” Chet told him. “I won’t shoot. You do the shooting.”

They nodded and he began to work in through the alders toward where Job stood. The others waited in vantage points outside. Chet came abreast of Job and stopped. But the dog stood still, and this surprised Chet, for Job was accustomed to rush forward, flushing up the bird as soon as he knew that Chet was near at hand. So the man studied the ground ahead of Job’s nose, trying to locate the bird; and he moved forward a step or two cautiously and at last began to beat to and fro, expecting every minute to hear the whistle of the woodcock’s wings as it rose.

Nothing happened. The two younger dogs broke point with a careless air as though to say they had not been pointing at all; that they had merely been considering the matter. They began to move about in the alders. And at last Chet, half convinced that Job was on a false point, turned to his dog and said harshly: “There’s nothing here, Job. Come out of it. Come along. Come in.”

Job watched Chet, but did not move. His lower jaw was fairly resting on the ground, and Chet exclaimed impatiently and stooped and caught his collar to drag him away. When he did this he saw the bird—saw its spreading wing beneath Job’s very jaw—and he reached down and lifted it, stone dead, from where it lay. Not till Chet had taken up the woodcock did Job stir, but when he saw it safe in his master’s hand he shook himself, looked at the other dogs with a triumphant cock of his ears and turned and trotted on down the run.

They left that cover presently, put in an hour in the Fuller pasture, where a partridge and two woodcock fell to their guns, and then drove back to the farm. It was beginning to rain—the thick brush soaked them. Chet bade them come and have dinner at the farm and wait on the chance that the afternoon would see a clearing sky. So they had a dinner of Chet’s cooking, and afterward they sat upon the side veranda watching the rain, smoking.

Chet McAusland is an extravagantly generous man. If you go fishing with him you take home both your fish and his own. He will not have it otherwise. Likewise if you go into the covers the birds are yours.

“Sho, I can get woodcock any time! You take them,” he will say. “Go on now.”

And it is so obvious that he is happier in giving than in keeping that he usually has his way.

After dinner he brought out the birds that had been killed in the morning and laid them on an empty chair beside him and began to tie their legs together so that they could be conveniently handled. Job was on the floor a yard away, apparently asleep. The men were talking. And Job growled.

Chet looked down, saw there were kittens about—there were always kittens at the farm—and reproved Job for growling at the kits. He was a little surprised, for Job usually paid no attention to them, even permitted them to eat from his plate. He said good-naturedly: “What are you doing, Job? Scaring that little kitten? Ain’t you ashamed!”

Job was so far from being ashamed that he barked loudly and Chet bent to cuff him into silence. Then he saw and laughed aloud. “Now ain’t that comical!” he demanded. “Look a-there!”

One of the kittens under Chet’s very chair was laboring heavily, trying to drag away a woodcock that seemed twice as large as itself. The other men laughed; Chet rescued the woodcock; the kitten fled and Job beamed with satisfaction and slapped his tail upon the floor.

Hayes cried: “By gad, McAusland, that dog has sense! I’d like to buy him.”

“You don’t want to buy him. He’s getting old. He won’t be able to hunt much longer.”

“Is he for sale?”

“Oh, you don’t want him,” Chet said uncomfortably. He hated to refuse any man anything.

“I’ll give you three hundred for him,” said Hayes.

Now three hundred dollars was as much cash as Chet was like to see in a year’s time, but—Job was Job. He hesitated, not because the offer attracted him but because he did not wish to refuse Hayes. He hesitated, but in the end he said, “You don’t want old Job.”

Gunther touched Hayes’ arm, caught his eye, shook his head; and Hayes forbore to push the matter. But he could not refrain from praising Job.

“I never saw as good a dog!” he declared.

“He is a good dog,” Chet agreed. “He’ll break shot, but that’s his only out. He’s staunch, he’ll mind, he works close in and he’s the best retriever in the County.”

“You don’t lose many birds with him,” Hayes agreed.

“I can throw a pebble from here right over the barn and he’ll fetch it in,” said Chet. “There’s nothing he won’t bring—if I tell him to.”

Gunther laughed.

“You’re taking in a good deal of territory, Chet.”

“I could tell you some things he’s done that would surprise you,” Chet declared.

Hayes chuckled.

“Let’s try him out,” he suggested.

“All right.”

Hayes pointed toward the barn. The great doors were open and a yellow and black cat was coming through the barn toward them. As Hayes pointed her out she sat down in the doorway and began to lick her breast fur down.

“Have him fetch the cat,” said Hayes.

Chet laughed. He stooped and touched the dog’s head.

“Job,” he said, “come here.”

Job got up and stood at Chet’s knee, looking up into his master’s face, tail wagging slowly to and fro. Chet waved his hand toward the barn.

“Go fetch the cat,” he said. “Go fetch the cat, Job.” The dog looked toward the barn, looked up at Chet again. Chet repeated, “Fetch the cat, Job.”

And the dog, a little doubtfully, left them and walked toward the barn. The cat saw Job coming, but was not afraid. They were old friends. All creatures were friends on Chet’s farm. It rose as Job approached and rubbed against his legs. Job stood still, uncertain; he looked back at Chet, looked down at the cat, looked back at Chet.

“Fetch, Job!” Chet called.

Then the dog in a matter of fact way that delighted the three men on the porch closed his jaws over the cat’s back, at the shoulder. The cat may have been astonished, but it is cat instinct to hang quietly when lifted in this wise. It made no more than a muffled protest; it hung in a furry ball, head drawn up, paws close against its body.

Job brought the cat gravely to Chet’s knee, and Chet took it from his mouth and soothed it and applauded Job.

“I’ll give you five hundred for that dog,” said Hayes.

“You don’t want to buy him,” Chet replied slowly, and the two men saw that there was a fierce pride in his eyes.

V

A dog does not live as long as a man and this natural law is the fount of many tears. If boy and puppy might grow to manhood and doghood together, and together grow old, and so in due course die, full many a heartache might be avoided. But the world is not so ordered, and dogs will die and men will weep for them so long as there are dogs and men.

A setter may live a dozen years—may live fifteen. Job lived fourteen years. But the years of his prime were only seven, less than his share, for in his sixth year he had distemper and hunted not at all then or the year thereafter. For months through his long convalescence he was too weak to walk and Chet used to go in the morning and lift the dog from his bed in the barn into a wheelbarrow; and he would wheel Job around into the sun where he might lie quietly the long day through. But in his eighth year he was himself again—and in his ninth and tenth he hunted.

When he was eleven years old his eyes failed him. The eye is the first target of old age in a setter. It fails while the nose is still keen. In August of Job’s eleventh year he went into the fields with Chet one day when Chet was haying, and because the day was fine the dog was full of life, went at a gallop to and fro across the field.

Chet had begun to fear that Job was aging; he watched the dog now, somewhat reassured; and he said to Jim Saladine, who was helping him, “There’s life in the old dog yet.”

“Look at that!” said Saladine.

But Chet had seen. Job going full tilt across the field had run headlong into a bowlder as big as a barrel, which rose three feet above the stubble. He should have seen it clear across the field; he had not seen it at all. They heard his yelp of pain at the blow upon his tender nose and saw him get up and totter in aimless circles. Chet ran toward him, comforted him.

The dog was not stone blind, but his sight was almost gone. It must have gone suddenly, though Chet looking backward could see that he should have guessed before. Job was half stunned by the blow he had received and he followed Chet to the barn and lay down on a litter of hay there and seemed glad to rest. Chet, his eyes opened by what had happened, seemed to see the marks of age very plain upon the old dog of a sudden.

He took him into the covers that fall once or twice and Job’s nose functioned as marvelously as ever. But Chet could not bear to see the old dog blundering here and there, colliding with every obstacle that offered itself. After the third trial he gave up and hunted no more that fall. He even refused to go out with others when they brought their dogs.

“My old Job can’t hunt any more,” he would say. “I don’t seem to enjoy it any more myself. I guess I’ll not go out to-day.”

Hayes was one of those who tried to persuade Chet to take the field. An abiding friendship had grown up between these two. And late in October Hayes brought another puppy to the farm.

“He’ll never be the dog Job was,” he told Chet. “But he’s a well-blooded dog.”

“There won’t ever be another Job,” Chet agreed. “But—I’m obliged for the puppy—and he’ll be company for Job.”

He called the new dog Mac and he set about Mac’s training that winter, but his heart was not in it. That Job should grow old made Chet feel his own years heavy upon him. He was still in middle life, as hale as any man of twenty. But—Job was growing old and Chet’s heart was heavy.

Mary Thurman in the village—it was she whom Job called his mistress—saw the sorrow in Chet. She was full of sympathetic understanding of the man. They were as truly one as though they had been married these dozen years.

Annie Bissell, Will Bissell’s wife, said to her once: “Why don’t you marry him, Mary? Land knows, you’ve loved him long enough.”

Mary Thurman told her: “He don’t need me. He’s always lived alone and been comfortable enough and never known the need of a woman. I’ll marry no man that don’t know he needs me and tells me so.”

“Land knows, he needs someone to rid up that house of his. It’s a mess,” the other woman said.

“Chet don’t need me,” Mary insisted. “When he needs me I reckon I’ll go to him.”

She saw now the sorrow in Chet’s eyes and she tried to talk him out of it and to some extent succeeded.

Chet laughed a little, rubbed Job’s head, said slowly: “I hate to see the old dog get old, that’s all.”

“Sho,” said Mary, “he’s just beginning to enjoy living. Don’t have to work any more.”

In the end she did bring some measure of comfort to Chet. And it was she who christened Job anew. He and Chet came down one evening, stopped on their way for the mail, and she greeted Chet and to the dog said, “Hello, Old Tantrybogus.”

Chet looked at her, asked what she meant.

“Nothing,” Mary told him. “He just looks like an old tantrybogus, that’s all.”

“What is a tantrybogus?” Chet asked. “I don’t believe there’s any such thing.”

“Well, if there was he’d look like one,” said Mary.

The name took hold. Mary always used it; Chet himself took it up. By the time Job was twelve years old he was seldom called anything else.

Chet had expected that Mac, the young dog, would prove a companion for Job, but at first it seemed he would be disappointed. To begin with, Job was jealous; he sulked when Chet paid Mac attention and was a scornful spectator at Mac’s training sessions. This early jealousy came to a head about the time Mac got his full stature—in a fight over a field mouse. It happened in the orchard, where Chet was piling hay round his trees. Mac dug the mouse out of the grass, Old Tantrybogus stole it and Mac went for him.

Tantry was old, but strength was still in him, and some measure of craft. He got a neck hold and it is probable he would have killed Mac then and there if Chet had not interfered. As it was, Chet broke the hold, punished both dogs and chained them up for days till by every language a dog can muster they promised him to behave themselves. They never fought again. Mac had for Tantry a deep respect; Job had for Mac—having established his ascendancy—a mild and elderly affection.

In Tantry’s thirteenth year during the haying Mac caught a mouse one day and brought it and gave it to the older dog; and Chet, who saw the incident, slapped his knee and cried, “Now ain’t that comical?”

About his twelfth year old Tantry’s bark had begun to change. Little by little it lost the deeper notes of the years of his prime; it lost the certainty and decision which were always a part of the dog. It began to crack, as an old man’s voice quavers and cracks. A shrill querulous note was born in it. Before he was thirteen his bark had an inhuman sound and Chet could hardly bear to hear it. On gunning days while Chet was preparing to take the field with Mac, Old Tantrybogus would dance unsteadily round him, barking this hoarse, shrill, delighted bark.

It was like seeing an old man gamboling; it was age aping youth. There was something pitiful in it, and Chet used to swear and chain Tantry to his kennel and bid him—abusively—be still.

The chain always silenced Tantry. He would lie in the kennel, head on his paws in the doorway, and watch Chet and Mac start away, with never a sound. And at night when they came home Chet would show him the birds and Tantry would snuffle at them eagerly, then hide his longing under a mask of condescension as though to say that woodcock had been of better quality in his day.

In his thirteenth year age overpowered Tantry. His coat by this time was long; it hung in fringes from his thin flanks, through which the arched ribs showed. His head drooped, his tail dragged; his long hair was clotted into tangles here and there, because he was grown too old to keep himself in order. The joints of his legs were weak and he was splayfooted, his feet spreading out like braces on either side of him. When he walked he weaved like a drunken man; when he ran he collided with anything from a fence post to the barn itself. His eyes were rheumy. And he was pathetically affectionate, pushing his nose along Chet’s knee, smearing Chet’s trousers with his long white hairs. In his prime he had been a proud dog, caring little for caresses. This senile craving for the touch of Chet’s hand made Chet cry—and swear. It was at this time that Mary Thurman told Chet he ought to put Tantrybogus away.

“He’s too old for his own good,” she said—“half sick, and sore and uncomfortable. He ain’t happy, Chet.”

Chet told her that he would—some day. But the day did not come, and Mary knew it would not come. Nevertheless she urged Chet more than once to do the thing.

“You ought to. He’d be happier,” she said—“and so would you. You ain’t happy with him around.”

Chet laughed at her.

“I guess Old Tantry won’t bother me long as he wants to live,” he said.

“He makes you feel like an old man, Chet McAusland, just to look at him,” she protested. But Chet shook his head.

“I won’t feel old long as I can see you,” he told her.

So Old Tantry lived on and grew more decrepit. One day in the winter of his thirteenth year he followed Chet down into the wood lot and hunted him out there—and was so weary from his own exertions that Chet had to carry the dog up the hill and home and put him to bed in the barn.

“I ought to put you away, Tantry,” he said to himself as he gave the weary old creature a plate of supper. “It’s time you were going, old dog. But I can’t—I can’t.”

His fourteenth year saw Tantrybogus dragging out a weary life. Till then there had been nothing the matter with him save old age, but in his fourteenth summer a lump appeared on his right side against the ribs, and it was as large as a nut before Chet one day discovered it. Thereafter it grew. And at times when the old dog lay down on that side he would yelp with pain and get up hurriedly and lie down on the other side. By September the lump was half as large as an apple. And when Chet touched it Tantry whined and licked Chet’s hand in a pitiful appeal. Even then Chet would not do that which Mary wished him to do.

“He’ll go away some day and I’ll never see him again,” he told her. “But as long as he wants to stay—he’ll stay.”

“It’s cruel to the dog,” Mary told him. “You keep him, but you won’t let him do what he wants to do. I’m ashamed of you, Chet McAusland.”

Chet laughed uncomfortably.

“I can’t help it, Mary,” he said.

VI

October came—the month of birds, the month when a dog scents the air and feels a quickening in his blood and watches to see his master oil the gun and break out a box of shells and fetch down the bell from the attic. And on the third day of the season, a crisp day, frost upon the ground and the sun bright in the sky, Chet decided to go down toward the river and try to find a bird.

When the bell tinkled Mac came from the barn at a gallop and danced on tiptoe round his master so that Chet had difficulty in making him stand quietly for as long as it took to adjust the bell on his collar. Old Tantrybogus had been asleep in the barn, and he was as near deaf as he was blind by this time, so that he heard nothing. But the stir of Mac’s rush past him roused the old dog and he climbed unsteadily to his feet and came weaving like a drunken man to where Chet stood. And he barked his shrill, senile, pitiful bark and he tried in his poor old way to dance as Mac was dancing.

Chet looked down at the old dog and because there were tears in his eyes he spoke harshly.

“Tantry, you old fool,” he said, “go lie down. You’re not going. You couldn’t walk from here to the woods. Go lie down and rest, Tantry.”

Tantry paid not the least attention; he barked more shrilly than ever. He pretended that it was a matter of course that Chet would bell him and take him along. This is one of the favorite ruses of the dog—to pretend to be sure of the treat in store for him until his master must have a heart of iron to deny him.

Tantry continued to dance until Chet walked to the kennel and pointed in and said sternly, “Get in there, Tantry!”

Then and only then the old dog obeyed. He did not sulk; he went in with a certain dignity, and once inside he turned and lay with his head in the door, watching Chet and Mac prepare to go. Chet did not chain him. There was no need, he thought. Tantry could scarce walk at all, much less follow him to the fringe of woodland down the hill.

When he was ready he and Mac went through the barn and across the garden into the meadow and across this meadow and the wall beyond till the hill dropped steeply toward the river. Repeated commands kept Mac to heel, though the dog was fretting with impatience. Not till they were at the edge of the wood did Chet wave his hand and bid the dog go on.

“Now find a bird, Mac,” Chet commanded. “Go find a bird.”

And Mac responded, moving into the cover at a trot, nosing to and fro. They began to work along the fringe down toward the river, where in an alder run or two Chet hoped to find a woodcock. Neither of them looked back toward the farm and so it was that neither of them saw Old Tantrybogus like a shadow of white slip through the barn and come lumbering unsteadily along their trail. That was a hard journey for Tantry. He was old and weak and he could not see and the lump upon his side was more painful than it had ever been before. He passed through the barn without mishap, for that was familiar ground. Between the barn and the garden he brushed an apple tree that his old eyes saw too late. In the garden he blundered among the dead tops of the carrots and turnips, which Chet had not yet harvested. He was traveling by scent alone, his nose to the ground, picking out Chet’s footsteps. He had not been so far away from the farm for months; it was an adventure and a stiff one. The wall between the garden and the meadow seemed intolerably high and a rock rolled under him so that he fell painfully. The old dog only whimpered a little and tried again and passed the wall and started along Chet’s trail across the meadow.

Midway of this open his strength failed him so that he fell forward and lay still for a considerable time, tongue out, panting heavily. But when he was rested he climbed to his feet again—it was a terrible effort, even this—and took up his progress.

The second wall, which inclosed Chet’s pasture, was higher and there was a single strand of barbed wire atop it. Tantry failed twice in his effort to leap to the top of the unsteady rank of stones and after that he turned aside and moved along the wall looking for an easier passage. He came to a bowlder that helped him, scrambled to the top, cut his nose on the barbed wire, slid under it and half jumped, half fell to the ground. He was across the wall.

Even in the trembling elation of this victory the old dog’s sagacity did not fail him. Another dog might have blundered down into the wood on a blind search for his master. Tantrybogus did not do this. He worked back along the wall until he picked up the trail, then followed it as painstakingly as before. He was increasingly weary, however, and more than once he stopped to rest. But always when a thin trickle of strength flowed back into his legs he rose and followed on.

Chet and Mac had found no partridges in the fringe of the woods, so at the river they turned to the right, pushed through some evergreens and came into a little alder run where woodcock were accustomed to nest and where Chet expected to find birds lying on this day. Almost at once Mac began to mark game, standing motionless for seconds on end, moving forward with care, making little side casts to and fro. Chet’s attention was all on the dog; his gun was ready; he was alert for the whistle of the woodcock’s wings, every nerve strung in readiness to fling up his gun and pull.

If Mac had not found game in this run, if Chet and the dog had kept up their swift hunter’s gait, Old Tantrybogus would never have overtaken them, for the old dog’s strength was almost utterly gone. But Chet halted for perhaps five minutes in the little run, following slowly as Mac worked uphill, and this halt gave Old Tantry time to come up with them. He lumbered out of the cover of the evergreens and saw Chet, and the old dog barked aloud with joy and scrambled and tottered to where Chet stood. He was so manifestly exhausted that Chet’s eyes filled with frank tears—they flowed down his cheeks. He had not the heart to scold Tantry for breaking orders and following them.

He reached down and patted the grizzled old head and said huskily: “You damned old fool, Tantry! What are you doing down here?”

Tantry looked up at him and barked again and again and there was a rending ring of triumph in the old dog’s cackling voice.

Chet said gently: “There now, be still. You’ll scare the birds, Tantry. Behave yourself. Mac’s got a bird here somewhere. Be still—you’ll scare the birds.”

For answer, as though his deaf old ears had caught the familiar word and read it as an order, Tantry shuffled past his master and worked in among the alders toward where Mac was casting slowly to and fro. Chet watched him for a minute through eyes so blurred he could hardly see and he brushed his tears away with the back of his hand.

“The poor old fool,” he said. “Hell, let him have his fun!”

He took one step forward to follow the dogs—and stopped. For old Tantrybogus, a dog of dogs in his day, had proved that he was not yet too old to know his craft. Unerringly, where Mac had blundered for a minute or more, he had located the woodcock—he was on point. And Mac, turning, saw him and stiffened to back the other dog.

Tantrybogus’ last point was not beautiful; it would have taken no prize in field trials. His splayfeet were spread, the better to support his body on his tottering legs. His tail drooped to the ground instead of being stiffened out behind. His head was on one side, cocked knowingly, and it was still as still. When Chet, frankly weeping, worked in behind him he saw that the old dog was trembling like a leaf and he knew this was no tremor of weakness but a shivering ecstacy of joy in finding game again.

Chet came up close behind Old Tantry and stopped and looked down at the dog. He paid no heed to Mac. Mac was young, unproved. But he and Tantry, they were old friends and tried; they knew each the other.

“You’re happier now than you’ve been for a long time, Tantry,” said Chet softly, as much to himself as to the dog. “Happy old boy! It’s a shame to make you stay at home.”

And of a sudden, without thought or plan but on the unconsidered impulse of the moment, Chet dropped his gun till the muzzle was just behind Old Tantry’s head. At the roar of it a woodcock rose on shrilling wings—rose and flew swiftly up the run with never a charge of shot pursuing. Chet had not even seen it go.

The man was on his knees, cradling the old dog in his arms, crying out as though Tantry still could hear: “Tantry! Tantry! Why did I have to go and—I’m a murderer, Tantry! Plain murderer! That’s what I am, old dog!”

He sat back on his heels, laid the white body down and folded his arms across his face as a boy does, weeping. In the still crisp air a sound seemed still ringing—the sound of a dog’s bark—the bark of Old Tantrybogus, yet strangely different too. Stronger, richer, with a new and youthful timbre in its tones; like the bark of a young strong dog setting forth on an eternal hunt with a well-loved master through alder runs where woodcock were as thick as autumn leaves.

VII

Half an hour after that Will Bissell chanced by Chet’s farm and saw Chet fetching pick and shovel from the shed, and something in the other’s bearing made him ask: “What’s the matter, Chet? Something wrong?”

Chet looked at him slowly, said in a hoarse voice: “I’ve killed Old Tantrybogus. I’m going down to put him away.”

And he went through the barn and left Will standing there, down into the wood to a spot where the partridges love to come in the late fall for feed, and made a bed there and lined it thick with boughs and so at last laid Old Tantry to sleep.

His supper that night was solitary and cheerless and dreary and alone. But—Will Bissell must have spread the news, for while Chet was washing the dishes someone knocked, and when he turned Mary Thurman opened the door and came in.

Chet could not bear to look at her. He turned awkwardly and sat down at the kitchen table and buried his head in his arms. And Mary, smiling though her eyes were wet, came toward him. There was the mother light in her eyes, the mother radiance in Mary Thurman’s face. And she took Chet’s lonely head in her arms.

“There, Chet, there!” she whispered softly. “I reckon you need me now.”