Part 32 (1/2)

She came to him and caught him by both shoulders. She looked up pityingly into his face.

”Poor old Jim--why didn't you tell me?”

”Oh, well, there wasn't any use, Mary. Mr. Gordon knows how to treat a dog like Prince. I didn't mind much.”

So he spoke, boldly, in the kitchen. But as he went about his work in the yard he missed the silent companions.h.i.+p of Prince at his heels. As he ate supper, his eyes from force of habit wandered over the table for sc.r.a.ps of food for Prince. While he sat smoking his pipe before the bedroom fire he tried resolutely not to look at the empty rug in front of the hearth. And when later he went out to draw water the yard was desolate, and the moon risen over the fields looked at him in solemn reproach.

Next day he rode to Greenville with Tom Jennings, a neighbouring farmer, and bought a mule. They had pa.s.sed the club before sunrise, sitting side by side on the wagon seat in the cold morning air. No sound had come from those white kennels which he could make out dimly in the back yard like tombstones. Old Prince was not the kind of dog to whine or howl.

But all that morning while he went from one sales stable to another Jim knew Prince would be p.r.i.c.king his ears at every footstep around the club, and scanning every approaching face with hopeful, eager eyes. He had known some bird dogs who were the property of any hunter who chanced along with a gun, and others that stuck to one man, and one man alone.

Prince was a one man's dog.

He left town in the afternoon, sitting on a box in the rear of Jennings's wagon, leading the mule by a halter. Before sunset they came to the country where he and Prince had hunted a hundred times. On top of that steep hill, yonder by that dead pine, Prince had held a covey an hour one stormy day in a gale of wind that threatened to blow him off his feet.

Into this swift creek, over whose bridge the wagon wheels rumbled, Prince had plunged one icy morning and retrieved a wounded bird, the water freezing on him as he stepped dripping out. These things and others like them, in spite of himself, pa.s.sed, along with the slowly pa.s.sing landscape, through the mind of Jim Taylor while the sun dropped low over the hills and Tom Jennings talked about what a bargain the mule was, and the mule pulled back, as mules always do, on the halter.

It was nearly dusk when they came in sight of the club, whose lights twinkled through the trees, and Jennings spoke up suddenly:

”h.e.l.lo! Ain't that your wife yonder?”

Jim glanced around. ”Looks like her, Tom.”

”She just left the club.”

”Been to sell eggs, likely.”

But when they caught up with her Jim saw that she was in her best black dress with the black beaded bonnet, and when he helped her in the wagon he noticed that her face was worried. She did not even seem to observe the mule; and Jim, as he led his sleek new purchase to the barn, was wondering what it all meant.

He was still wondering while he finished his lonely work about the yard.

As he stamped up the back steps he saw her through the kitchen window rise suddenly from a chair. She had changed her dress, but she had not started the fire or lit the lamp. He must have surprised her.

Oh, she was just tired, she said in reply to his anxious question. She had been to the club to sell eggs.

”They must have been mighty fine eggs,” he said, his eyes twinkling kindly, ”for you to dress up so. You must have toted 'em in your hands, too, for you forgot your basket.”

She sank into a chair, looking up helplessly at him.

”Sit down, Jim,” she said. Then she went on: ”I never meant to tell you, Jim. I tried--I tried to buy him back.”

”Buy him?”

”Yes, old Prince.”

”Why, Mary, I thought I told you--he give me two hundred and fifty dollars.”

”I know. I offered him what he gave.”

”You--you done what?”

She smiled a little at the amazement in his face, but her voice trembled as she made her confession. For ten years she had been saving up on chickens and eggs, a quarter here, a half-dollar there. In secret she had dreamed and planned. They would have new furniture, she had thought, when the house was theirs--new furniture and a parlour. She had meant to surprise him, not to let him know till it came. She had the furniture picked out in a catalogue.