Buff: A Collie and Other Dog-Stories — Human-Interest Stuff, Part 1
HUMAN-INTEREST STUFF
Happiness, to Jeff Titus, had become a fine art.
It had become so when he married Eve Wallace, a little wisp of a city girl who had come to the Kentucky mountain hinterland to cure a set of weak lungs--and who had not only wedded but well-nigh civilised the lanky young mountaineer.
Happiness had remained a fine art for Jeff, up there on his bare hillside farm, with Eve.
It had remained so, for the most part, ever since his wedding.
And now, in a single breath, happiness had taken a place among the lost arts.
The “single breath” had been supplied by a sour east wind which had smitten Eve as she stood in the shack dooryard waiting for her husband’s home-coming.
She was thinly clad, and she was in a perspiration from working in her flower garden.
Her lungs were still weak.
The east wind did the rest.
By night she had a heavy cold.
The third morning, pneumonia flung out its flaming red No Surrender signal on each of her fever-scorched cheeks.
And life, to Jeff Titus, all at once became a horror.
A frightened anguish gripped him by the throat and shook him to the bewildered soul; as he crouched night after night beside the slab bed where tossed and muttered the delirious little wisp of a woman who was at once his mate and his saint.
Eve was so tiny, so fragile, so good!
It wasn’t fair that this bullying unseen spirit of illness should torture and harry her and sap the life of her--while the man who right blithely would have been burned to a crisp to please her, sat helpless at the bedside, unable to do a thing to drive forth the damnable visitant!
Jeff Titus dwelt upon the theme of his own impotence to save her; he swore venomously, and in the peculiarly hideous diction of Kentucky mountaineer blasphemy.
There were doctors, of course, in the county seat of Duneka, thirty-two miles away.
But they might as well have been in Austria, for all the good they could do the sick girl.
Jeff could not desert Eve to go in quest of such a physician.
Nor could he send one of his mile-distant neighbours.
He knew that.
It would be of no use.
Those city doctors had no convenient means of getting over the thirty-odd miles of half-inaccessible trail, to his hinterland farm.
Assuredly none of them was going to make the journey on foot or on mule-back, leaving his town practice for days, at the behest of a hill-billy who perhaps could not or would not pay for the sacrifice.
Meantime, Eve was growing worse, steadily worse.
Even the ignorant Jeff could see that.
So, apparently, could the only sharer of his day-and-night vigils--a huge and lionlike dog which lay pressed close to the far side of the bed, and which all Titus’ commands could not keep out of the sick-room.
This dog, Robin Adair, was the joy of Eve’s heart--or he had been, when her heart still could hold joy and not merely fever and delirium.
One of Eve’s ragged hill-billy admirers had given the dog to her; in the old days, when Robin was a roly-poly mass of tawny-brown fluff, no bigger than a Persian cat.
The dog had grown into a shaggy giant.
A passing seed-catalogue man had told Eve he was a collie--a breed of which she had heard, in a vague fashion, as emanating from Scotland.
And she had named him Robin Adair; after the hero of a Scotch song her mother had been wont to sing.
He was Robin, for short.
When she had married Jeff Titus, she had brought her beloved collie to live at the mountain shack.
From the moment his mistress fell ill, Robin had not once willingly stirred from her bedside.
Drinking little, eating nothing, the great dog had lain there, his sorrowing brown eyes fixed on the small white figure in the big slab bed.
But of late he was beginning to vary the vigil by low-voiced whines, from time to time.
And once or twice his huge body quivered as if in physical pain.
It was on the dawn of the fourth day that Robin got to his feet with a leap, and, pointing his heavy muzzle skyward, set the still room to reverberating with a yell that was nothing short of unearthly.
Jeff, starting from his daze of misery, made as though to throttle the brute that had broken in on the invalid’s unresting rest.
Then, remembering Eve’s affection for the collie, he contented himself with picking Robin up bodily and bearing him towards the door; with the intent of putting him out of the house.
The door, before Jeff could reach it, was flung open from outside.
On the threshold stood a ramrodlike figure in rusty black.
The caller was the Reverend Ephraim Stair--Methodist circuit-rider for the up-State counties, and a man whose brain and heart had long since made him the blindly obeyed autocrat of his scattered mountain flock.
“What’s wrong, Titus?
” was his wondering greeting as his sharp old eyes flashed from the man with the big dog in his arms to the eternally whispering little form on the bed.
“I heard a scream, as I was riding past, and----” “Oh, parson!
” gasped Jeff in babbling relief, dumping Robin on the puncheon floor and gripping the circuit-rider by both hands.
“For Gawd’s sake, _do_ suthin’ fer her!
She acts like--like she ain’t goin’ to git well none!
” Loud through the mountains were the praises of Stair’s medical lore.
Many were the tales of sick folk he had cured; when the old women had given them up and had begun gruesomely relishful preparations for the funeral.
Jeff Titus clutched at his unexpected presence, as at a life-belt.
Half in superstitious awe, he glanced at the dog whose providential screech had made the clergyman halt in his brisk ride from one county seat to the next.
Meantime, Stair had crossed to the bed, and, on his knees beside it, was examining the stricken Eve.
Jeff came up behind him, standing awkwardly and with open mouth, in expectation of some miracle.
But no miracle was vouchsafed.
Instead the clergyman asked one or two questions as to the illness’ course, felt the patient’s pulse and her torrid cheek, then ordered his host to go and fetch in his saddlebags.
“My medicine-kit is in them,” he explained.
“And you can stable my horse, too.
I’m going to stay.
” “She--she’s goin’ to git on all right, now you’re here, ain’t she?
” pleaded Titus ingratiatingly, pausing at the door.
“Get my saddlebags!
” was the non-committal retort.
“Jump!
Then you can heat some water.
Wait!
Before you go, open those windows.
And leave the door open.
Isn’t this poor child having enough trouble in breathing; without your sealing the room hermetically?
” “Sick folks hadn’t oughter be let have cold air tetch ’em, I’ve allers heard,” Jeff defended himself, nevertheless obeying.
“It gives ’em----” “It gives them life!
” retorted Stair.
“Now get those saddlebags!
” Next morning Eve was perceptibly worse: the breathing was more laboured; the fever blazed higher.
This in spite of Stair and his ceaseless ministrations.
Stark despair tore at the husband’s throat.
Following Stair, as the circuit-rider left the room for a moment to wash his hands at the pump, Titus demanded fiercely: “She’s a-aimin’ to die, ain’t she?
Spit out the truth, man!
I got a right to hear it!
” “I can’t say,” answered Stair, taking no offence at the furious manner.
“She is in the midst of the crisis now.
It is the turning-point in such cases.
If she rallies from that--Meanwhile we can only hope--and work.
It is in God’s hands.
She----” “In Gawd’s hands!
” mocked Jeff, wildly.
“In _Gawd’s_ hands, hey?
You’re Gawd-a’mighty fond of blattin’ ’bout Gawd, parson!
But I take notice He ain’t a-doin’ nothin’ fer that pore sick gal of mine, in yonder.
Why ain’t He?
Where is He, anyhow, if He cain’t----” “He is _here_,” answered Stair very quietly.
“Here, and in that delirious girl’s room, back there.
He is wherever His children cry out to Him in sorrow and pain--just as, in your inmost heart, you are crying to Him now.
If His children are too deaf or too scared or too noisy, in their grief, to know He has come at their call, then the fault is with their own stupidity; and not with the all-pitying Father, who is carrying them through the ordeal.
” He pushed past the mouthing Titus and went back to his post in the sick-room.
On the second morning Eve was in a heavy sleep.
Her once-parched forehead was moist.
Stair, with a jerk of his thumb, motioned Jeff out into the dooryard.
On his withered face was the glow of a conqueror.
Harshly, as if in doubt of his own self-control, the circuit-rider said: “The crisis is past.
She has turned the corner.
I think she will live.
The rest depends on nursing--on building her up.
You may thank God, if you care to.
Or if you still think He hasn’t been here----” “If He ain’t,” choked Titus ecstatically, “He sent a damn’ fine substitoot:--meanin’ no disrespec’.
I--I reckon, parson--I reckon you-all knows how small I feel; ’bout blabbin’ like I did.
An’--an’--Oh, you’re dead _sure_ she’s a-goin’ to live?
There--there ain’t--there ain’t nothing I c’n say!
But--but----” Incontinently Jeff Titus bolted around the side of the house and out of sight into the woods.
When he returned, an hour later, he was carrying a half-armful of kindling.
Circumstantially and at some length he explained to Stair that he had spent the entire hour in looking for it.
Stair accepted the explanation in grave credulity and forebore to glance towards the high-piled heap of kindling in the woodshed.
At noon Eve awoke.
She was very weak, very tired, very thin and big-eyed.
But she was _alive_.
And in Jeff’s heart there was something that made him yearn to howl aloud in rapture and roll on the grass, and to join the church all over again, and to thrash some mythical man for speaking mythical ill of Ephraim Stair; and to turn over his farm and his savings to foreign missions, and to get very drunk indeed, and to buy Eve a gold watch.
Being a Kentucky mountaineer, and a Titus to boot, he contented himself with grinning down upon his sick wife and grunting: “Feel better?
That’s nice.
Be all right, pretty soon, now.
Reckon I’d best be gittin’ in some more wood, b’fore it rains.
So long!
” Robin Adair, like his master, knew Eve was on the way to health again.
But being only a dog and not a mountaineer, Robin did not sneak out of the house to hide his emotion.
He stood beside the bed, his dark eyes aglow, his furry bulk quivering all over with puppyish joy; and wagging his plumed tail, frantically, every time his mistress looked at him.
* * * * * One evening a few days later the two men were smoking together in the dooryard before turning in.
Eve had been made comfortable for the night and was asleep.
She had gained a little ground, but her convalescence was maddeningly slow and uncertain to Jeff.
The horror of the past fortnight or so had left him nerve-shaken.
In spite of all Stair’s assurances, he could not throw off his fear for her safety.
“She has been through a terrible illness,” patiently explained Stair for the hundredth time.
“Her body and her mind are exhausted.
She lies there, like that, because she is resting.
She is resting, because nature is making her rest.
She is steadily getting better.
Bar accidents, she is practically out of danger.
Her strength is beginning to seep back, too.
It would come back faster, of course, if she could rally her tired mind to some great interest in life--something that wouldn’t tire or excite her too much.
It would help Mother Nature along.
An interest in life is a wonderful aid, in convalescence.
A bit of unexpected good news, for instance----” “Good news, hey?
” mused Jeff, his bony hands supporting his leathern face as he cogitated.
“Good news?
H’m!
” “Yes,” returned Stair, “that, or something pleasant to look forward to.
When she’s well enough, you might take her to Duneka, or somewhere, for a little outing.
Tell her so.
It may brighten her to----” “Nope,” dissented Jeff.
“It wouldn’t. I tried, to-day.
Told her she must git well, right smart, now; so’s we c’d have a ja’ntin’, somewheres.
She said she was so tired, she reckoned she’d jest stay quiet to home a spell.
It didn’t brace her, a wee peckle.
Funny, too!
’Cause jest before she was took sick, she an’ me was projectin’, a hull lot, on a trip we was plannin’ to make.
She’d got her heart real sot on it--’count of suthin’ she’d read into the Duneka _Chron’cle_.
The fall County Fair is on, to Duneka, this week, you know.
An’ the _Chron’cle_ told how they’re lottin’ on holdin’ the State dawg-show there, the fourth day of the fair.
That’s the day after to-morror.
The _Chron’cle_ said there was to be reel silver cups offered fer best dawgs of a lot of breeds.
Collies was one of the breeds it spoke about.
” “Well?
” asked Stair, in no special interest, as Jeff paused.
“Wal,” went on the mountaineer sheepishly, “you-all know how much store Eve sets by Robin, here.
She thinks he’s jest the finest dawg on this yer planet.
She was a-sayin’ there couldn’t be no finer dawg in the collie bunch, at the show, than what Robin is.
An’ she was honin’ fer us to take him down there an’ let him git a chance at that silver cup.
Wal, whatever Eve hones fer, she’s a-goin’ to git--if it’s gittable an’ if I’m in reach to git it fer her.
So I ’greed we’d take Robin to the show.
She was all het up over the idee of a-gittin’ that ’ere cup.
An’ she was a-sayin’ how grand it’d be to have the paper print Robin’s name as winnin’ it, so’s she c’d send a copy of the paper to her folks, down Looeyville way, an’ all that.
Wal, that’s all there is to it,” he ended with a loud sigh.
“Why is that all there is to it?
” demanded Stair with sudden inspiration.
“Why can’t you take the dog down to the show yourself, if he really has a chance for the cup?
That cup, and the notice in the paper, would do more to stir Eve up and to renew her interest in life than any other good news I can think of.
And it’ll be something to look forward to.
Go ahead and do it!
” “Good!
Oh, _good_!
” exulted a feeble little voice in the room behind them.
Eve had waked, during their talk.
And, in her tones, as she applauded the plan, rang the first interest she had shown since the beginning of her illness.
Stair, listening, shut his thin lips on a belated objection that had come into his mind while the mountaineer was applauding his chance suggestion.
It had just occurred to the circuit-rider that if Robin should not be adjudged worthy of the cup, the disappointment was likely to do the invalid more harm than a week of nursing could counteract.
But it was too late to voice that warning now.
Eve had heard.
Eve was pathetically eager over the scheme.
And, kicking himself mentally for his own impulsiveness, the clergyman held his peace.
He knew nothing about dogs, from a show standpoint--and mightily he hoped Eve’s estimate of her pet might be correct.
But he doubted--more and more, he doubted.
Collies, fit to win silver cups, do not often find their way into the mountaineer cabins in the Kentucky hinterland.
Timidly, Stair sought to wet-blanket the venture.
But again he was too late.
At last Eve had the desired “interest in life,” an interest that threatened to bring back her fever.
The dog-show virus is potent, as any exhibitor can testify.
It has a mystic lure.
Jeff, once he grasped the idea, was swept off his feet by it.
* * * * * The fall County Fair at Duneka had begun its fourth day.
That day’s star feature was to be the “all breeds” dog-show, to be held in the Agricultural Building.
A gratifying number of dogs was benched in the main hall of the ramshackle structure; early on the morning of the show.
Two stewards were busy receiving the fast-arriving entrants, assigning to them their places in the double aisles of wire-partitioned and straw-littered “benches,” and assessing late-comers the usual extra fees for “post-entries.
” To these grievously overworked functionaries, in the thick of their labours, appeared a lanky farmer of the true mountaineer type.
He was clad in store-clothes that sat on his angular figure as might a horse-blanket on a washboard.
By a rope, the hill-billy led a large and shaggy dog whose rough, tawny coat had been washed and brushed until it shone like bronze and fluffed out like the hair of a Circassian beauty.
“Collie dawg,” announced Jeff, “owned by Miz Jeff Titus.
Entered for the silver cup.
” Patiently the stewards explained to him that a dog must be entered for one or more of the show’s regular classes, and that the coveted silver cup was to go to the collie adjudged best in the whole show.
They also informed Jeff that as his was a post-entry, it would cost him an extra fifty cents to exhibit his dog.
He was told that in addition to this it would cost him a dollar for every class in which he might enter Robin.
As most of this was Greek to the puzzled exhibitor, one of the stewards asked if the dog had ever before been shown.
On receiving a negative answer he took one look at the uninterested Robin and suggested he be entered for the “novice class,” alone.
As soon as he could be made to understand that a collie winning, in the novice class, would stand as good a chance for the cup as would any other, Titus paid over his money and led Robin to the stall in the collie section corresponding to the number the steward had tied to the dog’s collar.
After mooring Robin’s rope to the ring in his wire-partitioned bench, and getting him some water, Jeff had leisure to take in his odd surroundings.
Dogs--_dogs_--DOGS!
Everywhere dogs--more dogs than Jeff had known existed--dogs of all breeds and sizes, from Peke to St. Bernard.
The iron-girdered roof was re-echoing with their clangour.
They were barking or yapping in fifty different keys, but all with the same earnestness.
Jeff saw that each breed had a bench-section to itself.
In the hall’s centre, to which the bench aisles converged, were two wood-and-wire inclosures in each of which were a low central platform and a corner table and a chair.
On the tables were neat piles of red and yellow and blue ribbons alongside a record-ledger.
Handlers were everywhere busy making their pets ready for the judging.
