facing hunger and his old red setter dog, the Major, who gazed at him with a brow furrowed by anxiety and then laid his gaunt, grizzled muzzle against his master’s face that rested on his hands. The turkey won at the raffle in Corrigan’s saloon had been devoured—flesh, bones, skin, and I had almost said feathers—so ravenous had been the pair, for Charity Hallet being ill was tended by a neighbour, who would rather burn up plate scraps than feed tramp dogs, as she designated the Major, who as usual had come scratching at the kitchen door, and so for many days he had crept away empty.
A few days only remained of the upland open season, but for that matter the sportsmen speeding from all quarters in their motors to the most remote woodlands and brush lots had changed the luck and ways of foot hunting, and what birds remained had been so harried that they huddled and refused to rise. His duck boat was rotten to the danger point, while the clam banks that had meant a certain weekly yield had the past season been ruthlessly dug out by the summer cottagers, who herded in a string of cheap and gaudy shore houses and knew no law.
This was the plight of Marquis Lafayette Burney, fantastically christened thus at his mother’s command, and called from his youth “The Markis,” in well-understood derision.
Feeling the dog’s caress, the man raised his head and gazed at his solitary friend, then out upon the water. The wind that ruffled the sand into little ridges raised the hair upon the dog’s back, plainly revealing its leanness. Out on the bay beyond the bar the steel-blue tide chafed and fretted; within the protecting arm lay still-water without a trace of ice on it, while in and out among the shallows the wild ducks fed and at night would bed down inside the point.
Along the beach itself there was no life or sound, a wide band of dull blue mussel shells thrown up by a recent storm only intensified the look of cold, while the gulls that floated overhead carried this colour skyward, and cast it upon the clouds.
“It’s come jest ter this, Maje,” the Markis muttered, “there’s nothin’ ter eat! nothin’ ter eat! Do you sense that, old man? Come fust o’ the year, if we hold out to then, we’ll hev to make other arrang’ments, you and me! Town farm’s a good place fer the winter, some say, and some say bad, certain sure we won’t be over het up there, that’s what I dre’d in gettin’ in out o’ the air!” Then as a new thought struck him, he cried aloud, “God! suppose they won’t take you in along o’ me!” and the Markis started back aghast at the thought and then peered about with blinking eyes that he shielded with a shaking hand, for the Major had disappeared.
The Markis whistled and waited. Presently from behind the dunes loped the Major carrying something in his mouth; with a cheerful air of pride he laid before his master a turkey drumstick, sand-covered and dry, the last bone in the dog’s ground larder; then, stepping back with a short, insistent bark, he fixed his eyes on the Markis with lip half raised in a persuasive grin.
As the man slowly realized the meaning of the bone, his bleared eyes filled and the knotting of his throat half stopped his breath. Pulling the slouch hat that he always wore still lower to hide his face, though only gulls were near to see, he drew the Major close between his knees and hugged him. Who dares say that any man o’ersteps salvation when a dog yet sees in him the divine spark that he recognizes and serves as master?
Into the hut went the Markis, took down his gun from its rest above a tangle of shad nets that he had been mending before cold weather, picked up a pair of skilfully made duck decoys, and looked at them regretfully, saying, “A couple o’ dollars would fix that boat in shape, but where’s a couple o’ dollars?” the last coin he had fingered having gone to pay the Major’s license on instalments, the final quarter being yet due, and only two days of grace.
Still rummaging he picked up some bits of fish line and flexible wire; these he dropped into a ragged pocket together with a handful of unhulled buckwheat. Then he padlocked the door of the cabin carefully, threw his gun over his shoulder, and set off along the road that led up country, with his slow slouching gait, the Major to heel, muttering to himself—“I hain’t never done it before, I allers hunted square, but time’s come when I’ll jest hev ter set a couple o’ snares and see what’ll turn up. I know where I can place a pair o’ grouse for two dollars at this time o’ year, and two dollars means another week together for us—yes, another week!”
Two hours later the Markis and the Major crept out of the lane that ran between a brush lot and stubble field on the Lonetown side of the Ridge. Both master and dog were footsore and weary, while the Markis wore a shifting, guilty look; for he had spoken truly: pot-hunter he had always been, but never a setter of snares, except for mink or muskrat. To be sure he would come to the front door to offer berries that he frankly said were gathered in one’s own back lot, but this day was the first time that he had thought to set a loop to catch a partridge by the neck instead of shooting it in fair hunting.
Straightening himself for a moment he glanced shoreward down the rolling hills, while the Major dropped upon a heap of dry leaves and dozed with twitching limbs. The sun came from behind the wind clouds with which he had been running a race all day, and suddenly the face of nature melted as with a smile and grew more tender. A big gray squirrel ran along the stone fence, a blue jay screamed, but the Markis started nervously and once more looked shoreward.
What was that flickering and glimmering far away upon the beach? Merely the sunlight flashing upon the single window of his cabin? No, a puff of smoke was running along the dry grasses from the inlet of the creek, where the men who watch the oyster grounds had beached their boat and kindled a bit of fire to heat their coffee.
Another puff, and the smoke arose in a cone the shape of the Markis’s cabin that the hungry flames were devouring!
With a harsh cry the man dropped his half-made snare and fled impotently, for now indeed were the Markis and the Major homeless vagabonds!
When father, being sent for by a farmer of the marsh road who said that both man and dog had doubtless perished in the hut, reached the shore a little before sunset, he stumbled over the Markis lying among the broken sedge and seaweed, numb with cold and despair, the Major keeping watch beside.
When, after being shaken awake and some stimulant hastily forced between his lips, the Markis started up muttering a plea to be left alone, and saw who was bending over him, he whispered, for his voice was hoarse and uncertain, “It’s you, Doc, is it? Well, I’d ruther you’n another! For it’s all up this time; it’s either go to the town farm to-night, or be a stiff, and I’m near that now. We thought mebbe we could pull through till the next shad run, Maje and me, but now the nets and all hev gone!” Then, sitting up and pulling himself together with an effort, “Would you—I wouldn’t ask it of any other man—would you house the Maje, Doc, until maybe he’d drop off comfortable and quiet, or I get round again? and once in a time jest say, quick like, ‘Maje, where’s the Markis?’ to keep me in mind?”
This time the Markis made no effort to hide the tears that washed roadways down his grimy cheeks.
“But there is no need of this,” father replied, as, clearing his throat and wiping his nose, he tried to look severe and judicial, (dear Dad! how well I know this particularly impossible and fleeting expression of yours)—“I got you the promise of work at Mrs. Pippin’s only last week, to do a few light errands and keep her in split kindlings for three square meals a day, and pay in money by the hour for tinkering and carpentering, and you only stayed one morning! Man alive! you are intelligent! why can’t you work? The day is over when hereabout men can live like wild-fowl!”
“Doctor Russell,” said the Markis, speaking slowly and raising a lean forefinger solemnly, “did you ever try to keep Mis’s Pippin in kettlewood for three square meals a day, likewise her opinion o’ you thrown in for pepper, and talk o’ waiting hell fire for mustard, with only one door to the woodshed and her a-standin’ in it? Not but the meals was square enough, that was jest it—they was too square, they wouldn’t swaller! Give me a man’s job and I’ll take a brace and try it for the Major here, but who takes one of us takes both, savvy? Beside, when Mis’s Pippin was Luella Green she liked to dance ter my fiddlin’, and now she don’t like ter think o’t and seein’ me reminds her!”