Jim, Coyote Dog

BY WILLIAM WALLACE COOK

OBODY owned him! nobody wanted to own him. But he had a dogged determination to belong to some one, and he selected Patterson.

He shadowed Patterson; slunk along after him with nose to the ground so completely absorbed in the trail that occasionally he collided with Patterson’s legs, and was promptly launched through the air by Patterson’s boot. He would dodge around a pile of rock, or a derrick, or a building, and come blithely and unexpectedly out in front of Patterson, capering a little and watching Patterson’s feet while making his timid approaches. Whenever Patterson looked at him, he would tumble and roll over; whenever Patterson swore at him, he would sit down on his stump of a tail and howl; and whenever Patterson threw a rock at him, he would bound after it joyfully and bring it back.

The foreman’s hatred for dogs amounted to a mania. It was grievous enough to bear with those pedigreed canines vouched for by the Kennel Club; and as for this long, lank, heavy-fanged, muscular mongrel, half Manuelito and half coyote, the very sight of him set Patterson’s nerves on edge.

The dog came from nowhere in particular, drifting into camp out of the wilds of the Harquahallas. At first he was not thought worthy of a name; later he was casually referred to as “Jim.”

Forbearance finally ceased to be a virtue; Patterson borrowed a revolver and strolled up a ravine, tagged, as usual, by the persistent Jim. Six distinct reports were wafted back to camp, and it was generally conceded that if a coyote dog had as many lives as the proverbial eat, all but three of Jim’s had gone glimmering. To those three Jim clung tenaciously, for he was back at the mine ahead of Patterson, peering reproachfully at him around a corner of the shaft-house. One ear was cropped and one leg broken. Patterson was at a loss to account for the other four shots.

The camp arose to pursue and stone the outcast, wishing to absolve him from further misery; but Jim’s three legs were equal to the task of saving what was left of him, and he vanished into his primal haunts. Patterson congratulated himself that he was rid of his bugbear.

One morning, a few days later, the foreman found on his doorstep the remains of a woodchuck which had been slain by Ham Blake a week before. The woodchuck was first detected by an overpowering odor that threw the finer sensibilities of the entire camp into a panic. Blake had thrown the remains into an open cut on the hillside; Patterson now had them carried up the ravine, a mile from camp, and remarked caustically that if the affair was a joke it was a joke of doubtful taste. For the present Jim was not suspected, the work having been surreptitiously performed.

Another dawn found the woodchuck back on Patterson’s doorstep. The foreman waxed wroth, and had the carcass buried. Even this failed to retire it permanently, for it was dug up and again conveyed to his domicile.

Blake averred that Jim was the guilty party. With Patterson’s consent, he added, he would attend to the dog in such a way that his partnership with the woodchuck would be forever dissolved. Patterson grasped at the straw of hope, and Blake trimmed a piece of fuse, thrust it into a cap, and wrapped both up neatly with a stick of giant powder.

The camp took note of these proceedings with much interest, and was on the qui vive from the moment when Blake removed the woodchuck beyond the mine buildings and went on night watch with his infernal machine.

At the hour of five, lo, there came Jim, worrying the woodchuck back to Patterson’s. He had but three feet now, having amputated the useless member with his teeth, as is the custom of coyote dogs. Blake, watched by a dozen curious ones from various points of concealment—among them Patterson, at his window—struck fire to the fuse and hurled the spluttering death at Jim.

Jim, discovered though he was, felt that here was an invitation to fetch and carry which was evidence of an amicable change in the sentiment of the camp. He released the woodchuck, caught up the infernal machine, and laid it tenderly at Patterson’s door.

What might have happened is problematical. What really did happen left on the watchers a vivid impression of the celerity with which a man can move when his house is menaced. Patterson got to the door with a bucket of water just in time to drench the bomb—and the astounded Jim. The coyote dog took umbrage at this treatment and again retired into the hills. The woodchuck was consigned to the depths of a six-hundred-foot shaft, long since abandoned, and the incident was closed.

Although he must have been discouraged, Jim continued to carry out his policy of conciliation. All sorts of things were smuggled to Patterson’s door—bones, baling-wire, old bits of harness; also a half-dead rattlesnake, which showed enough life to strike at the foreman when discovered. But Jim’s last three donations—especially the second of the three—sent a wave of mystery and intense excitement throbbing through the camp.

The first was a human skull, fleshless, bleached to a chalky white, with an Apache arrow-point fixed in the eye-socket.

The spell of wonder aroused by the skull had hardly dissolved when Patterson opened his door to find a leather pouch, seemingly ancient enough to have been carried by the Spanish conquistadores. The pouch contained a sample of gold ore of exceeding richness.

The sample was of white quartz, the size of a man’s fist, all fuzzy with yellow wires. Virgin metal, forced through the rock crevices in spirals, overlaid the basic stone as with golden filigree-work. Such ore was not known in the Tres Alamos district, nor could veteran prospectors remember that any had been found within a hundred miles. From whence, then, had Jim brought this? The camp dreamed golden dreams, and the crippled outcast of the hills was transformed into an object of universal solicitude.

Patterson wove an ingenious theory about the skull and the leather pouch. He assumed that Jim had found them in the same place, and that treacherous redskins had struck down a gold-hunter on the very threshold of a realization of his wildest hopes.

To watch for Jim on his next nightly visit, then to follow to his rendezvous in the hills, was the plan. Patterson, Blake, and Reynolds were chosen for the work. Arming themselves with ropes for use in difficult parts of the hills, they hid out in the mesquit. A promise of storm was gathering slowly on the horizon, but overhead the sky was clear as a bell.

midnight, under the full glare of the moon, Jim was discovered hobbling swiftly from the entrance to the ravine. In his mouth was a white object whose nature could not be determined. With infinite care he deposited his offering in the accustomed place, after which he paid a stealthy visit to the scrap-pile behind the kitchen. Then he was off, a mere blot of shadow vanishing into the blackness of the defile.

Reynolds, mad with a thirst for gold, led the pursuit, and often it was necessary to hold him in check lest he should draw too near and divert the dog from his course. Two miles out, Jim’s lank, ungainly form topped a rise. There he stood, a silhouette against the moon’s yellow disk, his body hunched together and his nose raised to sniff the air. Coyotes, half-brothers and would-be Cains, howled from the dim regions around, and Jim was seen to turn slowly, preserving silence the while.

The quavering yelps, fierce with a lust for blood, drew nearer, and from the foot of the slope the men saw a pack of the wild hill scavengers dart clear of the hovering shadows. The vengeful ones leaped at the devoted Jim with snap and snarl.

Jim was a pariah. The strain of alien blood that had led him to hunger for a master among men had made him equally an outcast among his kind and among those whose favor he courted. Although he fought nobly, yet he would have been overborne and rent in pieces had not Patterson, Blake, and Reynolds charged to his rescue. The pack fled helter-skelter in every direction, Jim seizing his opportunity and disappearing as completely as the rest.

Patterson and his companions returned to the mine, determined to make a fresh start with the approach of daylight. Jim’s last offering, they discovered, was a skeleton hand, belonging, no doubt, to the same anatomy that had furnished the skull.

In the early morning, Patterson, Reynolds, and Blake picked up a trail of blood on the opposite side of the uplift whose crest had been the scene of Jim’s battle and rescue. Mile after mile to the brink of Canyon Diablo the crimson line was followed, only to be lost in the red shale of the gulch’s brim. The party separated for a search, Patterson going down into the canyon, which narrowed, at this point, to a width of scarce fifty feet.

The stormy portents of night had thickened with the coming of day. The sky was overcast, and thunder muttered in the direction of Diablo’s head-waters. Blake shook his head and prophesied a cloudburst with a tidal wave down the defile. He even counseled a return to the mine and another search later on.

Reynolds was obdurate. If rain came, Jim’s blood would be washed away and the trail lost. Blake suggested that Jim could be followed again. Reynolds, brutally selfish, declared that no crimson trail could be left again; perhaps the coyotes had wounded Jim to the death, and the camp would know him no more.

The wind grew into a gale during the colloquy. Lightning zigzagged through the rocky scarps of the hills, and thunder boomed among the crags. Blake descended a little down the steep canyon-side, made a trumpet of his hands, and shouted to Patterson. The foreman had scaled the tortuous steep of the opposite wall, gaining shelf after shelf, only to halt on his last foothold and see fifty feet of sheer granite above him.

He waved his hand in answer to Blake and started down, but as he started a roar echoed from up the canyon, and a wall of water, churned to foam, rolled toward him with the speed of an express train. In a flash Diablo Creek became a torrent. One great wave followed another, filling the gulch by leaps and bounds.

Escape was cut off for Patterson; he could only crouch on the uppermost ledge and watch destruction reaching for him with greedy arms.

“He’s done for!” groaned Blake. “Nothing can save him.”

“Look!” cried Reynolds.

Blake’s eyes swerved from the disconsolate man across the gulch to the bruised and lacerated form of Jim. The dog stood a dozen yards away, trembling from weakness caused by his wounds—stood at the edge of the tumbling waters and looked over them to Patterson. An idea suggested itself to Blake.

“The ropes! The ropes!” he cried.

With feverish haste he removed his own rope from his shoulder and snatched the coil Reynolds was carrying. Quickly he spliced the two together and started toward Jim. Reynolds sprang in the way.

“What are you doing?”

“Patterson is beyond human aid,” shouted Blake. “If he is to be saved at all the dog must do it!”

“No!” roared Reynolds. “The dog is badly hurt; he might get over to Patterson, but he’d never live to get back. We need him to lead us to that mine”

A furious oath tore through Blake’s lips. He struck Reynolds out of the way with his clenched fist, sprang at Jim, and tied one end of the spliced roped about his neck.

“Call him, Patterson; call him! ”

In the roar of the tempest the words did not carry half way across the gulch. Patterson, however, had seen and understood.

“Here, Jim! Here, Jim! ”

Up to his knees in water, clinging wildly to the face of the cliff, Patterson, for the first time, called to the outcast. The wind caught and scattered the feeble words, but brute senses are keen. Jim heard, and dragged his maimed body into the rushing tide. He was lifted, engulfed and lifted again, flung against the sharp rocks and hurled hither and thither, yet foot by foot he fought his way onward. The man for whose friendship he had yearned and struggled was calling him, and that was enough.

And success crowned his efforts. He reached the foreman’s side. Patterson lashed the rope about his waist, took his rescuer in his arms, and together they breasted the flood. Reynolds was now himself again, and fell to, with Blake at the other end of the rope.

Half dead but still clutching the coyote dog, Patterson was dragged to safety. When he regained his senses his first inquiry was for Jim. The dog was barely alive. Patterson dropped down beside him, patted his ugly head, touched lightly the rough scars made by the venomous pack and the equally merciless torrent. And when the dog stiffened and lay still Patterson got up slowly, brushed a hand across his forehead, and looked at Blake.

His eyes were misty with his heart’s tribute to Jim, coyote dog.

[[Category:Western fiction]