Translation:The High Mountains/76

Gkeka was waiting for Aphrodo's wedding to take place the following day. He had eaten so many bones on the Sunday.

He went over to the Vlachs' cabins on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. However, he saw that they didn't have a wedding every day.

As he came back at night to the children's cabins, the round moon shone in the sky.

Gkeka didn't bay at the moon as he usually did, because this evening he had a heavy heart. He settled down outside the cabins, his head near his tail, and was thoughtful.

“The other day my uncle Mourgos and my other uncle Pistos and my Grandpa Kitsos chased a wolf... What am I doing here? I just play with the children? And from time to time I bark.

“But now I'm a big dog. And a dog that's grown up shouldn't eat bread and bones without deserving it, like I do.

“The children haven't got a herd that I could guard, and they don't give me any other work to do. I've still done nothing!”

Poor Gkeka was very unhappy.

“I'll have to tell them, he thought... Tomorrow I'll wag my tail several times in front of Andreas, Phanis and Dimitrakis. They'll certainly understand me”.

At that moment he heard something near the first huts. He raised his head and saw a hurried shadow stealing away.

Gkeka made three leaps. In his whole life he'd never jumped so far. A “crack!” was heard with a stifled hen's squawk.

It was the fox! He'd got a hen in his mouth and was running away.

When the fox heard the noise, he suspected the presence of a dog. So he let go of the hen and ran faster.

Only a dog good at running with all his might could manage to catch a fox, as he runs so quickly.

However, after the fox had made a few leaps away, he was sorry and went back quickly to pick up the hen, because he found it nice and fat.

That's how it happened.

Gkeka caught him and seized him by the neck. He won't leave go! The fox yelped, struggled, tried to bite him.

Gkeka clamped his teeth on the fox and growled. The hens squawked in the henhouse. Mr Stephan came running with his gun. Andreas, Dimos and Costakis woke up. Everyone woke up.

“A rope! Get a rope, quickly!” shouted Mr Stephan, when he saw by the light of the moon that it was a fox! He wanted to tied him up and held his gun ready, in case the fox escaped.

Most of the children, without coming close, wanted to know:

“Does he bite?” It was the first time they'd seen a living wild animal.

Mr Stephan passed the rope around his back paws and, while the dog held him by the neck, he tried to attach it securely.

But Gkeka had finished the job. He had gripped the fox's larynx so hard and had sunk his teeth in so deeply that he had suffocated it.

The fox could not survive in the jaws of such a formidable enemy.

So, after having fought in vain, it remained stretched out and inert. The children gathered round and looked at it attentively in the moonlight.

They saw his pointed ears, his pointed nose, his long tail, which was half as long as his body.

So that's the beast that eats the rabbits, birds in their nests and hens in the henhouse? It's over for him!

—The poor thing, said Dimos. If he'd know that he wouldn't return to his den. —Who told him to eat all our nice hens? said Costakis.

Gkeka didn't stop for an instant. He breathed heavily, bent over to sniff him, as if he didn't believe he was dead.

He'd heard the old dogs say that sometimes the fox pretended to be dead and then got up and disappeared.

If this was his intention, let him get up! But no, that wasn't going to happen. Gkeka had done his work very well.

“Bravo, bravo Gkeka! The children cried stroking him.

He jumped in front of them, looked them in the eyes and was prouder than any other dog.