“And into beautiful milk from Mrs. Johnson’s beautiful cow,” Madge
added. “To-morrow’s the first of the month, you know.”
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66
Walt scowled unconsciously; then his face brightened, and he
clapped his hand to his breast pocket.
“Never mind. I have here a nice beautiful new cow, the best milker
in California.”
“When did you write it?” she demanded eagerly. Then,
reproachfully, “And you never showed it to me.”
“I saved it to read to you on the way to the post-office, in a spot
remarkably like this one,” he answered, indicating, with a wave of
his hand, a dry log on which to sit.
A tiny stream flowed out of a dense fern-brake, slipped down a
mossy-lipped stone, and ran across the path at their feet. From
the valley arose the mellow song of meadow-larks, while about them,
in and out, through sunshine and shadow, fluttered great yellow
butterflies.
Up from below came another sound that broke in upon Walt reading
softly from his manuscript. It was a crunching of heavy feet,
punctuated now and again by the clattering of a displaced stone.
As Walt finished and looked to his wife for approval, a man came
into view around the turn of the trail. He was bare-headed and
sweaty. With a handkerchief in one hand he mopped his face, while
in the other hand he carried a new hat and a wilted starched collar
which he had removed from his neck. He was a well-built man, and
his muscles seemed on the point of bursting out of the painfully
new and ready-made black clothes he wore.
“Warm day,” Walt greeted him. Walt believed in country democracy,
and never missed an opportunity to practise it.
The man paused and nodded.
“I guess I ain’t used much to the warm,” he vouchsafed half
apologetically. “I’m more accustomed to zero weather.”
“You don’t find any of that in this country,” Walt laughed.
“Should say not,” the man answered. “An’ I ain’t here a-lookin’
for it neither. I’m tryin’ to find my sister. Mebbe you know
where she lives. Her name’s Johnson, Mrs. William Johnson.”
“You’re not her Klondike brother!” Madge cried, her eyes bright
with interest, “about whom we’ve heard so much?”
“Yes’m, that’s me,” he answered modestly. “My name’s Miller, Skiff
Miller. I just thought I’d s’prise her.”
“You are on the right track then. Only you’ve come by the foot-
path.” Madge stood up to direct him, pointing up the canyon a
quarter of a mile. “You see that blasted redwood? Take the little
trail turning off to the right. It’s the short cut to her house.
You can’t miss it.”
“Yes’m, thank you, ma’am,” he said. He made tentative efforts to
LOVE OF LIFE AND OTHER STORIES
67
go, but seemed awkwardly rooted to the spot. He was gazing at her
with an open admiration of which he was quite unconscious, and
which was drowning, along with him, in the rising sea of
embarrassment in which he floundered.
“We’d like to hear you tell about the Klondike,” Madge said.
“Mayn’t we come over some day while you are at your sister’s? Or,
better yet, won’t you come over and have dinner with us?”
“Yes’m, thank you, ma’am,” he mumbled mechanically. Then he caught
himself up and added: “I ain’t stoppin’ long. I got to be pullin’
north again. I go out on to-night’s train. You see, I’ve got a
mail contract with the government.”
When Madge had said that it was too bad, he made another futile
effort to go. But he could not take his eyes from her face. He
forgot his embarrassment in his admiration, and it was her turn to
flush and feel uncomfortable.
It was at this juncture, when Walt had just decided it was time for
him to be saying something to relieve the strain, that Wolf, who
had been away nosing through the brush, trotted wolf-like into
view.
Skiff Miller’s abstraction disappeared. The pretty woman before
him passed out of his field of vision. He had eyes only for the
dog, and a great wonder came into his face.
“Well, I’ll be damned!” he enunciated slowly and solemnly.
He sat down ponderingly on the log, leaving Madge standing. At the
sound of his voice, Wolf’s ears had flattened down, then his mouth
had opened in a laugh. He trotted slowly up to the stranger and
first smelled his hands, then licked them with his tongue.
Skiff Miller patted the dog’s head, and slowly and solemnly
repeated, “Well, I’ll be damned!”
“Excuse me, ma’am,” he said the next moment “I was just s’prised
some, that was all.”
“We’re surprised, too,” she answered lightly. “We never saw Wolf
make up to a stranger before.”
“Is that what you call him – Wolf?” the man asked.
Madge nodded. “But I can’t understand his friendliness toward you
– unless it’s because you’re from the Klondike. He’s a Klondike
dog, you know.”
“Yes’m,” Miller said absently. He lifted one of Wolf’s fore legs
and examined the foot-pads, pressing them and denting them with his
thumb. “Kind of SOFT,” he remarked. “He ain’t been on trail for a
long time.”
“I say,” Walt broke in, “it is remarkable the way he lets you
handle him.”
LOVE OF LIFE AND OTHER STORIES
68
Skiff Miller arose, no longer awkward with admiration of Madge, and
in a sharp, businesslike manner asked, “How long have you had him?”
But just then the dog, squirming and rubbing against the newcomer’s
legs, opened his mouth and barked. It was an explosive bark, brief
and joyous, but a bark.
“That’s a new one on me,” Skiff Miller remarked.
Walt and Madge stared at each other. The miracle had happened.
Wolf had barked.
“It’s the first time he ever barked,” Madge said.
“First time I ever heard him, too,” Miller volunteered.
Madge smiled at him. The man was evidently a humorist.
“Of course,” she said, “since you have only seen him for five
minutes.”
Skiff Miller looked at her sharply, seeking in her face the guile
her words had led him to suspect.
“I thought you understood,” he said slowly. “I thought you’d
tumbled to it from his makin’ up to me. He’s my dog. His name
ain’t Wolf. It’s Brown.”
“Oh, Walt!” was Madge’s instinctive cry to her husband.
Walt was on the defensive at once.
“How do you know he’s your dog?” he demanded.
“Because he is,” was the reply.
“Mere assertion,” Walt said sharply.
In his slow and pondering way, Skiff Miller looked at him, then
asked, with a nod of his head toward Madge:
“How d’you know she’s your wife? You just say, ‘Because she is,’
and I’ll say it’s mere assertion. The dog’s mine. I bred ‘m an’
raised ‘m, an’ I guess I ought to know. Look here. I’ll prove it
to you.”
Skiff Miller turned to the dog. “Brown!” His voice rang out
sharply, and at the sound the dog’s ears flattened down as to a
caress. “Gee!” The dog made a swinging turn to the right. “Now
mush-on!” And the dog ceased his swing abruptly and started
straight ahead, halting obediently at command.
“I can do it with whistles”, Skiff Miller said proudly. “He was my
lead dog.”
“But you are not going to take him away with you?” Madge asked
LOVE OF LIFE AND OTHER STORIES
69
tremulously.
The man nodded.
“Back into that awful Klondike world of suffering?”
He nodded and added: “Oh, it ain’t so bad as all that. Look at
me. Pretty healthy specimen, ain’t I?”
“But the dogs! The terrible hardship, the heart-breaking toil, the
starvation, the frost! Oh, I’ve read about it and I know.”
“I nearly ate him once, over on Little Fish River,” Miller
volunteered grimly. “If I hadn’t got a moose that day was all that
saved ‘m.”
“I’d have died first!” Madge cried.
“Things is different down here”, Miller explained. “You don’t have
to eat dogs. You think different just about the time you’re all
in. You’ve never ben all in, so you don’t know anything about it.”
“That’s the very point,” she argued warmly. “Dogs are not eaten in
California. Why not leave him here? He is happy. He’ll never
want for food – you know that. He’ll never suffer from cold and
hardship. Here all is softness and gentleness. Neither the human
nor nature is savage. He will never know a whip-lash again. And
as for the weather – why, it never snows here.”
“But it’s all-fired hot in summer, beggin’ your pardon,” Skiff
Miller laughed.
“But you do not answer,” Madge continued passionately. “What have
you to offer him in that northland life?”
“Grub, when I’ve got it, and that’s most of the time,” came the
answer.
“And the rest of the time?”
“No grub.”
“And the work?”
“Yes, plenty of work,” Miller blurted out impatiently. “Work
without end, an’ famine, an’ frost, an all the rest of the miseries
– that’s what he’ll get when he comes with me. But he likes it.