Artists -- Fiction; Short stories, American; Storytelling -- Fiction
"We soon found that fooling around a swamp of a dark night, with your
eyes blinded by a lantern, was no joke. Every other step we took we fell
into holes or got tripped up by briars. We stumbled on, skirting by the
edge of the cranberry patch, hollering as loud as we could; stopping to
listen; then going on again. We tried the other big swamp, but that was
impossible in the dark. Then an idea popped into my head. I gave the
lantern I was carrying to one of the men, hollered to the others to stay
where they were till I got back, cleared the cranberry patch, struck out
for the club-house on a run, sprang upstairs, grabbed Quarterman's coat
hanging in the closet, ran downstairs again, and shoved it under the
nose of the setter. Then I told him all about it, just as I'd tell you.
Quarterman was lost--he was in the swamp, perhaps; where, we didn't
know--and he was the only one who could find him. Would he go? _Go!_ You
just ought to have seen him! He threw his nose up in the air, sniffed
around as though he were looking for gnats to bite; made a spring from
the porch and began circling the lawn, his nose to the ground and sand;
then he made a bound over the fence and disappeared in the night.
"I hollered for the others and we kept after the setter as best we
could. Every now and then he would give a short bark--sometimes far
away, sometimes nearer. All we could do was to skirt along the edge of
the cranberry patch swinging the lanterns and hollering, 'Quarterman!
Quarterman!' until our throats gave out.
"Then I heard a quick, sharp bark, followed by a series of short yelps,
not fifty yards away. Next there came a faint halloo, a man's voice. We
pushed on, and there, about ten yards from hard ground, we found
Quarterman stretched out, the setter squatting beside him. He had
slipped into a hole some hours before, had broken his ankle, and had
made up his mind to wait until daylight, the pain, every time he moved,
almost making him faint. He was soaked to the skin and shivering with
cold. We helped him up on one foot, carried him to dry land, and finally
got him home; the dog following at a respectful distance.
"After we had put Quarterman to bed and had sent a man off on horseback
to Pottsburg for a doctor, I looked up the setter. He was in his old
place on the porch, stretched out under one of the wooden benches, his
nose resting on his paws--just as Chief lies here now--thinking the
whole situation over. He raised his head for an instant, licked my hand
and looked up inquiringly into my face as if expecting some further
service might be required of him; then he dropped his head again and
kept on thinking. Nobody had bothered himself about him; they hadn't
even thanked him in their hearts. Nothing to thank him for. Childish to
think of it! All the setter had done was just being plain dog. Hunting
up things was what he was born for.
"Next morning the dog turned up missing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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