Perhaps, Jeff thought, he could find a family that would give the dog a home--but he abandoned the notion almost as soon as it glimmered. How many families wanted a dog half the size of a Shetland pony? Maybe he could pay someone to take care of him. But how could he be sure that the dog would be cared for and not abused? There was no way to check. Six weeks from now, depending on where Tarrant Enterprises, Ltd., led him, Jeff might be a hundred or a thousand miles away. He did not know when, if ever, he would come back. The happy thought that first things must be first occurred to him. While the dog looked gravely on, he tilted his bubbling coffee away from the fire and unwrapped the chicken. The dog licked his lips and riveted his gaze on the fowl. Jeff grinned. He'd been told that dogs should not have chicken bones. But unless they were always tied or penned, sooner or later most dogs found and ate them. At any rate, the dog had to eat and there wasn't anything except chicken, bread and butter. Jeff sliced both legs from the chicken and ordered, "Sit!" The dog sat; obviously he had had training. When Jeff extended a chicken leg, the dog took it from him so gently that only his lips touched Jeff's hand, but when he had the leg in his mouth he tore all the meat from it with one turn of his jaws. Then he ground the bone to bits and swallowed that too. Jeff looked at the two bites he had taken from his own drumstick. "Hey!" he protested. "Just because you're company, you don't have to gobble everything in sight!" He looked determinedly away and took another bite of chicken, but he felt the dog's appealing eyes on him and turned back again. "If you could talk," he said resignedly, "you could be sales manager for Tarrant Enterprises, Ltd. You certainly know how to sell yourself." Jeff cut a wing, gave it to the dog, and watched in fascination while it went the way of, and as fast as, the chicken leg. He cut the loaf of bread into six thick slices, spread an equal amount of butter on each, and saw the dog gulp five of them. Jeff ate as rapidly as he could; if he was going to get anything, he had to get it fast. He watched while the dog ate all the rest of the chicken and cleaned and swallowed the splintered bones. "If you're going to be a partner," he observed, "you'd better learn to pay your own way. I'll go broke just feeding you. Oh, well, we can always have nice fresh air for breakfast. Now I'm going to work on you, Pal. You do look sort of wild and woolly and it might help both of us stay out of trouble if you didn't. Down!" The dog lay down, eyes glowing happily, and Jeff used gentle fingers to untangle his fur. Where it was matted too tightly, he cut it off with a pair of scissors. Separating a hair at a time and using as little pressure as possible, he worked on the injured right side. Then he took a brush from his pack and brushed the dog smooth.