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Page 50
"But Sourdough will spoil your fine coat for you, my gentleman, the
first time you come in our way," the sergeant would mutter to himself
when he chanced to see Dick giving Jan his morning brush-down after
Paddy was groomed.
He had been foiled half a dozen times in his attempts to get Sourdough
into Paddy's stall when Jan was there and Dick Vaughan engaged in any
way elsewhere. It seemed that some of Dick's comrades were always on
hand to bar the way; and, for appearance's sake, the sergeant could not
have it said that he had deliberately brought about a fight between his
dog and the valued hound of an officer, who was everybody's favorite.
"They're afraid, Sourdough, that's what it is; they're afraid you might
chew up the overgrown brute and spit him out in scraps about the yard.
Let 'em wait. We'll give 'em something to be afraid of presently."
He meant it, and he kept his word.
Since the Italian murder case, a regular craze had developed among the
men for trailing and the education of dogs. The barracks dogs were
constantly being added to, and every man who owned or could obtain a dog
gave his leisure to attempts--largely unsuccessful--at training the
animal to track.
O'Malley was one of the first to succumb to the new diversion, and was
lavishing immense care and patience upon the education of a cross-bred
Irish terrier, who would soon be able to wipe the eye of any Sassenach
dog in Canada, so he would! Meanwhile O'Malley, conveniently forgetful
of Jan's English nationality, was fond of borrowing the big hound for an
hour or so together to help him in his educational efforts on behalf of
Micky Doolan, the terrier. In such a matter Dick Vaughan and Jan were
equally approachable and good-natured. Indeed, the pair of them had
already done more than any of the different pupils' masters in the
matter of this revival of schooling among the barracks dogs.
It happened toward four o'clock of a late autumn day that Dick Vaughan
was engaged in Regina in attendance upon a great personage from Ottawa.
O'Malley, having borrowed Jan's services as helper, was busy giving
tracking lessons to Micky Doolan on the prairie, half a mile from
barracks. Chancing to look up from his work, O'Malley saw Sergeant Moore
approaching on foot, with Sourdough (as ever) at his heels. He did not
know that the sergeant had been watching him through binoculars from the
barracks, and that he had spent a quarter of an hour in carefully
devised efforts to exacerbate the never very amiable temper of
Sourdough.
O'Malley swore afterward that as the sergeant drew level with little
Micky Doolan (a dozen paces or so from the Irishman), he whispered to
Sourdough, and "sooled him on."
"Tsss--sss! To him, then, lad," is what O'Malley vowed the sergeant
said.
Be that as it may, Sourdough did wheel aside, as his way was, and
administer a savage slash of his fangs upon poor little Micky's neck. As
O'Malley rushed forward to protect his pet the game little beast,
instead of slinking back from tyrant Sourdough, a tribute that hard case
demanded from every dog he met, sprang forward with a snarl and a plucky
attempt to return the unsolicited bite he had received.
"Come in, come in, ye little fool!" yelled O'Malley.
But he was too late. A light of malevolent joy gleamed in the big
husky's red eyes as he plunged upon the terrier. One thrust of his
mighty shoulder sent the little chap spinning on his back, and there was
the throat-hold exposed to Sourdough's practised fangs. His bitter
temper had been carefully inflamed in advance, and demanded now the
sacrifice of blood, warm life-blood. His wide jaws flashed in upon the
terrier's throat just as O'Malley's boot took him in the rear.
"If ye touch that dog again, my man, I'll break your jaw for you," came
from the sergeant in a hoarse growl.
Now O'Malley was a disciplined man, and the sergeant was his official
superior. But, as it happened, the matter was now taken out of his
hands. Jan, who, before the sergeant's arrival, had been lying stretched
in the dust thirty paces distant, had risen then and stood stiffly,
watching Sourdough with raised hackles. At the moment that the husky's
fangs touched the skin of Micky's throat, Jan was upon him like a
battering-ram, shoulder to shoulder, with an impact that sent the husky
rolling, all four feet in the air, a position in which no barracks dog
had ever before seen Sourdough, and one in which any of them would have
given a day's food to find him. For that is the one position in which
even a Sourdough may with safety be attacked.
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