A. E. (Alfred Edgar) Coppard - The Collected Tales of A. E. Coppard

One day he tramped right over to the head keeper’s house to deliver a message, and there Tom Hussey had shown him a litter of retriever puppies he was tending. They had a pedigree, Tom Hussey said, as long as the shafts of a cart; the mother herself was valued at fifty golden guineas, but the sire belonged to Lord Camover and banknotes wouldn’t buy that dog, nor love nor money—not even the crown of England. There they were, six puppies just weaned and scrambling about, beautiful bouncing creatures, all except one that seemed quiet and backward.

“That one?” Tom Hussey said; “I be going to kill her. Sha’s got a sort of rupture in her navel.”

“Don’t do that,” said old Dick, for he knew a lot about dogs as well as birds and lambs and donkeys. “Give it to I.” And Tom Hussey gave him the pup then and there, and he took it home to his tent and bandaged it artfully with a yard strip of canvas, and called it Sossy because it was so pert.

Every day the old man attended to that bandage round Sossy’s stomach—he knew a whole lot about dogs—and the dog throve and grew, and every night nuzzled in the straw beside him; and Dick rejoiced. They lived heartily, for Dick was a nimble hand with a wire, and rabbits were plentiful, and he was always begging for bones and suchlike for his Sossy. Everywhere in that wood he took Sossy with him and he trained her so in the arts of obedience that she knew what he wanted even if he only winked one eye. After about six months of this he took off her bandage for the last time and threw it away. There she was, cured and fit and perfect, a fine sweet flourishing thing. What a glossy coat! What a bushy tail! And her eyes—they made you dream of things!

Awhile after that Tom Hussey came into the wood to shoot some pigeons. There was always a great flock of them somewhere in the wood, and when they rose up from the trees the whirr of their thousand wings was like the roar of a great wave. Well, Tom Hussey came, and as he passed near the tent he called out the good of the morning to old Dick.

“Come here,” cried Dick, and Tom Hussey went, and when he saw that dog you could have split him with a lath of wood he was so astonished. Sossy danced round him in a rare flurry, nuzzling at his pockets.

“She’s hungry,” he said.

“No, she ain’t. Get down, you great devil! No, she ain’t hungry, she’s just had a saucepan full o’ shackles—get down!—that saucepan there what I washes myself in.”

When Tom Hussey shot a pigeon she stood to the gun and brought the bird back like an angel.

“Dick, you can swap that dog for a donkey whenever you’ve a mind to,” Tom Hussey said.

“Ain’t she got a mouth? I tell you,” Dick cried joyfully.

“Like silk,” was the rejoinder.

“It’s a gift.”

“Born,” chanted Tom Hussey.

“It’s a gift, I tell you.”

“Born. She’s worth twenty pounds. You sell that bitch and get you a donkey, quick.”

“No,” deliberated the veteran. “I shan’t do that.”

“Twenty pound she’s worth, of good money.”

“I shan’t have ’ee, I tell you.”

“You sell that bitch and get you a donkey. That’s my last word to you,” Tom Hussey said as he stalked away.

But that “Owd Venrable” was a far-seeing sagacious creature, a very artful old man he was, and when the time came for it he and Tom Hussey conjured up a deal between themselves. It would have been risky for Tom Hussey, but as he was changing to another estate he chanced it and he connived and Sossy was mated on the sly to one of his master’s finest retrievers, as good as ever stepped into a covert, and by all accounts the equal of Lord Camover’s dog that had begot Sossy. So when Tom Hussey departed, there was old Dick with his valuable dog, looking forward to the few weeks hence when Sossy would have the finest bred puppies of their kind in the land. He scarcely dared to compute their value, but it would surely be enough to relegate the idea of a donkey to the limbo of outworn and mean conceits. No, if all went well he would have a change of life altogether. He would give up the old tent; it was rotting, he was tired of it. If things came wonderful well he would buy a nag and a little cart and a few cokernuts and he would travel the round of the fairs and see something of the world again. Nothing like cokernuts for a profitable trade. And perhaps he might even find some old “gal” to go with him.

This roseate dream so tinted every moment of his thoughts that he lived, as you might say, like a poet, cherishing the dog, the source and promise of these ideals, with fondness and joy. The only cloud on the horizon of bliss was the new gamekeeper, a sprag young fellow, who had taken a deep dislike to him. Old Dick soon became aware of this animosity, for the new keeper kept a strict watch upon his neighbourhood and walked about kicking over Dick’s snares, impounding his wires, and complaining of his dirty habits and his poaching. And it was true, he was dirty, he had lost his pride, and he did poach, just a little, for he had a belly that hungered like any other man’s, and he had a dog.

Early one morning as Dick was tending his fire the new keeper strolled up. He was a wry-mouthed slow-speaking young chap, and he lounged there with his gun under his arm and his hands in his pockets. Neither spoke for a while, but at last the keeper said:

“It burns well.”

“Huh, and so would you burn well,” grinned the old man, “if I cut you atop of it.”

For fully two minutes the young keeper made no retort, he was a rather enraging young keeper. Then he said: “Ah, and what do you think you may be doing round here?”

The old man flung a few pinches of tea into a can of boiling water.

“You get on with your job, young feller, and I’ll get on with mine.”

“What is your job?”

The “Owd Venrable” eyed him angrily.

“My job? I’ll tell you—it’s to mind my own business. You’ll learn that for yourself later on, I ’spects, when you get the milk outer your mouth—you ought to, however. Wait till yer be as old as I.”

“Ah,” drawled the keeper, “I don’t mind waiting.”

“I met chaps like you before,” the old man began to thunder. “Thousands on ’em. D’you know what happened to the last one?”

“Died of fleabites, I shouldn’t wonder,” was the placid rejoinder.

“I had him on the hop. When he warn’t thinking,” the old man, ruminating, grinned, “I wuz! I give him a kick o’ the stomach as fetched him atween wind and water, and down he went, clean as a smelt. D’you know what I did then?”

“Picked his pocket, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Yah! Never stole nothing from no man, ’cept it was my own. Clean as a smelt, I tell you.”

“Well,” the new keeper slowly said, shifting his gun from the left arm to the right, “I can take a hiding from any man. . . .”

“Ah, and from any old woman, too, I should say.”

“. . . from any man,” continued the imperturbable one, “as can give it me—if you know of one.” He began to pick his teeth with a matchstick. “Did you get my message?” he more briskly added.

“What message?”

“I sent you a message.”

“Then you sent it by a wet hen. I an’t had no message.”

“I know you had it, but I’ll tell you again. I’ve got orders to clear you out of this wood, you and your dog. You can take your time, don’t want to be hard on you, but out you goes, and soon, you and your dog.”

“Well, we can go, my cunning feller, we can go.”

“That’s right, then.”

“We can go—when we’ve a mind to. But who’s a-going to look arter my job?”

“What job’s that?”

“Huh, what job!” the old man disgustedly groaned. “Why, who’s a-going to keep an eye on things, and they poachers, thousands on ’em, just waiting for to catch I asleep! But they can’t do it.”