IIITHE STRANGE BEHAVIOR OF DOGS AND MEN 

CHAPTER III

THE STRANGE BEHAVIOR OF DOGS AND MEN

Five days after the burning of the red pirogue, another queer thing happened at O’Dell’s Point. It happened between three and five o’clock of the afternoon.

Jim McAllister had driven off downstream early that morning with two horses and a heavy wagon to buy provisions at the town of Woodstock. The round trip was an all-day job. Ben O’Dell shouldered an ax after dinner and, accompanied by the youngest of the three O’Dell dogs, went back to mend a brush fence and see if the highest hay field was ripe for the scythe. Mrs. O’Dell and little Marion Sherwood washed and dried the dinner dishes and Mrs. O’Dell took a great ham from the oven and set it to cool in the pantry. At three o’clock she and the little girl took an armful of books to the old orchard between the house and the river. Red Lily went with them; Red Chief, the oldest of the O’Dell setters, remained asleep in the kitchen.

Mrs. O’Dell and the little girl from French River returned to the house at five o’clock, having finished “Treasure Island.” Red Chief arose from his slumbers and welcomed them with sweeps of his plumed tail. Mrs. O’Dell went to the pantry to see how the ham looked—and the ham wasn’t there!

Some one had been in the pantry, had come and gone by way of the kitchen, and yet Red Chief had not barked. Mrs. O’Dell was not only puzzled but alarmed. A thief had visited the house of the O’Dells, a thing that had not happened for generations; and, worse still, a dog of the famous old red strain had failed in his duty. And yet Red Chief had many times proved himself as good a dog as any of his ancestors had been. Red Chief, the wise and true and fearless, had permitted a thief to enter and leave the house without so much as giving tongue. It was a puzzling and disturbing thought to the woman who held the honor of her dead husband’s family so high that even the honor of the O’Dell red dogs was dear to her.

She said nothing about the stolen ham to her little guest but she took the old setter by his silken ears and gazed searchingly into his unwavering eyes. But there was neither guile nor shame in those eyes. Devotion, courage, vision and entire self-satisfaction were there. The old dog’s conscience was clear.

Mrs. O’Dell went through the pantry. Two loaves of bread had gone with the ham. She searched here and there 

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