United States or Angola ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
A billy-can swung over the fire on a tripod of stakes, and the man was engaged with his supper. Finn did not know, of course, that the man was a boundary-rider, and his dog a not very well-bred kangaroo-hound. The wind was north-west, or the kangaroo-hound would surely have scented Finn's approach and given tongue.
Indeed, the bigger of the three dingoes told himself, with a regretful sigh, that this great grey wolf had in all probability dispatched the kangaroo-hound at an early stage of the night, and had been sleeping off the first effects of his orgy, when they first saw him lying near the camp-fire. At all events, the wolf had disappeared.
It was then, as his jaws parted in anger, that consciousness of the black hound's sex came to him, in the subtle way that his kind do acquire such facts, and his jaws promptly closed upon space. When the kangaroo-hound snapped a second time, Finn turned his shoulder to her meekly and gave a little friendly whinny of a whine.
As a fact, poor Jess would rather have died a dozen deaths than call once upon a dingo for mercy. It was the pain in her lacerated body, resulting from the attempt to bark, that had introduced that wailing note into her cry. And now, as the dingoes drew nearer, inch by inch, the black kangaroo-hound braced herself to die biting, and to sell her flesh as dearly as might be.
After four days of this sort of life, during practically every hour of which Finn was learning bush-craft from Jess, and learning at a great rate for the reason that his intelligence was of a higher order than that of the kangaroo-hound, while his hunting instincts came to him from an older and more direct line of inheritance, the Wolfhound began to feel almost as thoroughly at home in the bush as he had felt on his own hunting-ground in Sussex.
Slowly, and with only a little less caution than before, Finn now approached the camp a second time, and heard Bill say to the kangaroo-hound: "All right, Jess; go to him, then!" In another moment, Jess came prancing out towards him, and Finn spread out his fore-legs and lowered his great frame to the earth, while his hind-quarters remained erect and ready for a pivoting movement.
A log on the fire broke in half, allowing a long tongue of flame to leap up and light the ground for fifty yards around, and the kangaroo-hound turned its greyhound-like muzzle sharply to one side and saw Finn.
I am not to be trifled with!" But apparently the black kangaroo-hound was not very greatly impressed.
For her part, Jess was too weak and ill to be likely to interfere with the wound; even the slight lifting of her head to lap a little broth seemed to tax her strength to the utmost. All night Finn lay within a couple of yards of the kangaroo-hound; and in the morning, soon after dawn, he brought her a fresh-killed rabbit and laid it at her feet.
Finn was not in the least like a dingo; but, on the other hand, he was not like a kangaroo-hound. He was twice the size of a dingo, very nearly, and a good seven inches taller than the biggest kangaroo-hound the stallion had seen. Also, his coat was shaggy and long, instead of close and short like that of a greyhound, or kangaroo-hound.
Word Of The Day