The Icelandic Canadian - 01.06.1961, Side 41

THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
39
were tears in the eyes of that animal
too. They kept watchin’ each other
until we were out of sight. I drove
about ten miles down the road and
then left him tied to a tree. The rope
would give me a head start. It would
be an hour or so before he could chew
it apart. You may think it was mean
to tie him up, but you have to remem-
ber that horses aren’t as fast as these
here cars.”
“Now let me tell you,” the old man
continued with a touch of pride in his
voice, “that boy wasn’t spoilt. He’d
been brought up right. But there was
somethin’ between him and that
animal. Well, even so, he went of and
sulked. Didn’t cry mind you. Just
wouldn’t say anythin’. Ate his food
at supper and went to bed. The walls
in the house weren’t thick, just heavy
cardboard paper, and that night the
wife and I couldn’t sleep. She said it
was the heat, and I agreed with her.
Timmy cried himself to sleep.”
The old man smiled to himself and
continued, “You can guess what a
relief it was when Spook turned up
next mornin’. I was goin out to the
barn to milk the cows and there he
was, standin’ lookin’ at the window
to Timmy’s room. You could have
knocked me over with a chicken
feather! Spook saw me and didn’t know
what to do. He ‘bellied down’ to the
ground as close as he could and gave
a few hopeful wags of hs tail. I didn’t
know what to do, but I did know I
couldn’t take him away again. I call-
ed to him quietly and led him into
Timmy’s room. He settled himself at
the foot of the bed and went to sleep.
You’d a’ thought nothin’ had happen-
ed. He made me think about the first
time he came into the house, just goin’
to sleep like that.”
The old man paused to knock out
his pipe against the side of the box,
then continued as he put it into his
pocket. “We were in the kitchen when
the boy woke up. I’d expected a real
hullaballoo, but I should have known
better. You know what happened? He
came out of the bedroom with that
ugly mut at his heels, and you know
what he said? He said, “Spook must
be awful hungry, can he have some
milk?” As he was goin’ out the door to
get the milk he turned and quietly said,
“You know daddy, he had to come
back.” “Not he came back, but ‘he
had to come back’.” Can you beat it,
eh?”
The old man tilted the box forward,
leaning closer to the listeners and said,
‘There was somethin’ between those
two even then.” With this he got up
and shuffled down the hghway, using
his cane to help himself along.
We took our ‘pop’ (bottles and placed
them in the wooden case at the side of
the store. I turned to one of the loun-
gers and said, “That is really some-
thing. A dog that is part wolf for a
pet. But what did he mean ‘even
then’?”
He did not answer, but an elderly
man that was sitting beside him on
the store steps replied, “That all hap-
pened thirty years ago.”
“But”, I answered, “he talks like it
happened only a while ago.”
"It did, for him. Would you like to
hear the rest of the story,” he asked?
“Thanks no,” I said, then changed
my mind. “Yes, yes I would like to hear
the rest of the story.” 1 pulled the box
the old man had been sitting on over
to me and sat down.
“Well, let’s see. He said the boy was
five when this happened. It was a year
and a half later, if I’m not mistaken,
that some people built a house across
the road from the old man. That
wolf-dog had never bothered anyone,
but like the old man said he was ugly.