Adventure Magazine, December 10, 1924 — page 93: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Snowzer The wolf, however, persists in every dog, and in that short four minutes Snowzer had forgotten many things his master had taught him, and remembered many other things called instinct, which he never knew he knew. And Snowzer really laid himself out to hunt then. Now the hunting of Snowzer was like the hunting of no other dog I know. Most of them run by sight, or scent; Snowzer tore at racehorse speed by sight and scent. His grandfather bulldog gave him the scent, a point most people overlook, and his greyhound parents gave him his sight and speed. f MY! BUT that was some hunt. a You picture Snowzer always flying “<M along over the heather, now check- ing, now twisting, now sliding, this way, now streaking that, now leaping a boulder or, aye, even the fallen pillar of an ancient dolmen, now unraveling one maze at top speed which the genius of the little buck had set him, now picking out with whirling pounces nine great leaps with barely a kiss of the ground between each, which that elfin buck had left for him to puzzle out. Now he was doing one straight flash of a mile, only to find that the cunning roe had come back on his own trail for the half of it, and gone off at a tangent. And now sitting sliding on his tail in a bog that looked firm grass, and leaping twistingly sidewise with one mighty wrench to save his carcass from certain death. Across these boggy patches the roebuck had pranced dainty and un- flustered, light and magical as if he were indeed the fairy thing he pretended to be, and then—Snouts and tail-tips! That was the limit. Snowzer had not stopped short merely. He could not have done that at the speed he was going over the springy turf just then. He threw himself backward, and landed his head with a thud on the ground behind where his tail should be. It was the greatest muscular effort he had ever made in his lifetime, and he felt as if he had strained every sinew in his body, but it had saved his life. Exactly beneath his feet the sheer drop of four hundred feet of the cliff’s terrible face had suddenly yawned without warning. And the roebuck? Had he fallen over and dashed himself to crab-feed on the cliffs below? Nay, but I should worry. He 7I had merely skipped lightly down to a giddy ledge four inches wide and skipped back again a little farther up. That was what he had done. Snowzer could do as he liked, and Snowzer did, just. Nearly he had done what he did not like. After that hunting roebucks as a sport rather palled upon Snowzer, especially as he seemed no nearer getting on terms with the little fairy beggar of a buck than when he had started. Evidently roebucks did not mind being hunted. They appeared rather to like it. At any rate, I think he had a pretty shrewd idea in his intelligent long cranium that this buck had known per- fectly well what he was up to from the word ‘go,’ and had simply been playing with him all along. Which, by the way, is the peculiar sporting way with roebucks, and their great charm—one of their charms. Snowzer was just turning from staring gloomily over the cliff’s edge into the nothing that was there, with that complete freedom from giddiness which is peculiar to all the wild folk, when, from it seemed far away, borne upon the wind, cutting through the din of the surf, faintly, so faintly that I swear no human ear could have heard it, Snowzer heard a whistle that shot him stiff as if he had been galvanized. One — two — three — four — five — six seven—eight—nine—nine seconds passed. Ten—eleven—twe—ah! The whistle came again, and this time there was no mistake for Snowzer. For him, I say, and only for him out of all the living creatures in the wide, wide world. His ears were like a wireless receiver trained to accept from only one sender, and they had received their call, clear and true through the tail end of the night now. It was an S. O. S. oF It was so typical of the beast’s whole life — that self-controlled, self-cen- tered, self-absorbed dog who rejected all friendships save one. Snowzer let himself go along the cliff-top with a single shooting bound that carried him yards, and with a trembling, almost sobbing whine, which was the only sound I ever heard him make save once a growl. And from that moment he became not so much a dog at all, as a vibrating, curving streak, a projectile hurled with inconceiv- able velocity through the night; a something I LIKE to think of Snowzer’s action. CoMmiclbool< Wh) C© 5}