Tails to Wag (26 page)

A little later, as they trampled along, James Moore heard little pattering, staggering footsteps behind.

He stopped, and the other two went on.

“Man,” a voice whispered, and a face, white and pitiful, like a mother's pleading for her child, looked into his—“Man, ye'll no tell them a'? I'd no like 'em to ken 'twas ma Wullie. Think an 't had been yer ain dog.”

“You may trust me!” the other answered thickly.

The little man stretched out a palsied hand.

“Gie us yer hand on 't. And G-God bless ye, James Moore!”

So these two shook hands in the moonlight, with none to witness it but the God who made them.

And that is why the mystery of the Black Killer is yet unsolved in the Daleland. Many have surmised; besides those three only one other knows—knows now which of those two he saw upon a summer night was the guilty, which the innocent. And Postie Jim tells no man.

Sources

Excerpt from
Beautiful Joe
by Marshall Saunders, 1903.

“Uncle Dick's Rolf” by Georgiana M. Craik from
The Junior Classics
, Volume 8, edited by William Patten, 1912.

“Ulysses and the Dogman” by O. Henry from
Sixes and Sevens
, 1914.

“The Baron's Wonderful Dog” by R. E. Raspe from
The Surprising Adventures of the Renowned Baron Munchausen
, 1811.

“Brown Wolf” by Jack London from
Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories
, 1920.

“A Yellow Dog” by Bret Harte from
Barker's Luck and Other Stories
, 1896.

“Bingo” by Ernest Thompson Seton from
Wild Animals I Have Known
, 1900.

“A Dark-Brown Dog” by Stephen Crane from
Men, Women, and Boats
, 1920.

“Memoirs of a Yellow Dog” by O. Henry from
The Four Million
, 1907.

“The She-Wolf” by Saki (H. H. Munro) from
Beast and Super-Beasts
, 1914.

“Tito: The Story of the Coyote That Learned How” by Ernest Thompson Seton from
Lives of the Hunted
, 1901.

“A Fire-fighter's Dog” by Arthur Quiller-Couch from
The Junior Classics
, Volume 8, edited by William Patten, 1912.

“Scrap” by Lucia Chamberlain from
The Junior Classics
, Volume 8, edited by William Patten, 1912.

“Carlo, the Soldiers' Dog” by Rush C. Hawkins from
The Junior Classics
, Volume 8, edited by William Patten, 1912.

Excerpt from
Bruce
by Albert Payson Terhune, 1920.

Excerpt from
Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)
by Jerome K. Jerome, 1889.

“Philippa's Fox Hunt” by E. Somerville and Martin Ross from
Some Experiences of an Irish R. M.
, 1899.

Excerpt from
Bob, Son of Battle
by Alfred Ollivant, 1898.