"Now Jerry's after rabbits, and fox-trails; but you'll notice
they don't interest Michael much. They're not what he's after. He
behaves like one who has lost a great treasure and doesn't know where he
lost it nor where to look for it."

Much Michael learned from Jerry of the varied life of the forest and
fields. To run with Jerry seemed the one pleasure he took, for he never
played. Play had passed out of him. He was not precisely morose or
gloomy from his years on the trained-animal stage and in Harris Collins's
college of pain, but he was sobered, subdued. The spring and the
spontaneity had gone out of him. Just as the leopard had claw-marked his
shoulder so that damp and frosty weather made the pain of the old wound
come back, so was his mind marked by what he had gone through. He liked
Jerry, was glad to be with him and to run with him; but it was Jerry who
was ever in the lead, who ever raised the hue and cry of hunting pursuit,
who barked indignation and eager yearning at a tree'd squirrel in refuge
forty feet above the ground. Michael looked on and listened, but took no
part in such antics of enthusiasm.

In the same way he looked on when Jerry fought fearful comic battles with
Norman Chief, the great Percheron stallion. It was only play, for Jerry
and Norman Chief were tried friends; and, though the huge horse, ears
laid back, mouth open to bite, pursued Jerry in mad gyrations all about
the paddock, it was with no thought of inflicting hurt, but merely to act
up to his part in the sham battle. Yet no invitation of Jerry's could
induce Michael to join in the fun. He contented himself with sitting
down outside the rails and looking on.

"Why play?" might Michael have asked, who had had all play taken out of
him.

But when it came to serious work, he was there even ahead of Jerry. On
account of foot-and-mouth disease and of hog-cholera, strange dogs were
taboo on the Kennan ranch. It did not take Michael long to learn this,
and stray dogs got short shrift from him. With never a warning bark nor
growl, in deadly silence, he rushed them, slashed and bit them, rolled
them over and over in the dust, and drove them from the place. It was
like nigger-chasing, a service to perform for the gods whom he loved and
who willed such chasing.

No wild passion of love, such as he had had for Steward, did he bear
Villa and Harley, but he did develop for them a great, sober love. He
did not go out of his way