The Project Gutenberg EBook of His Dog, by Albert Payson Terhune

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Title: His Dog

Author: Albert Payson Terhune

Posting Date: March 1, 2009 [EBook #2393]
Release Date: November, 2000

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HIS DOG ***

Produced by Dianne Bean. HTML version by Al Haines.

HIS DOG

by

ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE

1922

CONTENTS

I. The Derelict
II. The Battle
III. The Ordeal
IV. The Choice

CHAPTER I.

The Derelict

Link Ferris was a fighter. Not by nature, nor by choice, but to keep
alive.

His battleground covered an area of forty acres--broken, scrubby,
uncertain side-hill acres, at that. In brief, a worked-out farm among
the mountain slopes of the North Jersey hinterland; six miles from the
nearest railroad.

The farm was Ferris's, by right of sole heritage from his father, a
Civil-War veteran, who had taken up the wilderness land in 1865 and
who, for thirty years thereafter, had wrought to make it pay. At best
the elder Ferris had wrenched only a meager living from the light and
rock-infested soil.

The first-growth timber on the west woodlot for some time had staved
off the need of a mortgage; its veteran oaks and hickories grimly
giving up their lives, in hundreds, to keep the wolf from the door of
their owner. When the last of the salable timber was gone Old Man
Ferris tried his hand at truck farming, and sold his wares from a wagon
to the denizens of Craigswold, the new colony of rich folk, four miles
to northward.

But to raise such vegetables and fruits as would tempt the eyes and the
purses of Craigswold people it was necessary to have more than mere
zeal and industry. Sour ground will not readily yield sweet abundance,
be the toiler ever so industrious. Moreover, there was large and
growing competition, in the form of other huckster routes.

And presently the old veteran wearied of the eternal uphill struggle.
He mortgaged the farm, dying soon afterward. And Link, his son, was
left to carry on the thankless task.

Link Ferris was as much a part of the Ferris farm as was the giant
bowlder in the south mowi