Chapter XXXVI
Winter came on in its delectable way in the Valley of the Moon. The last
Mariposa lily vanished from the burnt grasses as the California Indian
summer dreamed itself out in purple mists on the windless air. Soft rain-
showers first broke the spell. Snow fell on the summit of Sonoma
Mountain. At the ranch house the morning air was crisp and brittle, yet
mid-day made the shade welcome, and in the open, under the winter sun, roses bloomed and oranges, grape-fruit, and lemons turned to golden yellow ripeness. Yet, a thousand feet beneath, on the floor of the valley, the mornings were white with frost.
And Michael barked twice. The first time was when Harley Kennan, astride
a hot-blooded sorrel colt, tried to make it leap a narrow stream. Villa
reined in her steed at the crest beyond, and, looking back into the
little valley, waited for the colt to receive its lesson. Michael
waited, too, but closer at hand. At first he lay down, panting from his
run, by the stream-edge. But he did not know horses very well, and soon
his anxiety for the welfare of Harley Kennan brought him to his feet.
Harley was gentle and persuasive and all patience as he strove to make
the colt take the leap. The urge of voice and rein was of the mildest; but the animal balked the take-off each time, and the hot thoroughbredness in its veins made it sweat and lather. The velvet of young grass was torn up by its hoofs, and its terror of the stream was such, that, when fetched to the edge at a canter, it stiffened and crouched to an abrupt stop, then reared on its hind-legs. Which was too much for Michael.
He sprang at the horse's head as it came down with forefeet to earth, and
as he sprang he barked. In his bark was censure and menace, and, as the
horse reared again, he leaped into the air after it, his teeth clipping
together as he just barely missed its nose.
Villa rode back down the slope to the opposite bank of the stream.
"Mercy!" she cried. "Listen to him! He's actually barking."
"He thinks the colt is trying to do some damage to me," Harley said. "That's his provocation. He hasn't forgotten how to bark. He's reading the colt a lecture."
"If he gets him by the nose it will be more than a lecture," Villa
warned. "Be careful, Harley, or he will."
"Now, Michael, lie down and be good," Harley commanded. "It's all right, I tell you. It's an right. Lie down."
Michael sank down obediently, but protestingly; and he had eyes only for
the horse's antics, while all his muscles were gathered tensely to spring
in case the horse threatened injury to Harley again.
"I can't give in to him now, or he never will jump anything," Harley said
to his wife, as he whirled about to gallop back to a distance. "Either I
lift him over or I take a cropper."
He came back at full speed, and the colt, despite himself, unable to
stop, lifted into the leap that would avoid the stream he feared, so that
he cleared it with a good two yards to spare on the other side.
The next time Michael barked was when Harley, on the same hot-blood
mount, strove to close a poorly hung gate on the steep pitch of a
mountain wood-road. Michael endured the danger to his man-god as long as
he could, then flew at the colt's head in a frenzy of barking.
"Anyway, his barking helped," Harley conceded, as he managed to close the
gate. "Michael must certainly have told the colt that he'd give him what-
for if he didn't behave."
"At any rate, he's not tongue-tied," Villa laughed, "even if he isn't
very loquacious."
And Michael's loquacity never went farther. Only on these two occasions, when his master-god seemed to be in peril, was he known to bark. He never barked at the moon, nor at hillside echoes, nor at any prowling thing. A particular echo, to be heard directly from the ranch-house, was an unfailing source of exercise for Jerry's lungs. At such times that Jerry barked, Michael, with a bored expression, would lie down and wait until the duet was over. Nor did he bark when he attacked strange dogs that strayed upon the ranch.
"He fights like a veteran," Harley remarked, after witnessing one such
encounter. "He's cold-blooded. There's no excitement in him."
"He's old before his time," Villa said. "There is no heart of play left
in him, and no desire for speech. Just the same I know he loves me, and
you--"
"Without having to be voluble about it," her husband completed for her.