Getting Together
A HALF dozen bent figures crouched over the bright campfire seeking to shield themselves from the late November cold. It was not so much the cold that they felt as it was the biting wind, which drove the cold through them and numbed their fingers. They were not clad in cloth garments but in skins, and their figures were not those of civilization, but those of savagery. They were stouter of build, and without those lines and curves that cultivation and breeding are supposed to give to the finer races of men. Their faces as seen in the light of the campfire were dark copper color, or light brown. The wind and cold, the frost and the storm, had all played a part in this coloring. Their faces were flat and stolid. They rarely smiled, for there was little to smile about.
The three women in the party worked feverishly on skin garments which they were sewing, while two of the men fashioned spears and bound stone heads to them. The third man tended the campfire and watched some fish which were broiling in the coals. The fire was close to the mouth of a cave. Inside a dozen dark children were sleeping peacefully.
On the very outskirts of the firelight, or rather on the rim of the outer darkness, skulked a gray dog-like figure watching the man creatures beside the campfire.
To the nostrils of this wild beast came the odor of the broiling fish and it made saliva drip from his hungry jaws. Yet he knew that the meat in the coals was not for him. He had no part in this campfire scene, still he watched night after night. Or if he did not watch from the perimeter of the darkness, he sat on his tail at the top of a nearby hill and howled dismally at the moon. But best of all he loved to watch. If one of the men creatures saw him, he would pluck a torch from the campfire and wave it at him, or perhaps throw it, and he would at once slink away into the darkness.
The gray dog-like brute had a great fear of the bright warmth which these men creatures handled so fearlessly. This was one reason why the animal admired the animallike man. He was not afraid of fire.
If the gray animal came in too close and did not mind the sign of the fire which the man creature made to him, the man would take up a curved stick with a strong piece of deer thong stretched from end to end. Then he would fit a sharp stick in it and send the sharp stick singing into the darkness at the skulker. If the aim was good the stick bit so deeply into the inquisitive one that he would lie down and sleep with his curiosity stilled forever. If it simply stuck in his side he went away wounded. This would cure him for a while, but this creature who walked on two legs instead of four fascinated and drew him strangely.
He had great powers over the wild creatures, which made him a god among them. The wild beast saw and understood this, so he worshipped afar.
Not only was the man creature who walked on two legs not afraid of fire, and had power to wound his wild brothers from afar off, but he had certain other very mysterious powers. He could come and go on the water like a duck in a strange contrivance made of bark. The brute knew it was bark because he had often smelled it in the night when the man creature was asleep in his hole in the side of the hill. For they all slept in a cave away from the winds and the cold. And their house was feebly lighted in the night by a stone lamp.
From the bark water duck the wild beast knew the smell of this fascinating god whom he worshipped from afar. He could detect this smell more easily than any other in the wilderness and it was the most fearful of all the scents in the woods. Yet it also drew him. If he discovered a trail bearing this scent, he always had an impulse to follow it and see what his god was doing. Perhaps the strange two-legged creature was making trouble for the wilderness dwellers. He often built small houses held up in some strange way which would fall down and break one's back when he went inside to investigate. He also dug deep pits and covered them over carefully. When the wilderness dwellers were walking along unsuspectingly, often they fell into these pits and then the man creature came and killed them with his sharp stick, or with a club.
Then he could bend down a tree and fasten a long strip of deer hide to the end, and the other end to the ground, so that it would spring up and catch the wilderness dwellers, either by the neck or a leg, and hold them till he came.
He could dart a long sharp stick into the water and bring out a fish flopping on its point. Or he could pull the fish from the water with a small something, like a long piece of grass. Some of the birds he could catch in meshes made of many strands woven closely together.
So in one way or another he made all of the wild creatures serve him. He took their warm coats from them and used them to cover his own bare body. He ate them, and made their bones into his utensils. He used them as he would. So altogether he was a most fearful and wonderful creature. And was it any wonder that this gray dog-like brute watched him from the outer rim of the firelight and trailed him in the deep woods, seeking to know what he was doing?
Thus the centuries and the æons passed, with the two-legged man creature living beside his warm campfire and the dog-like beast watching from the outer rim of the darkness. Often the man creature thought, "If I had the young of the beast they would be fine for the little two-legged creatures to play with. He might even be useful to me."
Often the gray dog-like beast thought dimly, "If I could only go nearer and know him better, I might learn to like him. He draws me strangely."
Finally it happened that the man creature one day discovered the mother gray beast playing with her five cubs at the mouth of a cave where they lived. They were so intent with their frolic that he crept up very carefully and killed the mother with his sharp stick which could fly so quickly through the air. Then he caught two of the cubs, a male and a female, and took them home to his cave and his own young.
The wild beasts were so young that they had not been taught the fear of this two-legged god who ruled over the wilderness, so they played and grew with the young of the man and knew not that they were the offspring of a wild beast.
They ate venison and fish just as the men did and became a part of the primitive life. They slept with the children in their corners of the cave and blinked at the feeble light of the stone lamp, but were not afraid of the fire, nor of the men creatures, either the large or the small ones. Finally when they grew up they in turn had young which also grew up with the children and became a part of the life of the wilderness man.
This god in time taught his tamed beasts to watch his campfire and growl when the other wild beasts came near. He taught them to trail the wild beasts for him and to help him kill them. They lived with this man creature and worshipped him continually. They grew to love each other and to be mutually helpful.
Thus it was that the first gray wolf came into the life of the primitive man and became the ancestor of the civilized dog of to-day. Long association with man and much breeding have done the rest. The dog's first ancestor was a wolf, and a collie pup will go back to the wolf life, if he is placed in a wolf den with a litter of small wolves, in a single generation. But this strangely lovable animal has come nearer to man than has any other beast, and he loves and worships man as no other animal does.
To-day in many a family the dog is as much a part of the household as the people. He has won his way into our human hearts until we could not live without him.
So here is wishing good luck and happiness to all dogs, be they mighty mastiffs or tiny Pomeranians. For they are all lovable and faithful and equally deserving of our love and admiration.