Lost Dog 
A Tale of a Stray Hound Who Proved to 
day, the snow had been sifting 
around and piling up as it does in 
midwinter in the Finger Lakes country 
of central New York. We were getting 
that kind of bitter cold weather which 
sets man and beast shivering and 
seeking shelter, when through my office 
window I saw a big upstanding noble- 
looking foxhound standing in the snow. 
He didn’t seem to mind the tempera- 
ture, and I made a mental note that 
someone surely owned a foxhound with 
enough red blood racing through his 
veins to make him unmindful of wind 
and weather which chills most 
of us to our very bones. Then 
I got interested in my work 
and might never have thought 
of that rugged black - and - tan 
hound again had I not spied 
him the following day sitting 
upright on a _ snowdrift, and 
somehow he had a far-away look about 
him which made me think he might be 
a lost dog, so I went out to the ship- 
ping-room and asked George Clapp, 
who likes dogs, if he knew whose dog 
that was. And George said the dog 
had been hanging around a week or 
more, but couldn’t be coaxed into the 
plant. Most any hound dog will fol- 
low me, so I sallied forth to see if, by 
chance, some good fellow’s address 
might be on that dog’s collar, and I 
used all my skill in a vain effort to get 
my hand on that black-and-tan, but 
about twenty feet seemed to be the 
danger-line over which he would not 
permit me to advance, and the net re- 
sult of my maneuvers was that the dog 
bolted and ran toward town as I have 
seen a frightened deer run up in the 
wilds of Quebec, and right there it 
came over me that I had seen the dog 
somewhere, but when and where was 
the question. 
|: was a wild and windy January 
yeu who have grown up with dogs 
will know how the memory of a dog 
stays with you—just as will the mem- 
ory of a person, and you know how 
you will sometimes remember, all of a 
sudden, just when and where you saw 
that particular dog or person; so you 
will not be surprised when I tell you 
that up at Spencer Lake—18 miles 
from my home town of Ithaca, N. Y. 
—I was doing my best to reduce a huge 
pile of steamed clams at an Elks clam 
bake when around the corner of Bob 
Angel’s Spencer Lake Hotel trotted a 
Page 207 














By LOU SMITH 
hound which looked as though he was 
mighty hungry and convinced me he 
was hungry by cleaning up a ten-quart 
pailfull of table scraps in record time. 
The more I thougth about it the more 
certain I was that the hungry hound 
of that hot and sultry summer’s day 
was none other than the cold-resisting 
dog I had so recently discovered; so I 
offered a box of cigars to any gfun- 
maker who would catch that dog, and 
immediately they began in all sorts of 
ways to win those cigars. They coaxea 
him with food and they coaxed with- 
out food; they often started in calling 
him nice dog- 
gie and wound 
up calling him 
most anything 
but a nice dog, 
and still he 
roamed the 
Ithaca hills 
unfettered by 
the chains of 
man; then one 
day I could 
hardly believe what I saw, which was 
that self-same lost dog playing like a 
puppy with a small boy, romping 
around and now and then taking that 
boy’s hand in his mouth so tenderly, 
then stopping to have his head patted. 
No lost dog now, just a good old pal to 
a fun-loving kid, and to that kid I said: 
“Boy, can you hold that dog?” and the 
kid said to me: “Sure I can, why not?” 
And my answer was: “Boy, if you will 
take hold of that dog’s collar and hang 
on ’til I get there I will give you a 
new dollar bill,” and the boy got a good 
grip on that dog’s collar with both his 
hands, Then I started toward them, 
Be a Winner 
and an affectionate dog reverted in a 
second to a wild dog, jumping and pull- 
ing, performing most of the antics one 
sees a green bronco perform when first 
a cowboy throws a leg over him; but 
the boy was game, and that dollar 
looked big. to him. He hung like death 
to a nigger and eventually I did get 
my good right hand on that dog’s col- 
lar and the kid let go. Then I expected 
this man-fearing dog to show fight, but 
he didn’t; he just looked up as though 
he expected a mauling, and when I 
patted him he wagged his tail and fol- 
lowed me into my office. 
N EXT morning there was a beautiful 
tracking snow, and as generally 
happens on such mornings a half dozen 
Ithaca gun-makers who like the fox- 
hunting game as do I were at my 
house at daybreak. Lost Dog wanted 
to go along with Prince and Ted when 
we boosted them into the tail-end of the 
Dodge truck we use for hunting; in 
fact, Lost Dog didn’t need any boost- 
ing; he sailed into that car as one 
would expect a grayhound to take the 
jump, and away we went up the Inlet 
Valley about seven miles to the 
little white house which nestles 
over under the hill. It is there 
John Wilson and his good wife 
dispense hospitality to us fox 
hunters, and just above John’s 
house we picked up a fox track 
made the night before, and Bill 
Davis sugested we keep Prince 
and Ted on chain, letting only 
Lost Dog loose to see whether 
he was or was not a red fox 
dog. So we did it Bill’s way, 
and a black-and-tan dog went 
loping over the knolls up the 
Inlet until he got to the hill 
East and south of West Danby, 
when his tune changed and we knew 
his fox was up. 
“PALER about speed—Lost Dog had 
speed to burn, and how he could 
take a fence, not through it nor under 
it—but over the top without touching 
it, and he seemed to have that fox 
sense one finds in a dog once or twice 
in a lifetime of fox hunting; knew 
just which way to go to pick it up when 
the trail was lost in a roadway or on a 
hill covered with crust from which the 
loose snow had blown away the night 
before, and it wasn’t long. perhaps a 
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