The man huddled frowzily in the tree crotch, like a rumpled and sick raccoon. At times he would crane his thin neck and peer about him, but more as if he feared rescue than as though he hoped for it.
Then, before slumping back to his sick-raccoon pose, he would look murderously earthward and swear with lurid fervor.
At the tree foot the big dog wasted neither time nor energy in frantic barking or in capering excitedly about. Instead, he lay at majestic ease, gazing up toward the treed man with grave attentiveness.
Thus, for a full half -hour, the two had remained—the treer and the treed. Thus, from present signs, they would continue to remain until Christmas.
There is, by tradition, something intensely comic in the picture of a man treed by a dog. The man, in the present case, supplied the only element of comedy in the scene. The dog was anything but comic, either in looks or in posture.
He was a collie, huge of bulk, massive of shoulder, deep and shaggy of chest. His forepaws were snowy and absurdly small. His eyes were seal-dark and sorrowful—eyes that proclaimed not only an uncannily wise brain, but a soul as well. In brief, he was Lad; official guard of The Place’s safety.
It was in this rôle of guard that he was now serving as jailer to the man he had seen slouching through the undergrowth of the forest which grew close up to The Place’s outbuildings.
From his two worshipped deities—the Mistress and the Master—Lad had learned in puppyhood the simple provisions of the Guest Law. He knew, for example, that no one openly approaching the house along the driveway from the furlong-distant high-road was to be molested. Such a visitor’s advent—especially at night—might lawfully be greeted by a salvo of barks. But the barks were a mere announcement, not a threat.
On the other hand, the Law demanded the instant halting of all prowlers, or of anyone seeking to get to the house from road or lake by circuitous and stealthy means. Such roundabout methods spell Trespass. Every good watchdog knows that. But wholly good watchdogs are far fewer than most people—even their owners—realize. Lad was one of the few.
To-day’s trespasser had struck into The Place’s grounds from an adjoining bit of woodland. He had moved softly and obliquely and had made little furtive dashes from one bit of cover to another, as he advanced toward the outbuildings a hundred yards north of the house.
He had moved cleverly and quietly. No human had seen or heard him. Even Lad, sprawling half-asleep on the veranda, had not seen him. For, in spite of theory, a dog’s eye by daylight is not so keen or so far-seeing as is a human’s. But the wind had brought news of a foreign presence on The Place—a presence which Lad’s hasty glance at driveway and lake edge did not verify.
So the dog had risen to his feet, stretched himself, collie-fashion, fore and aft, and trotted quickly away to investigate. Scent, and then sound, taught him which way to go.
Two minutes later he changed his wolf trot to a slow and unwontedly stiff-legged walk, advancing with head lowered, and growling softly far down in his throat. He was making straight for a patch of sumac, ten feet in front of him and a hundred feet behind the stables.
Now, when a dog bounds toward a man, barking and with head up, there is nothing at all to be feared from his approach. But when the pace slackens to a stiff walk and his head sinks low, that is a very good time, indeed, for the object of his attentions to think seriously of escape or of defense.
Instinct or experience must have imparted this useful truth to the lurker in the sumac patch, for as the great dog drew near the man incontinently wheeled and broke cover. At the same instant Lad charged.
The man had a ten-foot start. This vantage he utilized by flinging himself bodily at a low-forked hickory tree directly in his path.
Up the rough trunk to the crotch he shinned with the speed of a chased cat. Lad arrived at the tree bole barely in time to collect a mouthful of cloth from the climber’s left trouser ankle.
After which, since he was not of the sort to clamor noisily for what lurked beyond his reach, the dog yawned and lay down to keep guard on his arboreal prisoner. For half an hour he lay thus, varying his vigil once or twice by sniffing thoughtfully at a ragged scrap of trouser cloth between his little white forepaws. He sniffed the thing as though trying to commit its scent to memory.
The man did not seek help by shouting. Instead, he seemed oddly willing that no other human should intrude on his sorry plight. A single loud yell would have brought aid from the stables or from the house or even from the lodge up by the gate. Yet, though the man must have guessed this, he did not yell. Instead, he cursed whisperingly at intervals and snarled at his captor.
At last, his nerve going, the prisoner drew out a jackknife, opened a blade at each end of it and hurled the ugly missile with all his force at the dog. As the man had shifted his position to get at the knife, Lad had risen expectantly to his feet with some hope that his captive might be going to descend.
It was lucky for Lad that he was standing when the knife was thrown for the aim was not bad, and a dog lying down cannot easily dodge. A dog standing on all fours is different, especially if he is a collie.
Lad sprang to one side instinctively as the thrower’s arm went back. The knife whizzed, harmless, into the sumac patch. Lad’s teeth bared themselves in something that looked like a smile and was not. Then he lay down again on guard.
A minute later he was up with a jump. From the direction of the house came a shrill whistle followed by a shout of “Lad! La-ad!”
It was the Master calling him. The summons could not be ignored. Usually it was obeyed with eager gladness, but now—Lad looked worriedly up into the tree. Then, coming to a decision, he galloped away at top speed.
In ten seconds he was at the veranda where the Master stood talking with a newly arrived guest. Before the Master could speak to the dog, Lad rushed up to him, whimpering in stark appeal, then ran a few steps toward the stables, paused, looked back and whimpered again.
“What’s the matter with him?” loudly demanded the guest—an obese and elderly man, right sportily attired. “What ails the silly dog?”
“He’s found something,” said the Master. “Something he wants me to come and see—and he wants me to come in a hurry.”
“How do you know?” asked the guest.
“Because I know his language as well as he knows mine,” retorted the Master.
He set off in the wake of the excited dog. The guest followed in more leisurely fashion complaining:
“Of all the idiocy! To let a measly dog drag you out of the shade on a red-hot day like this just to look at some dead chipmunk he’s found!”
“Perhaps,” stiffly agreed the Master, not slackening his pace. “But if Lad behaves like that, unless it’s pretty well worth while, he’s changed a lot in the past hour. A man can do worse sometimes than follow a tip his dog gives him.”
“Have it your own way,” grinned the guest. “Perhaps he may lead us to a treasure cave or to a damsel in distress. I’m with you.”
“Guy me if it amuses you,” said the Master.
“It does,” his guest informed him. “It amuses me to see any grown man think so much of a dog as you people think of Lad. It’s maudlin.”
“My house is the only one within a mile on this side of the lake that has never been robbed,” was the Master’s reply. “My stable is the only one in the same radius that hasn’t been rifled by harness-and-tire thieves. Thieves who seem to do their work in broad daylight, too, when the stables won’t be locked. I have Lad to thank for all that. He—”
The dog had darted far ahead. Now he was standing beneath a low-forked hickory tree staring up into it.
“He’s treed a cat!” guffawed the guest, his laugh as irritating as a kick. “Extra! Come out and get a nice sunstroke, folks! Come and see the cat Lad has treed!”
The Master did not answer. There was no cat in the tree. There was nothing visible in the tree. Lad’s aspect shrank from hope to depression. He looked apologetically at the Master. Then he began to sniff once more at a scrap of cloth on the ground.
The Master picked up the cloth and presently walked over to the tree. From a jut of bark dangled a shred of the same cloth. The Master’s hand went to Lad’s head in approving caress.
“It was not a cat,” he said. “It was a man. See the rags of—”
“Oh, piffle!” snorted the guest. “Next you’ll be reconstructing the man’s middle name and favorite perfume from the color of the bark on the tree. You people are always telling about wonderful stunts of Lad’s. And that’s all the evidence there generally is to it.”
“No, Mr. Glure,” denied the Master, taking a strangle hold on his temper. “No. That’s not quite all the evidence that we have for our brag about Lad. For instance, we had the evidence of your own eyes when he herded that flock of stampeded prize sheep for you last spring, and of your own eyes again when he won the ‘Gold Hat’ cup at the Labor Day Dog Show. No, there’s plenty of evidence that Lad is worth his salt. Let it go at that. Shall we get back to the house? It’s fairly cool on the veranda. By the way, what was it you wanted me to call Lad for? You asked to see him. And—”
“Why, here’s the idea,” explained Glure, as they made their way through the heat back to the shade of the porch. “It’s what I drove over here to talk with you about. I’m making the rounds of all this region. And, say, I didn’t ask to see Lad. I asked if you still had him. I asked because—”
“Oh,” apologized the Master. “I thought you wanted to see him. Most people ask to if he doesn’t happen to be round when they call. We—”
“I asked you if you still had him,” expounded Mr. Glure, “because I hoped you hadn’t. I hoped you were more of a patriot.”
“Patriot?” echoed the Master, puzzled.
“Yes. That’s why I’m making this tour of the country: to rouse dog owners to a sense of their duty. I’ve just formed a local branch of the Food Conservation League and—”
“It’s a splendid organization,” warmly approved the Master, “but what have dog owners to—”
“To do with it?” supplemented Glure. “They have nothing to do with it, more’s the pity. But they ought to. That’s why I volunteered to make this canvass. It was my own idea. Some of the others were foolish enough to object, but as I had founded and financed this Hampton branch of the League—”
“What ‘canvass’ are you talking about?” asked the Master, who was far too familiar with Glure’s ways to let the man become fairly launched on a pæean of self-adulation. “You say it’s ‘to rouse dog owners to a sense of their duty.’ Along what line? We dog men have raised a good many thousand dollars this past year by our Red Cross shows and by our subscriptions to all sorts of war funds. The Blue Cross, too, and the Collie Ambulance Fund have—”
“This is something better than the mere giving of surplus coin,” broke in Glure. “It is something that involves sacrifice. A needful sacrifice for our country. A sacrifice that may win the war.”
“Count me in on it, then!” cordially approved the Master. “Count in all real dog men. What is the ‘sacrifice’?”
“It’s my own idea,” modestly boasted Glure, adding: “That is, of course, it’s been agitated by other people in letters to newspapers and all that, but I’m the first to go out and put it into actual effect.”
“Shoot!” suggested the weary Master.
“That’s the very word!” exclaimed Glure. “That’s the very thing I want dog owners to combine in doing. To shoot!”
“To—what?”
“To shoot—or poison—or asphyxiate,” expounded Glure, warming to his theme. “In short, to get rid of every dog.”
The Master’s jaw swung ajar and his eyes bulged. His face began to assume an unbecoming bricky hue. Glure went on:
“You see, neighbor, our nation is up against it. When war was declared last month it found us unprepared. We’ve got to pitch in and economize. Every mouthful of food wasted here is a new lease of life to the Kaiser. We’re cutting down on sugar and meat and fat, but for every cent we save that way we’re throwing away a dollar in feeding our dogs. Our dogs that are a useless, senseless, costly luxury! They serve no utilitarian end. They eat food that belongs to soldiers. I’m trying to brighten the corner where I am by persuading my neighbors to get rid of their dogs. When I’ve proved what a blessing it is I’m going to inaugurate a nation-wide campaign from California to New York, from—”
“Hold on!” snapped the Master, finding some of his voice and, in the same effort, mislaying much of his temper. “What wall-eyed idiocy do you think you’re trying to talk? How many dog men do you expect to convert to such a crazy doctrine? Have you tried any others? Or am I the first mark?”
“I’m sorry you take it this way,” reproved Glure. “I had hoped you were more broad-minded, but you are as pig-headed as the rest.”
“The ‘rest’ hey?” the Master caught him up. ‘The ‘rest?’ Then I’m not the first? I’m glad they had sense enough to send you packing.”
“They were blind animal worshipers, both of them,” said Glure aggrievedly, “just as you are. One of them yelled something after me that I sincerely hope I didn’t hear aright. If I did, I have a strong action for slander against him. The other chucklehead so far forgot himself as to threaten to take a shotgun to me if I didn’t get off his land.”
“I’m sorry!” sighed the Master. “For both of them seem to have covered the ground so completely that there isn’t anything unique for me to say—or do. Now listen to me for two minutes. I’ve read a few of those anti-dog letters in the newspapers, but you’re the first person I’ve met in real life who backs such rot. And I’m going—”
“It is not a matter for argument,” loftily began Glure.
“Yes it is,” asserted the Master. “Everything is, except religion and love and toothache. You say dogs ought to be destroyed as a patriotic duty because they aren’t utilitarian. There’s where you’re wrong at the very beginning. Dead wrong. I’m not talking about the big kennels where one man keeps a hundred dogs as he’d herd so many prize hogs. Though look what the owners of such kennels did for the country at the last New York show at Madison Square Garden! Every penny of the thousands and thousands of dollars in profits from the show went to the Red Cross. I’m speaking of the man who keeps one dog or two or even three dogs, and keeps them as pets. I’m speaking of myself, if you like. Do you know what it costs me per week to feed my dogs?”
“I’m not looking for statistics in—”
“No, I suppose not. Few fanatics are. Well, I figured it out a few weeks ago, after I read one of those anti-dog letters. The total upkeep of all my dogs averages just under a dollar a week. A bare fifty dollars a year. That’s true. And—”
“And that fifty dollars,” interposed Glure eagerly, “would pay for a soldier’s—”
“It would not!” contradicted the Master, trying to keep some slight grip on his sliding temper. “But I can tell you what it would do: Part of it would go for burglar insurance, which I don’t need now, because no stranger dares to sneak up to my house at night. Part of it would go to make up for things stolen around The Place. For instance, in the harness room of my stable there are five sets of good harness and two or three extra automobile tires. Unless I’m very much mistaken, the best of those would be gone now if Lad hadn’t just treed the man who was after them.”
“Pshaw!” exploded Glure in fine scorn. “We saw no man there. There was no proof of—”
“There was proof enough for me,” continued the Master. “And if Lad hadn’t scented the fellow one of the other dogs would. As I told you, mine is the only house—and mine is the only stable—on this side of the lake that has never been looted. Mine is the only orchard—and mine is the only garden—that is never robbed. And this is the only place, on our side of the lake, where dogs are kept at large for twelve months of the year. My dogs’ entry fees at Red Cross shows have more than paid for their keep, and those fees went straight to charity.”
“But—”
“The women of my family are as safe here, day and night, as if I had a machine-gun company on guard. That assurance counts for more than a little, in peace of mind, back here in the North Jersey hinterland. I’m not taking into account the several other ways the dogs bring in cash income to us. Not even the cash Lad turned over to the Red Cross when we sent that $1600 ‘Gold Hat’ cup he won, to be melted down. And I’m not speaking of our dogs’ comradeship, and what that means to us. Our dogs are an asset in every way—not a liability. They aren’t deadheads either. For I pay the state tax on them every year. They’re true, loyal, companionable chums, and they’re an ornament to The Place as well as its best safeguard. All in return for table scraps and skim milk and less than a weekly dollar’s worth of stale bread and cast-off butcher-shop bones. Where do you figure out the ‘saving’ for the war chest if I got rid of them?”
“As I said,” repeated Glure with cold austerity, “it’s not a matter for argument. I came here hoping to—”
“I’m not given to mawkish sentiment,” went on the Master shamefacedly, “but on the day your fool law for dog exterminating goes into effect there’ll be a piteous crying of little children all over the whole world—of little children mourning for the gentle protecting playmates they loved. And there’ll be a million men and women whose lives have all at once become lonely and empty and miserable. Isn’t this war causing enough crying and loneliness and misery without your adding to it by killing our dogs? For the matter of that, haven’t the army dogs over in Europe been doing enough for mankind to warrant a square deal for their stay-at-home brothers? Haven’t they?”
“That’s a mass of sentimental bosh,” declared Glure. “All of it.”
“It is,” willingly confessed the Master. “So are most of the worth-while things in life, if you reduce them to their lowest terms.”
“You know what a fine group of dogs I had,” said Glure, starting off on a new tack. “I had a group that cost me, dog for dog, more than any other kennel in the state. Grand dogs too. You remember my wonderful Merle, for instance, and—”
“And your rare ‘Prussian sheep dog’ or was it a prune-hound? that a Chicago man sold to you for $1100,” supplemented the Master, swallowing a grin. “I remember. I remember them all. What then?”
“Well,” resumed Glure, “no one can accuse me of not practicing what I preach. I began this splendid campaign by getting rid of every dog I owned. So I—”
“Yes,” agreed the Master. “I read all about that last month in your local paper. Distemper had run through your kennel, and you tried doctoring the dogs on a theory of your own instead of sending for a vet. So they all died. Tough luck! Or perhaps you got rid of them that way on purpose? For the good of the Cause? I’m sorry about the Merle. He was—”
“I see there’s no use talking to you,” sighed Glure in disgust, ponderously rising and waddling toward his car. “I’m disappointed; because I hoped you were less bone-brained and more patriotic than these yokels round here.”
“I’m not,” cheerily conceded the Master. “I’m not, I’m glad to say. Not a bit.”
“Then,” pursued Glure, climbing into the car, ‘‘since you feel that way about it, I suppose there’s no use asking you to come to the little cattle show I’m organizing for week after next, because that’s for the Food Conservation League too. And since you’re so out of sympathy with—”
“I’m not out of sympathy with the League,” asserted the Master. “Its card is in our kitchen window. We’ve signed its pledge and we’re boosting it in every way we know how, except by killing our dogs; and that’s no part of the League’s programme, as you know very well. Tell me more about the cattle show.”
“It’s a neighborhood affair,” said Glure sulkily, yet eager to secure any possible entrants. “Just a bunch of home-raised cattle. Cup and rosette for best of each recognized breed, and the usual ribbons for second and third. Three dollars an entry. Only one class for each breed. Every entrant must have been raised by the exhibitor. Gate admission fifty cents. Red Cross to get the gross proceeds. I’ve offered the use of my south meadow at Glure Towers—just as I did for the specialty dog show. I’ve put up a hundred dollars toward the running expenses too. Micklesen’s to judge.”
“I don’t go in for stock raising,” said the Master. “My little Alderney heifer is the only head of quality stock I ever bred. I doubt if she is worth taking up there, but I’ll be glad to take her if only to swell the competition list. Send me a blank, please.”
Lad trotted dejectedly back to the house as Glure’s car chugged away up the drive. Lad was glumly unhappy. He had had no trouble at all in catching the scent of the man he had treed. He had followed the crashingly made trail through undergrowth and woodland until it had emerged into the highroad.
And there, perforce, Lad had paused. For, taught from puppyhood, he knew the boundaries of The Place as well as did the Mistress or the Master, and he knew equally well that his own jurisdiction ended at those boundaries. Beyond them he might not chase even the most loathed intruder. The highroad was sanctuary.
Wherefore at the road edge he stopped and turned slowly back. His pursuit was ended, but not his anger, nor his memory of the marauder’s scent. The man had trespassed slyly on The Place. He had gotten away unpunished. These things rankled in the big dog’s mind. …
It was a pretty little cattle show and staged in a pretty setting withal—at Glure Towers, two weeks later. The big sunken meadow on the verge of the Ramapo River was lined on two sides with impromptu sheds. The third side was blocked by something between a grand stand and a marquee. The tree-hung river bordered the fourth side. In the field’s center was the roped-off judging inclosure into which the cattle, class by class, were to be led.
Above the pastoral scene brooded the architectural crime, known as The Towers homestead and stronghold of Hamilcar Q. Glure, Esquire.
Glure had made much money in Wall Street—a crooked little street that begins with a grave-yard and ends in a river. Having waxed indecently rich, he had erected for himself a hideously expensive estate among the Ramapo Mountains and had settled down to the task of patronizing his rural neighbors. There he elected to be known as the “Wall Street Farmer,” a title that delighted not only himself but everyone else in the region.
There was, in this hinterland stretch, a friendly and constant rivalry among the natives and other old residents in the matter of stock raising. Horses, cattle, pigs, chickens, even a very few sheep were bred for generations along lines which their divers owners had laid out—lines which those owners fervently believed must some day produce perfection.
Each owner or group of owners had his own special ideas as to the best way to produce this super-stock result. The local stock shows formed the only means of proving or disproving the excellence of the varied theories. Hence these shows were looked upon as barnyard supreme courts.
Mr. Glure had begun his career in the neighborhood with a laudable aim of excelling everybody else in everything. He had gone, heart and soul, into stock producing and as he had no breeding theories of his own he proceeded to acquire a set. As it would necessarily take years to work out these beliefs, he bridged the gap neatly by purchasing and importing prize livestock and by entering it against the home-raised products of his neighbors.
Strangely enough, this did not add to the popularity which he did not possess. Still more strangely, it did not add materially to his prestige as an exhibitor, for the judges had an exasperating way of handing him a second or third prize ribbon and then of awarding the coveted blue rosette to the owner and breeder of some local exhibit.
After a long time it began to dawn upon Glure that narrow neighborhood prejudice deemed it unsportsmanlike to buy prize stock and exhibit it as one’s own. At approximately the same time three calves were born to newly imported prize cows in the two-acre model barns of Glure Towers, and with them was born Glure’s newest idea.
No one could deny he had bred these calves himself. They were born on his own place and of his own high-pedigreed cattle. Three breeds were represented among the trio of specimens. By points and by lineage they were well-nigh peerless. Wherefore the plan for a show of neighborhood “home-raised” cattle. At length Glure felt he was coming into his own.
The hinterland folk had fought shy of Glure since the dog show wherein he had sought to win the capital prize by formulating a set of conditions that could be filled by no entrant except a newly imported champion Merle of his own.
But the phrase “home-raised” now proved a bait that few of the region’s stock lovers could resist; and on the morning of the show no fewer than fifty-two cattle of standard breeds were shuffling or lowing in the big impromptu sheds.
A farm hand, the day before, had led to the show ground The Place’s sole entrant—the pretty little Alderney heifer of which the Master had spoken to Glure and which, by the way, was destined to win nothing higher than a third-prize ribbon.
For that matter, to end the suspense, the best of the three Glure calves won only a second prize, all the first for their three breeds going to two nonplutocratic North Jerseymen who had bred the ancestors of their entrants for six generations.
The Mistress and the Master motored over to Glure Towers on the morning of the show in their one car. Lad went with them. He always went with them.
Not that any dog could hope to find interest in a cattle show, but a dog would rather go anywhere with his Master than to stay at home without him. Witness the glad alacrity wherewith the weariest dog deserts a snug fireside in the vilest weather for the joy of a master-accompanying walk.
A tire puncture delayed the trip. The show was about to begin when the car was at last parked behind the sunken meadow. The Mistress and the Master, with Lad at their heels, started across the meadow afoot toward the well-filled grand-stand.
Several acquaintances in the stand waved to them as they advanced. Also, before they had traversed more than half the meadow’s area their host bore down upon them.
Mr. Glure (dressed, as usual, for the Occasion) looked like a blend of Landseer’s “Edinburgh Drover” and a theater-program picture of “What the Man Will Wear.”
He had been walking beside a garishly liveried groom who was leading an enormous Holstein bull toward the judging enclosure. The bull was steered by a five-foot bar, the end snapped to a ring in his nose.
“Hello, good people!” Mr. Glure boomed, pump-handling the unenthusiastic Mistress’ right hand and bestowing a jarringly annoying slap upon the Master’s shoulder. “Glad to see you! You’re late. Almost too late for the best part of the show. Before judging begins, I’m having some of my choicest European stock paraded in the ring. Just for exhibition, you know. Not for a contest. I like to give a treat to some of these farmers who think they know how to breed cattle.”
“Yes?” queried the Master, who could think of nothing cleverer to say.
“Take that bull, Tenebris, of mine, for instance,” proclaimed Glure, with a wave toward the approaching Holstein and his guide. “Best ton of livestock that ever stood on four legs. Look how he—”
Glure paused in his lecture for he saw that both the Mistress and the Master were staring, not at the bull, but at the beast’s leader. The spectacle of a groom in gaudy livery, on duty at a cattle show, was all but too much for their gravity.
“You’re looking at that boy of mine, hey? Fine, well-set-up chap, isn’t he? A faithful boy. Devoted to me. Slavishly devoted. Not like most of these grumpy, independent Jersey rustics. Not much. He’s a treasure, Winston is. Used to be chief handler for some of the biggest cattle breeders in the East he tells me. I got hold of him by chance, and just by the sheerest good luck, a week or so ago. Met him on the road and he asked for a lift. He—”
It was then that Lad disgraced himself and his deities, and proved himself all unworthy to appear in so refined an assembly. The man in livery had convoyed the bull to within a few feet of the proudly exhorting Glure. Now, without growl or other sign of warning, the hitherto peaceable dog changed into a murder machine.
In a single mighty bound he cleared the narrowing distance between himself and the advancing groom.
The leap sent him hurtling through the air, an eighty-pound furry catapult, straight for the man’s throat.
Over and beyond the myriad cattle odors, Lad had suddenly recognized a scent that spelt deathless hatred. The scent had been verified by a single glance at the brilliantly clad man in livery. Wherefore the mad charge.
The slashing jaws missed their mark in the man’s throat by a bare half inch. That they missed it at all was because the man also recognized Lad, and shrank back in mortal terror.
Even before the eighty-pound weight, smashing against his chest, sent the groom sprawling backward to the ground, Lad’s slashing jaws had found a hold in place of the one they had missed.
This grip was on the liveried shoulder, into which the fangs sank to their depth. Down went the man, screaming, the dog atop of him.
“Lad!” cried the Mistress, aghast. “Lad!”
Through the avenging rage that misted his brain the great dog heard. With a choking sound that was almost a sob he relinquished his hold and turned slowly from his prey.
The Master and Glure instinctively took a step toward the approaching dog and the writhingly prostrate man. Then, still more instinctively, and without even coming to a standstill before going into reverse, they both sprang back. They would have sprung further had not the roped walls of the show ring checked them.
For Tenebris had taken a sudden and active part in the scene.
The gigantic Holstein during his career in Europe had trebly won his title to champion. And during the three years before his exportation to America he had gored to death no fewer than three over-confident stable attendants. The bull’s homicidal temper, no less than the dazzling price offered by Glure, had caused his owner to sell him to the transatlantic bidder.
A bull’s nose is the tenderest spot of his anatomy. Next to his eyes, he guards its safety most zealously. Thus, with a stout leading-bar between him and his conductor, Tenebris was harmless enough.
But the conductor just now had let go of that bar, as Lad’s weight had smitten him. Freed, Tenebris had stood for an instant in perplexity.
Fiercely he flung his gnarled head to one side to see the cause of the commotion. The gesture swung the heavy leading-bar, digging the nose ring cruelly into his sensitive nostrils. The pain maddened Tenebris. A final plunging twist of the head—and the bar’s weight tore the nose ring free from the nostrils.
Tenebris bellowed thunderously at the climax of pain. Then he realized he had shaken off the only thing that gave humans a control over him. A second bellow—a furious pawing of the earth—and the bull lowered his head. His evil eyes glared about him in search of something to kill.
It was the sight of this motion which sent the Master and Glure recoiling against the show-ring ropes.
In almost the same move the Master caught up his wife and swung her over the top rope, into the ring. He followed her into that refuge’s fragile safety with a speed that held no dignity whatever. Glure, seeing the action, wasted no time in wriggling through the ropes after him.
Tenebris did not follow them.
One thing and only one his red eyes saw: On the ground, not six feet away, rolled and moaned a man. The man was down. He was helpless. Tenebris charged.
A bull plunging at a near-by object shuts both eyes. A cow does not. Which may—or may not—explain the Spanish theory that bullfights are safer than cow-fights. To this eye-closing trait many a hard-pressed matador has owed his life.
Tenebris, both eyes screwed shut, hurled his 2000-pound bulk at the prostrate groom. Head down, nose in, short horns on a level with the earth and barely clearing it, he made his rush.
But at the very first step he became aware that something was amiss with his pleasantly anticipated charge. It did not follow specifications or precedent.
All because a heavy something had flung its weight against the side of his lowered head, and a new and unbearable pain was torturing his blood-filled nostrils.
Tenebris swerved. He veered to one side, throwing up his head to clear it of this unseen torment.
As a result, the half-lifted horns grazed the fallen man. The pointed hoofs missed him altogether. At the same moment the weight was gone from against the bull’s head, and the throbbing stab from his nostrils.
Pausing uncertainly, Tenebris opened his eyes and glared about him. A yard or two away a shaggy dog was rising from the tumble caused by the jerky uptossing of the bull’s head.
Now, were this a fiction yarn, it would be interesting to devise reasons why Lad should have flown to the rescue of a human whom he loathed, and arrayed himself against a fellow-beast toward which he felt no hatred at all.
To dogs all men are gods. And perhaps Lad felt the urge of saving even a detested god from the onslaught of a beast. Or perhaps not. One can go only by the facts. And the facts were that the collie had checked himself in the reluctant journey toward the Mistress and had gone to his foe’s defense.
With a flash of speed astonishing in so large and sedate a dog, he had flown at the bull in time—in the barest time—to grip the torn nostrils and turn the whirlwind charge.
And now Tenebris shifted his baleful glare from the advancing dog to the howling man. The dog could wait. The bull’s immediate pleasure and purpose were to kill the man.
He lowered his head again. But before he could launch his enormous bulk into full motion—before he could shut his eyes the dog was between him and his quarry.
In one spring Lad was at the bull’s nose. And again his white eye teeth slashed the ragged nostrils. Tenebris halted his own incipient rush and strove to pin the collie to the ground. It would have been as easy to pin a whizzing hornet.
Tenebris thrust at the clinging dog, once more seeking to smash Lad against the sod with his battering-ram forehead and his short horns. But Lad was not there. Instead, he was to the left, his body clean out of danger, his teeth in the bull’s left ear.
A lunge of the tortured head sent Lad rolling over and over. But by the time he stopped rolling he was on his feet again. Not only on his feet, but back to the assault. Back, before his unwieldy foe could gauge the distance for another rush at the man. And a keen nip in the bleeding nostrils balked still one more charge.
The bull, snorting with rage, suddenly changed his plan of campaign. Apparently his first ideas had been wrong. It was the man who could wait, and the dog that must be gotten out of the way.
Tenebris wheeled and made an express-train rush at Lad. The collie turned and fled. He did not flee with tail down, as befits a beaten dog. Brush wavingly aloft, he gamboled along at top speed, just a stride or two ahead of the pursuing bull. He even looked back encouragingly over his shoulder as he went.
Lad was having a beautiful time. Seldom had he been so riotously happy. All the pent-up mischief in his soul was having a glorious airing.
The bull’s blind charge was short, as a bull’s charge always is. When Tenebris opened his eyes he saw the dog, not ten feet in front of him, scampering for dear life toward the river. And again Tenebris charged.
Three such charges, one after another, brought pursuer and pursued to within a hundred feet of the water.
Tenebris was not used to running. He was getting winded. He came to a wavering standstill, snorting loudly and pawing up great lumps of sod.
But he had not stood thus longer than a second before Lad was at him. Burnished shaggy coat a-bristle, tail delightedly wagging, the dog bounded forward. He set up an ear-splitting fanfare of barking.
Round and round the bull he whirled, never letting up on that deafening volley of barks; nipping now at ears, now at nose, now at heels; dodging in and out under the giant’s clumsy body; easily avoiding the bewilderingly awkward kicks and lunges of his enemy. Then, forefeet crouching and muzzle close to the ground, like a playful puppy, he waved his plumed tail violently and, in a new succession of barks, wooed his adversary to the attack.
It was a pretty sight. And it set Tenebris into active motion at once.
The bull doubtless thought he himself was doing the driving, by means of his panting rushes, and by his lurches to one side or another to keep away from the dog’s sharp bites. But he was not. It was Lad who chose the direction in which they went. And he chose it deliberately.
Presently the two were but fifteen feet away from the river, at a point where the bank shelved, cliff -like, for two or three yards, down to a wide pool.
Feinting for the nose, Lad induced Tenebris to lower his tired head. Then he sprang lightly over the threatening horns, and landed, a-scramble, with all four feet, on the bull’s broad shoulders.
Scurrying along the heaving back, the dog nipped Tenebris on the hip, and dropped to earth again.
The insult, the fresh pain, the astonishment combined to make Tenebris forget his weariness. Beside himself with maniac wrath, he shut both eyes and launched himself forward. Lad slipped, eel-like, to one side. Carried by his own blind momentum,, Tenebris shot over the bank edge.
Too late the bull looked. Half sliding, half scrambling, he crashed down the steep sides of the bank and into the river.
Lad, tongue out, jogged over to the top of the bank, where, with head to one side and ears cocked, he gazed interestedly down into the wildly churned pool.
Tenebris had gotten to his feet after the ducking; and he was floundering pastern-deep in stickily soft mud. So tightly bogged down that it later took the efforts of six farm-hands to extricate him, the bull continued to flounder and to bellow.
A stream of people were running down the meadow toward the river. Lad hated crowds. He made a loping detour of the nearest runners and sought to regain the spot where last he had seen the Mistress and Master. Also, if his luck held good, he might have still another bout with the man he had once treed. Which would be an ideal climax to a perfect day.
He found all the objects of his quest together. The groom, hysterical, was swaying on his feet, supported by Glure.
At sight of the advancing collie the bitten man cried aloud in fear and clutched his employer for protection.
“Take him away, sir!” he babbled in mortal terror. “He’ll kill me! He hates me, the ugly hairy devil! He hates me. He tried to kill me once before! He—”
“H’m!” mused the Master. “So he tried to kill you once before, eh? Aren’t you mistaken?”
“No, I ain’t!” wept the man. “I’d know him in a million! That’s why he went for me again to-day. He remembered me. I seen he did. That’s no dog. It’s a devil!”
“Mr. Glure,” asked the Master, a light dawning, “when this chap applied to you for work, did he wear grayish tweed trousers? And were they in bad shape?”
“His trousers were in rags,” said Glure. “I remember that. He said a savage dog had jumped into the road from a farmhouse somewhere and gone for him. Why?”
“Those trousers,” answered the Master, “weren’t entire strangers to you. You’d seen the missing parts of them on—a tree and on the ground near it, at The Place. Your ‘treasure’ is the harness thief Lad treed the day you came to see me. So—”
“Nonsense!” fumed Glure. “Why, how absurd! He—”
“I hadn’t stolen nothing!” blubbered the man. “I was coming cross-lots to a stable to ask for work. And the brute went for me. I had to run up a tree and—”
“And it didn’t occur to you to shout for help?” sweetly urged the Master. “I was within call. So was Mr. Glure. So was at least one of my men. An honest seeker for work needn’t have been afraid to halloo. A thief would have been afraid to. In fact, a thief was!”
“Get out of here, you!” roared Glure, convinced at last. “You measly sneak thief! Get out or I’ll have you jailed! You’re an imposter! A pan-handler! A—”
The thief waited to hear no more. With an apprehensive glance to see that Lad was firmly held, he bolted for the road.
“Thanks for telling me,” said Glure. “He might have stolen everything at Glure Towers if I hadn’t found out. He—”
“Yes. He might even have stolen more than the cost of our non-utilitarian Lad’s keep,” unkindly suggested the Master. “For that matter, if it hadn’t been for a non-utilitarian dog, that mad bull’s horns, instead of his nostrils, would be red by this time. At least one man would have been killed. Perhaps more. So, after all—”
He stopped. The Mistress was tugging surreptitiously at his sleeve. The Master, in obedience to his wife’s signal, stepped aside, to light a cigar.
“I wouldn’t say any more, dear, if I were you,” the Mistress was whispering. “You see, if it hadn’t been for Lad, the bull would never have broken loose in the first place. By another half-hour that fact may dawn on Mr. Glure, if you keep rubbing it in. Let’s go over to the grand stand. Come, Lad!”