Lad had never been in a city or in a crowd. To him the universe was bounded by the soft green mountains that hemmed in the valley and the lake. The Place stood on the lake’s edge, its meadows running back to the forest. There were few houses nearer than the mile-distant village. It was an ideal home for such a dog as Lad, even as Lad was an ideal dog for such a home.
A guest started all the trouble—a guest who spent a week-end at The Place and who loved dogs far better than he understood them. He made much of Lad, being loud-voiced in his admiration of the stately collie. Lad endured the caresses when he could not politely elude them.
“Say!” announced the guest just before he departed, “If I had a dog like Lad, I’d ‘show’ him—at the big show at Madison Square, you know. It’s booked for next month. Why not take a chance and exhibit him there? Think what it would mean to you people to have a Westminster blue ribbon the big dog had won! Why, you’d be as proud as Punch!”
It was a careless speech and well meant. No harm might have come from it, had not the Master the next day chanced upon an advance notice of the dog-show in his morning paper. He read the press-agent’s quarter-column proclamation. Then he remembered what the guest had said. The Mistress was called into consultation. And it was she, as ever, who cast the deciding vote.
“Lad is twice as beautiful as any collie we ever saw at the Show,” she declared, “and not one of them is half as wise or good or human as he is. And—a blue ribbon is the greatest honor a dog can have, I suppose. It would be something to remember.”
After which, the Master wrote a letter to a friend who kept a show kennel of Airedales. He received this answer:
Thus encouraged, the Master filled in the blank and sent it with a check. And in due time word was returned to him that “Sunnybank Lad” was formally entered for the Novice class, at the Westminister Kennel Club’s annual show at Madison Square Garden.
By this time both the Mistress and the Master were infected with the most virulent type of the Show Germ. They talked of little else than the forthcoming Event. They read all the dog-show literature they could lay hands on.
As for Lad, he was mercifully ignorant of what was in store for him.
The Mistress had an inkling of his fated ordeal when she read the Kennel Club rule that no dog could be taken from the Garden, except at stated times, from the moment the show should begin, at ten a.m. Wednesday morning, until the hour of its close, at ten o’clock Saturday night. For twelve hours a day—for four consecutive days—every entrant must be there. By paying a forfeit fee, dog owners might take their pets to some nearby hotel or stable, for the remainder of the night and early morning—a permission which, for obvious reasons, would not affect most dogs.
“But Lad’s never been away from home a night in his life!” exclaimed the Mistress in dismay. “He’ll be horribly lonely there, all that while—especially at night.”
By this time, with the mysterious foreknowledge of the best type of thoroughbred collie, Lad began to be aware that something unusual had crept into the atmosphere of The Place. It made him restless, but he did not associate it with himself—until the Mistress took to giving him daily baths and brushings.
Always she had brushed him once a day, to keep his shaggy coat fluffy and burnished; and the lake had supplied him with baths that made him as clean as any human. But never had he undergone such searching massage with comb and brush as was now his portion. Never had he known such soap-infested scrubbings as were now his daily fate, for the week preceding the show.
As a result of these ministrations his wavy fur was like spun silk in texture; and it stood out all over him like the hair of a Circassian beauty in a dime museum. The white chest and forepaws were like snow. And his sides and broad back and mighty shoulders shone like dark bronze.
He was magnificent—but he was miserable. He knew well enough, now, that he was in some way the center of all this unwonted stir and excitement which pervaded The Place. He loathed change of any sort—a thoroughbred collie being ever an ultraconservative. This particular change seemed to threaten his peace; also it kept his skin scraped with combs and his hair redolent of nasty-smelling soaps.
To humans there was no odor at all in the naphtha soap with which the Mistress lathered the dog, and every visible atom of it was washed away at once with warm water. But a human’s sense of smell, compared with the best type of collie’s, is as a purblind puppy’s power of sight in comparison to a hawk’s.
All over the East, during these last days before the Show, hundreds of high-bred dogs were undergoing preparation for an exhibition which to the beholder is a delight—and which to many of the canine exhibits is a form of unremitting torture. To do justice to the Master and the Mistress, they had no idea—then—of this torture. Otherwise all the blue ribbons ever woven would not have tempted them to subject their beloved chum to it.
In some kennels Airedales were “plucked,” by hand, to rid them of the last vestige of the soft gray outer coat which is an Airedale’s chief natural beauty—and no hair of which must be seen in a show. “Plucking” a dog is like pulling live hairs from a human head, so far as the sensation goes. But show-traditions demand the anguish.
In other kennels, bull-terriers’ white coats were still further whitened by the harsh rubbing of pipe-clay into the tender skin. Sensitive tails and still more sensitive ears were sandpapered, for the victims’ greater beauty—and agony. Ear-interiors, also, were shaved close with safety-razors.
Murderous little “knife-combs” were tearing blithely away at collies’ ear-interiors and heads, to “barber” natural furriness into painful and unnatural trimness. Ears were “scrunched” until their wearers quivered with stark anguish—to impart the perfect tulip-shape; ordained by fashion for collies.
And so on, through every breed to be exhibited—each to its own form of torment; torments compared to which Lad’s gentle if bothersome brushing and bathing were a pure delight!
Few of these ruthlessly “prepared” dogs were personal pets. The bulk of them were “kennel dogs”—dogs bred and raised after the formula for raising and breeding prize hogs or chickens, and with little more of the individual element in it. The dogs were bred in a way to bring out certain arbitrary “points” which count in show-judging, and which change from year to year.
Brain, fidelity, devotion, the human side of a dog—these were totally ignored in the effort to breed the perfect physical animal. The dogs were kept in kennel-buildings and in wire “runs” like so many pedigreed cattle—looked after by paid attendants, and trained to do nothing but to be the best-looking of their kind, and to win ribbons. Some of them did not know their owners by sight—having been reared wholly by hirelings.
The body was everything; the heart, the mind, the namelessly delightful quality of the master-raised dog—these were nothing. Such traits do not win prizes at a bench-show. Therefore fanciers, whose sole aim is to win ribbons and cups, do not bother to cultivate them. (All of this is extraneous; but may be worth your remembering, next time you go to a dog-show.)
Early on the morning of the Show’s first day, the Mistress and the Master set forth for town with Lad. They went in their little car, that the dog might not risk the dirt and cinders of a train.
Lad refused to eat a mouthful of the tempting breakfast set before him that day. He could not eat, when foreboding was hot in his throat. He had often ridden in the car. Usually he enjoyed the ride; but now he crawled rather than sprang into the tonneau. All the way up the drive, his great mournful eyes were turned back toward the house in dumb appeal. Every atom of spirit and gayety and dash were gone from him. He knew he was being taken away from the sweet Place he loved, and that the car was whizzing him along toward some dreaded fate. His heart was sick within him.
To the born and bred show-dog this is an everyday occurrence—painful, but inevitable. To a chum-dog like Lad, it is heartbreaking. The big collie buried his head in the Mistress’ lap and crouched hopelessly at her feet as the car chugged cityward.
A thoroughly unhappy dog is the most thoroughly unhappy thing on earth. All the adored Mistress’ coaxings and pettings could not rouse Lad from his dull apathy of despair. This was the hour when he was wont to make his stately morning rounds of The Place, at the heels of one of his two deities. And now, instead, these deities were carrying him away to something direfully unpleasant. A lesser dog would have howled or would have struggled crazily to break away. Lad stood his ground like a furry martyr, and awaited his fate.
In an hour or so the ride ended. The car drew up at Madison Square—beside the huge yellowish building, arcaded and Diana-capped, which goes by the name of “Garden” and which is as nearly historic as any landmark in feverish New York is permitted to be.
Ever since the car had entered Manhattan Island, unhappy Lad’s nostrils had been aquiver with a million new and troublous odors. Now, as the car halted, these myriad strange smells were lost in one—an all-pervasive scent of dog. To a human, out there in the street, the scent was not observable. To a dog it was overwhelming.
Lad, at the Master’s word, stepped down from the tonneau onto the sidewalk. He stood there, dazedly sniffing. The plangent roar of the city was painful to his ears, which had always been attuned to the deep silences of forest and lake. And through this din he caught the muffled noise of the chorused barks and howls of many of his own kind.
The racket that bursts so deafeningly on humans as they enter the Garden, during a dog-show, was wholly audible to Lad out in the street itself. And, as instinct or scent makes a hog flinch at going into a slaughterhouse, so the gallant dog’s spirit quailed for a moment as he followed the Mistress and the Master into the building.
A man who is at all familiar with the ways of dogs can tell at once whether a dog’s bark denotes cheer or anger or terror or grief or curiosity. To such a man a bark is as expressive of meanings as are the inflections of a human voice. To another dog these meanings are far more intelligible. And in the timbre of the multiple barks and yells that now assailed his ears, Lad read nothing to allay his own fears.
He was the hero of a half-dozen hard-won fights. He had once risked his life to save life. He had attacked tramps and peddlers and other stick-wielding invaders who had strayed into the grounds of The Place. Yet the tiniest semblance of fear now crept into his heart.
He looked up at the Mistress, a world of sorrowing appeal in his eyes. At her gentle touch on his head and at a whisper of her loved voice, he moved onward at her side with no further hesitation. If these, his gods, were leading him to death, he would not question their right to do it, but would follow on as befitted a good soldier.
Through a doorway they went. At a wicket a yawning veterinary glanced uninterestedly at Lad. As the dog had no outward and glaring signs of disease, the vet’ did not so much as touch him, but with a nod suffered him to pass. The vet’ was paid to inspect all dogs as they entered the show. Perhaps some of them were turned back by him, perhaps not; but after this, as after many another show, scores of kennels were swept by distemper and by other canine maladies, scores of deaths followed. That is one of the risks a dog-exhibitor must take—or rather that his luckless dogs must take—in spite of the fees paid to yawning veterinaries to bar out sick entrants.
As Lad passed in through the doorway, he halted involuntarily in dismay. Dogs—dogs—DOGS! More than two thousand of them, from Great Dane to toy terrier, benched in row after row throughout the vast floor-space of the Garden! Lad had never known there were so many dogs on earth.
Fully five hundred of them were barking or howling. The hideous volume of sound swelled to the Garden’s vaulted roof and echoed back again like innumerable hammer-blows upon the eardrum.
The Mistress stood holding Lad’s chain and softly caressing the bewildered dog, while the Master went to make inquiries. Lad pressed his shaggy body closer to her knee for refuge, as he gazed blinkingly around him.
In the Garden’s center were several large inclosures of wire and reddish wood. Inside each inclosure were a table, a chair and a movable platform. The platform was some six inches high and four feet square. At corners of these “judging-rings” were blackboards on which the classes next to be inspected were chalked up.
All around the central space were alleys, on each side of which were lines of raised “benches,” two feet from the ground. The benches were carpeted with straw and were divided off by high wire partitions into compartments about three feet in area. Each compartment was to be the abiding-place of some unfortunate dog for the next four days and nights. By short chains the dogs were bound into these open-fronted cells.
The chains left their wearers just leeway enough to stand up or lie down or to move to the various limits of the tiny space. In front of some of the compartments a wire barrier was fastened. This meant that the occupant was savage—in other words, that under the four-day strain he was likely to resent the stares or pokes or ticklings or promiscuous alien pattings of fifty thousand curious visitors.
The Master came back with a plumply tipped attendant. Lad was conducted through a babel of yapping and snapping thoroughbreds of all breeds, to a section at the Garden’s northeast corner, above which, in large black letters on a white sign, was inscribed “Collies.” Here his conductors stopped before a compartment numbered “658.”
“Up, Laddie!” said the Mistress, touching the straw-carpeted bench.
Usually, at this command, Lad was wont to spring to the indicated height—whether car-floor or table-top—with the lightness of a cat. Now, one foot after another, he very slowly climbed into the compartment he was already beginning to detest—the cell which was planned to be his only resting-spot for four interminable days. There he, who had never been tied, was ignominiously chained as though he were a runaway puppy. The insult bit to the depths of his sore soul. He curled down in the straw.
The Mistress made him as comfortable as she could. She set before him the breakfast she had brought and told the attendant to bring him some water.
The Master, meantime, had met a collie man whom he knew, and in company with this acquaintance he was walking along the collie-section examining the dogs tied there. A dozen times had the Master visited dog-shows; but now that Lad was on exhibition, he studied the other collies with new eyes.
“Look!” he said boastfully to his companion, pausing before a bench whereon were chained a half-dozen dogs from a single illustrious kennel. “These fellows aren’t in it with old Lad. See—their noses are tapered like tooth-picks, and the span of their heads, between the ears, isn’t as wide as my palm; and their eyes are little and they slant like a Chinaman’s; and their bodies are as curved as a grayhound’s. Compared with Lad, some of them are freaks. That’s all they are, just freaks—not all of them, of course, but a lot of them.”
“That’s the idea nowadays,” laughed the collie man patronizingly. “The up-to-date collie—this year’s style, at least—is bred with a borzoi (wolf-hound) head and with graceful, small bones. What’s the use of his having brain and scenting-power? He’s used for exhibition or kept as a pet nowadays—not to herd sheep. Long nose, narrow head—”
“But Lad once tracked my footsteps two miles through a snowstorm,” bragged the Master; “and again on a road where fifty people had walked since I had; and he understands the meaning of every simple word. He—”
“Yes?” said the collie man, quite unimpressed. “Very interesting—but not useful in a show. Some of the big exhibitors still care for sense in their dogs, and they make companions of them—Eileen Moretta, for instance, and Fred Leighton and one or two more; but I find most of the rest are just out for the prizes. Let’s have a look at your dog. Where is he?”
On the way down the alley toward Cell 658 they met the worried Mistress.
“Lad won’t eat a thing,” she reported, “and he wouldn’t eat before we left home this morning, either. He drinks plenty of water, but he won’t eat. I’m afraid he’s sick.”
“They hardly ever eat at a show,” the collie man consoled her, “hardly a mouthful—most of the high-strung ones, but they drink quarts of water. This is your dog, hey?” he broke off, pausing at 658. “H’m!”
He stood, legs apart, hands behind his back, gazing down at Lad. The dog was lying, head between paws, as before. He did not so much as glance up at the stranger, but his great wistful eyes roved from the Mistress to the Master and back again. In all this horrible place they two alone were his salvation.
“H’m!” repeated the collie man thoughtfully. “Eyes too big and not enough slanted. Head too thick for length of nose. Ears too far apart. Eyes too far apart, too. Not enough ‘terrier expression’ in them. Too much bone, too much bulk. Wonderful coat, though—glorious coat! Best coat I’ve seen this five years. Great brush, too! What’s he entered for? Novice, hey? May get a third with him at that. He’s the true type—but old-fashioned. I’m afraid he’s too old-fashioned for such fast company as he’s in. Still, you never can tell. Only it’s a pity he isn’t a little more—”
“I wouldn’t have him one bit different in any way!” flashed the Mistress. “He’s perfect as he is. You can’t see that, though, because he isn’t himself now. I’ve never seen him so crushed and woe-begone. I wish we had never brought him here.”
“You can’t blame him,” said the collie man philosophically. “Why, just suppose you were brought to a strange place like this and chained into a cage and were left there four days and nights while hundreds of other prisoners kept screaming and shouting and crying at the top of their lungs every minute of the time! And suppose about a hundred thousand people kept jostling past your cage night and day, rubbering at you and pointing at you and trying to feel your ears and mouth, and chirping at you to shake hands, would you feel very hungry or very chipper? A four-day show is the most fearful thing a high-strung dog can go through—next to vivisection. A little one-day show, for about eight hours, is no special ordeal, especially if the dog’s Master stays near him all the time; but a four-day show is—is Sheol! I wonder the S. P. C. A. doesn’t do something to make it easier.”
“If I’d known—if we’d known—” began the Mistress.
“Most of these folks know!” returned the collie man. “They do it year after year. There’s a mighty strong lure in a bit of ribbon. Why, look what an exhibitor will do for it! He’ll risk his dog’s health and make his dog’s life a horror. He’ll ship him a thousand miles in a tight crate from Show to Show. (Some dogs die under the strain of so many journeys.) And he’ll pay five dollars for every class the dog’s entered in. Some exhibitors enter a single dog in five or six classes. The Association charges one dollar admission to the show. Crowds of people pay the price to come in. The exhibitor gets none of the gate-money. All he gets for his five dollars or his twenty-five dollars is an off chance at a measly scrap of colored silk worth maybe four cents. That, and the same off-chance at a tiny cash prize that doesn’t come anywhere near to paying his expenses. Yet, for all, it’s the straightest sport on earth. Not an atom of graft in it, and seldom any profit. … So long! I wish you folks luck with 658.”
He strolled on. The Mistress was winking very fast and was bending over Lad, petting him and whispering to him. The Master looked in curiosity at a kennel man who was holding down a nearby collie while a second man was trimming the scared dog’s feet and fetlocks with a pair of curved shears; and now the Master noted that nearly every dog but Lad was thus clipped as to ankle.
At an adjoining cell a woman was sifting almost a pound of talcum powder into her dog’s fur to make the coat fluffier. Elsewhere similar weird preparations were in progress. And Lad’s only preparation had been baths and brushing! The Master began to feel like a fool.
People all along the collie line presently began to brush dogs (smoothing the fur the wrong way to fluff it) and to put other finishing touches on the poor beasts’ make-up. The collie man strolled back to 658.
“The Novice class in collies is going to be called presently,” he told the Mistress. “Where’s your exhibition-leash and choke-collar? I’ll help you put them on.”
“Why, we’ve only this chain,” said the Mistress. “We bought it for Lad yesterday, and this is his regular collar though he never has had to wear it. Do we have to have another kind?”
“You don’t have to unless you want to,” said the collie man, “but it’s best—especially, the choke-collar. You see, when exhibitors go into the ring, they hold their dogs by the leash close to the neck. And if their dogs have choke-collars, why, then they’ve got to hold their heads high when the leash is pulled. They’ve got to, to keep from strangling. It gives them a fine, proud carriage of the head, that counts a lot with some judges. All dog-photos are taken that way. Then the leash is blotted out of the negative. Makes the dog look showy, too—keeps him from slumping. Can’t slump much you’re trying not to choke, you know.”
“It’s horrible! Horrible!” shuddered the Mistress. “I wouldn’t put such a thing on Lad for all the prizes on earth. When I read Davis’ wonderful ‘Bar Sinister’ story, I thought dog-shows were a real treat to dogs. I see, now, they’re—”
“Your class is called!” interrupted the collie man. “Keep his head high, keep him moving as showily as you can. Lead him close to you with the chain as short as possible. Don’t be scared if any of the other dogs in the ring happen to fly at him. The attendants will look out for all that. Good luck.”
Down the aisle and to the wired gate of the north-eastern ring the unhappy Mistress piloted the unhappier Lad. The big dog gravely kept beside her, regardless of other collies moving in the same direction. The Garden had begun to fill with visitors, and the ring was surrounded with interested “rail-birds.” The collie classes, as usual, were among those to be judged on the first day of the four.
Through the gate into the ring the Mistress piloted Lad. Six other Novice dogs were already there. Beautiful creatures they were, and all but one were led by kennel men. At the table, behind a ledger flanked by piles of multicolored ribbons, sat the clerk. Beside the platform stood a wizened and elderly little man in tweeds. He was McGilead, who had been chosen as judge for the collie division. He was a Scot, and he was also a man with stubborn opinions of his own as to dogs.
Around the ring, at the judge’s order, the Novice collies were paraded. Most of them stepped high and fast and carried their heads proudly aloft—the thin choke-collars cutting deep into their furry necks. One entered was a harum-scarum puppy who writhed and bit and whirled about in ecstasy of terror.
Lad moved solemnly along at the Mistress’ side. He did not pant or curvet or look showy. He was miserable and every line of his splendid body showed his misery. The Mistress, too, glancing at the more spectacular dogs, wanted to cry—not because she was about to lose, but because Lad was about to lose. Her heart ached for him. Again she blamed herself bitterly for bringing him here.
McGilead, hands in pockets, stood sucking at an empty brier pipe, and scanning the parade that circled around him. Presently he stepped up to the Mistress, checked her as she filed past him, and said to her with a sort of sorrowful kindness:
“Please take your dog over to the far end of the ring. Take him into the corner where he won’t be in my way while I am judging.”
Yes, he spoke courteously enough, but the Mistress would rather have had him hit her across the face. Meekly she obeyed his command. Across the ring, to the very farthest corner, she went—poor beautiful Lad beside her, disgraced, weeded out of the competition at the very start. There, far out of the contest, she stood, a drooping little figure, feeling as though everyone were sneering at her dear dog’s disgrace.
Lad seemed to sense her sorrow. For, as he stood beside her, head and tail low, he whined softly and licked her hand as if in encouragement. She ran her fingers along his silky head. Then, to keep from crying, she watched the other contestants.
No longer were these parading. One at a time and then in twos, the judge was standing them on the platform. He looked at their teeth. He pressed their heads between his hands. He “hefted” their hips. He ran his fingers through their coats. He pressed his palm upward against their underbodies. He subjected them to a score of such annoyances, but he did it all with a quick and sure touch that not even the crankiest of them could resent.
Then he stepped back and studied the quartet. After that he seemed to remember Lad’s presence, and, as though by way of earning his fee, he slouched across the ring to where the forlorn Mistress was petting her dear disgraced dog.
Lazily, perfunctorily, the judge ran his hand over Lad, with absolutely none of the thoroughness that had marked his inspection of the other dogs. Apparently there was no need to look for the finer points in a disqualified collie. The sketchy examination did not last three seconds. At its end the judge jotted down a number on a pad he held. Then he laid one hand heavily on Lad’s head and curtly thrust out his other hand at the Mistress.
“Can I take him away now?” she asked, still stroking Lad’s fur.
“Yes,” rasped the judge, “and take this along with him.”
In his outstretched hand fluttered a little bunch of silk—dark blue, with gold lettering on it.
The blue ribbon! First prize in the Novice class! And this grouchy little judge was awarding it—to Lad!
The Mistress looked very hard at the bit of blue and gold in her fingers. She saw it through a queer mist. Then, as she stooped to fasten it to Lad’s collar, she furtively kissed the tiny white spot on the top of his head.
“It’s something like the ‘Bar Sinister’ victory after all!” she exclaimed joyously as she rejoined the delighted Master at the ring gate. “But, oh, it was terrible for a minute or two, wasn’t it?”
Now, Angus McGilead, Esq. (late of Linlithgow, Scotland), had a knowledge of collies such as is granted to few men, and this very fact made him a wretchedly bad dog-show judge; as the Kennel Club, which—on the strength of his fame—had engaged his services for this single occasion, speedily learned. The greatest lawyer makes often the worst judge. Legal annals prove this; and the same thing applies to dog-experts. They are sane rather than judicial.
McGilead had scant patience with the ultramodern, inbred and grayhoundlike collies which had so utterly departed from their ancestral standards. At one glimpse he had recognized Lad as a dog after his own heart—a dog that brought back to him the murk and magic of the Highland moors.
He had noted the deep chest, the mighty fore-quarters, the tiny white paws, the incredible wealth of outer- and under-coat, the brush, the grand head, and the soul in the eyes. This was such a dog as McGilead’s shepherd ancestors had admitted as an honored equal, at hearth and board—such a dog, for brain and brawn and beauty, as a Highland master would no sooner sell than he would sell his own child.
McGilead, therefore, had waved Lad aside while he judged the lesser dogs of his class, lest he be tempted to look too much at Lad and too little at them; and he rejoiced, at the last, to give honor where all honor was due.
Through dreary hours that day Lad lay disconsolate in his cell, nose between paws, while the stream of visitors flowed sluggishly past him. His memory of the Guest-Law prevented him from showing his teeth when some of these passing humans paused in front of the compartment to pat him or to consult his number in their catalogues. But he accorded not so much as one look—to say nothing of a handshake—to any of them.
A single drop of happiness was in his sorrow-cup. He had, seemingly, done something that made both the Master and the Mistress very, very proud of him. He did not know just why they should be for he had done nothing clever. In fact, he had been at his dullest. But they were proud of him—undeniably proud, and this made him glad, through all his black despondency.
Even the collie man seemed to regard him with more approval than before—not that Lad cared at all; and two or three exhibitors came over for a special look at him. From one of these exhibitors the Mistress learned of a dog-show rule that was wholly new to her.
She was told that the winning dog of each and every class was obliged to return later to the ring to compete in what was known as the Winners’ class—a contest whose entrants included every class-victor from Novice to Open. Briefly, this special competition was to determine which class-winner was the best collie in the whole list of winners and, as such, entitled to a certain number of “points” toward a championship. There were eight of these winners.
One or two such world-famed champions as Grey Mist and Southport Sample were in the show “for exhibition only.” But the pick of the remaining leaders must compete in the winners’ class—Sunnybank Lad among them. The Master’s heart sank at this news.
“I’m sorry!” he said. “You see, it’s one thing to win as a Novice against a bunch of untried dogs, and quite another to compete against the best dogs in the show. I wish we could get out of it.”
“Never mind!” answered the Mistress. “Laddie has won his ribbon. They can’t take that away from him. There’s a silver cup for the Winners’ class, though. I wish there had been one for the Novices.”
The day wore on. At last came the call for “Winners!” And for the second time poor Lad plodded reluctantly into the ring with the Mistress. But now, instead of novice dogs, he was confronted by the cream of colliedom.
Lad’s heartsick aspect showed the more intensely in such company. It grieved the Mistress bitterly to see his disconsolate air. She thought of the three days and nights to come—the nights when she and the Master could not be with him, when he must lie listening to the babel of yells and barks all around, with nobody to speak to him except some neglectful and sleepy attendant. And for the sake of a blue ribbon she had brought this upon him!
The Mistress came to a sudden and highly unsportsmanlike resolution.
Again the dogs paraded the ring. Again the judge studied them from between half-shut eyes. But this time he did not wave Lad to one side. The Mistress had noted, during the day, that McGilead had always made known his decisions by first laying his hand on the victor’s head. And she watched breathless for such a gesture.
One by one the dogs were weeded out until only two remained. Of these two, one was Lad—the Mistress’ heart banged crazily—and the other was Champion Coldstream Guard. The Champion was a grand dog, gold-and-white of hue, perfect of coat and line, combining all that was best in the old and new styles of collies. He carried his head nobly aloft with no help from the choke-collar. His “tulip” ears hung at precisely the right curve.
Lad and Coldstream Guard were placed shoulder to shoulder on the platform. Even the Mistress could not fail to contrast her pet’s woe-begone aspect with the Champion’s alert beauty.
“Lad!” she said, very low, and speaking with slow intentness as McGilead compared the two. “Laddie, we’re going home. Home! Home, Lad!”
Home! At the word, a thrill went through the great dog. His shoulders squared. Up went his head and his ears. His dark eyes fairly glowed with eagerness as he looked expectantly up at the Mistress. Home!
Yet, despite the transformation, the other was the finer dog—from a mere show viewpoint. The Mistress could see he was. Even the new uptilt of Lad’s ears could not make those ears so perfect in shape and attitude as were the Champion’s.
With almost a gesture of regret McGilead laid his hand athwart Coldstream Guard’s head. The Mistress read the verdict, and she accepted it.
“Come, Laddie, dear,” she said tenderly. “You’re second, anyway, Reserve-Winner. That’s something.”
“Wait!” snapped McGilead.
The judge was seizing one of Champion Coldstream Guard’s supershapely ears and turning it backward. His sensitive fingers, falling on the dog’s head in token of victory, had encountered an odd stiffness in the curve of the ear. Now he began to examine that ear, and then the other, and thereby he disclosed a most clever bit of surgical bandaging.
Neatly crisscrossed, inside each of the Champion’s ears, was a succession of adhesive-plaster strips cut thin and running from tip to orifice. The scientific applying of these strips had painfully imparted to the prick-ears (the dog’s one flaw) the perfect tulip-shape so desirable as a show-quality. Champion Coldstream Guard’s silken ears could not have had other than ideal shape and posture if he had wanted them to—while that crisscross of sticky strips held them in position!
Now, this was no new trick—the ruse that the Champion’s handlers had employed. Again and again in bench-shows, it had been employed upon bull-terriers. A year or two ago a woman was ordered from the ring, at the Garden, when plaster was found inside her terrier’s ears, but seldom before had it been detected in a collie—in which a prick-ear usually counts as a fatal blemish.
McGilead looked at the Champion. Long and searchingly he looked at the man who held the Champion’s leash—and who fidgeted grinningly under the judge’s glare. Then McGilead laid both hands on Lad’s great honest head—almost as in benediction.
“Your dog wins, Madam,” he said, “and while it is no part of a judge’s duty to say so, I am heartily glad. I won’t insult you by asking if he is for sale, but if ever you have to part with him—”
He did not finish, but abruptly gave the Mistress the “Winning Class” rosette.
And now, as Lad left the ring, hundreds of hands were put out to pat him. All at once he was a celebrity.
Without returning the dog to the bench, the Mistress went directly to the collie man.
“When do they present the cups?” she asked.
“Not until Saturday night, I believe,” said the man. “I congratulate you both on—”
“In order to win his cup, Lad will have to stay in this—this inferno—for three days and nights longer?”
“Of course. All the dogs—”
“If he doesn’t stay, he won’t get the cup?”
“No. It would go to the Reserve, I suppose, or to—”
“Good!” declared the Mistress in relief. “Then he won’t be defrauding anyone, and they can’t rob him of his two ribbons because I have those.”
“What do you mean?” asked the puzzled collie man.
But the Master understood—and approved.
“Good!” he said. “I wanted all day to suggest it to you, but I didn’t have the nerve. Come around to the Exhibitors’ Entrance. I’ll go ahead and start the car.”
“But what’s the idea?” queried the collie man in bewilderment.
“The idea,” replied the Mistress, “is that the cup can go to any dog that wants it. Lad’s coming home. He knows it, too. Just look at him. I promised him he should go home. We can get there by dinner-time, and he has a day’s fast to make up for.”
“But,” expostulated the scandalized collie man, “if you withdraw your dog like that, the Association will never allow you to exhibit him at its shows again.”
“The Association can have a pretty silver cup,” retorted the Mistress, “to console it for losing Lad. As for exhibiting him again—well, I wouldn’t lose these two ribbons for a hundred dollars, but I wouldn’t put my worst enemy’s dog to the torture of winning them over again—for a thousand. Come along, Lad, we’re going back home.”
At the talisman-word, Lad broke silence for the first time in all that vilely wretched day. He broke it with a series of thunderously trumpeting barks that quite put to shame the puny noise-making efforts of every other dog in the show.