Before he could continue, Buff created a diversion by routing a large and terrified rabbit out of a fence corner and charging down the road toward them in noisy pursuit of his prey. Bunny fled in blind panic straight between the nervous horse’s forefeet. The mount snorted and reared. As Ruth skilfully mastered the plunging steed, Trent caught the bridle, close to the bit, and at the same time whistled Buff to heel. Unwillingly, but instantly, the collie abandoned his delightfulchase and trotted obediently back to his master.
“Don’t scold him!” begged Ruth. “It wasn’t his fault!”
“I’m not going to scold him!” laughed Trent, ruffling the dog’s ears. “It’s many a long month since Buff needed a scolding. He didn’t drive the rabbit this way. The rabbit drove itself, before Buff could choose the direction. He——”
“Buff is splendid protection for you, isn’t he?” she broke in, a tinge of nervousness in her soft voice.
“Why, personally, I don’t stand in any great need of protection,” he smiled. “I’m not exactly a timid little flower. But he protects the farm and the house and the livestock as efficiently as a machine-gun company could. He’s a born watchdog.”
Buff, realising he was under discussion, sat down in the road between the man and the girl. He was wriggling with self-consciousness and fanning the dust into a little whirlwind with the lightning sweeps of his plumy tail; as he grinned expectantly from one to the other of the speakers. But the collie’s grin found no answer on Ruth Hammerton’s flower-tinted face. The girl’s eyes had grown grave, and there was a tinge of uneasiness in them.
“I hope you’re right,” she began, hesitantly,“in saying you don’t need any protection. And probably I’m foolish. But that’s why I rode out here this morning.”
“To protect me?” he asked quizzically, yet perplexed at her new bearing.
“To risk your thinking me impertinent,” she evaded, “by mixing into something that doesn’t concern me.”
“Anything that concerns me,” he said as she hesitated again, “concerns you, too; so far as you’ll let it. What’s the matter?”
She drew a long breath, knit her dark brows, and plunged into the distasteful mission that had brought her to the Trent farm.
“In the first place,” she began, “do you know two men named Con Hegan and Billy Gates?”
In stark surprise Trent stared up at her.
“Why, yes!” he made answer. “Of course I do. I have good reason to know them. I’ve told you the story. I told it to your father, too, before I accepted his invitation to come and see him. They were the two men I found in my kitchen when I——”
“Yes, yes,” she interposed hastily, as though trying to shield him from memories that must be painful. “I know. Of course, I remember. But—but you never told me their names. I’m certain you didn’t. Or they’d have been familiar to me when I heard them this morning.”
“This morning?” echoed Trent, puzzled. “I don’t——”
“I was at the store, doing the marketing,” she explained. “Some men were loafing on the steps, just outside the window. And one of them said, ‘A fellow from down Logan-way told me just now that Con Hegan and Billy Gates are due to be turned loose to-morrow.’ And one of the other men said, ‘Then Trent had better hire a special cop and take out another life insurance policy. Both of ’em swore they’d get him, if they was to go to the chair for it. And that’s one kind of an oath neither of ’em’s liable to break. I wouldn’t like to be in his shoes just now!’ That was all I could hear. But it worried me. I didn’t associate the names with those men you had told me about. Perhaps because the phrase ‘turned loose’ didn’t mean anything to me. But I came out here to tell you, just the same. It wasn’t so much what the fellow on the store steps said, as the scared way he said it, that frightened me. Oh, is there any real danger of——”
“Nonsense!” laughed Trent. “There’s no danger at all. And you’re not to give the matter another minute of your precious thought. But it was bully of you to come out here to warn me—to care enough to——”
“You’re making light of it, just to make mestop worrying!” she accused. “I know you are! Won’t you please notify the police about their threat? Won’t you go armed? Won’t you lock your house ever so carefully and keep indoors after dark? And——”
“And wear warm flannels next to my skin, all summer?” supplemented Trent, with vast solemnity. “And carry an umbrella and wear rubbers if the day is at all stormy? And——”
“Stop!” she commanded, a hint of tears in her troubled young voice. “You’re making fun of me!”
“Heaven forbid!” he disclaimed, piously.
“You are!” she accused. “And you’re doing it to lead me to think you aren’t in any danger; so that I won’t worry. But thereisdanger! And I know it. I’m positive of it, now that you’ve told me who those men really are. Oh, can’t you——”
“Listen!” he begged. “You’re getting all wrought up over nothing, Ruth. It’s wonderful to have you bother your head over my safety. But I’m not going to let you do it. Here’s the idea: Hegan and Gates belonged to the ‘Riverside Gang,’ over in South Boone. The gang was cleared out some years ago. Some of its members went to jail. The police had nothing definite on those two; so they let them alone. They picked up a living by their wits, as semi-stationary tramps and they kept their petty theftsfrom being found out. Then, when they’d sent me to prison—they’d had it in for me ever since the time I caught them near my hen-roost and ordered them off my land, to the accompaniment of a stray kick or so—they went into the business on a larger scale, using my house as a place to store their plunder and to hide out in, when the neighbours might be suspecting them of a share in the robberies. When Buff and I collared them they went all to pieces and confessed everything. Just as I told you, before. Now, I leave it to you if two such pitifully cowardly sneak thieves are likely to risk another jail sentence by trying to harm me. It’s ridiculous. Just the same, I’m as much your debtor for warning me, as if the danger were real.”
Ruth had dismounted, during the talk. Now, turning to the horse, she prepared to get into the saddle once more. But first she bent down and laid her soft cheek against the delighted Buff’s head. Under cover of the collie’s glad whimper of friendliness she whispered very low:
“Take care of him, Buff! Oh, take care of him—forme.”
Then, with assumed lightness, she said, as Trent lifted her to the saddle:
“Probably you’re right. But it didn’t do any harm to warn you. I’m sorry if I’ve seemed foolish. Good-bye!”
The little black horse cantered away. Michael Trent and Buff stood in the middle of the road watching the girl out of sight. Then Trent turned slowly to his chum.
“Buff, old man,” said he, “we made a good bluff of it just now, you and I. All the same, it’s up to us both to keep our eyes open for a while. Hegan and Gates were soaked with cheap whisky and sodden and jumpy after a week’s carouse, when the chief of police ‘sweated’ them. And he sure did ‘sweat’ them good and hard. It smashed their nerve. Because they were in prime shape to have it smashed. And that’s how he got them to go all to pieces and confess. That and the goods he found on them. And, besides, he told each of them separately that the other one had squealed; and made them sore on each other that way.
“But that wasn’t like either Gates or Hegan to give in. When they were normal, they were as tough a pair of birds as I care to see. They’ve had nearly three years to sober up in and get back their nerve by hard work and plain food and no drink, Buff. And unless I’ve got them both sized up all wrong, they’ve been spending most of that three years in planning how to get back at the man who spoiled their game and thrashed them and got them put away.
“They’ve had plenty of time to store up venom,Buff. And plenty of venom to store up. Yes, and a good alibi, too, to clear them if anything happens to me. Buff, we aren’t going to be fools enough to worry. But we’ll keep awake, just the same. And, Lord, but wasn’t it glorious of her to care enough about me to come ’way out here and warn me! Buff, she knew what I meant, too, when I told her about having the right pretty soon to ‘ask a question.’ I wonder if I’m pig-headed not to have asked it long ago instead of waiting till I had something besides my measly self to offer?”
During his mumbled address to the wistfully listening dog he had been moving homeward. Now, standing on his neat porch, the man looked about him, over his well-kept farm and its trim buildings; with a little throb of pride as he contrasted it with the way the home had looked on his return from prison three years earlier. The world, all at once, seemed to him a wonderful place to live in, and life seemed unbelievably sweet. His glance strayed down the long, yellow road toward the old Brander place, and his lean face softened with a glow that transfigured it.
Early the following morning Michael Trent set off down the same yellow road toward Boone Lake for the monthly market day. But the patch of road directly in front of him was nolonger yellow. It was filled with jogging and tossing billows of greyish-white.
Forty sheep, consigned to the market, were moving in close formation in front of their staff-swinging master. For one reason alone did they keep this close formation or, indeed, keep to the narrow road at all.
That one reason was Buff. The collie, with calm generalship, was herding and driving them. And he was doing it to such perfection as to make Trent’s rearguard task a sinecure.
For more than thirty months now Buff had been the lonely Trent’s closest chum and almost his only companion. With true collie efficiency, the dog had learned his hard and confusing farm lessons from the master, who never lost his temper with him and who never dealt unjustly by him. The bond between the two had sharpened and increased Buff’s naturally “human” tendencies, and had brought out in him the great soul and uncanny brain wherewith nature had endowed him. A one-man dog, he idolised Trent and served him with joyous zeal.
Trent and Buff guided their woolly charges through the single winding street of Boone Lake, now beginning to fill with market day traffic, and on to the fenced-in market square. There they herded the forty silly sheep in one corner of thelivestock enclosure, a rod or two distant from a second and much larger flock.
The owner of this second flock—a drover named Bayne—had no dog to reinforce his shepherding. Instead, three of his hired men were busily running and shouting along the wabbly borders of the hemmed-in flock.
Trent observed that they were not keeping their sheep in the best order, and that they seemed to be wilfully exciting instead of calming the big flock. At this he wondered, even as he had wondered when these same shepherds had been equally awkward at two former market days—days whereon Trent himself had had no sheep to sell.
He had heard rumours—odd, unconfirmed gossip—about this Bayne’s methods. And, when he was not watching the antics of the three clumsy shepherds, he observed Bayne’s craggy and shifty-eyed face with covert interest.
A half-hour later, as a third huddle of sheep were driven into the enclosure, there was a new commotion among Bayne’s flock.
All three shepherds dashed into the jostling mass as in an effort to calm the pestered beasts. Instead, the noisy move stampeded the entire flock. They scattered broadcast through the entire enclosure.
The new arrival saw the panic. He jumpedahead of his own bunch of sheep as they were filing in, and drove them precipitately out of the square, standing at the opening to see that none of Bayne’s stampeding flock should follow. Thus, by rare presence of mind—and perhaps having also had experience with Bayne—he avoided any chance of his sheep mingling with the runaways.
Michael Trent was less fortunate. Full tilt into the very midst of his orderly flock charged some fifty of Bayne’s stampeders, a shepherd at their heels yelling to them to stop. The shepherd’s voice and excitement had merely the effect of urging them on. Trent, watching, wondered wrathfully why so stupid a man should be placed in charge of any market consignment.
Ragged and lean were the newcomers, of mixed blood and in bad condition; as was the way with Bayne’s livestock. They were not to be compared to Trent’s fine merinos, either in blood or in condition—assuredly not in value.
Into and through the Trent flock swarmed the invaders. In ten seconds the two flocks were inextricably intertangled. In vain did Buff seek to restore order. He could do nothing against three men—four now, for Bayne had joined the bedlam—whose yells and crazy rushes frustrated his every movement. The dog looked up in angry bewilderment at Trent, mutely beggingfor advice as to how the snarl might be straightened out.
But Trent did not see the appealing glance. His mind and eyes were too completely taken up in staring at Bayne and the latter’s three men.
For in a flash the quartet had changed from impotently roaring and running idiots, to swiftly certain and efficient shepherds. With splendid skill and speed they were quelling the stampede, separating the two flocks and driving their own sheep to their allotted corner of the enclosure. Their command of the situation was something to admire.
Presently the Bayne flock was in its place, orderly and safe, with two shepherds in front of it to prevent further panic flight. Trent glanced back at his own flock, attracted to them by a sudden stir among the forty.
Buff, leaving his master, had plunged into the flock and was busily at work, but for what purpose Trent could not guess. Then, almost at once, he was out of the compact flock again, driving in front of him six sheep, which he detached from the remaining thirty-four, and sent helter skelter out into the middle of the square.
Still wondering if his wise dog had lost his wits, Trent chanced to take special note of the six sheep as they hurtled past him. And his face went blank. The six were dirty, thin, undersized,sparse of wool. They were as different from his own plump flock as a scavenger horse from a Derby winner.
Before Trent could speak or move, Buff had deserted the six ragged specimens, leaving them bleating forlornly in the centre of the square.
And he had bounded straight at Bayne’s close-huddled flock. At one leap he was on the backs of the sheep which formed the outer wall of the mass. He did not even waste time to plough through their tight-held front rank.
Over their backs he ran; and on until he vanished into the milling sea of wool.
Then, while Bayne and his three shepherds still shouted in uncomprehending dismay, the dog appeared again on one edge of the flock. Moving slowly, by reason of the press around and ahead of him, he emerged from the bunch, driving two sheep. Fat they were and of heavy wool, undoubted merinos both. Across the narrow space Buff headed them and drove them into his master’s flock. Then, on the instant, he was in the Bayne flock again, running once more over the scared backs of many sheep and dropping to earth in the middle of the throng.
A second time he emerged from the huddle, again with two fat and woolly merinos ahead of him. Eluding Bayne, who rushed down on him with staff upraised, Buff galloped the two intohis master’s corner, and was back again, without pausing, in front of Bayne’s flock.
But this time his self-imposed job was no sinecure. Bayne and the three shepherds had shaken off their amaze and were ready for him. Shouting and threatening they advanced on the eager dog.
Trent, leaving his sheep in care of an official of the market, sprang to Buff’s aid. But the dog did not wait for him. Instead, the collie made a growling dash at Bayne’s booted legs.
Bayne jumped aside to guard his endangered shanks, and smote at the attacking collie with his staff. The blow did not land;—Buff was no longer there. Eluding the swung cudgel with wolfish agility, he darted into the gap in the line—the gap made by Bayne’s sideways jump—and was at the fiercely guarded flock once more.
As Buff reappeared, after an interval, with another pair of sheep herded ahead of him, Bayne and the shepherds were waiting for him. But so was Trent. A shepherd made a lunging rush at the two salvaged sheep. Bayne aimed a murderous blow at the dog.
Trent, with ludicrous ease, tripped the awkwardly charging shepherd and sent him asprawl on the ground. Trent’s staff met the descending stick of Bayne, and the latter’s weapon was shattered by the impact.
In practically the same gesture, Trent leaped between his dog and the two remaining shepherds, menacing them with staff and voice, and holding them in check while the collie cantered the rescued sheep back into Trent’s flock.
Bayne, swearing and mouthing, strode in pursuit. He was met by a crouching collie, who faced him with an expression that looked like a smile and which was not a smile.
Bayne hesitated, whirling on the tranquil Trent.
“Your cur’s stolen six of my sheep!” he thundered in righteous indignation. “I’ll——”
“No, you won’t, Mr. Bayne,” gently contradicted Trent, his pleasant voice slow and drawling. “Stop a second and cool off, and you’ll let the matter drop. You’ll let it go as a mistake of your men’s in separating the two flocks. Men often make mistakes, you know. Buff never does. There are six sheep straying over yonder—six thin, cross-bred sheep. Not merinos. They are yours.”
“I tell you—” spluttered Bayne, though visibly uneasy at Trent’s manner and at the crowd that was collecting three deep around them.
“No,” intervened Trent. “Don’t tell me, Mr. Bayne; don’t bother to. I see it was a mistake. Just as you are beginning to see it. There’s no sin in a mistake. Though there’s always sure tobe a mistake in a sin. My sheep are safe. So are yours. Let the matter drop. I’ve seen stampedes of your flocks before. And I’ve heard of them, too. This time no harm’s done. That’s all, I think.”
“I’ll get a court order for my sheep your cur run off!” flared Bayne in a last rally; and he turned to his shepherds, commanding:
“Here, boys, go and get them sheep he run into that bunch. Get ’em!”
“Speaking of court orders,” said Trent, still in the same cool, slow tones of indifference and interposing his own lithe body beside the bristling Buff’s to the hesitant advance of the shepherds—“speaking of court orders, Mr. Bayne, when you get yours, be sure to tell the judge that I’m ready to show him the secret mark on each and every one of my sheep, to prove they’re mine. Now, if your men care to keep on edging toward my flock, Buff and I will try to entertain them as best we can till the police come up.”
Bayne glowered horribly into the smilingly level eyes that met his glare so tranquilly. Then, with a grunt, he turned back to his own corner, the three shepherds trailing after him.
Behind his calm exterior Michael Trent drew a long breath of relief. These forty sheep of his were culled from the two new flocks he had so recently purchased. None of them bore a mark.The only “secret mark” on them was Buff’s unerring knowledge of their identity. Trent stooped and petted the collie lovingly on the head and stroked the massive ruff.
“That’s how Mr. Bayne makes money, old man,” he whispered. “One of his several hundred ways. We couldn’t have proved he didn’t have six fat merinos in that mangy bunch of sheep. And his shepherds would have sworn to them. Figure out the price-difference between six of our best sheep and six of Bayne’s scarecrows, and you’ll know to a penny how much cash you’ve saved me to-day, Buff.”
The collie did not get the sense of one word in five. But he realised he had somehow made Trent very proud of him and that he was being praised. So for a moment he forgot to be stately and aloof. He wagged his tail wildly and caught Trent’s caressing hand between his mighty jaws in well-simulated savageness, pretending to bite it ferociously, while not exerting the pressure of a fraction of an ounce. Which was one of Buff’s many modes of showing affection for the pleasant-voiced man who was his master and his god.
Dusk had fallen when Trent and Buff turned in at the gate of the silent farmhouse. The day had been prosperous. The merinos had brought a well-nigh record price—the whole forty havingbeen bought by an up-country stock farm man. Thus, Trent’s investment in them had turned into an unexpectedly quick and large profit.
Also, he had been congratulated by a dozen fellow sheep raisers on his victory over Bayne. He had banked his market cheque—the Boone Lake Bank remaining open until seven in the evening on market days—and had spent a blissful half-hour on the Hammerton porch with Ruth on the way home. Now, comfortably tired and buoyed by an equally comfortable sense of well-being, he lounged up the short path leading from the road to his house. As he reached the fence gate he had bidden Buff fetch the cows from their upland pasturage and drive them to the barn. He himself went around to the side door, for the milk pails that were kept in the kitchen during the day.
He unlocked and opened the door and stepped in. As he did so a bag was thrown over his head, and the upper part of his body—a bag whose bottom was soaked in something that smelt like crushed apples. A rope was flung about his arms at the same moment and its noose ran tight.
Vainly, Trent stamped and writhed to free himself. His wiry strength was pinioned and cramped by the noose and the impeding bag. More of the apple-smelling liquid was dashedinto his face through the sack’s loose meshes. Then, as he still struggled and choked, something crashed down upon his skull.
Buff trotted obediently across the road toward the hill pasture. Like his master, Buff had had a happy and busy day. He had been praised much and petted much by Trent, and had had a truly marvellous dinner at the Boone Lake Hotel. He was complacently at peace with the world.
Then all at once he was not at peace with anything. For, far behind him, he heard the noise of scuffling feet and of a loud, choking gasp. And his weird sixth sense told him his master was in trouble.
Wheeling, he set off for the house at a tearing run. Excited as he was, he was aware of a strange and vaguely remembered foot-scent as he whirled in through the gate and up the path. His faint memory of the scent was hostile. He could not remember why.
At a bound he reached the open kitchen door. Trent was lying inert and crumpled on the floor. Two men were bending over him. And, as he charged, Buff caught their scent.
Like a rabid wolf he hurled himself upon the nearest of the men. His teeth closed in Hegan’s shoulder with the bone-crushing grip of his pit terrier ancestors. At the same moment Gatesdrew a pistol and fired point blank at the leaping dog.
Buff’s muscles collapsed. He slumped to the floor and lay lifelessly across the body of his master.
“What’d you shoot for, you chucklehead!” panted Hegan, nursing his rent shoulder. “Want to bring all Boone Lake down on us?”
“Only way to get him!” retorted Gates. “He’d ‘a’ chewed us both into Hamburg steak if I hadn’t.”
Quickly and deftly the two worked. First assuring themselves that no one had heard the shot, they went through the house and through Trent’s clothes. Then, their loot gathered, they carried it to the barn and stowed it in Trent’s new car. After which, under cover of darkness and carrying Trent between them, they loaded their victim into the tonneau, covering him with a blanket. Then, while Hegan groaningly and laboriously cleaned away the tell-tale blood spots and other marks of struggle, Gates scowled down at the motionless huddle of tawny soft fur.
“Got to lug him along with us, too, I s’pose?” he grunted. “Can’t leave him here.”
“Get a stone,” commanded Hegan—“a big one. Tie it around his neck. Then drop him down the well.”
Gates groped around the steps until he foundone of the old-time door stones, and in another minute or so this was firmly affixed to Buff’s collar by a stout rope. As Gates picked up the heavy dog and carried him puffingly to the well the telephone bell rung.
Tossing dog and stone over the well curb, Gates bolted for the house in sudden fright. Hegan had already gone into the hall, and was lifting the instrument from its table.
“Hallo!” he grunted in a stifled voice as he motioned Gates to silence.
His face cleared, and he made answer to the query at the far end:
“Yep, this is Michael Trent. Yes? No, I won’t be here. Nope. I’m just starting off on a motor trip up country. I may go a couple of thousand miles before I get back. Maybe I won’t ever come back. I’m dead sick of this hole. Yep. Good-bye.”
He hung up the receiver.
“Corking good alibi!” he chuckled gleefully. “Some feller that Trent sold some sheep to to-day. Don’t seem to know Trent well. Didn’t suspicion the voice. Now, when Trent and his car are missing, nobody’ll ask nosey questions. Come along!”
They hurried to the barn, backed the laden car out, and drove away into the night.
Not for some minutes did Buff recover consciousnessfrom the bullet graze that had rapped his skull so hard as to stun him and to gash the silken fur above his eye.
He woke in decided discomfort; his head was still in dire pain, and he was fastened securely in one spot.
When Michael Trent had had his farm drinking water tested, a year earlier, he had learned that the well showed strong traces of stable drainage. Wherefore, the well had been filled up, to within two yards of the surface, and a new well had been dug on higher ground behind the house.
Thus it was that Buff woke to find himself sprawling on a pile of rubble, with a short rope attaching him to a large stone.
Indignantly the collie set to work gnawing the rope in two. This accomplished, he got dizzily to his feet. A rush and a scramble, and he was up the stone-lined wall of the well and on firm ground above.
Straight to the house he ran, his teeth gleaming, his ruff abristle. At the kitchen door he halted. The door was shut; he could not get in. But his scent told him Trent was no longer there. His scent told him more—much more. It confirmed his memory of his master’s two assailants, and stamped their odour for ever in his mind. Their steps led him to the barn whither they had carried Trent. The senseless man’s clothinghad brushed the lintel of the barn door as they had lifted him into the car. Buff looked wildly about him, sniffing the air, his tense brain telling him much.
Then a red light began to smoulder in his deep-set eyes. Out into the high road he dashed, not running now like a collie, but like a timber wolf. As he ran he paused but once, and then he waited only long enough to throw his head aloft and shatter the night silences with a howl as hideous and discordant as it was ear-splitting.
A mile away a drowsy farmer dropped his weekly paper with a shiver.
“If I was back on the frontier,” he mused to his startled wife, “I’d say that was a mad wolf a-howlin’—and I’d say the hunt was up!”
NOWthis is the story of the masterless wanderings of Buff.
Long and unavailingly did Buff follow the track of the car which had borne away the man who was his god. Dizzy from his wound, faint from loss of blood, heart-broken and frantic at the vanishing of his master, the collie sped in pursuit. The scent was fresh in his nostrils—the scent of the kidnapped man and of his abductors, and the familiar odour of Trent’s car.
Mile after mile galloped Buff through the summer night; trusting wholly to his sense of smell. With the peculiar mile-eating canter of his wolf-ancestors, he stuck to the trail, even when the car’s track ceased to furrow the dusty country road and passed clean through a busy little city.
Through the city’s myriad odours and distractions, Buff stuck to the scent of his master’s car. Other cars—hundreds of them—had laced the trail. The asphalt’s smell of gasoline and grease was sickeningly acute in the dog’s nostrils, confusing and sometimes all but blotting out the scent he was following. Yet never quite did Buff lose the track.
Under the lamps of motor-trucks and trolley cars he flashed, swerving barely far enough out of their way to save himself from death; then ever picking up the scent again.
Once a troop of small boys gave chase, realising the chances of reward that lay in the capture of so fine a dog. But Buff, with that odd and choppy wolf-stride of his, soon out-distanced them. And they threw stones, futilely, in the wake of the flying tawny shape.
Again, a Great Dane whirled out of a dooryard and pursued the passing collie. Buff was aware of the larger dog’s presence only when a spring and a snarl warned him to wheel, in bare time to avoid the full shock of the Dane’s charge.
Buff had no time for fighting. Paying no further heed to the attacking giant, he swerved from the assault, caught the trail again, and increased his pace. But the Great Dane would not have it so. His instincts of a bully were aroused by the meek flight of this stranger dog from his onset. And he pursued at top speed.
A motor-bus, whirring out from a side street, checked Buff’s flight for an instant, by barring the way. Before he could get into his stride again, the Dane had hurled himself upon the fugitive, bearing him to the ground, in the slime and mud of the greasy street.
By the time Buff’s tawny back smote the asphalt, he was master of the situation. Furious at this abominable delay he reverted to type—or to two types.
It was his wolf-ancestry that lent him the wit and the nimbleness to spin to his feet, under the big assailant’s lunging body, and to find by instinct the hind leg tendon of the lumbering brute. All this, in one lightning swirl, and before the Dane could slacken his own pace.
But it was his pit terrier strain that made him set his curved eye-teeth deep and firmly in that all-important tendon, and to hold his grip with a vise-like steadfastness and might, while he ground his jaws slowly together.
Almost before the smitten mongrel could shriek forth his agony and fear, before the toppling gigantic body could crash to the ground, the fierce-grinding jaws had met in the centre of the thing they gripped. And, leaving behind him the crippled and howling bully, Buff slipped through the human crowd that had begun to collect; and was casting about once more for the ever-fainter trail of Trent’s car.
In a moment he had found it. And he sped along in renewed zest.
Through the city and out into its straggling suburbs galloped Buff. There, a mile beyond, was a wayside garage, with one or two ramshacklebuildings on either side of it. Behind them a rotting dock nosed its way out into the river. Here, at times, tugs and tenders and lighters touched; on their way between the city and the ocean harbour, eight miles to southward.
At the garage the trail ended. Here had halted Michael Trent’s car.
Buff ran twice around the closed garage. His nostrils told him the car was inside that dark and deserted building. He had followed it twenty miles or more. He was worn out from the run. Yet here the scent of his adored master was stronger than it had been anywhere along the way.
The dog scratched imperiously at the garage door. The sagging wood shook and grumbled under the impact. But it held firm. Nor did anyone come from inside to answer the summons. Frightened at the silence, yet certain of the scent he sought, Buff circled the building once more, nose to earth, steps uncertain, head darting from side to side.
The quest did not bring to his senses any trace of Trent. But it did bring to him a dual odour that set the dog’s ruff to bristling, and his teeth to glinting from under his uncurled lip. For here, side by side, had trodden Hegan and Gates. Not more than an hour earlier they had walked here, their heels striking deep in the dirt, as though theycarried between them some heavy weight. They had walked thus to the dock and to its outer edge.
Baffled, the collie made his way back to the garage. There, distinct through the reek of gas and oil and dead tobacco and dried grease, he caught again the scent of his master. With a little whimper of eagerness, Buff paused beneath a shut and locked window, some three feet from the ground. He gathered his waning strength for one more effort, and sprang upward.
Through the thin and cracked glass and the rotting sash he clove his way, alighting on the slimy concrete floor of the garage amid a shower of window particles.
The glass, by some minor miracle, scarce cut the dog. Apart from a scratch or two on his pads and a shallow cut on the nose, he was none the worse for his dive through the shaky casement.
The instant he touched ground, Buff was in new search of his master’s scent. And at once he found it.
There were three cars in the garage. Two of them were old and battered and in parlous condition. The third was still new. And to this new car Buff ran.
It was Michael Trent’s car. Empty as it was now—even of cushions and dashboard equipments, and shorn of its license numbers—Buffknew it at a single sniff. He knew more. He knew that in this car’s muddied tonneau, little over half an hour ago, Trent had been lying. Yes, and that Gates and Hegan had been occupying the front seat. Also that the nasty smell of some medicine or drug was strong in the tonneau.
But the one thing that interested Buff was Michael Trent’s recent presence there. Being only a real-life dog and not a story-book detective, it occurred quite naturally to Buff that where Trent had so lately been, he would in time be again.
Trent had left the car. That was evident. But doubtless he would return to it. Every day he used this car. And, of course, he would come back to it, soon or late. Wherefore, as Trent’s trail led no farther, there seemed nothing for Buff to do but to wait for him here.
Accordingly, the collie stepped up on the running board, and through the open doorway of the tonneau. Stretching himself out there, as close as possible to the space where Trent had lain, Buff began his vigil—waiting in worried patience for the return of the man whom he had chosen as his deity.
And so in time he fell asleep; worn-out nature renewing itself in his tired body and building upagain the strong young tissues and the wonted vigour of frame and of brain.
Fast as the dog had run, and with as few delays, yet he had arrived far too late to ameliorate or even share his master’s doom. Fast as a collie can run—and no dog but the greyhound can outstrip him—yet a new and desperately driven motor-car can cover thrice the same ground in far less time than can he.
Moreover, Buff had wasted many precious minutes in senselessness, in the waterless well, and many more in gnawing through the rope, and in casting about the farmhouse and in the yard for Trent’s trail. More than an hour ahead of him, Gates and Hegan had reached their destination. They had disposed of the stolen car, borne off the valuables they had taken from Trent’s home and from his body, and did all else they had planned in advance to do. The only creature with a clue to the victim’s whereabouts had come up an hour too late.
It was daylight when Buff awoke. He was stiff and drowsy. The bullet graze and the glass cut on his head were throbbing. He was thirsty, too, and hungry. He did not wake, of his own accord, but through force of habit, as the crunching of human feet reached his sleeping senses.
He lifted his head. Steps were clumping upto the garage door, and a key was at work in the padlock. Buff was keenly interested.
A dog awakens instantly and with all his faculties acute. With him there is none of the owlish stupidity and dazedness which marks the transition from sleep to awake, among humans. At one instant he is fast asleep; at the next he is wide awake. And so it was with Buff.
He was interested now at the sound of steps, because he hoped one of the two men whose tread he heard might be Michael Trent. But at once he knew it was not. Trent’s step was as familiar to Buff as was Trent’s scent. And neither of these two approaching persons had a semblance to Trent’s light, springy stride. Indeed, before the garage door opened more than an inch, Buff’s nostrils told him that these newcomers were total strangers to him.
One of the two men was elderly and disreputable. The other, a mere boy, had not lived long enough to look as thoroughly disreputable as did his companion, but very evidently he had done his best along that line in the few years allotted him.
The older man was approaching Trent’s car, talking over his shoulder to the youth.
“Put them new license plates on this, first thing you do,” he commanded. “Then get a chisel andsee what you can do with the motor number. And we’ll have to——”
He stopped with much abruptness. As he had been speaking he had advanced to Trent’s car and had laid a careless hand on the swinging tonneau door. At the same moment he was aware of a tawny shape, bloody of head, that arose from the depths of the tonneau; teeth bared and eyes menacing.
This car belonged to Michael Trent as much as did the Trent farmhouse. Long since, Buff had learned that it was his sacred duty to guard the one as rigidly as the other. And here this stranger was laying an impious hand on the machine!
At the apparition of the threatening head and at the sound of the equally threatening growl, the man recoiled from the car, jerking back his dirty hand from the door as suddenly as if the latter had turned into a snake.
Open-mouthed, the two men surveyed Buff. Quietly, but not at all friendlily, the collie returned their stare. He had no quarrel with either of them. For all he knew or cared, this might be their rightful home. So long as they should abstain from touching or otherwise molesting Trent’s car, he was content to let them alone. But his pose and expression made it very clear that he expected the same sort of treatment from themand that he was calmly ready to enforce such treatment.
“It’s—it’s—why, it’s a dog!” cleverly observed the youth, breaking the momentary silence of surprise. “It’s——”
“It’s a collie,” amended his senior, finding his voice, and his wits together. “A top-notcher, at that. Must have sneaked in here while we was closin’ up last night. A dog like that is worth a big heap of cash. And most likely there’ll be a reward offered for him. See, he’s got a good collar on. And he’s chawed his rope through. He’s worth keepin’ till called for. Go, catch him, sonny. And tie him up yonder, till we c’n take him over to the house.”
The man spoke wheedlingly to his young companion. But the lad had noted his sire’s own reception from Buff. And, modestly, he hung back. At the other’s repeated and sterner mandate, the youth remarked:
“Think I’ll run up home for breakfast. I’ll be back in ten minutes. You might tie him up, yourself, while I’m gone. I ain’t much used to dogs.”
The older man scowled; then his brow cleared.
“We’ll both go up to breakfast,” he decreed. “We’ll lock this feller in here while we’re gone. On the way back I’ll stop for Joe Stears. He’s got a passel of dogs; and he und’stands handlin’ ’em. Come on.”
Compromising thus, they departed, closing and locking the garage door behind them. Neither of them having gone to the far side of the room, they did not see the broken sash and the mess of glass on the floor—a bit of wreckage hidden from their view by the three cars.
For a few minutes after they left him, Buff lay still. Then he got up, stretched fore and aft, collie fashion, and stepped down to the concrete floor. Making his way across to a water-tub, he drank long and deep. Then he stood irresolute.
He had been in this ill-smelling place for many hours. Michael Trent had not returned to his car. Michael Trent’s odour had grown faint—almost imperceptible. There was no reason, after all, to believe that Trent would come back here. A few months ago he had taken his old car to a garage and had never gone back for it. Perhaps that was what he would do in the present case.
Meanwhile, Buff was bitterly homesick for his master. And Buff was worried, to the depths of his soul, as to what might have befallen Trent at the hands of the two men with whom the dog associated his master’s departure—the men he was learning to hate with a mortal hatred because he knew them for his master’s enemies.
By loitering here, he could get no trace of Trent, nor of the men who had carried him away.Refreshed and once more alert, he prepared to take up his quest again.
An easy leap carried Buff out through the smashed window, and to freedom. As he stood in the road, hesitant, he saw bearing down toward him at a run the two men who had just left the garage, and with them a third man, who carried a rope and a club.
As the trio very evidently meant to seize him, and as he had no reason for staying there in the road to be caught, the collie set off across the nearest field at a hard-gallop, heading for a distant patch of woods. The men gave chase. But, without bothering to increase his speed, he soon left them panting and swearing, far in the rear. Presently, they gave up the pursuit.
Midway in the field, Buff scared up an unwary young rabbit. At sight of the pneumatically bouncing cottontail, the collie remembered he himself had eaten nothing in nearly twenty-four hours. Like a furry whirlwind, he was after the rabbit. Fifty yards on, a swirl in the long grass and a few red-stained leaves marked the abrupt end of the race. And Buff found himself supplied with a toothsome breakfast.
Thus began the collie’s first day of utter loneliness; a day of bleak misery and bewilderment, of biting grief. He ranged the country for miles on either side for a trace of his master. He followedseveral motor-cars, on various highways, because of their vague resemblance to Trent’s.
Once he ran rapturously for a quarter-mile, in pursuit of a well-set-up man who was taking a cross-country tramp; and whom, in the distance, his near-sighted eyes mistook for his master. The wind being in the wrong direction, Buff was not aware of his error until he had careered to within fifty feet of the stranger. Then, head and brush drooping, he slunk away, heavy of heart and heedless of the man’s kindly hail.
Under cover of darkness, that evening, the collie made a detour that brought him back to the garage where last he had seen Trent’s car. Whether he hoped Trent might have come back there, or whether perhaps the desolate dog craved the faint scent of his master on the tonneau door and flooring—in any event, he leaped in through the unmended window of the garage, and sought to locate the stolen car.
The car was no longer there. After the deft underground method employed by professional automobile thieves and receivers of such booty, the car had already been passed along the line to its next resting-place.
A boy, coming home late from the near-by city, chanced to be passing the unlit garage. From the cavernous depths of the building burst forth into the still night a hideous sound—the anguishhowl of a wolf or of a masterless and wretched collie.
While the boy still stood shivering in terror at the eerie sound, a dark shape hurtled out through the window and vanished into the surrounding blackness.
And now began Buff’s tortured experience as a stray—as a leal one-man dog whose master is gone. Goaded on ever by that vague hope of somewhere finding Trent, and the scarce lesser hope of finding and wreaking vengeance on the men he associated with Trent’s disappearance, the great collie wandered aimlessly over the face of the countryside.
Unhappiness and the nerve-wrack of his endless quest lent him a strange furtiveness, and made him revert in a measure to the wild. Always searching—always avoiding his own kind and humans—he grew gaunt and lean. Living by his wits, in summer the forests gave him enough food to support life. He became craftily adept in catching rabbits and squirrels, and even occasional young birds. He did not starve, for the wolf-brain lent him the gift of foraging; although his farm training held him aloof from hen-roost and stall and fold, in his food-hunts.
Almost at once he skirted the city and guided himself back to Boone Lake, nearly thirty miles from where the trail had ended. The feat wasnot difficult, and he consumed less than a single night on the journey.
Reaching his master’s farm at grey of dawn, Buff found the house and outbuildings deserted. The weeds had crept thick among the once trim crops, and there was an air of desolation brooding over the land.
Buff could not know that of all Boone Lake, Ruth Hammerton alone had refused to accept as true the report that Michael Trent had left home of his own accord. She had visited the deserted farm with her father, as soon as the story had been repeated to her, and had prevailed on Mr. Hammerton to send one of his farm-hands to transfer to the Hammertons’ place Trent’s suffering livestock for safe-keeping.
It was enough for the collie to know his master was not at home, and that he had not been at home since the night of his kidnapping. Buff did not belong to the silly and professionally loyal type of dog that curls itself on its owner’s vacant doorstep and starves to death.
There was no time to think of such selfish matters as death, while Michael Trent remained to be found and his two enemies to be tracked down.
So, aimlessly, he took up his search.
That night he circled Boone Lake, investigating every house and path that Trent had been wont to frequent, visiting first the Hammertonplace and last the market square—the scene of his triumph over Bayne, the drover.
Dawn found him miles away, ever seeking, ever wandering, living on slain forest creatures, obsessed and haunted by his overmastering impulse to find Trent.
Once, as he trotted along the ridge of a wooded hill, Buff saw in the valley below a farmer trying with pitiable ill-success to round up a flock of sixty sheep that had bolted through the pasture gate and were scattering over the surrounding fields and woods; instead of marching toward their distant fold, whose gate stood invitingly open.
Moved by an instinct he did not stay to define or to resist, the collie swept down the ridge and into the valley below. The harassed farmer beheld descending on his stampeded flock a bolt of tawny-and-white lightning that whirled in and out among the galloping strays as if bent on their wholesale destruction.
While the man was yelling his lungs out and seeking a stone wherewith to brain the marauder, he suddenly came to a foolish halt, and stood gaping at the spectacle before him.
The supposedly rabid and murderous dog was rounding up the scattered flock with uncanny skill and speed, marshalling them into the narrow road, driving strays back into the column andmoving the whole woolly throng steadily and decorously toward the fold.
Arrived at the gate, one wether bolted past it, and ten other sheep followed his lead. The wether did not go forty feet before he and his fellow-truants found themselves confronted by a large and indignant collie, who forced them with gentle relentlessness to wheel in their tracks and rejoin the flock.
Tongue out, tail wagging, Buff stood at the gate of the fold, holding his prisoners from passing out again until the puffing and marvelling farmer came running up.
The man paused to fasten the gate before turning his full attention on the wonderful collie. But by the time the gate was made fast the dog was a hundred yards down the road, trotting lazily back toward the ridge. Not by so much as a turn of his classic head did he show he heard the frantic and cajoling shouts the farmer sent after him.
On another late afternoon, ten miles from there, a farmer’s child was piloting her father’s eleven cows and two calves home along the road from pasture. Three men, passing in a small motor-truck, halted, jumped to the ground, seized the pair of calves and prepared to sling them into the truck.
The child screamed in terrified appeal, andcaught hold of one of the men by the arm, while the herd of cows ran in panic through fields and woods.
The man shook off the child’s convulsive hold with a vehemence that sent her flat in the dust of the road.
And on the same instant a huge and lean and hairy beast burst through a roadside thicket and flung himself on the man, bearing him to earth by the sheer weight of his assault.
By the time the thief had landed, rolling and yelling, in the roadway, Buff had deserted him, and was at another of the trio. And this was the collie of it. A bulldog secures his grip and holds it till doomsday. A collie, fighting, is everywhere at once. The collie strain in Buff told him his opponents were three, and that there was no sense in devoting himself over-long to any one of them at the expense of the rest. So he was raging at the second man’s throat before the first fairly realised what had attacked him.
The third man, however, had a trifle more time on his hands than had either of his companions. And, wisely, he utilised that second of time in dropping the calf he had caught and in making one flying leap for the seat of the truck.
There, as fast as they could beat off the furry demon that was rending their flesh and clothes, the two others joined him. Leaving the calvesto run free, the men set the machine into rapid motion and rattled off down the road.
Buff did not follow. Already he was in the thickets again, rounding up the gawkily galloping cows. And presently he had them back in the highway, in orderly alignment and walking stolidly homeward.
Dropping back beside the still weeping child, Buff licked her frightened face with his pink tongue, wagged his tail and his entire body reassuringly, and then thrust his muzzle into her trembling little hand. Thus, her father, having witnessed the scene from afar, came hurrying up, to find his cattle safe and in the road, and his erstwhile terrified daughter hugging a huge collie frantically and kissing the silken crest of the dog’s head in an agony of gratitude and love.
But, as the farmer himself sought to catch hold of the dog, Buff showed his white teeth in a wild-beast snarl that made the man start back.
Taking advantage of this momentary check, the collie bounded off into the bushes and was gone.
Buff himself could not have explained the unwonted wildness and ferocity that seemed to have taken hold of him in his wanderings. For the first three years or so of his life—indeed, until Gates’s pistol shot had stunned him—he had known nothing but friendliness and good treatment.And, except toward tramps and like prowlers, he had never felt hatred. Though he had always been a one-man dog, he had shown no ill-temper toward those who sought to make friends with him.
Yet now, as evidenced by his snarl at the father of the child who was caressing him, he had neither lot nor part with mankind at large. His every hope and yearning were centred on the finding of his master. And the wolf strain in his make-up thrilled almost as keenly to his longing to encounter the men with whom he associated the disappearance of Trent.
For the rest of humanity he felt no interest. Not even toward Ruth Hammerton, who had reigned second to Trent in his heart.
Twice during his months as a tramp dog, Buff revisited Boone Lake—casting about the farm, trotting at midnight through the village, hanging wistfully around the Hammerton place for nearly an hour. But before dawn he was far away again.
Most of his travelling was done by night or in dusk and at grey daybreak. For experience had taught him that the open ways are not safe for an unattached dog by sunlight.
A lesser dog might readily have attached himself to one of the various friendly folk who chanced to meet him and to give him a kindlyword or call. A lesser dog, too, might have chosen a home at one of the farms scattered through the broad stretch of country Buff traversed. At any of a dozen places his beauty and his prowess at herding would have won for the collie a warm and lasting welcome.
But none of this was for Buff. He had known but one master. Losing Trent, he was fated to be forever masterless, unless he should chance to find the man he had lost. And, being only a dog, he knew no better way of finding him than by this everlasting and aimless search.
On a late September afternoon, he was roused from a troubled nap in the long grass and bushes at the verge of a field, by the sound of a mad-galloping horse and of a woman’s brave yet frightened calls to the runaway. Looking over the fringe of grass, towards the road, a furlong distant, he saw a fast-moving cloud of yellow-grey dust, which resolved itself into a hazy screen for a horse and light buggy.
The horse—a young and nervous brute—had taken fright at the running of a woodchuck across the road under his feet, and had sprung forward with a suddenness that snapped his check-rein. The swinging check smote him resoundingly again and again, on the neck and across the face, turning his first fright into panic, and makinguseless the efforts of the driver to bring him down.
A woman was driving. She was neither young nor beautiful. She had self-possession, and she had a more than tolerable set of driving hands. She was keeping the maddened horse more or less in the road, and was sawing with valorous strength on one rein while she held the other steady. Which was all the good it did her. For the brute had the bit between his teeth.
Buff arrived at the road-edge just as one of the two light reins broke under the undue strain put on it.
Before the driver could lighten the pull on the remaining rein its impulse had jerked the horse’s low-laid head far to one side. His rushing body prepared to follow the lead of his head towards a steep roadside bank some ten feet deep, with a scattering of broken rock at the bottom.
Then it was that the horse became dimly aware of a furry shape which whizzed in front of him on that side, and of a flying head that struck for his nose. A stinging slash on the left nostril sent the runaway veering from the bank-edge, and plunging toward the telegraph pole on the other side of the road. He was met and turned again by a second slash from one of the collie’s curved eye-teeth. On the same moment Buff stopped slashing and let his bulldog ancestry take control.
Thus the horse was assailed by a full double set of teeth that buried themselves in his bleeding nostrils, and that hung on.
The wild steed sought to fling up his head to shake off this anguishing weight of seventy odd pounds. But he could not shake himself free. He checked his furious pace and reared, striking out with his forefeet, and threatening to pitch backward into the buggy.
But a fierce wrench of the hanging jaws and a wriggle of the intolerable weight brought him down on all fours again. At once Buff released his grip and stood in front of the trembling horse. The runaway made as though to plunge forward. But he flinched at the memory of the dog’s attack and at the threat of its renewal.
While he hesitated, dancing, pawing, and in momentary cessation of his run, the woman slipped from the seat to the ground and ran to his head. With practised strength she shook the bit into place and held fast. The horse jerked back. Buff nipped his heel, and instantly was at his bloody nose, again.
The runaway, conquered and shivering, lashed out with one foreleg in a last hopeless display of terrified anger. His shod hoof smote the unprepared collie in the side. With a gasping sound, Buff rolled over into the ditch, two ribs broken and a foot crushed.
Tying the horse to a telegraph pole, the woman went over to where the wounded collie lay. In strong, capable arms, that were wondrous gentle, she lifted him and bore him to the buggy. Laying him tenderly on the floor of the vehicle, she returned to the horse’s head, untied the cowed and trembling steed, and began to lead him homeward.
Ten minutes later she turned in at a lane leading to a rambling, low farmhouse. And in another five minutes Buff was reclining on the kitchen floor, the woman’s husband working skilfully over his injuries, while the matron poured out the tale of his heroism and cleverness.
“I know what dog this is, too,” she finished. “I’m sure I know. It must be the same one that fought those thieves away from Sol Gilbert’s cows over to Pompton, last week, when Sol’s girl was driving them home. Mrs. Gilbert told me about it at the Grange, Monday. And he’s likely the dog that rounded up those sheep for Parkins—or whatever his name was—at Revere. You read me about it in theBulletin, don’t you remember? The letter Parkins wrote to the editor about it? I know it must be the same one. It isn’t likely there’s more than one dog in Passaic County with the sense to do all three of those things. He must be like those knight-errant folks in Sylvia’s school book, who used to go through the countryrescuing folks that were in distress. The best in the house isn’t any too good for him.”
“He’ll get it,” curtly promised her husband, without looking up from his task. “It’s lucky I’ve had experience, though, in patching up busted critters. Because this one is needing a lot of patching. Say! Notice how he don’t even let a whimper out of him? This rib-setting must hurt like fury, too. Acts more like a bulldog than a collie. I’m going to advertise him. And if the owner shows up, I’ll offer him a hundred dollars for the dog. He’ll be worth it, and a heap more, to me, herding and such.So, old feller! Now for the smashed foot. Don’t seem to be any big bones broke there.”
The weeks that followed were more nearly pleasant to Buff than had been any space of time since Trent’s disappearance. He was perforce at rest, while his fractured ribs and then his broken foot slowly mended. And all that time he was fed up and petted and made much of, in a way that would have turned most invalids’ heads.
It was well, after his months of restless searchings, to come to a halt here in this abode of comfort and kindliness; to be petted again by a woman’s soft hand, to eat cooked food once more, to be praised and to feel himself gloriously welcome.
Buff’s craving ambition, to find Trent and torun to earth his two enemies, was less acute in these drowsy days of convalescence. His sick soul seemed to be returning to normal along with his sick body.
By the time Buff could walk with any degree of comfort again, the morning frost lay heavy on the fields. The dog went out for a brief stroll with the farmer and his wife. To their delight, he did not try to run away, but accompanied them home and lay down contentedly on the doorstep.
After that, no further guard was kept over him. It was understood that he would stay with the people who had succoured and healed him.
One cold night in late autumn the dog accompanied his host, as usual, on the evening rounds of barns and outbuildings. As they were returning towards the warm red glow of the lamplit kitchen windows, Buff came to a dead stop.
A slight shudder ran through him. He lifted his delicate nose and sniffed the frosty air. He smelt nothing. He sniffed merely in an effort to corroborate in some way by scent the strange impulse which was taking possession of him—an impulse he could not resist.
“Come along, Shep, old boy!” coaxed the farmer, arriving at the doorstep and turning back towards the collie. “Supper’s ready. What’s the matter?”
Slowly, very slowly, Buff approached the man.Timidly, almost remorsefully, he licked the outstretched hand. Then, throwing back his magnificent head, he made the frost-chilled stillnesses of the autumn night re-echo with a hideously discordant and ear-torturing wolf-howl.
“Why, Shep,” exclaimed the farmer in amaze, “whatever ails you? What’s——”
He broke off in the midst of his bewildered query and raised his voice in a shout of summons to the dog. For, like a streak of tawny light, Buff had whirled out of the dooryard and was fleeing up the road.
He heard the eager call of the man who had cured him and befriended him and given him a happy home. But he heard—far more clearly—a soundless call that urged him forward.
Guided only by mystic collie instinct and by that weird impulse which had taken possession of him, he fled through the night at breakneck speed, headed unswervingly for Boone Lake, full thirty miles away.
On the same night—after a cautious absence of several months—Con Hegan and Billy Gates ventured to return to their former homes in the Boone Lake suburbs.