"If Mr. Glure chooses to invent Hugh Lester Maury and make him give a Gold Hat for a collie prize?" suggested the Mistress. "But——"
"I didn't say so," denied the superintendent. "And it's none of my business, anyhow. Here's——"
"But why should Mr. Glure do such a thing?" asked the Mistress, in wonder. "I never heard of his shrinking coyly behind another name when he wanted to spend money. I don't understand why he——"
"Here is the conditions-list for the Maury Specialty Cup," interposed the superintendent with extreme irrelevance, as he handed her a pink slip of paper. "Glance over it."
The Mistress took the slip and read aloud for the benefit of the Master who was still glowering at the Gold Hat:
"Conditions of Contest for Hugh Lester Maury Gold Cup:
"'First.—No collie shall be eligible that has not already taken at least one blue ribbon at a licensed American or British Kennel Club Show.'"
"That single clause has barred out eleven of the sixteen entrants," commented the Superintendent. "You see, most of the dogs at these local Shows are pets, and hardly any of them have been to Madison Square Garden or to any of the other A. K. C. shows. The few that have been to them seldom got a Blue."
"Lad did!" exclaimed the Mistress joyfully. "He took two Blues at the Garden last year; and then, you remember, it was so horrible for him there we broke the rules and brought him home without waiting for——"
"I know," said the Superintendent, "but read the rest."
"'Second,'" read the Mistress. "'Each contestant must have a certified five-generation pedigree, containing the names of at least ten champions.' Lad had twelve in his pedigree," she added, "and it's certified."
"Two more entrants were killed out bythatclause," remarked the Superintendent, "leaving only three out of the original sixteen. Now go ahead with the clause that puts poor old Lad and one other out of the running. I'm sorry."
"'Third,'" the Mistress read, her brows crinkling and her voice trailing as she proceeded. "'Each contestant must go successfully through the preliminary maneuvers prescribed by the Kirkaldie Association, Inc., of Great Britain, for its Working Sheepdog Trials.'—But," she protested, "Lad isn'ta 'working' sheepdog! Why, this is some kind of a joke! I never heard of such a thing—even in a Specialty Show."
"No," agreed the Superintendent, "nor anybody else. Naturally, Lad isn't a 'working' sheepdog. There probably haven't been three 'working' sheepdogs born within a hundred miles of here, and it's a mighty safe bet that no 'working' sheepdog has ever taken a 'Blue' at an A. K. C. Show. A 'working' dog is almost never a show dog. I know of only one either here or in England; and he's a freak—a miracle. So much so, that he's famous all over the dog-world."
"Do you mean Champion Lochinvar III?" asked the Mistress. "The dog the Duke of Hereford used to own?"
"That's the dog. The only——"
"We read about him in theCollie Folio," said the Mistress. "His picture was there, too. He was sent to Scotland when he was a puppy, theFoliosaid, and trained to herd sheep before ever he was shown. His owner was trying to induce other collie-fanciers to make their dogs useful and not just Show-exhibits. Lochinvar is an international champion, too, isn't he?"
The Superintendent nodded.
"If the Duke of Hereford lived in New Jersey," pursued the Mistress, trying to talk down her keen chagrin over Lad's mishap, "Lochinvar might have a chance to win a nice Gold Hat."
"He has," replied the superintendent. "He has every chance, and the only chance."
"Whohas?" queried the puzzled Mistress.
"Champion Lochinvar III," was the answer. "Glure bought him by cable. Paid $7000 for him. That eclipses Untermeyer's record price of $6500 for old Squire of Tytton. The dog arrived last week. He's here. A big Blue Merle. You ought to look him over. He's a wonder. He——"
"Oh!" exploded the Mistress. "You can't mean it. Youcan't!Why, it's the most—the most hideously unsportsmanlike thing I ever heard of in my life! Do you mean to tell me Mr. Glure put up this sixteen hundred-dollar cup and then sent for the only dog that could fulfill the Trophy's conditions? It's unbelievable!"
"It's Glure," tersely replied the Superintendent. "Which perhaps comes to the same thing."
"Yes!" spoke up the Master harshly, entering the talk for the first time, and tearing his disgusted attention from the Gold Hat. "Yes, it's Glure, and it's unbelievable! And it's worse than either of those, if anything can be. Don't you see the full rottenness of it all? Half the world is starving or sick or wounded. The other half is working its fingers off to help the Red Cross make Europe a little less like hell; and, when every cent counts in the work, this—this Wall Street Farmer spends sixteen hundred precious dollars to buy himself a Gold Hat; and he does it under the auspices ofthe Red Cross, in the holy name of charity. The unsportsmanlikeness of it is nothing to that. It's—it's an Unpardonable Sin, and I don't want to endorse it by staying here. Let's get Lad and go home."
"I wish to heaven we could!" flamed the Mistress, as angry as he. "I'd do it in a minute if we were able to. I feel we're insulting loyal old Lad by making him a party to it all. But we can't go. Don't you see? Mr. Glure is unsportsmanlike, but that's no reason we should be. You've told me, again and again, that no true sportsman will back out of a contest just because he finds he has no chance of winning it."
"She's right," chimed in the Superintendent. "You've entered the dog for the contest, and by all the rules he'll have to stay in it. Lad doesn't know the first thing about 'working.' Neither does the only other local entrant that the first two rules have left in the competition. And Lochinvar is perfect at every detail of sheep-work. Lad and the other can't do anything but swell his victory. It's rank bad luck, but——"
"All right! All right!" growled the Master. "We'll go through with it. Does anyone know the terms of a 'Kirkaldie Association's Preliminaries,' for 'Working Sheepdog Trials?' My own early education was neglected."
"Glure's education wasn't," said the Superintendent. "He has the full set of rules in his brandnew Sportsman Library. That's, no doubt, where he got the idea. I went to him for them this morning, and he let me copy the laws governing the preliminaries. They're absurdly simple for a 'working' dog and absurdly impossible for a non-worker. Here, I'll read them over to you."
He fished out a folded sheet of paper and read aloud a few lines of pencil-scribblings:
"Four posts shall be set up, at ninety yards apart, at the corners of a square enclosure. A fifth post shall be set in the center. At this fifth post the owner or handler of the contestant shall stand with his dog. Nor shall such owner or handler move more than three feet from the post until his dog shall have completed the trial.
"Guided only by voice and by signs, the dog shall go alone from the center-post to the post numbered '1.' He shall go thence, in the order named, to Posts 2, 3 and 4, without returning to within fifteen feet of the central post until he shall have reached Post 4.
"Speed and form shall count as seventy points in these evolutions. Thirty points shall be added to the score of the dog or dogs which shall make the prescribed tour of the posts directed wholly by signs and without the guidance of voice."
"There," finished the superintendent, "you see it is as simple as a kindergarten game. But a child who had never been taught could not play Puss-in-the-Corner.' I was talking to the Englishtrainer that Glure bought along with the dog. The trainer tells me Lochinvar can go through those maneuvers and a hundred harder ones without a word being spoken. He works entirely by gestures. He watches the trainer's hand. Where the hand points he goes. A snap of the fingers halts him. Then he looks back for the next gesture. The trainer says it's a delight to watch him."
"The delight is all his," grumbled the Master. "Poor, poor Lad! He'll get bewildered and unhappy. He'll want to do whatever we tell him to, but he can't understand. It was different the time he rounded up Glure's flock of sheep—when he'd never seen a sheep before. That was ancestral instinct. A throwback. But ancestral instinct won't teach him to go to Post 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. He——"
"Hello, people!" boomed a jarringly cordial voice. "Welcome to the Towers!"
Bearing down upon the trio was a large person, round and yellow of face and clad elaborately in a morning costume that suggested a stud-groom with ministerial tendencies. He was dressed for the Occasion. Mr. Glure was always dressed for the Occasion.
"Hello, people!" repeated the Wall Street Farmer, alternately pump-handling the totally unresponsive Mistress and Master. "I see you've been admiring the Maury Trophy. Magnificent, eh? Oh, Maury's a prince, I tell you! A prince! Abit eccentric, perhaps—as you'll have guessed by the conditions he's put up for the cup. But a prince. A prince! We think everything of him on the Street. Have you seen my new dog? Oh, you must go and take a look at Lochinvar! I'm entering him for the Maury Trophy, you know."
"Yes," assented the Master dully, as Mr. Glure paused to breathe. "I know."
He left his exultant host with some abruptness, and piloted the Mistress back to the Collie Section. There they came upon a scene of dire wrath. Disgruntled owners were loudly denouncing the Maury conditions-list, and they redoubled their plaint at sight of the two new victims of the trick.
Folk who had bathed and brushed and burnished their pets for days, in eager anticipation of a neighborhood contest, gargled in positive hatred at the glorious Merle. They read the pink slips over and over with more rage at each perusal.
One pretty girl had sat down on the edge of a bench, gathering her beloved gold-and-white collie's head in her lap, and was crying unashamed. The Master glanced at her. Then he swore softly, and set to work helping the Mistress in the task of fluffing Lad's glossy coat to a final soft shagginess.
Neither of them spoke. There was nothing to say; but Lad realized more keenly than could a human that both his gods were wretchedly unhappy, and his great heart yearned pathetically to comfort them.
"There's one consolation," said a woman at work on a dog in the opposite bench, "Lochinvar's not entered for anything except the Maury Cup. The clerk told me so."
"Little good that will do any of us!" retorted her bench-neighbor. "In an all-specialty show, the winner of the Maury Trophy will go up for the 'Winners Class,' and that means Lochinvar will get the cup for the 'Best Collie,' as well as the Maury Cup and probably the cup for 'Best Dog of any Breed,' too. And——"
"The Maury Cup is the first collie event on the programme," lamented the other. "It's slated to be called before even the Puppy and the Novice classes. Mr. Glure has——"
"Contestants for the Maury Trophy—all out!" bawled an attendant at the end of the section.
The Master unclasped the chain from Lad's collar, snapped the light show-ring leash in its place and handed the leash to the Mistress.
"Unless you'd rather have me take him in?" he whispered. "I hate to think of your handling a loser."
"I'd rather take Lad to defeat than any other dog to—a Gold Hat," she answered, sturdily. "Come along, Laddie!"
The Maury contest, naturally, could not be decided in the regular show-ring. Mr. Glure had thoughtfully set aside a quadrangle of greensward for the Event—a quadrangle bounded by four whiteand numbered posts, and bearing a larger white post in its center.
A throng of people was already banked deep on all four sides of the enclosure when the Mistress arrived. The collie judge standing by the central post declaimed loudly the conditions of the contest. Then he asked for the first entrant.
This courtier of failure chanced to be the only other local dog besides Lad that had survived the first two clauses of the conditions. He chanced also to be the dog over which the pretty girl had been crying.
The girl's eyes were still red through a haze of powder as she led her slender little gold-and-snow collie into the ring. She had put on a filmy white muslin dress with gold ribbons that morning with the idea of matching her dog's coloring. She looked very sweet and dainty—and heartsore.
At the central post she glanced up hopelessly at the judge who stood beside her. The judge indicated Post No. 1 with a nod. The girl blinked at the distant post, then at her collie, after which she pointed to the post.
"Run on over there, Mac!" she pleaded. "That's a good boy!"
The little collie wagged his tail, peered expectantly at her, and barked. But he did not stir. He had not the faintest idea what she wanted him to do, although he would have been glad to do it. Wherefore, the bark.
Presently (after several more fruitless entreaties which reduced the dog to a paroxysm of barking) she led her collie out of the enclosure, strangling her sobs as she went. And again the Master swore softly, but with much venomous ardor.
And now, at the judge's command, the Mistress led Lad into the quadrangle and up to the central post. She was very pale, but her thoroughbred nerves were rocklike in their steadiness. She, like Lad, was of the breed that goes down fighting. Lad walked majestically beside her, his eyes dark with sorrow over his goddess' unhappiness, which he could not at all understand and which he so longed to lighten. Hitherto, at dog shows, Lad had been the only representative of The Place to grieve.
He thrust his nose lovingly into the Mistress' hand, as he moved along with her to the post; and he whined, under his breath.
Ranging up beside the judge, the Mistress took off Lad's leash and collar. Stroking the dog's upraised head, she pointed to the No. 1 Post.
"Over there," she bade him.
Lad looked in momentary doubt at her, and then at the post. He did not see the connection, nor know what he was expected to do. So, again he looked at the sorrowing face bent over him.
"Lad!" said the Mistress gently, pointing once more to the Post. "Go!"
Now, there was not one dog at The Place that had not known from puppy-hood the meaning ofthe word "Go!" coupled with the pointing of a finger. Fingers had pointed, hundreds of times, to kennels or to the open doorways or to canoe-bottoms or to car tonneaus or to whatsoever spot the dog in question was desired to betake himself. And the word "Go!" had always accompanied the motion.
Lad still did not see why he was to go where the steady finger indicated. There was nothing of interest over there; no one to attack at command. But he went.
He walked for perhaps fifty feet; then he turned and looked back.
"Go on!" called the voice that was his loved Law.
And he went on. Unquestionably, as uncomprehendingly, he went, because the Mistress told him to! Since she had brought him out before this annoying concourse of humans to show off his obedience all he could do was to obey. The knowledge of her mysterious sadness made him the more anxious to please her.
So on he went. Presently, as his progress brought him alongside a white post, he heard the Mistress call again. He wheeled and started toward her at a run. Then he halted again, almost in mid-air.
For her hand was up in front of her, palm forward, in a gesture that had meant "Stop!" from the time he had been wont to run into the house with muddy feet, as a puppy.
Lad stood, uncertain. And now the Mistress was pointing another way and calling:
"Go on! Lad! Go on!"
Confused, the dog started in the new direction. He went slowly. Once or twice he stopped and looked back in perplexity at her; but, as often, came the steady-voiced order:
"Go on! Lad! Goon!"
On plodded Lad. Vaguely, he was beginning to hate this new game played without known rules and in the presence of a crowd. Lad abominated a crowd.
But it was the Mistress' bidding, and in her dear voice his quick hearing could read what no human could read—a hard-fought longing to cry. It thrilled the big dog, this subtle note of grief. And all he could do to ease her sorrow, apparently, was to obey this queer new whim of hers as best he might.
He had continued his unwilling march as far as another post when the welcome word of recall came—the recall that would bring him close again to his sorrowing deity. With a bound he started back to her.
But, for the second time, came that palm-forward gesture and the cry of "Stop! Goback!"
Lad paused reluctantly and stood panting. This thing was getting on his fine-strung nerves. And nervousness ever made him pant.
The Mistress pointed in still another direction, and she was calling almost beseechingly:
"Go on, Lad! Goon!"
Her pointing hand waved him ahead and, as before, he followed its guidance. Walking heavily, his brain more and more befogged, Lad obeyed. This time he did not stop to look to her for instructions. From the new vehemence of the Mistress' gesture she had apparently been ordering him off the field in disgrace, as he had seen puppies ordered from the house. Head and tail down, he went.
But, as he passed by the third of those silly posts, she recalled him. Gleeful to know he was no longer in disgrace he galloped toward the Mistress; only to be halted again by that sharp gesture and sharper command before he had covered a fifth of the distance from the post to herself.
The Mistress was actually pointing again—more urgently than ever—and in still another direction. Now her voice had in it a quiver that even the humans could detect; a quiver that made its sweetness all but sharp.
"Go on, Lad! Goon!"
Utterly bewildered at his usually moodless Mistress' crazy mood and spurred by the sharp reprimand in her voice Lad moved away at a crestfallen walk. Four times he stopped and looked back at her, in piteous appeal, asking forgiveness of the unknown fault for which she was ordering himaway; but always he was met by the same fierce "Goon!"
And he went.
Of a sudden, from along the tight-crowded edges of the quadrangle, went up a prodigious handclapping punctuated by such foolish and ear-grating yells as "Goodboy!" "Goodold Laddie!" "Hedidit!"
And through the looser volume of sound came the Mistress' call of:
"Laddie! Here,Lad!"
In doubt, Lad turned to face her. Hesitatingly he went toward her expecting at every step that hateful command of "Goback!"
But she did not send him back. Instead, she was running forward to meet him. And out of her face the sorrow—but not the desire to cry—had been swept away by a tremulous smile.
Down on her knees beside Lad the Mistress flung herself, and gathered his head in her arms and told him what a splendid, dear dog he was and how proud she was of him.
All Lad had done was to obey orders, as any dog of his brain and heart and home training might have obeyed them. Yet, for some unexplained reason, he had made the Mistress wildly happy. And that was enough for Lad.
Forgetful of the crowd, he licked at her caressing hands in puppylike ecstasy; then he rolled in front of her; growling ferociously and catching oneof her little feet in his mighty jaws, as though to crush it. This foot-seizing game was Lad's favorite romp with the Mistress. With no one else would he condescend to play it, and the terrible white teeth never exerted the pressure of a tenth of an ounce on the slipper they gripped.
"Laddie!" the Mistress was whispering to him, "Laddie!You did it, old friend. You did it terribly badly I suppose, and of course we'll lose. But we'll 'lose right.' We've made the contest. Youdidit!"
And now a lot of noisy and bothersome humans had invaded the quadrangle and wanted to paw him and pat him and praise him. Wherefore Lad at once got to his feet and stood aloofly disdainful of everything and everybody. He detested pawing; and, indeed, any outsider's handling.
Through the congratulating knot of folk the Wall Street Farmer elbowed his way to the Mistress.
"Well, well!" he boomed. "I must compliment you on Lad! A really intelligent dog. I was surprised. I didn't think any dog could make the round unless he'd been trained to it. Quite a dog! But, of course, you had to call to him a good many times. And you were signaling pretty steadily every second. Those things count heavily against you, you know. In fact, they goose-egg your chances if another entrant can go the round without so much coaching. Now my dog Lochinvarnever needs the voice at all and he needs only one slight gesture for each manœuver. Still, Lad did very nicely. He—why does the sulky brute pull away when I try to pat him?"
"Perhaps," ventured the Mistress, "perhaps he didn't catch your name."
Then she and the Master led Lad back to his bench where the local contingent made much of him, and where—after the manner of a high-bred dog at a Show—he drank much water and would eat nothing.
When the Mistress went again to the quadrangle, the crowd was banked thicker than ever, for Lochinvar III was about to compete for the Maury Trophy.
The Wall Street Farmer and the English trainer had delayed the Event for several minutes while they went through a strenuous dispute. As the Mistress came up she heard Glure end the argument by booming:
"I tell you that's all rot. Why shouldn't he 'work' for me just as well as he'd 'work' for you? I'm his Master, ain't I?"
"No, sir," replied the trainer, glumly. "Only hisowner."
"I've had him a whole week," declared the Wall Street Farmer, "and I've put him through those rounds a dozen times. He knows me and he goes through it all like clockwork for me. Here! Give me his leash!"
He snatched the leather cord from the protesting trainer and, with a yank at it, started with Lochinvar toward the central post. The aristocratic Merle resented the uncalled-for tug by a flash of teeth. Then he thought better of the matter, swallowed his resentment and paced along beside his visibly proud owner.
A murmur of admiration went through the crowd at sight of Lochinvar as he moved forward. The dog was a joy to look on. Such a dog as one sees perhaps thrice in a lifetime. Such a dog for perfect beauty, as were Southport Sample, Grey Mist, Howgill Rival, Sunnybank Goldsmith or Squire of Tytton. A dog, for looks, that was the despair of all competing dogdom.
Proudly perfect in carriage, in mist-gray coat, in a hundred points—from the noble pale-eyed head to the long massy brush—Lochinvar III made people catch their breath and stare. Even the Mistress' heart went out—though with a tinge of shame for disloyalty to Lad—at his beauty.
Arrived at the central post, the Wall Street Farmer unsnapped the leash. Then, one hand on the Merle's head and the other holding a half-smoked cigar between two pudgy fingers, he smiled upon the tense onlookers.
This was his Moment. This was the supreme moment which had cost him nearly ten thousand dollars in all. He was due, at last, to win a trophy that would be the talk of all the sporting universe.These country-folk who had won lesser prizes from under his very nose—how they would stare, after this, at his gun-room treasures!
"Ready, Mr. Glure?" asked the Judge.
"All ready!" graciously returned the Wall Street Farmer.
Taking a pull at his thick cigar, and replacing it between the first two fingers of his right hand, he pointed majestically with the same hand to the first post.
No word of command was given; yet Lochinvar moved off at a sweeping run directly in the line laid out by his owner's gesture.
As the Merle came alongside the post the Wall Street Farmer snapped his fingers. Instantly Lochinvar dropped to a halt and stood moveless, looking back for the next gesture.
This "next gesture" was wholly impromptu. In snapping his fingers the Wall Street Farmer had not taken sufficient account of the cigar stub he held. The snapping motion had brought the fire-end of the stub directly between his first and second fingers, close to the palm. The red coal bit deep into those two tenderest spots of all the hand.
With a reverberating snort the Wall Street Farmer dropped the cigar-butt and shook his anguished hand rapidly up and down, in the first sting of pain. The loose fingers slapped together like the strands of an obese cat-of-nine-tails.
And this was the gesture which Lochinvar beheld,as he turned to catch the signal for his next move.
Now, the frantic St. Vitus shaking of the hand and arm, accompanied by a clumsy step-dance and a mouthful of rich oaths, forms no signal known to the very cleverest of "working" collies. Neither does the inserting of two burned fingers into the signaler's mouth—which was the second motion the Merle noted.
Ignorant as to the meaning of either of these unique signals the dog stood, puzzled. The Wall Street Farmer recovered at once from his fit of babyish emotion, and motioned his dog to go on to the next post.
The Merle did not move. Here, at last, was a signal he understood perfectly well. Yet, after the manner of the best-taught "working" dogs, he had been most rigidly trained from earliest days to finish the carrying out of one order before giving heed to another.
He had received the signal to go in one direction. He had obeyed. He had then received the familiar signal to halt and to await instructions. Again he had obeyed. Next, he had received a wildly emphatic series of signals whose meaning he could not read. A long course of training told him he must wait to have these gestures explained to him before undertaking to obey the simple signal that had followed.
This, in his training kennel, had been the rule. When a pupil did not understand an order he muststay where he was until he could be made to understand. He must not dash away to carry out a later order that might perhaps be intended for some other pupil.
Wherefore, the Merle stood stock still. The Wall Street Farmer repeated the gesture of pointing toward the next post. Inquiringly, Lochinvar watched him. The Wall Street Farmer made the gesture a third time—to no purpose other than to deepen the dog's look of inquiry. Lochinvar was abiding, steadfastly, by his hard-learned lessons of the Scottish moorland days.
Someone in the crowd tittered. Someone else sang out delightedly:
"Lad wins!"
The Wall Street Farmer heard. And he proceeded to mislay his easily-losable self control. Again, these inferior country folk seemed about to wrest from him a prize he had deemed all his own, and to rejoice in the prospect.
"You mongrel cur!" he bellowed. "Get along there!"
This diction meant nothing to Lochinvar, except that his owner's temper was gone—and with it his scanty authority.
Glure saw red—or he came as near to seeing it as can anyone outside a novel. He made a plunge across the quadrangle, seized the beautiful Merle by the scruff of the neck and kicked him.
Now, here was something the dog could understand with entire ease. This loud-mouthed vulgarian giant, whom he had disliked from the first, was daring to lay violent hands on him—on Champion Lochinvar III, the dog-aristocrat that had always been handled with deference and whose ugly temper had never been trained out of him.
As a growl of hot resentment went up from the onlookers, a far more murderously resentful growl went up from the depths of Lochinvar's furry throat.
In a flash, the Merle had wrenched free from his owner's neck-grip. And, in practically the same moment, his curved eye-teeth were burying themselves deep in the calf of the Wall Street Farmer's leg.
Then the trainer and the judge seized on the snarlingly floundering pair. What the outraged trainer said, as he ran up, would have brought a blush to the cheek of a waterside bartender. What the judge said (in a tone of no regret, whatever) was:
"Mr. Glure, you have forfeited the match by moving more than three feet from the central post. But your dog had already lost it by refusing to 'work' at your command. Lad wins the Maury Trophy."
So it was that the Gold Hat, as well as themodest little silver "Best Collie" cup, went to The Place that night. Setting the golden monstrosity on the trophy shelf, the Master surveyed it for a moment; then said:
"That Gold Hat is even bigger than it looks. It is big enough to hold a thousand yards of surgical dressings; and gallons of medicine and broth, besides. And that's what it is going to hold. To-morrow I'll send it to Vanderslice, at the Red Cross Headquarters."
"Good!" applauded the Mistress. "Oh,good!send it in Lad's name."
"I shall. I'll tell Vanderslice how it was won; and I'll ask him to have it melted down to buy hospital supplies. If that doesn't take off its curse of unsportsmanliness, nothing will. I'll get you something to take its place, as a trophy."
But there was no need to redeem that promise. A week later, from Headquarters, came a tiny scarlet enamel cross, whose silver back bore the inscription:
"To SUNNYBANK LAD; in memory of a generous gift to Humanity."
"Its face-value is probably fifty cents, Lad, dear," commented the Mistress, as she strung the bit of scarlet on the dog's shaggy throat. "But its heart value is at least a billion dollars. Besides—you can wear it. And nobody, outside a nightmare,could possibly have worn kind, good Mr. Hugh Lester Maury's Gold Hat. I must write to Mr. Glure and tell him all about it. How tickled he'll be! Won't he, Laddie?"
The man huddled frowzily in the tree crotch, like a rumpled and sick raccoon. At times he would crane his thin neck and peer about him, but more as if he feared rescue than as though he hoped for it.
Then, before slumping back to his sick-raccoon pose, he would look murderously earthward and swear with lurid fervor.
At the tree foot the big dog wasted neither time nor energy in frantic barking or in capering excitedly about. Instead, he lay at majestic ease, gazing up toward the treed man with grave attentiveness.
Thus, for a full half-hour, the two had remained—the treer and the treed. Thus, from present signs, they would continue to remain until Christmas.
There is, by tradition, something intensely comic in the picture of a man treed by a dog. The man, in the present case, supplied the only element of comedy in the scene. The dog was anything but comic, either in looks or in posture.
He was a collie, huge of bulk, massive of shoulder, deep and shaggy of chest. His forepaws were snowy and absurdly small. His eyes were seal-dark and sorrowful—eyes that proclaimed not only an uncannily wise brain, but a soul as well. In brief, he was Lad; official guard of The Place's safety.
It was in this rôle of guard that he was now serving as jailer to the man he had seen slouching through the undergrowth of the forest which grew close up to The Place's outbuildings.
From his two worshipped deities—the Mistress and the Master—Lad had learned in puppyhood the simple provisions of the Guest Law. He knew, for example, that no one openly approaching the house along the driveway from the furlong-distant highroad was to be molested. Such a visitor's advent—especially at night—might lawfully be greeted by a salvo of barks. But the barks were a mere announcement, not a threat.
On the other hand, the Law demanded the instant halting of all prowlers, or of anyone seeking to get to the house from road or lake by circuitous and stealthy means. Such roundabout methods spell Trespass. Every good watchdog knows that. But wholly good watchdogs are far fewer than most people—even their owners—realize. Lad was one of the few.
To-day's trespasser had struck into The Place's grounds from an adjoining bit of woodland. Hehad moved softly and obliquely and had made little furtive dashes from one bit of cover to another, as he advanced toward the outbuildings a hundred yards north of the house.
He had moved cleverly and quietly. No human had seen or heard him. Even Lad, sprawling half-asleep on the veranda, had not seen him. For, in spite of theory, a dog's eye by daylight is not so keen or so far-seeing as is a human's. But the wind had brought news of a foreign presence on The Place—a presence which Lad's hasty glance at driveway and lake edge did not verify.
So the dog had risen to his feet, stretched himself, collie-fashion, fore and aft, and trotted quickly away to investigate. Scent, and then sound, taught him which way to go.
Two minutes later he changed his wolf trot to a slow and unwontedly stiff-legged walk, advancing with head lowered, and growling softly far down in his throat. He was making straight for a patch of sumac, ten feet in front of him and a hundred feet behind the stables.
Now, when a dog bounds toward a man, barking and with head up, there is nothing at all to be feared from his approach. But when the pace slackens to a stiff walk and his head sinks low, that is a very good time, indeed, for the object of his attentions to think seriously of escape or of defense.
Instinct or experience must have imparted this useful truth to the lurker in the sumac patch, foras the great dog drew near the man incontinently wheeled and broke cover. At the same instant Lad charged.
The man had a ten-foot start. This vantage he utilized by flinging himself bodily at a low-forked hickory tree directly in his path.
Up the rough trunk to the crotch he shinned with the speed of a chased cat. Lad arrived at the tree bole barely in time to collect a mouthful of cloth from the climber's left trouser ankle.
After which, since he was not of the sort to clamor noisily for what lurked beyond his reach, the dog yawned and lay down to keep guard on his arboreal prisoner. For half an hour he lay thus, varying his vigil once or twice by sniffing thoughtfully at a ragged scrap of trouser cloth between his little white forepaws. He sniffed the thing as though trying to commit its scent to memory.
The man did not seek help by shouting. Instead, he seemed oddly willing that no other human should intrude on his sorry plight. A single loud yell would have brought aid from the stables or from the house or even from the lodge up by the gate. Yet, though the man must have guessed this, he did not yell. Instead, he cursed whisperingly at intervals and snarled at his captor.
At last, his nerve going, the prisoner drew out a jackknife, opened a blade at each end of it and hurled the ugly missile with all his force at the dog.As the man had shifted his position to get at the knife, Lad had risen expectantly to his feet with some hope that his captive might be going to descend.
It was lucky for Lad that he was standing when the knife was thrown for the aim was not bad, and a dog lying down cannot easily dodge. A dog standing on all fours is different, especially if he is a collie.
Lad sprang to one side instinctively as the thrower's arm went back. The knife whizzed, harmless, into the sumac patch. Lad's teeth bared themselves in something that looked like a smile and was not. Then he lay down again on guard.
A minute later he was up with a jump. From the direction of the house came a shrill whistle followed by a shout of "Lad!La-ad!" It was the Master calling him. The summons could not be ignored. Usually it was obeyed with eager gladness, but now—Lad looked worriedly up into the tree. Then, coming to a decision, he galloped away at top speed.
In ten seconds he was at the veranda where the Master stood talking with a newly arrived guest. Before the Master could speak to the dog, Lad rushed up to him, whimpering in stark appeal, then ran a few steps toward the stables, paused, looked back and whimpered again.
"What's the matter with him?" loudly demandedthe guest—an obese and elderly man, right sportily attired. "What ails the silly dog?"
"He's found something," said the Master. "Something he wants me to come and see—and he wants me to come in a hurry."
"How do you know?" asked the guest.
"Because I know his language as well as he knows mine," retorted the Master.
He set off in the wake of the excited dog. The guest followed in more leisurely fashion complaining:
"Of all the idiocy! To let a measly dog drag you out of the shade on a red-hot day like this just to look at some dead chipmunk he's found!"
"Perhaps," stiffly agreed the Master, not slackening his pace. "But if Lad behaves like that, unless it's pretty well worth while, he's changed a lot in the past hour. A man can do worse sometimes than follow a tip his dog gives him."
"Have it your own way," grinned the guest. "Perhaps he may lead us to a treasure cave or to a damsel in distress. I'm with you."
"Guy me if it amuses you," said the Master.
"It does," his guest informed him. "It amuses me to see any grown man think so much of a dog as you people think of Lad. It's maudlin."
"My house is the only one within a mile on this side of the lake that has never been robbed," was the Master's reply. "My stable is the only one in the same radius that hasn't been rifled by harness-and-tire thieves. Thieves who seem to do their work in broad daylight, too, when the stables won't be locked. I have Lad to thank for all that. He——"
The dog had darted far ahead. Now he was standing beneath a low-forked hickory tree staring up into it.
"He's treed a cat!" guffawed the guest, his laugh as irritating as a kick. "Extra! Come out and get a nice sunstroke, folks! Come and see the cat Lad has treed!"
The Master did not answer. There was no cat in the tree. There was nothing visible in the tree. Lad's aspect shrank from hope to depression. He looked apologetically at the Master. Then he began to sniff once more at a scrap of cloth on the ground.
The Master picked up the cloth and presently walked over to the tree. From a jut of bark dangled a shred of the same cloth. The Master's hand went to Lad's head in approving caress.
"It was not a cat," he said. "It was a man. See the rags of——"
"Oh, piffle!" snorted the guest. "Next you'll be reconstructing the man's middle name and favorite perfume from the color of the bark on the tree. You people are always telling about wonderful stunts of Lad's. And that's all the evidence there generally is to it."
"No, Mr. Glure," denied the Master, taking astrangle hold on his temper. "No. That's not quite all the evidence that we have for our brag about Lad. For instance, we had the evidence of your own eyes when he herded that flock of stampeded prize sheep for you last spring, and of your own eyes again when he won the 'Gold Hat' cup at the Labor Day Dog Show. No, there's plenty of evidence that Lad is worth his salt. Let it go at that. Shall we get back to the house? It's fairly cool on the veranda. By the way, what was it you wanted me to call Lad for? You asked to see him. And——"
"Why, here's the idea," explained Glure, as they made their way through the heat back to the shade of the porch. "It's what I drove over here to talk with you about. I'm making the rounds of all this region. And, say, I didn't ask to see Lad. I asked if you still had him. I asked because——"
"Oh," apologized the Master. "I thought you wanted to see him. Most people ask to if he doesn't happen to be round when they call. We——"
"I asked you if you still had him," expounded Mr. Glure, "because I hoped you hadn't. I hoped you were more of a patriot."
"Patriot?" echoed the Master, puzzled.
"Yes. That's why I'm making this tour of the country: to rouse dog owners to a sense of their duty. I've just formed a local branch of the Food Conservation League and——"
"It's a splendid organization," warmly approved the Master, "but what have dog owners to——"
"To do with it?" supplemented Glure. "They have nothing to do with it, more's the pity. But they ought to. That's why I volunteered to make this canvass. It was my own idea. Some of the others were foolish enough to object, but as I had founded and financed this Hampton branch of the League——"
"What 'canvass' are you talking about?" asked the Master, who was far too familiar with Glure's ways to let the man become fairly launched on a pæan of self-adulation. "You say it's 'to rouse dog owners to a sense of their duty.' Along what line? We dog men have raised a good many thousand dollars this past year by our Red Cross shows and by our subscriptions to all sorts of war funds. The Blue Cross, too, and the Collie Ambulance Fund have——"
"This is something better than the mere giving of surplus coin," broke in Glure. "It is something that involves sacrifice. A needful sacrifice for our country. A sacrifice that may win the war."
"Count me in on it, then!" cordially approved the Master. "Count in all real dog men. What is the 'sacrifice'?"
"It's my own idea," modestly boasted Glure, adding: "That is, of course, it's been agitated by other people in letters to newspapers and all that,but I'm the first to go out and put it into actual effect."
"Shoot!" suggested the weary Master.
"That's the very word!" exclaimed Glure. "That's the very thing I want dog owners to combine in doing. To shoot!"
"To—what?"
"To shoot—or poison—or asphyxiate," expounded Glure, warming to his theme. "In short, to get rid of every dog."
The Master's jaw swung ajar and his eyes bulged. His face began to assume an unbecoming bricky hue. Glure went on:
"You see, neighbor, our nation is up against it. When war was declared last month it found us unprepared. We've got to pitch in and economize. Every mouthful of food wasted here is a new lease of life to the Kaiser. We're cutting down on sugar and meat and fat, but for every cent we save that way we're throwing away a dollar in feeding our dogs. Our dogs that are a useless, senseless, costly luxury! They serve no utilitarian end. They eat food that belongs to soldiers. I'm trying to brighten the corner where I am by persuading my neighbors to get rid of their dogs. When I've proved what a blessing it is I'm going to inaugurate a nation-wide campaign from California to New York, from——"
"Hold on!" snapped the Master, finding some of his voice and, in the same effort, mislaying muchof his temper. "What wall-eyed idiocy do you think you're trying to talk? How many dog men do you expect to convert to such a crazy doctrine? Have you tried any others? Or am I the first mark?"
"I'm sorry you take it this way," reproved Glure. "I had hoped you were more broad-minded, but you are as pig-headed as the rest."
"The 'rest,' hey?" the Master caught him up. "The 'rest?' Then I'm not the first? I'm glad they had sense enough to send you packing."
"They were blind animal worshipers, both of them," said Glure aggrievedly, "just as you are. One of them yelled something after me that I sincerely hope I didn't hear aright. If I did, I have a strong action for slander against him. The other chucklehead so far forgot himself as to threaten to take a shotgun to me if I didn't get off his land."
"I'm sorry!" sighed the Master. "For both of them seem to have covered the ground so completely that there isn't anything unique for me to say—or do. Now listen to me for two minutes. I've read a few of those anti-dog letters in the newspapers, but you're the first person I've met in real life who backs such rot. And I'm going——"
"It is not a matter for argument," loftily began Glure.
"Yes it is," asserted the Master. "Everything is, except religion and love and toothache. You say dogs ought to be destroyed as a patriotic dutybecause they aren't utilitarian. There's where you're wrong at the very beginning. Dead wrong. I'm not talking about the big kennels where one man keeps a hundred dogs as he'd herd so many prize hogs. Though look what the owners of such kennels did for the country at the last New York show at Madison Square Garden! Every penny of the thousands and thousands of dollars in profits from the show went to the Red Cross. I'm speaking of the man who keeps one dog or two or even three dogs, and keeps them as pets. I'm speaking of myself, if you like. Do you know what it costs me per week to feed my dogs?"
"I'm not looking for statistics in——"
"No, I suppose not. Few fanatics are. Well, I figured it out a few weeks ago, after I read one of those anti-dog letters. The total upkeep of all my dogs averages just under a dollar a week. A bare fifty dollars a year. That's true. And——"
"And that fifty dollars," interposed Glure eagerly, "would pay for a soldier's——"
"It would not!" contradicted the Master, trying to keep some slight grip on his sliding temper. "But I can tell you what itwoulddo: Part of it would go for burglar insurance, which I don't need now, because no stranger dares to sneak up to my house at night. Part of it would go to make up for things stolen around The Place. For instance, in the harness room of my stable there are five sets of good harness and two or three extra automobiletires. Unless I'm very much mistaken, the best of those would be gone now if Lad hadn't just treed the man who was after them."
"Pshaw!" exploded Glure in fine scorn. "We saw no man there. There was no proof of——"
"There was proof enough for me," continued the Master. "And if Lad hadn't scented the fellow one of the other dogs would. As I told you, mine is the only house—and mine is the only stable—on this side of the lake that has never been looted. Mine is the only orchard—and mine is the only garden—that is never robbed. And this is the only place, on our side of the lake, where dogs are kept at large for twelve months of the year. My dogs' entry fees at Red Cross shows have more than paid for their keep, and those fees went straight to charity."
"But——"
"The women of my family are as safe here, day and night, as if I had a machine-gun company on guard. That assurance counts for more than a little, in peace of mind, back here in the North Jersey hinterland. I'm not taking into account the several other ways the dogs bring in cash income to us. Not even the cash Lad turned over to the Red Cross when we sent that $1600 'Gold Hat' cup he won, to be melted down. And I'm not speaking of our dogs' comradeship, and what that means to us. Our dogs are an asset in every way—not a liability. They aren't deadheads either.For I pay the state tax on them every year. They're true, loyal, companionable chums, and they're an ornament to The Place as well as its best safeguard. All in return for table scraps and skim milk and less than a weekly dollar's worth of stale bread and cast-off butcher-shop bones. Where do you figure out the 'saving' for the war chest if I got rid of them?"
"As I said," repeated Glure with cold austerity, "it's not a matter for argument. I came here hoping to——"
"I'm not given to mawkish sentiment," went on the Master shamefacedly, "but on the day your fool law for dog exterminating goes into effect there'll be a piteous crying of little children all over the whole world—of little children mourning for the gentle protecting playmates they loved. And there'll be a million men and women whose lives have all at once become lonely and empty and miserable. Isn't this war causing enough crying and loneliness and misery without your adding to it by killing our dogs? For the matter of that, haven't the army dogs over in Europe been doing enough for mankind to warrant a square deal for their stay-at-home brothers? Haven't they?"
"That's a mass of sentimental bosh," declared Glure. "All of it."
"It is," willingly confessed the Master. "So are most of the worth-while things in life, if you reduce them to their lowest terms."
"You know what a fine group of dogs I had," said Glure, starting off on a new tack. "I had a group that cost me, dog for dog, more than any other kennel in the state. Grand dogs too. You remember my wonderful Merle, for instance, and——"
"And your rare 'Prussian sheep dog'—or was it a prune-hound?—that a Chicago man sold to you for $1100," supplemented the Master, swallowing a grin. "I remember. I remember them all. What then?"
"Well," resumed Glure, "no one can accuse me of not practicing what I preach. I began this splendid campaign by getting rid of every dog I owned. So I——"
"Yes," agreed the Master. "I read all about that last month in your local paper. Distemper had run through your kennel, and you tried doctoring the dogs on a theory of your own instead of sending for a vet. So they all died. Tough luck! Or perhaps you got rid of them that way on purpose? For the good of the Cause? I'm sorry about the Merle. He was——"
"I see there's no use talking to you," sighed Glure in disgust, ponderously rising and waddling toward his car. "I'm disappointed; because I hoped you were less bone-brained and more patriotic than these yokels round here."
"I'm not," cheerily conceded the Master. "I'm not, I'm glad to say. Not a bit."
"Then," pursued Glure, climbing into the car, "since you feel that way about it, I suppose there's no use asking you to come to the little cattle show I'm organizing for week after next, because that's for the Food Conservation League too. And since you're so out of sympathy with——"
"I'm not out of sympathy with the League," asserted the Master. "Its card is in our kitchen window. We've signed its pledge and we're boosting it in every way we know how, except by killing our dogs; and that's no part of the League's programme, as you know very well. Tell me more about the cattle show."
"It's a neighborhood affair," said Glure sulkily, yet eager to secure any possible entrants. "Just a bunch of home-raised cattle. Cup and rosette for best of each recognized breed, and the usual ribbons for second and third. Three dollars an entry. Only one class for each breed. Every entrant must have been raised by the exhibitor. Gate admission fifty cents. Red Cross to get the gross proceeds. I've offered the use of my south meadow at Glure Towers—just as I did for the specialty dog show. I've put up a hundred dollars toward the running expenses too. Micklesen's to judge."
"I don't go in for stock raising," said the Master. "My little Alderney heifer is the only head of quality stock I ever bred. I doubt if she is worth taking up there, but I'll be glad to take her if onlyto swell the competition list. Send me a blank, please."
Lad trotted dejectedly back to the house as Glure's car chugged away up the drive. Lad was glumly unhappy. He had had no trouble at all in catching the scent of the man he had treed. He had followed the crashingly made trail through undergrowth and woodland until it had emerged into the highroad.
And there, perforce, Lad had paused. For, taught from puppyhood, he knew the boundaries of The Place as well as did the Mistress or the Master, and he knew equally well that his own jurisdiction ended at those boundaries. Beyond them he might not chase even the most loathed intruder. The highroad was sanctuary.
Wherefore at the road edge he stopped and turned slowly back. His pursuit was ended, but not his anger, nor his memory of the marauder's scent. The man had trespassed slyly on The Place. He had gotten away unpunished. These things rankled in the big dog's mind....
It was a pretty little cattle show and staged in a pretty setting withal—at Glure Towers, two weeks later. The big sunken meadow on the verge of the Ramapo River was lined on two sides with impromptu sheds. The third side was blocked by something between a grand stand and a marquee. The tree-hung river bordered the fourth side. In thefield's center was the roped-off judging inclosure into which the cattle, class by class, were to be led.
Above the pastoral scene brooded the architectural crime, known as The Towers—homestead and stronghold of Hamilcar Q. Glure, Esquire.
Glure had made much money in Wall Street—a crooked little street that begins with a graveyard and ends in a river. Having waxed indecently rich, he had erected for himself a hideously expensive estate among the Ramapo Mountains and had settled down to the task of patronizing his rural neighbors. There he elected to be known as the "Wall Street Farmer," a title that delighted not only himself but everyone else in the region.
There was, in this hinterland stretch, a friendly and constant rivalry among the natives and other old residents in the matter of stock raising. Horses, cattle, pigs, chickens, even a very few sheep were bred for generations along lines which their divers owners had laid out—lines which those owners fervently believed must some day produce perfection.
Each owner or group of owners had his own special ideas as to the best way to produce this super-stock result. The local stock shows formed the only means of proving or disproving the excellence of the varied theories. Hence these shows were looked upon as barnyard supreme courts.
Mr. Glure had begun his career in the neighborhood with a laudable aim of excelling everybodyelse in everything. He had gone, heart and soul, into stock producing and as he had no breeding theories of his own he proceeded to acquire a set. As it would necessarily take years to work out these beliefs, he bridged the gap neatly by purchasing and importing prize livestock and by entering it against the home-raised products of his neighbors.
Strangely enough, this did not add to the popularity which he did not possess. Still more strangely, it did not add materially to his prestige as an exhibitor, for the judges had an exasperating way of handing him a second or third prize ribbon and then of awarding the coveted blue rosette to the owner and breeder of some local exhibit.
After a long time it began to dawn upon Glure that narrow neighborhood prejudice deemed it unsportsmanlike to buy prize stock and exhibit it as one's own. At approximately the same time three calves were born to newly imported prize cows in the two-acre model barns of Glure Towers, and with them was born Glure's newest idea.
No one could deny he had bred these calves himself. They were born on his own place and of his own high-pedigreed cattle. Three breeds were represented among the trio of specimens. By points and by lineage they were well-nigh peerless. Wherefore the plan for a show of neighborhood"home-raised" cattle. At length Glure felt he was coming into his own.
The hinterland folk had fought shy of Glure since the dog show wherein he had sought to win the capital prize by formulating a set of conditions that could be filled by no entrant except a newly imported champion Merle of his own.
But the phrase "home-raised" now proved a bait that few of the region's stock lovers could resist; and on the morning of the show no fewer than fifty-two cattle of standard breeds were shuffling or lowing in the big impromptu sheds.
A farm hand, the day before, had led to the show ground The Place's sole entrant—the pretty little Alderney heifer of which the Master had spoken to Glure and which, by the way, was destined to win nothing higher than a third-prize ribbon.
For that matter, to end the suspense, the best of the three Glure calves won only a second prize, all the first for their three breeds going to two nonplutocratic North Jerseymen who had bred the ancestors of their entrants for six generations.
The Mistress and the Master motored over to Glure Towers on the morning of the show in their one car. Lad went with them. He always went with them.
Not that any dog could hope to find interest in a cattle show, but a dog would rather go anywhere with his Master than to stay at home without him.Witness the glad alacrity wherewith the weariest dog deserts a snug fireside in the vilest weather for the joy of a master-accompanying walk.
A tire puncture delayed the trip. The show was about to begin when the car was at last parked behind the sunken meadow. The Mistress and the Master, with Lad at their heels, started across the meadow afoot toward the well-filled grand-stand.
Several acquaintances in the stand waved to them as they advanced. Also, before they had traversed more than half the meadow's area their host bore down upon them.
Mr. Glure (dressed, as usual, for the Occasion) looked like a blend of Landseer's "Edinburgh Drover" and a theater-program picture of "What the Man Will Wear."
He had been walking beside a garishly liveried groom who was leading an enormous Holstein bull toward the judging enclosure. The bull was steered by a five-foot bar, the end snapped to a ring in his nose.
"Hello, good people!" Mr. Glure boomed, pump-handling the unenthusiastic Mistress' right hand and bestowing a jarringly annoying slap upon the Master's shoulder. "Glad to see you! You're late. Almost too late for the best part of the show. Before judging begins, I'm having some of my choicest European stock paraded in the ring. Just for exhibition, you know. Not for a contest. Ilike to give a treat to some of these farmers who think they know how to breed cattle."
"Yes?" queried the Master, who could think of nothing cleverer to say.
"Take that bull, Tenebris, of mine, for instance," proclaimed Glure, with a wave toward the approaching Holstein and his guide. "Best ton of livestock that ever stood on four legs. Look how he——"
Glure paused in his lecture for he saw that both the Mistress and the Master were staring, not at the bull, but at the beast's leader. The spectacle of a groom in gaudy livery, on duty at a cattle show, was all but too much for their gravity.
"You're looking at that boy of mine, hey? Fine, well-set-up chap, isn't he? A faithful boy. Devoted to me. Slavishly devoted. Not like most of these grumpy, independent Jersey rustics. Not much. He's a treasure, Winston is. Used to be chief handler for some of the biggest cattle breeders in the East he tells me. I got hold of him by chance, and just by the sheerest good luck, a week or so ago. Met him on the road and he asked for a lift. He——"
It was then that Lad disgraced himself and his deities, and proved himself all unworthy to appear in so refined an assembly. The man in livery had convoyed the bull to within a few feet of the proudly exhorting Glure. Now, without growl orother sign of warning, the hitherto peaceable dog changed into a murder machine.
In a single mighty bound he cleared the narrowing distance between himself and the advancing groom.
The leap sent him hurtling through the air, an eighty-pound furry catapult, straight for the man's throat.
Over and beyond the myriad cattle odors, Lad had suddenly recognized a scent that spelt deathless hatred. The scent had been verified by a single glance at the brilliantly clad man in livery. Wherefore the mad charge.
The slashing jaws missed their mark in the man's throat by a bare half inch. That they missed it at all was because the man also recognized Lad, and shrank back in mortal terror.
Even before the eighty-pound weight, smashing against his chest, sent the groom sprawling backward to the ground, Lad's slashing jaws had found a hold in place of the one they had missed.
This grip was on the liveried shoulder, into which the fangs sank to their depth. Down went the man, screaming, the dog atop of him.
"Lad!" cried the Mistress, aghast. "Lad!" Through the avenging rage that misted his brain the great dog heard. With a choking sound that was almost a sob he relinquished his hold and turned slowly from his prey.
The Master and Glure instinctively took a steptoward the approaching dog and the writhingly prostrate man. Then, still more instinctively, and without even coming to a standstill before going into reverse, they both sprang back. They would have sprung further had not the roped walls of the show ring checked them.
For Tenebris had taken a sudden and active part in the scene.
The gigantic Holstein during his career in Europe had trebly won his title to champion. And during the three years before his exportation to America he had gored to death no fewer than three over-confident stable attendants. The bull's homicidal temper, no less than the dazzling price offered by Glure, had caused his owner to sell him to the transatlantic bidder.
A bull's nose is the tenderest spot of his anatomy. Next to his eyes, he guards its safety most zealously. Thus, with a stout leading-bar between him and his conductor, Tenebris was harmless enough.
But the conductor just now had let go of that bar, as Lad's weight had smitten him. Freed, Tenebris had stood for an instant in perplexity.
Fiercely he flung his gnarled head to one side to see the cause of the commotion. The gesture swung the heavy leading-bar, digging the nose ring cruelly into his sensitive nostrils. The pain maddened Tenebris. A final plunging twist of the head—and the bar's weight tore the nose ring free from the nostrils.
Tenebris bellowed thunderously at the climax of pain. Then he realized he had shaken off the only thing that gave humans a control over him. A second bellow—a furious pawing of the earth—and the bull lowered his head. His evil eyes glared about him in search of something to kill.
It was the sight of this motion which sent the Master and Glure recoiling against the show-ring ropes.
In almost the same move the Master caught up his wife and swung her over the top rope, into the ring. He followed her into that refuge's fragile safety with a speed that held no dignity whatever. Glure, seeing the action, wasted no time in wriggling through the ropes after him.
Tenebris did not follow them.
One thing and only one his red eyes saw: On the ground, not six feet away, rolled and moaned a man. The man was down. He was helpless. Tenebris charged.
A bull plunging at a near-by object shuts both eyes. A cow does not. Which may—or may not—explain the Spanish theory that bullfights are safer than cow-fights. To this eye-closing trait many a hard-pressed matador has owed his life.
Tenebris, both eyes screwed shut, hurled his 2000-pound bulk at the prostrate groom. Head down, nose in, short horns on a level with the earth and barely clearing it, he made his rush.
But at the very first step he became aware thatsomething was amiss with his pleasantly anticipated charge. It did not follow specifications or precedent.
All because a heavy something had flung its weight against the side of his lowered head, and a new and unbearable pain was torturing his blood-filled nostrils.
Tenebris swerved. He veered to one side, throwing up his head to clear it of this unseen torment.
As a result, the half-lifted horns grazed the fallen man. The pointed hoofs missed him altogether. At the same moment the weight was gone from against the bull's head, and the throbbing stab from his nostrils.
Pausing uncertainly, Tenebris opened his eyes and glared about him. A yard or two away a shaggy dog was rising from the tumble caused by the jerky uptossing of the bull's head.