Turning to the Master, he added:
"I suppose one of us will have to stand guard over him while the other one hunts up the sheep. Shall I——"
"Neither of us need do that," said the Master. "Lad!"
The collie started eagerly forward, and Schwartz started still more eagerly backward.
"Watch him!" commanded the Master. "Watchhim!"
It was an order Lad had learned to follow in the many times when the Mistress and the Master left him to guard the car or to do sentry duty over some other article of value. He understood. He would have preferred to deal with this enemy according to his own lights. But the Master had spoken. So, standing at view, the collie looked longingly at Schwartz's throat.
"Keep perfectly still!" the Master warned theprisoner, "and perhaps he won't go for you. Move, and he most surely will.Watchhim, Laddie!"
Maclay and the Master left the captive and his guard, and set forth on a flashlight-illumined tour of the knoll. It was a desolate spot, far back in the swamp and more than a mile from any road; a place visited not three times a year, except in the shooting season.
In less than a half-minute the plaintive ba-a-a of a sheep guided the searchers to the left of the knoll where stood a thick birch-and-alder copse. Around this they circled until they reached a narrow opening where the branch-ends, several feet above ground, were flecked with hanks of wool.
Squirming through the aperture in single file, the investigators found what they sought.
In the tight-woven copse's center was a small clearing. In this, was a rudely wattled pen some nine feet square; and in the pen were bunched six sheep.
An occasional scared bleat from deeper in the copse told the whereabouts of the sheep Schwartz had taken from the barnyard that night and which he had dropped at Lad's onslaught before he could put it in the pen. On the ground, just outside the enclosure, lay the smashed lantern.
"Sheep on the hoof are worth $12.50 per, at the Paterson Market," mused the Master aloud, as Maclay blinked owlishly at the treasure trove. "There are $75 worth of sheep in that pen, andthere would have been three more of them before morning if we hadn't butted in on Herr Schwartz's overtime labors. To get three sheep at night, it was well worth his while to switch suspicion to Lad by killing a fourth sheep every time, and mangling its throat with a stripping-knife. Only, he mangled it too efficiently. There was too muchKulturabout the mangling. It wasn't ragged enough. That's what first gave me my idea. That, and the way the missing sheep always vanished into more or less thin air. You see, he probably——"
"But," sputtered Maclay, "why four each night? Why——"
"You saw how long it took him to get one of them here," replied the Master. "He didn't dare to start in till the Romaines were asleep, and he had to be back in time to catch Lad at the slaughter before Titus got out of bed. He wouldn't dare hide them any nearer home. Titus has spent most of his time both days in hunting for them. Schwartz was probably waiting to get the pen nice and full. Then he'd take a day off to visit his relatives. And he'd round up this tidy bunch and drive them over to the Ridgewood road, through the woods, and so on to the Paterson Market. It was a pretty little scheme all around."
"But," urged Maclay, as they turned back to where Lad still kept his avid vigil, "I still hold you were taking big chances in gambling $1000and your dog's life that Schwartz would do the same thing again within twenty-four hours. He might have waited a day or two, till——"
"No," contradicted the Master, "that's just what he mightn't do. You see, I wasn't perfectly sure whether it was Schwartz or Romaine—or both—who were mixed up in this. So I set the trap at both ends. If it was Romaine, it was worth $1000 to him to have more sheep killed within twenty-four hours. If it was Schwartz—well, that's why I made him try to hit Lad and why I made him try to kick me. The dog went for him both times, and that was enough to make Schwartz want him killed for his own safety as well as for revenge. So he was certain to arrange another killing within the twenty-four hours if only to force me to shoot Lad. He couldn't steal or kill sheep by daylight. I picked the only hours he could do it in. If he'd gotten Lad killed, he'd probably have invented another sheep-killer dog to help him swipe the rest of the flock, or until Romaine decided to do the watching. We——"
"It was clever of you," cordially admitted Maclay. "Mighty clever, old man! I——"
"It was my wife who worked it out, you know," the Master reminded him. "I admit my own cleverness, of course, only (like a lot of men's money) it's all in my wife's name. Come on, Lad! You can guard Herr Schwartz just as well by walking behind him. We're going to wind up theevening's fishing trip by tendering a surprise party to dear genial old Mr. Titus Romaine. I hope the flashlights will hold out long enough for me to get a clear look at his face when he sees us."
There were but three collies on The Place in those days. There was a long shelf in the Master's study whereupon shimmered and glinted a rank of silver cups of varying sizes and shapes. Two of The Place's dogs had won them all.
Above the shelf hung two huge picture-frames. In the center of each was the small photograph of a collie. Beneath each likeness was a certified pedigree, a-bristle with the red-letter names of champions. Surrounding the pictures and pedigrees, the whole remaining space in both frames was filled with blue ribbons—the very meanest bit of silk in either was a semi-occasional "Reserve Winners"—while, strung along the tops of the frames from side to side, ran a line of medals.
Cups, medals, and ribbons alike had been won by The Place's two great collies, Lad and Bruce. (Those were their "kennel names." Their official titles on the A. K. C. registry list were high-sounding and needlessly long.)
Lad was growing old. His reign on The Placewas drawing toward a benignant close. His muzzle was almost snow-white and his once graceful lines were beginning to show the oncoming heaviness of age. No longer could he hope to hold his own, in form and carriage, with younger collies at the local dog-shows where once he had carried all before him.
Bruce—"Sunnybank Goldsmith"—was six years Lad's junior. He was tawny of coat, kingly of bearing; a dog without a fault of body or of disposition; stately as the boar-hounds that the painters of old used to love to depict in their portraits of monarchs.
The Place's third collie was Lad's son, Wolf. But neither cup nor ribbon did Wolf have to show as an excuse for his presence on earth, nor would he have won recognition in the smallest and least exclusive collie-show.
For Wolf was a collie only by courtesy. His breeding was as pure as was any champion's, but he was one of those luckless types to be found in nearly every litter—a throwback to some forgotten ancestor whose points were all defective. Not even the glorious pedigree of Lad, his father, could make Wolf look like anything more than he was—a dog without a single physical trait that followed the best collie standards.
In spite of all this he was beautiful. His gold-and-white coat was almost as bright and luxuriant as any prize-winner's. He had, in a general way,the collie head and brush. But an expert, at the most casual glance, would have noted a shortness of nose and breadth of jaw and a shape of ear and shoulder that told dead against him.
The collie is supposed to be descended direct from the wolf, and Wolf looked far more like his original ancestors than like a thoroughbred collie. From puppyhood he had been the living image, except in color, of a timber-wolf, and it was from this queer throw-back trait that he had won his name.
Lad was the Mistress' dog. Bruce was the Master's. Wolf belonged to the Boy, having been born on the latter's birthday.
For the first six months of his life Wolf lived at The Place on sufferance. Nobody except the Boy took any special interest in him. He was kept only because his better-formed brothers had died in early puppyhood and because the Boy, from the outset, had loved him.
At six months it was discovered that he was a natural watch-dog. Also that he never barked except to give an alarm. A collie is, perhaps, the most excitable of all large dogs. The veriest trifle will set him off into a thunderous paroxysm of barking. But Wolf, the Boy noted, never barked without strong cause.
He had the rare genius for guarding that so few of his breed possess. For not one dog in ten merits the title of watch-dog. The duties thatshould go with that office are far more than the mere clamorous announcement of a stranger's approach, or even the attacking of such a stranger.
The born watch-dog patrols his beat once in so often during the night. At all times he must sleep with one ear and one eye alert. By day or by night he must discriminate between the visitor whose presence is permitted and the trespasser whose presence is not. He must know what class of undesirable to scare off with a growl and what class needs stronger measures. He must also know to the inch the boundaries of his own master's land.
Few of these things can be taught; all of them must be instinctive. Wolf had been born with them. Most dogs are not.
His value as a watch-dog gave Wolf a settled position of his own on The Place. Lad was growing old and a little deaf. He slept, at night, under the piano in the music-room. Bruce was worth too much money to be left at large in the night time for any clever dog-thief to steal. So he slept in the study. Rex, a huge mongrel, was tied up at night, at the lodge, a furlong away. Thus Wolf alone was left on guard at the house. The piazza was his sentry-box. From this shelter he was wont to set forth three or four times a night, in all sorts of weather, to make his rounds.
The Place covered twenty-five acres. It ran from the high-road, a furlong above the house, down to the lake that bordered it on two sides. On thethird side was the forest. Boating-parties, late at night, had a pleasant way of trying to raid the lakeside apple-orchard. Tramps now and then strayed down the drive from the main road. Prowlers, crossing the woods, sometimes sought to use The Place's sloping lawn as a short cut to the turnpike below the falls.
For each and all of these intruders Wolf had an ever-ready welcome. A whirl of madly pattering feet through the dark, a snarling growl far down in the throat, a furry shape catapulting into the air—and the trespasser had his choice between a scurrying retreat or a double set of white fangs in the easiest-reached part of his anatomy.
The Boy was inordinately proud of his pet's watchdog prowess. He was prouder yet of Wolf's almost incredible sharpness of intelligence, his quickness to learn, his knowledge of word meaning, his zest for romping, his perfect obedience, the tricks he had taught himself without human tutelage—in short, all the things that were a sign of the brain he had inherited from Lad.
But none of these talents overcame the sad fact that Wolf was not a show dog and that he looked positively underbred and shabby alongside of his sire or of Bruce. Which rankled at the Boy's heart; even while loyalty to his adored pet would not let him confess to himself or to anyone else that Wolf was not the most flawlessly perfect dog on earth.
Under-sized (for a collie), slim, graceful, fierce,affectionate, Wolf was the Boy's darling, and he was Lad's successor as official guardian of The Place. But all his youthful life, thus far, had brought him nothing more than this—while Lad and Bruce had been winning prize after prize at one local dog show after another within a radius of thirty miles.
The Boy was duly enthusiastic over the winning of each trophy; but always, for days thereafter, he was more than usually attentive to Wolf to make up for his pet's dearth of prizes.
Once or twice the Boy had hinted, in a veiled, tentative way, that young Wolf might perhaps win something, too, if he were allowed to go to a show. The Master, never suspecting what lay behind the cautious words, would always laugh in good-natured derision, or else he would point in silence to Wolf's head and then to Lad's.
The Boy knew enough about collies to carry the subject no further. For even his eyes of devotion could not fail to mark the difference in aspect between his dog and the two prize-winners.
One July morning both Lad and Bruce went through an hour of anguish. Both of them, one after the other, were plunged into a bath-tub full of warm water and naphtha soap-suds and Lux; and were scrubbed right unmercifully, after which they were rubbed and curried and brushed for another hour until their coats shone resplendent. All day,at intervals, the brushing and combing were kept up.
Lad was indignant at such treatment, and he took no pains to hide his indignation. He knew perfectly well, from the undue attention, that a dog show was at hand. But not for a year or more had he himself been made ready for one. His lake baths and his daily casual brushing at the Mistress' hands had been, in that time, his only form of grooming. He had thought himself graduated forever from the nuisance of going to shows.
"What's the idea of dolling up old Laddie like that?" asked the Boy, as he came in for luncheon and found the Mistress busy with comb and dandy-brush over the unhappy dog.
"For the Fourth of July Red Cross Dog Show at Ridgewood to-morrow," answered his mother, looking up, a little flushed from her exertions.
"But I thought you and Dad said last year he was too old to show any more," ventured the Boy.
"This time is different," said the Mistress. "It's a specialty show, you see, and there is a cup offered for 'the bestveterandog of any recognized breed.' Isn't that fine? We didn't hear of the Veteran Cup till Dr. Hooper telephoned to us about it this morning. So we're getting Lad ready. Therecan'tbe any other veteran as splendid as he is."
"No," agreed the Boy, dully, "I suppose not."
He went into the dining-room, surreptitiously helped himself to a handful of lump-sugar andpassed on out to the veranda. Wolf was sprawled half-asleep on the driveway lawn in the sun.
The dog's wolflike brush began to thump against the shaven grass. Then, as the Boy stood on the veranda edge and snapped his fingers, Wolf got up from his soft resting-place and started toward him, treading mincingly and with a sort of swagger, his slanting eyes half shut, his mouth a-grin.
"You know I've got sugar in my pocket as well as if you saw it," said the Boy. "Stop where you are."
Though the Boy accompanied his order with no gesture nor change of tone, the dog stopped dead short ten feet away.
"Sugar is bad for dogs," went on the Boy. "It does things to their teeth and their digestions. Didn't anybody ever tell you that, Wolfie?"
The young dog's grin grew wider. His slanting eyes closed to mere glittering slits. He fidgeted a little, his tail wagging fast.
"But I guess a dog's got to havesomekind of consolation purse when he can't go to a show," resumed the Boy. "Catch!"
As he spoke he suddenly drew a lump of sugar from his pocket and, with the same motion, tossed it in the direction of Wolf. Swift as was the Boy's action, Wolf's eye was still quicker. Springing high in air, the dog caught the flung cube of sugar as it flew above him and to one side. Asecond and a third lump were caught as deftly as the first.
Then the Boy took from his pocket the fourth and last lump. Descending the steps, he put his left hand across Wolf's eyes. With his right he flipped the lump of sugar into a clump of shrubbery.
"Find it!" he commanded, lifting the blindfold from the eyes of his pet.
Wolf darted hither and thither, stopped once or twice to sniff, then began to circle the nearer stretch of lawn, nose to ground. In less than two minutes he merged from the shrubbery placidly crunching the sugar-lump between his mighty jaws.
"And yet they say you aren't fit to be shown!" exclaimed the Boy, fondling the dog's ears. "Gee, but I'd give two years' growth if you could have a cup! You deserve one, all right; if only those judges had sense enough to study a collie's brain as well as the outside of his head!"
Wolf ran his nose into the cupped palm and whined. From the tone underlying the words, he knew the Boy was unhappy, and he wanted to be of help.
The Boy went into the house again to find his parents sitting down to lunch. Gathering his courage in both hands, he asked:
"Is there going to be a Novice Class for collies at Ridgewood, Dad?"
"Why, yes," said the Master, "I suppose so. There always is."
"Do—do they give cups for the Novice Class?" inquired the Boy, with studied carelessness.
"Of course they don't," said the Master, adding reminiscently, "though the first time we showed Lad we put him in the Novice Class and he won the blue ribbon there, so we had to go into the Winners' Class afterward. He got the Winner's Cup, you remember. So, indirectly, the Novice Class won him a cup."
"I see," said the Boy, not at all interested in this bit of ancient history. Then speaking very fast, he went on:
"Well, a ribbon's better than nothing! Dad, will you do me a favor? Will you let me enter Wolfie for the Novice Class to-morrow? I'll pay the fee out of my allowance. Will you, Dad?"
The Master looked at his son in blank amazement. Then he threw back his head and laughed loudly. The Boy flushed crimson and bit his lips.
"Why, dear!" hurriedly interposed the Mistress, noting her son's discomfiture. "You wouldn't want Wolf to go there and be beaten by a lot of dogs that haven't half his brains or prettiness! It wouldn't be fair or kind to Wolf. He's so clever, he'd know in a moment what was happening. He'd know he was beaten. Nearly all dogs do. No, it wouldn't be fair to him."
"There's a 'mutt' class among the specials, Dr.Hopper says," put in the Master, jocosely. "You might——"
"Wolf'snota mutt!" flashed the Boy, hotly. "He's no more of a mutt than Bruce or Lad, or Grey Mist, or Southport Sample, or any of the best ones. He has as good blood as all of them. Lad's his father, and Squire of Tytton was his grandfather, and Wishaw Clinker was his——"
"I'm sorry, son," interposed the Master, catching his wife's eye and dropping his tone of banter. "I apologize to you and Wolf. He's not a 'mutt.' There's no better blood in colliedom than his, on both sides. But Mother is right. You'd only be putting him up to be beaten, and you wouldn't like that. He hasn't a single point that isn't hopelessly bad from a judge's view. We've never taken a loser to a show from The Place. You don't want us to begin now, do you?"
"He has more brains that any dog alive, except Lad!" declared the Boy, sullenly. "That ought to count."
"It ought to," agreed the Mistress, soothingly, "and I wish it did. If it did, I know he'd win."
"It makes me sick to see a bushel of cups go to dogs that don't know enough to eat their own dinners," snorted the Boy. "I'm not talking about Lad and Bruce, but the thoroughbreds that are brought up in kennels and that have all their sense sacrificed for points. Why, Wolf's the cleverest—best—and he'll never even have one cup to show for it. He——"
He choked, and began to eat at top speed. The Master and the Mistress looked at each other and said nothing. They understood their son's chagrin, as only a dog-lover could understand it. The Mistress reached out and patted the Boy gently on the shoulder.
Next morning, directly after early breakfast, Lad and Bruce were put into the tonneau of the car. The Mistress and the Master and the Boy climbed in, and the twelve-mile journey to Ridgewood began.
Wolf, left to guard The Place, watched the departing show-goers until the car turned out of the gate, a furlong above. Then, with a sigh, he curled up on the porch mat, his nose between his snowy little paws, and prepared for a day of loneliness.
The Red Cross dog show, that Fourth of July, was a triumph for The Place.
Bruce won ribbon after ribbon in the collie division, easily taking "Winners" at the last, and thus adding another gorgeous silver cup to his collection. Then, the supreme event of the day—"Best dog in the show"—was called. And the winners of each breed were led into the ring. The judges scanned and handled the group of sixteen for barely five minutes before awarding to Bruce the dark-blue rosette and the "Best Dog" cup.
The crowd around the ring's railing applaudedloudly. But they applauded still more loudly a little later, when, after a brief survey of nine aged thoroughbreds, the judge pointed to Lad, who was standing like a mahogany statue at one end of the ring.
These nine dogs of various breeds had all been famed prize-winners in their time. And above all the rest, Lad was adjudged worthy of the "veteran cup!" There was a haze of happy tears in the Mistress' eyes as she led him from the ring. It seemed a beautiful climax for his grand old life. She wiped her eyes, unashamed, whispering praise the while to her stately dog.
"Why don't you trundle your car into the ring?" one disgruntled exhibitor demanded of the Mistress. "Maybe you'd win a cup withthat, too. You seem to have gotten one for everything else you brought along."
It was a celebration evening for the two prize dogs, when they got home, but everybody was tired from the day's events, and by ten o'clock the house was dark. Wolf, on his veranda mat, alone of all The Place's denizens, was awake.
Vaguely Wolf knew the other dogs had done some praiseworthy thing. He would have known it, if for no other reason, from the remorseful hug the Boy had given him before going to bed.
Well, some must win honors and petting and the right to sleep indoors; while others must plod along at the only work they were fit for, and must sleepout, in thunderstorm or clear, in heat or freezing cold. That was life. Being only a dog, Wolf was too wise to complain of life. He took things as he found them, making the very best of his share.
He snoozed, now, in the warm darkness. Two hours later he got up, stretched himself lazily fore and aft, collie-fashion, and trotted forth for the night's first patrol of the grounds.
A few minutes afterward he was skirting the lake edge at the foot of the lawn, a hundred yards below the house. The night was pitch dark, except for pulses of heat-lightning, now and then, far to westward. Half a mile out on the lake two men in an anchored scow were cat-fishing.
A small skiff was slipping along very slowly, not fifty feet off shore.
Wolf did not give the skiff a second glance. Boats were no novelty to him, nor did they interest him in the least—except when they showed signs of running ashore somewhere along his beat.
This skiff was not headed for land, but was paralleling the shore. It crept along at a snail-pace and in dead silence. A man, its only occupant, sat at the oars, scarcely moving them as he kept his boat in motion.
A dog is ridiculously near-sighted. More so than almost any other beast. Keen hearing and keener scent are its chief guides. At three hundred yards' distance it cannot, by eye, recognize its master, nor tell him from a stranger. But at closequarters, even in the darkest night, a dog's vision is far more piercing and accurate than man's under like conditions.
Wolf thus saw the skiff and its occupant, while he himself was still invisible. The boat was no concern of his; so he trotted on to the far end of The Place, where the forest joined the orchard.
On his return tour of the lake edge he saw the skiff again. It had shifted its direction and was now barely ten feet off shore—so near to the bank that one of the oars occasionally grated on the pebbly bottom. The oarsman was looking intently toward the house.
Wolf paused, uncertain. The average watchdog, his attention thus attracted, would have barked. But Wolf knew the lake was public property. Boats were often rowed as close to shore as this without intent to trespass. It was not the skiff that caught Wolf's attention as he paused there on the brink, it was the man's furtive scrutiny of the house.
A pale flare of heat-lightning turned the world, momentarily, from jet black to a dim sulphur-color. The boatman saw Wolf standing, alert and suspicious, among the lakeside grasses, not ten feet away. He started slightly, and a soft, throaty growl from the dog answered him.
The man seemed to take the growl as a challenge, and to accept it. He reached into his pocket and drew something out. When the next faint glow oflightning illumined the shore, the man lifted the thing he had taken from his pocket and hurled it at Wolf.
With all the furtive swiftness bred in his wolf-ancestry, the dog shrank to one side, readily dodging the missile, which struck the lawn just behind him. Teeth bared in a ferocious snarl, Wolf dashed forward through the shallow water toward the skiff.
But the man apparently had had enough of the business. He rowed off with long strokes into deep water, and, once there, he kept on rowing until distance and darkness hid him.
Wolf stood, chest deep in water, listening to the far-off oar-strokes until they died away. He was not fool enough to swim in pursuit; well knowing that a swimming dog is worse than helpless against a boatman.
Moreover, the intruder had been scared away. That was all which concerned Wolf. He turned back to shore. His vigil was ended for another few hours. It was time to take up his nap where he had left off.
Before he had taken two steps, his sensitive nostrils were full of the scent of raw meat. There, on the lawn ahead of him, lay a chunk of beef as big as a fist. This, then, was what the boatman had thrown at him!
Wolf pricked up his ears in appreciation, and his brush began to vibrate. Trespassers had once ortwice tried to stone him, but this was the first time any of them had pelted him with delicious raw beef. Evidently, Lad and Bruce were not the only collies on The Place to receive prizes that day.
Wolf stooped over the meat, sniffed at it, then caught it up between his jaws.
Now, a dog is the easiest animal alive to poison, just as a cat is the hardest, for a dog will usually bolt a mouthful of poisoned meat without pausing to chew or otherwise investigate it. A cat, on the contrary, smells and tastes everything first and chews it scientifically before swallowing it. The slightest unfamiliar scent or flavor warns her to sheer off from the feast.
So the average dog would have gulped this toothsome windfall in a single swallow; but Wolf was not the average dog. No collie is, and Wolf was still more like his eccentric forefathers of the wilderness than are most collies.
He lacked the reasoning powers to make him suspicious of this rich gift from a stranger, but a queer personal trait now served him just as well.
Wolf was an epicure; he always took three times as long to empty his dinner dish as did the other dogs, for instead of gobbling his meal, as they did, he was wont to nibble affectedly at each morsel, gnawing it slowly into nothingness; and all the time showing a fussily dainty relish of it that used to delight the Boy and send guests into peals of laughter.
This odd little trait that had caused so much ridicule now saved Wolf's life.
He carried the lump of beef gingerly up to the veranda, laid it down on his mat, and prepared to revel in his chance banquet after his own deliberate fashion.
Holding the beef between his forepaws, he proceeded to devour it in mincing little squirrel-bites. About a quarter of the meat had disappeared when Wolf became aware that his tongue smarted and that his throat was sore; also that the interior of the meat-ball had a ranky pungent odor, very different from the heavenly fragrance of its outside and not at all appetizing.
He looked down at the chunk, rolled it over with his nose, surveyed it again, then got up and moved away from it in angry disgust.
Presently he forgot his disappointment in the knowledge that he was very, very ill. His tongue and throat no longer burned, but his body and brain seemed full of hot lead that weighed a ton. He felt stupid, and too weak to stir. A great drowsiness gripped him.
With a grunt of discomfort and utter fatigue, he slumped down on the veranda floor to sleep off his sick lassitude. After that, for a time, nothing mattered.
For perhaps an hour Wolf lay sprawling there, dead to his duty, and to everything else. Then faintly, through the fog of dullness that enwrappedhis brain, came a sound—a sound he had long ago learned to listen for. The harshly scraping noise of a boat's prow drawn up on the pebbly shore at the foot of the lawn.
Instinct tore through the poison vapors and roused the sick dog. He lifted his head. It was strangely heavy and hard to lift.
The sound was repeated as the prow was pulled farther up on the bank. Then came the crunch of a human foot on the waterside grass.
Heredity and training and lifelong fidelity took control of the lethargic dog, dragging him to his feet and down the veranda steps through no volition of his own.
Every motion tired him. He was dizzy and nauseated. He craved sleep; but as he was just a thoroughbred dog and not a wise human, he did not stop to think up good reasons why he should shirk his duty because he did not feel like performing it.
To the brow of the hill he trotted—slowly, heavily, shakily. His sharp powers of hearing told him the trespasser had left his boat and had taken one or two stealthy steps up the slope of lawn toward the house.
And now a puff of west wind brought Wolf's sense of smell into action. A dog remembers odors as humans remember faces. And the breeze bore to him the scent of the same man who had flungashore that bit of meat which had caused all his suffering.
He had caught the man's scent an hour earlier, as he had stood sniffing at the boat ten feet away from him. The same scent had been on the meat the man had handled.
And now, having played such a cruel trick on him, the joker was actually daring to intrude on The Place!
A gust of resentful rage pierced the dullness of Wolf's brain and sent a thrill of fierce energy through him. For the moment this carried him out of his sick self and brought back all his former zest as a watch-dog.
Down the hill, like a furry whirlwind, flew Wolf, every tooth bared, his back a-bristle from neck to tail. Now he was well within sight of the intruder. He saw the man pausing to adjust something to one of his hands. Then, before this could be accomplished, Wolf saw him pause and stare through the darkness as the wild onrush of the dog's feet struck upon his hearing.
Another instant and Wolf was near enough to spring. Out of the blackness he launched himself, straight for the trespasser's face. The man saw the dim shape hurtling through the air toward him. He dropped what he was carrying and flung up both hands to guard his neck.
At that, he was none too soon, for just as thethief's palm reached his own throat, Wolf's teeth met in the fleshy part of the hand.
Silent, in agony, the man beat at the dog with his free hand; but an attacking collie is hard to locate in the darkness. A bulldog will secure a grip and will hang on; a collie is everywhere at once.
Wolf's snapping jaws had already deserted the robber's mangled hand and slashed the man's left shoulder to the bone. Then the dog made another furious lunge for the face.
Down crashed the man, losing his balance under the heavy impact; Wolf atop of him. To guard his throat, the man rolled over on his face, kicking madly at the dog, and reaching back for his own hip-pocket. Half in the water and half on the bank, the two rolled and thrashed and struggled—the man panting and wheezing in mortal terror; the dog growling in a hideous, snarling fashion as might a wild animal.
The thief's torn left hand found a grip on Wolf's fur-armored throat. He shoved the fiercely writhing dog backward, jammed a pistol against Wolf's head, and pulled the trigger!
The dog relaxed his grip and tumbled in a huddled heap on the brink. The man staggered, gasping, to his feet; bleeding, disheveled, his clothes torn and mud-coated.
The echoes of the shot were still reverberating among the lakeside hills. Several of the house'sdark windows leaped into sudden light—then more windows in another room—and in another.
The thief swore roundly. His night's work was ruined. He bent to his skiff and shoved it into the water; then he turned to grope for what he had dropped on the lawn when Wolf's unexpected attack had interfered with his plans.
As he did so, something seized him by the ankle. In panic terror the man screamed aloud and jumped into the water, then, peering back, he saw what had happened.
Wolf, sprawling and unable to stand, had reached forward from where he lay and had driven his teeth for the last time into his foe.
The thief raised his pistol again and fired at the prostrate dog, then he clambered into his boat and rowed off with frantic speed, just as a salvo of barks told that Lad and Bruce had been released from the house; they came charging down the lawn, the Master at their heels.
But already the quick oar-beats were growing distant; and the gloom had blotted out any chance of seeing or following the boat.
Wolf lay on his side, half in and half out of the water. He could not rise, as was his custom, to meet the Boy, who came running up, close behind the Master and valorously grasping a target rifle; but the dog wagged his tail in feeble greeting, then he looked out over the black lake, and snarled.
The bullet had grazed Wolf's scalp and then had passed along the foreleg; scarring and numbing it. No damage had been done that a week's good nursing would not set right.
The marks in the grass and the poisoned meat on the porch told their own tale; so did the neat kit of burglar tools and a rubber glove found near the foot of the lawn; and then the telephone was put to work.
At dawn, a man in torn and muddy clothes, called at the office of a doctor three miles away to be treated for a half-dozen dog-bites received, he said, from a pack of stray curs he had met on the turnpike. By the time his wounds were dressed, the sheriff and two deputies had arrived to take him in charge. In his pockets were a revolver, with two cartridges fired, and the mate of the rubber glove he had left on The Place's lawn.
"You—you wouldn't let Wolfie go to any show and win a cup for himself," half-sobbed the Boy, as the Master worked over the injured dog's wound, "but he's saved you from losing all the cups the other dogs ever won!"
Three days later the Master came home from a trip to the city. He went directly to the Boy's room. There on a rug lounged the convalescent Wolf, the Boy sitting beside him, stroking the dog's bandaged head.
"Wolf," said the Master, solemnly, "I've beentalking about you to some people I know. And we all agree——"
"Agreewhat?" asked the Boy, looking up in mild curiosity.
The Master cleared his throat and continued:
"We agree that the trophy-shelf in my study hasn't enough cups on it. So I've decided to add still another to the collection. Want to see it, son?"
From behind his back the Master produced a gleaming silver cup—one of the largest and most ornate the Boy had ever seen—larger even than Bruce's "Best Dog" cup.
The Boy took it from his father's outstretched hand.
"Who won this?" he asked. "And what for? Didn't we get all the cups that were coming to us at the shows. Is it——"
The Boy's voice trailed away into a gurgle of bewildered rapture. He had caught sight of the lettering on the big cup. And now, his arm around Wolf, he read the inscription aloud, stammering with delight as he blurted out the words:
"Hero Cup. Won by WOLF, Against All Comers."
"Hero Cup. Won by WOLF, Against All Comers."
Now, this is the true tale of Lad's last great adventure.
For more years than he could remember, Lad had been king. He had ruled at The Place, from boundary-fence to boundary-fence, from highway to Lake. He had had, as subjects, many a thoroughbred collie; and many a lesser animal and bird among the Little Folk of The Place. His rule of them all had been lofty and beneficent.
The other dogs at The Place recognized Lad's rulership—recognized it without demur. It would no more have occurred to any of them, for example, to pass in or out through a doorway ahead of Lad than it would occur to a courtier to shoulder his way into the throne-room ahead of his sovereign. Nor would one of them intrude on the "cave" under the living-room piano which for more than a decade had been Lad's favorite resting-place.
Great was Lad. And now he was old—very old.
He was thirteen—which is equivalent to the human age of seventy. His long, clean lines had become blurred with flesh. He was undeniablystout. When he ran fast, he rolled slightly in his stride. Nor could he run as rapidly or as long as of yore. While he was not wheezy or asthmatic, yet a brisk five-mile walk would make him strangely anxious for an hour's rest.
He would not confess, even to himself, that age was beginning to hamper him so cruelly. And he sought to do all the things he had once done—if the Mistress or the Master were looking. But when he was alone, or with the other dogs, he spared himself every needless step. And he slept a great deal.
Withal, Lad's was a hale old age. His spirit and his almost uncanny intelligence had not faltered. Save for the silvered muzzle—first outward sign of age in a dog—his face and head were as classically young as ever. So were the absurdly small fore-paws—his one gross vanity—on which he spent hours of care each day, to keep them clean and snowy.
He would still dash out of the house as of old—with the wild trumpeting bark which he reserved as greeting to his two deities alone—when the Mistress or the Master returned home after an absence. He would still frisk excitedly around either of them at hint of a romp. But the exertionwasan exertion. And despite Lad's valiant efforts at youthfulness, everyone could see it was.
No longer did he lead the other dogs in their headlong rushes through the forest in quest of rabbits. Since he could not now keep the pace, he let the others go on these breath-and-strength-taking excursions without him; and he contented himself with an occasional lone and stately walk through the woods where once he had led the run—strolling along in leisurely fashion, with the benign dignity of some plump and ruddy old squire inspecting his estate.
There had been many dogs at The Place during the thirteen years of Lad's reign—dogs of all sorts and conditions, including Lad's worshiped collie mate, the dainty gold-and-white "Lady." But in this later day there were but three dogs beside himself.
One of them was Wolf, the only surviving son of Lad and Lady—a slender, powerful young collie, with some of his sire's brain and much of his mother's appealing grace—an ideal play-dog. Between Lad and Wolf there had always been a bond of warmest affection. Lad had trained this son of his and had taught him all he knew. He unbent from his lofty dignity, with Wolf, as with none of the others.
The second of the remaining dogs was Bruce ("Sunnybank Goldsmith"), tawny as Lad himself, descendant of eleven international champions and winner of many a ribbon and medal and cup. Bruce was—and is—flawless in physical perfection and in obedience and intelligence.
The third was Rex—a giant, a freak, a dog oddlyout of place among a group of thoroughbreds. On his father's side Rex was pure collie; on his mother's, pure bull-terrier. That is an accidental blending of two breeds which cannot blend. He looked more like a fawn-colored Great Dane than anything else. He was short-haired, full two inches taller and ten pounds heavier than Lad, and had the bunch-muscled jaws of a killer.
There was not an outlander dog for two miles in either direction that Rex had not at one time or another met and vanquished. The bull-terrier strain, which blended so ill with collie blood, made its possessor a terrific fighter. He was swift as a deer, strong as a puma.
In many ways he was a lovable and affectionate pet; slavishly devoted to the Master and grievously jealous of the latter's love for Lad. Rex was five years old—in his fullest prime—and, like the rest, he had ever taken Lad's rulership for granted.
I have written at perhaps prosy length, introducing these characters of my war-story. The rest is action.
March, that last year, was a month of drearily recurrent snows. In the forests beyond The Place, the snow lay light and fluffy at a depth of sixteen inches.
On a snowy, blowy, bitter cold Sunday—one of those days nobody wants—Rex and Wolf elected to go rabbit-hunting.
Bruce was not in the hunt, sensibly preferringto lie in front of the living-room fire on so vile a day rather than to flounder through dust-fine drifts in search of game that was not worth chasing under such conditions. Wolf, too, was monstrous comfortable on the old fur rug by the fire, at the Mistress' feet.
But Rex, who had waxed oddly restless of late, was bored by the indoor afternoon. The Mistress was reading; the Master was asleep. There seemed no chance that either would go for a walk or otherwise amuse their four-footed friends. The winter forests were calling. The powerful crossbred dog would find the snow a scant obstacle to his hunting. And the warmly quivering body of a new-caught rabbit was a tremendous lure.
Rex got to his feet, slouched across the living-room to Bruce and touched his nose. The drowsing collie paid no heed. Next Rex moved over to where Wolf lay. The two dogs' noses touched.
Now, this is noMowglitale, but a true narrative. I do not pretend to say whether or not dogs have a language of their own. (Personally, I think they have, and a very comprehensive one, too. But I cannot prove it.) No dog-student, however, will deny that two dogs communicate their wishes to each other in some way by (or during) the swift contact of noses.
By that touch Wolf understood Rex's hint to join in the foray. Wolf was not yet four years old—at an age when excitement still outweighs lazycomfort. Moreover, he admired and aped Rex, as much as ever the school's littlest boy models himself on the class bully. He was up at once and ready to start.
A maid was bringing in an armful of wood from the veranda. The two dogs slipped out through the half-open door. As they went, Wolf cast a sidelong glance at Lad, who was snoozing under the piano. Lad noted the careless invitation. He also noted that Wolf did not hesitate when his father refused to join the outing but trotted gayly off in Rex's wake.
Perhaps this defection hurt Lad's abnormally sensitive feelings. For of old he had always led such forest-runnings. Perhaps the two dogs' departure merely woke in him the memory of the chase's joys and stirred a longing for the snow-clogged woods.
For a minute or two the big living-room was quiet, except for the scratch of dry snow against the panes, the slow breathing of Bruce and the turning of a page in the book the Mistress was reading. Then Lad got up heavily and walked forth from his piano-cave.
He stretched himself and crossed to the Mistress' chair. There he sat down on the rug very close beside her and laid one of his ridiculously tiny white fore-paws in her lap. Absent-mindedly, still absorbed in her book, she put out a hand and patted the soft fur of his ruff and ears.
Often, Lad came to her or to the Master forsome such caress; and, receiving it, would return to his resting-place. But to-day he was seeking to attract her notice for something much more important. It had occurred to him that it would be jolly to go with her for a tramp in the snow. And his mere presence failing to convey the hint, he began to "talk."
To the Mistress and the Master alone did Lad condescend to "talk"—and then only in moments of stress or appeal. No one, hearing him, at such a time, could doubt the dog was trying to frame human speech. His vocal efforts ran the gamut of the entire scale. Wordless, but decidedly eloquent, this "talking" would continue sometimes for several minutes without ceasing; its tones carried whatever emotion the old dog sought to convey—whether of joy, of grief, of request or of complaint.
To-day there was merely playful entreaty in the speechless "speech." The Mistress looked up.
"What is it, Laddie?" she asked. "What do you want?"
For answer Lad glanced at the door, then at the Mistress; then he solemnly went out into the hall—whence presently he returned with one of her fur gloves in his mouth.
"No, no," she laughed. "Not to-day, Lad. Not in this storm. We'll take a good, long walk to-morrow."
The dog sighed and returned sadly to his lair beneath the piano. But the vision of the forestswas evidently hard to erase from his mind. And a little later, when the front door was open again by one of the servants, he stalked out.
The snow was driving hard, and there was a sting in it. The thermometer was little above zero; but the snow had been a familiar bedfellow, for centuries, to Lad's Scottish forefathers; and the cold was harmless against the woven thickness of his tawny coat. Picking his way in stately fashion along the ill-broken track of the driveway, he strolled toward the woods. To humans there was nothing in the outdoor day but snow and chill and bluster and bitter loneliness. To the trained eye and the miraculous scent-power of a collie it contained a million things of dramatic interest.
Here a rabbit had crossed the trail—not with leisurely bounds or mincing hops, but stomach to earth, in flight for very life. Here, close at the terrified bunny's heels, had darted a red fox. Yonder, where the piling snow covered a swirl of tracks, the chase had ended.
The little ridge of snow-heaped furrow, to the right, held a basketful of cowering quail—who heard Lad's slow step and did not reckon on his flawless gift of smell. On the hemlock tree just ahead a hawk had lately torn a blue-jay asunder. A fluff of gray feathers still stuck to a bough, and the scent of blood had not been blown out of the air. Underneath, a field-mouse was plowing itsway into the frozen earth, its tiny paw-scrapes wholly audible to the ears of the dog above it.
Here, through the stark and drifted undergrowth, Rex and Wolf had recently swept along in pursuit of a half-grown rabbit. Even a human eye could not have missed their partly-covered tracks; but Lad knew whose track was whose and which dog had been in the lead.
Yes, to humans, the forest would have seemed a deserted white waste. Lad knew it was thick-populated with the Little People of the woodland, and that all day and all night the seemingly empty and placid groves were a blend of battlefield, slaughterhouse and restaurant. Here, as much as in the cities or in the trenches, abode strenuous life, violent death, struggle, greed and terror.
A partridge rocketed upward through a clump of evergreen, while a weasel, jaws a-quiver, glared after it, baffled. A shaggy owl crouched at a tree-limb hole and blinked sulkily about in search of prey and in hope of dusk. A crow, its black feet red with a slain snowbird's blood, flapped clumsily overhead. A poet would have vowed that the still and white-shrouded wilderness was a shrine sacred to solitude and severe peace. Lad could have told him better. Nature (beneath the surface) is never solitary and never at peace.
When a dog is very old and very heavy and a little unwieldy, it is hard to walk through sixteen-inch snow, even if one moves slowly and sedately.Hence Lad was well pleased to come upon a narrow woodland track; made by a laborer who had passed and repassed through that same strip of forest during the last few hours. To follow in that trampled rut made walking much easier; it was a rut barely wide enough for one wayfarer.
More and more like an elderly squire patrolling his acres, Lad rambled along, and presently his ears and his nose told him that his two loving friends Rex and Wolf were coming toward him on their home-bound way. His plumy tail wagged expectantly. He was growing a bit lonely on this Sunday afternoon walk of his, and a little tired. It would be a pleasure to have company—especially Wolf's.
Rex and Wolf had fared ill on their hunt. They had put up two rabbits. One had doubled and completely escaped them; and in the chase Rex had cut his foot nastily on a strip of unseen barbed wire. The sandlike snow had gotten into the jagged cut in a most irritating way.
The second rabbit had dived under a log. Rex had thrust his head fiercely through a snowbank in quest of the vanished prey; and a long briar-thorn, hidden there, had plunged its needle point deep into the inside of his left nostril. The inner nostril is a hundred-fold the most agonizingly sensitive part of a dog's body, and the pain wrung a yell of rage and hurt from the big dog.
With a nostril and a foot both hurt, there wasno more fun in hunting, and—angry, cross, savagely in pain—Rex loped homeward, Wolf pattering along behind him. Like Lad, they came upon the laborer's trampled path and took advantage of the easier going.
Thus it was, at a turn in the track, that they came face to face with Lad. Wolf had already smelled him, and his brush began to quiver in welcome. Rex, his nose in anguish, could smell nothing; not until that turn did he know of Lad's presence. He halted, sulky, and ill-tempered. The queer restlessness, the pre-springtime savagery that had obsessed him of late had been brought to a head by his hurts. He was not himself. His mind was sick.
There was not room for two large dogs to pass each other in that narrow trail. One or the other must flounder out into the deep snow to the side. Ordinarily, there would be no question about any other dog on The Place turning out for Lad. It would have been a matter of course, and so, to-day, Lad expected it to be. Onward he moved, at that same dignified walk, until he was not a yard away from Rex.
The latter, his brain fevered and his hurts torturing him, suddenly flamed into rebellion. Even as a younger buck sooner or later assails for mastery the leader of the herd, so the brain-sick Rex went back, all at once, to primal instincts, amaniac rage mastered him—the rage of the angry underling, the primitive lust for mastery.
With not so much as a growl or warning, he launched himself upon Lad. Straight at the tired old dog's throat he flew. Lad, all unprepared for such unheard-of mutiny, was caught clean off his guard. He had not even time enough to lower his head to protect his throat or to rear and meet his erstwhile subject's attack halfway. At one moment he had been plodding gravely toward his two supposedly loyal friends; the next, Rex's ninety pounds of whale-bone muscle had smitten him violently to earth, and Rex's fearsome jaws—capable of cracking a beef-bone as a man cracks a filbert—had found a vise-grip in the soft fur of his throat.
Down amid a flurry of high-tossed snow, crashed Lad, his snarling enemy upon him, pinning him to the ground, the huge jaws tearing and rending at his ruff—the silken ruff that the Mistress daily combed with such loving care to keep it fluffy and beautiful.
It was a grip and a leverage that would have made the average opponent helpless. With a short-haired dog it would have meant the end, but the providence that gave collies a mattress of fur—to stave off the cold, in their herding work amid the snowy moors—has made that fur thickest about the lower neck.
Rex had struck in crazy rage and had not gaugedhis mark as truly as though he had been cooler. He had missed the jugular and found himself grinding at an enormous mouthful of matted hair—and at very little else; and Lad belonged to the breed that is never to be taken wholly by surprise and that acts by the swiftest instinct or reason known to dogdom. Even as he fell, he instinctively threw his body sideways to avoid the full jar of Rex's impact—and gathered his feet under him.
With a heave that wrenched his every unaccustomed muscle, Lad shook off the living weight and scrambled upright. To prevent this, Rex threw his entire body forward to reinforce his throat-grip. As a result, a double handful of ruff-hair and a patch of skin came away in his jaws. And Lad was free.
He was free—to turn tail and run for his life from the unequal combat—and that his hero-heart would not let him do. He was free, also, to stand his ground and fight there in the snowbound forest until he should be slain by his younger and larger and stronger foe, and this folly his almost-human intelligence would not permit.
There was one chance and only one—one compromise alone between sanity and honor. And this chance Lad took.
Hewouldnot run. Hecouldnot save his life by fighting where he stood. His only hope was to keep his face to his enemy, battling as best he could, and all the time keep backing toward home.If he could last until he came within sight or sound of the folk at the house, he knew he would be saved. Home was a full half-mile away and the snow was almost chest-deep. Yet, on the instant, he laid out his plan of campaign and put it into action.
Rex cleared his mouth of the impeding hair and flew at Lad once more—before the old dog had fairly gotten to his feet, but not before the line of defense had been thought out. Lad half wheeled, dodging the snapping jaws by an inch and taking the impact of the charge on his left shoulder, at the same time burying his teeth in the right side of Rex's face.
At the same time Lad gave ground, moving backward three or four yards, helped along by the impetus of his opponent. Home was a half-mile behind him, in an oblique line, and he could not turn to gauge his direction. Yet he moved in precisely the correct angle.
(Indeed, a passer-by who witnessed the fight, and the Master, who went carefully over the ground afterward, proved that at no point in the battle did Lad swerve or mistake his exact direction. Yet not once could he have been able to look around to judge it, and his foot-prints showed that not once had he turned his back on the foe.)
The hold Lad secured on Rex's cheek was good, but it was not good enough. At thirteen, a dog's "biting teeth" are worn short and dull, and hisyellowed fangs are blunted; nor is the jaw by any means as powerful as once it was. Rex writhed and pitched in the fierce grip, and presently tore free from it and to the attack again, seeking now to lunge over the top of Lad's lowered head to the vital spot at the nape of the neck, where sharp teeth may pierce through to the spinal cord.
Thrice Rex lunged, and thrice Lad reared on his hind legs, meeting the shock with his deep, shaggy breast, snapping and slashing at his enemy and every time receding a few steps between charges. They had left the path now, and were plowing a course through deep snow. The snow was scant barrier to Rex's full strength, but it terribly impeded the steadily backing Lad. Lad's extra flesh, too, was a bad handicap; his wind was not at all what it should have been, and the unwonted exertion began to tell sharply on him.
Under the lead-hued skies and the drive of the snow the fight swirled and eddied. The great dogs reared, clashed, tore, battered against tree-trunks, lost footing and rolled, staggered up again and renewed the onslaught. Ever Lad manœuvered his way backward, waging a desperate "rear-guard action." In the battle's wake was an irregular but mathematically straight line of trampled and blood-spattered snow.
Oh, but it was slow going, this ever-fighting retreat of Lad's, through the deep drifts, with his mightier foe pressing him and rending at his throatand shoulders at every backward step! The old dog's wind was gone; his once-superb strength was going, but he fought on with blazing fury—the fury of a dying king whowillnot be deposed.
In sheer skill and brain-work and generalship, Lad was wholly Rex's superior, but these served him ill in a death-grapple. With dogs, as with human pugilists, mere science and strategy avail little against superior size and strength and youth. Again and again Lad found or made an opening. Again and again his weakening jaws secured the right grip only to be shaken off with more and more ease by the younger combatant.
Again and again Lad "slashed" as do his wolf cousins and as does almost no civilized dog but the collie. But the slashes had lost their one-time lightning speed and prowess. And the blunt "rending fangs" scored only superficial furrows in Rex's fawn-colored hide.
There was meager hope of reaching home alive. Lad must have known that. His strength was gone. It was his heart and his glorious ancestry now that were doing his fighting—not his fat and age-depleted body. From Lad's mental vocabulary the wordquithad ever been absent. Wherefore—dizzy, gasping, feebler every minute—he battled fearlessly on in the dying day; never losing his sense of direction, never turning tail, never dreaming of surrender, taking dire wounds, inflicting light ones.
There are many forms of dog-fight. Two strange dogs, meeting, will fly at each other because their wild forbears used to do so. Jealous dogs will battle even more fiercely. But the deadliest of all canine conflicts is the "murder-fight." This is a struggle wherein one or both contestants have decided to give no quarter, where the victor will fight on until his antagonist is dead and will then tear his body to pieces. It is a recognized form of canine mania.
And it was a murder-fight that Rex was waging, for he had gone quite insane. (This is wholly different, by the way, from "going mad.")
Down went Lad, for perhaps the tenth time, and once more—though now with an effort that was all but too much for him—he writhed to his feet, gaining three yards of ground by the move. Rex was upon him with one leap, the frothing and bloody jaws striking for his mangled throat. Lad reared to block the attack. Then suddenly, overbalanced, he crashed backward into the snowdrift.
Rex had not reached him, but young Wolf had.
Wolf had watched the battle with a growing excitement that at last had broken all bounds. The instinct, which makes a fluff-headed college-boy mix into a scrimmage that is no concern of his, had suddenly possessed Lad's dearly loved son.
Now, if this were a fiction yarn, it would be edifying to tell how Wolf sprang to the aid of his grand old sire and how he thereby saved Lad'slife. But the shameful truth is that Wolf did nothing of the sort. Rex was his model, the bully he had so long and so enthusiastically imitated. And now Rex was fighting a most entertaining bout, fighting it with a maniac fury that infected his young disciple and made him yearn to share in the glory.
Wherefore, as Lad reared to meet Rex's lunge, Wolf hurled himself like a furry whirlwind upon the old dog's flank, burying his white teeth in the muscles of the lower leg.
The flank attack bowled Lad completely over. There was no chance now for such a fall as would enable him to spring up again unscathed. He was thrown heavily upon his back, and both his murderers plunged at his unguarded throat and lower body.
But a collie thrown is not a collie beaten, as perhaps I have said once before. For thirty seconds or more the three thrashed about in the snow in a growling, snarling, right unloving embrace. Then, by some miracle, Lad was on his feet again.
His throat had a new and deep wound, perilously close to the jugular. His stomach and left side were slashed as with razor-blades. But he was up. And even in that moment of dire stress—with both dogs flinging themselves upon him afresh—he gained another yard or two in his line of retreat.
He might have gained still more ground. For his assailants, leaping at the same instant, collidedand impeded each other's charge. But, for the first time the wise old brain clouded, and the hero-heart went sick; as Lad saw his own loved and spoiled son ranged against him in the murder-fray. He could not understand. Loyalty was as much a part of himself as were his sorrowful brown eyes or his tiny white fore-paws. And Wolf's amazing treachery seemed to numb the old warrior, body and mind.
But the second of dumfounded wonder passed quickly—too quickly for either of the other dogs to take advantage of it. In its place surged a righteous wrath that, for the instant, brought back youth and strength to the aged fighter.
With a yell that echoed far through the forest's sinister silence, Lad whizzed forward at the advancing Rex. Wolf, who was nearer, struck for his father's throat—missed and rolled in the snow from the force of his own momentum. Lad did not heed him. Straight for Rex he leaped. Rex, bounding at him, was already in midair. The two met, and under the Berserk onset Rex fell back into the snow.
Lad was upon him at once. The worn-down teeth found their goal above the jugular. Deep and raggedly they drove, impelled by the brief flash of power that upbore their owner.
Almost did that grip end the fight and leave Rex gasping out his life in the drift. But the access of false strength faded. Rex, roaring like a hurttiger, twisted and tore himself free. Lad realizing his own bolt was shot, gave ground, backing away from two assailants instead of one.
It was easier now to retreat. For Wolf, unskilled in practical warfare, at first hindered Rex almost as much as he helped him, again and again getting in the bigger dog's way and marring a rush. Had Wolf understood "teamwork," Lad must have been pulled down and slaughtered in less than a minute.
But soon Wolf grasped the fact that he could do worse damage by keeping out of his ally's way and attacking from a different quarter, and thereafter he fought to more deadly purpose. His favorite ruse was to dive for Lad's forelegs and attempt to break one of them. That is a collie manœuver inherited direct from Wolf's namesake ancestors.
Several times his jaws reached the slender white forelegs, cutting and slashing them and throwing Lad off his balance. Once he found a hold on the left haunch and held it until his victim shook loose by rolling.
Lad defended himself from this new foe as well as he might, by dodging or by brushing him to one side, but never once did he attack Wolf, or so much as snap at him. (Rex after the encounter, was plentifully scarred. Wolf had not so much as a scratch.)
Backward, with ever-increasing difficulty, theold dog fought his way, often borne down to earth and always staggering up more feebly than before. But ever he was warring with the same fierce courage; despite an ache and bewilderment in his honest heart at his son's treason.
The forest lay behind the fighters. The deserted highroad was passed. Under Lad's clawing and reeling feet was the dear ground of The Place—The Place where for thirteen happy years he had reigned as king, where he had benevolently ruled his kind and had given worshipful service to his gods.
But the house was still nearly a furlong off, and Lad was well-nigh dead. His body was one mass of wounds. His strength was turned to water. His breath was gone. His bloodshot eyes were dim. His brain was dizzy and refused its office. Loss of blood had weakened him full as much as had the tremendous exertion of the battle.
Yet—uselessly now—he continued to fight. It was a grotesquely futile resistance. The other dogs were all over him—tearing, slashing, gripping, at will—unhindered by his puny effort to fend them off. The slaughter-time had come. Drunk with blood and fury, the assailants plunged at him for the last time.
Down went Lad, helpless beneath the murderous avalanche that overwhelmed him. And this time his body flatly refused to obey the grim command of his will. The fight was over—the good,goodfight of a white-souled Paladin against hopeless odds.
The living-room fire crackled cheerily. The snow hissed and slithered against the glass. A sheet of frost on every pane shut out the stormy twilit world. The screech of the wind was music to the comfortable shut-ins.
The Mistress drowsed over her book by the fire. Bruce snored snugly in front of the blaze. The Master had awakened from his nap and was in the adjoining study, sorting fishing-tackle and scouring a rusted hunting-knife.
Then came a second's lull in the gale, and all at once Bruce was wide awake. Growling, he ran to the front door and scratched imperatively at the panel. This is not the way a well-bred dog makes known his desire to leave the house. And Bruce was decidedly a well-bred dog.