Mr. Lucius Frayne,My dear Sir:
Mr. Lucius Frayne,My dear Sir:
Mr. Lucius Frayne,My dear Sir:
Mr. Lucius Frayne,
My dear Sir:
Last year, out to the Midwestburg show, here, you sold me a fine puppy of your Ch. Lochinvar King. And as soon as I could raise the price you sent him on here to me. I would of written to you when I got him, to thank you and to say how pleased I was with him and how all my friends praised him. But I figured you’re a busy man and you haven’t got any waste time to spend in reading letters about how good your dogs are. Because you know it already. And so I didn’t write to you. But I am writing to you now. Because this is business.
You know what a grand pup Bobby was when you sent him to me? Well to my way of thinking he has developed even better than he gave promise to. And some of my friends say the same. To my way of thinking he is the grandest collie in North America or anywhere else to-day. He is sure one grand dog. He turned out every bit as good as you said he would. He’s better now than he was at five months.
I want to thank you for letting me have such a dog, Mr. Frayne. Just as you said, he is of Champion timber. Now this brings me to the business I spoke about.
Granther used to tell me how the gentry on the other side would bet with each other on their dogs at the shows. Six months ago my Aunt Marjorie died and she willed me nine hundred dollars ($900). It is in bank waiting for a good investment for it. Now here is an investment that seems to me a mighty safe one. Me knowing Bobby as I do. A fine sporting investment. And I hope it may please you as well. I am entering Bobby for Westminster. I read inDog Newsthat you are expecting to enter Champion Lochinvar King there, with others of your string. So here is my proposition.
I propose you enter King for “Open, Sable-and-White” and “Open, Any Colour,” these being the only regular classes a sable champion is eligible for. I will enter Bobby in the same classes, instead of “Novice” as I was going to. And I will wager you six hundred dollars ($600) even, that the judge will place Bobby above King. I am making this offer knowing how fine King is but thinking my dog is even better. For Bobby has really improved since a pup. My wife thinks so too.
If this offer pleases you, will you deposit a certified check of six hundred dollars ($600) with the editor ofDog News? He is a square man as every one knows and he will see fair play. He has promised me he will hold the stakes. I am ready to deposit my certified check for six hundred dollars ($600) at once. I would like to bet the whole nine hundred dollars ($900). Knowing it a safe investment. Knowing Bobby like I do. But my wife doesn’t want me to bet it at all and so we are compromising on six hundred dollars ($600).
Please let me hear from you on this, Mr. Frayne. And I thank you again for how you treated me as regardsBobby. I hope to repay you at Westminster by letting you see him for yourself.
Your ob’t servant,James A. Mackellar.
Your ob’t servant,James A. Mackellar.
Your ob’t servant,James A. Mackellar.
Your ob’t servant,
James A. Mackellar.
Yes, it was a long letter. Yet Frayne skipped no word of it. And Roke listened, as to heavenly music.
“Talk about Lochinvar luck!” chortled Frayne as he finished. “The worst pup we ever bred; and we sold him for one-fifty! And now he is due to fetch us another six hundred, in dividends. He—”
“You’re going to cover his bet?” queried Roke. “Good! I was afraid maybe you’d feel kind of sorry for the poor cuss, and—”
“Unless I break both wrists, in the next hour,” announced Frayne, “that certified check will start for theDog Newsoffice by noon. It’s the same old wheeze: A dub has picked up a smattering of dog talk; he thinks he knows it all. He buys a bum pup with a thundering pedigree. The pedigree makes him think the pup is a humdinger. He brags about it to his folks. They think anything that costs so much must be the best ever, no matter how it looks. And he gets to believing he’s got a world beater. Then—”
“But, boss,” put in Roke with happy unction, “just shut your eyes and try to remember how that poor mutt looked! And the boob says he’s ‘even better than he gave promise to be.’ Do you get that? Yet you hear a lot about Scotchmen being shrewd! Gee, but I wish you’d let me have a slice of that $600 bet! I’d—”
“No,” said Frayne judicially. “That’s my own meat. It was caught in my trap. But I tell you what you can do: Wait till I send my check and till it’s covered, and then write to Mackellar and ask him if he’s willing to betanother $150, on the side, with you. From the way he sounds, you ought to have it easy in getting him to make the side bet. He needn’t tell his wife. Try it anyhow; if you like.”
Roke tried it. And, after ridiculously small objection on Jamie’s part, the side bet was recorded and its checks were posted with the editor ofDog News. Once more Lucius Frayne and his faithful kennel man shook hands in perfect happiness.
To the topmost steel rafters, where the grey February shadows hung, old Madison Square Garden echoed and reverberated with the multi-keyed barks of some two thousand dogs. The four-day show had been opened at ten o’clock of a slushy Wednesday morning. And as usual the collies were to be judged on the first day.
Promptly at eleven o’clock the clean-cut collie judge followed his steward into the ring. The leather-lunged runner passed down the double ranks of collie benches, bawling the numbers for the Male Puppy Class.
The judge had a reputation for quickness, as well as for accuracy and honesty. The Open classes, for male dogs, were certain to come up for verdict within an hour, at most.
Seven benches had been thrown into one, for the Frayne dogs. At its back ran a strip of red silk, lettered in silver: “LOCHINVAR COLLIE KENNELS.” Seven high-quality dogs lay or sat in this space de luxe. In the centre—his name on a bronze plate above his head—reclined Lochinvar King.
In full majesty of conscious perfection he lay there; magnificent as a Numidian lion, the target for all eyes. Conditioned and groomed to the minute, he stood out from his high-class kennel-mates like a swan among cygnets.
Frayne, more than once in the show’s first hour or so, left his much-admired benches; for a glance at a near-by unoccupied space, numbered 568. Here, according to the catalogue, should be benched Lochinvar Bobby.
But Bobby was nowhere to be seen.
Congratulating himself on his own craft in having inserted a forfeit clause in the bet agreement, Frayne was none the less disappointed that the fifth-rate mutt had not shown up.
He longed for a chance to hear the titter of the railbirds; when the out-at-elbow, gangling, semi-hairless little nondescript should shamble into the ring. Bobby’s presence would add zest to his own oft-told tale of the wager.
According to American Kennel Club rules, a dog must be on its bench from the moment the exhibition opens until the close, excepting only when it is in the ring or at stated exercise periods. That rule, until recently, has been most flagrantly disregarded by many exhibitors. In view of this, Frayne made a trip to the exercise room and then through the dim-lit stalls under the main floor.
As he came back from a fruitless search for Bobby or for Mackellar, he passed the collie ring. “Limit; Dogs,” was chalked on the blackboard. Two classes more—“Open, Merle,” and "Open, Tricolour"—and then King must enter the ring for “Open, Sable.” Frayne hurried to the Lochinvar benches, where Roke and another kennel man were fast at work putting finishing touches to King’s toilet.
The great dog was on his feet, tense and eager for the coming clash. Close behind the unseeing Roke, and studying King with grave admiration, stood Jamie Mackellar.
“Hello, there!” boomed Frayne with loud cordiality, bearing down upon the little man. “Get cold feet? Isee your dog’s absent. Remember, you forfeit by absence.”
“Yes, sir,” said Jamie with meekness, taking off his hat to the renowned sportsman, and too confused in fumbling with its wabbly brim to see the hand which Frayne held out to him. “Yes, sir. I remember the forfeit clause, sir. I’m not forfeiting. Bobby is here.”
“Here? Where? I looked all over the—”
“I hired one of the cubby-hole rooms upstairs, sir; to keep him in, nights, while he’s here. And I haven’t brought him down to his bench yet. You see, he—he ain’t seen many strangers. And you’ll remember, maybe, that he used to be just a wee peckle shy. So I’m keeping him there till it is time to show him. My boy, Donald, is up, now, getting him ready. They’ll be down presently, sir. I think you’ll be real pleased with how Bobby looks.”
"I’m counting on a heap of pleasure," was Frayne’s cryptic reply, as he turned away to mask a grin of utter joy.
Five grey dogs were coming down the aisle to their benches. The Merle Class had been judged and the Tricolours were in the ring. There were but four of these.
In another handful of minutes the “Open, Sable” Class was called. It was the strongest class of the day. It contained no less than three champions; in addition to four less famous dogs, like Bobby;—seven entries in all.
Six of these dogs were marched into the ring. The judge looked at the steward, for the “all-here” signal. As he did so, the seventh entrant made his way past the gate crowd and was piloted into the ring by a small and cheaply clad man.
While the attendant was slipping the number board on Mackellar’s arm, Lucius Frayne’s eyes fell upon Lochinvar Bobby. So did those of the impatient judge and the ninety out of every hundred of the railbirds.
Through the close-packed ranks of onlookers ran a queer little wordless mutter—the most instinctive and therefore the highest praise that can be accorded.
Alertly calm of nerve, heedless of his surroundings so long as his worshipped god was crooning reassurances to him, Bobby stood at Mackellar’s side.
His incredible coat was burnished like old bronze. His head was calmly erect, his mighty frame steady. His eyes, with true eagle look, surveyed the staring throng.
Never before, in all the Westminster Club’s forty-odd shows, had such a collie been led into the ring. Eugenic breeding, wise rationing and tireless human care had gone to the perfecting of other dogs. But Mother Nature herself had made Lochinvar Bobby what he was. She had fed him bountifully upon the all-strengthening ration of the primal beast; and she had given him the exercise-born appetite to eat and profit by it. Her pitiless winter winds had combed and winnowed his coat as could no mortal hand, giving it thickness and length and richness beyond belief. And she had moulded his growing young body into the peerless model of the Wild.
Then, because he had the loyal heart of a collie and not the incurable savagery of the wolf, she had awakened his soul and made him bask rapturously in the friendship of a true dog-man. The combination was unmatchable.
“Walk your dogs, please,” ordered the judge, coming out of his momentary daze.
Before the end of the ring’s first turn, he had motioned Frayne and Mackellar to take their dogs into one corner. He proceeded to study the five others; awarding to two of them the yellow third-prize ribbon and the white reserve, and then ordering the quintet from the ring. After which he beckoned Bobby and King to the judging block.
In the interim, Frayne had been staring goggle-eyed at the Midwestburg collie. He tried to speak; but he could not. A hundred thoughts were racing dumbly through his bemused brain. He stood agape, foolish of face.
Jamie Mackellar was pleasantly talkative.
“A grand class, this,” he confided to his voiceless comrade. “But, first crack, Judge Breese had the eye to single out our two as so much the best that he won’t size ’em up with the others. How do you like Bobby, sir? Is he very bad? Don’t you think, maybe, he’s picked up, just a trifle, since you shipped him to me? He’s no worse, anyhow, than he was then, is he?”
Frayne gobbled, wordlessly.
“This is the last time I’ll show him, for a while, Mr. Frayne,” continued Jamie, a grasping note coming into his timid voice. “The cash I’m due to collect from you and Mr. Roke will make enough, with the legacy and what I’ve saved, to start me in business with a truck of myown.own.Bobby and I are going into partnership. And we’re going to clean up. Bobby is putting seven hundred and fifty dollars and to-day’s cash prizes into the firm. He and I are getting out of the show-end of collie breeding, for a time. The more we see of some of you professionals, the better we like cesspools. If dogs weren’t the grandest animals the good Lord ever put on earth, a few of the folks who exploit them would have killed the dog game long ago. It—. Judge Breese is beckoning for us!”
Side by side, the two glorious collies advanced to the judging block. Side by, side, at their handlers’ gestures, they mounted it. And again from the railbirds arose that queer wordless hum. Sire and son, shoulder to shoulder, faced the judge.
And, for the first time in his unbroken career of conquest,Lochinvar King looked almost shabby; beside the wondrous young giant he had sired. His every good point—and he had no others—was bettered by Bobby.
As a matter of form, Breese went over both dogs with meticulous care; testing coat-texture, springofofribs, action, soundness of bone, carriage, facial expression, and the myriad other details which go into the judging of a show dog. Long he faced them, crouching low and staring into their deep-set eyes; marking the set and carriage of the tulip ears; comparing point with point; as becomes a man who is about to give victory to an Unknown over a hitherto Invincible.
Then with a jerk of his head he summoned the steward with the judging book and ribbons. And, amid a spontaneous rattle of applause, Jamie Mackellar led his splendid dog to the far end of the ring, with one hand; while in the fingers of the other fluttered a strip of gold-lettered dark blue ribbon.
Back came both collies for the “Open, Any Colour Class,” and the verdict was repeated; as it was repeated in the supreme “Winners’” Class which followed. “Winners’” Class carried, with its rosette and cash specials, a guerdon of five points toward Bobby’s championship.
Then followed the rich harvest of other cash specials in the collie division, including $25 for “Best of Breed,” and for the next three days even fatter gleanings from among the variety classes and unclassified specials. These last awards ranged from five dollars to twenty-five dollars apiece; apart from a valiseful of silver cups and like trophies which are more beautiful than pawnable.
On Saturday, Jamie Mackellar and Bobby took the midnight train for Midwestburg; richer by almost nine hundred dollars for their New York sojourn.
Rolling sweetly around in Jamie’s memory was a brieftalk he had had with Roke, an hour before the close of the show. Sent as emissary by Frayne, the kennel manager had offered Mackellar a flat two thousand dollars for the sensational young prize winner.
“We’re not parting company, Bobby and I,” Jamie had made civil answer. “Thanking you and your boss just as much. But tell Mr. Frayne if ever I breed a pup as good as Bobby was when he came to me, he can have it for an even hundred and fifty. I wouldn’t want such a fine chap to think I’m not just as clean a sportsman as what he is!”