Now this is the story of the masterless wanderings of Buff.
Long and unavailingly did Buff follow the track of the car which had
borne away the man who was his god. Dizzy from his wound, faint from
loss of blood, heart-broken and frantic at the vanishing of his
master, the collie sped in pursuit. The scent was fresh in his
nostrils--the scent of the kidnapped man and of his abductors, and the
familiar odour of Trent’s car.
Mile after mile galloped Buff through the summer night; trusting
wholly to his sense of smell. With the peculiar mile-eating canter of
his wolf-ancestors, he stuck to the trail, even when the car’s track
ceased to furrow the dusty country road and passed clean through a
busy little city.
Through the city’s myriad odours and distractions, Buff stuck to the
scent of his master’s car. Other cars--hundreds of them--had laced the
trail. The asphalt’s smell of gasoline and grease was sickeningly
acute in the dog’s nostrils, confusing and sometimes all but blotting
out the scent he was following. Yet never quite did Buff lose the
track.
Under the lamps of motor-trucks and trolley cars he flashed, swerving
barely far enough out of their way to save himself from death; then
ever picking up the scent again.
Once a troop of small boys gave chase, realising the chances of reward
that lay in the capture of so fine a dog. But Buff, with that odd and
choppy wolf-stride of his, soon out-distanced them. And they threw
stones, futilely, in the wake of the flying tawny shape.
Again, a Great Dane whirled out of a dooryard and pursued the passing
collie. Buff was aware of the larger dog’s presence only when a spring
and a snarl warned him to wheel, in bare time to avoid the full shock
of the Dane’s charge.
Buff had no time for fighting. Paying no further heed to the attacking
giant, he swerved from the assault, caught the trail again, and
increased his pace. But the Great Dane would not have it so. His
instincts of a bully were aroused by the meek flight of this stranger
dog from his onset. And he pursued at top speed.
A motor-bus, whirring out from a side street, checked Buff’s flight
for an instant, by barring the way. Before he could get into his
stride again, the Dane had hurled himself upon the fugitive, bearing
him to the ground, in the slime and mud of the greasy street.
By the time Buff’s tawny back smote the asphalt, he was master of the
situation. Furious at this abominable delay he reverted to type--or to
two types.
It was his wolf-ancestry that lent him the wit and the nimbleness to
spin to his feet, under the big assailant’s lunging body, and to find
by instinct the hind leg tendon of the lumbering brute. All this, in
one lightning swirl, and before the Dane could slacken his own pace.
But it was his pit terrier strain that made him set his curved
eye-teeth deep and firmly in that all-important tendon, and to hold
his grip with a vise-like steadfastness and might, while he ground his
jaws slowly together.
Almost before the smitten mongrel could shriek forth his agony and
fear, before the toppling gigantic body could crash to the ground, the
fierce-grinding jaws had met in the centre of the thing they gripped.
And, leaving behind him the crippled and howling bully, Buff slipped
through the human crowd that had begun to collect; and was casting
about once more for the ever-fainter trail of Trent’s car.
In a moment he had found it. And he sped along in renewed zest.
Through the city and out into its straggling suburbs galloped Buff.
There, a mile beyond, was a wayside garage, with one or two
ramshackle buildings on either side of it. Behind them a rotting dock
nosed its way out into the river. Here, at times, tugs and tenders and
lighters touched; on their way between the city and the ocean harbour,
eight miles to southward.
At the garage the trail ended. Here had halted Michael Trent’s car.
Buff ran twice around the closed garage. His nostrils told him the car
was inside that dark and deserted building. He had followed it twenty
miles or more. He was worn out from the run. Yet here the scent of his
adored master was stronger than it had been anywhere along the way.
The dog scratched imperiously at the garage door. The sagging wood
shook and grumbled under the impact. But it held firm. Nor did anyone
come from inside to answer the summons. Frightened at the silence, yet
certain of the scent he sought, Buff circled the building once more,
nose to earth, steps uncertain, head darting from side to side.
The quest did not bring to his senses any trace of Trent. But it did
bring to him a dual odour that set the dog’s ruff to bristling, and
his teeth to glinting from under his uncurled lip. For here, side by
side, had trodden Hegan and Gates. Not more than an hour earlier they
had walked here, their heels striking deep in the dirt, as though
they carried between them some heavy weight. They had walked thus to
the dock and to its outer edge.
Baffled, the collie made his way back to the garage. There, distinct
through the reek of gas and oil and dead tobacco and dried grease, he
caught again the scent of his master. With a little whimper of
eagerness, Buff paused beneath a shut and locked window, some three
feet from the ground. He gathered his waning strength for one more
effort, and sprang upward.
Through the thin and cracked glass and the rotting sash he clove his
way, alighting on the slimy concrete floor of the garage amid a shower
of window particles.
The glass, by some minor miracle, scarce cut the dog. Apart from a
scratch or two on his pads and a shallow cut on the nose, he was none
the worse for his dive through the shaky casement.
The instant he touched ground, Buff was in new search of his master’s
scent. And at once he found it.
There were three cars in the garage. Two of them were old and battered
and in parlous condition. The third was still new. And to this new car
Buff ran.
It was Michael Trent’s car. Empty as it was now--even of cushions and
dashboard equipments, and shorn of its license numbers--Buff knew it
at a single sniff. He knew more. He knew that in this car’s muddied
tonneau, little over half an hour ago, Trent had been lying. Yes, and
that Gates and Hegan had been occupying the front seat. Also that the
nasty smell of some medicine or drug was strong in the tonneau.
But the one thing that interested Buff was Michael Trent’s recent
presence there. Being only a real-life dog and not a story-book
detective, it occurred quite naturally to Buff that where Trent had so
lately been, he would in time be again.
Trent had left the car. That was evident. But doubtless he would
return to it. Every day he used this car. And, of course, he would
come back to it, soon or late. Wherefore, as Trent’s trail led no
farther, there seemed nothing for Buff to do but to wait for him here.
Accordingly, the collie stepped up on the running board, and through
the open doorway of the tonneau. Stretching himself out there, as
close as possible to the space where Trent had lain, Buff began his
vigil--waiting in worried patience for the return of the man whom he
had chosen as his deity.
And so in time he fell asleep; worn-out nature renewing itself in his
tired body and building up again the strong young tissues and the
wonted vigour of frame and of brain.
Fast as the dog had run, and with as few delays, yet he had arrived
far too late to ameliorate or even share his master’s doom. Fast as a
collie can run--and no dog but the greyhound can outstrip him--yet a
new and desperately driven motor-car can cover thrice the same ground
in far less time than can he.
Moreover, Buff had wasted many precious minutes in senselessness, in
the waterless well, and many more in gnawing through the rope, and in
casting about the farmhouse and in the yard for Trent’s trail. More
than an hour ahead of him, Gates and Hegan had reached their
destination. They had disposed of the stolen car, borne off the
valuables they had taken from Trent’s home and from his body, and did
all else they had planned in advance to do. The only creature with a
clue to the victim’s whereabouts had come up an hour too late.
It was daylight when Buff awoke. He was stiff and drowsy. The bullet
graze and the glass cut on his head were throbbing. He was thirsty,
too, and hungry. He did not wake, of his own accord, but through force
of habit, as the crunching of human feet reached his sleeping senses.
He lifted his head. Steps were clumping up to the garage door, and a
key was at work in the padlock. Buff was keenly interested.
A dog awakens instantly and with all his faculties acute. With him
there is none of the owlish stupidity and dazedness which marks the
transition from sleep to awake, among humans. At one instant he is
fast asleep; at the next he is wide awake. And so it was with Buff.
He was interested now at the sound of steps, because he hoped one of
the two men whose tread he heard might be Michael Trent. But at once
he knew it was not. Trent’s step was as familiar to Buff as was
Trent’s scent. And neither of these two approaching persons had a
semblance to Trent’s light, springy stride. Indeed, before the garage
door opened more than an inch, Buff’s nostrils told him that these
newcomers were total strangers to him.
One of the two men was elderly and disreputable. The other, a mere
boy, had not lived long enough to look as thoroughly disreputable as
did his companion, but very evidently he had done his best along that
line in the few years allotted him.
The older man was approaching Trent’s car, talking over his shoulder
to the youth.
“Put them new license plates on this, first thing you do,” he
commanded. “Then get a chisel and see what you can do with the motor
number. And we’ll have to----”
He stopped with much abruptness. As he had been speaking he had
advanced to Trent’s car and had laid a careless hand on the swinging
tonneau door. At the same moment he was aware of a tawny shape, bloody
of head, that arose from the depths of the tonneau; teeth bared and
eyes menacing.
This car belonged to Michael Trent as much as did the Trent farmhouse.
Long since, Buff had learned that it was his sacred duty to guard the
one as rigidly as the other. And here this stranger was laying an
impious hand on the machine!
At the apparition of the threatening head and at the sound of the
equally threatening growl, the man recoiled from the car, jerking back
his dirty hand from the door as suddenly as if the latter had turned
into a snake.
Open-mouthed, the two men surveyed Buff. Quietly, but not at all
friendlily, the collie returned their stare. He had no quarrel with
either of them. For all he knew or cared, this might be their rightful
home. So long as they should abstain from touching or otherwise
molesting Trent’s car, he was content to let them alone. But his pose
and expression made it very clear that he expected the same sort of
treatment from them and that he was calmly ready to enforce such
treatment.
“It’s--it’s--why, it’s a dog!” cleverly observed the youth, breaking
the momentary silence of surprise. “It’s----”
“It’s a collie,” amended his senior, finding his voice, and his wits
together. “A top-notcher, at that. Must have sneaked in here while we
was closin’ up last night. A dog like that is worth a big heap of
cash. And most likely there’ll be a reward offered for him. See, he’s
got a good collar on. And he’s chawed his rope through. He’s worth
keepin’ till called for. Go, catch him, sonny. And tie him up yonder,
till we c’n take him over to the house.”
The man spoke wheedlingly to his young companion. But the lad had
noted his sire’s own reception from Buff. And, modestly, he hung back.
At the other’s repeated and sterner mandate, the youth remarked:
“Think I’ll run up home for breakfast. I’ll be back in ten minutes.
You might tie him up, yourself, while I’m gone. I ain’t much used to
dogs.”
The older man scowled; then his brow cleared.
“We’ll both go up to breakfast,” he decreed. “We’ll lock this feller
in here while we’re gone. On the way back I’ll stop for Joe Stears.
He’s got a passel of dogs; and he und’stands handlin’ ’em. Come on.”
Compromising thus, they departed, closing and locking the garage door
behind them. Neither of them having gone to the far side of the room,
they did not see the broken sash and the mess of glass on the floor--a
bit of wreckage hidden from their view by the three cars.
For a few minutes after they left him, Buff lay still. Then he got up,
stretched fore and aft, collie fashion, and stepped down to the
concrete floor. Making his way across to a water-tub, he drank long
and deep. Then he stood irresolute.
He had been in this ill-smelling place for many hours. Michael Trent
had not returned to his car. Michael Trent’s odour had grown
faint--almost imperceptible. There was no reason, after all, to
believe that Trent would come back here. A few months ago he had taken
his old car to a garage and had never gone back for it. Perhaps that
was what he would do in the present case.
Meanwhile, Buff was bitterly homesick for his master. And Buff was
worried, to the depths of his soul, as to what might have befallen
Trent at the hands of the two men with whom the dog associated his
master’s departure--the men he was learning to hate with a mortal
hatred because he knew them for his master’s enemies.
By loitering here, he could get no trace of Trent, nor of the men who
had carried him away. Refreshed and once more alert, he prepared to
take up his quest again.
An easy leap carried Buff out through the smashed window, and to
freedom. As he stood in the road, hesitant, he saw bearing down toward
him at a run the two men who had just left the garage, and with them a
third man, who carried a rope and a club.
As the trio very evidently meant to seize him, and as he had no reason
for staying there in the road to be caught, the collie set off across
the nearest field at a hard-gallop, heading for a distant patch of
woods. The men gave chase. But, without bothering to increase his
speed, he soon left; them panting and swearing, far in the rear.
Presently, they gave up the pursuit.
Midway in the field, Buff scared up an unwary young rabbit. At sight
of the pneumatically bouncing cottontail, the collie remembered he
himself had eaten nothing in nearly twenty-four hours. Like a furry
whirlwind, he was after the rabbit. Fifty yards on, a swirl in the
long grass and a few red-stained leaves marked the abrupt end of the
race. And Buff found himself supplied with a toothsome breakfast.
Thus began the collie’s first day of utter loneliness; a day of bleak
misery and bewilderment, of biting grief. He ranged the country for
miles on either side for a trace of his master. He followed several
motor-cars, on various highways, because of their vague resemblance to
Trent’s.
Once he ran rapturously for a quarter-mile, in pursuit of a
well-set-up man who was taking a cross-country tramp; and whom, in the
distance, his near-sighted eyes mistook for his master. The wind being
in the wrong direction, Buff was not aware of his error until he had
careered to within fifty feet of the stranger. Then, head and brush
drooping, he slunk away, heavy of heart and heedless of the man’s
kindly hail.
Under cover of darkness, that evening, the collie made a detour that
brought him back to the garage where last he had seen Trent’s car.
Whether he hoped Trent might have come back there, or whether perhaps
the desolate dog craved the faint scent of his master on the tonneau
door and flooring--in any event, he leaped in through the unmended
window of the garage, and sought to locate the stolen car.
The car was no longer there. After the deft underground method
employed by professional automobile thieves and receivers of such
booty, the car had already been passed along the line to its next
resting-place.
A boy, coming home late from the near-by city, chanced to be passing
the unlit garage. From the cavernous depths of the building burst
forth into the still night a hideous sound--the anguish howl of a
wolf or of a masterless and wretched collie.
While the boy still stood shivering in terror at the eerie sound, a
dark shape hurtled out through the window and vanished into the
surrounding blackness.
And now began Buff’s tortured experience as a stray--as a leal one-man
dog whose master is gone. Goaded on ever by that vague hope of
somewhere finding Trent, and the scarce lesser hope of finding and
wreaking vengeance on the men he associated with Trent’s
disappearance, the great collie wandered aimlessly over the face of
the countryside.
Unhappiness and the nerve-wrack of his endless quest lent him a
strange furtiveness, and made him revert in a measure to the wild.
Always searching--always avoiding his own kind and humans--he grew
gaunt and lean. Living by his wits, in summer the forests gave him
enough food to support life. He became craftily adept in catching
rabbits and squirrels, and even occasional young birds. He did not
starve, for the wolf-brain lent him the gift of foraging; although his
farm training held him aloof from hen-roost and stall and fold, in his
food-hunts.
Almost at once he skirted the city and guided himself back to Boone
Lake, nearly thirty miles from where the trail had ended. The feat
was not difficult, and he consumed less than a single night on the
journey.
Reaching his master’s farm at grey of dawn, Buff found the house and
outbuildings deserted. The weeds had crept thick among the once trim
crops, and there was an air of desolation brooding over the land.
Buff could not know that of all Boone Lake, Ruth Hammerton alone had
refused to accept as true the report that Michael Trent had left home
of his own accord. She had visited the deserted farm with her father,
as soon as the story had been repeated to her, and had prevailed on
Mr. Hammerton to send one of his farm-hands to transfer to the
Hammertons’ place Trent’s suffering livestock for safe-keeping.
It was enough for the collie to know his master was not at home, and
that he had not been at home since the night of his kidnapping. Buff
did not belong to the silly and professionally loyal type of dog that
curls itself on its owner’s vacant doorstep and starves to death.
There was no time to think of such selfish matters as death, while
Michael Trent remained to be found and his two enemies to be tracked
down.
So, aimlessly, he took up his search.
That night he circled Boone Lake, investigating every house and path
that Trent had been wont to frequent, visiting first the Hammerton
place and last the market square--the scene of his triumph over Bayne,
the drover.
Dawn found him miles away, ever seeking, ever wandering, living on
slain forest creatures, obsessed and haunted by his overmastering
impulse to find Trent.
Once, as he trotted along the ridge of a wooded hill, Buff saw in the
valley below a farmer trying with pitiable ill-success to round up a
flock of sixty sheep that had bolted through the pasture gate and were
scattering over the surrounding fields and woods; instead of marching
toward their distant fold, whose gate stood invitingly open.
Moved by an instinct he did not stay to define or to resist, the
collie swept down the ridge and into the valley below. The harassed
farmer beheld descending on his stampeded flock a bolt of
tawny-and-white lightning that whirled in and out among the galloping
strays as if bent on their wholesale destruction.
While the man was yelling his lungs out and seeking a stone wherewith
to brain the marauder, he suddenly came to a foolish halt, and stood
gaping at the spectacle before him.
The supposedly rabid and murderous dog was rounding up the scattered
flock with uncanny skill and speed, marshalling them into the narrow
road, driving strays back into the column and moving the whole woolly
throng steadily and decorously toward the fold.
Arrived at the gate, one wether bolted past it, and ten other sheep
followed his lead. The wether did not go forty feet before he and his
fellow-truants found themselves confronted by a large and indignant
collie, who forced them with gentle relentlessness to wheel in their
tracks and rejoin the flock.
Tongue out, tail wagging, Buff stood at the gate of the fold, holding
his prisoners from passing out again until the puffing and marvelling
farmer came running up.
The man paused to fasten the gate before turning his full attention on
the wonderful collie. But by the time the gate was made fast the dog
was a hundred yards down the road, trotting lazily back toward the
ridge. Not by so much as a turn of his classic head did he show he
heard the frantic and cajoling shouts the farmer sent after him.
On another late afternoon, ten miles from there, a farmer’s child was
piloting her father’s eleven cows and two calves home along the road
from pasture. Three men, passing in a small motor-truck, halted,
jumped to the ground, seized the pair of calves and prepared to sling
them into the truck.
The child screamed in terrified appeal, and caught hold of one of the
men by the arm, while the herd of cows ran in panic through fields and
woods.
The man shook off the child’s convulsive hold with a vehemence that
sent her flat in the dust of the road.
And on the same instant a huge and lean and hairy beast burst through
a roadside thicket and flung himself on the man, bearing him to earth
by the sheer weight of his assault.
By the time the thief had landed, rolling and yelling, in the roadway,
Buff had deserted him, and was at another of the trio. And this was
the collie of it. A bulldog secures his grip and holds it till
doomsday. A collie, fighting, is everywhere at once. The collie strain
in Buff told him his opponents were three, and that there was no sense
in devoting himself over-long to any one of them at the expense of the
rest. So he was raging at the second man’s throat before the first
fairly realised what had attacked him.
The third man, however, had a trifle more time on his hands than had
either of his companions. And, wisely, he utilised that second of time
in dropping the calf he had caught and in making one flying leap for
the seat of the truck.
There, as fast as they could beat off the furry demon that was rending
their flesh and clothes, the two others joined him. Leaving the
calves to run free, the men set the machine into rapid motion and
rattled off down the road.
Buff did not follow. Already he was in the thickets again, rounding up
the gawkily galloping cows. And presently he had them back in the
highway, in orderly alignment and walking stolidly homeward.
Dropping back beside the still weeping child, Buff licked her
frightened face with his pink tongue, wagged his tail and his entire
body reassuringly, and then thrust his muzzle into her trembling
little hand. Thus, her father, having witnessed the scene from afar,
came hurrying up, to find his cattle safe and in the road, and his
erstwhile terrified daughter hugging a huge collie frantically and
kissing the silken crest of the dog’s head in an agony of gratitude
and love.
But, as the farmer himself sought to catch hold of the dog, Buff
showed his white teeth in a wild-beast snarl that made the man start
back.
Taking advantage of this momentary check, the collie bounded off into
the bushes and was gone.
Buff himself could not have explained the unwonted wildness and
ferocity that seemed to have taken hold of him in his wanderings. For
the first three years or so of his life--indeed, until Gates’s pistol
shot had stunned him--he had known nothing but friendliness and good
treatment. And, except toward tramps and like prowlers, he had never
felt hatred. Though he had always been a one-man dog, he had shown no
ill-temper toward those who sought to make friends with him.
Yet now, as evidenced by his snarl at the father of the child who was
caressing him, he had neither lot nor part with mankind at large. His
every hope and yearning were centred on the finding of his master. And
the wolf strain in his make-up thrilled almost as keenly to his
longing to encounter the men with whom he associated the disappearance
of Trent.
For the rest of humanity he felt no interest. Not even toward Ruth
Hammerton, who had reigned second to Trent in his heart.
Twice during his months as a tramp dog, Buff revisited Boone
Lake--casting about the farm, trotting at midnight through the
village, hanging wistfully around the Hammerton place for nearly an
hour. But before dawn he was far away again.
Most of his travelling was done by night or in dusk and at grey
daybreak. For experience had taught him that the open ways are not
safe for an unattached dog by sunlight.
A lesser dog might readily have attached himself to one of the various
friendly folk who chanced to meet him and to give him a kindly word
or call. A lesser dog, too, might have chosen a home at one of the
farms scattered through the broad stretch of country Buff traversed.
At any of a dozen places his beauty and his prowess at herding would
have won for the collie a warm and lasting welcome.
But none of this was for Buff. He had known but one master. Losing
Trent, he was fated to be forever masterless, unless he should chance
to find the man he had lost. And, being only a dog, he knew no better
way of finding him than by this everlasting and aimless search.
On a late September afternoon, he was roused from a troubled nap in
the long grass and bushes at the verge of a field, by the sound of a
mad-galloping horse and of a woman’s brave yet frightened calls to the
runaway. Looking over the fringe of grass, towards the road, a furlong
distant, he saw a fast-moving cloud of yellow-grey dust, which
resolved itself into a hazy screen for a horse and light buggy.
The horse--a young and nervous brute--had taken fright at the running
of a woodchuck across the road under his feet, and had sprung forward
with a suddenness that snapped his check-rein. The swinging check
smote him resoundingly again and again, on the neck and across the
face, turning his first fright into panic, and making useless the
efforts of the driver to bring him down.
A woman was driving. She was neither young nor beautiful. She had
self-possession, and she had a more than tolerable set of driving
hands. She was keeping the maddened horse more or less in the road,
and was sawing with valorous strength on one rein while she held the
other steady. Which was all the good it did her. For the brute had the
bit between his teeth.
Buff arrived at the road-edge just as one of the two light reins broke
under the undue strain put on it.
Before the driver could lighten the pull on the remaining rein its
impulse had jerked the horse’s low-laid head far to one side. His
rushing body prepared to follow the lead of his head towards a steep
roadside bank some ten feet deep, with a scattering of broken rock at
the bottom.
Then it was that the horse became dimly aware of a furry shape which
whizzed in front of him on that side, and of a flying head that struck
for his nose. A stinging slash on the left nostril sent the runaway
veering from the bank-edge, and plunging toward the telegraph pole on
the other side of the road. He was met and turned again by a second
slash from one of the collie’s curved eye-teeth. On the same moment
Buff stopped slashing and let his bulldog ancestry take control.
Thus the horse was assailed by a full double set of teeth that buried
themselves in his bleeding nostrils, and that hung on.
The wild steed sought to fling up his head to shake off this
anguishing weight of seventy odd pounds. But he could not shake
himself free. He checked his furious pace and reared, striking out
with his forefeet, and threatening to pitch backward into the buggy.
But a fierce wrench of the hanging jaws and a wriggle of the
intolerable weight brought him down on all fours again. At once Buff
released his grip and stood in front of the trembling horse. The
runaway made as though to plunge forward. But he flinched at the
memory of the dog’s attack and at the threat of its renewal.
While he hesitated, dancing, pawing, and in momentary cessation of his
run, the woman slipped from the seat to the ground and ran to his
head. With practised strength she shook the bit into place and held
fast. The horse jerked back. Buff nipped his heel, and instantly was
at his bloody nose, again.
The runaway, conquered and shivering, lashed out with one foreleg in a
last hopeless display of terrified anger. His shod hoof smote the
unprepared collie in the side. With a gasping sound, Buff rolled over
into the ditch, two ribs broken and a foot crushed.
Tying the horse to a telegraph pole, the woman went over to where the
wounded collie lay. In strong, capable arms, that were wondrous
gentle, she lifted him and bore him to the buggy. Laying him tenderly
on the floor of the vehicle, she returned to the horse’s head, untied
the cowed and trembling steed, and began to lead him homeward.
Ten minutes later she turned in at a lane leading to a rambling, low
farmhouse. And in another five minutes Buff was reclining on the
kitchen floor, the woman’s husband working skilfully over his
injuries, while the matron poured out the tale of his heroism and
cleverness.
“I know what dog this is, too,” she finished. “I’m sure I know. It
must be the same one that fought those thieves away from Sol Gilbert’s
cows over to Pompton, last week, when Sol’s girl was driving them
home. Mrs. Gilbert told me about it at the Grange, Monday. And he’s
likely the dog that rounded up those sheep for Parkins--or whatever
his name was--at Revere. You read me about it in the _Bulletin_, don’t
you remember? The letter Parkins wrote to the editor about it? I know
it must be the same one. It isn’t likely there’s more than one dog in
Passaic County with the sense to do all three of those things. He must
be like those knight-errant folks in Sylvia’s school book, who used to
go through the country rescuing folks that were in distress. The best
in the house isn’t any too good for him.”
“He’ll get it,” curtly promised her husband, without looking up from
his task. “It’s lucky I’ve had experience, though, in patching up
busted critters. Because this one is needing a lot of patching. Say!
Notice how he don’t even let a whimper out of him? This rib-setting
must hurt like fury, too. Acts more like a bulldog than a collie. I’m
going to advertise him. And if the owner shows up, I’ll offer him a
hundred dollars for the dog. He’ll be worth it, and a heap more, to
me, herding and such. _So_, old feller! Now for the smashed foot.
Don’t seem to be any big bones broke there.”
The weeks that followed were more nearly pleasant to Buff than had
been any space of time since Trent’s disappearance. He was perforce at
rest, while his fractured ribs and then his broken foot slowly mended.
And all that time he was fed up and petted and made much of, in a way
that would have turned most invalids’ heads.
It was well, after his months of restless searchings, to come to a
halt here in this abode of comfort and kindliness; to be petted again
by a woman’s soft hand, to eat cooked food once more, to be praised
and to feel himself gloriously welcome.
Buff’s craving ambition, to find Trent and to run to earth his two
enemies, was less acute in these drowsy days of convalescence. His
sick soul seemed to be returning to normal along with his sick body.
By the time Buff could walk with any degree of comfort again, the
morning frost lay heavy on the fields. The dog went out for a brief
stroll with the farmer and his wife. To their delight, he did not try
to run away, but accompanied them home and lay down contentedly on the
doorstep.
After that, no further guard was kept over him. It was understood that
he would stay with the people who had succoured and healed him.
One cold night in late autumn the dog accompanied his host, as usual,
on the evening rounds of barns and outbuildings. As they were
returning towards the warm red glow of the lamplit kitchen windows,
Buff came to a dead stop.
A slight shudder ran through him. He lifted his delicate nose and
sniffed the frosty air. He smelt nothing. He sniffed merely in an
effort to corroborate in some way by scent the strange impulse which
was taking possession of him--an impulse he could not resist.
“Come along, Shep, old boy!” coaxed the farmer, arriving at the
doorstep and turning back towards the collie. “Supper’s ready. What’s
the matter?”
Slowly, very slowly, Buff approached the man. Timidly, almost
remorsefully, he licked the outstretched hand. Then, throwing back his
magnificent head, he made the frost-chilled stillnesses of the autumn
night re-echo with a hideously discordant and ear-torturing wolf-howl.
“Why, Shep,” exclaimed the farmer in amaze, “whatever ails you?
What’s----”
He broke off in the midst of his bewildered query and raised his voice
in a shout of summons to the dog. For, like a streak of tawny light,
Buff had whirled out of the dooryard and was fleeing up the road.
He heard the eager call of the man who had cured him and befriended
him and given him a happy home. But he heard--far more clearly--a
soundless call that urged him forward.
Guided only by mystic collie instinct and by that weird impulse which
had taken possession of him, he fled through the night at breakneck
speed, headed unswervingly for Boone Lake, full thirty miles away.
On the same night--after a cautious absence of several months--Con
Hegan and Billy Gates ventured to return to their former homes in the
Boone Lake suburbs.