instant, Shunk wheeled and fled. Just behind him was a shellbark tree,
with a low limb jutting out above the lane. Shunk dropped his coat and
leaped for this overhanging limb as Chum made a second dash for him.
The man’s fingers closed round the branch and he sought to draw himself
up, screaming loudly for help. The scream redoubled in volume and scaled
half an octave in pitch as the pursuing collie’s teeth met in Shunk’s
calf.
His flabby muscles galvanised by pain and by terror, the man made shift
to drag his weight upward and to fling a leg over the branch. But as the
right leg hooked itself across the bough, the dangling left leg felt a
second embrace from the searing white teeth, in a slashing bite that
clove through trouser and sock and skin and flesh and grated against the
bone itself.
Screeching and mouthing, Shunk wriggled himself up onto the branch and
lay hugging it with both arms and both punctured legs. Below him danced
and snarled Chum, launching himself high in air, again and again, in a
mad effort to get at his escaped prey. Then the dog turned to the
approaching Ferris in stark appeal for help in dislodging the intruder
from his precarious perch.
“That’s enough, Chummie!” drawled Link. “Leave him be!”
He petted the dog’s head and smiled amusedly at Chum’s visible
reluctance in abandoning the delightful game of man treeing. At a motion
of Ferris’s hand, the collie walked reluctantly away and lay down beside
Dorcas.
Chum could never understand why humans had such a habit of calling him
off—just when fun was at its height. It was like this when he ran stray
cattle off the farm or chased predatory tramps. Still, Link was his god;
obedience was Chum’s creed. Wherefore, so far as he was concerned, Eben
Shunk ceased to exist.
The dog catcher noted the cessation of attack. And he ceased his own
howls. He drew himself to a painful sitting posture on the tree limb and
began to nurse one of his torn legs.
“You’ll go to jail for this!” he whined down at Ferris.
“I’ll swear out a warr’nt agin ye, the minute I git back to Hampton.
Yes, an’ I’ll git the judge to order your dog shot as a men’ce to public
safety an’—”
“I guess not!” Ferris cut him short as Shunk’s whine swelled to a howl.
“I guess not, Mister Meanest Man. In fact, you’ll be lucky if you keep
out of the hoosgow, on my charge of trespass. You came onto my land
against my wish. You couldn’t help seein’ my No Trespassing sign yonder.
I ordered you off. You refused to go. I gave you fair warnin’. You
wouldn’t mind it. I did all that before I sicked the dog on you. My wife
is a reli’ble witness. And she can swear to it in any court. If I sick
my dog onto a trespasser who refuses to clear out when he’s told to,
there’s no law in North Jersey that will touch either me or Chum. And
you know it as well as I do. Now I tell you once more to clear off of my
farm. If you’ll go quick I’ll see the dog don’t bother you. If you put
up any more talk I’ll station him under this tree and leave you and him
to companion each other here all day. Now git!”
As though to impress his presence once more on Mr. Shunk, Chum slowly
got up from the ground at Dorcas’ feet and slouched lazily toward the
tree again. Link, wondering at the dog’s apparent disobedience of his
command to leave the prisoner alone, looked on with a frown of
perplexity. But at once his face cleared.
For Chum was not honouring the tree dweller by so much as a single
upward glance. Instead, he was picking his way to where Shunk’s
discarded coat lay on the ground near the tree foot. The dog stood over
this unlovely garment, looking down at its greasily worn surface with
sniffling disapproval. Then, with much cold deliberation, Chum knelt
down and thrust one of his great furry shoulders against the rumpled
surface of the coat and shoved the shoulder along the unkempt expanse of
cloth. After which he repeated the same performance with his other
shoulder, ending the demonstration by rolling solemnly and luxuriously
upon the rumpled, mishandled coat.
Link burst into a bellow of Homeric laughter. Shunk, peering down, went
purple with utter and speechless indignation. Both men understood dogs.
Therefore, to both of them, Chum’s purpose was as clear as day. But Baby
Olive looked on in crass perplexity. She wondered why Link found it so
funny.
“What’s he doing, Link?” she demanded. “What’s Chummie rolling on that
nassy ol’ coat for? It’ll get him all dirty.”
“Listen, Baby,” exhorted Link, when he could speak. “A dog never digs
his shoulders into anything, that way, and then rolls in it—except
carrion! He—”
“Link!” cried Dorcas, scandalised.
“That’s so, old girl,” replied her husband. “It’s a busy day and we
won’t have time to waste in giving the dog a bath. Come away, Chum!”
The dog came back to his place in front of Dorcas. Ferris, wearying of
the scene, nodded imperatively to Shunk.
“Come down!” he decreed. “It’s safe. So long as you get out of here,
now!”
Mouthing, gobbling like some distressed turkey, Eben Shunk proceeded to
let his bulk down from the limb. He groaned in active misery as his
bitten legs were called upon to bear his weight again. He stood for a
moment glowering from Link to the disgruntedly passive collie. Chum
returned the look with compound interest, then glanced at Ferris in
wistful appeal, dumbly begging leave to renew the chase.
Shunk still fought for coherent utterance and weighed in his bemused
brain the fact that he had overstepped the law. Before he could speak, a
pleasant diversion was caused by Olive Chatham.
The little girl had been a happily interested spectator of the bout
between her adored Chum and this pig-eyed fat man. But the coat-rolling
episode had been beyond her comprehension. She had trotted away, after
Link’s explanation of it, and her mind had cast about for some new
excitement. She had found it.
The bony yellow horse had been left untied; in Shunk’s haste to annex a
dog-catching dollar. Therefore the horse, after the manner of his kind,
had begun to crop the wayside grass. But this grass was close cut and
was hard for his decaying teeth to nibble. A little farther on, just
within the limits of the lane, the herbage grew lusher and higher. So
the horse had strayed thither, trundling his disreputable wagon after
him.
Olive’s questing glance had fallen upon horse and cart, not ten feet
away from her, and several yards inside of the farm’s boundary line. She
heard also that pitiful sound of whimpering from within the
canvas-covered body of the wagon. And she remembered what Link had said
about the dogs imprisoned there.
She hurried up to the vehicle and circumnavigated it until she came to
the grating at the back.
Clambering up on the rear step, she looked in. At once several
pathetically sniffing little noses were thrust through the bars for a
caress or a kind word in that abode of loneliness and fear.
This was too much for the child’s warm heart. She resolved then and
there upon the rôle of deliverer. Reaching up to the grated door, she
pushed back its simple bolt.
Instantly she was half-buried under a canine avalanche. No fewer than
seven dogs—all small and all badly scared—bounded through the open
doorway toward freedom. In their dash for safety they almost knocked the
baby to the ground. Then with joyous barks and yelps they galloped off
in every direction.
This was the spectacle which smote upon the horrified senses of Eben
Shunk as he fought for words under the tree that had been his abode of
refuge.
Shunk had had an unusually profitable morning. Not often did a single
day’s work net him seven dollars. But this was circus day at Paterson
and many Hampton people had gone thither. They had left their dogs at
home. One or two of these dogs had wandered onto the street, where they
had fallen easy victims to the dog catcher. Others he had snatched,
protesting, from the porches and dooryards of their absent owners. Seven
of the lot had not chanced to wear license tags, and these Shunk had
corralled in his wagon. Now his best day’s work in months threatened to
become a total loss.
With a wild wrench he drove his arms into the sleeves of the coat he had
just rescued. In the same series of motions—and bawling an assortment of
expletives, which Link hoped Dorcas and Olive might not understand—the
dog catcher made a wild rush for his escaped captives, picking up and
brandishing the landing net as he ran.
“Chum!” whispered Ferris tensely.
As he spoke he pointed to the bony yellow horse.
“Easy!” he added, observing the steed’s feebleness and age.
The yellow horse was roused from his first square meal in weeks by a
gentle nip at his heel. He threw up his head with a snort and made a
clumsy bound forward.
But, instantly, Chum was in front of him, herding him as often he had
herded recalcitrant cows of Link’s, steering him for the highroad. As
the wagon creaked and bumped out onto the turnpike, Chum imparted a
farewell nip to one of the charger’s hocks.
With a really creditable burst of speed the horse set off down the road
at a hand gallop. The rattle and squeaking of the disreputable wagon
reached Shunk’s ears just as Eben had almost cornered one of the seven
escaping dogs.
Shunk turned round. Down the road his horse was running. A sharp turn
was barely quarter of a mile beyond. On the stone of this turn the brute
might well shatter the wagon and perhaps injure himself. There was but
one thing for his distracted owner to do. Horse and wagon were worth
more than seven dollars—even if not very much more. Eben Shunk was a
thrifty man. And he knew he must forgo the capture of the seven rescued
dogs if he intended to save his equipage.
He broke into a run, giving chase to his faithless steed. As he passed
the thunderously guffawing Ferris, Shunk wasted enough precious breath
and time to yell:
“I’ll git that dog of yourn yet! Next time he sets foot in Hampton
Borough I’ll—”
The rest of his threat was lost in distance.
“H’m!” mused Ferris, the laugh dying on his lips. “He’ll do it too!
He’ll be layin’ in wait for Chum, if it takes a year. In the borough
limits dogs and folks is bound by borough laws. That means we can’t take
Chum to Hampton again. Unless—Lord, but folks can stir up more ructions
over a decent innocent dog than over all the politics that ever
happened! If—”
His maundering voice trailed away. Just before him, at the spot where
Shunk had jettisoned his defiled and much-rolled-on coat, was a scrap of
paper. It was dirty and it was greasy and it had been folded in a half
sheet. His hard-learned lessons in neatness impelled Link to stoop and
pick up this bit of litter which marred the clean surface of the sward.
The doubled half sheet opened in his hand as he glanced carelessly at
it. The first of several sentences scrawled thereon leaped forth to meet
the man’s gaze.
Ferris stuck the paper in his shirt pocket and stared down the road
after the receding Shunk with a smoulder in his eye that might have
stirred that village functionary to some slight alarm had he seen it.
Olive’s visit to her big sister ended a week later. Link and Dorcas
escorted her back to the Chathams’ Hampton home. Old Man Chatham ran the
village’s general store and post office and had the further distinction
of being a local justice of the peace.
Olive did not at all care for the idea of changing her outdoor life at
the Ferris farm for a return to the metropolitan roar and jostle of a
village with nine hundred inhabitants. And she showed her disapproval by
sitting in solemn and semi-tearful silence on the slippery back seat of
Link’s ancient carryall all the short way into town. Only as the
carryall was drawing up in front of the store, which occupied the
southerly half of her ancestral home, did she break silence. Then she
said aggrievedly:
“This is just like when I get punished. And poor Chummie got punished,
too, for something. Why did Chummie get punished, Link?”
“Old Chum never got punished in his life,” answered Link. “Whatever gave
you that notion, Baby?”
“When I looked for him, to say by-by,” explained Olive, “he wasn’t
anywheres at all. So I called at him. And he barked. And I went to where
the bark was. And there was poor old Chummie all tied up to a chain in
the barn. He was being punished. So I—”
"He wasn’t being punished, dear," said Dorcas, lifting the child to the
ground. “Link tied him up so he wouldn’t follow us to town. There are so
many autos on the roads Saturday afternoons. Besides, Eben Shunk—”
“Oh,” queried Olive. “Was that why? I thought he was punished. So I
unpunished him. I let him loose. Not outdoors. Because maybe you’d see
him and tie him again. I let him loose and I shut the barn door, so he
could stay in there and play and not be tied.”
"It’d take Chum just about ten minutes to worry the barn door open!"
grinned Link. “He’ll get our scent and come pirootin’ straight after
us.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Dorcas. “Hadn’t you better turn back and—”
But the hurrying of the child’s father and mother from the house to
welcome the newcomers drove the thought out of her mind. Link had but
grinned the wider at her troubled suggestion. Greeting his
parents-in-law, Ferris hitched his horse and followed Dorcas and her
mother to the veranda.
There they sat talking until suddenly a volley of heart-broken screams
broke in upon them. Up the path from the street rushed little Olive, her
eyes streaming, her baby mouth in a wide circle, from which issued a
series of panic cries.
Both men sprang to their feet and hurried down the path to meet her. Her
mother and sister rushed from the house at the same moment and ran to
succour the screaming child. But Olive thrust them back, squealing
frantically to Link:
“That awful man’s got Chummie! He tooked him from me and he says he’ll
beat him till he’s dead. I pulled Chummie away and the man slapped me
over and he’s running off with Chummie!”
Old Man Chatham was an elder in the church at Hampton. Yet on hearing of
the blow administered to his worshipped child and at the sight of an
ugly red mark athwart her plump baby face, an expletive crackled luridly
from between his pious lips—an expletive which should have brought him
before the consistory of his church for rigid discipline.
Then, by the time Olive had sobbed out her pitiful tidings, both he and
Link Ferris had set off down the street at a dead run. Instinctively
they were heading for an alley which bisected the street a furlong
below—an alley wherein abode Eben Shunk and where his backyard pound was
maintained.
Truly, Chum had let himself and others in for an abundance of trouble
when he scratched and nosed at the recalcitrant barn door until he pried
it wide enough open to let him slip out. He had caught the scent, as
Link predicted, and he had turned into the main street of Hampton a bare
five minutes behind the carryall.
As he was on his orderly journey toward the Chatham home, Olive spied
him from the dooryard and ran out to greet him.
And Eben Shunk, seeing them, waited only long enough to snatch up his
rope and landing net, and gave chase. Coming upon the unsuspecting pair
from behind, he was able to jam the net over Chum’s head before the
placidly pacing collie was aware of his presence.
Chum, catching belated sight and scent of his enemy, sought right
valiantly to free himself and give battle. But the tough meshes of the
net had been drawn as tightly over his head and jaws as any glove,
holding him helpless. And Shunk was fastening the rope about the wildly
struggling neck. It was then that Olive sprang to her canine comrade’s
aid, only to be slapped out of the way by the irate and overoccupied
man. Whereat, she had fled for reinforcements.
A dog has but a single set of weapons, namely, his mighty jaws. The net
held Chum’s mouth fast shut. The noose was cutting off his wind. And bit
by bit strangulation and confusion weakened the collie’s struggles. With
a final wrench of the noose, Shunk got under way. Heading down street
toward his own alley, he dragged the fiercely unwilling prisoner behind
him. A crowd accompanied him, as did their highly uncomplimentary
remarks.
As Shunk reached the mouth of the alley and prepared to turn toward his
own yard, two newcomers were added to the volunteer escort. But these
two men were not content to look on in passive disgust. The elder of
them hurled himself bodily at Shunk.
Link intervened as his enraged father-in-law was about to seize the dog
catcher by the throat.
“Don’t!” he warned, thrusting Chatham back. “There’s the cop! You’re a
judge. You sure know a better way to get Shunk than to punch him. If you
hit the man you give him a chance to sue. Do the suing, yourself!”
While he talked, Link was using his hastily drawn farm knife in
scientific fashion. One slash severed the noose from about Chum’s furry
throat. A second cut parted the drawstring of the net. A dexterous tug
at the meshes tore the net off the dog’s head, setting free the terrible
imprisoned jaws.
Meanwhile, choking back his craving to assail Shunk, Old Man Chatham
strode up to the dumfounded constable.
“Officer,” Chatham commanded in his very best bench manner, albeit still
sputtering with rage and loss of breath, “you’ll arrest that man—that
Shunk person, there—and you’ll convey him to the court room over my
store. There I’ll commit him to the calaboose to await a hearing in the
morning.”
Shunk gobbled in wordless and indignant dismay. The constable hesitated,
confused.
“I accuse him,” went on the grimly judicious accents, “of striking and
knocking down my six-year-old daughter, Olive. He struck her, here, in
the public thoroughfare, causing possible ‘abrasions and contusions and
mental and physical anguish,’ as the statoot books describe it. The
penalty for striking a minor, as you know, is severe. I shall press the
charge, when the case comes before one of my feller magistrates,
to-morrow. I shall also bring civil action for—”
“Hold on, there!” bleated Shunk as the constable, overawed by the array
of legal terms, took a truculent step toward him. “Hold on, there! The
brat—she beat at me with both her fists, she did, an’—”
“And in self-preservation against a six-year-old child you were obliged,
to knock her down?” put in Link. “That’s a plea that’ll sure clear you.
’Specially if there’s any of the jury that’s got little girls of their
own.”
"I didn’t knock nobody down!" fumed Shunk, wincing under the constable’s
grip on his shoulder. “She was a-pummellin’ me an’ tryin’ to git the dog
away from me. I just slapped her, light like, to make her quit. She
slipped an’ tumbled down. It didn’t hurt her none. She was up an’ off in
a—”
"You’ll all bear witness," observed Link, “that he confesses to hittin’
the child and that she fell down when he hit her. We hadn’t anything but
her word to go on till now. And children are apt to get confused in
court. Shunk, you’ve just saved us a heap of trouble by ownin’ up.”
"Ownin’ up?" shrilled the dog catcher, stung to the belated fury which
is supposed to obsess a cornered rat. “Ownin’ up? Not much! Chatham, I’m
a-goin’ to bring soot agin you, as your child’s legal gardeen, for her
‘interferin’ with an off’cer in pursoot of his dooty’! I’m a sworn
off’cer of this borough. I was doin’ my dooty in catchin’ that
unlicensed cur yonder. She interfered with me an’ tried to git him away
from me. I know enough law to—”
He checked himself, then pointed to Link and demanded:
“Constable Todd, I want you should arrest Lincoln Ferris! I charge him
with assaultin’ me, just now, in the presence of ev’ry one here an’
interferin’ with me in the pursoot of my dooty, an’ for takin’ away from
me, with a drawn knife, an unlicensed dog I had caught as the law orders
I should catch such dogs on the streets of this borough. Take him along
unless you want to lose your shield for neglect of dooty. If I’ve got to
stand trial, there’s a couple of men who’ll stand it too.”
“Gee!” groaned Old Man Chatham, his legal lore revealing to him the mess
wherein Shunk could so easily involve Ferris and himself. “You were dead
right, Link. One dog can cause more mixups in a c’munity than—”
“Than Eben Shunk?” asked Ferris. “No, you’re wrong, sir. Shunk can stir
up more bother than a poundful of dogs. Listen here, Shunk,” he went on.
“You claim that Olive and I both interfered with you in the pursuit of
your duty. How did we?”
“By tryin’ to take away from me a dog that the law c’mpelled me to
catch, of course,” snapped Eben, adding: “An’ I charge you with ’sault
and batt’ry too. You hit me in the stummick an’ knocked me clean off’n
the sidewalk.”
“I was at work over my dog with one hand and I was holding back Mr.
Chatham with the other,” denied Link. “How could I have hit you? Did any
one here see me strike this man?” he challenged the crowd.
“Aw, you didn’t hit him!” answered one of the boys who had picked up
stones. “He slipped on the curb. I saw him do it. Nobody hit him.”
“That’s right,” agreed the constable. “I was here. And I didn’t witness
any assault.”
"I’m thinkin’ you’ll have trouble provin’ that assault charge, Shunkie,"
grinned Link. “Now for the other one. Judge,” he said, addressing his
worried father-in-law, “you are an authority on legal things. I grant
it’s a misdemeanour—or a crime—or something—to interfere with a dog
catcher on a street of his own bailiwick when he’s pullin’ along an
unlicensed dog. But what would the law be if Shunk had grabbed a duly
licensed dog—a dog that was wearin’ his license tag on his collar, like
the law directs—a dog that was walkin’ peacefully along the street,
guardin’ a child whose fam’ly it belonged to? Would that child or would
the dog’s owner be committin’ any punishable fault for tryin’ to keep
the dog catcher from stealin’ their pet? Would they? And would the dog
catcher have any right to lay hands on such a dog? Would he have any
case against such child or man? Hey?”
“Why, no! Of course not!” fumed Old Man Chatham. “He’d have no legal
right to touch such a dog. They’d have a right to protect the beast from
him. But that’s all beside the point. The point is—”
“The point is,” intervened Link, calling Chum to him by a snap of the
fingers—“the point is that I was bothered by this man’s threats to grab
my dog and torture him. So I walked into town yesterday and paid my
dollar license fee to the borough clerk and took out a license for Chum.
I paid ten cents extra for a license tag and I fastened it on Chum’s
collar, as the law directs. See?”
He parted the heavy masses of ruff on the collie’s throat, bringing to
view a narrow circular collar, whereon dangled a little brass triangle.
At sight of the emblem Shunk’s jaw dropped.
“I didn’t see that!” he stammered aghast. “You told me last week he
wa’n’t licensed. How was I to know—”
“The borough clerk read me the law,” replied Ferris. “The law commands
that dog catchers search a dog’s collar for license tags before taking
him in charge. Shunkie, I’m afraid your sweet hopes of beatin’ Chum to
death must be folded up and laid away, like the pants of some dear dead
friend. Something tells me, too, that the mayor and council will appoint
a brand-new poundmaster when our complaint is laid before ’em and when
they hear their champion dog catcher’s in the hoosgow on a charge of
beatin’ a child. Something tells me, too, that you’ll find it c’nvenient
to move somewheres else, when you get out, and give some other burg the
honour of havin’ a Meanest Man in its ’mongst.”
"If I’d ’a’ cotched him a day earlier," moaned Shunk in utter regret and
to himself rather than to the others—“if I’d—”
"You couldn’t, Shunkie!" replied Link blithely. “I saw to that! He
didn’t stir off my land till I had time to come and get him licensed. If
it hadn’t been for holdin’ back the judge, here, from wallopin’ you, I
wouldn’t even of hurried to-day, when I found you had Chum. I was kind
of hopin’ you might try it. That’s why I didn’t head Chum off when I
guessed he’d started for town. I was waitin’ for you. That’s why I got
the license.”
From his pocket Link fished out a soiled half sheet of paper and
tendered it to the bulging-eyed dog catcher.
“Prop’ty of yours,” he explained. "You let it drop out’n your coat that
day you nosed round my farm lookin’ for Chum. At the time I had an idea
you was lookin’ for a dollar fee. When I read that note I saw you was
after a hundred-dollar fee—the cash you was offered by Sim Hooper if you
could impound Chum and then let Sim sneak him out of your yard and over
to Pat’son, to a collie dealer there, before I c’d come to redeem him.