house which all at once had been left unto him desolate. For the first
time in centuries a Mackellar was without a collie.
During the next week the Midwestburg Kennel Association’s annual dog
show was held at the Fourth Regiment Armory. This show was one of the
banner events of the year throughout Western dog circles. Its rich cash
specials and its prestige even drew breeders from the Atlantic States to
exhibit thereat the best their kennels afforded.
Thither, still hot and sore of heart, fared Jamie Mackellar. Always
during the three days of the Midwestburg dog show Jamie took a triple
holiday and haunted the collie section and the ringside. Here more than
once his dead chum had won blue ribbon and cash over the exhibits from
larger and richer kennels. And at such times Jamie Mackellar had
rejoiced with a joy that was too big for words, and which could express
itself only in a furtive hug of his collie’s shaggy ruff.
To-day, as usual, Jamie entered the barnlike armory among the very first
handful of spectators. To his ears the reverberant clangour of a
thousand barks was as battle music; as it echoed from the girdered roof
and yammered incessantly on the eardrums.
As ever, he made his way at once to the collie section. A famous New
York judge was to pass upon this breed. And there was a turnout of
nearly sixty collies; including no less than five from the East. Four of
these came from New Jersey; which breeds more high-class collies than do
any three other states in the Union.
It was Jamie’s rule to stroll through the whole section, for a casual
glance over the collies, before stopping at any of the benches for a
closer appraisal. But to-day he came to a halt, before he had traversed
the first row of stalls. His pale-blue eyes were riveted on a single
dog.
Lying at lazily majestic ease on the straw of a double-size bench was a
huge dark-sable collie. Full twenty-six inches high at the shoulder and
weighing perhaps seventy-five pounds, this dog gave no hint of
coarseness or of oversize. He was moulded as by a super-sculptor. His
well-sprung ribs and mighty chest and leonine shoulders were fit
complements to the classically exquisite yet splendidly strong head.
His tawny coat was as heavy as a bison’s mane. The outer coat—save where
it turned to spun silk, on the head—was harsh and wavy. The under coat
was as impenetrably soft as the breast of an eider duck. From gladiator
shoulders the gracefully powerful body sloped back to hips which spoke
of lightning speed and endurance. The tulip ears had never known weights
or pincers. The head was a true wedge, from every viewpoint. The
deep-set dark eyes were unbelievably perfect in expression and placment.
Here was a collie! Here was a dog whose sheer perfection made Jamie
Mackellar catch his breath for wonder, and then begin pawing frantically
at his show catalogue. He read, half aloud:
729: _Lochinvar Kennels. CHAMPION LOCHINVAR KING. Lochinvar
Peerless—Lochinvar Queen_
Followed the birth date and the words “Breeder owner.”
Jamie Mackellar’s pale eyes opened yet wider and he stared on the collie
with tenfold interest; an interest which held in it a splash of
reverence. Jamie was a faithful reader of the dog press. And for the
past two years Champion Lochinvar King’s many pictures and infinitely
more victories had stirred his admiration. He knew the dog, as a million
Americans know Man-o’-War.
Now eagerly he scanned the wonder collie. Every detail,—from the level
mouth and chiselled, wedge-shaped head and stern eyes with their true
“look of eagles,” to the fox brush tail with its sidewise swirl at the
tip—Jamie scanned with the delight of an artist who comes for the first
time on a Velasquez of which he has read and dreamed. Never in his
dog-starred life had the little man beheld so perfect a collie. It was
an education to him to study such a marvel.
Two more men came up to the bench. One was wearing a linen duster; and
fell to grooming King’s incredibly massive coat with expert hands. The
other—a plump giant in exaggeratedly vivid clothes—chirped to the dog
and ran careless fingers over the silken head. The collie waved his
plumed tail in response to the caress. Recalling how coldly King had
ignored his own friendly advances, Jamie Mackellar addressed the plump
man in deep respect.
“Excuse me, sir,” said he humbly, “but might you be Mr. Frayne—Mr.
Lucius Frayne?”
The man turned with insolent laziness, eyed the shabby little figure
from head to foot, and nodded. Then he went back to his inspection of
King.
Not to be rebuffed, Mackellar continued:
“I remember reading about you when you started the Lochinvar Kennels,
sir. That’ll be—let’s see—that’ll be the best part of eight years ago.
And three years back you showed Lochinvar Peerless out here—this great
feller’s sire. I’m proud to meet you, sir.”
Frayne acknowledged this tribute by another nod, this time not even
bothering to turn toward his admirer.
Mackellar pattered on:
“Peerless got Americanbred and Limit, that year; and he went to Reserve
Winners. If I’d ’a’ been judging, I’d of gave him Winners, over Rivers
Pride, that topped him. Pride was a good inch-and-a-half too short in
the brush. And the sable grew away too far from his eyes. Gave ’em a
roundish, big look. He was just a wee peckle overshot too. And your
Peerless outshowed him, besides. But, good as Peerless was, he wasn’t a
patch on this son of his you’ve got here to-day. Losh, but it sure looks
like you was due to make a killing, Mr. Frayne.”
And now the Eastern breeder deigned to face the man whose words were
pattering so meekly into his heedless ears. Frayne realised this little
chap was not one of the ignorant bores who pester exhibitors at every
big show; but that he spoke, and spoke well, the language of the
initiate. No breeder is above catering to intelligent praise of his dog.
And Frayne warmed mildly toward the devotee.
“Like him, do you?” he asked, indulgently.
“Like him?” echoed Mackellar. “_Like_ him? Man, he’s fifty per cent. the
best I’ve set eyes on. And I’ve seen a hantle of ’em.”
“Take him down, Roke,” Frayne bade his linen-dustered kennel man. “Let
him move about a bit. You can get a real idea of him when you see his
action,” he continued to the dazzled Mackellar. “How about that? Hey?”
At the unfastening of his chain, Lochinvar King stepped majestically to
the floor and for an instant stood gazing up at his master. He stood as
might an idealised statue of a collie. Mackellar caught his breath and
stared. Then with expert eyes he watched the dog’s perfect action as the
kennel man led him up and down for half a dozen steps.
“He’s—he’s better even than I thought he could be,” sighed Jamie. “He
looked too good to be true. Lord, it does tickle a man’s heartstrings to
see such a dog! I—I lost a mighty fine collie a few days back,” he went
on confidingly. “Not in King’s class, of course, sir. But a grand old
dog. And—and he was my chum, too. I’m fair sick with greeting over him.
It kind of crumples a feller, don’t it, to lose a chum collie? One
reason I wanted to come here early to-day was to look around and see
were any of the for-sale ones inside my means. I’ve never been without a
collie before. And I want to get me one—a reg’lar first-rater, like the
old dog—as quick as I can. It’s lonesome-like not to have a collie
laying at my feet, evening times; or running out to meet me.”
Lucius Frayne listened now with real interest to the little man’s timid
plaint.
As Mackellar paused, shamefaced at his own non-Scottish show of feeling,
the owner of the Lochinvar Kennels asked suavely:
“What were you counting on paying for a new dog? Or hadn’t you made up
your mind?”
“Once in a blue moon,” replied Mackellar, “a pretty good one is for sale
cheap. Either before the judging or if the judge don’t happen to fancy
his type. I—well, if I had to, I was willing to spend a hundred—if I
could get the right dog. But I tholed maybe I could get one for less.”
Still more interestedly did Frayne beam down on the earnest little
Mackellar.
“It’s a pity you can’t go higher,” said he with elaborate nonconcern.
“Especially since King here has caught your fancy. You see, I’ve got a
four-month pup of King’s, back home. Out of my winning Lochinvar Lassie,
at that. I sold all the other six in the litter. Sold ’em at gilt-edge
prices; on account of their breeding. This little four-monther I’m
speaking about—he was so much the best of the lot that I was planning to
keep him. He’s the dead image of what King was at his age. He’s got
‘future champion’ written all over him. But—well, since you’ve lost your
chum dog and since you know enough of collies to treat him right—well,
if you were back East where you could look him over, I’d—well, I’d
listen to your offer for him.”
He turned toward his kennel man as if ending the talk. Like a well-oiled
phonograph, the linen dustered functionary spoke up.
“Oh, Mr. Frayne!” he blithered, ceasing to groom King’s wondrous coat
and clasping both dirty hands together. “You wouldn’t ever go and sell
the little ’un? Not Lochinvar Bobby, sir? Not the best pup we ever bred?
Why, he’s 20 per cent. better than what King, here, was at his age.
You’ll make a champion of him by the time he’s ten months old. Just like
Doc Burrows did with his Queen Betty. He’s a second Howgill Rival, that
pup is;—a second Sunnybank Sigurd! You sure wouldn’t go selling him? Not
Bobby?”
"There’ll be other Lochinvar King pups along in a few weeks, Roke,"
argued Frayne conciliatingly. “And this man has just lost his only dog.
If—What a pair of fools we are!” he broke off, laughing loudly. “Here we
go gabbling about selling Bobby, and our friend, here, isn’t willing to
go above a hundred dollars for a dog!”
The kennel man, visibly relieved, resumed operations on King with
dandy-brush and cloth. But Mackellar stood looking up at Frayne as a
hungry pup might plead dumbly with some human who had just taken from
him his dinner bone.
“If—if he’s due to be a second Lochinvar King,” faltered Jamie, “I—I
s’pose he’d be way beyond me. I’m a truck driver, you see, sir. And I’ve
got a wife and a couple of kids. So I wouldn’t have any right to spend
too much, just for a dog—even if I had the cash. But—gee, but it’s a
chance!”
Sighing softly in renunciation, he took another long and admiring gaze
at the glorious Lochinvar King; and then made as though to move away.
But Lucius Frayne’s dog-loving heart evidently was touched by Jamie’s
admiration for the champion and by the hinted tale of his chum dog’s
death. He stopped the sadly departing Mackellar.
“Tell me more about that collie you lost,” he urged. “How’d he die? What
was his breeding? Ever show him?”
Now perhaps there breathes some collie man who can resist one of those
three questions about his favourite dog. Assuredly none lives who can
resist all three. Mackellar, in a brace of seconds, found himself
prattling eagerly to this sympathetic giant; telling of his dog’s points
and wisdom and lovableness, and of the prizes he had won; and, last of
all, the tale of his ending.
Frayne listened avidly, nodding his head and grunting consolation from
time to time. At last he burst forth, on impulse:
“Look here! You know dogs. You know collies. I see that. I’d rather have
a Lochinvar pup go to a man who can appreciate him, as you would, and
who’d give him the sort of home you’d give him, than to sell him for
three times as much, to some mucker. I’m in this game for love of the
breed, not to skin my neighbours. Lochinvar Bobby is yours, friend, for
a hundred and fifty dollars. I hope you’ll say no,” he added with his
loud laugh, “because I’d rather part with one of my back teeth. But
anyhow I feel decenter for making the offer.”
Pop-eyed and scarlet and breathing fast, Jamie Mackellar did some mental
arithmetic. One hundred and fifty dollars was a breath-taking sum.
Nobody knew it better than did he. But—oh, there stood Lochinvar King!
And King’s best pup could be Jamie’s for that amount.
Then Mackellar bethought him of an extra job that was afloat just now in
Midwestburg—a job at trucking explosives by night from the tesladite
factory, over on the heights, to the railroad. It was a job few people
cared for. The roads were joggly. And tesladite was a ticklish
explosive. Even the company’s offer of fifty dollars a week, at short
hours, had not brought forth many volunteer chauffeurs.
Yet Jamie was a careful driver. He knew he could minimise the risk. And
by working three hours a night for three weeks he could clean up the
price of the wonderful pup without going down into the family’s slim
funds.
“You’re—you’re on!” he babbled, shaking all over with pure happiness.
“In three weeks I’ll send you a money order. Here’s—here’s—let’s
see—here’s twenty-seven dollars to bind the bargain.”
“Roke,” said Frayne, ignoring his kennel man’s almost weeping protests,
“scribble out a bill of sale for Lochinvar Bobby. And see he’s shipped
here the day we get this gentleman’s money order for the balance of
$150. And don’t forget to send him Bobby’s papers at the same time.
Seeing it’s such a golden bargain for him, he’ll not grudge paying the
expressage, too. I suppose I’m a wall-eyed fool, but—say! Hasn’t a man
got to do a generous action once in a while? Besides, it’s all for the
good of the breed.”
Ten minutes later Mackellar tore away his ardent eyes from inspection of
the grand dog whose best pup he was so soon to earn, and pattered on
down the collie section.
Then and then only did Lucius Frayne and Roke look at each other. Long
and earnestly they looked. And Frayne reached out his thick hand and
shook his kennel man’s soiled fingers. He shook them with much
heartiness. He was a democratic sportsman, this owner of the famed
Lochinvar Kennels. He did not disdain to grasp the toil-hardened hand of
his honest servitor; especially at a time like this.
Lochinvar King that day clove his path straight through “Open,
Sable-and-White” and “Open, any Colour,” to “Winners”; in a division of
fifty-eight collies. Then be annexed the cup and the forty dollars in
cash awards for Best of Breed; also four other cash specials. And in the
classic special for Best Dog in Show he came as near to winning as ever
a present-day collie can hope to at so large a show. Jamie Mackellar,
with a vibrating pride and a sense of personal importance, watched and
applauded every win of his pup’s matchless sire.
“In another year,” he mused raptly, “I’ll be scooping up them same
specials with King’s gorgeous little son. This man Frayne is sure one of
the fellers that God made.”
Four weeks and two days later, a past-worthy slatted crate, labelled
“Lochinvar Collie Kennels,” was delivered at Jamie’s door. It arrived a
bare ten minutes after Mackellar came home from work. All the family
gathered around it in the kitchen; while, with hands that would not stay
steady, the head of the house proceeded to unfasten the clamps which
held down its top.
It was Jamie Mackellar’ s great moment, and his wife and children were
infected almost to hysteria by his long-sustained excitement.
Back went the crate lid. Out onto the kitchen floor shambled a dog.
For a long minute, as the new-arrived collie stood blinking and
trembling in the light, everybody peered at him without word or motion.
Jamie’s jaw had gone slack, at first sight of him. And it still hung
supine; making the man’s mouth look like a frog penny bank’s.
The puppy was undersized. He was scrawny and angular and all but
shapeless. At a glance, he might have belonged to any breed or to many
breeds or to none. His coat was sparse and short and kinky; and through
it glared patches of lately-healed eczema. The coat’s colour was
indeterminate, what there was of it. Nor had four days in a tight crate
improved its looks.
The puppy’s chest was pitifully narrow. The sprawly legs were out at
elbow and cow-hocked. The shoulders were noteworthy by the absence of
any visible sign of them. The brush was an almost hairless rat-tail. The
spine was sagged and slightly awry.
But the head was the most direful part of the newcomer. Its
expressionless eyes were sore and dull. Its ears hung limp as a
setter’s. The nose and foreface were as snubbily broad as a Saint
Bernard’s. The slack jaw was badly overshot. The jowls showed a marked
tendency to cheekiness and the skull seemed to be developing an
apple-shaped dome in place of the semi-platform which the top of a
collie’s head ought to present.
Breed dogs as carefully and as scientifically as you will; once in a way
some such specimen will be born into even the most blue-blooded
litter;—a specimen whose looks defy all laws of clean heredity; a
specimen which it would be gross flattery to call a mutt.
One of three courses at such times can be followed by the luckless
breeder: To kill the unfortunate misfit; to give it away to some child
who may or may not maul it to death; or to swindle a buyer into paying a
respectable price for it.
Thriftily, Lucius Frayne had chosen the third course. And no law could
touch him for the deal. He had played as safe, in his dirty trade, as
does any vivisector.
Mackellar had bought the dog, sight unseen. Frayne had guaranteed
nothing save the pedigree, which was flawless. He had said the creature
was the image of King at the same age. But he had said it in the
presence of no witness save his own kennel man. And the statement, in
any event, was hard of refutal by law.
No; Frayne, like many another shrewd professional dog breeder, had
played safe. And he had annexed one hundred and fifty dollars, in
peril-earned hoardings, for a beast whose true cash value was less than
eight cents to any one. He had not even bothered to give the cur a
high-sounding pedigree name.
There stood, or crouched, the trembling and whimpering wisp of
worthlessness; while the Mackellar family looked on in dumb horror. To
add to the pup’s ludicrous aspect, an enormous collar hung dangling from
his neck. Frayne had been thrifty, in even this minor detail. Following
the letter of the transportation rules, he had “equipped the dog with
suitable collar and chain.” But the chain, which Jamie had unclasped in
releasing the pup from the crate, had been a thing of rust and
flimsiness. The collar had been outworn by some grown dog. To keep it
from slipping off over the puppy’s head Roke had fastened to it a twist
of wire, whose other end was enmeshed in the scattering short hairs of
the youngster’s neck. From this collar’s ring still swung the last
year’s license tag of its former wearer.
It was little Elspeth who broke the awful spell of silence.
"Looks—looks kind of—of measly, don’t he?“ she volunteered.
”_Jamie Mackellar!_" shrilled her mother, finding voice and wrath in one
swift gasp. “You—you went and gambled with your life on them explosion
trucks—and never told me a word about it till it was over—just to earn
money to buy—to buy—_that_!”
Then Jamie spoke. And at his first luridly sputtered sentence his wife
shooed the children out of the room in scandalised haste. But from the
cottage’s farthest end she could hear her spouse’s light voice still
raised to shrill falsetto. He seemed to be in earnest converse with his
Maker, and the absence of his wife and children from the room lent
lustre and scope to his vocabulary.
Outside, the night was settling down bitterly chill. A drifting snow was
sifting over the frozen earth. The winter’s worst cold spell was
beginning. But in the firelit kitchen a hope-blasted and swindled man
was gripped by a boiling rage that all the frigid outer world could not
have cooled.
Presently, through his sputtering soliloquy, Mackellar found time and
justice to note that Lochinvar Bobby was still shaking with the cold of
his long wagon ride through the snow from the station. And sullenly the
man went out to the refrigerator in the back areaway for milk to warm
for the sufferer.
He left the door open behind him. Into the kitchen seeped the deadly
chill of night. It struck the miserable Bobby and roused him from the
apathy of fright into which his advent to the bright room had immersed
him.
The fright remained, but the impotence to move was gone. Fear had been
born in his cringing soul, from the harsh treatment meted out to him in
the place of his birth by kennel men who scoffed at his worthlessness.
Fear had increased fifty fold by his long and clangorous journey across
half the continent. Now, fear came to a climax.
He had cowered in helpless terror before these strangers, here in the
closed room. He had sensed their hostility. But now for an instant the
strangers had left him. Yes, and the back door was standing ajar—the
door to possible escape from the unknown dangers which beset him on all
sides.
Tucking his ratlike tail between his cow-hocks, Bobby put down his head
and bolted. Through the doorway he scurried, dodging behind the legs of
Jamie Mackellar as he fled through the refrigerator-blocked areaway.
Jamie heard the scrambling footfalls, and turned in time to make a
belated grab for the fleeing dog.
He missed Bobby by an inch; and the man’s gesture seemed to the pup a
new menace. Thus had Roke and the other kennel men struck at him in
early days; or had seized him by tail or hind leg as he fled in terror
from their beatings.
Out into the unfenced yard galloped the panic-driven Bobby. And through
the pitch blackness Mackellar stumbled in utterly futile pursuit. The
sound of Jamie’s following feet lent new speed to the cowed youngster.
Instead of stopping, after a few moments, he galloped on, with his
ridiculous wavering and sidewise gait.
Mackellar lived on the outskirts of the suburb, which, in turn, was on
the outskirts of the city. By chance or by instinct Bobby struck ahead
for the rocky ridge which divided denser civilisation from the uncleared
wilderness and the patches of farm country to the north. Nor did the
puppy cease to run until he had topped, puffingly, the ridge’s summit.
There he came to a shambling halt and peered fearfully around him.
On the ridge-crest, the wind was blowing with razor sharpness. It cut
like a billion waxed whiplashes, through the sparse coat and against the
sagging ribs of the pup. It drove the snow needles into his watering
eyes, and it stung the blown-back insides of his sensitive ears. He
cowered under its pitiless might, as under a thrashing; and again he
began to whimper and to sob.
Below him, from the direction whence he had wormed his slippery way up
the ridge, lay the squalidly flat bit of plain with its sprinkle of mean
houses; behind it, the straggling suburb whence he had escaped; and
behind that, the far-reaching tangle of glare and blackness which was
Midwestburg, with miles of lurid light reflection on the low-hanging
clouds.
Turning, the puppy looked down the farther slope of his ridge to the
rolling miles of forest and clearing, with wide-scattered farmsteads and
cottages. The wilds seemed less actively and noisily terrifying than the
glare and muffled roar of the city behind him. And, as anything was
better than to cower freezing there in the wind’s full path, Bobby slunk
down the ridge’s northern flank and toward the naked black woodlands
beyond its base.
The rock edges and the ice cut his uncalloused splay feet. Even out of
the wind, the chill gnawed through coat and skin. The world was a
miserable place to do one’s living in. Moreover, Bobby had not eaten in
more than twenty-four hours; although a pup of his age is supposed to be
fed not less than four times a day.
The rock-strewn ridge having been passed, the going became easier. Here,
on the more level ground, a snow carpet made it softer, if colder. No
longer running, but at a loose-jointed wolf trot, Bobby entered the
woods. A quarter mile farther on, he stopped again; at sight of
something which loomed up at a height of perhaps three feet above the
half-acre of cleared ground about it.
He had strayed into the once-popular Blake’s Woods Picnic Grove, and the
thing which arrested his sick glance was the dancing platform which had
been erected at the grove’s painfully geometrical centre.