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[Illustration]
LAD: A DOG
[Illustration: (_From a photograph by Lacy Van Wagenen_)]
LAD: A DOG
BY
ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 FIFTH AVENUE
Copyright 1919
By E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
_All Rights Reserved_
_First Printing, April, 1919_
_Second Printing, June, 1919_
_Third Printing, July, 1919_
_Fourth Printing, August, 1919_
_Fifth Printing, August, 1919_
_Sixth Printing, August, 1919_
_Seventh Printing, August, 1919_
_Eighth Printing, August, 1919_
_Ninth Printing, August, 1919_
_Tenth Printing, August, 1919_
_Eleventh Printing, December, 1919_
_Twelfth Printing, December, 1919_
_Thirteenth Printing, December, 1919_
_Fourteenth Printing, December, 1919_
_Fifteenth Printing, December, 1919_
_Sixteenth Printing, December, 1919_
_Seventeenth Printing, December, 1919_
_Eighteenth Printing, August, 1921_
_Nineteenth Printing, March, 1922_
_Twentieth Printing, August, 1922_
_Twenty-first Printing, Sept., 1922_
_Twenty-second Pr'ting, Feb., 1923_
_Printed in the United States of America_
MY BOOK IS DEDICATED
TO THE MEMORY OF
Lad
THOROUGHBRED IN BODY AND SOUL
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. HIS MATE 1
II. "QUIET!" 26
III. A MIRACLE OF TWO 49
IV. HIS LITTLE SON 74
V. FOR A BIT OF RIBBON 97
VI. LOST! 126
VII. THE THROWBACK 156
VIII. THE GOLD HAT 180
IX. SPEAKING OF UTILITY 218
X. THE KILLER 251
XI. WOLF 297
XII. IN THE DAY OF BATTLE 321
AFTERWORD 347
LAD: A DOG
CHAPTER I
HIS MATE
Lady was as much a part of Lad's everyday happiness as the sunshine
itself. She seemed to him quite as perfect, and as gloriously
indispensable. He could no more have imagined a Ladyless life than a
sunless life. It had never occurred to him to suspect that Lady could
be any less devoted than he--until Knave came to The Place.
Lad was an eighty-pound collie, thoroughbred in spirit as well as in
blood. He had the benign dignity that was a heritage from endless
generations of high-strain ancestors. He had, too, the gay courage of
a d'Artagnan, and an uncanny wisdom. Also--who could doubt it, after
a look into his mournful brown eyes--he had a Soul.
His shaggy coat, set off by the snowy ruff and chest, was like
orange-flecked mahogany. His absurdly tiny forepaws--in which he took
inordinate pride--were silver white.
Three years earlier, when Lad was in his first prime (before the
mighty chest and shoulders had filled out and the tawny coat had waxed
so shaggy), Lady had been brought to The Place. She had been brought
in the Master's overcoat pocket, rolled up into a fuzzy gold-gray ball
of softness no bigger than a half-grown kitten.
The Master had fished the month-old puppy out of the cavern of his
pocket and set her down, asprawl and shivering and squealing, on the
veranda floor. Lad had walked cautiously across the veranda, sniffed
inquiry at the blinking pigmy who gallantly essayed to growl defiance
up at the huge welcomer--and from that first moment he had taken her
under his protection.
First it had been the natural impulse of the thoroughbred--brute or
human--to guard the helpless. Then, as the shapeless yellow baby grew
into a slenderly graceful collie, his guardianship changed to stark
adoration. He was Lady's life slave.
And she bullied him unmercifully--bossed the gentle giant in a
shameful manner, crowding him from the warmest spot by the fire,
brazenly yet daintily snatching from between his jaws the choicest
bone of their joint dinner, hectoring her dignified victim into
lawn-romps in hot weather when he would far rather have drowsed under
the lakeside trees.
Her vagaries, her teasing, her occasional little flurries of temper,
were borne by Lad not meekly, but joyously. All she did was, in his
eyes, perfect. And Lady graciously allowed herself to be idolized,
for she was marvelously human in some ways. Lad, a thoroughbred
descended from a hundred generations of thoroughbreds, was less human
and more disinterested.
Life at The Place was wondrous pleasant for both the dogs. There were
thick woods to roam in, side by side; there were squirrels to chase
and rabbits to trail. (Yes, and if the squirrels had played fair and
had not resorted to unsportsmanly tactics by climbing trees when close
pressed, there would doubtless have been squirrels to catch as well as
to chase. As for the rabbits, they were easier to overtake. And Lady
got the lion's share of all such morsels.)
There was the ice-cool lake to plunge into for a swim or a wallow,
after a run in the dust and July heat. There was a deliciously
comfortable old rug in front of the living-room's open fire whereon to
lie, shoulder to shoulder, on the nights when the wind screamed
through bare trees and the snow scratched hungrily at the panes.
Best of all, to them both, there were the Master and the Mistress;
especially the Mistress.
Any man with money to make the purchase may become a dog's _owner_.
But no man--spend he ever so much coin and food and tact in the
effort--may become a dog's _Master_ without the consent of the
dog. Do you get the difference? And he whom a dog once unreservedly
accepts as Master is forever that dog's God.
To both Lad and Lady, from the first, the man who bought them was
not the mere owner but the absolute Master. To them he was the
unquestioned lord of life and death, the hearer and answerer, the
Eternal Law; his the voice that must be obeyed, whatever the command.
From earliest puppyhood, both Lad and Lady had been brought up within
the Law. As far back as they could remember, they had known and obeyed
The Place's simple code.
For example: All animals of the woods might lawfully be chased; but
the Mistress' prize chickens and the other little folk of The Place
must be ignored no matter how hungry or how playful a collie might
chance to be. A human, walking openly or riding down the drive into
The Place by daylight, must not be barked at except by way of friendly
announcement. But anyone entering the grounds from other ingress than
the drive, or anyone walking furtively or with a tramp slouch, must be
attacked at sight.
Also, the interior of the house was sacrosanct. It was a place for
perfect behavior. No rug must be scratched, nothing gnawed or played
with. In fact, Lady's one whipping had followed a puppy-frolic effort
of hers to "worry" the huge stuffed bald eagle that stood on a
papier-mache stump in the Master's study, just off the big living-room
where the fireplace was.
That eagle, shot by himself as it raided the flock of prize chickens,
was the delight of the Master's heart. And at Lady's attempt on it, he
had taught her a lesson that made her cringe for weeks thereafter at
bare sight of the dog-whip. To this day, she would never walk past the
eagle without making the widest possible detour around it.
But that punishment had been suffered while she was still in the
idiotic days of puppyhood. After she was grown, Lady would no more
have thought of tampering with the eagle or with anything else in the
house than it would occur to a human to stand on his head in church.
Then, early one spring, came Knave--a showy, magnificent collie;
red-gold of coat save for a black "saddle," and with alert topaz eyes.
Knave did not belong to the Master, but to a man who, going to Europe
for a month, asked him to care for the dog in his absence. The Master,
glad to have so beautiful an ornament to The Place, had willingly
consented. He was rewarded when, on the train from town, an admiring
crowd of commuters flocked to the baggage-car to stare at the
splendid-looking collie.
The only dissenting note in the praise-chorus was the grouchy old
baggage-man's.
"Maybe he's a thoroughbred, like you say," drawled the old fellow to
the Master, "but I never yet saw a yellow-eyed, prick-eared dog I'd
give hell-room to."
Knave showed his scorn for such silly criticism by a cavernous yawn.
"Thoroughbred?" grunted the baggage-man. "With them streaks of
pinkish-yeller on the roof of his mouth? Ever see a thoroughbred that
didn't have a black mouth-roof?"
But the old man's slighting words were ignored with disdain by the
crowd of volunteer dog-experts in the baggage-car. In time the Master
alighted at his station, with Knave straining joyously at the
leash. As the Master reached The Place and turned into the drive, both
Lad and Lady, at sound of his far-off footsteps, came tearing around
the side of the house to greet him.
On simultaneous sight and scent of the strange dog frisking along at
his side, the two collies paused in their madly joyous onrush. Up went
their ruffs. Down went their heads.
Lady flashed forward to do battle with the stranger who was monopolizing
so much of the Master's attention. Knave, not at all averse to battle
(especially with a smaller dog), braced himself and then moved
forward, stiff-legged, fangs bare.
But of a sudden his head went up; his stiff-poised brush broke into
swift wagging; his lips curled down. He had recognized that his
prospective foe was not of his own sex. (And nowhere, except among
humans, does a full-grown male ill-treat or even defend himself
against the female of his species.)
Lady, noting the stranger's sudden friendliness, paused irresolute in
her charge. And at that instant Lad darted past her. Full at Knave's
throat he launched himself.
The Master rasped out:
"Down, Lad! _Down!_"
Almost in midair the collie arrested his onset--coming to earth
bristling, furious and yet with no thought but to obey. Knave, seeing
his foe was not going to fight, turned once more toward Lady.
"Lad," ordered the Master, pointing toward Knave and speaking with
quiet intentness, "let him alone. Understand? Let him _alone_."
And Lad understood--even as years of training and centuries of
ancestry had taught him to understand every spoken wish of the
Master's. He must give up his impulse to make war on this intruder
whom at sight he hated. It was the Law; and from the Law there was no
appeal.
With yearningly helpless rage he looked on while the newcomer was
installed on The Place. With a wondering sorrow he found himself
forced to share the Master's and Mistress' caresses with this
interloper. With growing pain he submitted to Knave's gay attentions
to Lady, and to Lady's evident relish of the guest's companionship.
Gone were the peaceful old days of utter contentment.
Lady had always regarded Lad as her own special property--to tease and
to boss and to despoil of choice food-bits. But her attitude toward
Knave was far different. She coquetted, human-fashion, with the
gold-and-black dog--at one moment affecting to scorn him, at another
meeting his advances with a delighted friendliness.
She never presumed to boss him as she had always bossed Lad. He
fascinated her. Without seeming to follow him about, she was forever
at his heels. Lad, cut to the heart at her sudden indifference toward
his loyal self, tried in every way his simple soul could devise to win
back her interest. He essayed clumsily to romp with her as the
lithely graceful Knave romped, to drive rabbits for her on their
woodland rambles, to thrust himself, in a dozen gentle ways, upon her
attention.
But it was no use. Lady scarcely noticed him. When his overtures of
friendship chanced to annoy her, she rewarded them with a snap or with
an impatient growl. And ever she turned to the all-conquering Knave in
a keenness of attraction that was all but hypnotic.
As his divinity's total loss of interest in himself grew too apparent
to be doubted, Lad's big heart broke. Being only a dog and a
Grail-knight in thought, he did not realize that Knave's newness and
his difference from anything she had known, formed a large part of
Lady's desire for the visitor's favor; nor did he understand that such
interest must wane when the novelty should wear off.
All Lad knew was that he loved her, and that for the sake of a flashy
stranger she was snubbing him.
As the Law forbade him to avenge himself in true dog-fashion by
fighting for his Lady's love, Lad sadly withdrew from the unequal
contest, too proud to compete for a fickle sweetheart. No longer did
he try to join in the others' lawn-romps, but lay at a distance, his
splendid head between his snowy little forepaws, his brown eyes sick
with sorrow, watching their gambols.
Nor did he thrust his undesired presence on them during their woodland
rambles. He took to moping, solitary, infinitely miserable. Perhaps
there is on earth something unhappier than a bitterly aggrieved
dog. But no one has ever discovered that elusive something.
Knave from the first had shown and felt for Lad a scornful indifference.
Not understanding the Law, he had set down the older collie's
refusal to fight as a sign of exemplary, if timorous prudence, and he
looked down upon him accordingly. One day Knave came home from the
morning run through the forest without Lady. Neither the Master's
calls nor the ear-ripping blasts of his dog-whistle could bring her
back to The Place. Whereat Lad arose heavily from his favorite
resting-place under the living-room piano and cantered off to the
woods. Nor did he return.
Several hours later the Master went to the woods to investigate,
followed by the rollicking Knave. At the forest edge the Master
shouted. A far-off bark from Lad answered. And the Master made his way
through shoulder-deep underbrush in the direction of the sound.
In a clearing he found Lady, her left forepaw caught in the steel jaws
of a fox-trap. Lad was standing protectingly above her, stooping now
and then to lick her cruelly pinched foot or to whine consolation to
her; then snarling in fierce hate at a score of crows that flapped
hopefully in the tree-tops above the victim.
The Master set Lady free, and Knave frisked forward right joyously to
greet his released inamorata. But Lady was in no condition to
play--then nor for many a day thereafter. Her forefoot was so
lacerated and swollen that she was fain to hobble awkwardly on three
legs for the next fortnight.
It was on one pantingly hot August morning, a little later, that Lady
limped into the house in search of a cool spot where she might lie and
lick her throbbing forefoot. Lad was lying, as usual, under the piano
in the living-room. His tail thumped shy welcome on the hardwood floor
as she passed, but she would not stay or so much as notice him.
On she limped, into the Master's study, where an open window sent a
faint breeze through the house. Giving the stuffed eagle a wide berth,
Lady hobbled to the window and made as though to lie down just beneath
it. As she did so, two things happened: she leaned too much weight on
the sore foot, and the pressure wrung from her an involuntary yelp of
pain; at the same moment a crosscurrent of air from the other side of
the house swept through the living-room and blew shut the door of the
adjoining study. Lady was a prisoner.
Ordinarily this would have caused her no ill-ease, for the open window
was only thirty inches above the floor, and the drop to the veranda
outside was a bare three feet. It would have been the simplest matter
in the world for her to jump out, had she wearied of her chance
captivity.
But to undertake the jump with the prospect of landing her full weight
and impetus on a forepaw that was horribly sensitive to the lightest
touch--this was an exploit beyond the sufferer's will-power. So Lady
resigned herself to imprisonment. She curled herself up on the floor
as far as possible from the eagle, moaned softly and lay still.
At sound of her first yelp, Lad had run forward, whining eager
sympathy. But the closed door blocked his way. He crouched, wretched
and anxious, before it, helpless to go to his loved one's assistance.
Knave, too, loping back from a solitary prowl of the woods, seeking
Lady, heard the yelp. His prick-ears located the sound at once. Along
the veranda he trotted, to the open study window. With a bound he had
cleared the sill and alighted inside the room.
It chanced to be his first visit to the study. The door was usually
kept shut, that drafts might not blow the Master's desk-papers
about. And Knave felt, at best, little interest in exploring the
interior of houses. He was an outdoor dog, by choice.
He advanced now toward Lady, his tail a-wag, his head on one side,
with his most irresistible air. Then, as he came forward into the
room, he saw the eagle. He halted in wonder at sight of the enormous
white-crested bird with its six-foot sweep of pinion. It was a wholly
novel spectacle to Knave; and he greeted it with a gruff bark, half of
fear, half of bravado. Quickly, however, his sense of smell told him
this wide-winged apparition was no living thing. And ashamed of his
momentary cowardice, he went over to investigate it.
As he went, Knave cast over his shoulder a look of invitation to Lady
to join him in his inspection. She understood the invitation, but
memory of that puppyhood beating made her recoil from accepting
it. Knave saw her shrink back, and he realized with a thrill that she
was actually afraid of this lifeless thing which could harm no
one. With due pride in showing off his own heroism before her, and
with the scamp-dog's innate craving to destroy, he sprang growling
upon the eagle.
Down tumbled the papier-mache stump. Down crashed the huge stuffed
bird with it; Knave's white teeth buried deep in the soft feathers of
its breast.
Lady, horror-struck at this sacrilege, whimpered in terror. But her
plaint served only to increase Knave's zest for destruction.
He hurled the bird to the floor, pinned it down with his feet and at
one jerk tore the right wing from the body. Coughing out the mouthful
of dusty pinions, he dug his teeth into the eagle's throat. Again
bracing himself with his forelegs on the carcass, he gave a sharp
tug. Head and neck came away in his mouth. And then before he could
drop the mouthful and return to the work of demolition, he heard the
Master's step.
All at once, now, Knave proved he was less ignorant of the Law--or, at
least, of its penalties--than might have been supposed from his act of
vandalism. In sudden panic he bolted for the window, the silvery head
of the eagle still, unheeded, between his jaws. With a vaulting
spring, he shot out through the open casement, in his reckless
eagerness to escape, knocking against Lady's injured leg as he passed.
He did not pause at Lady's scream of pain, nor did he stop until he
reached the chicken-house. Crawling under this, he deposited the
incriminating eagle-head in the dark recess. Finding no pursuer, he
emerged and jogged innocently back toward the veranda.
The Master, entering the house and walking across the living-room
toward the stairs, heard Lady's cry. He looked around for her,
recognizing from the sound that she must be in distress. His eye fell
on Lad, crouching tense and eager in front of the shut study door.
The Master opened the door and went into the study.
At the first step inside the room he stopped, aghast. There lay the
chewed and battered fragments of his beloved eagle. And there, in one
corner, frightened, with guilt writ plain all over her, cowered
Lady. Men have been "legally" done to death on far lighter evidence
than encompassed her.
The Master was thunderstruck. For more than two years Lady had had the
free run of the house. And this was her first sin--at that, a sin
unworthy any well-bred dog that has graduated from puppyhood and from
milk-teeth. He would not have believed it. He _could_ not have
believed it. Yet here was the hideous evidence, scattered all over the
floor.
The door was shut, but the window stood wide. Through the window,
doubtless, she had gotten into the room. And he had surprised her at
her vandal-work before she could escape by the same opening.
The Master was a just man--as humans go; but this was a crime the most
maudlin dog-spoiler could not have condoned. The eagle, moreover, had
been the pride of his heart--as perhaps I have said. Without a word,
he walked to the wall and took down a braided dog-whip, dust-covered
from long disuse.
Lady knew what was coming. Being a thoroughbred, she did not try to
run, nor did she roll for mercy. She cowered, moveless, nose to floor,
awaiting her doom.
Back swished the lash. Down it came, whistling as a man whistles whose
teeth are broken. Across Lady's slender flanks it smote, with the full
force of a strong driving-arm. Lady quivered all over. But she made
no sound. She who would whimper at a chance touch to her sore foot,
was mute under human punishment.
But Lad was not mute. As the Master's arm swung back for a second
blow, he heard, just behind, a low, throaty growl that held all the
menace of ten thousand wordy threats.
He wheeled about. Lad was close at his heels, fangs bared, eyes red,
head lowered, tawny body taut in every sinew.
The Master blinked at him, incredulous. Here was something infinitely
more unbelievable than Lady's supposed destruction of the eagle. The
Impossible had come to pass.
For, know well, a dog does not growl at its Master. At its owner,
perhaps; at its Master, never. As soon would a devout priest blaspheme
his deity.
Nor does a dog approach anything or anybody, growling and with lowered
head, unless intent on battle. Have no fear when a dog barks or even
growls at you, so long as his head is erect. But when he growls and
lowers his head--then look out. It means but one thing.
The Master had been the Master--the sublime, blindly revered and
worshiped Master--for all the blameless years of Lad's life. And now,
growling, head down, the dog was threatening him.
It was the supreme misery, the crowning hell, of Lad's career. For the
first time, two overpowering loves fought with each other in his
Galahad soul. And the love for poor, unjustly blamed, Lady hurled down
the superlove for the Master.
In baring teeth upon his lord, the collie well knew what he was
incurring. But he did not flinch. Understanding that swift death
might well be his portion, he stood his ground.
(Is there greater love? Humans--sighing swains, vow-laden suitors--can
any of _you_ match it? I think not. Not even the much-lauded
Antonys. They throw away only the mere world of earthly credit, for
love.)
The Master's jaw set. He was well-nigh as unhappy as the dog. For he
grasped the situation, and he was man enough to honor Lad's proffered
sacrifice. Yet it must be punished, and punished instantly--as any
dog-master will testify. Let a dog once growl or show his teeth in
menace at his Master, and if the rebellion be not put down in drastic
fashion, the Master ceases forever to be Master and degenerates to
mere owner. His mysterious power over his dog is gone for all time.
Turning his back on Lady, the Master whirled his dog-whip in air. Lad
saw the lash coming down. He did not flinch. He did not cower. The
growl ceased. The orange-tawny collie stood erect. Down came the
braided whiplash on Lad's shoulders--again over his loins, and yet
again and again.
Without moving--head up, dark tender eyes unwinking--the hero-dog took
the scourging. When it was over, he waited only to see the Master
throw the dog-whip fiercely into a corner of the study. Then, knowing
Lady was safe, Lad walked majestically back to his "cave" under the
piano, and with a long, quivering sigh he lay down.
His spirit was sick and crushed within him. For the first time in his
thoroughbred life he had been struck. For he was one of those not
wholly rare dogs to whom a sharp word of reproof is more effective
than a beating--to whom a blow is not a pain, but a damning and
overwhelming ignominy. Had a human, other than the Master, presumed
to strike him, the assailant must have fought for life.
Through the numbness of Lad's grief, bit by bit, began to smolder and
glow a deathless hate for Knave, the cause of Lady's humiliation. Lad
had known what passed behind that closed study door as well as though
he had seen. For ears and scent serve a true collie quite as usefully
as do mere eyes.
The Master was little happier than was his favorite dog. For he loved
Lad as he would have loved a human son. Though Lad did not realize it,
the Master had "let off" Lady from the rest of her beating, in order
not to increase her champion's grief. He simply ordered her out of the
study.
And as she limped away, the Master tried to rekindle his own
indignation and deaden his sense of remorse by gathering together the
strewn fragments of the eagle. It occurred to him that though the bird
was destroyed, he might yet have its fierce-eyed silvery head mounted
on a board, as a minor trophy.
But he could not find the head.
Search the study as he would, he could not find it. He remembered
distinctly that Lady had been panting as she slunk out of the
room. And dogs that are carrying things in their mouths cannot pant.
She had not taken the head away with her. The absence of the head only
deepened the whole annoying domestic mystery. He gave up trying to
solve any of the puzzle--from Lady's incredible vandalism to this
newest turn of the affair.
Not until two days later could Lad bring himself to risk a meeting
with Lady, the cause and the witness of his beating. Then, yearning
for a sight of her and for even her grudged recognition of his
presence, after his forty-eight hours of isolation, he sallied forth
from the house in search of her.
He traced her to the cool shade of a lilac clump near the outbuildings.
There, having with one paw dug a little pit in the cool earth,
she was curled up asleep under the bushes. Stretched out beside
her was Knave.
Lad's spine bristled at sight of his foe. But ignoring him, he moved
over to Lady and touched her nose with his own in timid caress. She
opened one eye, blinked drowsily and went to sleep again.
But Lad's coming had awakened Knave. Much refreshed by his nap, he
woke in playful mood. He tried to induce Lady to romp with him, but
she preferred to doze. So, casting about in his shallow mind for
something to play with, Knave chanced to remember the prize he had
hidden beneath the chicken-house.
Away he ambled, returning presently with the eagle's head between his
teeth. As he ran, he tossed it aloft, catching it as it fell--a pretty
trick he had long since learned with a tennis-ball.
Lad, who had lain down as near to sleepily scornful Lady as he dared,
looked up and saw him approach. He saw, too, with what Knave was
playing; and as he saw, he went quite mad. Here was the thing that had
caused Lady's interrupted punishment and his own black disgrace. Knave
was exploiting it with manifest and brazen delight.
For the second time in his life--and for the second time in three
days--Lad broke the law. He forgot, in a trice, the command "Let him
alone!" And noiseless, terrible, he flew at the gamboling Knave.
Knave was aware of the attack, barely in time to drop the eagle's head
and spring forward to meet his antagonist. He was three years Lad's
junior and was perhaps five pounds heavier. Moreover, constant
exercise had kept him in steel-and-whale-bone condition; while lonely
brooding at home had begun of late to soften Lad's tough sinews.
Knave was mildly surprised that the dog he had looked on as a dullard
and a poltroon should have developed a flash of spirit. But he was not
at all unwilling to wage a combat whose victory must make him shine
with redoubled glory in Lady's eyes.
Like two furry whirlwinds the collies spun forward toward each
other. They met, upreared and snarled, slashing wolf-like for the
throat, clawing madly to retain balance. Then down they went, rolling
in a right unloving embrace, snapping, tearing, growling.
Lad drove straight for the throat. A half-handful of Knave's golden
ruff came away in his jaws. For except at the exact center, a
collie's throat is protected by a tangle of hair as effective against
assault as were Andrew Jackson's cotton-bale breastworks at New
Orleans. And Lad had missed the exact center.
Over and over they rolled. They regained their footing and reared
again. Lad's saber-shaped tusk ripped a furrow in Knave's satiny
forehead; and Knave's half deflected slash in return set bleeding the
big vein at the top of Lad's left ear.
Lady was wide awake long before this. Standing immovable, yet wildly
excited--after the age-old fashion of the female brute for whom males
battle and who knows she is to be the winner's prize--she watched
every turn of the fight.
Up once more, the dogs clashed, chest to chest. Knave, with an
instinctive throwback to his wolf forebears of five hundred years
earlier, dived for Lad's forelegs with the hope of breaking one of
them between his foaming jaws.
He missed the hold by a fraction of an inch. The skin alone was
torn. And down over the little white forepaw--one of the forepaws that
Lad was wont to lick for an hour a day to keep them snowy--ran a
trickle of blood.
That miss was a costly error for Knave. For Lad's teeth sought and
found his left shoulder, and sank deep therein. Knave twisted and
wheeled with lightning speed and with all his strength. Yet had not
his gold-hued ruff choked Lad and pressed stranglingly against his
nostrils, all the heavier dog's struggles would not have set him free.
As it was, Lad, gasping for breath enough to fill his lungs, relaxed
his grip ever so slightly. And in that fraction of a second Knave tore
free, leaving a mouthful of hair and skin in his enemy's jaws.
In the same wrench that liberated him--and as the relieved tension
sent Lad stumbling forward--Knave instinctively saw his chance and
took it. Again heredity came to his aid, for he tried a manoeuver
known only to wolves and to collies. Flashing above his stumbling
foe's head, Knave seized Lad from behind, just below the base of the
skull. And holding him thus helpless, he proceeded to grit and grind
his tight-clenched teeth in the slow, relentless motion that must soon
or late eat down to and sever the spinal cord.
Lad, even as he thrashed frantically about, felt there was no
escape. He was well-nigh as powerless against a strong opponent in
this position as is a puppy that is held up by the scruff of the neck.
Without a sound, but still struggling as best he might, he awaited his
fate. No longer was he growling or snarling.
His patient, bloodshot eyes sought wistfully for Lady. And they did
not find her.
For even as they sought her, a novel element entered into the
battle. Lady, hitherto awaiting with true feminine meekness the
outcome of the scrimmage, saw her old flame's terrible plight, under
the grinding jaws. And, proving herself false to all canons of
ancestry--moved by some impulse she did not try to resist--she jumped
forward. Forgetting the pain in her swollen foot, she nipped Knave
sharply in the hind leg. Then, as if abashed by her unfeminine
behavior, she drew back, in shame.
But the work was done.
Through the red war lust Knave dimly realized that he was attacked
from behind--perhaps that his new opponent stood an excellent chance
of gaining upon him such a death-hold as he himself now held.
He loosed his grip and whizzed about, frothing and snapping, to face
the danger. Before Knave had half completed his lightning whirl, Lad
had him by the side of the throat.
It was no death-grip, this. Yet it was not only acutely painful, but
it held its victim quite as powerless as he had just now held
Lad. Bearing down with all his weight and setting his white little
front teeth and his yellowing tusks firmly in their hold, Lad
gradually shoved Knave's head sideways to the ground and held it
there.
The result on Knave's activities was much the same as is obtained by
sitting on the head of a kicking horse that has fallen. Unable to
wrench loose, helpless to counter, in keen agony from the pinching of
the tender throat-skin beneath the masses of ruff, Knave lost his
nerve. And he forthwith justified those yellowish streaks in his
mouth-roof whereof the baggage-man had spoken.
He made the air vibrate with his abject howls of pain and fear. He was
caught. He could not get away. Lad was hurting him horribly. Wherefore
he ki-yi-ed as might any gutter cur whose tail is stepped upon.
Presently, beyond the fight haze, Lad saw a shadow in front of him--a
shadow that resolved itself in the settling dust, as the Master. And
Lad came to himself.
He loosed his hold on Knave's throat, and stood up, groggily. Knave,
still yelping, tucked his tail between his legs and fled for his
life--out of The Place, out of your story.
Slowly, stumblingly, but without a waver of hesitation, Lad went up to
the Master. He was gasping for breath, and he was weak from fearful
exertion and from loss of blood. Up to the Master he went--straight up
to him.
And not until he was a scant two yards away did he see that the Master
held something in his hand--that abominable, mischief-making eagle's
head, which he had just picked up! Probably the dog-whip was in the
other hand. It did not matter much. Lad was ready for this final
degradation. He would not try to dodge it, he the double breaker of
laws.
Then--the Master was kneeling beside him. The kind hand was caressing
the dog's dizzy head, the dear voice--a queer break in it--was saying
remorsefully:
"Oh Lad! Laddie! I'm so sorry. So sorry! You're--you're more of a man
than I am, old friend. I'll make it up to you, somehow!"
And now besides the loved hand, there was another touch, even more
precious--a warmly caressing little pink tongue that licked his
bleeding foreleg.
Lady--timidly, adoringly--was trying to stanch her hero's wounds.
"Lady, I apologize to you too," went on the foolish Master. "I'm
sorry, girl."
Lady was too busy soothing the hurts of her newly discovered mate to
understand. But Lad understood. Lad always understood.