LOST!
Four of us were discussing abstract themes, idly, as men will, after a
good dinner and in front of a country-house fire. Someone asked:
"What is the saddest sight in everyday life? I don't mean the most
gloomily tragic, but the saddest?"
A frivolous member of the fireside group cited a helpless man between
two quarreling women. A sentimentalist said:
"A lost child in a city street."
The Dog-Master contradicted:
"A lost _dog_ in a city street."
Nobody agreed with him of course; but that was because none of the
others chanced to know dogs--to know their psychology--their souls, if
you prefer. The dog-man was right. A lost dog in a city street is the
very saddest and most hopeless sight in all a city street's abounding
everyday sadness.
A man between two quarreling women is an object piteous enough, heaven
knows. Yet his plight verges too much on the grotesque to be called
sad.
A lost child?--No. Let a child stand in the middle of a crowded
sidewalk and begin to cry. In one minute fifty amateur and professional
rescuers have flocked to the Lost One's aid. An hour, at most,
suffices to bring it in touch with its frenzied guardians.
A lost dog?--Yes. No succoring cohort surges to the relief. A gang of
boys, perhaps, may give chase, but assuredly not in kindness. A
policeman seeking a record for "mad dog" shooting--a professional
dog-catcher in quest of his dirty fee--these will show marked
attention to the wanderer. But, again, not in kindness.
A dog, at some turn in the street, misses his master--doubles back to
where the human demigod was last seen--darts ahead once more to find
him, through the press of other human folk--halts, hesitates, begins
the same maneuvers all over again; then stands, shaking in panic at
his utter aloneness.
Get the look in his eyes, then--you who do not mind seeing such
things--and answer, honestly: Is there anything sadder on earth? All
this, before the pursuit of boys and the fever of thirst and the final
knowledge of desolation have turned him from a handsome and prideful
pet into a slinking outcast.
Yes, a lost dog is the saddest thing that can meet the gaze of a man
or woman who understands dogs. As perhaps my story may help to
show--or perhaps not.
* * * * *
Lad had been brushed and bathed, daily, for a week, until his
mahogany-and-snow coat shone. All this, at The Place, far up in the
North Jersey hinterland and all to make him presentable for the
Westminster Kennel Show at New York's Madison Square Garden. After
which, his two gods, the Mistress and the Master took him for a
thirty-mile ride in The Place's only car, one morning.
The drive began at The Place--the domain where Lad had ruled as King
among the lesser folk for so many years. It ended at Madison Square
Garden, where the annual four-day dog show was in progress.
You have read how Lad fared at that show--how, at the close of the
first day, when he had two victories to his credit, the Mistress had
taken pity on his misery and had decreed that he should be taken home,
without waiting out the remaining three days of torture-ordeal.
The Master went out first, to get the car and bring it around
to the side exit of the Garden. The Mistress gathered up Lad's
belongings--his brush, his dog biscuits, etc., and followed, with Lad
himself.
Out of the huge building, with its reverberating barks and yells from
two thousand canine throats, she went. Lad paced, happy and majestic,
at her side. He knew he was going home, and the unhappiness of the
hideous day dropped from him.
At the exit, the Mistress was forced to leave a deposit of five
dollars, "to insure the return of the dog to his bench" (to which
bench of agony she vowed, secretly, Lad should never return). Then she
was told the law demands that all dogs in New York City streets shall
be muzzled.
In vain she explained that Lad would be in the streets only for such
brief time as the car would require to journey to the One Hundred and
Thirtieth Street ferry. The door attendant insisted that the law was
inexorable. So, lest a policeman hold up the car for such disobedience
to the city statutes, the Mistress reluctantly bought a muzzle.
It was a big, awkward thing, made of steel, and bound on with leather
straps. It looked like a rat-trap. And it fenced in the nose and
mouth of its owner with a wicked criss-cross of shiny metal bars.
Never in all his years had Lad worn a muzzle. Never, until to-day,
had he been chained. The splendid eighty-pound collie had been as free
of The Place and of the forests as any human; and with no worse
restrictions than his own soul and conscience put upon him.
To him this muzzle was a horror. Not even the loved touch of the
Mistress' dear fingers, as she adjusted the thing to his beautiful
head, could lessen the degradation. And the discomfort of it--a
discomfort that amounted to actual pain--was almost as bad as the
humiliation.
With his absurdly tiny white forepaws, the huge dog sought to dislodge
the torture-implement. He strove to rub it off against the Mistress'
skirt. But beyond shifting it so that the forehead strap covered one
of his eyes, he could not budge it.
Lad looked up at the Mistress in wretched appeal. His look held no
resentment, nothing but sad entreaty. She was his deity. All his life
she had given him of her gentleness, her affection, her sweet
understanding. Yet, to-day, she had brought him to this abode of noisy
torment, and had kept him there from morning to dusk. And now--just as
the vigil seemed ended--she was tormenting him, to nerve-rack, by this
contraption she had fastened over his nose. Lad did not rebel. But he
besought. And the Mistress understood.
"Laddie, dear!" she whispered, as she led him across the sidewalk to
the curb where the Master waited for the car. "Laddie, old friend,
I'm just as sorry about it as you are. But it's only for a few
minutes. Just as soon as we get to the ferry, we'll take it off and
throw it into the river. And we'll never bring you again where dogs
have to wear such things. I promise. It's only for a few minutes."
The Mistress, for once, was mistaken. Lad was to wear the accursed
muzzle for much, _much_ longer than "a few minutes."
"Give him the back seat to himself, and come in front here with me,"
suggested the Master, as the Mistress and Lad arrived alongside the
car. "The poor old chap has been so cramped up and pestered all day
that he'll like to have a whole seat to stretch out on."
Accordingly, the Mistress opened the door and motioned Lad to the back
seat. At a bound the collie was on the cushion, and proceeded to curl
up thereon. The Mistress got into the front seat with the Master. The
car set forth on its six-mile run to the ferry.
Now that his face was turned homeward, Lad might have found vast
interest in his new surroundings, had not the horrible muzzle absorbed
all his powers of emotion. The Milan Cathedral, the Taj Mahal, the
Valley of the Arno at sunset--these be sights to dream of for
years. But show them to a man who has an ulcerated tooth, or whose
tight, new shoes pinch his soft corn, and he will probably regard them
as Lad just then viewed the twilight New York streets.
He was a dog of forest and lake and hill, this giant collie with his
mighty shoulders and tiny white feet and shaggy burnished coat and
mournful eyes. Never before had he been in a city. The myriad blended
noises confused and deafened him. The myriad blended smells assailed
his keen nostrils. The swirl of countless multicolored lights stung
and blurred his vision. Noises, smells and lights were all jarringly
new to him. So were the jostling masses of people on the sidewalk and
the tangle and hustle of vehicular traffic through which the Master
was threading the car's way with such difficulty.
But, newest and most sickening of all the day's novelties was the
muzzle.
Lad was quite certain the Mistress did not realize how the muzzle was
hurting him nor how he detested it. In all her dealings with him--or
with anyone or anything else--the Mistress had never been unkind; and
most assuredly not cruel. It must be she did not understand. At all
events, she had not scolded or forbidden, when he had tried to rub the
muzzle off. So the wearing of this new torture was apparently no part
of the Law. And Lad felt justified in striving again to remove it.
In vain he pawed the thing, first with one foot, then with both. He
could joggle it from side to side, but that was all. And each shift of
the steel bars hurt his tender nose and tenderer sensibilities worse
than the one before. He tried to rub it off against the seat
cushion--with the same distressing result.
Lad looked up at the backs of his gods, and whined very softly. The
sound went unheard, in the babel of noise all around him. Nor did the
Mistress, or the Master turn around, on general principles, to speak a
word of cheer to the sufferer. They were in a mixup of crossways
traffic that called for every atom of their attention, if they were to
avoid collision. It was no time for conversation or for dog-patting.
Lad got to his feet and stood, uncertainly, on the slippery leather
cushion, seeking to maintain his balance, while he rubbed a corner of
the muzzle against one of the supports of the car's lowered top.
Working away with all his might, he sought to get leverage that would
pry loose the muzzle.
Just then there was a brief gap in the traffic. The Master put on
speed, and, darting ahead of a delivery truck, sharply rounded the
corner into a side street.
The car's sudden twist threw Lad clean off his precarious balance on
the seat, and hurled him against one of the rear doors.
The door, insecurely shut, could not withstand the eighty-pound
impact. It burst open. And Lad was flung out onto the greasy asphalt
of the avenue.
He landed full on his side, in the muck of the roadway, with a force
that shook the breath clean out of him. Directly above his head glared
the twin lights of the delivery truck the Master had just shot
past. The truck was going at a good twelve miles an hour. And the dog
had fallen within six feet of its fat front wheels.
Now, a collie is like no other animal on earth. He is, at worst, more
wolf than dog. And, at best, he has more of the wolf's lightning-swift
instinct than has any other breed of canine. For which reason Lad was
not, then and there, smashed, flat and dead, under the fore-wheels of
a three-ton truck.
Even as the tires grazed his fur, Lad gathered himself compactly
together, his feet well under him, and sprang far to one side. The
lumbering truck missed him by less than six inches. But it missed him.
His leap brought him scramblingly down on all fours, out of the
truck's way, but on the wrong side of the thoroughfare. It brought him
under the very fender of a touring car that was going at a good pace
in the opposite direction. And again, a leap that was inspired by
quick instinct alone, lifted the dog free of this newest death-menace.
He halted and stared piteously around in search of his deities. But in
that glare and swelter of traffic, a trained human eye could not have
recognized any particular car. Moreover, the Mistress and Master were
a full half-block away, down the less crowded side street, and were
making up for lost time by putting on all the speed they dared, before
turning into the next westward traffic-artery. They did not look
back, for there was a car directly in front of them, whose driver
seemed uncertain as to his wheel control, and the Master was
manoeuvering to pass it in safety.
Not until they had reached the lower end of Riverside Drive, nearly a
mile to the north, did either the Master or Mistress turn around for a
word with the dog they loved.
Meantime, Lad was standing, irresolute and panting, in the middle of
Columbus Circle. Cars of a million types, from flivver to trolley,
seemed to be whizzing directly at him from every direction at once.
A bound, a dodge, or a deft shrinking back would carry him out of one
such peril--barely out of it--when another, or fifty others, beset
him.
And, all the time, even while he was trying to duck out of danger, his
frightened eyes and his pulsing nostrils sought the Mistress and the
Master.
His eyes, in that mixture of flare and dusk, told him nothing except
that a host of motors were likely to kill him. But his nose told him
what it had not been able to tell him since morning--namely, that,
through the reek of gasoline and horseflesh and countless human
scents, there was a nearness of fields and woods and water. And,
toward that blessed mingling of familiar odors he dodged his
threatened way.
By a miracle of luck and skill he crossed Columbus Circle, and came to
a standstill on a sidewalk, beside a low gray stone wall. Behind
the wall, his nose taught him, lay miles of meadow and wood and
lake--Central Park. But the smell of the Park brought him no scent of
the Mistress nor of the Master. And it was they--infinitely more than
his beloved countryside--that he craved. He ran up the street, on the
sidewalk, for a few rods, hesitant, alert, watching in every
direction. Then, perhaps seeing a figure, in the other direction, that
looked familiar, he dashed at top speed, eastward, for half a
block. Then he made a peril-fraught sortie out into the middle of the
traffic-humming street, deceived by the look of a passing car.
The car was traveling at twenty miles an hour. But, in less than a
block, Lad caught up with it. And this, in spite of the many things
he had to dodge, and the greasy slipperiness of the unfamiliar
roadway. An upward glance, as he came alongside the car, told him his
chase was in vain. And he made his precarious way to the sidewalk once
more.
There he stood, bewildered, heartsick--lost!
Yes, he was lost. And he realized it--realized it as fully as would a
city-dweller snatched up by magic and set down amid the trackless
Himalayas. He was lost. And Horror bit deep into his soul.
The average dog might have continued to waste energy and risk life by
galloping aimlessly back and forth, running hopefully up to every
stranger he met; then slinking off in scared disappointment and
searching afresh.
Lad was too wise for that. He was lost. His adored Mistress had
somehow left him; as had the Master; in this bedlam place--all
alone. He stood there, hopeless, head and tail adroop, his great heart
dead within him.
Presently he became aware once more that he was still wearing his
abominable muzzle. In the stress of the past few minutes Lad had
actually forgotten the pain and vexation of the thing. Now, the memory
of it came back, to add to his despair.
And, as a sick animal will ever creep to the woods and the waste
places for solitude, so the soul-sick Lad now turned from the clangor
and evil odors of the street to seek the stretch of country-land he
had scented.
Over the gray wall he sprang, and came earthward with a crash among
the leafless shrubs that edged the south boundary of Central Park.
Here in the Park there were people and lights and motor-cars, too, but
they were few, and they were far off. Around the dog was a grateful
darkness and aloneness. He lay down on the dead grass and panted.
The time was late February. The weather of the past day or two had
been mild. The brown-gray earth and the black trees had a faint odor
of slow-coming spring, though no nostrils less acute than a dog's
could have noted it.
Through the misery at his heart and the carking pain from his muzzle,
Lad began to realize that he was tired, also that he was hollow from
lack of food. The long day's ordeal of the dog show had wearied him
and had worn down his nerves more than could a fifty-mile run. The
nasty thrills of the past half-hour had completed his fatigue. He had
eaten nothing all day. Like most high-strung dogs at a show, he had
drunk a great deal of water and had refused to touch a morsel of food.
He was not hungry even now for, in a dog, hunger goes only with peace
of mind, but he was cruelly thirsty. He got up from his slushy couch
on the dead turf and trotted wearily toward the nearest branch of the
Central Park lake. At the brink he stooped to drink.
Soggy ice still covered the lake, but the mild weather had left a
half-inch skim of water over it. Lad tried to lap up enough of this
water to allay his craving thirst. He could not.
The muzzle protruded nearly an inch beyond his nose. Either through
faulty adjustment or from his own futile efforts to scrape it off, the
awkward steel hinge had become jammed and would not open. Lad could
not get his teeth a half-inch apart.
After much effort he managed to protrude the end of his pink tongue
and to touch the water with it, but it was a painful and drearily slow
process absorbing water drop by drop in this way. More through fatigue
than because his thirst was slaked, he stopped at last and turned away
from the lake.
The next half-hour was spent in a diligent and torturing and wholly
useless attempt to rid himself of his muzzle.
After which the dog lay panting and athirst once more; his tender nose
sore and bruised and bleeding; the muzzle as firmly fixed in place as
ever. Another journey to the lake and another Tantalus-effort to
drink--and the pitifully harassed dog's uncanny brain began to work.
He no longer let himself heed the muzzle. Experience of the most
painful sort had told him he could not dislodge it nor, in that
clamorous and ill-smelling city beyond the park wall, could he hope to
find the Mistress and the Master. These things being certain, his mind
went on to the next step, and the next step was--Home!
Home! The Place where his happy, beautiful life had been spent, where
his two gods abode, where there were no clang and reek and peril as
here in New York. Home!--The House of Peace!
Lad stood up. He drew in great breaths of the muggy air, and he turned
slowly about two or three times, head up, nostrils aquiver. For a
full minute he stood thus. Then he lowered his head and trotted
westward. No longer he moved uncertainly, but with as much sureness as
if he were traversing the forest behind The Place--the forest that had
been his roaming-ground since puppyhood.
(Now, this is not a fairy story, nor any other type of fanciful yarn,
so I do not pretend to account for Lad's heading unswervingly toward
the northwest in the exact direction of The Place, thirty miles
distant, any more than I can account for the authenticated case of a
collie who, in 1917, made his way four hundred miles from the home of
a new owner in southern Georgia to the doorstep of his former and
better loved master in the mountains of North Carolina; any more than
I can account for the flight of a homing pigeon or for that of the
northbound duck in Spring. God gives to certain animals a whole set of
mystic traits which He withholds utterly from humans. No dog-student
can doubt that, and no dog-student or deep-delving psychologist can
explain it.)
Northwestward jogged Lad, and in half a mile he came to the low
western wall of Central Park. Without turning aside to seek a
gateway, he cleared the wall and found himself on Eighth Avenue in the
very middle of a block.
Keeping on the sidewalk and paying no heed to the few pedestrians, he
moved along to the next westward street and turned down it toward the
Hudson River. So calmly and certainly did he move that none would have
taken him for a lost dog.
Under the roaring elevated road at Columbus Avenue, he trotted; his
ears tormented by the racket of a train that reverberated above him;
his sense so blurred by the sound that he all but forgot to dodge a
southbound trolley car.
Down the cross street to Amsterdam Avenue he bore. A patrolman on his
way to the West Sixty-ninth Street police station to report for night
duty, was so taken up by his own lofty thoughts that he quite forgot
to glance at the big mud-spattered dog that padded past him.
For this lack of observation the patrolman was destined to lose a good
opportunity for fattening his monthly pay. Because, on reaching the
station, he learned that a distressed man and woman had just been
there in a car to offer a fifty-dollar reward for the finding of a big
mahogany-and-white collie, answering to the name of "Lad."
As the dog reached Amsterdam Avenue a high little voice squealed
delightedly at him. A three-year-old baby--a mere fluff of gold and
white and pink--was crossing the avenue convoyed by a fat woman in
black. Lad was jogging by the mother and child when the latter
discovered the passing dog.
With a shriek of joyous friendliness the baby flung herself upon Lad
and wrapped both arms about his shaggy neck.
"Why _doggie!_" she shrilled, ecstatically. "Why, dear, _dear_
doggie!"
Now Lad was in dire haste to get home, and Lad was in dire misery of
mind and body, but his big heart went out in eagerly loving answer to
the impulsive caress. He worshipped children, and would cheerfully
endure from them any amount of mauling.
At the baby embrace and the baby voice, he stopped short in his
progress. His plumy tail wagged in glad friendliness; his muzzled nose
sought wistfully to kiss the pink little face on a level with his
own. The baby tightened her hug, and laid her rose leaf cheek close to
his own.
"I love you, Miss Doggie!" she whispered in Lad's ear.
Then the fat woman in black bore down upon them. Fiercely, she
yanked the baby away from the dog. Then, seeing that the mud on
Lad's shoulder had soiled the child's white coat, she whirled a
string-fastened bundle aloft and brought it down with a resounding
thwack over the dog's head.
Lad winched under the heavy blow, then hot resentment blazed through
his first instant of grieved astonishment. This unpleasant fat
creature in black was not a man, wherefore Lad contented himself by
baring his white teeth, and with growling deep menace far down in his
throat.
The woman shrank back scared, and she screamed loudly. On the instant
the station-bound patrolman was beside her.
"What's wrong, ma'am?" asked the bluecoat.
The woman pointed a wobbly and fat forefinger at Lad, who had taken up
his westward journey again and was halfway across the street.
"Mad dog!" she sputtered, hysterically. "He--he bit me! Bit _at_ me,
anyhow!"
Without waiting to hear the last qualifying sentence, the patrolman
gave chase. Here was a chance for honorable blotter-mention at the
very least. As he ran he drew his pistol.
Lad had reached the westward pavement of Amsterdam Avenue and was in
the side street beyond. He was not hurrying, but his short wolf-trot
ate up ground in deceptively quick time.
By the time the policeman had reached the west corner of street and
avenue the dog was nearly a half-block ahead. The officer, still
running, leveled his pistol and fired.
Now, anyone (but a very newly-appointed patrolman or a movie-hero)
knows that to fire a shot when running is worse than fatal to any
chance of accuracy. No marksman--no one who has the remotest knowledge
of marksmanship--will do such a thing. The very best pistol-expert
cannot hope to hit his target if he is joggling his own arm and his
whole body by the motion of running.
The bullet flew high and to the right, smashing a second-story window
and making the echoes resound deafeningly through the narrow street.
"What's up?" excitedly asked a boy, who stood beside a barrel bonfire
with a group of chums.
"Mad dog!" puffed the policeman as he sped past.
At once the boys joined gleesomely in the chase, outdistancing the
officer, just as the latter fired a second shot.
Lad felt a white-hot ridge of pain cut along his left flank like a
whip-lash. He wheeled to face his invisible foe, and he found
himself looking at a half-dozen boys who charged whoopingly down on
him. Behind the boys clumped a man in blue flourishing something
bright.
Lad had no taste for this sort of attention. Always he had loathed
strangers, and these new strangers seemed bent on catching him--on
barring his homeward way.
He wheeled around again and continued his westward journey at a faster
pace. The hue-and-cry broke into louder yells and three or four new
recruits joined the pursuers. The yap of "Mad dog! _Mad dog!_" filled
the air.
Not one of these people--not even the policeman himself--had any
evidence that the collie was mad. There are not two really rabid dogs
seen at large in New York or in any other city in the course of a
year. Yet, at the back of the human throat ever lurks that fool-cry of
"Mad dog!"--ever ready to leap forth into shouted words at the
faintest provocation.
One wonders, disgustedly, how many thousand luckless and totally
harmless pet dogs in the course of a year are thus hunted down and
shot or kicked or stoned to death in the sacred name of Humanity, just
because some idiot mistakes a hanging tongue or an uncertainty of
direction for signs of that semi-phantom malady known as "rabies."
A dog is lost. He wanders to and fro in bewilderment. Boys pelt or
chase him. His tongue lolls and his eyes glaze with fear. Then, ever,
rises the yell of "Mad Dog!" And a friendly, lovable pet is joyfully
done to death.
Lad crossed Broadway, threading his way through the trolley-and-taxi
procession, and galloped down the hill toward Riverside Park. Close
always at his heels followed the shouting crowd. Twice, by sprinting,
the patrolman gained the front rank of the hunt, and twice he
fired--both bullets going wide. Across West End Avenue and across
Riverside Drive went Lad, hard-pressed and fleeing at top speed. The
cross-street ran directly down to a pier that jutted a hundred feet
out into the Hudson River.
Along this pier flew Lad, not in panic terror, but none the less
resolved that these howling New Yorkers should not catch him and
prevent his going home.
Onto the pier the clattering hue-and-cry followed. A dock watchman,
as Lad flashed by, hurled a heavy joist of wood at the dog. It whizzed
past the flying hind legs, scoring the barest of misses.
And now Lad was at the pier end. Behind him the crowd raced; sure it
had the dangerous brute cornered at last.
On the string-piece the collie paused for the briefest of moments
glancing to north and to south. Everywhere the wide river stretched
away, unbridged. It must be crossed if he would continue his homeward
course, and there was but one way for him to cross it.
The watchman, hard at his heels, swung upward the club he carried.
Down came the club with murderous force--upon the stringpiece
where Lad had been standing.
Lad was no longer there. One great bound had carried him over the edge
and into the black water below.
Down he plunged into the river and far, far under it, fighting his way
gaspingly to the surface. The water that gushed into his mouth and
nostrils was salty and foul, not at all like the water of the lake at
the edge of The Place. It sickened him. And the February chill of the
river cut into him like a million ice-needles.
To the surface he came, and struck out valorously for the opposite
shore much more than a mile away. As his beautiful head appeared, a
yell went up from the clustering riff-raff at the pier end. Bits of
wood and coal began to shower the water all around him. A pistol shot
plopped into the river a bare six inches away from him.
But the light was bad and the stream was a tossing mass of blackness
and of light-blurs, and presently the dog swam, unscathed, beyond the
range of missiles.
Now a swim of a mile or of two miles was no special exploit for
Lad--even in ice-cold water, but this water was not like any he had
swum in. The tide was at the turn for one thing, and while, in a way,
this helped him, yet the myriad eddies and cross-currents engendered
by it turned and jostled and buffeted him in a most perplexing
way. And there were spars and barrels and other obstacles that were
forever looming up just in front of him or else banging against his
heaving sides.
Once a revenue cutter passed not thirty feet ahead of him. Its wake
caught the dog and sucked him under and spun his body around and
around before he could fight clear of it.
His lungs were bursting. He was worn out. He felt as sore as if he had
been kicked for an hour. The bullet-graze along his flank was hurting
him as the salt water bit into it, and the muzzle half-blinded,
half-smothered him.
But, because of his hero heart rather than through his splendid
strength and wisdom, he kept on.
For an hour or more he swam until at last his body and brain were
numb, and only the mechanical action of his wrenched muscles held him
in motion. Twice tugs narrowly escaped running him down, and in the
wake of each he waged a fearful fight for life.
After a century of effort his groping forepaws felt the impact of a
submerged rock, then of another, and with his last vestige of strength
Lad crawled feebly ashore on a narrow sandspit at the base of the
elephant-gray Palisades. There, he collapsed and lay shivering,
panting, struggling for breath.
Long he lay there, letting Nature bring back some of his wind and his
motive-power, his shaggy body one huge pulsing ache.
When he was able to move, he took up his journey. Sometimes swimming,
sometimes on ground, he skirted the Palisades-foot to northward, until
he found one of the several precipice-paths that Sunday picnickers
love to climb. Up this he made his tottering way, slowly; conserving
his strength as best he could.
On the summit he lay down again to rest. Behind him, across the
stretch of black and lamp-flecked water, rose the inky skyline of the
city with a lurid furnace-glow between its crevices that smote the
sky. Ahead was a plateau with a downward slope beyond it.
Once more, getting to his feet, Lad stood and sniffed, turning his
head from side to side, muzzled nose aloft. Then, his bearings taken,
he set off again, but this time his jog-trot was slower and his light
step was growing heavier. The terrible strain of his swim was passing
from his mighty sinews, but it was passing slowly because he was so
tired and empty and in such pain of body and mind. He saved his
energies until he should have more of them to save.
Across the plateau, down the slope, and then across the interminable
salt meadows to westward he traveled; sometimes on road or path,
sometimes across field or hill, but always in an unswerving straight
line.
It was a little before midnight that he breasted the first rise of
Jersey hills above Hackensack. Through a lightless one-street village
he went, head low, stride lumbering, the muzzle weighing a ton and
composed of molten iron and hornet stings.
It was the muzzle--now his first fatigue had slackened--that galled
him worst. Its torture was beginning to do queer things to his nerves
and brain. Even a stolid, nerveless dog hates a muzzle. More than one
sensitive dog has been driven crazy by it.
Thirst--intolerable thirst--was torturing Lad. He could not drink at
the pools and brooks he crossed. So tight-jammed was the steel
jaw-hinge now that he could not even open his mouth to pant, which is
the cruelest deprivation a dog can suffer.
Out of the shadows of a ramshackle hovel's front yard dived a
monstrous shape that hurled itself ferociously on the passing collie.
A mongrel watchdog--part mastiff, part hound, part anything you
choose--had been dozing on his squatter-owner's doorstep when the
pad-pad-pad of Lad's wearily-jogging feet had sounded on the road.
Other dogs, more than one of them, during the journey had run out to
yap or growl at the wanderer, but as Lad had been big and had followed
an unhesitant course they had not gone to the length of actual attack.
This mongrel, however, was less prudent. Or, perhaps, dog-fashion, he
realized that the muzzle rendered Lad powerless and therefore saw
every prospect of a safe and easy victory. At all events, he gave no
warning bark or growl as he shot forward to the attack.
Lad--his eyes dim with fatigue and road dust, his ears dulled by water
and by noise--did not hear nor see the foe. His first notice of the
attack was a flying weight of seventy-odd pounds that crashed against
his flank. A double set of fangs in the same instant, sank into his
shoulder.
Under the onslaught Lad fell sprawlingly into the road on his left
side, his enemy upon him.
As Lad went down the mongrel deftly shifted his unprofitable shoulder
grip to a far more promisingly murderous hold on his fallen victim's
throat.
A cat has five sets of deadly weapons--its four feet and its jaws. So
has every animal on earth--human and otherwise--except a dog. A dog is
terrible by reason of its teeth. Encase the mouth in a muzzle and a
dog is as helpless for offensive warfare as is a newborn baby.
And Lad was thus pitiably impotent to return his foe's attack.
Exhausted, flung prone to earth, his mighty jaws muzzled, he
seemed as good as dead.
But a collie down is not a collie beaten. The wolf-strain provides
against that. Even as he fell Lad instinctively gathered his legs
under him as he had done when he tumbled from the car.
And, almost at once, he was on his feet again, snarling horribly and
lunging to break the mongrel's throat-grip. His weariness was
forgotten and his wondrous reserve strength leaped into play. Which
was all the good it did him; for he knew as well as the mongrel that
he was powerless to use his teeth.
The throat of a collie--except in one small vulnerable spot--is
armored by a veritable mattress of hair. Into this hair the mongrel
had driven his teeth. The hair filled his mouth, but his grinding jaws
encountered little else to close on.
A lurching jerk of Lad's strong frame tore loose the savagely
inefficient hold. The mongrel sprang at him for a fresh grip. Lad
reared to meet him, opposing his mighty chest to the charge and
snapping powerlessly with his close-locked mouth.
The force of Lad's rearing leap sent the mongrel spinning back by
sheer weight, but at once he drove in again to the assault. This time
he did not give his muzzled antagonist a chance to rear, but sprang at
Lad's flank. Lad wheeled to meet the rush and, opposing his shoulder
to it, broke its force.
Seeing himself so helpless, this was of course the time for Lad
to take to his heels and try to outrun the enemy he could not
outfight. To stand his ground was to be torn, eventually, to death.
Being anything but a fool Lad knew that; yet he ignored the chance of
safety and continued to fight the worse-than-hopeless battle.
Twice and thrice his wit and his uncanny swiftness enabled him to
block the big mongrel's rushes. The fourth time, as he sought to
rear, his hind foot slipped on a skim of puddle-ice.
Down went Lad in a heap, and the mongrel struck.
Before the collie could regain his feet the mongrel's teeth had found
a hold on the side of Lad's throat. Pinning down the muzzled dog, the
mongrel proceeded to improve his hold by grinding his way toward the
jugular. Now his teeth encountered something more solid than mere
hair. They met upon a thin leather strap.
Fiercely the mongrel gnawed at this solid obstacle, his rage-hot brain
possibly mistaking it for flesh. Lad writhed to free himself and to
regain his feet, but seventy-five pounds of fighting weight were
holding his neck to the ground.
Of a sudden, the mongrel growled in savage triumph. The strap was
bitten through!
Clinging to the broken end of the leather the victor gave one final
tug. The pull drove the steel bars excruciatingly deep into Lad's
bruised nose for a moment. Then, by magic, the torture-implement was
no longer on his head but was dangling by one strap between the
muzzled mongrel's jaws.
With a motion so swift that the eye could not follow it, Lad was on
his feet and plunging deliriously into the fray. Through a miracle,
his jaws were free; his torment was over. The joy of deliverance sent
a glow of Berserk vigor sweeping through him.
The mongrel dropped the muzzle and came eagerly to the battle. To his
dismay he found himself fighting not a helpless dog, but a maniac
wolf. Lad sought no permanent hold. With dizzying quickness his head
and body moved--and kept moving, and every motion meant a deep slash
or a ragged tear in his enemy's short-coated hide.
With ridiculous ease the collie eluded the mongrel's awkward
counter-attacks, and ever kept boring in. To the quivering bone his
short front teeth sank. Deep and bloodily his curved tusks slashed--as
the wolf and the collie alone can slash.
The mongrel, swept off his feet, rolled howling into the road; and Lad
tore grimly at the exposed under-body.
Up went a window in the hovel. A man's voice shouted. A woman in a
house across the way screamed. Lad glanced up to note this new
diversion. The stricken mongrel yelping in terror and agony seized
the second respite to scamper back to the doorstep, howling at every
jump.
Lad did not pursue him, but jogged along on his journey without one
backward look.
At a rivulet, a mile beyond, he stopped to drink. And he drank for
ten minutes. Then he went on. Unmuzzled and with his thirst slaked,
he forgot his pain, his fatigue, his muddy and blood-caked and abraded
coat, and the memory of his nightmare day.
He was going home!
At gray dawn the Mistress and the Master turned in at the gateway of
The Place. All night they had sought Lad; from one end of Manhattan
Island to the other--from Police Headquarters to dog pound--they had
driven. And now the Master was bringing his tired and heartsore wife
home to rest, while he himself should return to town and to the
search.
The car chugged dispiritedly down the driveway to the house, but
before it had traversed half the distance the dawn-hush was shattered
by a thundrous bark of challenge to the invaders.
Lad, from his post of guard on the veranda, ran stiffly forward to bar
the way. Then as he ran his eyes and nose suddenly told him these
mysterious newcomers were his gods.
The Mistress, with a gasp of rapturous unbelief, was jumping down from
the car before it came to a halt. On her knees, she caught Lad's muddy
and bloody head tight in her arms.
"Oh, Lad;" she sobbed incoherently. "Laddie! _Laddie!_"
Whereat, by another miracle, Lad's stiffness and hurts and weariness
were gone. He strove to lick the dear face bending so tearfully above
him. Then, with an abandon of puppylike joy, he rolled on the ground
waving all four soiled little feet in the air and playfully pretending
to snap at the loving hands that caressed him.
Which was ridiculous conduct for a stately and full-grown collie. But
Lad didn't care, because it made the Mistress stop crying and
laugh. And that was what Lad most wanted her to do.