THE KILLER
One of the jolliest minutes in Lad's daily cross-country tramp with
the Mistress and the Master was his dash up Mount Pisgah. This
"mount" was little more than a foothill. It was treeless, and covered
with short grass and mullein; a slope where no crop but buckwheat
could be expected to thrive. It rose out of the adjoining mountain
forests in a long and sweeping ascent.
Here, with no trees or undergrowth to impede him, Lad, from puppyhood,
had ordained a racecourse of his own. As he neared the hill he would
always dash forward at top speed; flying up the rise like a tawny
whirlwind, at unabated pace, until he stopped, panting and gloriously
excited, on the summit; to await his slower-moving human escorts.
One morning in early summer, Lad, as usual, bounded ahead of the
Mistress and the Master, as they drew near to the treeless "mount."
And, as ever, he rushed gleefully forward for his daily breather, up
the long slope. But, before he had gone fifty yards, he came to a
scurrying halt, and stood at gaze. His back was bristling and his lips
curled back from his white teeth in sudden annoyance.
His keen nostrils, even before his eyes, told him something was amiss
with his cherished race-track. The eddying shift of the breeze, from
west to north, had brought to his nose the odor which had checked his
onrush; an odor that wakened all sorts of vaguely formless memories
far back in Lad's brain; and which he did not at all care for.
Scent is ten times stronger, to a dog, than is sight. The best dog is
near sighted. And the worst dog has a magic sense of smell. Wherefore,
a dog almost always uses his nose first and his eyes last. Which Lad
now proceeded to do.
Above him was the pale green hillside, up which he loved to gallop.
But its surface was no longer smoothly unencumbered. Instead, it was
dotted and starred--singly or in groups--with fluffy grayish-white
creatures.
Lad was almost abreast of the lowest group of sheep when he paused.
Several of the feeding animals lifted their heads, snortingly,
from the short herbage, at sight of him; and fled up the hill. The
rest of the flock joined them in the silly stampede.
The dog made no move to follow. Instead, his forehead creased and his
eyes troubled, he stared after the gray-white surge that swept upward
toward the summit of his favored coursing ground. The Mistress and
the Master, too, at sight of the woolly avalanche, stopped and stared.
From over the brow of Mount Pisgah appeared the non-picturesque figure
of a man in blue denim overalls--one Titus Romaine, owner of the
sparse-grassed hill. Drawn by the noisy multiple patter of his flock's
hoofs, he emerged from under a hilltop boulder's shade; to learn the
cause of their flight.
Now, in all his life, Lad had seen sheep just once before. That one
exception had been when Hamilcar Q. Glure, "the Wall Street Farmer,"
had corralled a little herd of his prize Merinos, overnight, at The
Place, on the way to the Paterson Livestock Show. On that occasion,
the sheep had broken from the corral, and Lad, acting on ancestral
instinct, had rounded them up, without injuring or scaring one of
them.
The memory was not pleasing to Lad, and he wanted nothing more to do
with such stupid creatures. Indeed, as he looked now upon the sheep
that were obstructing his run, he felt a distinct aversion to
them. Whining a little, he trotted back to where stood the Mistress
and the Master. And, as they waited, Titus Romaine bore wrathfully
down upon them.
"I've been expectin' something like that!" announced the land-owner.
"Ever since I turned these critters out here, this mornin'. I ain't
surprised a bit. I----"
"What is it you've been expecting, Romaine?" asked the Master. "And
how long have you been a sheep-raiser? A sheep, here in the North
Jersey hinterland, is as rare as----"
"I been expectin' some savage dog would be runnin' 'em," retorted the
farmer. "Just like I've read they do. An' now I've caught him at it!"
"Caught _whom?_--at _what?_" queried the perplexed Mistress; failing
to note the man's baleful glower at the contemptuous Lad.
"That big ugly brute of your'n, of course," declared Romaine. "I
caught him, red-handed, runnin' my sheep. He----"
"Lad did nothing of the kind," denied the Mistress. "The instant he
caught sight of them he stopped running. Lad wouldn't hurt anything
that is weak and helpless. Your sheep saw him and they ran away. He
didn't follow them an inch."
"I seen what I seen," cryptically answered the man. "An' I give you
fair warnin', if any of my sheep is killed, I'll know right where to
come to look for the killer."
"If you mean Lad----" began the Master, hotly.
But the Mistress intervened.
"I am glad you have decided to raise sheep, Mr. Romaine," she
said. "Everyone ought to, who can. I read, only the other day, that
America is using up more sheep than it can breed; and that the price
of fodder and the scarcity of pasture were doing terrible things to
the mutton-and-wool supply. I hope you'll have all sorts of good
luck. And you are wise to watch your sheep so closely. But don't be
afraid of Lad harming any of them. He wouldn't, for worlds, I
know. Because I know Lad. Come along, Laddie!" she finished, as she
turned to go away.
But Titus Romaine stopped her.
"I've put a sight of money into this flock of sheep," he declared.
"More'n I could reely afford. An' I've been readin' up on sheep,
too. I've been readin' that the worst en'my to sheep is 'pred'tory
dogs.' An' if that big dog of your'n ain't 'pred'tory,' then
I never seen one that was. So I'm warnin' you, fair----"
"If your sheep come to any harm, Mr. Romaine," returned the Mistress,
again forestalling an untactful outbreak from her husband, "I'll
guarantee Lad will have nothing to do with it."
"An' I'll guarantee to have him shot an' have you folks up in court,
if he does," chivalrously retorted Mr. Titus Romaine.
With which exchange of goodfellowship, the two groups parted, Romaine
returning to his scattered sheep, while the Mistress, Lad at her
heels, lured the Master away from the field of encounter. The Master
was fuming.
"Here's where good old Mr. Trouble drops in on us for a nice long
visit!" he grumbled, as they moved homeward. "I can see how it is
going to turn out. Because a few stray curs have chased or killed
sheep, now and then, every decent dog is under suspicion as a
sheep-killer. If one of Romaine's wethers gets a scratch on its leg,
from a bramble, Lad will be blamed. If one of the mongrels from over
in the village should chase his sheep, Lad will be accused. And we'll
be in the first 'neighborhood squabble' of our lives."
The Master spoke with a pessimism his wife did not share, and which
he, himself, did not really believe. The folk at The Place had always
lived in goodfellowship and peace with their few rural neighbors, as
well as with the several hundred inhabitants of the mile-distant
village, across the lake. And, though livestock is the foundation of
ninety rustic feuds out of ninety-one, the dogs of The Place had never
involved their owners in any such row.
Yet, barely three days later, Titus Romaine bore down upon The Place,
before breakfast, breathing threatenings and complaining of slaughter.
He was waiting on the veranda in blasphemous converse with The Place's
foreman, when the Master came out. At Titus's heels stood his "hired
man"--a huge and sullen person named Schwartz, who possessed a
scarce-conquered accent that fitted the name.
"Well!" orated Romaine, in glum greeting, as he sighted the Master.
"Well, I guessed right! He done it, after all! He done it. We
all but caught him, red-handed. Got away with four of my best sheep!
Four of 'em. The cur!"
"What are you talking about?" demanded the Master, as the Mistress,
drawn by the visitor's plangent tones, joined the veranda-group.
"'Bout that ugly big dog of your'n!" answered Romaine. "I knew
what he'd do, if he got the chance. I knew it, when I saw him
runnin' my poor sheep, last week. I warned you then. The two
of you. An' now he's done it!"
"Done what?" insisted the Master, impatient of the man's noise and
fury.
"What dog?" asked the Mistress, at the same time.
"Are you talking about Lad? If you are----"
"I'm talkin' about your big brown collie cur!" snorted Titus. "He's
gone an' killed four of my best sheep. Did it in the night an' early
this mornin'. My man here caught him at the last of 'em, an' drove
him off, just as he was finishin' the poor critter. He got away with
the rest of 'em."
"Nonsense!" denied the Master. "You're talking rot. Lad wouldn't touch
a sheep. And----"
"That's what all folks say when their dogs or their children is
charged with doin' wrong!" scoffed Romaine. "But this time it won't do
no good to----"
"You say this happened last night?" interposed the Mistress.
"Yes, it did. Last night an' early in the mornin', too. Schwartz,
here----"
"But Lad sleeps in the house, every night," objected the Mistress. "He
sleeps under the piano, in the music room. He has slept there every
night since he was a puppy. The maid who dusts the downstairs rooms
before breakfast lets him out, when she begins work. So he----"
"Bolster it up any way you like!" broke in Romaine. "He was out last
night, all right. An' early this morning, too."
"How early?" questioned the Master.
"Five o'clock," volunteered Schwartz, speaking up, from behind his
employer. "I know, because that's the time I get up. I went out,
first thing, to open the barnyard gate and drive the sheep to the
pasture. First thing I saw was that big dog growling over a sheep he'd
just killed. He saw me, and he wiggled out through the barnyard
bars--same way he had got in. Then I counted the sheep. One was
dead,--the one he had just killed--and three were gone. We've been
looking for their bodies ever since, and we can't find them."
"I suppose Lad swallowed them," ironically put in The Place's
foreman. "That makes about as much sense as the rest of the yarn. The
Old Dog would no sooner----"
"Do you really mean to say you saw Lad--saw and _recognized_ him--in
Mr. Titus's barnyard, growling over a sheep he had just killed?"
demanded the Mistress.
"I sure do," affirmed Schwartz. "And I----"
"An' he's ready to go on th' stand an' take oath to it!" supplemented
Titus. "Unless you'll pay me the damages out of court. Them sheep cost
me exac'ly $12.10 a head, in the Pat'son market, one week ago. An'
sheep on the hoof has gone up a full forty cents more since then. You
owe me for them four sheep exac'ly----"
"I owe you not one red cent!" denied the Master. "I hate law worse
than I hate measles. But I'll fight that idiotic claim all the way up
to the Appellate Division before I'll----"
The Mistress lifted a little silver whistle that hung at her belt and
blew it. An instant later Lad came galloping gaily up the lawn from
the lake, adrip with water from his morning swim. Straight, at the
Mistress' summons, he came, and stood, expectant, in front of her,
oblivious of others.
The great dog's mahogany-and-snow coat shone wetly in the sunshine.
Every line of his splendid body was tense. His eyes looked up
into the face of the loved Mistress in eager anticipation. For a
whistle-call usually involved some matter of more than common
interest.
"That's the dog!" cried Schwartz, his thick voice betraying a shade
more of its half-lost German accent, in the excitement of the
minute. "That's the one. He has washed off the blood. But that is the
one. I could know him anywhere at all. And I knew him, already. And
Mr. Romaine told me to be looking out for him, about the sheep, too.
So I----"
The Master had bent over Lad, examining the dog's mouth. "Not a trace
of blood or of wool!" he announced. "And look how he faces us! If he
had anything to be ashamed of----"
"I got a witness to prove he killed my sheep," cut in Romaine. "Since
you won't be honest enough to square the case out of court, then the
law'll take a tuck in your wallet for you. The law will look after a
poor man's int'rest. I don't wonder there's folks who want all dogs
done 'way with. Pesky curs! Here, the papers say we are short on
sheep, an' they beg us to raise 'em, because mutton is worth double
what it used to be, in open market. Then, when I buy sheep, on that
sayso, your dog gets four of 'em the very first week. Think what them
four sheep would 'a meant to----"
"I'm sorry you lost them," the Master interrupted. "Mighty sorry. And
I'm still sorrier if there is a sheep-killing dog at large anywhere in
this region. But Lad never----"
"I tell ye, he _did!_" stormed Titus. "I got proof of it. Proof
good enough for any court. An' the court is goin' to see me righted.
It's goin' to do more. It's goin' to make you shoot that killer,
there, too. I know the law. I looked it up. An' the law says if a
sheep-killin' dog----"
"Lad is not a sheep-killing dog!" flashed the Mistress.
"That's what he is!" snarled Romaine. "An', by law, he'll be shot as
sech. He----"
"Take your case to law, then!" retorted the Master, whose last shred
of patience went by the board, at the threat. "And take it and
yourself off my Place! Lad doesn't 'run' sheep. But, at the word from
me, he'll ask nothing better than to 'run' you and your German every
step of the way to your own woodshed. Clear out!"
He and the Mistress watched the two irately mumbling intruders plod
out of sight up the drive. Lad, at the Master's side, viewed the
accusers' departure with sharp interest. Schooled in reading the
human voice, he had listened alertly to the Master's speech of
dismissal. And, as the dog listened, his teeth had come slowly into
view from beneath a menacingly upcurled lip. His eyes, half shut, had
been fixed on Titus with an expression that was not pretty.
"Oh, dear!" sighed the Mistress miserably, as she and her husband
turned indoors and made their way toward the breakfast room. "You were
right about 'good old Mr. Trouble dropping in on us.' Isn't it
horrible? But it makes my blood boil to think of Laddie being accused
of such a thing. It is crazily absurd, of course. But----"
"Absurd?" the Master caught her up. "It's the most absurd thing I ever
heard of. If it was about any other dog than Lad, it would be good for
a laugh. I mean, Romaine's charge of the dog's doing away with no less
than four sheep and not leaving a trace of more than one of them.
That, alone, would get his case laughed out of court. I remember, once
in Scotland, I was stopping with some people whose shepherd complained
that three of the sheep had fallen victim to a 'killer.' We all went
up to the moor-pasture to look at them. They weren't a pretty sight,
but they were all _there_. A dog doesn't devour a sheep he kills. He
doesn't even lug it away. Instead, he just----"
"Perhaps you'd rather describe it _after_ breakfast," suggested the
Mistress, hurriedly. "This wretched business has taken away all of my
appetite that I can comfortably spare."
At about mid-morning of the next day, the Master was summoned to the
telephone.
"This is Maclay," said the voice at the far end.
"Why, hello, Mac!" responded the Master, mildly wondering why his old
fishing-crony, the village's local Peace Justice, should be calling
him up at such an hour. "If you're going to tell me this is a good day
for small-mouth bass to bite I'm going to tell you it isn't. It isn't
because I'm up to my neck in work. Besides, it's too late for the
morning fishing, and too early for the bass to get up their afternoon
appetites. So don't try to tempt me into----"
"Hold on!" broke in Maclay. "I'm not calling you up for that. I'm
calling up on business; rotten unpleasant business, too."
"What's wrong?" asked the Master.
"I'm hoping Titus Romaine is," said the Justice. "He's just been
here--with his North Prussian hired man as witness--to make a
complaint about your dog, Lad. Yes, and to get a court order to have
the old fellow shot, too."
"What!" sputtered the Master. "He hasn't actually----"
"That's just what he's done," said Maclay. "He claims Lad killed four
of his new sheep night before last, and four more of them this morning
or last night. Schwartz swears he caught Lad at the last of the killed
sheep both times. It's hard luck, old man, and I feel as bad about it
as if it were my own dog. You know how strong I am for Lad. He's the
greatest collie I've known, but the law is clear in such----"
"You speak as if you thought Lad was guilty!" flamed the Master. "You
ought to know better than that. He----"
"Schwartz tells a straight story," answered Maclay, sadly, "and he
tells it under oath. He swears he recognized Lad first time. He says
he volunteered to watch in the barnyard last night. He had had a hard
day's work and he fell asleep while he was on watch. He says he woke
up in gray dawn to find the whole flock in a turmoil, and Lad pinning
one of the sheep to the ground. He had already killed three. Schwartz
drove him away. Three of the sheep were missing. One Lad had just
downed was dying. Romaine swears he saw Lad 'running' his sheep last
week. It----"
"What did you do about the case?" asked the dazed Master.
"I told them to be at the courtroom at three this afternoon with the
bodies of the two dead sheep that aren't missing, and that I'd notify
you to be there, too."
"Oh, I'll be there!" snapped the Master. "Don't worry. And it was
decent of you to make them wait. The whole thing is ridiculous!
It----"
"Of course," went on Maclay, "either side can easily appeal from any
decision I make. That is as regards damages. But, by the township's
new sheep-laws, I'm sorry to say there isn't any appeal from the local
Justice's decree that a sheep-killing dog must be shot at once. The
law leaves me no option if I consider a dog guilty of sheep-killing.
I have to order such a dog put to death at once. That's what's making
me so blue. I'd rather lose a year's pay than have to order old Lad
killed."
"You won't have to," declared the Master, stoutly; albeit he was
beginning to feel a nasty sinking in the vicinity of his stomach.
"We'll manage to prove him innocent. I'll stake anything you like on
that."
"Talk the case over with Dick Colfax or any other good lawyer before
three o'clock," suggested Maclay. "There may be a legal loophole out
of the muddle. I hope to the Lord there is."
"We're not going to crawl out through any 'loopholes,' Lad and I,"
returned the Master. "We're going to come through, _clean_. See if we
don't!"
Leaving the telephone, he went in search of the Mistress, and more and
more disheartened told her the story.
"The worst of it is," he finished, "Romaine and Schwartz seem to have
made Maclay believe their fool yarn."
"That is because they believe it, themselves," said the Mistress, "and
because, just as soon as even the most sensible man is made a Judge,
he seems to lose all his common sense and intuition and become nothing
but a walking statute-book. But you--you think for a moment, do you,
that they can persuade Judge Maclay to have Lad shot?"
She spoke with a little quiver in her sweet voice that roused all the
Master's fighting spirit.
"This Place is going to be in a state of siege against the entire law
and militia of New Jersey," he announced, "before one bullet goes into
Lad. You can put your mind to rest on that. But that isn't enough. I
want to _clear_ him. In these days of 'conservation' and scarcity, it
is a grave offense to destroy any meat-animal. And the loss of eight
sheep in two days--in a district where there has been such an effort
made to revive sheep raising----"
"Didn't you say they claim the second lot of sheep were killed in the
night and at dawn, just as they said the first were?" interposed the
Mistress.
"Why, yes. But----"
"Then," said the Mistress, much more comfortably, "we can prove Lad's
alibi just as I said yesterday we could. Marie always lets him out in
the morning when she comes downstairs to dust these lower rooms. She's
never down before six o'clock; and the sun, nowadays, rises long
before that. Schwartz says he saw Lad both times in the early
dawn. We can prove, by Marie, that Lad was safe here in the house till
long after sunrise."
Her worried frown gave way to a smile of positive inspiration. The
Master's own darkling face cleared.
"Good!" he approved. "I think that cinches it. Marie's been with us
for years. Her word is certainly as good as a Boche farmhand's. Even
Maclay's 'judicial temperament' will have to admit that. Send her in
here, won't you?"
When the maid appeared at the door of the study a minute later, the
Master opened the examination with the solemn air of a legal veteran.
"You are the first person down here in the mornings, aren't you,
Marie?" he began.
"Why, yes, sir," replied the wondering maid. "Yes, always, except
when you get up early to go fishing or when----"
"What time do you get down here in the mornings," pursued the Master.
"Along about six o'clock, sir, mostly," said the maid, bridling a bit
as if scenting a criticism of her work-hours.
"Not earlier than six?" asked the Master.
"No, sir," said Marie, uncomfortably. "Of course, if that's not early
enough, I suppose I could----"
"It's quite early enough," vouchsafed the Master. "There is no
complaint about your hours. You always let Lad out as soon as you come
into the music room?"
"Yes, sir," she answered, "as soon as I get downstairs. Those were
the orders, you remember."
The Master breathed a silent sigh of relief. The maid did not get
downstairs until six. The dog, then, could not get out of the house
until that hour. If Schwartz had seen any dog in the Romaine barnyard
at daybreak, it assuredly was not Lad. Yet, racking his brain, the
Master could not recall any other dog in the vicinity that bore
even the faintest semblance to his giant collie. And he fell to
recalling--from his happy memories of "_Bob, Son of Battle_"--that
"Killers" often travel many miles from home to sate their mania for
sheep-slaying.
In any event, it was no concern of his if some distant collie, drawn
to the slaughter by the queer "sixth" collie-sense, was killing
Romaine's new flock of sheep. Lad was cleared. The maid's very
evidently true testimony settled that point.
"Yes, sir," rambled on Marie, beginning to take a faint interest in
the examination now that it turned upon Lad whom she loved. "Yes, sir,
Laddie always comes out from under his piano the minute he hears my
step in the hall outside. And he always comes right up to me and wags
that big plume of a tail of his, and falls into step alongside of me
and walks over to the front door, right beside me all the way. He
knows as much as many a human, that dog does, sir."
Encouraged by the Master's approving nod, the maid ventured to enlarge
still further upon the theme.
"It always seems as if he was welcoming me downstairs, like," she
resumed, "and glad to see me. I've really missed him quite bad this
past few mornings." The approving look on the Master's face gave way
to a glare of utter blankness.
"This past few mornings?" he repeated, blitheringly. "What do you
mean?"
"Why," she returned, flustered afresh by the quick change in her
interlocutor's manner. "Ever since those French windows are left open
for the night--same as they always are when the hot weather starts in,
you know, sir. Since then, Laddie don't wait for me to let him
out. When he wakes up he just goes out himself. He used to do that
last year, too, sir. He----"
"Thanks," muttered the Master, dizzily. "That's all. Thanks."
Left alone, he sat slumped low in his chair, trying to think. He was
as calmly convinced as ever of his dog's innocence, but he had staked
everything on Marie's court testimony. And, now, that testimony was
rendered worse than worthless.
Crankily he cursed his own fresh-air mania which had decreed that the
long windows on the ground floor be left open on summer nights. With
Lad on duty, the house was as safe from successful burglary in
spite of these open windows, as if guarded by a squad of special
policemen. And the night-air, sweeping through, kept it pleasantly
cool against the next day's heat. For this same coolness, a heavy
price was now due.
Presently the daze of disappointment passed leaving the Master pulsing
with a wholesome fighting-anger. Rapidly he revised his defense and,
with the Mistress' far cleverer aid, made ready for the afternoon's
ordeal. He scouted Maclay's suggestion of hiring counsel and vowed to
handle the defense himself. Carefully he and his wife went over their
proposed line of action.
Peace Justice Maclay's court was held daily in a rambling room on an
upper floor of the village's Odd Fellows' Hall. The proceedings there
were generally marked by shrewd sanity rather than by any effort at
formalism. Maclay, himself, sat at a battered little desk at the
room's far end; his clerk using a corner of the same desk for the
scribbling of his sketchy notes.
In front of the desk was a rather long deal table with kitchen chairs
around it. Here, plaintiffs and defendants and prisoners and witnesses
and lawyers were wont to sit, with no order of precedent or of other
formality. Several other chairs were ranged irregularly along the wall
to accommodate any overflow of the table's occupants.
Promptly at three o'clock that afternoon, the Mistress and the Master
entered the courtroom. Close at the Mistress' side--though held by no
leash--paced Lad. Maclay and Romaine and Schwartz were already on
hand. So were the clerk and the constable and one or two idle
spectators. At a corner of the room, wrapped in burlap, were huddled
the bodies of the two slain sheep.
Lad caught the scent of the victims the instant he set foot in the
room, and he sniffed vibrantly once or twice. Titus Romaine, his eyes
fixed scowlingly on the dog, noted this, and he nudged Schwartz in the
ribs to call the German's attention to it.
Lad turned aside in fastidious disgust from the bumpy burlap
bundle. Seeing the Judge and recognizing him as an old acquaintance,
the collie wagged his plumed tail in gravely friendly greeting and
stepped forward for a pat on the head.
"Lad!" called the Mistress, softly.
At the word the dog paused midway to the embarrassed Maclay's desk and
obediently turned back. The constable was drawing up a chair at the
deal table for the Mistress. Lad curled down beside her, resting one
snowy little forepaw protectingly on her slippered foot. And the
hearing began.
Romaine repeated his account of the collie's alleged depredations,
starting with Lad's first view of the sheep. Schwartz methodically
retold his own story of twice witnessing the killing of sheep by the
dog.
The Master did not interrupt either narrative, though, on later
questioning he forced the sulkily truthful Romaine to admit he had not
actually seen Lad chase the sheep-flock that morning on Mount Pisgah,
but had merely seen the sheep running, and the dog standing at the
hill-foot looking upward at their scattering flight. Both the Mistress
and the Master swore that the dog on that occasion, had made no move
to pursue or otherwise harass the sheep.
Thus did Lad win one point in the case. But, in view of the after-crimes
wherewith he was charged, the point was of decidedly trivial
value. Even if he had not attacked the flock on his first view
of them he was accused of killing no less than eight of their
number on two later encounters. And Schwartz was an eye-witness to
this--Schwartz, whose testimony was as clear and as simple as
daylight.
With a glance of apology at the Mistress, Judge Maclay ordered the
sheep-carcasses taken from their burlap cerements and laid on the
table for court-inspection.
While he and Schwartz arranged the grisly exhibits for the judge's
view, Titus Romaine expatiated loudly on the value of the murdered
sheep and on the brutally useless wastage in their slaying. The
Master said nothing, but he bent over each of the sheep, carefully
studying the throat-wounds. At last he straightened himself up from
his task and broke in on Romaine's Antony-like funeral-oration by
saying quietly:
"Your honor, these sheep's throats were not cut by a dog. Neither by
Lad nor by any 'killer.' Look for yourself. I've seen dog-killed
sheep. The wounds were not at all like these."
"Not killed by a dog, hey?" loudly scoffed Romaine. "I s'pose they was
chewed by lightnin', then? Or, maybe they was bit by a skeeter? Huh!"
"They were not bitten at all," countered the Master. "Still less, were
they chewed. Look! Those gashes are ragged enough, but they are as
straight as if they were made by a machine. If ever you have seen a
dog worry a piece of meat----"
"Rubbish!" grunted Titus. "You talk like a fool! The sheeps' throats
is torn. Schwartz seen your cur tear 'em. That's all there is to it.
Whether he tore 'em straight or whether he tore 'em crooked don't
count in Law. He _tore_ 'em. An' I got a reli'ble witness to prove
it."
"Your Honor," said the Master, suddenly. "May I interrogate the
witness?"
Maclay nodded. The Master turned to Schwartz, who faced him in stolid
composure.
"Schwartz," began the Master, "you say it was light enough for you to
recognize the sheep-killing dog both mornings in Romaine's barnyard.
How near to him did you get?"
Schwartz pondered for a second, then made careful answer:
"First time, I ran into the barnyard from the house side and your dog
cut and run out of it from the far side when he saw me making for him.
That time, I don't think I got within thirty feet of him. But I was
near enough to see him plain, and I'd seen him often enough before on
the road or in your car; so I knew him all right. The next time--this
morning, Judge--I was within five feet of him, or even nearer. For I
was near enough to hit him with the stick I'd just picked up and to
land a kick on his ribs as he started away. I saw him then as plain as
I see you. And nearer than I am to you. And the light was 'most good
enough to read by, too."
"Yes?" queried the Master. "If I remember rightly you told Judge
Maclay that you were on watch last night in the cowshed, just
alongside the barnyard where the sheep were; and you fell asleep; and
woke just in time to see a dog----"
"To see your dog----" corrected Schwartz.
"To see a dog growling over a squirming and bleating sheep he had
pulled down. How far away from you was he when you awoke?"
"Just outside the cowshed door. Not six feet from me. I ups with the
stick I had with me and ran out at him and----"
"Were he and the sheep making much noise?"
"Between 'em they was making enough racket to wake a dead man,"
replied Schwartz. "What with your dog's snarling and growling, and the
poor sheep's bl'ats. And all the other sheep----"
"Yet, you say he had killed three sheep while you slept there--had
killed them and carried or dragged their bodies away and come back
again; and, presumably started a noisy panic in the flock every
time. And none of that racket waked you until the fourth sheep was
killed?"
"I was dog-tired," declared Schwartz. "I'd been at work in our
south-mowing for ten hours the day before, and up since five.
Mr. Romaine can tell you I'm a hard man to wake at best. I sleep
like the dead."
"That's right!" assented Titus. "Time an' again, I have to bang at his
door an' holler myself hoarse, before I can get him to open his
eyes. My wife says he's the sleepin'est sleeper----"
"You ran out of the shed with your stick," resumed the Master, "and
struck the dog before he could get away? And as he turned to run you
kicked him?"
"Yes, sir. That's what I did."
"How hard did you hit him?"
"A pretty good lick," answered Schwartz, with reminiscent satisfaction.
"Then I----"
"And when you hit him he slunk away like a whipped cur? He made no
move to resent it? I mean, he did not try to attack you?"
"Not him!" asserted Schwartz, "I guess he was glad enough to get out
of reach. He slunk away so fast, I hardly had a chance to land fair on
him, when I kicked."
"Here is my riding-crop," said the Master. "Take it, please, and
strike Lad with it just as you struck him--or the sheep-killing
dog--with your stick. Just as hard. Lad has never been struck except
once, unjustly, by me, years ago. He has never needed it. But if he
would slink away like a whipped mongrel when a stranger hits him, the
sooner he is beaten to death the better. Hit him exactly as you hit
him this morning."
Judge Maclay half-opened his lips to protest. He knew the love of the
people of The Place for Lad, and he wondered at this invitation to a
farmhand to thrash the dog publicly. He glanced at the Mistress. Her
face was calm, even a little amused. Evidently the Master's request
did not horrify or surprise her.
Schwartz's stubby fingers gripped the crop the Master forced into his
hand.
With true Teutonic relish for pain-inflicting, he swung the weapon
aloft and took a step toward the lazily recumbent collie, striking
with all his strength.
Then, with much-increased speed, Schwartz took three steps backward.
For, at the menace, Lad had leaped to his feet with the speed
of a fighting wolf, eluding the descending crop as it swished
past him and launching himself straight for the wielder's throat. He
did not growl; he did not pause. He merely sprang for his assailant
with a deadly ferocity that brought a cry from Maclay.
The Master caught the huge dog midway in his throatward flight.
"Down, Lad!" he ordered, gently.
The collie, obedient to the word, stretched himself on the floor at
the Mistress' feet. But he kept a watchful and right unloving eye on
the man who had struck at him.
"It's a bit odd, isn't it," suggested the Master, "that he went for
you, like that, just now; when, this morning, he slunk away from your
blow, in cringing fear?"
"Why wouldn't he?" growled Schwartz, his stolid nerve shaken by the
unexpected onslaught. "His folks are here to back him up, and
everything. Why wouldn't he go for me! He was slinky enough when I
whaled him, this morning."
"H'm!" mused the Master. "You hit a strong blow, Schwartz. I'll say
that, for you. You missed Lad, with my crop. But you've split the
crop. And you scored a visible mark on the wooden floor with it. Did
you hit as hard as that when you struck the sheep-killer, this
morning?"
"A sight harder," responded Schwartz. "My mad was up. I----"
"A dog's skin is softer than a pine floor," said the Master. "Your
Honor, such a blow would have raised a weal on Lad's flesh, an inch
high. Would your Honor mind passing your hand over his body and
trying to locate such a weal?"
"This is all outside the p'int!" raged the annoyed Titus Romaine.
"You're a-dodgin' the issue, I tell ye. I----"
"If your Honor please!" insisted the Master.
The judge left his desk and whistled Lad across to him. The dog looked
at his Master, doubtfully. The Master nodded. The collie arose and
walked in leisurely fashion over to the waiting judge. Maclay ran an
exploring hand through the magnificent tawny coat, from head to
haunch; then along the dog's furry sides. Lad hated to be handled by
anyone but the Mistress or the Master. But at a soft word from the
Mistress, he stood stock still and submitted to the inspection.
"I find no weal or any other mark on him," presently reported the
Judge.
The Mistress smiled happily. The whole investigation, up to this
point, and further, was along eccentric lines she herself had thought
out and had suggested to her husband. Lines suggested by her knowledge
of Lad.
"Schwartz," went on the Master, interrupting another fuming outbreak
from Romaine, "I'm afraid you didn't hit quite as hard as you thought
you did, this morning; or else some other dog is carrying around a big
welt on his flesh, to-day. Now for the kick you say you gave the
collie. I----"
"I won't copy _that_, on your bloodthirsty dog!" vociferated
Schwartz. "Not even if the Judge jails me for contempt, I won't. He'd
likely kill me!"
"And yet he ran from you, this morning," the Master reminded
him. "Well, I won't insist on your kicking Lad. But you say it was a
light kick; because he was running away when it landed. I am curious
to know just how hard a kick it was. In fact, I'm so curious about it
that I am going to offer myself as a substitute for Lad. My riding
boot is a good surface. Will you kindly kick me there, Schwartz; as
nearly as possible with the same force (no more, no less) than you
kicked the dog?"
"I protest!" shouted Romaine. "This measly tomfoolishness is----"
"If your Honor please!" appealed the Master sharply; turning from the
bewildered Schwartz to the no less dismayed Judge.
Maclay was on his feet to overrule so strange a request. But there
was keen supplication in the Master's eye that made the Judge
pause. Maclay glanced again at the Mistress. In spite of the prospect
of seeing her husband kicked, her face wore a most pleased smile. The
Judge noted, though, that she was stroking Lad's head and that she was
unobtrusively turning that head so that the dog faced Schwartz.
"Now, then!" adjured the Master. "Whenever you're ready, Schwartz! A
German doesn't get a chance, like this, every day, to kick an
American. And I'll promise not to go for your throat, as Laddie tried
to. Kick away!"
Awkwardly, shamblingly, Schwartz stepped forward. Urged on by his
racial veneration for the Law--and perhaps not sorry to assail the man
whose dog had tried to throttle him--he drew back his broganed left
foot and kicked out in the general direction of the calf of the
Master's thick riding boot.
The kick did not land. Not that the Master dodged or blocked it. He
stood moveless, and grinning expectantly.
But the courtroom shook with a wild-beast yell--a yell of insane
fury. And Schwartz drew back his half-extended left foot in sudden
terror; as a great furry shape came whizzing through the air at him.
The sight of the half-delivered kick, at his worshipped master, had
had precisely the effect on Lad that the Mistress had foreseen when
she planned the manoeuver. Almost any good dog will attack a man who
seeks to strike its owner. And Lad seemed to comprehend that a kick is
a more contemptuous affront than is a blow.
Schwartz's kick at the Master had thrown the adoring dog into a maniac
rage against this defiler of his idol. The memory of Schwartz's blow
at himself was as nothing to it. It aroused in the collie's heart a
deathless blood-feud against the man. As the Mistress had known it
would.
The Mistress' sharp command, and the Master's hastily outflung arm
barely sufficed to deflect Lad's charge. He writhed in their dual
grasp, snarling furiously, his eyes red; his every giant muscle
strained to get at the cowering Schwartz.
"We've had enough of this!" imperatively ordained Maclay, above the
babel of Titus Romaine's protests. "In spite of the informality of
hearing, this is a court of law: not a dog-kennel. I----"
"I crave your Honor's pardon," apologized the Master. "I was merely
trying to show that Lad is not the sort of dog to let a stranger
strike and kick him as this man claims to have done with impunity. I
think I have shown, from Lad's own regrettable actions, that it was
some other dog--if _any_--which cheered Romaine's barnyard, this
morning, and yesterday morning.
"It was _your_ dog!" cried Schwartz, getting his breath, in a swirl
of anger. "Next time I'll be on watch with a shotgun and not a
stick. I'll----"
"There ain't going to be no 'next time,'" asserted the equally angry
Romaine. "Judge, I call on you to order that sheep-killer shot; an' to
order his master to indemnify me for th' loss of my eight killed
sheep!"
"Your Honor!" suavely protested the Master, "may I ask you to listen
to a counter-proposition? A proposition which I think will be
agreeable to Mr. Romaine, as well as to myself?"
"The only prop'sition _I'll_ agree to, is the shootin' of that cur and
the indemnifyin' of me for my sheep!" persisted Romaine.
Maclay waved his hand for order; then, turning to the Master, said:
"State your proposition."
"I propose," began the Master, "that Lad be paroled, in my custody,
for the space of twenty-four hours. I will deposit with the court,
here and now, my bond for the sum of one thousand dollars; to be paid,
on demand, to Titus Romaine; if one or more of his sheep are killed by
any dog, during that space of time."
The crass oddity of the proposal set Titus's leathery mouth ajar. Even
the Judge gasped aloud at its bizarre terms. Schwartz looked blank,
until, little by little, the purport of the words sank into his slow
mind. Then he permitted himself the rare luxury of a chuckle.
"Do I und'stand you to say," demanded Titus Romaine, of the Master,
"that if I'll agree to hold up this case for twenty-four hours you'll
give me one thousan' dollars, cash, for any sheep of mine that gets
killed by dogs in that time?"
"That is my proposition," returned the Master. "To cinch it, I'll let
you make out the written arrangement, your self. And I'll give the
court a bond for the money, at once, with instructions that the sum is
to be paid to you, if you lose one sheep, through dogs, in the next
day. I furthermore agree to shoot Lad, myself, if you lose one or more
sheep in that time, and in that way, I'll forfeit another thousand if
I fail to keep that part of my contract. How about it?"
"I agree!" exclaimed Titus.
Schwartz's smile, by this time, threatened to split his broad face
across. Maclay saw the Mistress' cheek whiten a little; but her aspect
betrayed no worry over the possible loss of a thousand dollars and the
far more painful loss of the dog she loved.
When Romaine and Schwartz had gone, the Master tarried a moment in the
courtroom.
"I can't make out what you're driving at," Maclay told him. "But you
seem to me to have done a mighty foolish thing. To get a thousand
dollars Romaine is capable of scouring the whole country for a
sheep-killing dog. So is Schwartz--if only to get Lad shot. Did you
see the way Schwartz looked at Lad as he went out? He hates him."
"Yes," said the Master. "And I saw the way Lad looked at _him_. Lad
will never forget that kick at me. He'll attack Schwartz for it, if
they come together a year from now. That's why we arranged it. Say,
Mac; I want you to do me a big favor. A favor that comes within the
square and angle of your work. I want you to go fishing with me,
to-night. Better come over to dinner and be prepared to spend the
night. The fishing won't start till about twelve o'clock."
"Twelve o'clock!" echoed Maclay. "Why, man, nothing but catfish will
bite at that hour. And I----"
"You're mistaken," denied the Master. "Much bigger fish will
bite. _Much_ bigger. Take my word for that. My wife and I have it all
figured out. I'm not asking you in your official capacity; but as a
friend. I'll need you, Mac. It will be a big favor to me. And if I'm
not wrong, there'll be sport in it for you, too. I'm risking a
thousand dollars and my dog, on this fishing trip. Won't you risk a
night's sleep? I ask it as a worthy and distressed----"
"Certainly," assented the wholly perplexed Judge, impressed, "but I
don't get your idea at all. I----"
"I'll explain it before we start," promised the Master. "All I want,
now, is for you to commit yourself to the scheme. If it fails, you
won't lose anything, except your sleep. Thanks for saying you'll
come."
At a little after ten o'clock that night the last light in Titus
Romaine's farmhouse went out. A few moments later the Master got up
from a rock on Mount Pisgah's summit, on which he and Maclay had been
sitting for the past hour. Lad, at their feet, rose expectantly with
them.
"Come on, old Man," said the Master. "We'll drop down there, now. It
probably means a long wait for us. But it's better to be too soon than
too late; when I've got so much staked. If we're seen, you can cut and
run. Lad and I will cover your retreat and see you aren't recognized.
Steady, there, Lad. Keep at heel."
Stealthily the trio made their way down the hill to the farmstead at
its farther base. Silently they crept along the outer fringe of the
home-lot, until they came opposite the black-gabled bulk of the
barn. Presently, their slowly cautious progress brought them to the
edge of the barnyard, and to the rail fence which surrounds it. There
they halted.
From within the yard, as the huddle of drowsy sheep caught the scent
of the dog, came a slight stirring. But, after a moment, the yard was
quiet again.
"Get that?" whispered the Master, his mouth close to Maclay's
ear. "Those sheep are supposed to have been raided by a killer-dog,
for the past two nights. Yet the smell of a dog doesn't even make them
bleat. If they had been attacked by _any_ dog, last night, the scent
of Lad would throw them into a panic."
"I get something else, too," replied Maclay, in the same all-but
soundless whisper. "And I'm ashamed I didn't think of it before.
Romaine said the dog wriggled into the yard through the bars,
and out again the same way. Well, if those bars were wide enough apart
for an eighty-pound collie, like Lad, to get through, what would there
be to prevent all these sheep from escaping, the same way, any time
they wanted to? I'll have a look at those bars before I pass judgment
on the case. I begin to be glad you and your wife coerced me into this
adventure."
"Of course, the sheep could have gotten through the same bars that the
dog did," answered the Master. "For, didn't Romaine say the dog not
only got through, but dragged three dead sheep through, after him,
each night, and hid them somewhere, where they couldn't be found? No
man would keep sheep in a pen as open as all that. The entire story is
full of air-holes."
Lad, at a touch from his Master, had lain softly down at the men's
feet, beside the fence. And so, for another full hour, the three
waited there.
The night was heavily overcast; and, except for the low drone of
distant tree-toads and crickets, it was deathly silent. Heat
lightning, once in a while, played dimly along the western horizon.
"Lucky for us that Romaine doesn't keep a dog!" whispered Maclay.
"He'd have raised the alarm before we got within a hundred yards
of here."
"He told my foreman he gave his mongrel dog away, when he stocked
himself with sheep. And he's been reading a lot of rot about dogs
being non-utilitarian, too. His dog would have been anything but
non-utilitarian, to-night."
A touch on the sleeve from Maclay silenced the rambling whisper.
Through the stillness, a house door shut very softly, not far
away. An instant later, Lad growled throatily, and got to his feet,
tense and fiercely eager.
"He's caught Schwartz's scent!" whispered the Master, exultantly.
"Now, maybe you understand why I made the man try to kick me?
Down, Lad! _Quiet!_"
At the stark command in the Master's whisper, Lad dropped to earth
again; though he still rumbled deeply in his throat, until a touch
from the Master's fingers and a repeated "_Quiet_" silenced him.
The hush of the night was disturbed, once more--very faintly. This
time, by the muffled padding of a man's bare feet, drawing closer to
the barnyard. Lad as he heard it made as if to rise. The Master
tapped him lightly on the head, and the dog sank to the ground again,
quivering with hard-held rage.
The clouds had piled thicker. Only by a dim pulsing of far-away heat
lightning could the watchers discern the shadowy outline of a man,
moving silently between them and the far side of the yard. By the
tiny glow of lightning they saw his silhouette.
By Lad's almost uncontrollable trembling they knew who he must be.
There was another drowsy stirring of the sheep; checked by the
reassuring mumble of a voice the animals seemed to know. And, except
for the stealthy motion of groping feet, the barnyard seemed as empty
of human life as before.
Perhaps a minute later another sulphur-gleam of lightning revealed the
intruder to the two men who crouched behind the outer angle of the
fence. He had come out of the yard, and was shuffling away. But he
was fully a third wider of shoulder now, and he seemed to have two
heads, as his silhouette dimly appeared and then vanished.
"See that?" whispered the Master. "He has a sheep slung over his
back. Probably with a cloth wrapped around its head to keep it
quiet. We will give him twenty seconds' start and then----"
"_Good!_" babbled Maclay, in true buck-ague fever of excitement. "It's
worked out, to a charm! But how in the blazes can we track him through
this dark? It's as black as the inside of a cow. And if we show the
flashlights----"
"Trust Lad to track him," rejoined the Master, who had been slipping a
leash around the dog's low-growling throat. "That's what the old
fellow's here for. He has a kick to punish. He would follow Schwartz
through the Sahara desert, if he had to. Come on."
Lad, at a word from the Master, sprang to the end of the leash, his
mighty head and shoulders straining forward. The Master's reiterated
"Quiet!" alone kept him from giving tongue. And thus the trio started
the pursuit.
Lad went in a geometrically straight line, swerving not an inch; with
much difficulty held back to the slow walk on which the Master
insisted. There was more than one reason for this insistence. Not only
did the two men want to keep far enough behind Schwartz to prevent
him from hearing their careful steps; but Lad's course was so
uncompromisingly straight that it led them over a hundred obstacles
and gullies which required all sorts of skill to negotiate.
For at least two miles, the snail-like progress continued; most of the
way through woods. At last, with a gasp, the Master found himself
wallowing knee-deep in a bog. Maclay, a step behind him, also plunged
splashingly into the soggy mire.
"What's the matter with the dog?" grumpily demanded the Judge. "He's
led us into the Pancake Hollow swamp. Schwartz never in the world
carried a ninety pound sheep through here."
"Maybe not," puffed the Master. "But he has carried it over one of the
half-dozen paths that lead through this marsh. Lad is in too big a
hurry to bother about paths. He----"
Fifty feet above them, on a little mid-swamp knoll, a lantern
shone. Apparently, it had just been lighted. For it waxed brighter in
a second or so. The men saw it and strode forward at top speed. The
third step caused Maclay to stumble over a hummock and land, noisily,
on all fours, in a mud-pool. As he fell, he swore--with a loud
distinctness that rang through the swampy stillnesses, like a pistol
shot.
Instantly, the lantern went out. And there was a crashing in among the
bushes of the knoll.
"After him!" yelled Maclay, floundering to his feet. "He'll escape!
And we have no real proof who he is or----"
The Master, still ankle-high in sticky mud, saw the futility of trying
to catch a man who, unimpeded, was running away, along a dry-ground
path. There was but one thing left to do. And the Master did it.
Loosening the leash from the dog's collar he shouted:
"Get him, Laddie! _Get_ him!"
There was a sound as of a cavalry regiment galloping through shallow
water. That and a queerly ecstatic growl. And the collie was gone.
As fast as possible the two men made for the base of the knoll. They
had drawn forth their electric torches; and these now made the
progress much swifter and easier.
Nevertheless, before the Master had set foot on the first bit of firm
ground, all pandemonium burst forth amid the darkness, above and in
front of him.
The turmoil's multiple sounds were indescribable, blending into one
wild cacophony the yells and stamping of a fear-demented man, the
bleats of sheep, the tearing of underbrush--through and above and
under all--a hideous subnote as of a rabid beast worrying its prey.
It was this undercurrent of sound which put wings on the tired feet of
Maclay and the Master, as they dashed up the knoll and into the
path leading east from it. It spoke of unpleasant--not to say
gruesome--happenings. So did the swift change of the victim's yells
from wrath to mortal terror.
"Back Lad!" called the Master, pantingly, as he ran. "Back! Let him
_alone!_"
And as he cried the command he rounded a turn in the wooded path.
Prone on the ground, writhing like a cut snake and frantically
seeking to guard his throat with his slashed forearm, sprawled
Schwartz. Crouching above him--right unwillingly obeying the Master's
belated call--was Lad.
The dog's great coat was a-bristle. His bared teeth glinted white and
blood-flecked in the electric flare. His soft eyes were blazing.
"Back!" repeated the Master. "Back here!"
Absolute obedience was the first and foremost of The Place's few
simple dog-rules. Lad had learned it from earliest puppyhood. The
collie, still shaking all over with the effort of repressing his fury,
turned slowly and came over to his Master. There he stood stonily
awaiting further orders.
Maclay was on his knees beside the hysterically moaning German roughly
telling him that the dog would do him no more damage, and at the same
time making a quick inspection of the injuries wrought by the slashing
white fangs in the shielding arm and its shoulder.
"Get up!" he now ordered. "You're not too badly hurt to stand. Another
minute and he'd have gotten through to your throat, but your clothes
saved you from anything worse than a few ugly flesh-cuts. Get up! Stop
that yowling and get up!"
Schwartz gradually lessened his dolorous plaints under the stern
authority of Maclay's exhortations. Presently he sat up nursing his
lacerated forearm and staring about him. At sight of Lad he shuddered.
And recognizing Maclay he broke into violent and fatly-accented
speech.
"Take witness, Judge!" he exclaimed. "I watched the barnyard to-night
and I saw that schweinhund steal another sheep. I followed him and
when he got here he dropped the sheep and went for me. He----"
"Very bad, Schwartz!" disgustedly reproved Maclay. "Very bad,
indeed. You should have waited a minute longer and thought up a better
one. But since this is the yarn you choose to tell, we'll look about
and try to verify it. The sheep, for instance--the one you say Lad
carried all the way here and then dropped to attack you. I seem to
have heard a sheep bleating a few moments ago. Several sheep in
fact. We'll see if we can't find the one Lad stole."
Schwartz jumped nervously to his feet.
"Stay where you are!" Maclay bade him. "We won't bother a tired and
injured man to help in our search."
Turning to the Master, he added:
"I suppose one of us will have to stand guard over him while the other
one hunts up the sheep. Shall I----"
"Neither of us need do that," said the Master. "Lad!"
The collie started eagerly forward, and Schwartz started still more
eagerly backward.
"Watch him!" commanded the Master. "_Watch_ him!"
It was an order Lad had learned to follow in the many times when the
Mistress and the Master left him to guard the car or to do sentry duty
over some other article of value. He understood. He would have
preferred to deal with this enemy according to his own lights. But the
Master had spoken. So, standing at view, the collie looked longingly
at Schwartz's throat.
"Keep perfectly still!" the Master warned the prisoner, "and perhaps
he won't go for you. Move, and he most surely will. _Watch_ him,
Laddie!"
Maclay and the Master left the captive and his guard, and set forth on
a flashlight-illumined tour of the knoll. It was a desolate spot, far
back in the swamp and more than a mile from any road; a place visited
not three times a year, except in the shooting season.
In less than a half-minute the plaintive ba-a-a of a sheep guided the
searchers to the left of the knoll where stood a thick birch-and-alder
copse. Around this they circled until they reached a narrow opening
where the branch-ends, several feet above ground, were flecked with
hanks of wool.
Squirming through the aperture in single file, the investigators found
what they sought.
In the tight-woven copse's center was a small clearing. In this, was a
rudely wattled pen some nine feet square; and in the pen were bunched
six sheep.
An occasional scared bleat from deeper in the copse told the
whereabouts of the sheep Schwartz had taken from the barnyard that
night and which he had dropped at Lad's onslaught before he could put
it in the pen. On the ground, just outside the enclosure, lay the
smashed lantern.
"Sheep on the hoof are worth $12.50 per, at the Paterson Market,"
mused the Master aloud, as Maclay blinked owlishly at the treasure
trove. "There are $75 worth of sheep in that pen, and there would
have been three more of them before morning if we hadn't butted in on
Herr Schwartz's overtime labors. To get three sheep at night, it was
well worth his while to switch suspicion to Lad by killing a fourth
sheep every time, and mangling its throat with a stripping-knife.
Only, he mangled it too efficiently. There was too much _Kultur_
about the mangling. It wasn't ragged enough. That's what first
gave me my idea. That, and the way the missing sheep always vanished
into more or less thin air. You see, he probably----"
"But," sputtered Maclay, "why four each night? Why----"
"You saw how long it took him to get one of them here," replied the
Master. "He didn't dare to start in till the Romaines were asleep, and
he had to be back in time to catch Lad at the slaughter before Titus
got out of bed. He wouldn't dare hide them any nearer home. Titus has
spent most of his time both days in hunting for them. Schwartz was
probably waiting to get the pen nice and full. Then he'd take a day
off to visit his relatives. And he'd round up this tidy bunch and
drive them over to the Ridgewood road, through the woods, and so on to
the Paterson Market. It was a pretty little scheme all around."
"But," urged Maclay, as they turned back to where Lad still kept his
avid vigil, "I still hold you were taking big chances in gambling
$1000 and your dog's life that Schwartz would do the same thing again
within twenty-four hours. He might have waited a day or two, till----"
"No," contradicted the Master, "that's just what he mightn't do. You
see, I wasn't perfectly sure whether it was Schwartz or Romaine--or
both--who were mixed up in this. So I set the trap at both ends. If it
was Romaine, it was worth $1000 to him to have more sheep killed
within twenty-four hours. If it was Schwartz--well, that's why I made
him try to hit Lad and why I made him try to kick me. The dog went for
him both times, and that was enough to make Schwartz want him killed
for his own safety as well as for revenge. So he was certain to
arrange another killing within the twenty-four hours if only to force
me to shoot Lad. He couldn't steal or kill sheep by daylight. I picked
the only hours he could do it in. If he'd gotten Lad killed, he'd
probably have invented another sheep-killer dog to help him swipe the
rest of the flock, or until Romaine decided to do the watching.
We----"
"It was clever of you," cordially admitted Maclay. "Mighty clever, old
man! I----"
"It was my wife who worked it out, you know," the Master reminded
him. "I admit my own cleverness, of course, only (like a lot of men's
money) it's all in my wife's name. Come on, Lad! You can guard Herr
Schwartz just as well by walking behind him. We're going to wind up
the evening's fishing trip by tendering a surprise party to dear
genial old Mr. Titus Romaine. I hope the flashlights will hold out
long enough for me to get a clear look at his face when he sees us."