WOLF
There were but three collies on The Place in those days. There was a
long shelf in the Master's study whereupon shimmered and glinted a
rank of silver cups of varying sizes and shapes. Two of The Place's
dogs had won them all.
Above the shelf hung two huge picture-frames. In the center of each
was the small photograph of a collie. Beneath each likeness was
a certified pedigree, a-bristle with the red-letter names of
champions. Surrounding the pictures and pedigrees, the whole remaining
space in both frames was filled with blue ribbons--the very meanest
bit of silk in either was a semi-occasional "Reserve Winners"--while,
strung along the tops of the frames from side to side, ran a line of
medals.
Cups, medals, and ribbons alike had been won by The Place's two great
collies, Lad and Bruce. (Those were their "kennel names." Their
official titles on the A. K. C. registry list were high-sounding and
needlessly long.)
Lad was growing old. His reign on The Place was drawing toward a
benignant close. His muzzle was almost snow-white and his once
graceful lines were beginning to show the oncoming heaviness of
age. No longer could he hope to hold his own, in form and carriage,
with younger collies at the local dog-shows where once he had carried
all before him.
Bruce--"Sunnybank Goldsmith"--was six years Lad's junior. He was tawny
of coat, kingly of bearing; a dog without a fault of body or of
disposition; stately as the boar-hounds that the painters of old used
to love to depict in their portraits of monarchs.
The Place's third collie was Lad's son, Wolf. But neither cup nor
ribbon did Wolf have to show as an excuse for his presence on earth,
nor would he have won recognition in the smallest and least exclusive
collie-show.
For Wolf was a collie only by courtesy. His breeding was as pure as
was any champion's, but he was one of those luckless types to be found
in nearly every litter--a throwback to some forgotten ancestor whose
points were all defective. Not even the glorious pedigree of Lad, his
father, could make Wolf look like anything more than he was--a dog
without a single physical trait that followed the best collie
standards.
In spite of all this he was beautiful. His gold-and-white coat was
almost as bright and luxuriant as any prize-winner's. He had, in a
general way, the collie head and brush. But an expert, at the most
casual glance, would have noted a shortness of nose and breadth of jaw
and a shape of ear and shoulder that told dead against him.
The collie is supposed to be descended direct from the wolf, and Wolf
looked far more like his original ancestors than like a thoroughbred
collie. From puppyhood he had been the living image, except in color,
of a timber-wolf, and it was from this queer throw-back trait that he
had won his name.
Lad was the Mistress' dog. Bruce was the Master's. Wolf belonged to
the Boy, having been born on the latter's birthday.
For the first six months of his life Wolf lived at The Place on
sufferance. Nobody except the Boy took any special interest in him. He
was kept only because his better-formed brothers had died in early
puppyhood and because the Boy, from the outset, had loved him.
At six months it was discovered that he was a natural watch-dog. Also
that he never barked except to give an alarm. A collie is, perhaps,
the most excitable of all large dogs. The veriest trifle will set him
off into a thunderous paroxysm of barking. But Wolf, the Boy noted,
never barked without strong cause.
He had the rare genius for guarding that so few of his breed
possess. For not one dog in ten merits the title of watch-dog. The
duties that should go with that office are far more than the mere
clamorous announcement of a stranger's approach, or even the attacking
of such a stranger.
The born watch-dog patrols his beat once in so often during the
night. At all times he must sleep with one ear and one eye alert. By
day or by night he must discriminate between the visitor whose
presence is permitted and the trespasser whose presence is not. He
must know what class of undesirable to scare off with a growl and what
class needs stronger measures. He must also know to the inch the
boundaries of his own master's land.
Few of these things can be taught; all of them must be instinctive.
Wolf had been born with them. Most dogs are not.
His value as a watch-dog gave Wolf a settled position of his own on
The Place. Lad was growing old and a little deaf. He slept, at night,
under the piano in the music-room. Bruce was worth too much money to
be left at large in the night time for any clever dog-thief to
steal. So he slept in the study. Rex, a huge mongrel, was tied up at
night, at the lodge, a furlong away. Thus Wolf alone was left on guard
at the house. The piazza was his sentry-box. From this shelter he was
wont to set forth three or four times a night, in all sorts of
weather, to make his rounds.
The Place covered twenty-five acres. It ran from the high-road, a
furlong above the house, down to the lake that bordered it on
two sides. On the third side was the forest. Boating-parties,
late at night, had a pleasant way of trying to raid the lakeside
apple-orchard. Tramps now and then strayed down the drive from the
main road. Prowlers, crossing the woods, sometimes sought to use The
Place's sloping lawn as a short cut to the turnpike below the falls.
For each and all of these intruders Wolf had an ever-ready welcome. A
whirl of madly pattering feet through the dark, a snarling growl far
down in the throat, a furry shape catapulting into the air--and the
trespasser had his choice between a scurrying retreat or a double set
of white fangs in the easiest-reached part of his anatomy.
The Boy was inordinately proud of his pet's watchdog prowess. He was
prouder yet of Wolf's almost incredible sharpness of intelligence, his
quickness to learn, his knowledge of word meaning, his zest for
romping, his perfect obedience, the tricks he had taught himself
without human tutelage--in short, all the things that were a sign of
the brain he had inherited from Lad.
But none of these talents overcame the sad fact that Wolf was not a
show dog and that he looked positively underbred and shabby alongside
of his sire or of Bruce. Which rankled at the Boy's heart; even while
loyalty to his adored pet would not let him confess to himself or to
anyone else that Wolf was not the most flawlessly perfect dog on
earth.
Under-sized (for a collie), slim, graceful, fierce, affectionate, Wolf
was the Boy's darling, and he was Lad's successor as official guardian
of The Place. But all his youthful life, thus far, had brought him
nothing more than this--while Lad and Bruce had been winning prize
after prize at one local dog show after another within a radius of
thirty miles.
The Boy was duly enthusiastic over the winning of each trophy; but
always, for days thereafter, he was more than usually attentive to
Wolf to make up for his pet's dearth of prizes.
Once or twice the Boy had hinted, in a veiled, tentative way, that
young Wolf might perhaps win something, too, if he were allowed to go
to a show. The Master, never suspecting what lay behind the cautious
words, would always laugh in good-natured derision, or else he would
point in silence to Wolf's head and then to Lad's.
The Boy knew enough about collies to carry the subject no further. For
even his eyes of devotion could not fail to mark the difference in
aspect between his dog and the two prize-winners.
One July morning both Lad and Bruce went through an hour of anguish.
Both of them, one after the other, were plunged into a bath-tub
full of warm water and naphtha soap-suds and Lux; and were scrubbed
right unmercifully, after which they were rubbed and curried
and brushed for another hour until their coats shone resplendent. All
day, at intervals, the brushing and combing were kept up.
Lad was indignant at such treatment, and he took no pains to hide his
indignation. He knew perfectly well, from the undue attention, that a
dog show was at hand. But not for a year or more had he himself been
made ready for one. His lake baths and his daily casual brushing at
the Mistress' hands had been, in that time, his only form of
grooming. He had thought himself graduated forever from the nuisance
of going to shows.
"What's the idea of dolling up old Laddie like that?" asked the Boy,
as he came in for luncheon and found the Mistress busy with comb and
dandy-brush over the unhappy dog.
"For the Fourth of July Red Cross Dog Show at Ridgewood to-morrow,"
answered his mother, looking up, a little flushed from her exertions.
"But I thought you and Dad said last year he was too old to show any
more," ventured the Boy.
"This time is different," said the Mistress. "It's a specialty show,
you see, and there is a cup offered for 'the best _veteran_ dog of any
recognized breed.' Isn't that fine? We didn't hear of the Veteran Cup
till Dr. Hooper telephoned to us about it this morning. So we're
getting Lad ready. There _can't_ be any other veteran as splendid as
he is."
"No," agreed the Boy, dully, "I suppose not."
He went into the dining-room, surreptitiously helped himself to a
handful of lump-sugar and passed on out to the veranda. Wolf was
sprawled half-asleep on the driveway lawn in the sun.
The dog's wolflike brush began to thump against the shaven grass.
Then, as the Boy stood on the veranda edge and snapped his fingers,
Wolf got up from his soft resting-place and started toward him,
treading mincingly and with a sort of swagger, his slanting eyes
half shut, his mouth a-grin.
"You know I've got sugar in my pocket as well as if you saw it," said
the Boy. "Stop where you are."
Though the Boy accompanied his order with no gesture nor change of
tone, the dog stopped dead short ten feet away.
"Sugar is bad for dogs," went on the Boy. "It does things to their
teeth and their digestions. Didn't anybody ever tell you that,
Wolfie?"
The young dog's grin grew wider. His slanting eyes closed to mere
glittering slits. He fidgeted a little, his tail wagging fast.
"But I guess a dog's got to have _some_ kind of consolation purse when
he can't go to a show," resumed the Boy. "Catch!"
As he spoke he suddenly drew a lump of sugar from his pocket and, with
the same motion, tossed it in the direction of Wolf. Swift as was the
Boy's action, Wolf's eye was still quicker. Springing high in air, the
dog caught the flung cube of sugar as it flew above him and to one
side. A second and a third lump were caught as deftly as the first.
Then the Boy took from his pocket the fourth and last lump. Descending
the steps, he put his left hand across Wolf's eyes. With his right he
flipped the lump of sugar into a clump of shrubbery.
"Find it!" he commanded, lifting the blindfold from the eyes of his
pet.
Wolf darted hither and thither, stopped once or twice to sniff, then
began to circle the nearer stretch of lawn, nose to ground. In less
than two minutes he merged from the shrubbery placidly crunching the
sugar-lump between his mighty jaws.
"And yet they say you aren't fit to be shown!" exclaimed the Boy,
fondling the dog's ears. "Gee, but I'd give two years' growth if you
could have a cup! You deserve one, all right; if only those judges had
sense enough to study a collie's brain as well as the outside of his
head!"
Wolf ran his nose into the cupped palm and whined. From the tone
underlying the words, he knew the Boy was unhappy, and he wanted to be
of help.
The Boy went into the house again to find his parents sitting down to
lunch. Gathering his courage in both hands, he asked:
"Is there going to be a Novice Class for collies at Ridgewood, Dad?"
"Why, yes," said the Master, "I suppose so. There always is."
"Do--do they give cups for the Novice Class?" inquired the Boy, with
studied carelessness.
"Of course they don't," said the Master, adding reminiscently, "though
the first time we showed Lad we put him in the Novice Class and he won
the blue ribbon there, so we had to go into the Winners' Class
afterward. He got the Winner's Cup, you remember. So, indirectly, the
Novice Class won him a cup."
"I see," said the Boy, not at all interested in this bit of ancient
history. Then speaking very fast, he went on:
"Well, a ribbon's better than nothing! Dad, will you do me a favor?
Will you let me enter Wolfie for the Novice Class to-morrow? I'll pay
the fee out of my allowance. Will you, Dad?"
The Master looked at his son in blank amazement. Then he threw back
his head and laughed loudly. The Boy flushed crimson and bit his lips.
"Why, dear!" hurriedly interposed the Mistress, noting her son's
discomfiture. "You wouldn't want Wolf to go there and be beaten by a
lot of dogs that haven't half his brains or prettiness! It wouldn't be
fair or kind to Wolf. He's so clever, he'd know in a moment what was
happening. He'd know he was beaten. Nearly all dogs do. No, it
wouldn't be fair to him."
"There's a 'mutt' class among the specials, Dr. Hopper says," put in
the Master, jocosely. "You might----"
"Wolf's _not_ a mutt!" flashed the Boy, hotly. "He's no more of a
mutt than Bruce or Lad, or Grey Mist, or Southport Sample, or any of
the best ones. He has as good blood as all of them. Lad's his father,
and Squire of Tytton was his grandfather, and Wishaw Clinker was
his----"
"I'm sorry, son," interposed the Master, catching his wife's eye and
dropping his tone of banter. "I apologize to you and Wolf. He's not a
'mutt.' There's no better blood in colliedom than his, on both
sides. But Mother is right. You'd only be putting him up to be beaten,
and you wouldn't like that. He hasn't a single point that isn't
hopelessly bad from a judge's view. We've never taken a loser to a
show from The Place. You don't want us to begin now, do you?"
"He has more brains that any dog alive, except Lad!" declared the Boy,
sullenly. "That ought to count."
"It ought to," agreed the Mistress, soothingly, "and I wish it did. If
it did, I know he'd win."
"It makes me sick to see a bushel of cups go to dogs that don't know
enough to eat their own dinners," snorted the Boy. "I'm not talking
about Lad and Bruce, but the thoroughbreds that are brought up in
kennels and that have all their sense sacrificed for points. Why,
Wolf's the cleverest--best--and he'll never even have one cup to show
for it. He----"
He choked, and began to eat at top speed. The Master and the Mistress
looked at each other and said nothing. They understood their son's
chagrin, as only a dog-lover could understand it. The Mistress reached
out and patted the Boy gently on the shoulder.
Next morning, directly after early breakfast, Lad and Bruce were put
into the tonneau of the car. The Mistress and the Master and the Boy
climbed in, and the twelve-mile journey to Ridgewood began.
Wolf, left to guard The Place, watched the departing show-goers until
the car turned out of the gate, a furlong above. Then, with a sigh, he
curled up on the porch mat, his nose between his snowy little paws,
and prepared for a day of loneliness.
The Red Cross dog show, that Fourth of July, was a triumph for The
Place.
Bruce won ribbon after ribbon in the collie division, easily taking
"Winners" at the last, and thus adding another gorgeous silver cup to
his collection. Then, the supreme event of the day--"Best dog in the
show"--was called. And the winners of each breed were led into the
ring. The judges scanned and handled the group of sixteen for barely
five minutes before awarding to Bruce the dark-blue rosette and the
"Best Dog" cup.
The crowd around the ring's railing applauded loudly. But they
applauded still more loudly a little later, when, after a brief survey
of nine aged thoroughbreds, the judge pointed to Lad, who was standing
like a mahogany statue at one end of the ring.
These nine dogs of various breeds had all been famed prize-winners in
their time. And above all the rest, Lad was adjudged worthy of the
"veteran cup!" There was a haze of happy tears in the Mistress' eyes
as she led him from the ring. It seemed a beautiful climax for his
grand old life. She wiped her eyes, unashamed, whispering praise the
while to her stately dog.
"Why don't you trundle your car into the ring?" one disgruntled
exhibitor demanded of the Mistress. "Maybe you'd win a cup with
_that_, too. You seem to have gotten one for everything else you
brought along."
It was a celebration evening for the two prize dogs, when they got
home, but everybody was tired from the day's events, and by ten
o'clock the house was dark. Wolf, on his veranda mat, alone of all The
Place's denizens, was awake.
Vaguely Wolf knew the other dogs had done some praiseworthy thing. He
would have known it, if for no other reason, from the remorseful hug
the Boy had given him before going to bed.
Well, some must win honors and petting and the right to sleep indoors;
while others must plod along at the only work they were fit for, and
must sleep out, in thunderstorm or clear, in heat or freezing
cold. That was life. Being only a dog, Wolf was too wise to complain
of life. He took things as he found them, making the very best of his
share.
He snoozed, now, in the warm darkness. Two hours later he got up,
stretched himself lazily fore and aft, collie-fashion, and trotted
forth for the night's first patrol of the grounds.
A few minutes afterward he was skirting the lake edge at the foot of
the lawn, a hundred yards below the house. The night was pitch
dark, except for pulses of heat-lightning, now and then, far to
westward. Half a mile out on the lake two men in an anchored scow were
cat-fishing.
A small skiff was slipping along very slowly, not fifty feet off
shore.
Wolf did not give the skiff a second glance. Boats were no novelty to
him, nor did they interest him in the least--except when they showed
signs of running ashore somewhere along his beat.
This skiff was not headed for land, but was paralleling the shore. It
crept along at a snail-pace and in dead silence. A man, its only
occupant, sat at the oars, scarcely moving them as he kept his boat in
motion.
A dog is ridiculously near-sighted. More so than almost any other
beast. Keen hearing and keener scent are its chief guides. At three
hundred yards' distance it cannot, by eye, recognize its master, nor
tell him from a stranger. But at close quarters, even in the darkest
night, a dog's vision is far more piercing and accurate than man's
under like conditions.
Wolf thus saw the skiff and its occupant, while he himself was still
invisible. The boat was no concern of his; so he trotted on to the far
end of The Place, where the forest joined the orchard.
On his return tour of the lake edge he saw the skiff again. It had
shifted its direction and was now barely ten feet off shore--so near
to the bank that one of the oars occasionally grated on the pebbly
bottom. The oarsman was looking intently toward the house.
Wolf paused, uncertain. The average watchdog, his attention thus
attracted, would have barked. But Wolf knew the lake was public
property. Boats were often rowed as close to shore as this without
intent to trespass. It was not the skiff that caught Wolf's attention
as he paused there on the brink, it was the man's furtive scrutiny of
the house.
A pale flare of heat-lightning turned the world, momentarily, from jet
black to a dim sulphur-color. The boatman saw Wolf standing, alert
and suspicious, among the lakeside grasses, not ten feet away. He
started slightly, and a soft, throaty growl from the dog answered him.
The man seemed to take the growl as a challenge, and to accept it. He
reached into his pocket and drew something out. When the next faint
glow of lightning illumined the shore, the man lifted the thing he had
taken from his pocket and hurled it at Wolf.
With all the furtive swiftness bred in his wolf-ancestry, the dog
shrank to one side, readily dodging the missile, which struck the lawn
just behind him. Teeth bared in a ferocious snarl, Wolf dashed forward
through the shallow water toward the skiff.
But the man apparently had had enough of the business. He rowed off
with long strokes into deep water, and, once there, he kept on rowing
until distance and darkness hid him.
Wolf stood, chest deep in water, listening to the far-off oar-strokes
until they died away. He was not fool enough to swim in pursuit; well
knowing that a swimming dog is worse than helpless against a boatman.
Moreover, the intruder had been scared away. That was all which
concerned Wolf. He turned back to shore. His vigil was ended for
another few hours. It was time to take up his nap where he had left
off.
Before he had taken two steps, his sensitive nostrils were full of the
scent of raw meat. There, on the lawn ahead of him, lay a chunk of
beef as big as a fist. This, then, was what the boatman had thrown at
him!
Wolf pricked up his ears in appreciation, and his brush began to
vibrate. Trespassers had once or twice tried to stone him, but this
was the first time any of them had pelted him with delicious raw
beef. Evidently, Lad and Bruce were not the only collies on The Place
to receive prizes that day.
Wolf stooped over the meat, sniffed at it, then caught it up between
his jaws.
Now, a dog is the easiest animal alive to poison, just as a cat is the
hardest, for a dog will usually bolt a mouthful of poisoned meat
without pausing to chew or otherwise investigate it. A cat, on
the contrary, smells and tastes everything first and chews it
scientifically before swallowing it. The slightest unfamiliar scent or
flavor warns her to sheer off from the feast.
So the average dog would have gulped this toothsome windfall in a
single swallow; but Wolf was not the average dog. No collie is, and
Wolf was still more like his eccentric forefathers of the wilderness
than are most collies.
He lacked the reasoning powers to make him suspicious of this rich
gift from a stranger, but a queer personal trait now served him just
as well.
Wolf was an epicure; he always took three times as long to empty his
dinner dish as did the other dogs, for instead of gobbling his meal,
as they did, he was wont to nibble affectedly at each morsel, gnawing
it slowly into nothingness; and all the time showing a fussily dainty
relish of it that used to delight the Boy and send guests into peals
of laughter.
This odd little trait that had caused so much ridicule now saved
Wolf's life.
He carried the lump of beef gingerly up to the veranda, laid it down
on his mat, and prepared to revel in his chance banquet after his own
deliberate fashion.
Holding the beef between his forepaws, he proceeded to devour it in
mincing little squirrel-bites. About a quarter of the meat had
disappeared when Wolf became aware that his tongue smarted and that
his throat was sore; also that the interior of the meat-ball had a
ranky pungent odor, very different from the heavenly fragrance of its
outside and not at all appetizing.
He looked down at the chunk, rolled it over with his nose, surveyed it
again, then got up and moved away from it in angry disgust.
Presently he forgot his disappointment in the knowledge that he was
very, very ill. His tongue and throat no longer burned, but his body
and brain seemed full of hot lead that weighed a ton. He felt stupid,
and too weak to stir. A great drowsiness gripped him.
With a grunt of discomfort and utter fatigue, he slumped down on the
veranda floor to sleep off his sick lassitude. After that, for a time,
nothing mattered.
For perhaps an hour Wolf lay sprawling there, dead to his duty, and to
everything else. Then faintly, through the fog of dullness that
enwrapped his brain, came a sound--a sound he had long ago learned to
listen for. The harshly scraping noise of a boat's prow drawn up on
the pebbly shore at the foot of the lawn.
Instinct tore through the poison vapors and roused the sick dog. He
lifted his head. It was strangely heavy and hard to lift.
The sound was repeated as the prow was pulled farther up on the
bank. Then came the crunch of a human foot on the waterside grass.
Heredity and training and lifelong fidelity took control of the
lethargic dog, dragging him to his feet and down the veranda steps
through no volition of his own.
Every motion tired him. He was dizzy and nauseated. He craved sleep;
but as he was just a thoroughbred dog and not a wise human, he did not
stop to think up good reasons why he should shirk his duty because he
did not feel like performing it.
To the brow of the hill he trotted--slowly, heavily, shakily. His
sharp powers of hearing told him the trespasser had left his boat and
had taken one or two stealthy steps up the slope of lawn toward the
house.
And now a puff of west wind brought Wolf's sense of smell into
action. A dog remembers odors as humans remember faces. And the breeze
bore to him the scent of the same man who had flung ashore that bit of
meat which had caused all his suffering.
He had caught the man's scent an hour earlier, as he had stood
sniffing at the boat ten feet away from him. The same scent had been
on the meat the man had handled.
And now, having played such a cruel trick on him, the joker was
actually daring to intrude on The Place!
A gust of resentful rage pierced the dullness of Wolf's brain and sent
a thrill of fierce energy through him. For the moment this carried him
out of his sick self and brought back all his former zest as a
watch-dog.
Down the hill, like a furry whirlwind, flew Wolf, every tooth bared,
his back a-bristle from neck to tail. Now he was well within sight of
the intruder. He saw the man pausing to adjust something to one of
his hands. Then, before this could be accomplished, Wolf saw him pause
and stare through the darkness as the wild onrush of the dog's feet
struck upon his hearing.
Another instant and Wolf was near enough to spring. Out of the
blackness he launched himself, straight for the trespasser's face. The
man saw the dim shape hurtling through the air toward him. He dropped
what he was carrying and flung up both hands to guard his neck.
At that, he was none too soon, for just as the thief's palm reached
his own throat, Wolf's teeth met in the fleshy part of the hand.
Silent, in agony, the man beat at the dog with his free hand; but an
attacking collie is hard to locate in the darkness. A bulldog will
secure a grip and will hang on; a collie is everywhere at once.
Wolf's snapping jaws had already deserted the robber's mangled hand
and slashed the man's left shoulder to the bone. Then the dog made
another furious lunge for the face.
Down crashed the man, losing his balance under the heavy impact; Wolf
atop of him. To guard his throat, the man rolled over on his
face, kicking madly at the dog, and reaching back for his own
hip-pocket. Half in the water and half on the bank, the two rolled and
thrashed and struggled--the man panting and wheezing in mortal terror;
the dog growling in a hideous, snarling fashion as might a wild
animal.
The thief's torn left hand found a grip on Wolf's fur-armored
throat. He shoved the fiercely writhing dog backward, jammed a pistol
against Wolf's head, and pulled the trigger!
The dog relaxed his grip and tumbled in a huddled heap on the
brink. The man staggered, gasping, to his feet; bleeding, disheveled,
his clothes torn and mud-coated.
The echoes of the shot were still reverberating among the lakeside
hills. Several of the house's dark windows leaped into sudden
light--then more windows in another room--and in another.
The thief swore roundly. His night's work was ruined. He bent to his
skiff and shoved it into the water; then he turned to grope for what
he had dropped on the lawn when Wolf's unexpected attack had
interfered with his plans.
As he did so, something seized him by the ankle. In panic terror the
man screamed aloud and jumped into the water, then, peering back, he
saw what had happened.
Wolf, sprawling and unable to stand, had reached forward from where he
lay and had driven his teeth for the last time into his foe.
The thief raised his pistol again and fired at the prostrate dog, then
he clambered into his boat and rowed off with frantic speed, just as a
salvo of barks told that Lad and Bruce had been released from the
house; they came charging down the lawn, the Master at their heels.
But already the quick oar-beats were growing distant; and the gloom
had blotted out any chance of seeing or following the boat.
Wolf lay on his side, half in and half out of the water. He could not
rise, as was his custom, to meet the Boy, who came running up, close
behind the Master and valorously grasping a target rifle; but the dog
wagged his tail in feeble greeting, then he looked out over the black
lake, and snarled.
The bullet had grazed Wolf's scalp and then had passed along the
foreleg; scarring and numbing it. No damage had been done that a
week's good nursing would not set right.
The marks in the grass and the poisoned meat on the porch told their
own tale; so did the neat kit of burglar tools and a rubber glove
found near the foot of the lawn; and then the telephone was put to
work.
At dawn, a man in torn and muddy clothes, called at the office of a
doctor three miles away to be treated for a half-dozen dog-bites
received, he said, from a pack of stray curs he had met on the
turnpike. By the time his wounds were dressed, the sheriff and two
deputies had arrived to take him in charge. In his pockets were a
revolver, with two cartridges fired, and the mate of the rubber glove
he had left on The Place's lawn.
"You--you wouldn't let Wolfie go to any show and win a cup for
himself," half-sobbed the Boy, as the Master worked over the injured
dog's wound, "but he's saved you from losing all the cups the other
dogs ever won!"
Three days later the Master came home from a trip to the city. He went
directly to the Boy's room. There on a rug lounged the convalescent
Wolf, the Boy sitting beside him, stroking the dog's bandaged head.
"Wolf," said the Master, solemnly, "I've been talking about you to
some people I know. And we all agree----"
"Agree _what?_" asked the Boy, looking up in mild curiosity.
The Master cleared his throat and continued:
"We agree that the trophy-shelf in my study hasn't enough cups on
it. So I've decided to add still another to the collection. Want to
see it, son?"
From behind his back the Master produced a gleaming silver cup--one of
the largest and most ornate the Boy had ever seen--larger even than
Bruce's "Best Dog" cup.
The Boy took it from his father's outstretched hand.
"Who won this?" he asked. "And what for? Didn't we get all the cups
that were coming to us at the shows. Is it----"
The Boy's voice trailed away into a gurgle of bewildered rapture. He
had caught sight of the lettering on the big cup. And now, his arm
around Wolf, he read the inscription aloud, stammering with delight as
he blurted out the words:
"HERO CUP. WON BY WOLF, AGAINST ALL COMERS."