“The only place where two can live as cheap as one,” ruminated old Joel
Fenno, pointing with his chewed pipestem, “is right yonder.”
He indicated Treve, lounging on the puncheon floor in front of the
group. Treve had awakened with some abruptness from a snooze and was
scratching busily; driving his right hindfoot with great vigor and
speed into his furry body in the general direction of the short ribs.
On the collie’s wontedly wise face was the grin of idiotic vacuity
which goes with flea-scratching.
He was not looking his best or gracefulest or most sagacious, at the
moment. Joel Fenno was sharply aware of his chum’s absurd aspect. For
the benefit of the ranch guest, he sought to forestall any unfavorable
comment on the dog.
“Yep,” he resumed, as Davids, the guest, eyed him in mild curiosity,
“the only two, that can live as cheap as one, is not a spouse an’ a
spousess; but a flea an’ a dog.”
Davids smiled politely. Royce Mack had read this joke aloud to his
partner, from a year-old copy of _The Country Gentleman_, a month
before. He forbore to encourage the old fellow’s rare trip into the
realms of humor, now, by so much as a grin. But Davids followed up his
own civil smile by saying:
“I’ve been looking at that collie of yours, off and on, ever since I
got here. He’s a beauty. How’s he bred?”
“They say there’s beautiful things an’ useful things,” answered Fenno,
surlily. “An’ I’ve allus found the beautiful things is no use and the
useful things ain’t wuth lookin’ at. Yep, Treve must be ‘a beauty,’ all
right, all right. For he’s no use to anybody. Jes’ eats and snores and
loafs; an’ hunts fleas instead of sheep; an’ tries to make busy folks
romp with him. Likewise he succeeds in making ’em do it; so far as
Royce, here, is concerned. The work hours my partner wastes in playin’
and trampin’ an’ skylarkin’ with that measly cur--”
“How’s he bred?” repeated Davids, to stem the tide of Joel’s chronic
complaints against Mack and the collie.
“Bred?” echoed Fenno. “Who? Royce? All fired _ill_ bred, when he has a
mind to be. An’ that’s about all the time. He--”
“I mean the collie. What is it you call him? Treve?”
“Treve? Bred? I don’t--”
“He means,” spoke up Royce Mack, from boyhood memories of pedigreed
animals, in the East, “he means, who were Treve’s ancestors? We don’t
know, Davids. A queer sort of English tourist hobo came here and sold
him to us. The man absconded with all the cash in Joel’s vest and left
the pup behind. As far as we know, Treve’s pedigree began on the ranch,
here. Why?”
“Because,” said Davids, “he’s a high-bred dog. What’s more, he’s the
true show-type of collie. He’s good enough to win a blue ribbon at any
bench show in America. The hobo, most likely, stole him. Such dogs
aren’t left to roam at will.”
Treve had ceased to pursue the wicked flea; or else his frantic
clawing had dislodged the pest. For, with a lazy sigh, he resumed
his nap on the cool puncheon. Stretched out there on his left side,
silhouetted against the floor, he presented a picture to stir the heart
of any collie-judge. The classic head might have been chiseled by a
master-hand. The frame was mighty, yet as graceful as any greyhound’s.
The coat was unbelievably heavy and it shone like burnished copper.
Joel eyed the couchant dog with outward sourness of visage; but with
inward pride that Treve should have won such praise from this Eastern
engineer who had halted at the Dos Hermanos ranch for the night. It
was part of Fenno’s life-creed to maintain a continuous and universal
grouchy disapproval of everything and everybody.
“Just what I’ve always said!” exulted Mack, at Davids’ endorsement of
his pet. “I’ve always told Joel the dog was good enough to go to any A.
K. C. show. He’s--”
“Yep!” snarled Fenno, “he’d make a show of us, all right. Why, most
prob’ly they’d laugh him out of the place. Unless it was a flea-chasin’
match. Then he might--”
“If I were you,” put in Davids, addressing Mack and ignoring the
peevish oldster, “I’d enter him for the big Dos Hermanos Show, up at
La Cerra, next month. I was reading about it, on the way here. Quite
a ‘spread’ on it in the Sunday _Clarion_. I’ll leave my copy of it
with you, if you’d like to glance over it. They’re trying for a record
entry. A big English judge is going to handle collies and one or two
sporting breeds. On another page of the paper is a sort of primer for
novice exhibitors; telling them how to enter their dogs for the show,
whom to write to for premium lists and blanks, and all that, and how
to make out the blanks. A lot of people don’t understand how to do it.
Take my tip and enter Treve at La Cerra.”
“Huh!” snorted Joel, loudly.
“It’s only about a hundred miles from here,” pursued Davids. “You can
make most of the trip by train; and get there in less than a day. Think
it over. It’d be a fine thing to bring Treve home with a bunch of blue
ribbons and maybe a big silver cup; and have all the papers printing
his name. It’s as much of a triumph for a dog to win first prizes at
such a show as for a man to be elected to Congress.”
Another derisive snort from Joel Fenno interrupted his homily and made
Royce frown apologetically at the annoyed guest.
Now there was harrowing ridicule in Fenno’s snort. But in the heart
of Fenno an astonishing impulse had swirled into life. The snort was
designed to frighten this yearning impulse to death. It could not.
Whenever any one looked or spoke approvingly of Treve, old Fenno
had something of the thrill that might come to a man at praise of
a cherished brother. While he girded at this feeling, as babyishly
absurd, he could not check it. He loved the big collie; and he was
inordinately proud of him. That others should admire Treve seemed in a
way a sort of backhanded compliment to himself--to Joel who had never
in his life been admired or complimented.
And now, at Davids’ careless words, a glowing picture leaped into
Fenno’s dazed mental vision--a picture of cheering throngs at the La
Cerra show, all admiring and praising his victorious Treve. This and a
crazy desire to take the collie there.
As if in contempt for his companions’ chatter about a mere dog, Joel
got up, presently, and sauntered into the house. He strolled through
the room he and Royce Mack had assigned to Davids for the night. There
on the floor, alongside the engineer’s kitbag, lay the crumpled copy
of the _Clarion_. Furtively, Joel pouched it and bore it to his own
cubbyhole room. There, that night, long after the others were asleep,
he crouched on his bunk and read and reread and sought to master the
many bewildering bits of information as to the show and as to the mode
of conducting dogshows in general.
Much was as Greek to him; until he figured it out with painful
patience. Twice he flung the paper on the floor with a grunt of
disgust. But ever that glowing vision of his chum’s triumphs goaded him
on. Through the silent hours he continued to wrestle with the details;
as simplified for the benefit of novices.
Once, during his reading, he looked up guiltily. In the doorway of
his little room stood Treve, gravely inspecting him. The soft sound
of rustled paper had roused the collie from his nightly slumber
alongside Royce’s bunk. He had set forth to investigate. As Joel
peered blinkingly toward him, Treve wagged his plumed tail and came
mincing forward; thrusting his classic muzzle into the hand which Fenno
instinctively stretched forth.
“Trevy,” whispered the old man, “how’d you like to hear all them folks
clappin’ you an’ sayin’ what a grand dog you are? Hey? Think it over,
Trevy. There needn’t anybody know, but you and me, Trevy. Royce has
got to go to Omaha, with them sheep, next month. He’ll be gone for two
days before this show-date an’ for a couple of days after it. Nobody’ll
ever know, Trevy. I’ll tell the hands I’m goin’ to run up to Santa
Clara to see about a bunch of merinos an’ that I’m totin’ you along
to herd ’em. I--Oh, Trevy, we’re a pair of old fools, you an’ me! I
never thought I’d be such a dodo-bird as to waste time an’ cash on a
dog. I’m gettin’ in my dotage. Granther Hardin used to think he was a
postage stamp, when he got old, Trevy. An’ he used to putter around,
lookin’ for a env’lope big enough to stick himself to. They put him in
a foolish house. I reckon I’m qualifyin’ for one, all right, all right.
But--you’re sure a grand dog, Trevy!”
The modernized old Spanish city of La Cerra, at the westerly end of
Dos Hermanos County, had come to life in a rackety way, as it did
once a year when the annual three-day show of the Dos Hermanos Kennel
Association brought to town thoroughbred dogs and humans of all shades
of breeding.
It was to this show, two years earlier, that Fraser Colt had been
taking his collie pup when the latter’s clash with a police dog in the
baggage car had led to the temporary wrecking of one of his tulip ears;
and when his resentment of Colt’s kick had led his owner to hurl him
bodily out through the car’s open side door.
The memory of his own treatment at the hands--and boot toe--of the
gross brute who had bought him on speculation and who had been taking
him showward, rankled ever in the far-back recesses of Treve’s brain.
Which is the way of a collie. The harsh memory had been glozed over
by two years of friendly treatment. Treve himself was not aware it
existed. But it was there, none the less.
Joel Fenno, daily, had been more and more ashamed of his queer
impulse to take Treve to the show. But, daily, also, the show-virus
had infected him, more and more. Any one who has shown dogs will
understand. Ever he visualized a more and more gorgeous triumph for his
secret chum.
The first twelve miles of the trip were made in the Dos Hermanos
ranch’s wheezy little car--the same in which Joel had piloted his
partner to Santa Carlotta, the day before; when Royce set forth on his
Omaha journey. Treve sat proudly beside the ever-more nervous Fenno, on
the car’s one shabby seat.
The dog was delighted at the jaunt, as is nearly every collie who is
taken by his master on an outing. Instinctively, too, he felt Joel’s
grouchily suppressed thrill of excitement, and responded to it with a
quick gayety. Apparently this was some dazzlingly jolly adventure he
and his friend were embarking on.
At Santa Carlotta they took the spur line train for an eighty-mile run.
Sixty of these eighty miles were across dreary greenish gray desert,
flower-splashed, yet as dismal as the Mojave itself;--rolling miles of
sick alkaline sand, skunk-infected, habitat of rattlesnakes--a waste
strewn with sagebrush and Joshua trees. A dead and fearsome stretch;
steel-hard of outline, shrilly vivid of coloring.
Then came the steep upgrade, over an elephant-backed mountain’s
swordcut pass; and a pitch down into the fertile valley whose nearest
city was La Cerra.
Joel did not crate his dog; but sat on a trunk in the baggage car, with
the collie curled up comfortably at his feet. The train-ride woke dim
and not wholly pleasing memories in Treve. Something unpleasant had
befallen him on such a ride. Once or twice he glanced up worriedly at
the old man; only to be reassured by an awkward pat on the head or a
grumbled word of friendliness.
It was so, too, after they had debarked and had found their way to the
armory where the dogshow was in progress. As they entered the vast
barnlike building, Treve’s ears and nostrils were assailed in a way
that made him halt abruptly in his stately advance at Fenno’s side.
To him gushed the multiple plangent racket of hundreds of dogs barking
in hundreds of keys. To a dog, even more than to a dogman, each bark
carries its own translation. Treve read excitement in many of these
barks that now yammered about his sensitive ears. In more, he read
terror and loneliness and worried apprehension.
Also, the myriad blended odors of fellow-dogs rushed in upon him,
dazing his senses with their incredible volume. It is through ears and
nostrils that a dog receives his strongest impressions. And Treve was
receiving more than he could assimilate.
His troubled, deepset eyes scanned Joel Fenno’s gnarled face for
reassurance. The oldster was wellnigh as confused and scared as
his dog. He was a dweller in the lonely places. Crowds confused and
frightened him. Yet he rallied enough to pass his hand comfortingly
over the silken head of the collie and to mutter something by way of
encouragement. Then man and dog marched valiantly down the intersecting
aisles of barking or yelling or silently unhappy exhibits, to the
section labeled “Collies.”
There, Joel motioned Treve to jump up on the straw-littered bench that
bore his number. He tied him; and tipped a lounging boy to get a panful
of fresh water. The collie drank feverishly; but would touch none of
the tempting meat scraps which Fenno produced from a greasy newspaper
parcel for his benefit.
The great young dog did not cringe or shiver, amid this bedlam which
tortured his sensitive soul and which was so hideous a contrast to his
wonted life amid the sweet-scented silences. His head was erect. His
dark eyes were steady. He was a good soldier. But--well, it was out of
the question for him to swallow food, at such a place.
Joel looked about him. On either side of Treve’s bench, and across
the aisle, other collies were tied in their stall-like benches. Fenno
counted eighteen of them, in all. Some were snipe-nosed and fragile.
Some were deep of chest and massive of coat and had strongly classic
heads, much like Treve’s.
A few were snub-nosed and round-eyed and broad of skull. Old-fashioned
types, these, and without chance of victory in any contested class.
Their like is seen at nearly every show. They are pets, loved by their
masters or mistresses (oftenest mistresses), who think them wonderful.
They are brought to shows in the futile hope that a blue ribbon or a
cup may lend zest to their owners’ pride in them. To a judge who is
luckless enough to have a soft heart, these poor dogs and their cruelly
disappointed owners are the saddest features of an exhibition which, at
best, is never lacking in sad features.
Fenno stood, eyeing the dogs around him. He had a refreshing ignorance
of everything which constitutes a collie’s good or bad show points. All
he knew was that Treve was the grandest dog on earth. He had come here
to prove it to mankind at large. And the belief did not waver. Yet as
he watched the handlers prepare their collies for the ring, he scowled.
He had slicked Treve’s glorious coat down smooth, with much water. He
knew that humans are supposed to have their hair slicked down when they
want to look their best. And he supposed it was the same with dogs.
But now he saw men currying their dogs with expert touch; brushing
the hair up and out; so that it should not cleave to the body and
so that its texture and abundance might be fully seen by the judge.
After watching this process for several minutes and catching sight
of a collie poster on one of the benchbacks, Joel unearthed a mangy
dandy-brush from his kitbag; and proceeded to fall to work right
vigorously on Treve. The water had, for the most part, evaporated from
the slicked coat. What was left of it made the coat and frill stand out
with redoubled luxuriance as Joel brushed it upward.
Then Fenno scanned his neighbors, once more, for further tips in
collie-dressing. He was vaguely aware that several spectators had
paused at Treve’s bench, as they drifted past. They were eyeing the dog
in open admiration. This pleased Joel, but it did not surprise him. To
him it seemed only natural that people should stop to admire such a
dog. Then he heard one of the spectators read aloud to another from a
gray-backed catalog he held:
“_‘217. J. Fenno. TREVE. Particulars Not Given. Entered in Class 68.’_
“That’s funny!” went on the reader, looking up from the catalog’s
meager information and studying afresh the collie in front of him.
“That’s mighty funny, Chris! Here’s one of the best collies I’ve set
eyes on. Class in every inch of him. He’ll give Champion Howgill Rival
the tussle of his life, for Winners, to-day. And yet he isn’t even
registered. ‘Particulars not given.’ It doesn’t seem possible the owner
of a championship-timber collie, like that, shouldn’t know his pedigree
and his breeder’s name. ‘Particulars not given.’ Gee! That’s the stock
phrase they use for mutts. This dog’s a second Seedley Stirling. It
doesn’t make sense. Who’s ‘J. Fenno,’ anyway? Ever hear of him?”
“Some yap, out here, who bought the dog as a month-old pup, I s’pose,”
answered the man addressed, “and who doesn’t know what he’s got. I’m
going to hunt him out, before the judging; and see what I can buy this
collie for. Maybe I can pick him up for a song. It’s a cinch his value
will boom, after he’s been judged. Everybody’ll be wanting him, then.
I’m going on a still hunt, right away, for J. Fenno.”
“Meanin’ me?” asked Joel, turning on him with a sour suddenness that
made the Easterner recoil an involuntary step. “I’m Fenno. An’ I’m the
man you’ve got to go on a still hunt for, to buy this dog for a song.”
“No offense,” disclaimed the other, mistaking Joel’s normal manner for
snarling displeasure. “I like this dog of yours. That is,” he hedged,
craftily, “I like him in spots. He’s more good than bad. I don’t mind
making you an offer for him, if you’ve got the sense to sell him
cheap. How about it?”
“I don’t know how much cash you’re packin’ in that greasy old
ill-fitting handmedown suit you’re wearin’,” replied Joel, with his
wonted exquisite courtesy. “Nor yet I don’t know what value you place
on the mortgaged hencoop you live in, back home. But the whole price
won’t buy this collie of mine. Not if you throw in the million dollars
diff’rence between your valuation of yourself and my valuation of you.
Have I made it plain, friend? If I haven’t, I’ll try to speak less
flatterin’ and talk turkey to you.”
Without awaiting reply he turned his lean back to the flustered
Easterner. The move brought Fenno face to face with a stout man in
vivid raiment.
“Selling that dog of yours?” queried the stout man, catalog in hand.
“Oh, _you’re_ looking for a bargain, too, from the ‘yap,’ are you?”
snorted Joel. “Before the judge c’n tell him he’s got a good dog? Well,
the yap don’t need to be told. He knows it. That’s why he brang Treve
here to-day. If your fat was wuth a hundred dollars a pound, you’d be a
billionaire. But you wouldn’t be able to buy my dog. Get that?”
He was about to turn away from the stout personage, as from his
former interlocutor, when he noted the man was no longer looking
at him Instead, oblivious of the grouchy old hurler of insults, the
stranger was once more studying Treve. In his plump face was a glint of
perplexity, of struggling recollection.
Fraser Colt had an excellent memory. And the more he examined Treve,
the closer he came to verifying a most improbable idea that had come
to him, to-day, when first he caught sight of the collie reclining
unhappily on the bench.
Back into his trained mind came the picture of a highbred collie pup,
lying thus sorrowfully in Colt’s stuffy kennel yard, some two years
earlier, after Fraser had picked him up at his first master’s forced
sale. The dog’s markings and facial expression were unusual. It seemed
impossible. Yet--
Half-unconscious of his own gesture, Fraser Colt stretched out his hand
toward Treve’s shapely left ear. If there were sign of break or of
ancient teeth-marks therein, the mystery was solved. If not--
Treve had lain resignedly in this place of turmoil, consoling himself
by following with his sorrowful eyes the master who, for some
unexplainable reason, had brought him here. Then, amid the million
disturbing odors of the show, one special scent came to his nostrils in
a way to annihilate his heed of all the rest.
Suspiciously, his eyes clouding with half-formulated and long-sleeping
recollections, he sniffed the heavy air. At the same instant, came the
sound of a voice that was more than vaguely distasteful to him. Into
his friendly heart sprang a righteous anger--but against what or whom
he scarcely knew.
Then he saw Colt. And sound and scent and sight brought his dormant
memories wide awake. He knew the man. Even as he would have recognized
Royce and Joel, whom he loved--even as he would have recognized and
loved them after two years of absence--so now he knew and hated the man
who had maltreated him so abominably as a defenseless puppy. Into the
soft eyes flamed red rage.
All ignorant of the emotion he had aroused, Fraser Colt had stretched
forth his plump hand, confidently, to inspect the collie’s left ear.
The expert big fingers turned over the ear-tip. A glance showed Colt
what he sought. There, faintly white, on the ear’s pinkish underside,
were the harrow-marks of the police dog’s teeth. There, too, was a far
fainter groove-mark where the plaster and splints had once remained for
weeks on the healing ear. There could be no doubt.
This in less than a second. Before the big hand could be withdrawn,
Treve had completed his recognition. More, he realized what liberty
this loathed ex-owner of his was taking with him. The outstretched
hand, too, was reminiscent of the brute blow that once had crashed
against that mangled ear. And the dog’s hatred flamed into life.
His white eyeteeth slashed murderously. Colt’s thick sleeve and silken
cuff were shorn, as by a razor-sweep. So little did cloth and silk
deflect the slash that the eyetooth scored deep in the wide wrist;
missing artery and major veins by a hairbreadth.
With a yell, Fraser Colt yanked back his hurt wrist. Yet swift as was
his motion, it could not keep pace with the motion of the furious
collie’s head. And, before the hand was out of reach, Treve’s front
teeth had almost met in the fleshy heel of the thumb.
“You leave my dog be!” shrilled Joel, taking in only the fact that Colt
had reached out and done some presumably painful thing to Treve, which
the collie was trying angrily to punish.
He spoke too late. At the dog’s assault, Colt’s readily mislaid temper
scattered beyond control. Still yelling with pain he kicked with all
his might at the collie who ravened at him far over the pine footboard
of the bench.
The kick was less well calculated than fervent. The fury-driven toe
hit the top of the footboard; shattering the wood to splinters. But
it missed Treve. As the leg was withdrawn, Treve exacted tribute from
the ankle of the loud-patterned trousers; and his jaws raked the man’s
shin, agonizingly.
But not until later did Fraser Colt have chance to note this latest
hurt. For scarcely was the kick delivered when a lanky and wrinkled
bulk had hurled itself cursingly at his fat throat.
Joel Fenno prided himself on his surly self-control. Yet when this big
stranger kicked his beloved chum, self-control burst into a maniacal
wrath that could find vent only in homicide.
He flung himself at the big man’s throat; gouging, tearing, hammering;
and all the while keeping up a gruesome whimpering noise from between
his hard-clenched teeth; unpleasantly like the sound made by a rabid
beast worrying its prey.
Back, under that crazy onslaught, staggered the unprepared Colt. His
heel caught in a bench support, before he could rally his balance.
And he pitched backward onto the aisle floor. Not once had Fenno
relinquished his attack on the face and throat of his foe. Now, landing
atop the squirming bulk, he drove his fists madly into the upturned
visage. As Colt sought to fend off the flailing fists, Joel lunged at
his neck with yellowed teeth.
Above them, lurching far over the edge of the bench, Treve tugged and
struggled roaringly to free himself and to join in the carnage. Foam
spattered from his back-writhen lips. Added to his own hate of Colt was
the fact that this man was fighting with Fenno, whom the dog loved.
With all his weight and all his might be strove to break free from his
chain. A hundred dogs added their din to his.
All at once, the bystanders stirred from their momentary trance of
amaze. As crowds came running to the scene of strife, fifty hands
dragged Joel away from his enemy and lifted him, yelling and twisting,
to his feet. Others helped Fraser Colt to rise. Still others hung
officiously to the arms of both combatants, to prevent a resumption of
warfare. Scores of voices vociferated and questioned and babbled. Every
dog in the show took up the racket, with full-throated barks and howls.
Every human jabbered. No human could be heard.
Presently, into the ruck, two policemen shouldered their way; followed
by the show’s superintendent. Out of the myriad simultaneous efforts
at explanation and accusation, the police could gather only that a
lantern-jawed old rancher had committed flagrant assault and battery
upon Mr. Fraser Colt, a man well known to dozens present and vouched
for by the superintendent. The rancher, presumably, was either drunk
or insane.
His first madness dissipated, Joel stood trembling and sick; scared to
the point of horror at what he had let himself in for; yet furious as
ever at the assailant of his collie.
A policeman ended the uproar by taking hold of Joel’s collar and
propelling him through the milling crowd to the door of the armory
and thence out into the street, where a commandeered automobile bore
captive and captor to the police station a mile away.
Twice, on his forced progress through the armory and once during the
horrible station-ward drive, Fenno tried to plead with the officer to
let him make some arrangement for the comfort of his dog, before going
to jail. But the policeman, every time, shut him up and would not let
him speak.
Joel sank down in a miserable and all but sobbing heap on the slat
bed of his cell. Not for himself was his woe. He foresaw a long jail
sentence. In the meantime, what was to become of Treve? Who would feed
him? Who would see he got back to the ranch? At the close of the show,
would the beautiful collie be thrust out into the streets of this
strange city, a hundred miles from home; to fend for himself--he who
had always been so well cared for?
Worse yet, would he fall into the hands of the man who had kicked
him--the man who seemed all-powerful there at the show--the man who had
secured Fenno’s arrest and who had, himself, gone scot free? He had
kicked the collie; in the presence of Fenno. What might he not do to
luckless Treve, now there was no one to protect the dog?
At the searing thought of his chum’s defenselessness, Joel groaned
aloud, rocking back and forth on his hard seat.
“An’ it was all my own fault!” he mumbled, brokenly. “All my own
foolishness! What’n blue blazes can I do? What--what _IS_ there to do?
Oh, Trevy, you trusted me! You was glad to come along with me. An’ see
what I’ve made happen to you!”