Produced by Dianne Bean. HTML version by Al Haines.
Bruce
by
Albert Payson Terhune
TO MY TEN BEST FRIENDS:
Who are far wiser in their way and far better in every way, than I; and
yet who have not the wisdom to know it
Who do not merely think I am perfect, but who are calmly and
permanently convinced of my perfection;--and this in spite of fifty
disillusions a day
Who are frantically happy at my coming and bitterly woebegone in my
absence
Who never bore me and never are bored by me
Who never talk about themselves and who always listen with rapturous
interest to anything I may say
Who, having no conventional standards, have no respectability; and who,
having no conventional consciences, have no sins
Who teach me finer lessons in loyalty, in patience, in true courtesy,
in unselfishness, in divine forgiveness, in pluck and in abiding good
spirits than do all the books I have ever read and all the other models
I have studied
Who have not deigned to waste time and eyesight in reading a word of
mine and who will not bother to read this verbose tribute to themselves
In short, to the most gloriously satisfactory chums who ever appealed
to human vanity and to human desire for companionship
TO OUR TEN SUNNYBANK COLLIES MY STORY IS GRATEFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY
DEDICATED
BRUCE
by
Albert Payson Terhune
CONTENTS
I. The Coming Of Bruce
II. The Pest
III. The War Dog
IV. When Eyes Were No Use
V. The Double Cross
VI. The Werewolf
CHAPTER I. The Coming Of Bruce
She was beautiful. And she had a heart and a soul--which were a curse.
For without such a heart and soul, she might have found the tough
life-battle less bitterly hard to fight.
But the world does queer things--damnable things--to hearts that are so
tenderly all-loving and to souls that are so trustfully and forgivingly
friendly as hers.
Her "pedigree name" was Rothsay Lass. She was a collie--daintily
fragile of build, sensitive of nostril, furrily tawny of coat. Her
ancestry was as flawless as any in Burke's Peerage.
If God had sent her into the world with a pair of tulip ears and with a
shade less width of brain-space she might have been cherished and
coddled as a potential bench-show winner, and in time might even have
won immortality by the title of "CHAMPION Rothsay Lass."
But her ears pricked rebelliously upward, like those of her earliest
ancestors, the wolves. Nor could manipulation lure their stiff
cartilages into drooping as bench-show fashion demands. The average
show-collie's ears have a tendency to prick. By weights and plasters,
and often by torture, this tendency is overcome. But never when the
cartilage is as unyielding as was Lass's.
Her graceful head harked back in shape to the days when collies had to
do much independent thinking, as sheep-guards, and when they needed
more brainroom than is afforded by the borzoi skull sought after by
modern bench-show experts.
Wherefore, Lass had no hope whatever of winning laurels in the
show-ring or of attracting a high price from some rich fancier. She was
tabulated, from babyhood, as a "second"--in other words, as a faulty
specimen in a litter that should have been faultless.
These "seconds" are as good to look at, from a layman's view, as is any
international champion. And their offspring are sometimes as perfect as
are those of the finest specimens. But, lacking the arbitrary "points"
demanded by show-judges, the "seconds" are condemned to obscurity, and
to sell as pets.
If Lass had been a male dog, her beauty and sense and lovableness would
have found a ready purchaser for her. For nine pet collies out of ten
are "seconds"; and splendid pets they make for the most part.
But Lass, at the very start, had committed the unforgivable sin of
being born a female. Therefore, no pet-seeker wanted to buy her. Even
when she was offered for sale at half the sum asked for her less
handsome brothers, no one wanted her.
A mare--or the female of nearly any species except the canine--brings
as high and as ready a price as does the male. But never the female
dog. Except for breeding, she is not wanted.
This prejudice had its start in Crusader days, some thousand years ago.
Up to that time, all through the civilized world, a female dog had been
more popular as a pet than a male. The Mohammedans (to whom, by creed,
all dogs are unclean) gave their European foes the first hint that a
female dog was the lowest thing on earth.
The Saracens despised her, as the potential mother of future dogs. And
they loathed her accordingly. Back to Europe came the Crusaders,
bearing only three lasting memorials of their contact with the Moslems.
One of the three was a sneering contempt for all female dogs.
There is no other pet as loving, as quick of wit, as loyal, as
staunchly brave and as companionable as the female collie. She has all
the male's best traits and none of his worst. She has more in common,
too, with the highest type of woman than has any other animal alive.
(This, with all due respect to womanhood.)
Prejudice has robbed countless dog-lovers of the joy of owning such a
pal. In England the female pet dog has at last begun to come into her
own. Here she has not. The loss is ours.
And so back to Lass.
When would-be purchasers were conducted to the puppy-run at the Rothsay
kennels, Lass and her six brethren and sisters were wont to come
galloping to the gate to welcome the strangers. For the pups were only
three months old--an age when every event is thrillingly interesting,
and everybody is a friend. Three times out of five, the buyer's eye
would single Lass from the rollicking and fluffy mass of puppyhood.
She was so pretty, so wistfully appealing, so free from fear (and from
bumptiousness as well) and carried herself so daintily, that one's
heart warmed to her. The visitor would point her out. The kennel-man
would reply, flatteringly--
"Yes, she sure is one fine pup!"
The purchaser never waited to hear the end of the sentence, before
turning to some other puppy. The pronoun, "she," had killed forever his
dawning fancy for the little beauty.
The four males of the litter were soon sold; for there is a brisk and a
steady market for good collie pups. One of the two other females died.
Lass's remaining sister began to "shape up" with show-possibilities,
and was bought by the owner of another kennel. Thus, by the time she
was five months old, Lass was left alone in the puppy-run.
She mourned her playmates. It was cold, at night, with no other cuddly
little fur-ball to snuggle down to. It was stupid, with no one to help
her work off her five-months spirits in a romp. And Lass missed the
dozens of visitors that of old had come to the run.
The kennel-men felt not the slightest interest in her. Lass meant
nothing to them, except the work of feeding her and of keeping an extra
run in order. She was a liability, a nuisance.
Lass used to watch with pitiful eagerness for the attendants'
duty-visits to the run. She would gallop joyously up to them, begging
for a word or a caress, trying to tempt them into a romp, bringing them
peaceofferings in the shape of treasured bones she had buried for her
own future use. But all this gained her nothing.
A careless word at best--a grunt or a shove at worst were her only
rewards. For the most part, the men with the feed-trough or the
water-pail ignored her bounding and wrigglingly eager welcome as
completely as though she were a part of the kennel furnishings. Her
short daily "exercise scamper" in the open was her nearest approach to
a good time.
Then came a day when again a visitor stopped in front of Lass's run. He
was not much of a visitor, being a pallid and rather shabbily dressed
lad of twelve, with a brand-new chain and collar in his hand.
"You see," he was confiding to the bored kennel-man who had been
detailed by the foreman to take him around the kennels, "when I got the
check from Uncle Dick this morning, I made up my mind, first thing, to
buy a dog with it, even if it took every cent. But then I got to
thinking I'd need something to fasten him with, so he wouldn't run away
before he learned to like me and want to stay with me. So when I got
the check cashed at the store, I got this collar and chain."
"Are you a friend of the boss?" asked the kennel-man.
"The boss?" echoed the boy. "You mean the man who owns this place? No,
sir. But when I've walked past, on the road, I've seen his 'Collies for
Sale' sign, lots of times. Once I saw some of them being exercised.
They were the wonderfulest dogs I ever saw. So the minute I got the
money for the check, I came here. I told the man in the front yard I
wanted to buy a dog. He's the one who turned me over to you. I
wish--OH!" he broke off in rapture, coming to a halt in front of Lass's
run. "Look! Isn't he a dandy?"
Lass had trotted hospitably forward to greet the guest. Now she was
standing on her hind legs, her front paws alternately supporting her
fragile weight on the wire of the fence and waving welcomingly toward
the boy. Unknowingly, she was bidding for a master. And her wistful
friendliness struck a note of response in the little fellow's heart.
For he, too, was lonesome, much of the time, as is the fate of a sickly
only child in an overbusy home. And he had the true craving of the
lonely for dog comradeship.
He thrust his none-too-clean hand through the wire mesh and patted the
puppy's silky head. Lass wiggled ecstatically under the unfamiliar
caress. All at once, in the boy's eyes, she became quite the most
wonderful animal and the very most desirable pet on earth.
"He's great!" sighed the youngster in admiration; adding naïvely: "Is
he Champion Rothsay Chief--the one whose picture was in The Bulletin
last Sunday?"
The kennel-man laughed noisily. Then he checked his mirth, for
professional reasons, as he remembered the nature of the boy's quest
and foresaw a bare possibility of getting rid of the unwelcome Lass.
"Nope," he said. "This isn't Chief. If it was, I guess your Uncle
Dick's check would have to have four figures in it before you could
make a deal. But this is one of Chief's daughters. This is Rothsay
Lass. A grand little girl, ain't she? Say,"--in a confidential
whisper,--"since you've took a fancy for her, maybe I could coax the
old man into lettin' you have her at an easy price. He was plannin' to
sell her for a hundred or so. But he goes pretty much by what I say. He
might let her go for--How much of a check did you say your uncle sent
you?"
"Twelve dollars," answered the boy,--"one for each year. Because I'm
named for him. It's my birthday, you know. But--but a dollar of it went
for the chain and the collar. How much do you suppose the gentleman
would want for Rothsay Lass?"
The kennel-man considered for a moment. Then he went back to the house,
leaving the lad alone at the gate of the run. Eleven dollars, for a
high-pedigreed collie pup, was a joke price. But no one else wanted
Lass, and her feed was costing more every day. According to Rothsay
standards, the list of brood-females was already complete. Even as a
gift, the kennels would be making money by getting rid of the
prick-eared "second." Wherefore he went to consult with the foreman.
Left alone with Lass, the boy opened the gate and went into the run. A
little to his surprise Lass neither shrank from him nor attacked him.
She danced about his legs in delight, varying this by jumping up and
trying to lick his excited face. Then she thrust her cold nose into the
cup of his hand as a plea to be petted.
When the kennel-man came back, the boy was sitting on the dusty ground
of the run, and Lass was curled up rapturously in his lap, learning how
to shake hands at his order.
"You can have her, the boss says," vouchsafed the kennel-man. "Where's
the eleven dollars?"
By this graceless speech Dick Hazen received the key to the Seventh
Paradise, and a life-membership in the world-wide Order of Dog-Lovers.
The homeward walk, for Lass and her new master, was no walk at all, but
a form of spiritual levitation. The half-mile pilgrimage consumed a
full hour of time. Not that Lass hung back or rebelled at her first
taste of collar and chain! These petty annoyances went unfelt in the
wild joy of a real walk, and in the infinitely deeper happiness of
knowing her friendship-famine was appeased at last.
The walk was long for various reasons--partly because, in her frisking
gyrations, Lass was forever tangling the new chain around Dick's thin
ankles; partly because he stopped, every block or so, to pat her or to
give her further lessons in the art of shaking hands. Also there were
admiring boy-acquaintances along the way, to whom the wonderful pet
must be exhibited.
At last Dick turned in at the gate of a cheap bungalow on a cheap
street--a bungalow with a discouraged geranium plot in its
pocket-handkerchief front yard, and with a double line of drying
clothes in the no larger space behind the house.
As Dick and his chum rounded the house, a woman emerged from between
the two lines of flapping sheets, whose hanging she had been
superintending. She stopped at sight of her son and the dog.
"Oh!" she commented with no enthusiasm at all. "Well, you did it, hey?
I was hoping you'd have better sense, and spend your check on a nice
new suit or something. He's kind of pretty, though," she went on, the
puppy's friendliness and beauty wringing the word of grudging praise
from her. "What kind of a dog is he? And you're sure he isn't savage,
aren't you?"
"Collie," answered Dick proudly. "Pedigreed collie! You bet she isn't
savage, either. Why, she's an angel. She minds me already. See--shake
hands, Lass!" "Lass!" ejaculated Mrs. Hazen. "'SHE!' Dick, you don't
mean to tell me you've gone and bought yourself a--a FEMALE dog?"
The woman spoke in the tone of horrified contempt that might well have
been hers had she found a rattlesnake and a brace of toads in her son's
pocket. And she lowered her voice, as is the manner of her kind when
forced to speak of the unspeakable. She moved back from the puppy's
politely out-thrust forepaw as from the passing of a garbage cart.
"A female dog!" she reiterated. "Well, of all the chuckle-heads! A
nasty FEMALE dog, with your birthday money!"
"She's not one bit nasty!" flamed Dick, burying the grubby fingers of
his right hand protectively in the fluffy mass of the puppy's
half-grown ruff. "She's the dandiest dog ever! She--"
"Don't talk back to me!" snapped Mrs. Hazen. "Here! Turn right around
and take her to the cheats who sold her to you. Tell them to keep her
and give you the good money you paid for her. Take her out of my yard
this minute! Quick!"
A hot mist of tears sprang into the boy's eyes. Lass, with the queer
intuition that tells a female collie when her master is unhappy, whined
softly and licked his clenched hand.
"I--aw, PLEASE, Ma!" he begged chokingly. "PLEASE! It's--it's my
birthday, and everything. Please let me keep her. I--I love her better
than 'most anything there is. Can't I please keep her? Please!"
"You heard what I said," returned his mother curtly.
The washerwoman, who one day a week lightened Mrs. Hazen's household
labors, waddled into view from behind the billows of wind-swirled
clothes. She was an excellent person, and was built for endurance
rather than for speed. At sight of Lass she paused in real interest.
"My!" she exclaimed with flattering approval. "So you got your dog, did
you? You didn't waste no time. And he's sure a handsome little critter.
Whatcher goin' to call him?"
"It's not a him, Irene," contradicted Mrs. Hazen, with another modest
lowering of her strong voice. "It's a HER. And I'm sending Dick back
with her, to where she came from. I've got my opinion of people who
will take advantage of a child's ignorance, by palming off a horrid
female dog on him, too. Take her away, Dick. I won't have her here
another minute. You hear me?"
"Please, Ma!" stammered Dick, battling with his desire to cry. "Aw,
PLEASE! I--I--"
"Your ma's right, Dick," chimed in the washerwoman, her first
interested glance at the puppy changing to one of refined and lofty
scorn. "Take her back. You don't want any female dogs around. No nice
folks do."
"Why not?" demanded the boy in sudden hopeless anger as he pressed
lovingly the nose Lass thrust so comfortingly into his hand. "WHY don't
we want a female dog around? Folks have female cats around them, and
female women. Why isn't a female dog--"
"That will do, Dick!" broke in his shocked mother. "Take her away."
"I won't," said the boy, speaking very slowly, and with no excitement
at all.
A slap on the side of his head, from his mother's punitive palm, made
him stagger a little. Her hand was upraised for a second installment of
rebellion-quelling--when a slender little body flashed through the air
and landed heavily against her chest. A set of white puppy-teeth all
but grazed her wrathful red face.
Lass, who never before had known the impulse to attack, had jumped to
the rescue of the beaten youngster whom she had adopted as her god. The
woman screeched in terror. Dick flung an arm about the furry whirlwind
that was seeking to avenge his punishment, and pulled the dog back to
his side.
Mrs. Hazen's shriek, and the obbligato accompaniment of the
washerwoman, made an approaching man quicken his steps as he strolled
around the side of the house. The newcomer was Dick's father,
superintendent of the local bottling works. On his way home to lunch,
he walked in on a scene of hysteria.
"Kill her, sir!" bawled the washerwoman, at sight of him. "Kill her!
She's a mad dog. She just tried to kill Miz' Hazen!"
"She didn't do anything of the kind!" wailed Dick. "She was pertecting
me. Ma hit me; and Lass--"
"Ed!" tearily proclaimed Mrs. Hazen, "if you don't send for a policeman
to shoot that filthy beast, I'll--"
"Hold on!" interrupted the man, at a loss to catch the drift of these
appeals, by reason of their all being spoken in a succession so rapid
as to make a single blurred sentence. "Hold on! What's wrong? And where
did the pup come from? He's a looker, all right a cute little cuss.
What's the row?"
With the plangently useless iterations of a Greek chorus, the tale was
flung at him, piecemeal and in chunks, and in a triple key. When
presently he understood, Hazen looked down for a moment at the
puppy--which was making sundry advances of a shy but friendly nature
toward him. Then he looked at the boy, and noted Dick's hero-effort to
choke back the onrush of babyish sobs. And then, with a roughly
tolerant gesture, he silenced the two raucous women, who were beginning
the tale over again for the third time.
"I see," he said. "I see. I see how it is. Needn't din it at me any
more, folks. And I see Dicky's side of it, too. Yes, and I see the
pup's side of it. I know a lot about dogs. That pup isn't vicious. She
knows she belongs to Dick. You lammed into him, and she took up and
defended him. That's all there is to the 'mad-dog' part of it."
"But Ed--" sputtered his wife.
"Now, you let ME do the talking, Sade!" he insisted, half-grinning, yet
more than half grimly. "I'm the boss here. If I'm not, then it's safe
to listen to me till the boss gets here. And we're goin' to do whatever
I say we are--without any back-talk or sulks, either. It's this way:
Your brother gave the boy a birthday check. We promised he could spend
it any way he had a mind to. He said he wanted a dog, didn't he? And I
said, 'Go to it!' didn't I? Well, he got the dog. Just because it
happens to be a she, that's no reason why he oughtn't to be allowed to
keep it. And he can. That goes."
"Oh, Dad!" squealed Dick in grateful heroworship. "You're a brick! I'm
not ever going to forget this, so long as I live. Say, watch her shake
hands, Dad! I've taught her, already, to--"
"Ed Hazen!" loudly protested his wife. "Of all the softies! You haven't
backbone enough for a prune. And if my orders to my own son are going
to be--"
"That'll be all, Sade!" interposed the man stiffly--adding: "By the
way, I got a queer piece of news to tell you. Come into the kitchen a
minute."
Grumbling, rebellious, scowling,--yet unable to resist the lure of a
"queer piece of news," Mrs. Hazen followed her husband indoors, leaving
Dick and his pet to gambol deliriously around the clothes-festooned
yard in celebration of their victory.
"Listen here, old girl!" began Hazen the moment the kitchen door was
shut behind them. "Use some sense, can't you? I gave you the wink, and
you wouldn't catch on. So I had to make the grandstand play. I'm no
more stuck on having a measly she-dog around here than you are. And
we're not going to have her, either. But--"
"Then why did you say you were going to? Why did you make a fool of me
before Irene and everything?" she demanded, wrathful yet bewildered.
"It's the boy's birthday, isn't it?" urged Hazen. "And I'd promised
him, hadn't I? And, last time he had one of those 'turns,' didn't Doc
Colfax say we mustn't let him fret and worry any more'n we could help?
Well, if he had to take that dog back to-day, it'd have broke his
heart. He'd have felt like we were his enemies, and he'd never have
felt the same to us again. And it might have hurt his health too--the
shock and all. So--"
"But I tell you," she persisted, "I won't have a dirty little female--"
"We aren't going to," he assured her. "Keep your hair on, till I've
finished. Tonight, after Dick's asleep, I'm going to get rid of her.
He'll wake up in the morning and find she's gone; and the door'll be
open. He'll think she's run away. He'll go looking for her, and he'll
keep on hoping to find her. So that'll ease the shock, you see, by
letting him down bit by bit, instead of snatching his pet away from him
violent-like. And he won't hold it up against US, either, as he would
the other way. I can offer a reward for her, too."
There was a long and thought-crammed pause. The woman plunged deep into
the silences as her fat brain wrought over the suggestion. Then--
"Maybe you HAVE got just a few grains of sense, after all, Ed,"
grudgingly vouchsafed Mrs. Hazen. "It isn't a bad idea. Only he'll
grieve a lot for her."
"He'll be hoping, though," said her husband. "He'll be hoping all the
while. That always takes the razor-edge off of grieving. Leave it to
me."
That was the happiest day Dick Hazen had ever known. And it was the
first actively happy day in all Lass's five months of life.
Boy and dog spent hours in a ramble through the woods. They began
Lass's education--which was planned to include more intricate tricks
than a performing elephant and a troupe of circus dogs could hope to
learn in a lifetime. They became sworn chums. Dick talked to Lass as if
she were human. She amazed the enraptured boy by her cleverness and
spirits. His initiation to the dog-masters' guild was joyous and
complete.
It was a tired and ravenous pair of friends who scampered home at
dinner-time that evening. The pallor was gone from Dick's face. His
cheeks were glowing, and his eyes shone. He ate greedily. His parents
looked covertly at each other. And the self-complacency lines around
Hazen's mouth blurred.
Boy and dog went to bed early, being blissfully sleepy and full of
food--also because another and longer woodland ramble was scheduled for
the morrow.
Timidly Dick asked leave to have Lass sleep on the foot of his cot-bed.
After a second telegraphing of glances, his parents consented. Half an
hour later the playmates were sound asleep, the puppy snuggling deep in
the hollow of her master's arm, her furry head across his thin chest.
It was in this pose that Hazen found them when, late in the evening, he
tiptoed into Dick's cubby-hole room. He gazed down at the slumberous
pair for a space, while he fought and conquered an impulse toward fair
play. Then he stooped to pick up the dog.
Lass, waking at the slight creak of a floorboard, lifted her head. At
sight of the figure leaning above her adored master, the lip curled
back from her white teeth. Far down in her throat a growl was born.
Then she recognized the intruder as the man who had petted her and fed
her that evening. The growl died in her throat, giving place to a
welcoming thump or two of her bushy tail. Dick stirred uneasily.
Patting the puppy lightly on her upraised head, Hazen picked up Lass in
his arms and tiptoed out of the room with her. Mistaking this move for
a form of caress, she tried to lick his face. The man winced.
Downstairs and out into the street Hazen bore his trustful little
burden, halting only to put on his hat, and for a whispered word with
his wife. For nearly a mile he carried the dog. Lass greatly enjoyed
the ride. She was pleasantly tired, and it was nice to be carried thus,
by some one who was so considerate as to save her the bother of walking.
At the edge of the town, Hazen set her on the ground and at once began
to walk rapidly away in the direction of home. He had gone perhaps
fifty yards when Lass was gamboling merrily around his feet. A kick
sent the dismayed and agonized puppy flying through the air like a
whimpering catapult, and landed her against a bank with every atom of
breath knocked out of her. Before she had fairly struck ground,--before
she could look about her,--Hazen had doubled around a corner and had
vanished.
At a run, he made for home, glad the unpleasant job was over. At the
door his wife met him.
"Well," she demanded, "did you drown her in the canal, the way you
said?"
"No," he confessed sheepishly, "I didn't exactly drown her. You see,
she nestled down into my arms so cozy and trusting-like, that I--well,
I fixed it so she'll never show up around here again. Trust me to do a
job thoroughly, if I do it at all. I--"
A dramatic gesture from Mrs. Hazen's stubby forefinger interrupted him.
He followed the finger's angry point. Close at his side stood Lass,
wagging her tail and staring expectantly up at him.
With her keen power of scent, it had been no exploit at all to track
the man over a mile of unfamiliar ground. Already she had forgiven the
kick or had put it down to accident on his part. And at the end of her
eager chase, she was eager for a word of greeting.
"I'll be--" gurgled Hazen, blinking stupidly.
"I guess you will be," conceded his wife. "If that's the 'thorough' way
you do your jobs at the factory--"
"Say," he mumbled in a sort of wondering appeal, "is there any HUMAN
that would like to trust a feller so much as to risk another
ribcracking kick, just for the sake of being where he is? I almost
wish--"
But the wish was unspoken. Hazen was a true American husband. He feared
his wife more than he loved fairness. And his wife's glare was full
upon him. With a grunt he picked Lass up by the neck, tucked her under
his arm and made off through the dark.
He did not take the road toward the canal, however. Instead he made for
the railroad tracks. He remembered how, as a lad, he had once gotten
rid of a mangy cat, and he resolved to repeat the exploit. It was far
more merciful to the puppy--or at least, to Hazen's conscience,--than
to pitch Lass into the slimy canal with a stone tied to her neck.
A line of freight cars--"empties"--was on a siding, a short distance
above the station. Hazen walked along the track, trying the door of
each car he passed. The fourth he came to was unlocked. He slid back
the newly greased side door, thrust Lass into the chilly and black
interior and quickly slid shut the door behind her. Then with the silly
feeling of having committed a crime, he stumbled away through the
darkness at top speed.
A freight car has a myriad uses, beyond the carrying of legitimate
freight. From time immemorial, it has been a favorite repository for
all manner of illicit flotsam and jetsam human or otherwise.
Its popularity with tramps and similar derelicts has long been a theme
for comic paper and vaudeville jest. Though, heaven knows, the inside
of a moving box-car has few jocose features, except in the imagination
of humorous artist or vaudevillian!
But a far more frequent use for such cars has escaped the notice of the
public at large. As any old railroader can testify, trainhands are
forever finding in box-cars every genus and species of stray.
These finds range all the way from cats and dogs and discarded white
rabbits and canaries, to goats. Dozens of babies have been discovered,
wailing and deserted, in box-car recesses; perhaps a hundred miles from
the siding where, furtively, the tiny human bundle was thrust inside
some conveniently unlatched side door.
A freight train offers glittering chances for the disposal of the
Unwanted. More than once a slain man or woman has been sent along the
line, in this grisly but effective fashion, far beyond the reach of
recognition.
Hazen had done nothing original or new in depositing the luckless
collie pup in one of these wheeled receptacles. He was but following an
old-established custom, familiar to many in his line of life. There was
no novelty to it,--except to Lass.
The car was dark and cold and smelly. Lass hated it. She ran to its
door. Here she found a gleam of hope for escape and for return to the
home where every one that day had been so kind to her. Hazen had shut
the door with such vehemence that it had rebounded. The hasp was down,
and so the catch had not done its duty. The door had slid open a few
inches from the impetus of Hazen's shove.
It was not wide enough open to let Lass jump out, but it was wide
enough for her to push her nose through. And by vigorous thrusting,
with her triangular head as a wedge, she was able to widen the
aperture, inch by inch. In less than three minutes she had broadened it
far enough for her to wriggle out of the car and leap to the side of
the track. There she stood bewildered.
A spring snow was drifting down from the sulky sky. The air was damp
and penetrating. By reason of the new snow the scent of Hazen's
departing footsteps was blotted out. Hazen himself was no longer in
sight. As Lass had made the journey from house to tracks with her head
tucked confidingly under her kidnaper's arm, she had not noted the
direction. She was lost.
A little way down the track the station lights were shining with misty
warmth through the snow. Toward these lights the puppy trotted.
Under the station eaves, and waiting to be taken aboard the almost-due
eleven-forty express, several crates and parcels were grouped. One
crate was the scene of much the same sort of escape-drama that Lass had
just enacted.
The crate was big and comfortable, bedded down with soft sacking and
with "insets" at either side containing food and water. But commodious
as was the box, the unwonted confinement did not at all please its
occupant--a temperamental and highly bred young collie in process of
shipment from the Rothsay Kennels to a purchaser forty miles up the
line.
This collie, wearying of the delay and the loneliness and the strange
quarters, had begun to plunge from one side of the crate to the other
in an effort to break out. A carelessly nailed slat gave away under the
impact. The dog scrambled through the gap and proceeded to gallop
homeward through the snow.
Ten seconds later, Lass, drawn by the lights and by the scent of the
other dog, came to the crate. She looked in. There, made to order for
her, was a nice bed. There, too, were food and drink to appease the
ever-present appetite of a puppy. Lass writhed her way in through the
gap as easily as the former occupant had crawled out.
After doing due justice to the broken puppy biscuits in the
inset-trough, she curled herself up for a nap.
The clangor and glare of the oncoming express awakened her. She cowered
in one corner of the crate. Just then two station-hands began to move
the express packages out to the edge of the platform. One of them
noticed the displaced board of the crate. He drove home its loosened
nails with two sharp taps from a monkey-wrench, glanced inside to make
certain the dog had not gotten out, and presently hoisted the crate
aboard the express-car.
Two hours later the crate was unloaded at a waystation. At seven in the
morning an expressman drove two miles with it to a country-home, a mile
or so from the village where Lass had been disembarked from the train.
An eager knot of people--the Mistress, the Master and two
gardeners--crowded expectantly around the crate as it was set down on
the lawn in front of The Place's veranda. The latch was unfastened, and
the crate's top was lifted back on its hinges.
Out stepped Lass,--tired, confused, a little frightened, but eagerly
willing to make friends with a world which she still insisted on
believing was friendly. It is hard to shake a collie pup's inborn faith
in the friendliness of mankind, but once shaken, it is more than
shaken. It is shattered beyond hope of complete mending.
For an instant she stood thus, looking in timid appeal from one to
another of the faces about her. These faces were blank enough as they
returned her gaze. The glad expectancy was wiped from them as with a
sponge. It was the Master who first found voice.
"And THAT'S Rothsay Princess!" he snorted indignantly. "That's the pup
worth two hundred dollars at eight months, 'because she has every
single good point of Champion Rothsay Chief and not a flaw from nostril
to tail-tip'! Rothsay wrote those very words about her, you remember.
And he's supposed to be the most dependable man in the collie business!
Lord! She's undersized--no bigger than a five monther! And she's
prick-eared and apple-domed; and her head's as wide as a church door!"
Apparently these humans were not glad to see her. Lass was grieved at
their cold appraisal and a little frightened by the Master's tone of
disgust. Yet she was eager, as ever, to make a good impression and to
lure people into liking her. Shyly she walked up to the Mistress and
laid one white little paw on her knee.
Handshaking was Lass's one accomplishment. It had been taught her by
Dick. It had pleased the boy. He had been proud of her ability to do
it. Perhaps it might also please these strangers. And after the odd
fashion of all new arrivals who came to The Place, Lass picked out the
Mistress, rather than any one else, as a potential friend.
The Mistress had ever roused the impatience of collie experts by
looking past the showier "points" of a dog and into the soul and brain
and disposition that lay behind them. So now she looked; and what she
saw in Lass's darkly wistful eyes established the intruder's status at
The Place.
"Let her stay!" pleaded the Mistress as the Master growled something
about bundling the dog into her crate again and sending her back to the
Rothsay Kennels. "Let her stay, please! She's a dear."
"But we're not breeding 'dears,'" observed the Master. "We planned to
breed a strain of perfect collies. And this is a mutt!"
"Her pedigree says there's no better collie blood in America," denied
the Mistress. "And even if she happens to be a 'second,' that's no sign
her puppies will be seconds. See how pretty and loving and wise she is.
DO keep her!"
Which of course settled the matter.
Up the lawn, from his morning swim in the lake, strolled a great
mahogany-and-white collie. At sight of Lass he lowered his head for a
charge. He was king of The Place's dogs, this mighty thoroughbred,
Sunnybank Lad. And he did not welcome canine intruders.
But he halted midway in his dash toward the puppy who frisked forth so
gayly to meet him. For he recognized her as a female. And man is the
only animal that will molest the female of his species.
The fiercely silent charge was changed in a trice to a coldly civil
touching of noses, and the majestic wagging of a plumy tail. After
which, side by side, the two collies--big and little--old and
new--walked up to the veranda, to be petted by the humans who had so
amusedly watched their encounter.
"See!" exclaimed the Mistress, in triumph. "Lad has accepted her. He
vouches for her. That ought to be enough for any one!"
Thus it was that Lass found a home.
As she never yet had been taught to know her name, she learned readily
to respond to the title of "Princess." And for several months life went
on evenly and happily for her.
Indeed, life was always wondrous pleasant, there at The Place,--for
humans and for animals alike. A fire-blue lake bordered the grounds on
two sides. Behind stretched the forest. And on every side arose the
soft green mountains, hemming in and brooding over The Place as though
they loved it. In the winter evenings there was the huge library hearth
with its blaze and warmth; and a disreputable fur rug in front of it
that might have been ordained expressly for tired dogs to drowse on.
And there were the Mistress and the Master. Especially the Mistress!
The Mistress somehow had a way of making all the world seem worth while.
Then, of a morning, when Lass was just eleven months old, two things
happened.
The Mistress and the Master went down to her kennel after breakfast.
Lass did not run forth to greet them as usual. She lay still, wagging
her tail in feeble welcome as they drew near. But she did not get up.
Crowding close to her tawny side was a tiny, shapeless creature that
looked more like a fat blind rat than like anything else. It was a
ten-hour-old collie pup--a male, and yellowish brown of hue.
"That's the climax!" complained the Master, breaking in on the
Mistress's rhapsodies. "Here we've been planning to start a kennel of
home-bred collies! And see what results we get! One solitary puppy! Not
once in ten times are there less than six in a collie-litter. Sometimes
there are a dozen. And here the dog you wheedled me into keeping has
just one! I expected at least seven."
"If it's a freak to be the only puppy in a litter," answered the
Mistress, refusing to part with her enthusiasm over the miracle, "then
this one ought to bring us luck. Let's call him 'Bruce.' You remember,
the original Bruce won because of the mystic number, seven. This Bruce
has got to make up to us for the seven puppies that weren't born. See
how proud she is of him! Isn't she a sweet little mother?"
The second of the morning's events was a visit from the foreman of the
Rothsay Kennels, who motored across to The Place, intent on clearing up
a mystery.
"The Boss found a collie yesterday, tied in the front yard of a negro
cabin a mile or two from our kennels," he told the Master. "He
recognized her right away as Rothsay Princess. The negro claims to have
found her wandering around near the railroad tracks, one night, six
months ago. Now, what's the answer?"
"The answer," said the Master, "is that your boss is mistaken. I've had
Rothsay Princess for the past six months. And she's the last dog I'll
ever get from the Rothsay Kennels. I was stung, good and plenty, on
that deal.
"My wife wanted to keep her, or I'd have made a kick in the courts for
having to pay two hundred dollars for a cheeky, apple-domed, prick
eared--"
"Prick-eared!" exclaimed the foreman, aghast at the volleyed sacrilege.
"Rothsay Princess has the best ears of any pup we've bred since
Champion Rothsay Chief. Not a flaw in that pup. She--"
"Not a flaw, hey!" sniffed the Master. "Come down to the kennel and
take a look at her. She has as many flaws as a street-cur has fleas."
He led the way to the kennel. At sight of the stranger Lass growled and
showed her teeth. For a collie mother will let nobody but proven
friends come near to her newborn brood.
The foreman stared at the hostile young mother for a half-minute,
whistling bewilderedly between his teeth. Then he laughed aloud.
"That's no more Rothsay Princess than I am!" he declared. "I know who
she IS, though. I'd remember that funny mask among a million. That's
Rothsay Lass! Though how she got HERE--!
"We couldn't have shipped her by mistake, either," he went on,
confused. "For we'd sold her, that same day, to a kid in our town. I
ought to know. Because the kid kept on pestering us every day for a
month afterward, to find if she had come back to us. He said she ran
away in the night. He still comes around, once a week or so, to ask. A
spindly, weak, sick-looking little chap, he is. I don't get the point
of this thing, from any angle. But we run our kennels on the square.
And I can promise the boss'll either send back your check or send
Rothsay Princess to you and take Lass back."
Two days later, while all The Place was still mulling over the mystery,
a letter came for the Master from Lass's home town. It was signed
"Edw'd Hazen," and it was written on the cheap stationery of his
employer's bottling works. It read:
Dear Sir:
"Six months ago, my son bought a dog from the Rothsay Kennels. It was a
she-dog, and his ma and I didn't want one around. So I put it aboard a
freight-car on the sly. My boy went sick over losing his dog. He has
never rightly got over it, but he peaks and mopes and gets thinner all
the time. If I had known how hard he was going to take it, I would of
cut off my hand before I would of done such a thing. And my wife feels
just like I do about it. We would both of us have given a hundred
dollars to get the dog back for him, when we saw how bad he felt. But
it was too late. Somehow or other it is most generally too late when a
rotten thing has been done.
"To-day he went again to the Rothsay Kennels to ask if she had come
back. He has always been hoping she would. And they told him you have
her. Now, sir, I am a poor man, but if one hundred dollars will make
you sell me that dog, I'll send it to you in a money order by return
mail. It will be worth ten times that much, to my wife and me, to have
Dick happy again. I inclose a stamp. Will you let me know?"
Six weeks afterward The Place's car brought Dick Hazen across to
receive his long-lost pet.
The boy was thinner and shakier and whiter than when he had gone to
sleep with his cherished puppy curled against his narrow chest. But
there was a light in his eyes and an eagerness in his heart that had
not been there in many a long week.
Lass was on the veranda to welcome him. And as Dick scrambled out of
the car and ran to pick her up, she came more than half-way to meet
him. With a flurry of fast-pattering steps and a bark of eager welcome,
she flung herself upon her long-vanished master. For a highbred collie
does not forget. And at first glimpse of the boy Lass remembered him.
Dick caught her up in his arms--a harder feat than of yore, because of
her greater weight and his own sapped strength,--and hugged her tight
to his breast. Winking very fast indeed to disperse tears that had no
place in the eyes of a self-contained man of twelve, he sputtered
rapturously:
"I KNEW I'd find you, Lassie--I knew it all the time;--even the times
when I was deadsure I wouldn't! Gee, but you've grown, though! And
you're beautifuler than ever. Isn't she, Miss?" he demanded, turning to
the Mistress with instinctive knowledge that here at least he would
find confirmation. "Indeed she is!" the Mistress assured him.
"And see how glad she is to be with you again! She--"
"And Dad says she can stay with me, for keeps!" exulted Dick. "He says
he'll put a new lock on the cellar door, so she can't ever push out
again, the way she did, last time. But I guess she's had her lesson in
going out for walks at night and not being able to find her way back.
She and I are going to have the dandiest times together, that ever
happened. Aren't we, Lass? Is that her little boy?" he broke off, in
eager curiosity, as the Master appeared from the kennels, carrying
Bruce.
The puppy was set down on the veranda floor for Dick's inspection.
"He's cunning, isn't he? Kind of like a Teddy Bear,--the sort kids play
with. But," with a tinge of worry, "I'm not sure Ma will let me keep
two. Maybe--"
"Perhaps," suggested the Mistress, "perhaps you'd like us to keep
little Bruce, to remember Lass by? We'll try to make him very happy."
"Yes'm!" agreed Dick, in much haste, his brow clearing from a mental
vision of Mrs. Hazen's face when she should see him return with twice
as many dogs as he had set out for. "Yes'm. If you wouldn't mind, very
much. S'pose we leave it that way? I guess Bruce'll like being with
you, Miss. I--I guess pretty near anybody would. You'll--you'll try not
to be too homesick for Lass, won't you?"
On the steps of the veranda the downy and fat puppy watched his
mother's departure with no especial interest. By the Mistress's wish,
Mr. Hazen had not been required to make any part of his proffered
hundred-dollar payment for the return of his boy's pet. All the
Mistress had stipulated was that Lass might be allowed to remain at The
Place until baby Bruce should no longer need her.
"Bruce," said the Mistress as the car rolled up the drive and out of
sight, "you are the sole visible result of The Place's experiment in
raising prize collies. You have a tremendous responsibility on those
fat little shoulders of yours,--to live up to it all."
By way of showing his scorn for such trifles as a "tremendous
responsibility," Bruce proceeded to make a ferocious onslaught at the
Mistress's temperamental gray Persian kitten, "Tipperary," which was
picking a mincing way across the veranda.
A howl of pain and two scratches on his tiny nose immediately followed
the attack. Tipperary then went on with her mincing promenade. And
Bruce, with loud lamentations, galloped to the shelter of the
Mistress's skirt.
"Poor little chap!" soothed the Mistress, picking him up and comforting
him. "Responsibility isn't such a joke, after all, is it, Baby?"