Lad: A Dog Read online

  At sound of her first yelp, Lad had run forward, whining eager sympathy. But the closed door blocked his way. He crouched, wretched and anxious, before it, helpless to go to his loved one’s assistance.

  Knave, too, loping back from a solitary prowl of the woods, seeking Lady, heard the yelp. His prick-ears located the sound at once. Along the veranda he trotted, to the open study window. With a bound he had cleared the sill and alighted inside the room.

  It chanced to be his first visit to the study. The door was usually kept shut, that drafts might not blow the Master’s desk papers about. And Knave felt, at best, little interest in exploring the interior of houses. He was an outdoor dog, by choice.

  He advanced now toward Lady, his tail awag, his head on one side, with his most irresistible air. Then, as he came forward into the room, he saw the eagle. He halted in wonder at sight of the enormous white-crested bird with its six-foot sweep of pinion. It was a wholly novel spectacle to Knave; and he greeted it with a gruff bark, half of fear, half of bravado. Quickly, however, his sense of smell told him this wide-winged apparition was no living thing. And ashamed of his momentary cowardice, he went over to investigate it.

  As he went, Knave cast over his shoulder a look of invitation to Lady to join him in his inspection. She understood the invitation, but memory of that puppyhood beating made her recoil from accepting it. Knave saw her shrink back, and he realized with a thrill that she was actually afraid of this lifeless thing which could harm no one. With due pride in showing off his own heroism before her, and with the scamp dog’s innate craving to destroy, he sprang growling upon the eagle.

  Down tumbled the papier-mâché stump. Down crashed the huge stuffed bird with it; Knave’s white teeth buried deep in the soft feathers of its breast.

  Lady, horror-struck at this sacrilege, whimpered in terror. But her plaint served only to increase Knave’s zest for destruction.

  He hurled the bird to the floor, pinned it down with his feet and at one jerk tore the right wing from the body. Coughing out the mouthful of dusty pinions, he dug his teeth into the eagle’s throat. Again bracing himself with his forelegs on the carcass, he gave a sharp tug. Head and neck came away in his mouth. And then before he could drop the mouthful and return to the work of demolition, he heard the Master’s step.

  All at once, now, Knave proved he was less ignorant of the Law—or, at least, of its penalties—than might have been supposed from his act of vandalism. In sudden panic he bolted for the window, the silvery head of the eagle still, unheeded, between his jaws. With a vaulting spring, he shot out through the open casement, in his reckless eagerness to escape, knocking against Lady’s injured leg as he passed.

  He did not pause at Lady’s scream of pain, nor did he stop until he reached the chicken house. Crawling under this, he deposited the incriminating eagle head in the dark recess. Finding no pursuer, he emerged and jogged innocently back toward the veranda.

  The Master, entering the house and walking across the living room toward the stair, heard Lady’s cry. He looked around for her, recognizing from the sound that she must be in distress. His eye fell on Lad, crouching tense and eager in front of the shut study door.

  The Master opened the door and went into the study.

  At the first step inside the room he stopped, aghast. There lay the chewed and battered fragments of his beloved eagle. And there, in one corner, frightened, with guilt writ plain all over her, cowered Lady. Men have been “legally” done to death on far lighter evidence than encompassed her.

  The Master was thunderstruck. For more than two years Lady had had the free run of the house. And this was her first sin—at that, a sin unworthy any well-bred dog that has graduated from puppyhood and from milk teeth. He would not have believed it. He could not have believed it. Yet here was the hideous evidence, scattered all over the floor.

  The door was shut, but the window stood wide. Through the window, doubtless, she had gotten into the room. And he had surprised her at her vandal work before she could escape by the same opening.

  The Master was a just man—as humans go; but this was a crime the most maudlin dog-spoiler could not have condoned. The eagle, moreover, had been the pride of his heart —as perhaps I have said. Without a word, he walked to the wall and took down a braided dog whip, dust-covered from long disuse.

  Lady knew what was coming. Being a thoroughbred, she did not try to run, nor did she roll for mercy. She cowered, moveless, nose to floor, awaiting her doom.

  Back swished the lash. Down it came, whistling as a man whistles whose teeth are broken. Across Lady’s slender flanks it smote, with the full force of a strong driving arm. Lady quivered all over. But she made no sound. She who would whimper at a chance touch to her sore foot, was mute under human punishment.

  But Lad was not mute. As the Master’s arm swung back for a second blow, he heard, just behind, a low, throaty growl that held all the menace of ten thousand wordy threats.

  He wheeled about. Lad was close at his heels, fangs bared, eyes red, head lowered, tawny body taut in every sinew.

  The Master blinked at him, incredulous. Here was something infinitely more unbelievable than Lady’s supposed destruction of the eagle. The Impossible had come to pass.

  For, know well, a dog does not growl at its Master. At its owner, perhaps; at its Master, never. As soon would a devout priest blaspheme his deity.

  Nor does a dog approach anything or anybody, growling and with lowered head, unless intent on battle. Have no fear when a dog barks or even growls at you, so long as his head is erect. But when he growls and lowers his head—then look out. It means but one thing.

  The Master had been the Master—the sublime, blindly revered and worshiped Master—for all the blameless years of Lad’s life. And now, growling, head down, the dog was threatening him.

  It was the supreme misery, the crowning hell, of Lad’s career. For the first time, two overpowering loves fought with each other in his Galahad soul. And the love for poor, unjustly blamed Lady hurled down the superlove for the Master.

  In baring teeth upon his lord, the collie well knew what he was incurring. But he did not flinch. Understanding that swift death might well be his portion, he stood his ground.

  (Is there greater love? Humans—sighing swains, vow-laden suitors—can any of you match it? I think not. Not even the much-lauded Antonys. They throw away only the mere world of earthly credit, for love.)

  The Master’s jaw set. He was well-nigh as unhappy as the dog. For he grasped the situation, and he was man enough to honor Lad’s proffered sacrifice. Yet it must be punished, and punished instantly—as any dog-master will testify. Let a dog once growl or show his teeth in menace at his Master, and if the rebellion be not put down in drastic fashion, the Master ceases forever to be Master and degenerates to mere owner. His mysterious power over his dog is gone for all time.

  Turning his back on Lady, the Master whirled his dog whip in air. Lad saw the lash coming down. He did not flinch. He did not cower. The growl ceased. The orange-tawny collie stood erect. Down came the braided whiplash on Lad’s shoulders—again over his loins, and yet again and again.

  Without moving—head up, dark tender eyes unwinking—the hero dog took the scourging. When it was over, he waited only to see the Master throw the dog whip fiercely into a corner of the study. Then, knowing Lady was safe, Lad walked majestically back to his “cave” under the piano, and with a long, quivering sigh he lay down.

  His spirit was sick and crushed within him. For the first time in his thoroughbred life he had been struck. For he was one of those not wholly rare dogs to whom a sharp word of reproof is more effective than a beating—to whom a blow is not a pain, but a damning and overwhelming ignominy. Had a human, other than the Master, presumed to strike him, the assailant must have fought for life.

  Through the numbness of Lad’s grief, bit by bit, began to smolder and glow a deathless hate for Knave, the cause of Lady’s humiliation. Lad had known what passed behin
d that closed study door as well as though he had seen. For ears and scent serve a true collie quite as usefully as do mere eyes.

  The Master was little happier than was his favorite dog. For he loved Lad as he would have loved a human son. Though Lad did not realize it, the Master had “let off” Lady from the rest of her beating, in order not to increase her champion’s grief. He simply ordered her out of the study.

  And as she limped away, the Master tried to rekindle his own indignation and deaden his sense of remorse by gathering together the strewn fragments of the eagle. It occurred to him that though the bird was destroyed, he might yet have its fierce-eyed silvery head mounted on a board, as a minor trophy.

  But he could not find the head.

  Search the study as he would, he could not find it. He remembered distinctly that Lady had been panting as she slunk out of the room. And dogs that are carrying things in their mouths cannot pant. She had not taken the head away with her. The absence of the head only deepened the whole annoying domestic mystery. He gave up trying to solve any of the puzzle—from Lady’s incredible vandalism to this newest turn of the affair.

  Not until two days later could Lad bring himself to risk a meeting with Lady, the cause and the witness of his beating. Then, yearning for a sight of her and for even her grudged recognition of his presence, after his forty-eight hours of isolation, he sallied forth from the house in search of her.

  He traced her to the cool shade of a lilac clump near the outbuildings. There, having with one paw dug a little pit in the cool earth, she was curled up asleep under the bushes. Stretched out beside her was Knave.

  Lad’s spine bristled at sight of his foe. But ignoring him, he moved over to Lady and touched her nose with his own in timid caress. She opened one eye, blinked drowsily and went to sleep again.

  But Lad’s coming had awakened Knave. Much refreshed by his nap, he woke in a playful mood. He tried to induce Lady to romp with him, but she preferred to doze. So, casting about in his shallow mind for something to play with, Knave chanced to remember the prize he had hidden beneath the chicken house.

  Away he ambled, returning presently with the eagle’s head between his teeth. As he ran, he tossed it aloft, catching it as it fell—a pretty trick he had long since learned with a tennis ball.

  Lad, who had lain down as near to sleepily scornful Lady as he dared, looked up and saw him approach. He saw, too, with what Knave was playing; and as he saw, he went quite mad. Here was the thing that had caused Lady’s interrupted punishment and his own black disgrace. Knave was exploiting it with manifest and brazen delight.

  For the second time in his life—and for the second time in three days—Lad broke the Law. He forgot, in a trice, the command “Let him alone!” And noiseless, terrible, he flew at the gamboling Knave.

  Knave was aware of the attack, barely in time to drop the eagle’s head and spring forward to meet his antagonist. He was three years Lad’s junior and was perhaps five pounds heavier. Moreover, constant exercise had kept him in steel-and-whalebone condition; while lonely brooding at home had begun of late to soften Lad’s tough sinews.

  Knave was mildly surprised that the dog he had looked on as a dullard and a poltroon should have developed a flash of spirit. But he was not at all unwilling to wage a combat whose victory must make him shine with redoubled glory in Lady’s eyes.

  Like two furry whirlwinds the collies spun forward toward each other. They met. upreared and snarled, slashing wolflike for the throat, clawing madly to retain balance. Then down they went, rolling in a right unloving embrace, snapping, tearing, growling.

  Lad drove straight for the throat. A half-handful of Knave’s golden ruff came away in his jaws. For except at the exact center, a collie’s throat is protected by a tangle of hair as effective against assault as were Andrew Jackson’s cotton-bale breastworks at New Orleans. And Lad had missed the exact center.

  Over and over they rolled. They regained their footing and reared again. Lad’s saber-shaped tusk ripped a furrow in Knave’s satiny forehead; and Knave’s half-deflected slash in return set bleeding the big vein at the top of Lad’s left ear.

  Lady was wide awake long before this. Standing immovable, yet wildly excited—after the age-old fashion of the female brute for whom males battle and who knows she is to be the winner’s prize—she watched every turn of the fight.

  Up once more, the dogs clashed, chest to chest. Knave, with an instinctive throwback to his wolf forebears of five hundred years earlier, dived for Lad’s forelegs, with the hope of breaking one of them between his foaming jaws.

  He missed the hold by a fraction of an inch. The skin alone was torn. And down over the little white forepaw—one of the forepaws that Lad was wont to lick for an hour a day to keep them snowy—ran a trickle of blood.

  That miss was a costly error for Knave. For Lad’s teeth sought and found his left shoulder, and sank deep therein. Knave twisted and wheeled with lightning speed and with all his strength. Yet had not his gold-hued ruff choked Lad and pressed stranglingly against his nostrils, all the heavier dog’s struggles would not have set him free.

  As it was, Lad, gasping for breath enough to fill his lungs, relaxed his grip ever so slightly. And in that fraction of a second Knave tore free, leaving a mouthful of hair and skin in his enemy’s jaws.

  In the same wrench that liberated him—and as the relieved tension sent Lad stumbling forward—Knave instinctively saw his chance and took it. Again heredity came to his aid, for he tried a maneuver known only to wolves and to collies. Flashing above his stumbling foe’s head, Knave seized Lad from behind, just below the base of the skull. And holding him thus helpless, he proceeded to grit and grind his tight-clenched teeth in the slow, relentless motion that must soon or late eat down to and sever the spinal cord.

  Lad, even as he thrashed frantically about, felt there was no escape. He was well-nigh as powerless against a strong opponent in this position as is a puppy that is held up by the scruff of the neck.

  Without a sound, but still struggling as best he might, he awaited his fate. No longer was he growling or snarling.

  His patient, bloodshot eyes sought wistfully for Lady. And they did not find her.

  For even as they sought her, a novel element entered into the battle. Lady, hitherto awaiting with true feminine meekness the outcome of the scrimmage, saw her old flame’s terrible plight, under the grinding jaws. And, proving herself false to all canons of ancestry—moved by some impulse she did not try to resist—she jumped forward. Forgetting the pain in her swollen foot, she nipped Knave sharply in the hind leg. Then, as if abashed by her unfeminine behavior, she drew back, in shame.

  But the work was done.

  Through the red war lust Knave dimly realized that he was attacked from behind—perhaps that his new opponent stood an excellent chance of gaining upon him such a death-hold as he himself now held.

  He loosed his grip and whizzed about, frothing and snapping, to face the danger. Before Knave had half completed his lightning whirl, Lad had him by the side of the throat.

  It was no death-grip, this. Yet it was not only acutely painful, but it held its victim quite as powerless as he had just now held Lad. Bearing down with all his weight and setting his white little front teeth and his yellowing tusks firmly in their hold, Lad gradually shoved Knave’s head sideways to the ground and held it there.

  The result on Knave’s activities was much the same as is obtained by sitting on the head of a kicking horse that has fallen. Unable to wrench loose, helpless to counter, in keen agony from the pinching of the tender throat skin beneath the masses of ruff, Knave lost his nerve. And he forthwith justified those yellowish streaks in his mouth roof whereof the baggage man had spoken.

  He made the air vibrate with his abject howls of pain and fear. He was caught. He could not get away. Lad was hurting him horribly. Wherefore he ki-yied as might any gutter cur whose tail is stepped upon.

  Presently, beyond the fight haze, Lad saw a shadow in
front of him—a shadow that resolved itself in the settling dust as the Master. And Lad came to himself.

  He loosed his hold on Knave’s throat, and stood up, groggily. Knave, still yelping, tucked his tail between his legs and fled for his life—out of The Place, out of your story.

  Slowly, stumbling, but without a waver of hesitation, Lad went up to the Master. He was gasping for breath, and he was weak from fearful exertion and from loss of blood. Up to the Master he went—straight up to him.

  And not until he was a scant two yards away did he see that the Master held something in his hand—that abominable, mischief-making eagle’s head, which he had just picked up! Probably the dog whip was in the other hand. It did not matter much. Lad was ready for this final degradation. He would not try to dodge it, he the double breaker of Laws.

  Then—the Master was kneeling beside him. The kind hand was caressing the dog’s dizzy head, the dear voice—a queer break in it—was saying remorsefully:

  “Oh Lad! Laddie! I’m so sorry. So sorry! You’re—you’re more of a man than I am, old friend. I’ll make it up to you, somehow!”

  And now besides the loved hand, there was another touch, even more precious—a warmly caressing little pink tongue that licked his bleeding foreleg.

  , Lady-timidly, adoringly—was trying to stanch her hero’s wounds.

  “Lady, I apologize to you, too,” went on the foolish Master. “I’m sorry, girl.”

  Lady was too busy soothing the hurts of her newly dis-, covered mate to understand. But Lad understood. Lad always understood.

  2

  “QUIET”

  TO LAD THE REAL WORLD WAS BOUNDED BY THE PLACE. Outside, there were a certain number of miles of land and there were an uncertain number of people. But the miles were uninspiring, except for a cross-country tramp with the Master. And the people were foolish and strange folk who either stared at him—which always annoyed Lad—or else tried to pat him, which he hated. But The Place was—The Place.