Lad: A Dog (17 page)

Trembling with anger, yet with no thought of rebelling, Lad turned and trotted back to the veranda. He thrust his cold nose into the Mistress' warm little hand and looked up eagerly into her face, seeking a repeal of the command to keep away from the sheep and their driver.

But the Mistress only patted his silken head and whispered:

“We don't like it any more than you do, Laddie; but we mustn't let anyone know we don't. Leave them alone!”

Past the veranda filed the twenty priceless sheep, and on to the paddock.

“I suppose they'll carry off all the prizes at the fair, won't they?” asked the Mistress civilly, as McGillicuddy plodded past her at the tail of the procession.

“Ablins, aye,” grunted McGillicuddy, with the exquisite courtesy of a member of his race and class who feels he is being patronized. “Ablins, aye. Ablins, na'. Ablins—ugh-uh.”

Having thus safeguarded his statement against assault from any side at all, the Scot moved on. Lad strolled down toward the paddock to superintend the task of locking up the sheep. The Mistress did not detain him. She felt calmly certain her order of “Leave them alone!” had rendered the twenty visitors inviolate from him.

Lad walked slowly around the paddock, his gaze on the sheep. These were the first sheep he had ever seen. Yet his ancestors, for a thousand years or more, had herded and guarded flocks on the moors.

Atavism is mysteriously powerful in dogs, and it takes strange forms. A collie, too, has a queer strain of wolf in him—not only in body but in brain, and the wolf was the sheep's official murderer, as far back as the days when a humpbacked Greek slave, named Æsop, used to beguile his sleepless nights with writing fables.

Round and round the paddock prowled Lad, his eyes alight with a myriad half-memories, his sensitive nostrils quivering at the scents that enveloped them.

McGillicuddy, from time to time, eyed the dog obliquely, and with a scowl. These sheep were not the pride of his heart. His conscientious heart possessed no pride—pride being one of the seven deadly sins, and the sheep not being his own; but the flock represented his livelihood—his comfortably overpaid job with the Wall Street Farmer. He was responsible for their welfare.

And McGillicuddy did not at all like the way this beautiful collie eyed the prize merinos, nor was the Scot satisfied with the strength of the corral. Its wire fencing was rusty and sagging from long disuse, its gate hung crookedly and had a crazy hasp.

A sheep is one of the least intelligent creatures on earth. Should the flock's leader decide at any time during the night to press his heavy bulk against the gate or against some of the rustier wire strands, there would presently be a gap through which the entire twenty could amble forth. Once outside—

Again McGillicuddy glowered dourly at Lad. The collie returned the look with interest, a well-bred dog being as skilled in reading human faces as is any professional dead beat. Lad saw the dislike in McGillicuddy's heavy-thatched eyes; cordially he yearned to prove his own distaste for the shepherd, but the Mistress' command had immunized this sour stranger.

So Lad merely turned his back on the man, sat down, flattened his furry ears close against his head, thrust his pointed nose skyward, and sniffed. McGillicuddy was too much an animal man not to read the insult in the dog's posture and action, and the shepherd's fist tightened longingly round his staff.

Half an hour later the Wall Street Farmer himself arrived at The Place. He came in a runabout. On the seat beside him sat his pasty-faced, four-year-old son. At his feet was something which, at first glance, might have been either a quadruped or a rag bag.

The Mistress and the Master, with dutiful hypocrisy, came smilingly out on the veranda to welcome the guests. Lad, who had returned from the impromptu sheepfold, stood beside them. At sight and scent of this new batch of visitors the collie doubtless felt what old-fashioned novelists used to describe as “mingled emotions.”

There was a child in the car. And though there had been few children in Lad's life, yet he loved them, loved them as a big-hearted and big-bodied dog always loves the helpless. Wherefore, at sight of the child, Lad rejoiced.

But the animal crouching at the Wall Street Farmer's feet was quite a different form of guest. Lad recognized the thing as a dog—yet no such dog as ever he had seen. An unwholesome-looking dog. Even as the little boy was an unwholesome-looking child.

“Well!” sonorously proclaimed the Wall Street Farmer as he scrambled out of the runabout and bore down upon his hosts, “here I am! The sheep got here all safe? Good! I knew they would. McGillicuddy's a genius; nothing he can't do with sheep. You remember Mortimer?”—lifting the lanky youngster from the seat. “He teased so to come along, his mother said I'd better bring him. I knew you'd be glad. Shake hands with them, Morty, darling.”

“I wun't!” snarled Morty darling, hanging back.

Then he caught sight of Lad. The collie came straight up to the child, grinning from ear to ear, and wrinkling his nose so delightedly that every white front tooth showed. Morty flung himself forward to greet the huge dog, but the Wall Street Farmer, with a shout of warning, caught the boy in his arms and bravely interposed his own fat body between Mortimer and Lad.

“What does the beast mean by snarling at my son?” fiercely demanded the Wall Street Farmer. “You people have no right to leave such a savage dog at large.”

“He's not snarling,” the Mistress indignantly declared, “he's smiling. That's Lad's way. Why, he'd let himself be cut up into squares sooner than hurt a child.”

Still doubtful, the Wall Street Farmer cautiously set down his son on the veranda. Morty flung himself bodily upon Lad, hauling and mauling the stately collie this way and that.

Had any grown person, save only the Mistress or the Master, attempted such treatment, the curving white eyeteeth would have buried themselves very promptly in the offender.

Indeed, the Master now gazed, with some nervousness, at the performance, but the Mistress was not worried as to her adored pet's behavior; and the Mistress, as ever, was right.

For Lad endured the mauling—not patiently, but blissfully. He fairly writhed with delight at the painful tugging of hair and ears; and moistly he strove to kiss the wizened little face that was on a level with his own. Morty repaid this attention by slapping Lad across the mouth. Lad only wagged his plumy tail the more ecstatically and snuggled closer to the preposterous baby.

Meantime, the Wall Street Farmer, in clarion tones, was calling attention to the second of the two treasures he had brought along.

“Melisande!” he cried.

At the summons, the fuzzy monstrosity in the car ceased peering snappishly over the doortop at Lad, and condescended to turn toward its owner. It looked like something between an old English sheep dog and a dachshund; straw-colored fur enveloped the scrawny body; a miserable apology for a bushy tail hung limply between crooked hind legs; evil little eyes peered forth from beneath a scarecrow stubble of head fringe; it was not a pretty dog, this canine the Wall Street Farmer had just addressed by the poetic title of “Melisande.”

“What in blazes is he?” asked the Master.

“She is a Prussian sheep dog,” proudly replied the Wall Street Farmer. “She is the first of her breed ever imported to America. Cost me a clean $1,100 to buy her from a Chicago man who brought her over. I'm going to exhibit her at the Garden Show next winter. What do you think of her, old man?”

“I'd hate to tell you,” said the Master, “but I'll gladly tell you what I think of that Chicago man. He's the original genius who sold all the land between New York and Jersey City for a thousand dollars an acre and issued the series of ten-dollar season admission tickets to Central Park.”

Being the Wall Street Farmer's host the Master said this in the recesses of his own heart. Aloud, he blithered some complimentary lie and watched the visitor lift the scraggy nondescript out of the car.

The moment she was on the ground, Melisande made a wild dash at Lad. Snarling, she snapped ferociously at his throat. Lad merely turned his shaggy shoulder to meet the onslaught. And Melisande found herself gripping nothing but a mouthful of his soft hair. He made no move to resent the attack. And the Wall Street Farmer, shouting unobeyed mandates to his pet, dragged away the pugnacious Melisande by the scruff of the neck.

The $1,100 Prussian sheep dog next caught a glimpse of one of the half-grown peacock chicks—the joy of the Mistress' summer—strutting across the lawn. Melisande, with a yap of glee, rushed off in pursuit.

The chick had no fear. The dogs of The Place had always been trained to give the fowls a wide berth; so the pretty little peacock fell a pitifully easy prey to the first snap of Melisande's jaws.

Lad growled, deep down in his throat, at this gross lawlessness. The Mistress bit her lip to keep her self-control at the slaughter of her pet. The Master hastily said something that was lost in the louder volume of the Wall Street Farmer's bellow as he sought to call back his $1,100 treasure from further slaying.

“Well, well, well!” the guest exclaimed as at last he returned to the veranda, dragging Melisande along in his wake. “I'm sorry this happened, but you must overlook it. You see, Melisande is so high-spirited she is hard to control. That's the way with thoroughbred dogs. Don't you find it so?”

The Master, thus appealed to, glanced at his wife. She was momentarily out of earshot, having gone to pick up the killed peacock and stroke its rumpled plumage. So the Master allowed himself the luxury of plainer speech than if she had been there to be grieved over the breach of hospitality.

“A thoroughbred dog,” he said oracularly, “is either the best dog on earth, or else he is the worst. If he is the best he learns to mind, and to behave himself in every way like a thoroughbred. He learns it without being beaten or sworn at. If he is the worst—then it's wisest for his owner to hunt up some Easy Mark and sell the cur to him for $ 1, 100. You'll notice I said his ‘owner'—not his ‘master.' There's all the difference in the world between those two terms. Anybody, with price to buy a dog, can be an ‘owner,' but all the cash coined won't make a man a dog's ‘master'—unless he's that sort of man. Think it over.”

The Wall Street Farmer glared apoplectically at his host, who was already sorry that the sneer at Lad and the killing of his wife's pet had made him speak so to a guest—even to a self-invited and undesired guest. Then the Wall Street Man, with a grunt, put a leash on Melisande and gruffly asked that she be fastened to one of the vacant kennels.

The Mistress came back to the group as the $1,100 beast was led away, kennelward, by the gardener. Recovering her self-possession, the Mistress said to her guest:

“I never heard of a Prussian sheep dog before. Is she trained to herd your sheep?”

“No,” replied the Wall Street Farmer, his rancor forgotten in the prospect of exploiting his wondrous dog, “not yet. In fact, she hates the sheep. She's young, so we haven't tried to train her for shepherding. Two or three times we have taken her into the pasture—always on leash—but she flies at the sheep and goes almost crazy with anger. McGillicuddy says it's bad for the sheep to be scared by her. So we keep her away from them. But by next season—”

He got no further. A sound of lamentation—prolonged and leather-lunged lamentation—smote upon the air.

“Morty!” ejaculated the visitor in panic. “It's Morty! Quick!”

Following the easily traceable direction of the squalling, he ran up the veranda steps and into the house—closely followed by the Mistress and the Master.

The engaging Mortimer was of the stuff whereof explorers are made. Bored by the stupid talk of grown folk, wearying of Lad's friendly advances, he had slipped through the open house door into the living room.

There, for the day was cool, a jolly wood fire blazed on the hearth. In front of the fireplace was an enormous and cavernous couch. In the precise center of the couch was curled something that looked like a ball of the grayish fluff a maid sweeps under the bed.

As Mortimer came into the room, the infatuated Lad at his heels, the fluffy ball lazily uncurled and stretched—thereby revealing itself as no ball, but a superfurry gray kitten—the Mistress' temperamental new Persian kitten rejoicing in the dreamily Oriental name of Tipperary.

With a squeal of glad discovery, Mortimer grabbed Tipperary with both hands, essaying to pull her fox-brush tail. Now, no sane person needs to be told the basic difference between the heart of a cat and the heart of a dog. Nor will any student of Persian kittens be surprised to hear that Tipperary's reception of the ruffianly baby's advances was totally different from Lad's.

A lightning stroke of one of her shapeless forepaws, and Tipperary was free. Morty stood blinking in amaze at four geometrically regular red marks on the back of his own pudgy hand. Tipperary had not done her persecutor the honor to run away. She merely moved to the far end of the couch and lay down there to renew her nap.

A mad fury fired the brain of Mortimer, a fury goaded by the pain of his scratches. Screaming in rage he seized the cat by the nape of the neck—to be safe from teeth and whizzing claws—and stamped across toward the high-burning fire with her. His arm was drawn back to fling the squirming and offending kitten into the scarlet heart of the flames. And then Lad intervened.

Now Lad was not in the very least interested in Tipperary, treating the temperamental Persian always with marked coldness. It is even doubtful if he realized Morty's intent.

But one thing he did realize—that a silly baby was toddling straight toward the fire. As many another wise dog has done, before and since, Lad quietly stepped between Morty and the hearth. He stood, broadside to the fire and to the child—a shaggy wall between the peril and the baby.