Lad: A Dog (23 page)

The man did not seek help by shouting. Instead, he seemed oddly willing that no other human should intrude on his sorry plight. A single loud yell would have brought aid from the stables or from the house or even from the lodge up by the gate. Yet, though the man must have guessed this, he did not yell. Instead, he cursed whisperingly at intervals and snarled at his captor.

At last, his nerve going, the prisoner drew out a jackknife, opened a blade at each end of it and hurled the ugly missile with all his force at the dog. As the man had shifted his position to get at the knife, Lad had risen expectantly to his feet with some hope that his captive might be going to descend.

It was lucky for Lad that he was standing when the knife was thrown, for the aim was not bad, and a dog lying down cannot easily dodge. A dog standing on all fours is different, especially if he is a collie.

Lad sprang to one side instinctively as the thrower's arm went back. The knife whizzed, harmless, into the sumac patch. Lad's teeth bared themselves in something that looked like a smile and was not. Then he lay down again on guard.

A minute later he was up with a jump. From the direction of the house came a shrill whistle followed by a shout of “Lad! La-ad!”

It was the Master calling him. The summons could not be ignored. Usually it was obeyed with eager gladness, but now—Lad looked worriedly up into the tree. Then, coming to a decision, he galloped away at top speed.

In ten seconds he was at the veranda where the Master stood talking with a newly arrived guest. Before the Master could speak to the dog, Lad rushed up to him, whimpering in stark appeal, then ran a few steps toward the stables, paused, looked back and whimpered again.

“What's the matter with him?” loudly demanded the guest—an obese and elderly man, right sportily attired. “What ails the silly dog?”

“He's found something,” said the Master. “Something he wants me to come and see—and he wants me to come in a hurry.”

“How do you know?” asked the guest.

“Because I know his language as well as he knows mine,” retorted the Master.

He set off in the wake of the excited dog. The guest followed in more leisurely fashion complaining:

“Of all the idiocy! To let a measly dog drag you out of the shade on a red-hot day like this just to look at some dead chipmunk he's found!”

“Perhaps,” stiffly agreed the Master, not slackening his pace. “But if Lad behaves like that, unless it's pretty well worth while, he's changed a lot in the past hour. A man can do worse sometimes than follow a tip his dog gives him.”

“Have it your own way,” grinned the guest. “Perhaps he may lead us to a treasure cave or to a damsel in distress. I'm with you.”

“Guy me if it amuses you,” said the Master.

“It does,” his guest informed him. “It amuses me to see any grown man think so much of a dog as you people think of Lad. It's maudlin.”

“My house is the only one within a mile on this side of the lake that has never been robbed,” was the Master's reply. “My stable is the only one in the same radius that hasn't been rifled by harness and tire thieves. Thieves who seem to do their work in broad daylight, too, when the stables won't be locked. I have Lad to thank for all that. He—”

The dog had darted far ahead. Now he was standing beneath a low-forked hickory tree staring up into it.

“He's treed a cat!” guffawed the guest, his laugh as irritating as a kick. “Extra! Come out and get a nice sunstroke, folks! Come and see the cat Lad has treed!”

The Master did not answer. There was no cat in the tree. There was nothing visible in the tree. Lad's aspect shrank from hope to depression. He looked apologetically at the Master. Then he began to sniff once more at a scrap of cloth on the ground.

The Master picked up the cloth and presently walked over to the tree. From a jut of bark dangled a shred of the same cloth. The Master's hand went to Lad's head in approving caress.

“It was not a cat,” he said. “It was a man. See the rags of—”

“Oh, piffle!” snorted the guest. “Next you'll be reconstructing the man's middle name and favorite perfume from the color of the bark on the tree. You people are always telling about wonderful stunts of Lad's. And that's all the evidence there generally is to it.”

“No, Mr. Glure,” denied the Master, taking a strangle hold on his temper. “No. That's not quite all the evidence that we have for our brag about Lad. For instance, we had the evidence of your own eyes when he herded that flock of stampeded prize sheep for you last spring, and of your own eyes again when he won the ‘Gold Hat' cup at the Labor Day Dog Show. No, there's plenty of evidence that Lad is worth his salt. Let it go at that. Shall we get back to the house? It's fairly cool on the veranda. By the way, what was it you wanted me to call Lad for? You asked to see him. And—”

“Why, here's the idea,” explained Glure as they made their way through the heat back to the shade of the porch. “It's what I drove over here to talk with you about. I'm making the rounds of all this region. And, say, I didn't ask to see Lad. I asked if you still had him. I asked because—”

“Oh,” apologized the Master. “I thought you wanted to see him. Most people ask to if he doesn't happen to be round when they call. We—”

“I asked you if you still had him,” expounded Mr. Glure, “because I hoped you hadn't. I hoped you were more of a patriot.”

“Patriot?” echoed the Master, puzzled.

“Yes. That's why I'm making this tour of the country: to rouse dog owners to a sense of their duty. I've just formed a local branch of the Food Conservation League and—”

“It's a splendid organization,” warmly approved the Master, “but what have dog owners to—”

“To do with it?” supplemented Glure. “They have nothing to do with it, more's the pity. But they ought to. That's why I volunteered to make this canvass. It was my own idea. Some of the others were foolish enough to object, but as I had founded and financed this Hampton branch of the League—”

“What ‘canvass' are you talking about?” asked the Master, who was far too familiar with Glure's ways to let the man become fairly launched on a paean of self-adulation. “You say it's ‘to rouse dog owners to a sense of their duty.' Along what line? We dog men have raised a good many thousand dollars this past year by our Red Cross shows and by our subscriptions to all sorts of war funds. The Blue Cross, too, and the Collie Ambulance Fund have—”

“This is something better than the mere giving of surplus coin,” broke in Glure. “It is something that involves sacrifice. A needful sacrifice for our country. A sacrifice that may win the war.”

“Count me in on it, then!” cordially approved the Master. “Count in all real dog men. What is the ‘sacrifice'?”

“It's my own idea,” modestly boasted Glure, adding: “That is, of course, it's been agitated by other people in letters to newspapers and all that, but I'm the first to go out and put it into actual effect.”

“Shoot!” suggested the weary Master.

“That's the very word!” exclaimed Glure. “That's the very thing I want dog owners to combine in doing. To shoot! ”

“To—what?”

“To shoot—or poison—or asphyxiate,” expounded Glure, warming to his theme. “In short, to get rid of every dog.”

The Master's jaw swung ajar and his eyes bulged. His face began to assume an unbecoming bricky hue. Glure went on:

“You see, neighbor, our nation is up against it. When war was declared last month it found us unprepared. We've got to pitch in and economize. Every mouthful of food wasted here is a new lease of life to the Kaiser. We're cutting down on sugar and meat and fat, but for every cent we save that way we're throwing away a dollar in feeding our dogs. Our dogs that are a useless, senseless, costly luxury! They serve no utilitarian end. They eat food that belongs to soldiers. I'm trying to brighten the corner where I am by persuading my neighbors to get rid of their dogs. When I've proved what a blessing it is I'm going to inaugurate a nation-wide campaign from California to New York, from—”

“Hold on!” snapped the Master, finding some of his voice and, in the same effort, mislaying much of his temper. “What wall-eyed idiocy do you think you're trying to talk? How many dog men do you expect to convert to such a crazy doctrine? Have you tried any others? Or am I the first mark?”

“I'm sorry you take it this way,” reproved Glure. “I had hoped you were more broad-minded, but you are as pigheaded as the rest.”

“The ‘rest,' hey?” the Master caught him up. “The ‘rest'? Then I'm not the first? I'm glad they had sense enough to send you packing.”

“They were blind animal worshipers, both of them,” said Glure aggrievedly, “just as you are. One of them yelled something after me that I sincerely hope I didn't hear aright. If I did I have a strong action of slander against him. The other chucklehead so far forgot himself as to threaten to take a shotgun to me if I didn't get off his land.”

“I'm sorry!” sighed the Master. “For both of them seem to have covered the ground so completely that there isn't anything unique for me to say—or do. Now listen to me for two minutes. I've read a few of those antidog letters in the newspapers, but you're the first person I've met in real life who backs such rot. And I'm going—”

“It is not a matter for argument,” loftily began Glure.

“Yes it is,” asserted the Master. “Everything is, except religion and love and toothache. You say dogs ought to be destroyed as a patriotic duty because they aren't utilitarian. There's where you're wrong at the very beginning. Dead wrong. I'm not talking about the big kennels where one man keeps a hundred dogs as he'd herd so many prize hogs. Though look what the owners of such kennels did for the country at the last New York show at Madison Square Garden! Every penny of the thousands and thousands of dollars in profits from the show went to the Red Cross. I'm speaking of the man who keeps one dog or two or even three dogs, and keeps them as pets. I'm speaking of myself, if you like. Do you know what it costs me per week to feed my dogs?”

“I'm not looking for statistics In—”

“No, I suppose not. Few fanatics are. Well, I figured it out a few weeks ago, after I read one of those antidog letters. The total upkeep of all my dogs averages just under a dollar a week. A bare fifty dollars a year. That's true. And—”

“And that fifty dollars,” interposed Glure eagerly, “would pay for a soldier's—”

“It would not!” contradicted the Master, trying to keep some slight grip on his sliding temper. “But I can tell you what it
would
do: Part of it would go for burglar insurance, which I don't need now, because no stranger dares to sneak up to my house at night. Part of it would go to make up for things stolen around The Place. For instance, in the harness room of my stable there are five sets of good harness and two or three extra automobile tires. Unless I'm very much mistaken, the best of those would be gone now if Lad hadn't just treed the man who was after them.”

“Pshaw!” exploded Glure in fine scorn. “We saw no man there. There was no proof of—”

“There was proof enough for me,” continued the Master. “And if Lad hadn't scented the fellow one of the other dogs would. As I told you, mine is the only house—and mine is the only stable—on this side of the lake that has never been looted. Mine is the only orchard—and mine is the only garden—that is never robbed. And this is the only place, on our side of the lake, where dogs are kept at large for twelve months of the year. My dogs' entry fees at Red Cross shows have more than paid for their keep, and those fees went straight to charity.”

“But”

“The women of my family are as safe here, day and night, as if I had a machine-gun company on guard. That assurance counts for more than a little, in peace of mind, back here in the North Jersey hinterland. I'm not taking into account the several other ways the dogs bring in cash income to us. Not even the cash Lad turned over to the Red Cross when we sent that $1,600 ‘Gold Hat' cup he won, to be melted down. And I'm not speaking of our dogs' comradeship, and what that means to us. Our dogs are an asset in every way—not a liability. They aren't deadheads either. For I pay the state tax on them every year. They're true, loyal, companionable chums, and they're an ornament to The Place as well as its best safeguard. All in return for table scraps and skim milk and less than a weekly dollar's worth of stale bread and cast-off butcher-shop bones. Where do you figure out the ‘saving' for the war chest if I got rid of them?”

“As I said,” repeated Glure with cold austerity, “it's not a matter for argument. I came here hoping to—”

“I'm not given to mawkish sentiment,” went on the Master shamefacedly, “but on the day your fool law for dog exterminating goes into effect there'll be a piteous crying of little children all over the whole world—of little children mourning for the gentle protecting playmates they loved. And there'll be a million men and women whose lives have all at once become lonely and empty and miserable. Isn't this war causing enough crying and loneliness and misery without your adding to it by killing our dogs? For the matter of that, haven't the army dogs over in Europe been doing enough for mankind to warrant a square deal for their stay-at-home brothers? Haven't they?”

“That's a mass of sentimental bosh,” declared Glure. “All of it.”

“It is,” willingly confessed the Master. “So are most of the worth-while things in life, if you reduce them to their lowest terms.”