Lad: A Dog (29 page)

“Come on, old man,” said the Master. “We'll drop down there, now. It probably means a long wait for us. But it's better to be too soon than too late, when I've got so much staked. If we're seen, you can cut and run. Lad and I will cover your retreat and see you aren't recognized. Steady, there, Lad. Keep at heel.”

Stealthily the trio made their way down the hill to the farmstead at its farther base. Silently they crept along the outer fringe of the home lot, until they came opposite the black-gabled bulk of the barn. Presently, their slowly cautious progress brought them to the edge of the barnyard, and to the rail fence which surrounds it. There they halted.

From within the yard, as the huddle of drowsy sheep caught the scent of the dog, came a slight stirring. But, after a moment, the yard was quiet again.

“Get that?” whispered the Master, his mouth close to Maclay's ear. “Those sheep are supposed to have been raided by a killer dog, for the past two nights. Yet the smell of a dog doesn't even make them bleat. If they had been attacked by any dog, last night, the scent of Lad would throw them into a panic.”

“I get something else, too,” replied Maclay, in the same all but soundless whisper. “And I'm ashamed I didn't think of it before. Romaine said the dog wriggled into the yard through the bars, and out again the same way. Well, if those bars were wide enough apart for an eighty-pound collie, like Lad, to get through, what would there be to prevent all these sheep from escaping, the same way, any time they wanted to? I'll have a look at those bars before I pass judgment on the case. I begin to be glad you and your wife coerced me into this adventure.”

“Of course, the sheep could have gotten through the same bars that the dog did,” answered the Master. “For, didn't Romaine say the dog not only got through, but dragged three dead sheep through, after him, each night, and hid them somewhere, where they couldn't be found? No man would keep sheep in a pen as open as all that. The entire story is full of air holes.”

Lad, at a touch from his Master, had lain softly down at the men's feet, beside the fence. And so, for another full hour, the three waited there.

The night was heavily overcast; and, except for the low drone of distant tree toads and crickets, it was deathly silent. Heat lightning, once in a while, played dimly along the western horizon. “Lucky for us that Romaine doesn't keep a dog!” whispered Maclay. “He'd have raised the alarm before we got within a hundred yards of here.”

“He told my foreman he gave his mongrel dog away when he stocked himself with sheep. And he's been reading a lot of rot about dogs being nonutilitarian, too. His dog would have been anything but nonutilitarian, tonight.”

A touch on the sleeve from Maclay silenced the rambling whisper. Through the stillness, a house door shut very softly, not far away. An instant later, Lad growled throatily and got to his feet, tense and fiercely eager.

“He's caught Schwartz's scent!” whispered the Master, exultantly. “Now, maybe you understand why I made the man try to kick me? Down Lad!
Quiet!”

At the stark command in the Master's whisper, Lad dropped to earth again, though he still rumbled deeply in his throat, until a touch from the Master's fingers and a repeated
“Quiet”
silenced him.

The hush of the night was disturbed, once more—very faintly. This time, by the muffled padding of a man's bare feet, drawing closer to the barnyard. Lad as he heard it made as if to rise. The Master tapped him lightly on the head, and the dog sank to the ground again, quivering with hard-held rage.

The clouds had piled thicker. Only by a dim pulsing of faraway heat lightning could the watchers discern the shadowy outline of a man, moving silently between them and the far side of the yard. By the tiny glow of lightning they saw his silhouette.

By Lad's almost uncontrollable trembling they knew who he must be.

There was another drowsy stirring of the sheep, checked by the reassuring mumble of a voice the animals seemed to know. And, except for the stealthy motion of groping feet, the barnyard seemed as empty of human life as before.

Perhaps a minute later another sulphur-gleam of lightning revealed the intruder to the two men who crouched behind the outer angle of the fence. He had come out of the yard, and was shuffling away. But he was fully a third wider of shoulder now, and he seemed to have two heads, as his silhouette dimly appeared and then vanished.

“See that?” whispered the Master. “He has a sheep slung over his back. Probably with a cloth wrapped around its head to keep it quiet. We will give him twenty seconds' start and then—”

“Good!”
babbled Maclay, in true buck-ague fever of excitement. “It's worked out, to a charm! But how in the blazes can we track him through this dark? It's as black as the inside of a cow. And if we show the flashlights—”

“Trust Lad to track him,” rejoined the Master, who had been slipping a leash around the dog's low-growling throat. “That's what the old fellow's here for. He has a kick to punish. He would follow Schwartz through the Sahara Desert, if he had to. Come on.”

Lad, at a word from the Master, sprang to the end of the leash, his mighty head and shoulders straining forward. The Master's reiterated “Quiet!” alone kept him from giving tongue. And thus the trio started the pursuit.

Lad went in a geometrically straight line, swerving not an inch, with much difficulty held back to the slow walk on which the Master insisted. There was more than one reason for this insistence. Not only did the two men want to keep far enough behind Schwartz to prevent him from hearing their careful steps, but Lad's course was so uncompromisingly straight that it led them over a hundred obstacles and gullies which required all sorts of skill to negotiate.

For at least two miles, the snail-like progress continued, most of the way through woods. At last, with a gasp, the Master found himself wallowing knee-deep in a bog. Maclay a step behind him, also plunged splashingly into the soggy mire.

“What's the matter with the dog?” grumpily demanded the judge. “He's led us into the Pancake Hollow swamp. Schwartz never in the world carried a ninety-pound sheep through here.”

“Maybe not,” puffed the Master. “But he has carried it over one of the half-dozen paths that lead through this marsh. Lad is in too big a hurry to bother about paths. He—”

Fifty feet above them, on a little mid-swamp knoll, a lantern shone. Apparently, it had just been lighted. For it waxed brighter in a second or so. The men saw it and strode forward at top speed. The third step caused Maclay to stumble over a hummock and land, noisily, on all fours, in a mud pool. As he fell, he swore—with a loud distinctness that rang through the swampy stillnesses, like a pistol shot.

Instantly, the lantern went out. And there was a crashing in among the bushes of the knoll.

“After him!” yelled Maclay, floundering to his feet. “He'll escape! And we have no real proof who he is or—”

The Master, still ankle-high in sticky mud, saw the futility of trying to catch a man who, unimpeded, was running away, along a dry-ground path. There was but one thing left to do. And the Master did it.

Loosing the leash from the dog's collar he shouted:

“Get him, Laddie! Get him!”

There was a sound as of a cavalry regiment galloping through shallow water. That and a queerly ecstatic growl. And the collie was gone.

As fast as possible the two men made for the base of the knoll. They had drawn forth their electric torches; and these now made the progress much swifter and easier.

Nevertheless, before the Master had set foot on the first bit of firm ground, all pandemonium burst forth amid the darkness, above and in front of him.

The turmoil's multiple sounds were indescribable, blending into one wild cacophony the yells and stamping of a fear-demented man, the bleats of sheep, the tearing of underbrush—through and above and under all—a hideous sub-note as of a rabid beast worrying its prey.

It was this undercurrent of sound which put wings on the tired feet of Maclay and the Master, as they dashed up the knoll and into the path leading east from it. It spoke of unpleasant—not to say gruesome—happenings. So did the swift change of the victim's yells from wrath to mortal terror.

“Back, Lad!” called the Master, pantingly, as he ran. “Back! Let him
alone!”

And as he cried the command he rounded a turn in the wooded path.

Prone on the ground, writhing like a cut snake and frantically seeking to guard his throat with his slashed forearm, sprawled Schwartz. Crouching above him—right unwillingly obeying the Master's belated call—was Lad.

The dog's great coat was abristle. His bared teeth glinted white and blood-flecked in the electric flare. His soft eyes were blazing.

“Back!” repeated the Master. “Back here!”

Absolute obedience
was the first and foremost of The Place's few simple dog rules. Lad had learned it from earliest puppyhood. The collie, still shaking all over with the effort of repressing his fury, turned slowly and came over to his Master. There he stood stonily awaiting further orders.

Maclay was on his knees beside the hysterically moaning hired man, roughly telling him that the dog would do him no more damage, and at the same time making a quick inspection of the injuries wrought by the slashing white fangs in the shielding arm and its shoulder. “Get up!” he now ordered. “You're not too badly hurt to stand. Another minute and he'd have gotten through to your throat, but your clothes saved you from anything worse than a few ugly flesh cuts. Get up! Stop that yowling and get up!”

Schwartz gradually lessened his dolorous plaints under the stem authority of Maclay's exhortations. Presently he sat up nursing his lacerated forearm and staring about him. At sight of Lad he shuddered.

“Take witness, Judge!” he exclaimed. “I watched the barnyard tonight and I saw that dog steal another sheep. I followed him and when he got here he dropped the sheep and went for me. He—”

“Very bad, Schwartz!” disgustedly reproved Maclay. “Very bad, indeed. You should have waited a minute longer and thought up a better one. But since this is the yarn you choose to tell, we'll look about and try to verify it. The sheep, for instance, the one you say Lad carried all the way here and then dropped to attack you. I seem to have heard a sheep bleating a few moments ago. Several sheep in fact. We'll see if we can't find the one Lad stole.”

Schwartz jumped nervously to his feet.

“Stay where you are!” Maclay bade him. “We won't bother a tired and injured man to help in our search.”

Turning to the Master, he added:

“I suppose one of us will have to stand guard over him while the other one hunts up the sheep. Shall I—”

“Neither of us need do that,” said the Master. “Lad!”

The collie started eagerly forward, and Schwartz started still more eagerly backward.

“Watch him!” commanded the Master.
“Watch
him!”

It was an order Lad had learned to follow in the many times when the Mistress and the Master left him to guard the car or to do sentry duty over some other article of value. He understood. He would have preferred to deal with this enemy according to his own lights. But the Master had spoken. So, standing at view, the collie looked longingly at Schwartz's throat.

“Keep perfectly still!” the Master warned the prisoner, “and perhaps he won't go for you. Move, and he most surely will.
Watch
him, Laddie!”

Maclay and the Master left the captive and his guard, and set forth on a flashlight-illumined tour of the knoll. It was a desolate spot, far back in the swamp and more than a mile from any road; a place visited not three times a year, except in the shooting season.

In less than a half minute the plaintive ba-a-a of a sheep guided the searchers to the left of the knoll where stood a thick birch-and-alder copse. Around this they circled until they reached a narrow opening where the branch-ends, several feet above ground, were flecked with hanks of wool.

Squirming through the aperture in single file, the investi- . gators found what they sought.

In the tight-woven copse's center was a small clearing. In this was a rudely wattled pen some nine feet square; and in the pen were bunched six sheep.

An occasional scared bleat from deeper in the copse told the whereabouts of the sheep Schwartz had taken from the barnyard that night and which he had dropped at Lad's onslaught before he could put it in the pen. On the ground, just outside the inclosure, lay the smashed lantern.

“Sheep on the hoof are worth $12.50 per, at the Paterson Market,” mused the Master aloud, as Maclay blinked owlishly at the treasure-trove. “There are seventy-five dollars' worth of sheep in that pen, and there would have been three more of them before morning if we hadn't butted in on Schwartz's overtime labors. To get three sheep at night, it was well worth his while to switch suspicion to Lad by killing a fourth sheep every time, and mangling its throat with a stripping knife. Only, he mangled it too efficiently. It wasn't ragged enough. That's what first gave me my idea. That, and the way the missing sheep always vanished into more or less thin air. You see, he probably—”

“But,” sputtered Maclay, “why four each night? Why—”

“You saw how long it took him to get one of them here,” replied the Master. “He didn't dare to start in till the Romaines were asleep, and he had to be back in time to catch Lad at the slaughter before Titus got out of bed. He wouldn't dare hide them any nearer home. Titus has spent most of his time both days in hunting for them. Schwartz was probably waiting to get the pen nice and full. Then he'd take a day off to visit his relatives. And he'd round up this tidy bunch and drive them over to the Ridgewood road, through the woods, and so on to the Paterson Market. It was a pretty little scheme all around.”