Further Adventures of Lad Part 19

Thus was it the temperamental Lady's wont to punish real or fancied injuries from the Place's other animals,--and from humans as well, except only the Mistress and the Master. She charged first, and did her thinking afterward. Apparently, her brain, just then, could hold no impression except that her interfering mate had picked her up by the neck-scruff and had thrown her, head over heels, into a ditch. And such treatment called for instant penalty.

Under her fifty-pound impact, poor Lad's three-cornered balance gave way. Down he went in an awkward heap; while Lady snarled viciously and snapped for his momentarily exposed throat. Lad turned his head aside to guard the throat; but he made no move to resent this ungrateful onslaught; much less to fight back. Which was old Lad's way,--with Lady.

Dislocated shoulder or not, he would have flown at any male dog that a.s.sailed him; and would have made the aggressor fight for dear life.

But his mate was sacred. And he merely protected his throat and let her nip agonizingly at his ears and paws; until her brief flurry of wrath should be past.

A shout from the veranda,--whither the racket had drawn the Master from his study,--put a sudden stop to Lady's brainstorm. Obedience was the first and foremost rule drilled into the Little People of the Place.

And, from puppy days, the collies were taught to come,--and to come at a run,--at call from the Mistress or the Master.

Lady, with no good grace, desisted from her punitive task, and galloped down the drive to the house. Lad, rising with difficulty, followed; as fast as a three-legged gait would permit. And behind them chugged the delivery boy, bawling explanations.

A sharp word of reproof sent Lady skulking into a corner; anger forgotten in humiliation at the public rebuke. The Master paid no heed to her. Running up the drive, he met Lad, and picked up the suffering collie in his arms. Carrying him into the study, the Master gave first aid to the serious dislocation; then phoned for the nearest good vet.

As he left the study, to telephone, he encountered Lady, very woebegone and cringing, at the door. When he returned, he beheld the remorseful little gold-and-white vixen licking her mate's hurt shoulder and wagging a propitiatory tail in plea for forgiveness from the dog she had bitten and from the Master whose Law she had broken by her attack on the car.

Always, after her brief rages, Lady was prettily and genuinely repentant and eager to make friends again. And, as ever, Lad was meeting her apologies more than half-way;--absurdly blissful at her dainty attentions.

In the days that followed, Lady at first spent the bulk of her time near her lame mate. She was unusually gentle and affectionate with him; and seemed trying to make up to him for the enforced idleness of strained sinews and dislocated joint. In her friendliness and attention, Lad was very, very happy.

The vet had bandaged his shoulder and had anointed it with pungently smelly medicines whose reek was disgusting and even painful to the thoroughbred's supersensitive nostrils. Moreover, the vet had left orders that Lad be made to keep quiet until the hurt should heal; and that he risk no setback by undue exertion of any sort. It was sweet to lie in the Master's study,--one white forepaw or the great shapely head laid lovingly on the man's hiking boot; and with an occasional pat or a friendly word from his deity, as the latter pounded away on a clicky typewriter whose jarring noise Lad had long ago taught himself to tolerate.

Sweeter it was to be made much of and "poored" by the Mistress; and to have her light hands adjust his bandages; and to hear her tell him what a dear dog he was and praise his bravery in rescuing Lady.

Perhaps sweetest of all, in those early days of convalescence, was the amazing solicitude of Lady herself; and her queerly maternal tenderness toward him.

But, as the summer days dreamed themselves away and Lad's splendid health brought him nearer and nearer to recovery, Lady waxed restive under the long strain of indolence and of good temper. Lad had been her companion in the early morning rambles through the forest, back of the Place; in rabbit quests; in swims in the ice, cool lake at the foot of the lawn; in romps on the smooth green gra.s.s and in a dozen of the active pursuits wherein country-bred collies love to squander the outdoor days.

Less and less did Lady content herself with dull attendance on the convalescent. More and more often did she set forth without him on those cross-country runs that had meant so much to them both. Lad would watch her vanish up the drive,--their fiery little son, Wolf, cantering gleefully at her side. Then, his dark eyes full of sorrow, he would gaze at the Master and, with a sigh, would lie back on his rug--and wait.

There was something so human,--so uncomplainingly wretched,--in look and in sigh,--that the Master was touched by the big dog's loneliness and vexed at the flighty Lady's defection. Stooping down, at one such time, he ran his hand over the beautiful silky head that rested against his knee; and said in lame attempt at comfort:--

"Don't let it get under your skin, Laddie! She isn't worth it. One of your honest paws is worth more than her whole fly-away body.--Not that anyone ever was loved because he or she was worthy!--You're up against the penalty that is bound to get everybody with a soul, who is fool enough to love something or somebody without one ... . We're going over for the mail,--the Mistress and I. Want to come along?"

At once the melancholy in Lad's deep eyes gave place to puppy-like exultance.

While, naturally, he did not understand one word in ten of the Master's frequent prosy homilies to him, or of the Mistress's more melodious speech, yet, from puppyhood, he had been talked to by both of them.

And, as ever with a highbred collie, such constant conversation had borne ample fruit;--not only in giving the dog a startling comprehension of voice-meanings, but also in teaching him to understand many simple words and phrases.

For example, he recognized, as readily as would any five-year-old child, this invitation to go motoring. And it banished the memory of Lady's fickleness.

This morning, for the first time since his accident, Lad was able to spring into the car-tonneau, unaided. His hurt was all-but well.

Enthroning himself in the precise center of the rear seat, he prepared to enjoy every inch of the ride.

No matter how long or how tedious were these jaunts, Lad never went to sleep or ceased to survey with eager attention the myriad details of the trip. There was something half-laughable, half-pathetic, in his air of strained interest.

Only when the Mistress and the Master both chanced to leave the car at the same time, at market or bank or postoffice, would Lad cease from this genial and absorbed inspection of everything in sight. Left alone in the machine, he always realized at once that he was on guard. Head on paws he would lie, intently scanning anyone who might chance to pause near the auto; and, with a glint of curved white fang beneath sharply upcurled lip, warning away such persons as ventured too close.

Marketing done, today, the trio from the Place started homeward. Less than a quarter-mile from their own gateway, they heard the blaring honk of a motor horn behind them.

Within a second thereafter, a runabout roared past, the cut-out making echoes along the still road; and a poisonously choking cloud of dust whirling aloft in the speedster's wake.

The warning honk had not given the Mistress time to turn out. Luckily she was driving well on her own side of the none-too-wide road. As it was, a sharp little jar gave testimony to the light touch of mudguards.

And the runabout whizzed on.

"That's one of the speed-idiots who make an automobile an insult to everybody except its owner! The young fool!" stormed the Master, glowering impotently at the other car, already a hundred yards ahead; and at the back of its one occupant, a sportily-clad youth in the early twenties.

A high-pitched yelping bark,--partly of dismay, partly of warning,--from Lad, broke in on the Master's fuming remonstrance. The big dog had sprung up from his rear seat cushion and, with forepaws gripping the back of the front seat, he was peering forward; his head and shoulders between the Mistress and the Master.

Never before in all his rides had Lad so transgressed the rules of motoring behavior as to thrust himself forward like this. A word of rebuke died on the Master's tongue; as the Mistress, with a gasp of fear, pointed ahead, in the path of the speeding runabout.

Lady and Wolf had had a jolly gallop through the summer woodlands. And at last they had turned their faces homeward; for the plunge in the cool lake which was wont to follow a hot weather run. Side by side they jogged along, to the forest edge--and into the sixteen-acre meadow that stretches from forest to highway.

A few rods on the far side of the road which separated the meadow from the rest of the Place, Wolf paused to investigate a chipmunk hole. Lady was more interested just then in splashing her hot body in the chill of the lake than in exploring for hypothetical chipmunks.

Moreover, her keen ears caught a sound which rapidly swept nearer and nearer. A motor-car with the m.u.f.fler cut out was approaching, at a most gratifyingly high speed.

The noise was as martial music to Lady. The speed promised exhilarating sport. Her trot merged into a headlong run; and she dashed out into the road.

The runabout was a bare fifty yards ahead of her, and it was coming on with a speed which shook even Lady's excitement-craving nerves. Here, evidently, was a playmate which it would be safer to chase than to confront head-on.

It was at this juncture, by the way, that Lad lurched forward from the rear seat and that the Mistress pointed in terror at the endangered collie.

Lady, for once overawed by speed, leaped to one side of the road. Not far, but leaving ample s.p.a.ce for the driver to miss her by at least a yard. He had honked loudly, at sight of her. But, he had abated not an atom of his fifty-mile-an-hour pace.

Whether the man was rattled by the collie's antics,--whether he acted in sudden rage at her for startling him, whether he belonged to the filthy breed of motorist who recites chucklingly the record of his kills,--he did not hold his midroad course.

Instead,--still without checking speed,--he veered his machine slightly to the right; aiming the flying juggernaut directly at the mischievously-poised little collie who danced in imagined safety at the road-edge.

The rest was horror.

Merciful in its mercilessness, the hard-driven right front wheel smote the silky golden head with a force that left no terrible instant of fear or of agony. More lucky by far than the myriad innocent and friendly dogs that are left daily to scream out their lives writhingly in the wake of speeding motor-cars, Lady was killed at a single stroke.

The fluffy golden body was hurled far in front of its slayer; and the wheels struck it a second time. The force of the impact caused the runabout to skid, perilously; and the youthful driver brought it to a jarring and belated halt. Springing to the ground, he rolled the dead collie's impeding body into the shallow wayside ditch, clear of his wheels. Then, scrambling aboard again, he jammed down the accelerator.

Lad had made a flying leap over the door of the Master's car. He struck ground with a force which crumpled his healing right shoulder under him. Heedless of the pain, he hurled himself forward, on three legs, at an incredible speed; straight for the runabout. His great head low, his formidable teeth agleam beneath drawn-back lips, his soft eyes a-smolder with red flame, Lad charged.

But, for all his burst of speed, he was too late to avenge; even as he had been too late to save. By the time he could reach the spot where Lady lay crumpled and moveless in the ditch, the runabout had gathered full speed and was disappearing down the bend of the highway.

After it flew Lad, silent, terrible,--not stopping to realize that the fleetest dog,--even with all four of his legs in commission,--cannot hope to overhaul a motor-car driven at fifty miles an hour.

But, at the end of a furious quarter-mile, his wise brain took charge once more of his vengeance-craving heart. He halted, snarled hideously after the vanished car, and limped miserably back to the scene of the tragedy.

There, he found the Mistress sitting in the roadside dust, Lady's head in her lap. She was smoothing lovingly the soft rumpled fur; and was trying hard not to cry over the inert warm ma.s.s of gold-and-white fluffiness which, two minutes earlier, had been a beautiful thoroughbred collie, vibrant with life and fun and lovableness.

The Master had risen from his brief inspection of his pet's fatal injuries. Scowling down the road, he yearned to kick himself for his stupidity in failing to note the Juggernaut's number.

Head and tail a-droop, Lad toiled back to where Lady was lying. A queer low sound, strangely like a human sob, pulsed in his s.h.a.ggy throat, as he bent down and touched his dead mate's muzzle with his own. Then, huddling close beside her, he reverted all at once to a trait of his ancestors, a thousand generations back.