Further Adventures of Lad Part 20

Sitting on his haunches and lifting his pointed nose to the summer sky, he gave vent to a series of long-drawn wolf howls; horrible to hear.

There was no hint of a housebred twentieth century dog in his lament.

It was the death-howl of the primitive wolf;--a sound that sent an involuntary shiver through the two humans who listened aghast to their chum's awesome mourning for his lost mate.

The Master made as though to say something,--in comfort or in correction. The Mistress, wiser, motioned to him not to speak.

In a few seconds, Lad rose wearily to his feet; the spasm of primal grief having spent itself. Once more he was himself; sedate, wise, calm.

Limping over to where the car had halted so briefly, he cast about the ground, after the manner of a bloodhound.

Presently, he came to an abrupt halt. He had found what he sought. As motionless as a bird-dog at point, he stood there; nose to earth, sniffing.

"What in blazes--?" began the Master, perplexed.

The Mistress was keener of eye and of perception. She understood. She saw the Lad's inhalingly seeking muzzle was steady above a faint mark in the road-dust;--the mark of a buckskin shoe's print. Long and carefully the dog sniffed. Then, with heavy deliberation he moved on to the next footprint and the next. The runabout's driver had taken less than a half dozen steps in all; during his short descent to the ground.

But Lad did not stop until he had found and identified each and every step.

"He knows!" marveled the Mistress. "He saw the brute jump down from his car. And he has found his footsteps. He'll remember them, too."

"Little good it will do the poor chap!" commented the Master. "He can't track him, that way. Get aboard, won't you?" he went on. "I'll make Lad go back into the tonneau again, too. Drive down to the house; and take Lad indoors with you. Better telephone to the vet to come over and have another look at his shoulder. He's wrenched it badly, in all that run.

Anyway, please keep him indoors till--"

He finished his sentence by a glance at Lady. At the Master's order, Lad with sore reluctance left the body of his mate; whither he had returned after his useless finding of the footmarks. He had just curled up, in the ditch, pressing close to her side; and again that unnatural sobbing sound was in his throat. On the Master's bidding, Lad crossed to the car and suffered himself to be lifted aboard. The Mistress started down the drive. As they went, Lad ever looked back, with suffering despair in his dark eyes, at that huddle of golden fur at the wayside.

The Master carried the pitifully light armful to a secluded spot far beyond the stables; and there he buried it. Then, satisfied that Lad could not find his mate's grave, he returned to the house.

His heart was heavy with helpless wrath. Again and again, in the course of their drives, he and the Mistress had sickened at sight of mutely eloquent little bodies left in mid-road or tossed in some ditch,--testimony to the carelessness and callous hoggishness of autoists. Some few of these run-over dogs,--like poor Lady,--had of course tempted fate; spurred on by that strange craving which goaded them to fly at cars. But the bulk of them had been strolling peacefully along the highways or crossing to or from their own dooryards, when the juggernauts smashed them into torture or into instant death.

The Master reflected on the friendly country folk who pay taxes for the scenery and for the fine roads which make motoring so pleasant;--and on the reward so many motorists bestow upon these rural hosts of theirs by wanton or heedless murder of pet animals. For the first time, he could understand how and why farmers are tempted to strew gla.s.s or tacks in the road to revenge the slaying of a beloved dog.

For the next few days, until his shoulder was again in condition to bear his eighty-pound weight on it, Lad was kept indoors or on the veranda. As soon as he was allowed to go out alone, the big collie went straight to the spot where last he had seen Lady's body. Thence, he a made a careful detour of the Place,--seeking for--something. It was two days before he found what he sought.

In the meantime,--as ever, since his mate's killing,--he ate practically nothing; and went about in a daze.

"He'll get over it presently," prophesied the Master, to soothe his wife's worry.

"Perhaps so," returned the Mistress. "Or perhaps not. Remember he's a collie, and not just a human."

On the third day, Lad's systematic quartering of the Place brought him to the tiny new mound, far beyond the stables. Twice, he circled it.

Then he lay down, very close beside it; his mighty head athwart the ridge of upflung sod.

There,--having seen him from a distance,--the Master came across to speak to him. But at sight of the man, the collie got up from his resting place and moved furtively away.

Time after time, during the next week, the Master or the Mistress found him lying there. And always, at their approach, he would get up and depart. Nor did he go direct to the mound, on these pilgrimages; but by devious paths; as though trying to shake off possible pursuit. No longer did he spend the nights, as from puppyhood, in his beloved "cave" under the piano in the music room. On one pretext or another, he would manage to slip out of the house, during the evening. Twice, in gray dawn, the Master found him crouched beside the mound, where, sleepless, he had lain all night.

The Mistress and the Master grew seriously troubled over their collie chum's continued grief. They thought, more than once, of sending him away to boarding kennels or to some friend, for a month or two; to remove him from the surroundings which made him so wretched. Oddly enough, his heartbreak struck neither of them as absurd.

They had made a long study of collie nature in all its million queer and half-human phases. They knew, too, that a grieving dog is upheld by none of the supports of Faith nor of Philosophy; and that he lacks the wisdom which teaches the wondrous anaesthetic powers of Time. A sorrowing dog sorrows without hope.

Nor did Lad's misery seem ridiculous to the Place's many kindly neighbors; with whom the great dog was a favorite and who were righteously indignant over the killing of Lady.

Then in a single minute came the cure.

On Labor Day afternoon, the finals in a local tennis tournament were to be played at the mile distant country club. The Mistress and the Master went across to the tournament; taking Lad along. Not that there could be anything of the remotest interest to a dog in the sight of flanneled young people swatting a ball back and forth. But Lad was a privileged guest at all outdoor functions; and he enjoyed being with his two deities.

Thus, when the two climbed the clubhouse veranda, Lad was at their heels; pacing along in majestic unhappiness and not turning his beautiful head in response to any of a dozen greetings flung at him.

The Mistress found a seat among a bevy of neighbors. Lad lay down, decorously, at her feet; and refused to display the faintest interest in anything that went on around him.

The playing had not yet begun. New arrivals were drifting up the steps of the clubhouse. Car after car disgorged women in sport clothes and men in knickerbockers or flannels. There was plenty of chatter and bustle and motion. Lad paid no heed to any of it.

Then, up to the foot of the veranda steps jarred a flashy runabout; driven by a flashier youth. At word from the policeman in charge he parked his car at the rear of the clubhouse among fifty others, and returned on foot to the steps.

"That's young Rhuburger," someone was confiding to the Mistress. "You must have read about him. He was arrested as a Conscientious Objector, during the war. Since then, his father has died, and left him all sorts of money. And he is burning it; in double handfuls. No one seems to know just how he got into the club, here. And no one seems to--"

The gossipy maundering broke off short; drowned in a wild beast growl.

Both the Mistress and her husband had been eyeing Rhuburger as he ascended the veranda steps in all the glory of unbelievably exquisite and gaudy raiment. There seemed to both of them something vaguely familiar about the fellow; though neither could place him. But, to Lad, there was nothing at all vague in his recollections of the gorgeous newcomer.

As Rhuburger reached the topmost step, the collie lifted his head, his nostrils dilating wide. A thrill went through him. His nearsighted eyes swept the crowd. They rested at last on Rhuburger. Another deep inhalation told him all he needed to know. Not in vain had Lad sniffed so long and so carefully at those faint footprints in the road dust, at the spot where Lady died. In his throat a deep growl was born.

"h.e.l.lo, folks!" Rhuburger was declaiming, to a wholly unenthusiastic circle of acquaintances. "Made another record, just now. The little boat spun me here from Montclair in exactly nineteen minutes.

That's--that's roughly an average rate of a mile in seventy-five seconds. Not so bad, eh? That car sure made a hit with ME, all right.

Not so much of a hit, maybe, with a couple of chickens and a fat old dog that had the bad luck to be asleep in the middle of the--"

His plangent brag was lost in a sound seldom heard on the hither side of jungle or zoo. From the group of slightly disgusted onlookers, a huge and tawny shape burst forth; hurtling through the air, straight for the fat throat of the boaster.

Rhuburger, by some heaven-sent instinct, flung up his arms to shield his menaced jugular. He had no time to do more.

Lad's fury-driven eighty pounds of muscular weight crashed full against his chest. Lad's terrible teeth, missing their throat-goal, drove deep into the uplifted right forearm; shearing through imported tweed coat-sleeve and through corded silken shirt, and through flabby flesh and clean to the very bone.

The dog's lion-roar blended with the panic-screeches of the victim.

And, under that fearful impact, Rhuburger reeled back from the stairhead, and went crashing down the steps, to the broad stone flagging at the bottom.

Not once, during that meteoric, shriek-punctured downward flight, did Lad loose his grip on the torn forearm. But as the two struck the flagging at the bottom, he shifted his hold, with lightning speed; stabbing once more for the exposed jugular.

He lunged murderously at his mark. Yes, and this time he found it. His teeth had touched the pudgy throat, and began to cleave their remorseless way to the very life of the man who had slain Lady.

But, out of the jumble of cries and stamping feet and explosive shouts from the scared onlookers on the veranda above, one staccato yell pierced the swirl of rage-mists in the avenging collie's brain.

"LAD!" came the Master's sharp, scandalized mandate. "LAD!!!"

Hating the thought of desisting from his cherished revenge, the dog heard and heeded. With visible reluctance, he drew back from the slaughter; and turned his n.o.ble head to face the man who was running down the steps toward him.

Lad knew well what he might expect, for this thing he had done. He knew the Law. He knew, almost from birth, the courteous tolerance due to folk among whom his deities took him. And now he had made an industrious effort to kill one of these people.

It was no light offense for a dog to attack a human. Lad, like every well-trained collie, knew that. His own death might well follow.

Indeed, from the babel of voices on the veranda, squalling confusedly such hackneyed sentiments as "Mad dog!" and "Get a gun!" it seemed highly probable that Lad was due to suffer full penalty, from the man-pack.

Yet he gave no heed to the clamor. Instead, turning slowly, he faced the Master; ready for whatever might follow. But nothing followed,--nothing at least that he expected.