Further Adventures of Lad Part 21

The Master simply commanded:--

"Down, Lad!"

As the dog, obediently, dropped to the ground, the Master bent to examine the groaning and maudlinly weeping Rhuburger. In this Samaritan task he was joined by one or two of the club's more venturesome members who had followed him down the steps.

Rhuburger was all-but delirious with fright. His throat was scored by the first raking of Lad's teeth; but in the merest of flesh-wounds. The chewed arm was more serious; but no bone or tendon was injured. A fortnight of care would see it as good as new. By more or less of a miracle, no bones had been broken and no concussion caused by the backward dive down the flight of steps. There were bad bruises a-plenty; but there was nothing worse.

As the Master and the few others who had descended the steps were working over the fallen man, the Mistress checked the turmoil on the veranda. At Lad's leap, memory of this speed-mad motorist had rushed back to her.

Now, tersely, for the benefit of those around, she was identifying him with the killer of Lady; whose death had roused so much indignation in the village. And, as she spoke, the people who had clamored loudest of mad dogs and who had called so frantically for a gun, waxed silent. The myriad glances cast at the prostrate and blubbering Rhuburger were not loving. Someone even said, loudly:

"GOOD old Laddie!"

As the Mistress and the Master were closing the house for the night, a car came down the drive. Out of it stepped their friend of many years, Maclay, the local Justice of the Peace.

"h.e.l.lo, Mac!" hailed the Master. "Here to take us all to jail for a.s.sault-and-battery; or just to serve a 'dangerous dog' notice on us?"

He spoke lightly; but he was troubled. Today's escapade might well lead the village law to take some cognizance of Lad's ferocious deed.

"No," laughed Maclay. "Neither of those things. I'm here, unprofessionally. I thought you people might like to know a few things, before you go to bed. In the first place, the doctor patched up Rhuburger's bites and took him home. He couldn't take him home in Rhuburger's own car. For some of the tennis crowd had gotten at that.

What they did to that $6,000 runabout was a crime! They stripped it of everything. They threw the carburetor and the wheels and the steering gear and a lot of other parts into the lake."

"WHAT?"

"Then they left their cards pinned to the dismantled machine's cushions;--in case Rhuburger cares to go further into the matter. While they were doing all that, the club's Governors had a hurry-call meeting. And for once the Board was unanimous about something. It was unanimous--in expelling Rhuburger from the club. Then we--By the way, where's Laddie? Curled up by Lady's grave, as usual, I suppose? Poor old dog!"

"No," denied the Mistress. "He's asleep in his 'cave' under the piano.

He went there, of his own accord. And he ate a perfectly tremendous supper, tonight. He's--he's CURED!"

CHAPTER VIII. In Strange Company

Lad was getting along in years.

Not yet had age begun to claw at him; blearing the wondrous deep-set dark eyes and silvering the cla.s.sic muzzle and broadening the shapely skull and stiffening the sweepingly free gait; dulling the sharp ears or doing any of the other pitiably tragic things that nature does to the dog who is progressing in his teens. Those, humiliations were still waiting for Lad, one by one; beyond the next Turn of the Road.

Yet the romp and the spirit of bubbling fun and the lavishly needless exercise--these were merging into sobriety. True, at rare times, with the Mistress or the Master--especially with the Mistress, Lad would forget he was middle-aged and dignified; and would play like a crazy puppy. But, for the most part he had begun to carry his years a trifle seriously.

He was not yet in the winter or even the Indian Summer of his beautiful life. But, at least, he had strolled into its early autumn.

And this, be it well remembered, is the curse which Stepmother Nature placed upon The Dog, when he elected to turn his back on his own kind, and to become the only one of the world's four-footed folk to serve Man of his own accord. To punish the Dog for this abnormality, Nature decreed that his life should begin to fail, almost as soon as it had reached the glory of its early prime.

A dog is not at his best, in mind or in body, until he has pa.s.sed his third year. And, before he nears the ten-year mark, he has begun to decline. At twelve or thirteen, he is as decrepit as is the average human of seventy. And not one dog in a hundred can be expected to live to fourteen.

(Lad, by some miracle, was destined to endure past his own sixteenth birthday; a record seldom equaled among his race.)

And so to our story:--

When the car and the loaded equipment-truck drew up at the door, that golden October day, Lad forgot his advancing years. In a moment, he was once more a puppy. For he knew what it all meant. It did not need the advent of the Mistress and the Master from the house, in rough outing clothes, nor the piling of duffle-bags and the like into the car's tonneau, to send Laddie into a transport of trumpeting and gyrations.

The first sight and sniff of the tents, rolled tight in the truck, had done that. Lad understood. Lad always understood.

This gear meant the annual fall camping trip in the back reaches of the Ramapo Mountains, some twenty-odd miles north of the Place; the fortnight of tent-life, of shooting, of fishing, of bracingly chill nights and white-misted dawns and of drowsily happy campfire evenings.

It meant all manner of adventure and fun for Lad.

Now, on a fishing jaunt, the presence of any kind of dog is a liability; not an a.s.set. A thousand dog-fancier fishermen can attest to that. And, when humans are hunting any sort of game, a collie is several degrees worse than worthless.

Thus, Lad's usefulness, as a member of the party, was likely to be negligible;--except in the matter of guarding camp and as an all-round pal for the two campers.

Yet, as on former years, there was no question of leaving him at home.

Where the Mistress and the Master went, he went, too; whenever such a thing were possible. He was their chum. And they would have missed him as much as he would have missed them.

Which, of course, was an absurd way for two reasonably sane people to regard a mere dog. But, then, Lad was not a "mere" dog.

Thus it was that he took his place, by invitation, in the car's tonneau, amid a ruck of hand-luggage; as the camp-ward pilgrimage began. Ten miles farther on, the equipment truck halted to take aboard a guide named Barret, and his boy; and their professionally reliable old Irish setter.

This setter had a quality, not over-common with members of his grand breed; a trait which linked his career pathetically with that of a livery-plug. He would hunt for anybody. He went through his day's work, in stubble or undergrowth, with the sad conscientiousness of an elderly bookkeeper.

Away from the main road, and up a steadily rising byway that merged into an axle-snapping mountain-track, toiled the cars; at last coming to a wheezy and radiator-boiling halt at the foot of a rock-summit so steep that no vehicle could breast it. In a cup, at the summit of this mountain-top hillock, was the camp-site; its farther edge only a few yards above a little ba.s.s-populated spring-lake.

The luggage was hauled, gruntily, up the steep; and camp was pitched.

Then car and truck departed for civilization. And the two weeks of wilderness life set in.

It was a wonderful time for old Lad. The remoteness and wild stillness of it all seemed to take him back, in a way, to the wolf-centuries of his ancestors. It had been monstrous pleasant to roam the peaceful forest back of the Place. But there was a genuine thrill in exploring these all-but manless woods; with their queer scents of wild things that seldom ventured close to the ordained haunts of men.

It was exciting, to wake at midnight, beside the smoldering campfire, and to hear, above the industrious snoring, of the guide and his boy, the stealthy forest noises; the pad-pad-pad of some wary prowler circling at long range the twinkling embers; the crash of a far-off buck; the lumbering of some bear down to the lake to drink. The almost moveless sharp air carried a myriad fascinating scents which human nostrils were too gross to register; but which were acutely plain and understandable to the great dog.

Best of all, in this outing, Lad's two deities, the Mistress and the Master, were never busy at desk or piano, or too much tangled up with the society of silly outsiders, to be his comrades and playmates. True, sometimes they hurt his supersensitive feelings most distressingly, by calling to him: "No, no, Laddie. Back! Watch camp'" when he essayed to join them as they set forth with rods over their shoulders for a half-day's fishing; or as, armed with guns, they whistled up the bored but worthy setter for a shooting trip. But, for the most, Lad was close at their sides, during these two wonderful weeks. And he was very happy.

Once, during a solitary ramble, before the humans had awakened in the morning, Lad caught an odd scent; and followed it for a quarter mile down the mountainside. It waxed stronger and ranker. At last, a turn around a high boulder brought him face to face with its source. And he found himself confronting a huge black bear.

The bear was busy looting a bee-tree. It was the season when he and his like are stocking up, with all the fatmaking food they can gorge, in preparation for the winter's "holing-in." Thus, he viewed with sluggish non-interest the advent of the dog. He had scented Lad for as long a time as Lad had scented him. But he had eaten on, unperturbed. For he knew himself to be the match of any four dogs; especially if the dogs were unaccompanied by men. And, a long autumn of food had dulled his temper.

So, he merely checked his honey-gorging long enough to roll a rotted log to one side and to scoop up from under it a pawful of fat white grubs which had decided to winter beneath the decayed trunk. Then, absent-mindedly brushing aside a squadron of indignant bees, he continued his sweet feast.

As Lad rounded the boulder and came to a growling halt, the bear raised his honey-smeared head, showed a yellowing fang from under one upcurled corner of his sticky lips; and glowered evilly at the collie from out of his reddening little eyes. Then he made as though to go on eating.

But Lad would not have it so. Into his rejuvenated heart stole a tinge of the mischief which makes a collie puppy dash harrowingly at a tethered cow. Barking with sheer delight in the excitement of meeting this savage-looking monster, the dog rushed merrily at the bear. His teeth were not bared. His hackles were not bristling. This was no fight; but a jolly game. Lad's dark eyes danced with fun.

Midway of his charge, he checked himself. Not through fear, but from utter astonishment. For his new acquaintance had done a right non-quadrupedal thing. Bruin had reared himself upon his hind legs; and was standing there, like a man, confronting the dog. He towered, thus, ever so high above Lad's head.

His short arms, with their saber-shaped claws, were outstretched toward Lad, as if in humble supplication. But there was nothing supplicating or even civil in the tiny red eyes that squinted ferociously down at the collie. Small wonder that Laddie halted his own galloping advance; and stood doubtful!

The Master, a minute earlier, had turned out of the blankets for his painfully icy morning plunge in the lakelet. The fanfare of barking, a quarter-mile below, changed his intent. A true dogman knows his dog's bark,--and its every shade of meaning,--as well as though it were human speech. From the manner wherewith Lad had given tongue, the Master knew he had cornered or treed something quite out of the common. Catching up his rifle, he made for the direction of the bark; running at top speed.

The bear put an end to the moment of hesitancy. Lunging forward, he raked at the crouching collie, with one of his murderous claws; in a gesture designed to gather the impudent dog into his death-embrace.

Now, even from humans, except only the Mistress and the Master, Lad detested patting or handling of any kind. Whether he thought this maneuver of the bear's an uncouth form of caress or knew it for a menace,--he moved back from it. Yet he did so with a leisurely motion, devoid of fear and expressive of a certain lofty contempt. Perhaps that is why he moved without his native caution.