Further Adventures of Lad Part 27

Lad was not of the bulldog breed which seeks and gains a hold and then hangs on to it with locked jaws. A collie fights with brain as much as with teeth. By the time he and Roodie struck the earth, Lad tore free from the unloving embrace and whizzed about to face the second of his foes.

Eitel had taken advantage of the moment's respite to seize with his uninjured hand his slashed wrist. Then, on second thought, he released the wounded wrist and bent over the baby; with a view to picking him up and regaining the comparative safety of the car's floor. But his well-devised maneuver was not carried out.

For, as he leaned over the bundle, extending his hands to pick it up, Lad's teeth drove fiercely into the section of Eitel's plump anatomy which chanced to be presented to him by the stooping down of the kidnaper. Deep clove his sharp fangs. Nor did Eitel Schwartz sit down again with any degree of comfort for many a long day.

With resounding howls of pain, Eitel thrashed up and down the road; endeavoring to shake off this rear attack. The noise awakened the baby; who added his wails to the din. Roodie got dizzily to his feet; his left forearm useless and anguished from the tearing of its muscles:

"Shut up!" he bellowed. "You want to bring the whole county down on us?

We--"

He ceased speaking; and lurched at full speed to the car and to the top of its single seat. For, at sound of his voice, Lad had loosed his grip on the screeching Eitel and whirled about on this earlier adversary.

The man reached the car-seat and slammed the door behind him, perhaps a sixth of a second too soon for Lad to reach him.

Eitel, warned by his brother's bawled command, made a rush for the other side of the machine and clambered up. He was a trifle less fortunate than had been Roodie, in making this ascent. For Lad's flashing jaws grazed his ankle and carried away in that snap a sample of Eitel's best town-going trousers.

Thus, on the seat of the car, swaying, and clutching at each other, crouched the two sore-wounded brethren; while Lad ravened about the vehicle, springing upward now and, again in futile effort to clear the top of the closed door.

Far down the road shone the lights of an approaching motor. Eitel dropped into the driving seat and set the runabout into motion. Once more, the dread of pursuit and of capture and of prison danced hideously before his frightened mental vision.

Barely missing the crying baby, as the runabout jerked forward, he made a fruitless attempt to run down the raging collie. Then he addressed himself to the business of getting himself and his brother as far out of the way as possible, before the oncoming car should reach the scene of strife.

As a matter of fact, the other car never reached this spot. Its occupants were two youths and two damsels, in search of a sequestered s.p.a.ce of road where they might halt for a brief but delectable "petting party," on their way to a dance in the village. They found such a s.p.a.ce, about a furlong on the thither side of the curve where the runabout had stopped. And they advanced no farther.

Lad, for a few rods, gave chase to the retreating Schwartzes. Then, the heavy exertions of the past minute or two began to exact toll on his aging body. Also, the baby was still whimpering in a drowsy monotone, as the paregoric sought to renew its sway on the racket awakened brain.

The dog turned pantingly back to the bundle; pawed it softly, as though to make sure the contents were not harmed; then once more picked it up gingerly between his reddened jaws; and continued his sedate homeward journey.

The Mistress and the Master were sitting on the veranda. It was almost bedtime. The Master arose, to begin his nightly task of locking the lower windows. From somewhere on the highroad that lay two hundred yards distant from the house, came the confused noise of shouts. Then, as he listened, the far-off sounds ceased. He went on with his task of locking up; and returned in a minute or two to the veranda.

As he did so, Lad came walking slowly up the porch steps. In his mouth he carried something large and white and dusty. This he proceeded to deposit with much care at the feet of the Mistress. Then he stood back; tail waving, dark eyes mischievously expectant.

"Another dividend from the curve!" laughed the Master. "What is it, this time? A pillow or--?"

He broke off in the middle of his amused query. For, even as he turned his flashlight on the dusty and blood-streaked bundle, the baby began once more to cry.

The local chief of police, in the village across the lake, was making ready for bed, when a telephone summons brought him back to his lower hallway.

"h.e.l.lo!" came the Master's hail, over the wire. "Chief, has there been any alarm sent out for--for a missing baby?"

"Baby?" echoed the Chief. "No. Have you lost one?"

"No. I've found one. At least, Laddie has. He's just brought it home.

It is dressed in unusually costly things, my wife says. There was a white baby-blanket strapped around it. And there are dust and streaks of fresh blood on the blanket. But the baby himself isn't hurt at all.

And--"

"I'll be over there, in fifteen minutes," said the Chief, alive with professional interest.

But in ten minutes he was on the wire once more.

"Has the baby blanket got the monogram, 'B.R.R', on one corner?" he asked excitedly.

"Yes," answered the Master. "I was going to tell you that, when you hung up. And on--"

"That's the one!" fairly shouted the Chief. "As soon as you finished talking to me, I got another call. General alarm out for a kidnaped baby. Belongs to those Rennick people, up the Valley. The artists that rented the old Beasley place this summer. The baby was stolen, an hour ago; right out of the nursery. I'll phone 'em that he's found; and then I'll be over."

"All right. There's another queer point about all this. Our dog--"

"Speaking of dogs," went on the garrulous Chief, "this is a wakeful evening for me. I just got a call from the drug store that a couple of fellows have stopped there to get patched up from dog-bites. They say a dozen stray curs set on 'em, while they were changing a tire. The druggist thought they acted queer, contradicting each other in bits of their story. So he's taking his time, fixing them; till I can drop in on my way to your house and give 'em the once over. So---"

"Do more than that!" decreed the Master, on quick inspiration. "What I started to tell you is that there's blood on Lad's jaws; as well as on the baby's blanket. If two men say they've been bitten by dogs--"

"I get you!" yelled the other. "Good-by! I got no time to waste, when a clew like that is shaken in front of me. See you later!"

Long before the Chief arrived at the Place with triumphant tidings of his success in "sweating" the truth from the mangled and nerve-racked Schwartzes, the two other actors in the evening's drama were miles away among the sunflecked shadows of Dreamland.

The baby, industriously and unsanitarily sucking one pudgy thumb, was cuddled down to sleep in the Mistress's lap. And, in the depths of his cave under the living-room piano, Lad was stretched at perfect ease; his tiny white forepaws straight in front of him.

But his deep breathing was interrupted, now and then, by a muttered sigh. For, at last, one of his beautiful presents had failed to cause happiness and praise from his G.o.ds. Instead, it had apparently turned the whole household inside out; to judge by the noisy excitement and the telephoning and all. And, even in sleep, the old dog felt justly chagrined at the way his loveliest present to the Mistress had been received.

It was so hard to find out what humans would enjoy and what they wouldn't!

CHAPTER X. The Intruders

It began with a gap in a line fence. The gap should never have been there. For, on the far side of it roamed creatures whose chief zest in life is the finding of such gaps and in breaking through for forage.

The Place's acreage ended, to northward, in the center of an oak grove whose northern half was owned by one t.i.tus Romaine; a crabbed little farmer of the old school. Into his half of the grove, in autumn when mast lay thick and rich amid the tawny dead leaves, Romaine was wont to turn his herd of swine.

To Lad, the giant collie, this was always a trying season. For longer than he could remember, Lad had been the official watchdog of the Place. And his chief duties were to keep two-footed and four-footed strays from trespa.s.sing thereon.

To an inch, he knew the boundaries of the Master's land. And he knew that no human intruder was to be molested; so long as such intruder had the sense to walk straight down the driveway to the house. But woe to the tramp or other trespa.s.ser who chanced to come cross lots or to wander in any way off the drive! Woe also to such occasional cattle or other livestock as drifted in from the road or by way of a casual fence-gap!

Human invaders were to be met in drastic fashion. Quadruped trespa.s.sers were to be rounded up and swept at a gallop up the drive and out into the highroad. With cattle or with stray horses this was an easy job; and it contained, withal, much fun;--at least, for Lad.

But, pigs were different.

Experience and instinct had taught Lad what few humans realize. Namely, that of all created beasts, the pig is the worst and meanest and most vicious; and hardest to drive. When a horse or a cow, or a drove of them, wandered into the confines of the Place, it was simple and joyous to head them off, turn them, set them into a gallop and send them on their journey at top speed. It took little skill and less trouble to do this. Besides, it was gorgeous sport. But pigs--!

When a porker wriggled and hunched and nosed a s.p.a.ce in the line fence, and slithered greasily through, Lad's work was cut out for him. It looked simple enough. But it was not simple. Nor was it safe.

In the first instance, pigs were hard to start running. Oftener than not they would stand, braced, and glare at the oncoming collie from out their evil little red-rimmed eyes; the snouts above the hideous masked tushes quivering avidly. That meant Lad must circle them, at whirlwind speed; barking a thunderous fanfare to confuse them; and watching his chance to flash in and nip ear or flank; or otherwise get the brutes to running.

And, even on the run, they had an ugly way of wheeling, at close quarters, to face the pursuer. The razor tushes and the p.r.o.nged forefeet were always ready, at such times, to wreak death on the dog, unless he should have the wit and the skill and the speed to change, in a breath, the direction of his dash. No, pigs were not pleasant trespa.s.sers. There was no fun in routing them. And there was real danger.

Except by dint of swiftness and of brain; an eighty-pound collie has no chance against a six-hundred-pound pig. The pig's hide, for one thing, is too thick to pierce with an average slash or nip: And the pig is too close to earth and too well-balanced by build and weight, to be overturned: And the tushes and forefeet can move with deceptive quickness. Also, back of the red-rimmed little eyes flickers the redder spirit of murder.