Further Adventures of Lad Part 28

Locomotive engineers say a cow on a track is far less perilous to an oncoming train than is a pig. The former can be lifted, by the impact, and flung to one side. A pig, oftener than not, derails the engine.

Standing with the bulk of its weight close to the ground, it is well-nigh as bad an obstacle to trains as would be a boulder of the same size. Lad had never met any engineers. But he had identically their opinion of pigs.

In all his long life, the great collie had never known fear. At least, he never had yielded to it. Wherefore, in the autumns, he had attacked with gay zest such of t.i.tus Romaine's swine as had found their way through the fence.

But, nowadays, there was little enough of gay zest about anything Laddie did. For he was old;--very, very old. He had pa.s.sed the fourteenth milestone. In other words, he was as old for a dog as is an octogenarian for a man.

Almost imperceptibly, but to his indignant annoyance, age had crept upon the big dog; gradually blurring his long clean lines; silvering his muzzle and eyebrows; flecking his burnished mahogany coat with stipples of silver; spreading to greater size the absurdly small white forepaws which were his one gross vanity; dulling a little the preternaturally keen hearing and narrowing the vision.

Yes, Lad was old. And he was a bit unwieldy from weight and from age.

No longer could he lead Wolf and Bruce in the forest rabbit chases.

Wherefore he stayed at home, for the most part and seldom strayed far from the Mistress and the Master whom he worshiped.

Moreover, he deputed the bulk of trespa.s.s-repelling to his fiery little son, Wolf; and to the graver and sweeter Bruce;--"Bruce, the Beautiful."

Which brings us by needfully prosy degrees to a morning, when two marauders came to the Place at the same time, if by different routes.

They could not well have come at a more propitious time, for themselves; nor at a worse time for those whose domain they visited.

Bruce and Wolf had trotted idly off to the forest, back of the Place, for a desultory ramble in quest of rabbits or squirrels. This they had done because they were bored. For, the Mistress and the Master had driven over for the morning mail; and Lad had gone with them, as usual.

Had it been night, instead of morning, neither Wolf nor Bruce would have stirred a step from the grounds. For both were trained watchdogs, But, thus early in the day, neither duty nor companionship held them at home. And the autumn woods promised a half-hour of mild sport.

The superintendent and his helpers were in the distant "upper field,"

working around the roots of some young fruit trees. But for the maids, busy indoors, the Place was deserted of human or canine life.

Thus, luck was with the two intruders.

Through the fence-gap in the oak-grove, bored t.i.tus Romaine's hugest and oldest and crankiest sow. She was in search of acorns and of any other food that might lie handy to her line of march. In her owner's part of the grove, there was too much compet.i.tion, in the food-hunt, from other and equally greedy pigs of the herd. These she could fight off and drive from the choicest acorn-h.o.a.rds. But it was easier to forage without compet.i.tion.

So through the gap she forced her grunting bulk; and on through the Place's half of the oak-grove. Pausing now and then to root amid the strewn leaves, she made her leisurely way toward the open lawn with its two-hundred-year-old shade-oaks, and its flower-borders which still held a few toothsome bulbs.

The second intruder entered the grounds in much more open fashion. He was a man in the late twenties; well-set up, neatly, even sprucely, dressed; and he walked with a slight swagger. He looked very much at home and very certain of his welcome.

A casual student of human nature would have guessed him to be a traveling salesman, finely equipped with nerve and with confidence in his own goods. The average servant would have been vastly impressed with his air of self a.s.surance; and would have admitted him to the house, without question. (The long-memoried warden of Auburn Prison would have recognized him as Alf Dugan, one of the cleverest automobile thieves in the East.)

Mr. Dugan was an industrious young man; as well as ingenious. And he had a streak of quick-witted audacity which made him an ornament to his chosen profession. His method of work was simple. Coming to a rural neighborhood, he would stop at some local hotel, and, armed with clever patter and a sheaf of automobile insurance doc.u.ments, would make the rounds of the region's better-cla.s.s homes.

At these he sold no automobile insurance; though he made seemingly earnest efforts to do so. But he learned the precise location of each garage; the cars therein; and the easiest way to the highroad, and any possible obstacles to a hasty flight thereto. Usually, he succeeded in persuading his reluctant host to take him to the garage to look at the cars and to estimate the insurable value of each. While there, it was easy to palm a key or to get a good look at the garage padlock for future skeleton-key reference; or to note what sort of car-locks were used.

A night or two later, the garage was entered and the best car was stolen. Dugan, like love, laughed at locksmiths.

Sometimes,--notably in places where dogs were kept,--he would make his initial visit and then, choosing a time when he had seen some of the house's occupants go for a walk with their dogs, would enter by broad daylight, and take a chance at getting the car out, un.o.bserved. If he were interrupted before starting off in the machine, why, he was that same polite insurance aunt who had come back to revise his estimate on the premium needed for the car; and was taking another look at it to make certain. Once in the driver's seat and with the engine going, he had no fear of capture. A whizzing rush to the highroad and down it to the point where his confederate waited with the new number-plates; and he could snap his fat fingers at pursuit.

Dugan had called at the Place, a week earlier. He had taken interested note of the little garage's two cars and of the unlocked garage doors.

He had taken less approving note of the three guardian collies: Lad, still magnificent and formidable, in spite of his weight of years;--Bruce, gloriously beautiful and stately and aloof;--young Wolf, with the fire and fierce agility of a tiger-cat. All three had watched him, grimly. None had offered the slightest move to make friends with the smooth-spoken visitor. Dogs have a queerly occult sixth sense, sometimes, in regard to those who mean ill to their masters.

This morning, idling along the highroad, a furlong from the Place's stone gateway, Dugan had seen the Mistress and the Master drive past in the smaller of the two cars. He had seen Lad with them. A little later, he had seen the men cross the road toward the upper field. Then, almost on the men's heels, he had seen Bruce and Wolf canter across the same road; headed for the forest. And Dugan's correctly stolid face rippled into a pleased smile.

Quickening his pace, he hurried on to the gateway and down the drive.

But, as he pa.s.sed the house on his way to the garage where stood the other and larger car, he paused. Out of an ever-vigilant eye-corner, he saw an automobile turn in at the gateway, two hundred yards up the wooded slope; and start down the drive.

The Mistress and the Master were returning from the post office.

Dugan's smile vanished. He stopped in his tracks; and did some fast thinking. Then, mounting the veranda steps, he knocked boldly at a side door; the door nearest to him. As the maids were in the kitchen or making up the bedrooms, his knock was unheard. Half hidden by the veranda vines, he waited.

The car came down the driveway and circled the house to the side farthest from Dugan. There, at the front door, it halted. The Mistress and Lad got out. The Master did not go down to the garage. Instead, he circled the house again; and chugged off up the drive; bound for the station to meet a guest whose train was due in another ten minutes.

Dugan drew a long breath; and swaggered toward the garage. His walk and manner had in them an easy openness that no honest man's could possibly have acquired in a lifetime.

The Mistress, deposited at the front veranda, chirped to Lad; and started across the lawn toward the chrysanthemum bed, a hundred feet away.

The summer's flowers were gone--even to the latest thin stemmed Teplitz rose and the last stalk of rose-tinted cosmos. For dining table, now, and for living-room and guest rooms, nothing was left but the mauve and bronze hardy chrysanthemums which made gay the flower border at the crest of the lawn overlooking the lake. Thither fared the Mistress, in search of blossoms.

Between her and the chrysanthemum border was a bed of canvas. Frost had smitten the tall, dark stems; leaving only a copse of brown stalks. Out of this copse, chewing greedily at an uprooted bunch of canna-bulbs, slouched Romaine's wandering sow. At, sight of the Mistress, she paused in her leisurely progress and, with the bunch of bulbs still hanging from one corner of her shark-mouth, stood blinking truculently at the astonished woman.

Now, Lad had not obeyed the Mistress's soft chirp. It had not reached his dulling ears;--the ears which, of old, had caught her faintest whisper. Yet, he would have followed her, as ever, without such summons, had not his nostrils suddenly become aware of an alien scent.

Lad's sense of smell, like his hearing, was far less keen than once it had been. But, it was still strong enough to register the trace of intruders. His hackles bristled. Up went the cla.s.sically splendid head, to sniff the light breeze, for further information as to the reek of pig and the lighter but more disquieting scent of man.

Turning his head, to reinforce with his near-sighted eyes the failing evidence of his nostrils, he saw the sow emerge from the canna-clump.

He saw, too--or he divined--the look in her pale little red-rimmed eyes; as they glared defiantly at the Mistress. And Lad cleared the porch steps at one long leap.

For the instant, he forgot he was aged and stout and that his joints ached at any sudden motion; and that his wind and his heart were not what they had been;--and that his once-terrible fangs were yellowed and blunt; and that his primal strength was forever fled. Peril was facing the Mistress. That was all Laddie knew or cared. With his wonted trumpet-bark of challenge, he sped toward her.

The Mistress, recovering from her surprise at the apparition of the huge pig, noticed the bunch of canna-bulbs dangling from the s...o...b..ry lips. This very week all the bulbs were to have been dug up and taken into the greenhouse, for the winter. Angered,--with all a true flower-lover's indignation,--at this desecrating of one of her beloved plants, she caught up a stick which had been used as a rose-prop.

Brandishing this, and crying "Shoo!" very valiantly indeed, she advanced upon the sow.

The latter did not stir; except to lower her bristling head an inch or so; and let drop the bunch of bulbs from between her razor-teeth. The Mistress advanced another step; and struck at the beast.

The sow veered, to avoid the blow; then, with ludicrous yet deadly swiftness, wheeled back and charged straight for the woman.

Many a child and not a few grown men and women have gone down under such murderous charges; to be trampled and gouged and torn to death, before help could come. But the slaveringly foul jaws did not so much as touch the hem of the Mistress's dress.

Between her and the sow flashed a swirl of mahogany-and-snow. Lad, charging at full speed, crashed into the forward-lurching six-hundredweight of solid flesh and inch-thick hide.

The impact bowled him clean over, knocking the breath out of him. Not from choice had he made such a blundering and un-collielike attack. In other days, he could have flashed in and out again, with the speed of light; leaving his antagonist with a slashed face or even a broken leg, as souvenir of his a.s.sault. But those days were past. His uncannily wise brain and his dauntless courage were all that remained of his ancient prowess. And this brain and pluck told him his one chance of checking the sow's charge on the Mistress was to hurl himself full at her.

His impetus, which had knock him flat, scarce slowed down the pig's lurching rush; scarce enabled the frightened Mistress to recoil a step.

Then, the sow was lunging at her again, over the prostrate dog's body.

But, even as he fell, Lad had gathered his feet under him. And the shock which knocked him breathless did not make the wise brain waver in its plan of campaign. Before he sought to rise, up drove his bared teeth, at the sow that was plunging across him. And those teeth clove deep into her pinkish nostrils;--well-nigh the only vulnerable spot, (as Lad knew) in her bristling pigskin armor.

Lad got his grip. And, with all his fragile old strength, he hung on; grinding the outworn fangs further and further into the sensitive nose of his squealing foe.

This stopped the sow's impetuous charge; for good and all. With a heavy collie hanging to one's tortured nose and that collie's teeth sunk deep into it, there is no scope for thinking of any other opponent. She halted, striking furiously, with her sharp cloven fore-hoofs, at the writhing dog beneath her.

One ferociously driving hoof cut a gash in Lad's chest. Another tore the skin from his shoulder. Unheeding, he hung on. The sow braced herself, solid, on outspread legs; and shook her head and forequarters with all her muscular might.

Lad was hurled free, his weakened jaws failing to withstand such a yank. Over and over he rolled, to one side; the sow charging after him.

She had lost all interest in attacking the Mistress. Her flaming little brain now held no thought except to kill and mangle the dog that had hurt her snout so cruelly. And she rushed at him, the tushes glinting from under her upcurled and bleeding lips.

But, the collie, for all his years and unwieldiness, was still a collie. And, by the time he stopped rolling, he was scrambling to his feet. Shrinking quickly to one side, as the sow bore down upon him, he eluded her rush, by the fraction of an inch; and made a wolflike slash for her underbody, as she hurtled by.