Lad: A Dog Part 11

A man who is at all familiar with the ways of dogs can tell at once whether a dog's bark denotes cheer or anger or terror or grief or curiosity. To such a man a bark is as expressive of meanings as are the inflections of a human voice. To another dog these meanings are far more intelligible. And in the timbre of the multiple barks and yells that now a.s.sailed his ears, Lad read nothing to allay his own fears.

He was the hero of a half-dozen hard-won fights. He had once risked his life to save life. He had attacked tramps and peddlers and other stick-wielding invaders who had strayed into the grounds of The Place. Yet the tiniest semblance of fear now crept into his heart.

He looked up at the Mistress, a world of sorrowing appeal in his eyes. At her gentle touch on his head and at a whisper of her loved voice, he moved onward at her side with no further hesitation. If these, his G.o.ds, were leading him to death, he would not question their right to do it, but would follow on as befitted a good soldier.

Through a doorway they went. At a wicket a yawning veterinary glanced uninterestedly at Lad. As the dog had no outward and glaring signs of disease, the vet' did not so much as touch him, but with a nod suffered him to pa.s.s. The vet' was paid to inspect all dogs as they entered the show. Perhaps some of them were turned back by him, perhaps not; but after this, as after many another show, scores of kennels were swept by distemper and by other canine maladies, scores of deaths followed. That is one of the risks a dog-exhibitor must take--or rather that his luckless dogs must take--in spite of the fees paid to yawning veterinaries to bar out sick entrants.

As Lad pa.s.sed in through the doorway, he halted involuntarily in dismay. Dogs--dogs--DOGS! More than two thousand of them, from Great Dane to toy terrier, benched in row after row throughout the vast floor-s.p.a.ce of the Garden! Lad had never known there were so many dogs on earth.

Fully five hundred of them were barking or howling. The hideous volume of sound swelled to the Garden's vaulted roof and echoed back again like innumerable hammer-blows upon the eardrum.

The Mistress stood holding Lad's chain and softly caressing the bewildered dog, while the Master went to make inquiries. Lad pressed his s.h.a.ggy body closer to her knee for refuge, as he gazed blinkingly around him.

In the Garden's center were several large inclosures of wire and reddish wood. Inside each inclosure were a table, a chair and a movable platform. The platform was some six inches high and four feet square. At corners of these "judging-rings" were blackboards on which the cla.s.ses next to be inspected were chalked up.

All around the central s.p.a.ce were alleys, on each side of which were lines of raised "benches," two feet from the ground. The benches were carpeted with straw and were divided off by high wire part.i.tions into compartments about three feet in area. Each compartment was to be the abiding-place of some unfortunate dog for the next four days and nights. By short chains the dogs were bound into these open-fronted cells.

The chains left their wearers just leeway enough to stand up or lie down or to move to the various limits of the tiny s.p.a.ce. In front of some of the compartments a wire barrier was fastened. This meant that the occupant was savage--in other words, that under the four-day strain he was likely to resent the stares or pokes or ticklings or promiscuous alien pattings of fifty thousand curious visitors.

The Master came back with a plumply tipped attendant. Lad was conducted through a babel of yapping and snapping thoroughbreds of all breeds, to a section at the Garden's northeast corner, above which, in large black letters on a white sign, was inscribed "COLLIES." Here his conductors stopped before a compartment numbered "658."

"Up, Laddie!" said the Mistress, touching the straw-carpeted bench.

Usually, at this command, Lad was wont to spring to the indicated height--whether car-floor or table-top--with the lightness of a cat. Now, one foot after another, he very slowly climbed into the compartment he was already beginning to detest--the cell which was planned to be his only resting-spot for four interminable days. There he, who had never been tied, was ignominiously chained as though he were a runaway puppy. The insult bit to the depths of his sore soul. He curled down in the straw.

The Mistress made him as comfortable as she could. She set before him the breakfast she had brought and told the attendant to bring him some water.

The Master, meantime, had met a collie man whom he knew, and in company with this acquaintance he was walking along the collie-section examining the dogs tied there. A dozen times had the Master visited dog-shows; but now that Lad was on exhibition, he studied the other collies with new eyes.

"Look!" he said boastfully to his companion, pausing before a bench whereon were chained a half-dozen dogs from a single ill.u.s.trious kennel. "These fellows aren't in it with old Lad. See--their noses are tapered like tooth-picks, and the span of their heads, between the ears, isn't as wide as my palm; and their eyes are little and they slant like a Chinaman's; and their bodies are as curved as a grayhound's. Compared with Lad, some of them are freaks. That's all they are, just freaks--not all of them, of course, but a lot of them."

"That's the idea nowadays," laughed the collie man patronizingly. "The up-to-date collie--this year's style, at least--is bred with a borzoi (wolfhound) head and with graceful, small bones. What's the use of his having brain and scenting-power? He's used for exhibition or kept as a pet nowadays--not to herd sheep. Long nose, narrow head----"

"But Lad once tracked my footsteps two miles through a snowstorm,"

bragged the Master; "and again on a road where fifty people had walked since I had; and he understands the meaning of every simple word.

He----"

"Yes?" said the collie man, quite unimpressed. "Very interesting--but not useful in a show. Some of the big exhibitors still care for sense in their dogs, and they make companions of them--Eileen Moretta, for instance, and Fred Leighton and one or two more; but I find most of the rest are just out for the prizes. Let's have a look at your dog.

Where is he?"

On the way down the alley toward Cell 658 they met the worried Mistress.

"Lad won't eat a thing," she reported, "and he wouldn't eat before we left home this morning, either. He drinks plenty of water, but he won't eat. I'm afraid he's sick."

"They hardly ever eat at a show," the collie man consoled her, "hardly a mouthful--most of the high-strung ones, but they drink quarts of water. This is your dog, hey?" he broke off, pausing at 658. "H'm!"

He stood, legs apart, hands behind his back, gazing down at Lad. The dog was lying, head between paws, as before. He did not so much as glance up at the stranger, but his great wistful eyes roved from the Mistress to the Master and back again. In all this horrible place they two alone were his salvation.

"H'm!" repeated the collie man thoughtfully. "Eyes too big and not enough slanted. Head too thick for length of nose. Ears too far apart. Eyes too far apart, too. Not enough 'terrier expression' in them. Too much bone, too much bulk. Wonderful coat, though--glorious coat! Best coat I've seen this five years. Great brush, too! What's he entered for? Novice, hey? May get a third with him at that. He's the true type--but old-fashioned. I'm afraid he's too old-fashioned for such fast company as he's in. Still, you never can tell. Only it's a pity he isn't a little more----"

"I wouldn't have him one bit different in any way!" flashed the Mistress. "He's perfect as he is. You can't see that, though, because he isn't himself now. I've never seen him so crushed and woe-begone. I wish we had never brought him here."

"You can't blame him," said the collie man philosophically. "Why, just suppose _you_ were brought to a strange place like this and chained into a cage and were left there four days and nights while hundreds of other prisoners kept screaming and shouting and crying at the top of their lungs every minute of the time! And suppose about a hundred thousand people kept jostling past your cage night and day, rubbering at you and pointing at you and trying to feel your ears and mouth, and chirping at you to shake hands, would _you_ feel very hungry or very chipper? A four-day show is the most fearful thing a high-strung dog can go through--next to vivisection. A little one-day show, for about eight hours, is no special ordeal, especially if the dog's Master stays near him all the time; but a four-day show is--is Sheol! I wonder the S. P. C. A. doesn't do something to make it easier."

"If I'd known--if we'd known----" began the Mistress.

"Most of these folks know!" returned the collie man. "They do it year after year. There's a mighty strong lure in a bit of ribbon. Why, look what an exhibitor will do for it! He'll risk his dog's health and make his dog's life a horror. He'll ship him a thousand miles in a tight crate from Show to Show. (Some dogs die under the strain of so many journeys.) And he'll pay five dollars for every cla.s.s the dog's entered in. Some exhibitors enter a single dog in five or six cla.s.ses.

The a.s.sociation charges one dollar admission to the show. Crowds of people pay the price to come in. The exhibitor gets none of the gate-money. All he gets for his five dollars or his twenty-five dollars is an off chance at a measly sc.r.a.p of colored silk worth maybe four cents. That, and the same off-chance at a tiny cash prize that doesn't come anywhere near to paying his expenses. Yet, for all, it's the straightest sport on earth. Not an atom of graft in it, and seldom any profit.... So long! I wish you folks luck with 658."

He strolled on. The Mistress was winking very fast and was bending over Lad, petting him and whispering to him. The Master looked in curiosity at a kennel man who was holding down a nearby collie while a second man was tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the scared dog's feet and fetlocks with a pair of curved shears; and now the Master noted that nearly every dog but Lad was thus clipped as to ankle.

At an adjoining cell a woman was sifting almost a pound of talc.u.m powder into her dog's fur to make the coat fluffier. Elsewhere similar weird preparations were in progress. And Lad's only preparation had been baths and brushing! The Master began to feel like a fool.

People all along the collie line presently began to brush dogs (smoothing the fur the wrong way to fluff it) and to put other finishing touches on the poor beasts' make-up. The collie man strolled back to 658.

"The Novice cla.s.s in collies is going to be called presently," he told the Mistress. "Where's your exhibition-leash and choke-collar? I'll help you put them on."

"Why, we've only this chain," said the Mistress. "We bought it for Lad yesterday, and this is his regular collar--though he never has had to wear it. Do we have to have another kind?"

"You don't have to unless you want to," said the collie man, "but it's best--especially, the choke-collar. You see, when exhibitors go into the ring, they hold their dogs by the leash close to the neck. And if their dogs have choke-collars, why, then they've _got_ to hold their heads high when the leash is pulled. They've got to, to keep from strangling. It gives them a fine, proud carriage of the head, that counts a lot with some judges. All dog-photos are taken that way. Then the leash is blotted out of the negative. Makes the dog look showy, too--keeps him from slumping. Can't slump much when you're trying not to choke, you know."

"It's horrible! _Horrible!_" shuddered the Mistress. "I wouldn't put such a thing on Lad for all the prizes on earth. When I read Davis'

wonderful 'Bar Sinister' story, I thought dog-shows were a real treat to dogs. I see, now, they're----"

"Your cla.s.s is called!" interrupted the collie man. "Keep his head high, keep him moving as showily as you can. Lead him close to you with the chain as short as possible. Don't be scared if any of the other dogs in the ring happen to fly at him. The attendants will look out for all that. Good luck."

Down the aisle and to the wired gate of the north-eastern ring the unhappy Mistress piloted the unhappier Lad. The big dog gravely kept beside her, regardless of other collies moving in the same direction.

The Garden had begun to fill with visitors, and the ring was surrounded with interested "rail-birds." The collie cla.s.ses, as usual, were among those to be judged on the first day of the four.

Through the gate into the ring the Mistress piloted Lad. Six other Novice dogs were already there. Beautiful creatures they were, and all but one were led by kennel men. At the table, behind a ledger flanked by piles of multicolored ribbons, sat the clerk. Beside the platform stood a wizened and elderly little man in tweeds. He was McGilead, who had been chosen as judge for the collie division. He was a Scot, and he was also a man with stubborn opinions of his own as to dogs.

Around the ring, at the judge's order, the Novice collies were paraded. Most of them stepped high and fast and carried their heads proudly aloft--the thin choke-collars cutting deep into their furry necks. One entered was a harum-scarum puppy who writhed and bit and whirled about in ecstasy of terror.

Lad moved solemnly along at the Mistress' side. He did not pant or curvet or look showy. He was miserable and every line of his splendid body showed his misery. The Mistress, too, glancing at the more spectacular dogs, wanted to cry--not because she was about to lose, but because Lad was about to lose. Her heart ached for him. Again she blamed herself bitterly for bringing him here.

McGilead, hands in pockets, stood sucking at an empty brier pipe, and scanning the parade that circled around him. Presently he stepped up to the Mistress, checked her as she filed past him, and said to her with a sort of sorrowful kindness:

"Please take your dog over to the far end of the ring. Take him into the corner where he won't be in my way while I am judging."

Yes, he spoke courteously enough, but the Mistress would rather have had him hit her across the face. Meekly she obeyed his command. Across the ring, to the very farthest corner, she went--poor beautiful Lad beside her, disgraced, weeded out of the compet.i.tion at the very start. There, far out of the contest, she stood, a drooping little figure, feeling as though everyone were sneering at her dear dog's disgrace.

Lad seemed to sense her sorrow. For, as he stood beside her, head and tail low, he whined softly and licked her hand as if in encouragement.

She ran her fingers along his silky head. Then, to keep from crying, she watched the other contestants.

No longer were these parading. One at a time and then in twos, the judge was standing them on the platform. He looked at their teeth. He pressed their heads between his hands. He "hefted" their hips. He ran his fingers through their coats. He pressed his palm upward against their underbodies. He subjected them to a score of such annoyances, but he did it all with a quick and sure touch that not even the crankiest of them could resent.

Then he stepped back and studied the quartet. After that he seemed to remember Lad's presence, and, as though by way of earning his fee, he slouched across the ring to where the forlorn Mistress was petting her dear disgraced dog.

Lazily, perfunctorily, the judge ran his hand over Lad, with absolutely none of the thoroughness that had marked his inspection of the other dogs. Apparently there was no need to look for the finer points in a disqualified collie. The sketchy examination did not last three seconds. At its end the judge jotted down a number on a pad he held. Then he laid one hand heavily on Lad's head and curtly thrust out his other hand at the Mistress.