Lad: A Dog Part 27

Tenebris swerved. He veered to one side, throwing up his head to clear it of this unseen torment.

As a result, the half-lifted horns grazed the fallen man. The pointed hoofs missed him altogether. At the same moment the weight was gone from against the bull's head, and the throbbing stab from his nostrils.

Pausing uncertainly, Tenebris opened his eyes and glared about him. A yard or two away a s.h.a.ggy dog was rising from the tumble caused by the jerky uptossing of the bull's head.

Now, were this a fiction yarn, it would be interesting to devise reasons why Lad should have flown to the rescue of a human whom he loathed, and arrayed himself against a fellow-beast toward which he felt no hatred at all.

To dogs all men are G.o.ds. And perhaps Lad felt the urge of saving even a detested G.o.d from the onslaught of a beast. Or perhaps not. One can go only by the facts. And the facts were that the collie had checked himself in the reluctant journey toward the Mistress and had gone to his foe's defense.

With a flash of speed astonishing in so large and sedate a dog, he had flown at the bull in time--in the barest time--to grip the torn nostrils and turn the whirlwind charge.

And now Tenebris shifted his baleful glare from the advancing dog to the howling man. The dog could wait. The bull's immediate pleasure and purpose were to kill the man.

He lowered his head again. But before he could launch his enormous bulk into full motion--before he could shut his eyes--the dog was between him and his quarry.

In one spring Lad was at the bull's nose. And again his white eye teeth slashed the ragged nostrils. Tenebris halted his own incipient rush and strove to pin the collie to the ground. It would have been as easy to pin a whizzing hornet.

Tenebris thrust at the clinging dog, once more seeking to smash Lad against the sod with his battering-ram forehead and his short horns. But Lad was not there. Instead, he was to the left, his body clean out of danger, his teeth in the bull's left ear.

A lunge of the tortured head sent Lad rolling over and over. But by the time he stopped rolling he was on his feet again. Not only on his feet, but back to the a.s.sault. Back, before his unwieldy foe could gauge the distance for another rush at the man. And a keen nip in the bleeding nostrils balked still one more charge.

The bull, snorting with rage, suddenly changed his plan of campaign.

Apparently his first ideas had been wrong. It was the man who could wait, and the dog that must be gotten out of the way.

Tenebris wheeled and made an express-train rush at Lad. The collie turned and fled. He did not flee with tail down, as befits a beaten dog. Brush wavingly aloft, he gamboled along at top speed, just a stride or two ahead of the pursuing bull. He even looked back encouragingly over his shoulder as he went.

Lad was having a beautiful time. Seldom had he been so riotously happy. All the pent-up mischief in his soul was having a glorious airing.

The bull's blind charge was short, as a bull's charge always is. When Tenebris opened his eyes he saw the dog, not ten feet in front of him, scampering for dear life toward the river. And again Tenebris charged.

Three such charges, one after another, brought pursuer and pursued to within a hundred feet of the water.

Tenebris was not used to running. He was getting winded. He came to a wavering standstill, snorting loudly and pawing up great lumps of sod.

But he had not stood thus longer than a second before Lad was at him. Burnished s.h.a.ggy coat a-bristle, tail delightedly wagging, the dog bounded forward. He set up an ear-splitting fanfare of barking.

Round and round the bull he whirled, never letting up on that deafening volley of barks; nipping now at ears, now at nose, now at heels; dodging in and out under the giant's clumsy body; easily avoiding the bewilderingly awkward kicks and lunges of his enemy.

Then, forefeet crouching and muzzle close to the ground, like a playful puppy, he waved his plumed tail violently and, in a new succession of barks, wooed his adversary to the attack.

It was a pretty sight. And it set Tenebris into active motion at once.

The bull doubtless thought he himself was doing the driving, by means of his panting rushes, and by his lurches to one side or another to keep away from the dog's sharp bites. But he was not. It was Lad who chose the direction in which they went. And he chose it deliberately.

Presently the two were but fifteen feet away from the river, at a point where the bank shelved, cliff-like, for two or three yards, down to a wide pool.

Feinting for the nose, Lad induced Tenebris to lower his tired head. Then he sprang lightly over the threatening horns, and landed, a-scramble, with all four feet, on the bull's broad shoulders.

Scurrying along the heaving back, the dog nipped Tenebris on the hip, and dropped to earth again.

The insult, the fresh pain, the astonishment combined to make Tenebris forget his weariness. Beside himself with maniac wrath, he shut both eyes and launched himself forward. Lad slipped, eel-like, to one side. Carried by his own blind momentum, Tenebris shot over the bank edge.

Too late the bull looked. Half sliding, half scrambling, he crashed down the steep sides of the bank and into the river.

Lad, tongue out, jogged over to the top of the bank, where, with head to one side and ears c.o.c.ked, he gazed interestedly down into the wildly churned pool.

Tenebris had gotten to his feet after the ducking; and he was floundering pastern-deep in stickily soft mud. So tightly bogged down that it later took the efforts of six farm-hands to extricate him, the bull continued to flounder and to bellow.

A stream of people were running down the meadow toward the river. Lad hated crowds. He made a loping detour of the nearest runners and sought to regain the spot where last he had seen the Mistress and Master. Also, if his luck held good, he might have still another bout with the man he had once treed. Which would be an ideal climax to a perfect day.

He found all the objects of his quest together. The groom, hysterical, was swaying on his feet, supported by Glure.

At sight of the advancing collie the bitten man cried aloud in fear and clutched his employer for protection.

"Take him away, sir!" he babbled in mortal terror. "He'll kill me! He hates me, the ugly hairy devil! He _hates_ me. He tried to kill me once before! He----"

"H'm!" mused the Master. "So he tried to kill you once before, eh?

Aren't you mistaken?"

"No, I ain't!" wept the man. "I'd know him in a million! That's why he went for me again to-day. He remembered me. I seen he did. That's no dog. It's a _devil!_"

"Mr. Glure," asked the Master, a light dawning, "when this chap applied to you for work, did he wear grayish tweed trousers? And were they in bad shape?"

"His trousers were in rags," said Glure. "I remember that. He said a savage dog had jumped into the road from a farmhouse somewhere and gone for him. Why?"

"Those trousers," answered the Master, "weren't entire strangers to you. You'd seen the missing parts of them--on a tree and on the ground near it, at The Place. Your 'treasure' is the harness thief Lad treed the day you came to see me. So----"

"Nonsense!" fumed Glure. "Why, how absurd! He----"

"I hadn't stolen nothing!" blubbered the man. "I was coming cross-lots to a stable to ask for work. And the brute went for me. I had to run up a tree and----"

"And it didn't occur to you to shout for help?" sweetly urged the Master. "I was within call. So was Mr. Glure. So was at least one of my men. An honest seeker for work needn't have been afraid to halloo. A thief would have been afraid to. In fact, a thief _was!_"

"Get out of here, you!" roared Glure, convinced at last. "You measly sneak thief! Get out or I'll have you jailed! You're an imposter! A pan-handler! A----"

The thief waited to hear no more. With an apprehensive glance to see that Lad was firmly held, he bolted for the road.

"Thanks for telling me," said Glure. "He might have stolen everything at Glure Towers if I hadn't found out. He----"

"Yes. He might even have stolen more than the cost of our non-utilitarian Lad's keep," unkindly suggested the Master. "For that matter, if it hadn't been for a non-utilitarian dog, that mad bull's horns, instead of his nostrils, would be red by this time. At least one man would have been killed. Perhaps more. So, after all----"

He stopped. The Mistress was tugging surrept.i.tiously at his sleeve.

The Master, in obedience to his wife's signal, stepped aside, to light a cigar.

"I wouldn't say any more, dear, if I were you," the Mistress was whispering. "You see, if it hadn't been for Lad, the bull would never have broken loose in the first place. By another half-hour that fact may dawn on Mr. Glure, if you keep rubbing it in. Let's go over to the grand stand. Come, Lad!"

CHAPTER X