Lad: A Dog Part 31

replied Schwartz. "What with your dog's snarling and growling, and the poor sheep's bl'ats. And all the other sheep----"

"Yet, you say he had killed three sheep while you slept there--had killed them and carried or dragged their bodies away and come back again; and, presumably started a noisy panic in the flock every time. And none of that racket waked you until the fourth sheep was killed?"

"I was dog-tired," declared Schwartz. "I'd been at work in our south-mowing for ten hours the day before, and up since five.

Mr. Romaine can tell you I'm a hard man to wake at best. I sleep like the dead."

"That's right!" a.s.sented t.i.tus. "Time an' again, I have to bang at his door an' holler myself hoa.r.s.e, before I can get him to open his eyes. My wife says he's the sleepin'est sleeper----"

"You ran out of the shed with your stick," resumed the Master, "and struck the dog before he could get away? And as he turned to run you kicked him?"

"Yes, sir. That's what I did."

"How hard did you hit him?"

"A pretty good lick," answered Schwartz, with reminiscent satisfaction.

"Then I----"

"And when you hit him he slunk away like a whipped cur? He made no move to resent it? I mean, he did not try to attack you?"

"Not him!" a.s.serted Schwartz, "I guess he was glad enough to get out of reach. He slunk away so fast, I hardly had a chance to land fair on him, when I kicked."

"Here is my riding-crop," said the Master. "Take it, please, and strike Lad with it just as you struck him--or the sheep-killing dog--with your stick. Just as hard. Lad has never been struck except once, unjustly, by me, years ago. He has never needed it. But if he would slink away like a whipped mongrel when a stranger hits him, the sooner he is beaten to death the better. Hit him exactly as you hit him this morning."

Judge Maclay half-opened his lips to protest. He knew the love of the people of The Place for Lad, and he wondered at this invitation to a farmhand to thrash the dog publicly. He glanced at the Mistress. Her face was calm, even a little amused. Evidently the Master's request did not horrify or surprise her.

Schwartz's stubby fingers gripped the crop the Master forced into his hand.

With true Teutonic relish for pain-inflicting, he swung the weapon aloft and took a step toward the lazily rec.u.mbent collie, striking with all his strength.

Then, with much-increased speed, Schwartz took three steps backward.

For, at the menace, Lad had leaped to his feet with the speed of a fighting wolf, eluding the descending crop as it swished past him and launching himself straight for the wielder's throat. He did not growl; he did not pause. He merely sprang for his a.s.sailant with a deadly ferocity that brought a cry from Maclay.

The Master caught the huge dog midway in his throatward flight.

"Down, Lad!" he ordered, gently.

The collie, obedient to the word, stretched himself on the floor at the Mistress' feet. But he kept a watchful and right unloving eye on the man who had struck at him.

"It's a bit odd, isn't it," suggested the Master, "that he went for you, like that, just now; when, this morning, he slunk away from your blow, in cringing fear?"

"Why wouldn't he?" growled Schwartz, his stolid nerve shaken by the unexpected onslaught. "His folks are here to back him up, and everything. Why wouldn't he go for me! He was slinky enough when I whaled him, this morning."

"H'm!" mused the Master. "You hit a strong blow, Schwartz. I'll say that, for you. You missed Lad, with my crop. But you've split the crop. And you scored a visible mark on the wooden floor with it. Did you hit as hard as that when you struck the sheep-killer, this morning?"

"A sight harder," responded Schwartz. "My mad was up. I----"

"A dog's skin is softer than a pine floor," said the Master. "Your Honor, such a blow would have raised a weal on Lad's flesh, an inch high. Would your Honor mind pa.s.sing your hand over his body and trying to locate such a weal?"

"This is all outside the p'int!" raged the annoyed t.i.tus Romaine.

"You're a-dodgin' the issue, I tell ye. I----"

"If your Honor please!" insisted the Master.

The judge left his desk and whistled Lad across to him. The dog looked at his Master, doubtfully. The Master nodded. The collie arose and walked in leisurely fashion over to the waiting judge. Maclay ran an exploring hand through the magnificent tawny coat, from head to haunch; then along the dog's furry sides. Lad hated to be handled by anyone but the Mistress or the Master. But at a soft word from the Mistress, he stood stock still and submitted to the inspection.

"I find no weal or any other mark on him," presently reported the Judge.

The Mistress smiled happily. The whole investigation, up to this point, and further, was along eccentric lines she herself had thought out and had suggested to her husband. Lines suggested by her knowledge of Lad.

"Schwartz," went on the Master, interrupting another fuming outbreak from Romaine, "I'm afraid you didn't hit quite as hard as you thought you did, this morning; or else some other dog is carrying around a big welt on his flesh, to-day. Now for the kick you say you gave the collie. I----"

"I won't copy _that_, on your bloodthirsty dog!" vociferated Schwartz. "Not even if the Judge jails me for contempt, I won't. He'd likely kill me!"

"And yet he ran from you, this morning," the Master reminded him. "Well, I won't insist on your kicking Lad. But you say it was a light kick; because he was running away when it landed. I am curious to know just how hard a kick it was. In fact, I'm so curious about it that I am going to offer myself as a subst.i.tute for Lad. My riding boot is a good surface. Will you kindly kick me there, Schwartz; as nearly as possible with the same force (no more, no less) than you kicked the dog?"

"I protest!" shouted Romaine. "This measly tomfoolishness is----"

"If your Honor please!" appealed the Master sharply; turning from the bewildered Schwartz to the no less dismayed Judge.

Maclay was on his feet to overrule so strange a request. But there was keen supplication in the Master's eye that made the Judge pause. Maclay glanced again at the Mistress. In spite of the prospect of seeing her husband kicked, her face wore a most pleased smile. The Judge noted, though, that she was stroking Lad's head and that she was un.o.btrusively turning that head so that the dog faced Schwartz.

"Now, then!" adjured the Master. "Whenever you're ready, Schwartz! A German doesn't get a chance, like this, every day, to kick an American. And I'll promise not to go for your throat, as Laddie tried to. Kick away!"

Awkwardly, shamblingly, Schwartz stepped forward. Urged on by his racial veneration for the Law--and perhaps not sorry to a.s.sail the man whose dog had tried to throttle him--he drew back his broganed left foot and kicked out in the general direction of the calf of the Master's thick riding boot.

The kick did not land. Not that the Master dodged or blocked it. He stood moveless, and grinning expectantly.

But the courtroom shook with a wild-beast yell--a yell of insane fury. And Schwartz drew back his half-extended left foot in sudden terror; as a great furry shape came whizzing through the air at him.

The sight of the half-delivered kick, at his worshipped master, had had precisely the effect on Lad that the Mistress had foreseen when she planned the manoeuver. Almost any good dog will attack a man who seeks to strike its owner. And Lad seemed to comprehend that a kick is a more contemptuous affront than is a blow.

Schwartz's kick at the Master had thrown the adoring dog into a maniac rage against this defiler of his idol. The memory of Schwartz's blow at himself was as nothing to it. It aroused in the collie's heart a deathless blood-feud against the man. As the Mistress had known it would.

The Mistress' sharp command, and the Master's hastily outflung arm barely sufficed to deflect Lad's charge. He writhed in their dual grasp, snarling furiously, his eyes red; his every giant muscle strained to get at the cowering Schwartz.

"We've had enough of this!" imperatively ordained Maclay, above the babel of t.i.tus Romaine's protests. "In spite of the informality of hearing, this is a court of law: not a dog-kennel. I----"

"I crave your Honor's pardon," apologized the Master. "I was merely trying to show that Lad is not the sort of dog to let a stranger strike and kick him as this man claims to have done with impunity. I think I have shown, from Lad's own regrettable actions, that it was some other dog--if _any_--which cheered Romaine's barnyard, this morning, and yesterday morning.

"It was _your_ dog!" cried Schwartz, getting his breath, in a swirl of anger. "Next time I'll be on watch with a shotgun and not a stick. I'll----"

"There ain't going to be no 'next time,'" a.s.serted the equally angry Romaine. "Judge, I call on you to order that sheep-killer shot; an' to order his master to indemnify me for th' loss of my eight killed sheep!"

"Your Honor!" suavely protested the Master, "may I ask you to listen to a counter-proposition? A proposition which I think will be agreeable to Mr. Romaine, as well as to myself?"

"The only prop'sition _I'll_ agree to, is the shootin' of that cur and the indemnifyin' of me for my sheep!" persisted Romaine.

Maclay waved his hand for order; then, turning to the Master, said: