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Buff: A Collie, and Other Dog-Stories

by Albert Payson Terhune · English · Gutenberg #42804 · 425,727 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Buff: A Collie, and Other Dog-Stories

Author: Albert Payson Terhune


        
Release date: May 25, 2013 [eBook #42804]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BUFF: A COLLIE, AND OTHER DOG-STORIES ***

    BUFF: A COLLIE

    AND OTHER DOG-STORIES

    By

    _Albert Payson Terhune_

    _Author of_ LOCHINVAR LUCK,
    LAD, A DOG


    GROSSET & DUNLAP
    _Publishers_       _New York_


    COPYRIGHT, 1921,
    BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

    PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




FOREWORD


    A swirl of gold-and-white and gray and black,--
    Rackety, vibrant, glad with life’s hot zest,--
    Sunnybank collies, gaily surging pack,--
    These are my chums; the chums that love me best.

    Not chums alone, but courtiers, zealots, too,--
    Clean-white of soul, too wise for fraud or sham;
    Yet senseless in their worship ever new.
    These are the friendly folk whose god I am.

    A blatant, foolish, stumbling, purblind god,--
    A pinchbeck idol, clogged with feet of clay!
    Yet, eager at my lightest word or nod,
    They crave but leave to follow and obey.

    We humans are so slow to understand!
    Swift in our wrath, deaf to the justice-plea,
    Meting out punishment with lavish hand!
    What, but a dog, would serve such gods as we?

    Heaven gave them souls, I’m sure; but dulled the brain,
    Lest they should sadden at so brief a span
    Of heedless, honest life as they sustain;
    Or doubt the godhead of their master, Man.

    Today a pup; to-morrow at life’s prime;
    Then old and fragile;--dead at fourteen years.
    At best a meagre little inch of time.
    Oblivion then, sans mourners, memories, tears!

    Service that asks no price; forgiveness free
    For injury or for injustice hard.
    Stanch friendship, wanting neither thanks nor fee
    Save privilege to worship and to guard:--

    That is their creed. They know no shrewder way
    To travel through their hour of lifetime here.
    Would Man but deign to serve his God as they,
    Millennium must dawn within the year.




CONTENTS


                                           PAGE
    FOREWORD                                  v

    I
    BUFF: A COLLIE
    CHAPTER ONE: THE FIGHTING STRAIN         11
    CHAPTER TWO: “THE HUNT IS UP!”           48
    CHAPTER THREE: MASTERLESS!               80
    CHAPTER FOUR: THE END OF THE TRAIL      107

    II
    “SOMETHING”                             133

    III
    CHUMS                                   155

    IV
    HUMAN-INTEREST STUFF                    183

    V
    “ONE MINUTE LONGER”                     215

    VI
    THE FOUL FANCIER                        235

    VII
    THE GRUDGE                              283

    VIII
    THE SUNNYBANK COLLIES                   321




BUFF: A COLLIE




CHAPTER ONE: THE FIGHTING STRAIN


She was a mixture of the unmixable. Not one expert in eighty could
have guessed at her breed or breeds.

Her coat was like a chow’s, except that it was black and white and
tan--as is no chow’s between here and the Chinese Wall. Her deep chest
was as wide as a bulldog’s; her queer little eyes slanted like a
collie’s; her foreface was like a Great Dane’s, with its barrel muzzle
and dewlaps. She was as big as a mastiff.

She was Nina, and she belonged to a well-to-do farmer named Shawe, a
man who went in for registered cattle, and, as a side line, for prize
collies.

To clear up, in a handful of words, the mystery of Nina’s breeding,
her dam was Shawe’s long-pedigreed and registered and prize-winning
tricolour collie, Shawemere Queen. Her sire was Upstreet Butcherboy,
the fiercest and gamest and strongest and most murderous pit-terrier
ever loosed upon a doomed opponent.

Shawe had decided not to breed Shawemere Queen that season. Shawemere
Queen had decided differently. Wherefore, she had broken from her
enclosure by the simple method of gnawing for three hours at the
rotting wood that held a rusty lock-staple.

This had chanced to befall on a night when Tug McManus had deputed the
evening exercising of Upstreet Butcherboy to a new handy-man. The
handy-man did not know Butcherboy’s odd trick of going slack on the
chain for a moment and then flinging himself forward with all his
surpassing speed and still more surpassing strength.

As a result, the man came back to McManus’s alone, noisily nursing
three chain-torn fingers. Butcherboy trotted home to his kennel at
dawn, stolidly taking the whaling which McManus saw fit to administer.

When Shawemere Queen’s six bullet-headed pups came into the world,
sixty-three days later, there was loud and lurid blasphemy, at her
master’s kennels. Shawe, as soon as he could speak with any degree of
coherence, bade his kennelman drown five of the pups at once, and to
give like treatment to the sixth as soon as its mother should have no
further need of the youngster.

At random the kennelman scooped up five-sixths of the litter and
strolled off to the horse-pond.

As a result of this monopoly the sixth puppy throve apace. When she
was eight weeks old, fate intervened once more to save her from the
horse-pond. Mrs. Shawe’s sister had come, with her two children, to
spend the summer at the farm. The children, after a glimpse of the
pure-breed collie litters gambolling in the shaded puppy-run, had
clamoured loudly for a pup of their own to play with.

Shawe knew the ways of a child with a puppy. He was of no mind to risk
chorea or rickets or fits or other ailments, for any of his priceless
collie babies; from such Teddy Bear handling as the two youngsters
would probably give it. Yet the clamour of the pair grew the more
plangently insistent.

Then it was that the bothered man bethought him of the illegitimate
offspring of Shawemere Queen, the nondescript pup he had planned to
drown within the next few days. The problem was solved.

Once more, peace reigned at Shawemere. And the two children were
deliriously happy in the possession of a shaggy and shapeless morsel
of puppyhood, in whose veins coursed the ancient royal blood of pure
colliedom and the riotously battling strain of the pit-warriors.

They named their pet “Nina,” after a Pomeranian they had mauled and
harassed into convulsions. And they prepared to give like treatment
to their present puppy.

But a cross-breed is ever prone to be super-sturdy. The roughly
affectionate manhandling which had torn the Pom’s hair-trigger nerves
and tenuous vitality to shreds had no effect at all upon Nina. On the
contrary, she waxed fat under the dual caresses and yankings of her
new owners.

Which was lucky. For, while a puppy is an ideal playmate for a child,
the average child is a horrible playmate for a puppy. With no
consciousness of cruelty, children maul or neglect or otherwise
ill-treat thousands of friendly and helpless puppies to death, every
year. And fond parents look on, with fatuous smiles, at their playful
offsprings’ barbarity.

Strong and vigorous from birth, Nina began to take on size at an
amazing rate. Before she was eight months old she stood higher at the
shoulder than any collie at Shawemere. She looked like no other dog on
earth, and she was larger by far than either of her parents.

The cleverest breeder cannot always breed his best stock true to type.
And when it comes to crossbreeding--especially with dogs--nothing
short of Mother Nature herself can predict the outcome.

Nina was a freak. She resembled outwardly neither collie nor pit
bull-terrier. Withal, she was not ill to look on. There was a compact
symmetry and an impression of latent power to her. And the nondescript
coat was thick and fine. In spite of all this, she probably would have
met with a swift and reasonably merciful death, on the departure of
the two children, that autumn, had not Shawe realised that the
youngsters had been invited to the farm for the following summer, and
that the presence of their adored Nina would save some thoroughbred
pup from sacrifice as a pet.

So the crossbreed was permitted to stay on, living at Shawemere on
sufferance, well enough fed and housed in the stables, permitted to
wander pretty much at will, but unpetted and unnoticed. The folk at
the farm believed in breeding true to form. A nondescript did not
interest them.

And the loss was theirs. For the gigantic young mongrel was worth
cultivating. Clever, lovable, obedient, brave, she was an ideal farm
dog. And wistfully she sought to win friends from among these
indifferent humans. Sadly she missed the petting and the mauling of
the children.

These so-called mongrels, by the way, are prone to be cleverer and
stronger than any thoroughbred. Rightly trained, they are ideal chums
and pets and guards--a truth too little known.

If the farm people had troubled to give Nina one-fiftieth of the
attention they lavished on the kennel dogs, they would have seen to it
that she did not set forth, one icy moonlight night in late November,
on a restless gallop over the hills beyond the farm. And this story
would not have been written.

Champion Shawemere King was one of the four greatest collies in
America--perhaps on earth. He was such a dog as is bred perhaps twice
in a generation--flawless in show qualities and in beauty and in
mind. He had annexed the needful “fifteen points” for his championship
at the first six shows to which Shawe had taken him. Everywhere, he
had swept his way to “Winners” with ridiculous ease. He was the
sensation of every show he went to.

Wisely, Shawe had withdrawn him from the ring while King was still in
his glory. And, a few years later, the champion had been taken
permanently from the kennels and had been promoted (or retired) to the
rank of chief house-dog. As perfect in the home as in the ring, he was
the pride and ornament of the big farmhouse.

On this particular November night of ice and moonlight, King had
turned his back on the warmth of the living-room fire and the
disreputable old fur rug that was his resting-place, and had
stretched himself upon the veranda mat, head between forepaws; his
deep-set dark eyes fixed on the highroad leading from town. Shawe had
gone to town for the evening. He had forbidden King to go with him.
But, collie-like, the champion had preferred waiting on the cold porch
for a first glimpse of his returning master, rather than to lie in
smug comfort indoors.

As he lay there he lifted his head suddenly from between his white
forepaws and sniffed the dead-cold air. At the same moment the patter
of running feet on the icy ground caught his ear. Scent and sound came
from the direction of the distant stables.

Then, athwart his gaze, loomed something big and bulky, that flashed
in the white moonlight, cantering past him with an inviting backward
lilt of the head as it made for the hills.

At once, on the invitation, King forgot his accruing years and his
dignity. With a bound he was at Nina’s side. Together the two raced
madly across the yard and across the yellow road and on up into the
hills.

It was a wonderful night for such a wild run. Pure-breed and
cross-breed were obsessed by the urge of it all. Forgotten was King’s
stolidly loyal intent to lie on the chilly mat until Shawe should
return. Forgotten was the wistful loneliness that had saddened Nina
since the departure of the two children.

As the dogs bounded across the bright road, the kennelman, returning
from a stroll, caught sight of them and recognised them. He shouted to
King to come to heel. The champion did not so much as look back. At
Shawe’s call he would have obeyed--though with vast reluctance. But
this man was a hireling. And no dog knows better than a collie the
wide difference in the loyal obedience due to a master and the
negligible civility due to an employee. So King kept on, at the
shoulder of his galloping new mate.

When Shawe, late in January, followed the kennelman into the corner of
a disused stall and stared down at Nina, his face was creased in a
frown of disgust.

There, deep in a pile of bedding, lay the big young cross-bred dog.
She looked up at the visitors with a welcoming glint of her round
brown eyes and a thumping wag of her bushy tail. She was happy at
their notice. She was inordinately proud of what they had come to see.

Snuggled close against her side squirmed seven puppies. They were
three days old. A more motley collection could not have been found in
dogdom.

Two were short-haired and bullet-headed, and were white except for a
brindle spot or two on head and hip. Throwbacks, these, to their
warlike grandsire, Upstreet Butcherboy. Three more were intermediate
of aspect, and might or might not be going to have long coats. A sixth
was enough like a thoroughbred collie to have passed muster in almost
any newborn collie litter.

Over this harlequin sextette Shawe’s contemptuous glance strayed. Then
his gaze focused on the seventh pup. And the frown was merged into a
look of blank incredulity.

The pup was lying an inch or two away from his dam, and several inches
from the huddle of brothers and sisters. Every line of him was clearly
visible and distinct from the rest.

To a layman, he looked like any three-day-old collie. To Shawe he did
not. Any collie expert will tell you that at the age of three days a
pup gives far truer promise of his future appearance--to the trained
eye--than he gives at three months. To the man who knows, there is a
look--to the head, especially--that foreshadows the lines of maturity.

Later, all this foreshadowing vanishes. At two or three months it is
next to impossible to predict what the pup is going to turn into. But
in that one brief phase of babyhood the future often is writ clear.

Shawe noticed the coffin-shaped skull, the square muzzle, the full
foreface, the set of the tiny ears, the general conformation.
Unbelieving, he stared. He picked up the wiggling morsel of fur and
flesh and looked more closely at those prophetic head-lines.

“Good Lord!” he mumbled, bewildered, “why,--why, that’s a--a DOG! He’s
the living image of what King was, at three days. And I picked out
King for a great collie when he was this youngster’s age. I’ve never
known it to fail. Never, up to now. What’s this measly mongrel doing
with the head and build of a winner?”

“Well,” ruminated the kennelman, “we know he’s three-quarter bred,
don’t we? King’s his sire. And Shawemere Queen was his dam’s mother.
Best blood anywhere in colliedom, ain’t it? And it had to come out,
somewheres, didn’t it? Cross-breeding ain’t like mixing feed. You
don’t get the same mixture, every measureful you dip out. Some is all
one kind and some is all another, and some ain’t neither. Look at them
two white fellows! They’re straight bull-pup. (Wherever they got it!)
Not a trace of collie to ’em. It’s got to be av’raged up, somewheres.
And it’s av’raged up in that little cuss you’re holding there. He’s
all collie. Just like the two whitish ones is all bull. It’s----”

“I’ve--I’ve heard of such cases,” muttered Shawe wonderingly, as he
laid the tiny pup back at the mother’s side. “But--oh, he’ll most
likely develop a body that’ll give him away! Or else the head won’t
live up to its promise. Well, leave him, anyhow, when you drown the
rest. That can’t do any harm.”

Sheepishly, he gave the order. Still more sheepishly, as he left the
stall, he stooped and patted Nina’s lovingly upraised head--the first
caress he had ever wasted on the lonely cross-breed.

Thus it was that a great dog was born; and that his promise of
greatness was discovered barely in time to save him from death in
earliest babyhood. For the collie--or near-collie--pup was destined to
greatness, both of body and of brain.

Shawe named him “Buff.” This, of course, without the honorary prefix
of the kennel name, “Shawemere.” For Buff could never be registered.
His spotty pedigree could never be certified. He could claim no line
in the American Kennel Club’s Studbook. He was without recognised
lineage; without the right to wear a number after his name.

A dog, to be registered, must come of registered parents. These
parents, in turn, must come of registered stock; since no dog,
ordinarily, is eligible to registration unless both his sire and dam
have been registered. That means his race must have been pure and his
blood of unmingled azure since the beginning of his breed’s
recognition by the studbooks.

Buff’s sire could have traced his genealogy back, in an unbroken line,
for centuries. King’s nearer ancestors had been the peerless noblemen
of dogdom. Nina’s sire and dam--though of widely different stock--were
born to the purple. Despite all this, their descendant was a mongrel,
and barred by kennel law from any bench show.

The nameless pup grew to beautiful doghood. To all outward appearance,
he was a pure-bred collie of the very highest type. The head was
classic in its perfection. The body had the long, wolf-like lines of
the true collie. The coat was a marvel. The chest was deep and broad,
the body powerfully graceful. No collie judge, unhung, could have
detected the bar-sinister.

The mind and the soul and the heart, too, were of the true collie
sort. But, blended with the fiery gaiety and dash of his predominant
breed, ran unseen the steadfastness, the calm, the grimness, the stark
warrior spirit of the pit-bull terrier.

This same strain ran, equally unseen, through the physique as well;
giving un-collielike staunchness and iron strength and endurance to
the graceful frame; imparting an added depth of chest, a gripping and
rending quality to the jaw muscles; a mystic battling genius to body
and to spirit.

Yes, old Upstreet Butcherboy was present in this collie grandson of
his. So were a hundred mighty bull-terrier ancestors. It was a strange
blend. Yet it was a blend; not a mixture. Nature, for once, had been
kind, and had sought to atone for the cruel joke she had played in the
making of poor, neglected Nina.

The first half year or more of Buff’s life passed pleasantly enough at
Shawemere. At the age of three months he was moved from the stables
and put in one of the puppy runs. Nina was miserable at her baby’s
abduction. Whenever she was loose she would rush up to the puppy-runs
and canter whimperingly around their wire boundaries, seeking to
attract her little son’s attention.

And always, at first sight or sound or scent of her, Buff would leave
his fellow pups and come hurrying to the wire to greet her. Through
the wide meshes their noses would meet in a sniffing kiss; and with
wagging tails they would stand in apparent converse for minutes at a
time. It was a pretty sight, this greeting and talk between the young
aristocrat and his mongrel mother. But, at Shawemere, dogs were bred
for points and for sale; not for sentiment.

At first, Buff was wretchedly lonely for Nina. In the daytime it was
not so bad. For there was much to amuse and excite him in the populous
puppy-run. But at night, when the rest were asleep, he missed his
mother’s warm fur and her loving companionship. To some extent, this
homesickness for her wore off. But never entirely. Always Buff sought
means to get back to her. And their frequent meetings, on opposite
sides of the wire meshes, kept the impulse alive in his heart.

The run contained a nine-pup litter, a couple of months older than
little Buff. The biggest pup of the litter, on the hour of Buff’s
arrival, undertook to teach the lonesome baby his place. This he did
by falling unexpectedly upon Buff as the latter stood disconsolately
at the fence looking for his absent mother. The bully attacked the
small newcomer with much bluster and growling and show of youthful
ferocity.

It was Buff’s first encounter with an enemy--his first hint that the
world was not made up wholly of friendliness. And it staggered him.
Making no resistance at all, he crouched humbly under the fierce
attack. The bully, at this sign of humility, proceeded to follow up
his advantage by digging his milk teeth into Buff’s soft ear.

The bite stung, and with the sting came a swirl of wholesome
indignation into the exiled baby’s hitherto peace-loving brain. Away
back in his cosmos snarled the spirit of Upstreet Butcherboy. Scarce
knowing what he did, he flashed from under the larger body and made a
lightning lunge for the bully’s throat.

Subconscious fighting skill guided the counter-assault and lent zest
to the grappling youngster’s onset. As a result, some five seconds
later, the bully was on his back, squalling right piteously for mercy
from the opponent that was barely two-thirds his size, and half his
age.

By this time, Buff had shifted his vise-like grip from throat to
forelegs, and thence to stomach. For, along with the pit terrier’s
instinct for biting hard and holding on, he had inherited his collie
forbears’ knack of being everywhere at once in a fight; and of
changing one hold for a better at an instant’s notice. Which unusual
combination would have delighted the soul of any professional
dogfighter.

Yet, the moment the bully was cowed into subjection, Buff let him up.
Nor did he--at food trough or elsewhere--seek to take advantage of his
new position as boss of the run. He did not care to harass and
terrorize lesser pups. He preferred to be friends with all the world,
as he had been with his dear and friendly mother.

And so time wore on--time that shaped the roly-poly Buff into a leggy
but handsome six-months’ pup. And now the promise of the three-day
baby was fulfilled, more and more every hour. With puzzled pride Shawe
used to stand and inspect him. The pup was shaping into a true
winner. But what could be done with him--minus pedigree and plus
bar-sinister as he was? If Buff had been a thoroughbred he would have
been worth a small fortune to his owner. But now----

Again fate settled the problem--once and for all.

It was the night after the kennelman had put collars for the first
time on all the pups in Buff’s yard. These collars were of a
rudimentary sort, and for use only long enough to accustom the young
necks to such burden. Each collar was a circle of clothesline, with
buckle and tongue attached, and with its wearer’s “kennel name”--a
very different title from the lofty “pedigree name”--scribbled on a
tag attached to the steel tongue.

Buff did not like his collar at all. It fidgeted him and made him
nervous. The name-tag flapped tantalisingly just beneath the reach of
his jaws; which added to the annoyance. That was one reason why Buff
could not sleep. After a time he gave up the effort at slumber, and
came out of the sleeping quarters where his companions were snoozing
in furry comfort.

He made a few futile attempts to get the fluttering tag between his
teeth and to rub off the collar against the wire meshes. Then, with a
sigh of annoyance, he stretched himself out on the ground near the
yard’s gate.

He was still lying there when the kennelman came to fill the yard’s
water-pans before going to bed. As all the pups, presumably, were
asleep in their houses, the man did not bother to shut the wire gate
behind him as he entered the yard.

Buff saw the open portal. Beyond, somewhere in the dense darkness,
were the stables where his mother lived. His mother had always been
able to solve his few perplexities and soothe his hurts in the days
when he still had lived with her. Doubtless she could help him worry
off this miserable collar and tag.

On the instant, the pup trotted out, through the swinging gate,
without so much as a glance at the dimly seen man who was bending over
the row of pans. And in another second the truant was in the road,
sniffing to locate the stables.

But the wind set strong from the opposite direction that night. It
brought to Buff a faint whiff of stables, it is true; but they were
the stables of a farm a mile down the turnpike.

Now, though stable scents had been Buff’s earliest memory, yet he did
not know there were any other stables extant besides those in which he
had been born. So, locating the odour, he ambled eagerly off down the
road in search of his mother.

Perhaps the length of the journey puzzled him, but, as every step
brought the scent stronger, he kept on. At a bend in the road, a
half-mile below, he struck off into the fields and woods, taking the
shortest cut to the source of the ever-increasing odour.

A furlong from the road, his way led through a thick copse. Into it he
galloped merrily. In its exact centre his run was halted with much
abruptness. Something touched him on the chest, and, in the same
instant, tightened painfully about his neck.

Buff snorted with scared anger and lunged forward. The thing about his
neck promptly cut off his breathing apparatus, and dug deep into his
soft flesh. Resisting the panic impulse, Buff ceased to plunge and
roll, and sought to find out what had caught him.

He had run full into the middle of one of several nooses, cunningly
strung through the copse, for foxes.

Twisting his head, he seized the noose’s taut end between his jaws and
fell to gnawing. But he had his labour for his pains. The thin rope
was braided with strands of copper wire, against just such a move on
the part of some fox.

At gray dawn, the hired man of the farm, toward which Buff had been
faring, came out to look at his traps. All the nooses but one hung
limp. In one writhed and struggled a very tired little collie. At
sight of the farm-hand, Buff stopped struggling and wagged his tail.
All humans, so far as he knew, were friendly to dogs. Here,
presumably, was a rescuer. And Buff greeted him with warm cordiality.

The man stood gaping at him for a space. Then a slow grin began to
crease his leathery mouth. This was no fox he had caught. But it was
something that might well prove as valuable. He knew Shawemere, and
had often seen the Shawemere collies. He had heard that the Shawemere
pups brought big prices. Here, evidently, was one of those pups--a
Shawemere collie that had strayed in the night and had been noosed.

By taking the dog back to its home he might, perhaps, annex a
five-dollar reward; but scarcely more. There seemed better ways of
capitalising his treasure trove. Paying no heed to Buff’s friendly
advances the man left him there, hurried home, received grudging
permission for a half-day off, to visit the dentist in town, and
presently returned to the copse, with a pig-crate over his shoulder.

It was market-day at the near-by town. And this would not be the first
or the tenth time a dog had been exhibited for sale in the market
enclosure. So, a hundred yards from his destination, the man lifted
the pup from the too-tight crate and fastened a rope to his collar.
Then he prepared to lead his prize across to the market.

But a dog that has never before been led has to be trained to follow
at the gentle tug of the leash. This training sometimes takes only a
few minutes, it is true. But it is needful. Now, never before had Buff
been on the end of a leash. He did not know what to do. He had lost,
moreover, his early liking for his captor, and he wanted to go home.

At first tug of the rope the puppy braced all four feet, and pulled
back. A tired-looking man, passing, in a still more tired-looking
motor runabout, slowed his car at sight of the puppy’s resistance, and
scanned Buff appraisingly.

A second and more vehement yank of the rope, accompanied by a mouthful
of profanity from the hired man, brought renewed resistance from Buff,
and brought the stranger’s slowing car to a complete stop.

Buff braced his feet and sought in vain to get some sort of purchase
for his claws on the stone pavement. His conductor gave the rope a
vicious jerk and struck the puppy over the side of the head.

This was the first blow received by Buff in all his short life. He did
not at all grasp its meaning. But it hurt like the mischief, and it
set his delicate ears to ringing. Incidentally, it brought the
stranger, at one jump, out of his car and on to the narrow pathway.

“You idiot!” exhorted he, striding up to the farm-hand. “Don’t you
know any better than to hit a collie over the head? It might----”

“Don’t you know no better’n to butt in?” retorted the wrathful hired
man. “I’ll make this mangy cuss mind me, if I have to bust ev’ry bone
in his wuthless carcass!”

By way of emphasising his intention, he lifted the amazed Buff clean
off the ground on the end of the rope, and drew back one large-booted
foot for a drop-kick at the swinging youngster that had dared to
disobey him. The kick might well have smashed every rib in the soft
young body, besides rupturing its victim. But it did not reach its
mark.

The tired-looking man did two things, and he did them in practically
the same gesture. With his left hand he jerked the rope from the
calloused hand that held it, and lowered Buff gently to earth. With
his right he caught the farm-hand deftly by the nape of the neck, spun
him around, and bestowed upon him two swift but effective kicks.

Both kicks smote the amazed labourer approximately at the point where
his short jacket’s hem met the seat of his trousers. As his assailant
at the same time released his hold of the shirt-collar, his victim
collapsed in a blasphemous heap at the gutter-edge.

Buff had been watching the brief exhibition with keen interest.
Gradually it had been dawning on his unsophisticated mind that his
escort was trying in some way to harm him, and that the stranger had
not only averted the harm, but was punishing the aggressor.

So, in his babyhood, had Nina flown at a stable cat which had
scratched Buff’s too-inquisitive nose. Once more the puppy knew the
glad thrill of having a protector.

As the fallen man scrambled to his feet, the stranger felt a cold and
grateful little nose thrust into his palm. Instinctively--and with
unconscious proprietorship--his hand dropped lightly on the silken
head of the dog. But he kept his tired eyes unwaveringly on the man
whom he had assaulted.

The latter was on his feet again, swearing and gesticulating. But, all
at once, in the middle of a contemplated rush at his antagonist, he
checked himself and looked worriedly up and down the deserted lane. In
case of interference--in case of court proceedings--he might have
trouble in explaining his possession of the dog. A dozen persons in
court might well recognise the puppy as belonging to Shawemere. And
there would be difficulties--all manner of difficulties--perhaps a
jail term. Decidedly it was a moment for wile, rather than for force.
There were worse things than a kick. Jail was one of them.

“If you’re so stuck on the pup, why don’t you buy him?” he whined.
“’Stead of pickin’ on a poor man what’s got a livin’ to earn? He’s for
sale.”

“I’m not buying livestock----” began the stranger.

Then he paused. The silken head under his hand shifted, and the cold
little nose again nuzzled his palm.

“If you ain’t buyin’,” retorted the farm-hand, “give him back to me,
and I’ll take him to where I c’n git an offer on him.”

He snatched the rope before the tired-looking man was aware of the
intention. But Buff was aware of it--well aware of it. As the rough
fingers grabbed at his collar, the youngster growled fiercely and
launched himself at the tyrant.

“Good!” applauded the stranger, catching the angry puppy in mid-air
and holding him under one arm. “He’s got pluck! That means you haven’t
had him long. If you had, you’d have cowed or killed him, or made him
mean and savage. He’s thoroughbred, too. What do you want for him? If
the price is fair, I’ll buy. If it isn’t, I’ll carry him to the
nearest police-station. Which is it to be?”

Out of a volley of indignant denial, punctuated by such stock phrases
as, “I’m an honest man!” and the like, came at last the grunted words:

“Thutty dollars. He’s wuth a sight more. But he b’longs to my boy, and
we’re movin’, so I gotta sell him, an----”

“Here’s the cash,” interrupted the stranger, taking out some greasy
notes. “But, next time you steal a dog of this kind, just remember
that thirty dollars is a fool’s offer. It proves the dog is stolen.
There’s no use asking whom you stole him from. If there were, I might
be able to return him. I had no idea of cluttering my life with
anything again--even with a dog. But if I don’t, you’ll maltreat him.
And he’s too good for that. There are easier ways, you know, of
showing how much inferior you are to a dog, than by kicking him.”

The stranger was doling out bill after bill from his thin roll.
Finishing, he stuck the rest of his money back into his pocket, picked
up Buff, and started for his car. Midway, he hesitated; and looked
back at the gaping and muttering farm-hand.

“By the way,” he said carelessly, “think twice before you steal again.
Not for the sake of your alleged soul, but because it’s liable to land
you in a cell. Nothing is valuable enough to steal. A cell isn’t a
pleasant place to live in, either. I know,” he added as an
afterthought, “because I’ve just come out of one.”

He lifted Buff into the car, cranked the muddy and battered little
vehicle, and climbed aboard. Then, as the farm-hand still gaped at him
with a new respect in the bulgingly bloodshot eyes, the stranger
called back:

“If you decide to tell this dog’s owner what has become of him, my
name is Trent--Michael Trent. And I live at Boone Lake, about fifty
miles south of here. At least, I used to--and I’m on my way back
there.”

It was Buff’s first ride. For a few minutes it startled him to see the
countryside running backwards on either side of him, and to feel the
bumping vibration and throb of the car under his feet. But almost at
once he felt the joy of the new sensation, as does the average dog
that gets a chance to motor.

Besides, this rescuer of his was a most interesting person, a man
whose latent strength appealed to Buff’s canine hero-worship; a man,
too, who was unhappy. And, with true collie perception, Buff realised
and warmed to the human’s unhappiness.

Added to all this, Trent had a delightful way of taking one hand from
the steering-wheel from time to time and patting or rumpling the
puppy’s head. Once the strong slender fingers found the name tag.

“‘Buff,’ hey?” murmured Trent. “Is that your name or the colour of the
goods that were marked by this tag? How about it, Buff?”

He accented the last word. In response, Buff’s tail began to wag, and
one forepaw went up to the man’s knee.

“‘Buff’ it is,” nodded Trent. “And a good little name at that. A good
little name for a good little dog. And now that I’ve gone broke, in
buying you, will you please tell me what I’m going to do with you? I’m
an outcast, you know, Buff. An Ishmaelite. And I’m on my way back to
my home-place to live things down. It’ll be a tough job, Buff. All
kinds of rotten times ahead. Want to face it with me?”

Much did Trent talk to the dog during that long and bumpy drive. His
voice was pleasant, to his little chum. And it was the first time in
Buff’s six months of life that a human had troubled to waste three
sentences of speech on him. The attention tickled the lonely pup. His
heart was warming more and more to this tired-eyed, quiet-voiced new
master of his.

Closer he cuddled to the man’s knee, looking up into the prison-pale
face with growing eagerness and interest. There was a wistfulness in
Buff’s deep-set eyes as he gazed. With tense effort he was trying to
grasp the meaning of the unknown words wherewith from time to time
Trent favoured him. The man noted the pathetic eagerness of look, and
his own desolate heart warmed to this first interested listener he had
encountered in more than a year. He expanded under the flattering
attention, and his talk waxed less disjointed.

“Yes,” he said presently, stroking the puppy’s head as it rested
against his knee, “we’ve a tough row to hoe, you and I, Buff. Just as
I told you. Since you’re so different from two-footed curs, that
you’re willing to associate with a jail-bird, perhaps it’d amuse you
to hear how I came to be one. Eh, Buff?”

At each repetition of his name, Buff wagged his tail in delight at
hearing at least one word whose meaning he knew.

“Not to take up too much of your time, Buff,” proceeded Trent, trying
to negotiate a rutted bit of road with one hand while with the other
he sought to ease the bumping of the car for the dog, “here’s the main
idea: I’d just got that farm of mine on a paying basis, and changed it
from a liability to something like an asset, when the smash-up came.
Just because I chose to play the fool. It was down at the Boone Lake
store one night. I had walked into town for the mail. It was being
sorted. And on the mail stage had come two biggish boxes of goods for
Corney Fales. He’s the storekeeper and postmaster there, Buff.”

Again, at his name, Buff wagged his tail and thrust his cold nose into
Trent’s free hand.

“The boxes were left on the store porch while Fales sorted the mail,”
went on Trent. “It struck me it would be a corking joke to carry them
out behind a clump of lilacs to one side of the store, where it was
black dark that night. I hid them there for the fun of hearing old
Fales swear when he found them gone. Well, he swore, good and plenty.
And by the time he’d sworn himself out, I’d had about enough of the
joke. And I was just going to tell him about it and help him carry the
boxes back to the store, when a couple of chaps--that I’d ordered off
my land the week before--stepped up and told him they’d seen me lug
the boxes away in the dark. So I went out to the lilac clump to get
the stuff and carry it back to Fales.

“And, Buff, the boxes weren’t there. They’d been stolen in dead
earnest while I had been standing in the store laughing at Fales’s
red-hot language. It had been a silly joke, at best, for a grown man
to play, Buff.

“And, anyhow, nobody but a born fool ever plays practical jokes.
Always remember that, Buff. But you know how a fellow will limber up
sometimes after a lonely day’s work, and how he’ll do silly things.
Well, that’s how it happened, Buff.

“Of course I owned up, and offered to pay the sixty dollars Fales said
the goods were worth. But he wouldn’t have it that way. It seemed he’d
been missing things for quite a while. And his pig-headed brain got
full of the idea I had taken them all, and that I’d pretended it was a
joke when I was caught at last. So he prosecuted. And the county
attorney was looking for a record. And he got it, Buff. He sure got
it.

“I was sent up for eighteen months. Just for being a fool. And perhaps
I’m a fool to go back now and pick up life again in a place where
everyone thinks I’m a thief. But that’s what I’m going to do, Buff.
I’m going to win through. It’ll take a heap of time and a heap more
nerve to do it. But--well, we’re headed for Boone Lake. The sooner we
begin the fight the sooner we’ll win it.”

He paused, half ashamed of his babbling, yet half relieved at being
able to speak out at last to some listener who did not greet the tale
with a grin of incredulity. Buff snuggled the closer to him, and
licked his clenched hand as the pain underlying the light speech
struck upon the collie’s sensitive perceptions.

“Good little pal!” approved Trent, touched at the wordless sympathy
and feeling somehow less desolate and miserable than he had felt for
many a long month.

It was mid-afternoon when they drove through the edge of a rambling
village and on for a mile or so to a lane that led into a neglected
farm.

“This is home, Buff!” announced Trent, his eyes dwelling with sharp
unhappiness upon the tumbledown aspect of the deserted place.
“Home--including the mortgage that went on to it to pay for my lawyer.
Did you notice how those village people stared at us, and how they
nudged each other? Well, that’s just the first dose. A sort of sample
package. Are you game to stand for the rest of it? I am, if you are.”

Running the battered car into a shed, Trent lifted Buff to the ground
and set off towards the closed and forbidding house. Buff capered on
ahead of him, trotting back at every ten paces to make sure his master
was following.

Trent paused for a moment in the dooryard, to grope in his pocket for
a key. Buff had gained the summit of the low veranda. As Trent halted,
the pup took advantage of the delay to rest his car-cramped muscles by
stretching out at full length on the narrow strip of porch. Trent took
a step forward, then stopped again; this time to stare in bewildered
surprise at the collie. For he noted that Buff was lying like a
couchant lion, so far as his forequarters were concerned, but that
his hind-legs were both stretched out straight behind him.

Now, as Trent’s dog-lore told him, that is a position in which no
collie lies. Nor does any dog lie with his hind legs out behind him,
unless he has in his make-up a strong admixture of bulldog blood. Yet,
Trent’s dog-knowledge also told him that this was apparently a
pure-bred collie; perfect in every point. Wherefore, he stared in
wonder at the phenomenon of Buff’s position.

Then, giving up the problem, he advanced into the house. Buff,
springing up at once, followed Trent inquisitively through the
doorway, as the key turned noiselessly in the lock and the front door
swung open under the pressure of the man’s knee. Out gushed the musty
odour that haunts unused country houses. It filled Trent’s nostrils
and deepened his sense of desolation. But, mingled with the smell of
emptiness and disuse, another and more definite scent assailed Trent’s
nose. It was the reek of tobacco--of rank pipe tobacco, at that. Nor
was it stale.

At the whiff of it Trent stiffened like a pointing dog. His lips had
been parted in a careless word to Buff. Now he choked back the unborn
syllables.

Treading on tiptoe, he made his way from room to room. Buff, sensing
the other’s efforts at silence, padded quietly at his heels. As they
moved along, Trent paused from time to time, to sniff the heavy air.

Presently he flung open a door, with no caution whatever, and sprang
into a room beyond. It was the kitchen he entered in this whirlwind
fashion. And he saw, as his nose had told him, that it was already
occupied. A mattress had been hauled hither from one of the bedrooms.
Sprawled thereon were two men. One of them was snoring, the other was
puffing at a clay pipe.

On the floor beside them lay a full sack. Piled in a corner of the
room was a heterogeneous stack of household articles--a clock, a
silver candlestick, three gilt picture-frames, a plated soup-tureen,
some spoons, and similar loot. Trent had scarce time to note these
facts and a heap of empty bottles in another corner, before the smoker
had dropped his pipe with a grunt and sprung scramblingly to his feet.
The sleeping man, roused by his companion’s noise, sat up and blinked.

“H’m!” mused Trent, as the two stared owlishly at him. “I see. You
boys didn’t reckon on my time off for good behaviour, eh? Thought I
wasn’t due home for another month or so; and in the meantime this was
a dandy place to hide in and to keep the stuff you steal? Clever lads!
H’m!”

The two still blinked dully at him. Evidently their density was
intensified by the contents of some of the empty bottles lying near
the mattress.

“I’m beginning to understand things,” pursued Trent evenly. “You two
testified you saw me take away those boxes from Fales’ store. I went
to prison on your testimony. You had lived hereabouts all your lives,
and there was nothing known against either of you. So your word was
good enough to send me up--while you pinched the boxes, and plenty of
other things. Since then”--with a glance at the plunder--“you seem to
have gone into the business pretty extensively. And you picked the
safest place to keep it in. Now, suppose you both----”

He got no further. By tacit consent, the two lurched to their feet and
flung themselves upon him.

But, careless as had been his pose and his tone, Trent had not been
napping. Even as he spoke, he realised what a stroke of cleverness it
would be for the men to overpower him and to claim that they had found
him in his own house surrounded by these stolen goods. It would be so
easy a way to fix the blame of such recent robberies as had scourged
Boone Lake on some unknown accomplice of Trent’s! The craft that had
once made them take advantage of his joke on Fales would readily
serve them again.

But as they flung themselves on Trent, he was no longer there. In
fact, he was nowhere in particular. Also he was everywhere. Agile as a
lynx, he was springing aside from their clumsy rush, then dashing in
and striking with all his whalebone strength; dodging, blocking,
eluding, attacking; all in the same dazzlingly swift set of motions.
It was a pretty sight.

A prolonged carouse on raw whisky is not the best training for body or
for mind in an impromptu fight. And the two trespassers speedily
discovered this. Their man was all over them, yet ever out of reach.
Too stupidly besotted to use teamwork, they impeded rather than
reinforced each other. Up and down the broad kitchen raged the trio.

Then, ducking a wild swing, Trent darted in and uppercut one of his
antagonists. The man’s own momentum, in the swing, added fifty per
cent. to the impetus of Trent’s blow. Trent’s left fist caught his
enemy flush on the jaw-point. The man’s knees turned to tallow. He
slumped to the floor in a huddled heap.

Not so much as waiting to note the effect of his uppercut, Trent was
at the other thief; rushing him off his feet and across the room with
a lightning series of short-arm blows that crashed through the awkward
defence and landed thuddingly on heart and wind. In another few
seconds the fight must have ended--and ended with a second clean
knock-out--had not one of Trent’s dancing toes chanced to light on a
smear of bacon fat on the smooth floor.

Up went both of his feet. He struck ground on the back of his head,
after the manner of a novice skater. And, half stunned, he strove to
rise. But the impact had, for the moment, knocked the speed and the
vigour out of him. Before he could stagger half-way to his feet his
opponent had taken dizzy advantage of the slip. Snatching up one of
the big bottles by the neck, the thief swung it aloft, measuring with
his eye the distance and force needful to a blow over the head of the
reeling and dazed Trent.

Then the blow fell. But it did not fall upon Trent. It missed him by
an inch or more, and the bottle smashed into many pieces on the
boards. This through no awkwardness of the assailant, but because a
new warrior had entered the fray.

A flash of gold and white spun through the air, as the bottle was
brandished aloft; and a double set of white teeth buried themselves in
the striking arm.

Buff, from the doorway, had been watching the battle with quivering
excitement. In his brief life he had never before seen prolonged
strife among humans. And he did not understand it. To him it seemed
these men must be romping, as he and the other inmates of the puppy
run had been wont to romp. And he watched the wild performance in
breathless interest.

But, all at once, his master was down. And, above him, his foe was
brandishing something. Thus menacingly had been raised the farm-hand’s
arm when Buff was struck. Surely this was not a romp! His master was
threatened. And into the fight gallant young Buff hurled
himself--attacking the arm that menaced the quiet-voiced man he was
learning to adore.

Just below the elbow he found his grip. Deep drove the sharp white
teeth; not slashing, collie fashion, but with the grim holding power
that had won a score of battles for old Upstreet Butcherboy. On the
swung canvas strip, a hundred of his bull-terrier ancestors had been
made to strengthen the crushingly powerful jaw muscles they had
bequeathed to Buff.

The pup’s forty pounds of squirming weight deflected the blow’s aim,
and saved Trent’s skull from certain fracture.

The thief, in pain and terror, tore at the clinging furry body in
frantic rage. But the bulldog jaws were locked, and the fearless
collie spirit refused to unlock them at the yells and the hammerings
of the panic-stricken thief.

All this for the merest second. Then, still dizzy, but himself again,
Trent was up and at his foe.

The rest was conquest.

Hampered by the ferocious beast that clung to his right arm--weak from
pain and exertion--the man was ridiculously easy to overcome.

“You’ve won your welcome, Buff, old chum!” panted Trent, as he trussed
up his prisoners, before marching them to the village. “And you’ve
saved a life I don’t value overmuch. But you’ve done a lot more.
You’ve let me clear myself of the other charge. These men will have to
talk when the police sweat them. And that will make life worth while
for me again. Yes, you’ve paid your way, all right! Something tells me
you and I are going to be the best pals ever. But--where in blue
blazes did a thoroughbred collie ever pick up that bulldog grip?”




CHAPTER TWO: “THE HUNT IS UP!”


Michael Trent stood knee-deep in a grey-white drift that eddied and
surged about him in tumultuous, soft waves, almost threatening to
engulf him.

The grey-white drift filled the tiny field in whose centre Trent was
standing. Its ragged edges were spilling in irregular driblets into
the adjoining fields and the road, scattering thence athwart the
nearer countryside.

To descend to bare fact, Michael Trent was in the middle of a milling
and unruly flock of merino sheep; and he was, incidentally, in more or
less of a fix.

Of these sheep, seventy had belonged to his farm for months. And he
had just added to them two additional flocks, new-bought, of thirty
and of twenty-five each; making a grand total of one hundred and
twenty-five.

This morning he had undertaken to pasture the three groups together in
a single paddock-field while he should assort from the full flock a
detachment of forty which he planned to drive to Boone Lake the
following morning for the rural metropolis’ monthly market day.

It had seemed a simple thing, this opening of the gates from two
fields and driving into a third field the occupants of the other two.
So simple had it appeared that Trent had not even enlisted the
services of his beautiful collie Buff in the petty task.

Buff had been sent, a half-hour earlier, to drive the farm’s little
bunch of cattle to the “forest pasture,” a mile to the east; and he
was not yet back. Trent had not bothered to wait for the collie’s
return before herding the three flocks of sheep into one. He had
merely opened the gates leading into the central field where were
pastured his original flock, and had driven the newer occupants of
those two fields into the middle one.

Then trouble had set in--as trouble is forever waiting to do, where
sheep are concerned.

One of the two new flocks had stampeded at sight and scent of the
strange flocks, and of the still more strange man. The stampeding
flock had ploughed straight into and through the thick of the others,
jostling and shoving them roughly, and communicating to them the
stampede impulse.

That had been quite enough, and all at once there were a hundred and
twenty-five crazy sheep surging around Trent and radiating away in
every direction. Their fear-driven bodies had found a weak panel in
the hurdle fence that bordered the road. Down flapped the hurdle, and
through the gap the nearest sheep began to dribble. The remainder were
in great and ever-increasing danger of injury from the mad plungings
of their companions.

Another accidental shove had loosed the half-fastened latch on the
centre field’s gate, which Trent had neglected to clamp when he came
into the paddock; and another leakage seeped out through that opening.

Helpless, wrathful, Trent waded through the turmoil, trying in vain to
restore quiet, and to make his way to one or both of the apertures
before a wholesale stampede should empty the field through gate or
hurdle, bruising and perhaps killing some of the weaker sheep against
the sides of the gap.

In his extremity, the farmer put his fingers to his lips and sent
forth a whistle agonisingly piercing and shrill. Then he turned back
to his futile labours of calming the stampede. Because he turned back
thus, he missed a sight really worth seeing.

Over the brow of a ridge, across the winding high road, flashed a
tawny and white shape that was silhouetted for an instant on the
pulsing sky-line--the shape of a large collie running as no dog but a
collie or a greyhound can run. Close to earth, in his sweeping stride,
Buff was coming at full speed in response to the far-heard whistle.

As he breasted the ridge-crest, the dog took in the scene below him in
a single glance. He saw the milling and straggling sheep, and his
distracted master in the centre of the panic throng. Thus, he did not
wait, as usual, for the signals Trent had taught him in “working”
sheep. Instead, he went into action on his own account.

Through the waves of greyish-white a tawny and wedge-shaped head clove
its way at express-train speed. With seeming aimlessness, Buff swirled
through the mass, sheering now to right, now to left, now wheeling,
now halting with a menace of thundered barks. Yet not one move was
thrown away, not one step was without definite purpose.

As by miracle, the charging sheep began to shape up, in the field’s
centre; and while they were still following this centrifugal impulse,
Buff was gone from among them. Out into the high road he flew, not
waiting to find either of the openings; but taking the tall hurdles in
his stride.

And in another second or so he had caught up with the rearmost of the
stragglers, had passed it and flashed on toward the more distant
strays. Before the sheep in the paddock had shaken off their
Buff-given impulse to crowd to the centre of the enclosure, the collie
had rounded up the scampering and bleating strays and was driving
them in a reluctant huddle through the gateway and in among their
fellows once more.

Then, without resting, he swung shut the gate--an easy trick long
since taught to him, as to many another working collie--and was
guarding with his body the gap made by the overset hurdle.

Trent ran up, fixed the hurdle in place, and then turned to pet and
praise his exultant dog.

“Buff,” he declared, taking the collie’s fluffy head between his two
gnarled hands, “you’re worth ten times your weight in hired men, and
you’re the best side-partner and chum a lonely chap ever had!”

Buff grinned, licked his master’s hand in quick friendliness, then lay
down at Trent’s feet for an instant’s rest. And, for the thousandth
time in the past three years the man noted something in the collie’s
pose that baffled him.

For, though Buff was lying upright and not on his side, both hind legs
were stretched straight out behind him. Normally no collie lies thus,
nor does any other canine that is not the possessor of a strong strain
of bulldog. It was Buff’s favourite posture. And Buff had every point
of a pure-bred collie--indeed, of the highest type of “show collie.”

The man’s bewilderment was roused, thus, from time to time, by the
dog’s various bulldog traits, such as lying with hindlegs out behind
him, or of holding a grip with the grim stubbornness of a pit terrier
rather than with the fiery dash of a true collie, or of diving for the
heels of driven cattle instead of for nose and ear.

Waiting only for a moment, while Buff was breathing himself after his
hard run across country, and his harder rounding up of the flock,
Trent chirped to the collie, and prepared to shut the two new
consignments of merinos back in their respective pens. The mingling of
the three flocks had been a mistake. Until their forthcoming drive to
market, the three bunches would fare better among their own
acquaintances than among strange sheep.

But the task was no easy one. To a casual eye all the milling sheep
looked just alike. Trent could distinguish by his personal red mark
his original flock. But the two sets of strangers were unmarked.
Wherefore his chirp to Buff.

The moment the collie was made to see what was required of him, he was
in the thick of the jostling turmoil again, flashing in and out like a
streak of tawny fire, seeming to have no objective, but to be
scampering without any special purpose.

Yet within fifty seconds he had headed a scared sheep through the
gateway into the right-hand paddock where stood his master. Then
another and yet another sheep, then a huddled half-dozen of them
cantered bleatingly into the paddock. While Trent looked on in wonder,
Buff proceeded to segregate, until the entire twenty-five that
belonged in this particular field were back within its boundaries.

Trent shifted to the opposite paddock, whence he had turned the second
flock of thirty into the central enclosure. And here Buff repeated his
unerring performance.

Though Trent was filled with amazed admiration at his pet’s
discernment, yet he recognised there was nothing miraculous in it.
Buff had herded both these new flocks into the paddocks at least three
times before, on their way from pasture, during the few days Trent had
owned them. He had become familiar with their scents and their
separate identities, after the uncanny fashion of the best sort of
working collie.

As the job ended, and Trent started homeward, with Buff trotting
chummily beside him, a slender black saddle-horse came single-footing
around the bend of the road between the paddocks and the farmhouse.
Astride the black, sat a figure as slender and highbred as the mount’s
own.

The rider was a girl of perhaps twenty, clad in crash and booted. At
sight of the man and the collie she waved her crop gaily at them, and
put her horse to a lope by a shift of the snaffle-rein.

Trent’s bronzed face went red with surprised pleasure at the
equestrian vision bearing down on him. Buff, after a single doubtful
glance, recognised horse and rider, and set off at a run to welcome
them.

“Why, I didn’t know you were at home yet, Ruth!” exclaimed Trent,
reaching up to take the gauntleted little hand extended to greet him.
“Your father said you’d be in the city another month. I saw him at the
store last evening, and he said----”

“Yes,” she interrupted, “I know. He hadn’t got my telegram, then. Aunt
Hester had to go out West to take care of her son--my cousin, Dick
Clinton, you remember? He has a ranch in Idaho. She had a letter from
him yesterday morning, saying he’d broken his leg. So she packed up,
right away; and took the night train, West. And I came home.”

“Oh!” said Trent, in an effort at sympathy. “And you had to cut your
visit in half? What a shame!”

“No,” she denied guiltily, “it wasn’t a shame. It was a blessing. I
oughtn’t to say so, but it was. She did everything to give me a good
time. And I enjoyed it, too, ever so much. But all the while I was
homesick for these dear hills. And I’m so glad to get back to them!
It’s queer,” she added, “how I’ve grown to love this Boone Lake
region; when dad and I have lived here barely eighteen months.”

“Eighteen months and nine days,” gravely corrected Trent. “I remember.
I had gone to town that evening to get the mail. And when I passed by
the old Brander house I saw lights in it. At the post-office they told
me a New York man and his daughter--‘some people named Hammerton’--had
moved in, that day, and that they’d come here for Mr. Hammerton’s
health. It wasn’t more than a week--just six days, to be exact--after
that, when your father stopped here to ask me about the commission
people I was dealing with in the city. He spent the morning, and he
asked me to come and see him. It was the next evening I called. That
was when I met you. So----”

“Do you keep a diary?” she asked, in an amusement that seemed tinged
with embarrassment. “Or have you a genius for remembering dates?”

“And,” pursued Trent, “it was just sixteen days after that when we
went horseback riding the first time. It--it may be a bit of silly
superstition,” he went on reluctantly, “but I’ve always dated the
start of this farm toward real success from the time you people moved
to Boone Lake. Ever since then I’ve prospered. Another six months
will find me in shape to install the last lot of up-to-date machinery
and to take over that eighty-acre tract of Holden’s that I’ve got the
option on. Then I can begin to call my soul my own and live like real
people. And, the first day I can do that, I am going to put my whole
fortune and my life, too, to the biggest test in the world. A test I
hadn’t any right to put it to while I was staggering along on the edge
of bankruptcy and with the future all so hazy. In six months I’ll be
able to ask a question that will show me whether all my luck is Dead
Sea fruit or--or the greatest thing that ever happened.”

He talked on, ramblingly, with an effort at unconcern; avoiding her
eyes. But his gaze was on her little gloved hand as it lay athwart the
horse’s mane. And he saw it tremble and clench. Trent was half glad,
half frightened that she had caught the drift of his blundering words.

Before he could continue, Buff created a diversion by routing a large
and terrified rabbit out of a fence corner and charging down the road
toward them in noisy pursuit of his prey. Bunny fled in blind panic
straight between the nervous horse’s forefeet. The mount snorted and
reared. As Ruth skilfully mastered the plunging steed, Trent caught
the bridle, close to the bit, and at the same time whistled Buff to
heel. Unwillingly, but instantly, the collie abandoned his delightful
chase and trotted obediently back to his master.

“Don’t scold him!” begged Ruth. “It wasn’t his fault!”

“I’m not going to scold him!” laughed Trent, ruffling the dog’s ears.
“It’s many a long month since Buff needed a scolding. He didn’t drive
the rabbit this way. The rabbit drove itself, before Buff could choose
the direction. He----”

“Buff is splendid protection for you, isn’t he?” she broke in, a tinge
of nervousness in her soft voice.

“Why, personally, I don’t stand in any great need of protection,” he
smiled. “I’m not exactly a timid little flower. But he protects the
farm and the house and the livestock as efficiently as a machine-gun
company could. He’s a born watchdog.”

Buff, realising he was under discussion, sat down in the road between
the man and the girl. He was wriggling with self-consciousness and
fanning the dust into a little whirlwind with the lightning sweeps of
his plumy tail; as he grinned expectantly from one to the other of the
speakers. But the collie’s grin found no answer on Ruth Hammerton’s
flower-tinted face. The girl’s eyes had grown grave, and there was a
tinge of uneasiness in them.

“I hope you’re right,” she began, hesitantly, “in saying you don’t
need any protection. And probably I’m foolish. But that’s why I rode
out here this morning.”

“To protect me?” he asked quizzically, yet perplexed at her new
bearing.

“To risk your thinking me impertinent,” she evaded, “by mixing into
something that doesn’t concern me.”

“Anything that concerns me,” he said as she hesitated again, “concerns
you, too; so far as you’ll let it. What’s the matter?”

She drew a long breath, knit her dark brows, and plunged into the
distasteful mission that had brought her to the Trent farm.

“In the first place,” she began, “do you know two men named Con Hegan
and Billy Gates?”

In stark surprise Trent stared up at her.

“Why, yes!” he made answer. “Of course I do. I have good reason to
know them. I’ve told you the story. I told it to your father, too,
before I accepted his invitation to come and see him. They were the
two men I found in my kitchen when I----”

“Yes, yes,” she interposed hastily, as though trying to shield him
from memories that must be painful. “I know. Of course, I remember.
But--but you never told me their names. I’m certain you didn’t. Or
they’d have been familiar to me when I heard them this morning.”

“This morning?” echoed Trent, puzzled. “I don’t----”

“I was at the store, doing the marketing,” she explained. “Some men
were loafing on the steps, just outside the window. And one of them
said, ‘A fellow from down Logan-way told me just now that Con Hegan
and Billy Gates are due to be turned loose to-morrow.’ And one of the
other men said, ‘Then Trent had better hire a special cop and take out
another life insurance policy. Both of ’em swore they’d get him, if
they was to go to the chair for it. And that’s one kind of an oath
neither of ’em’s liable to break. I wouldn’t like to be in his shoes
just now!’ That was all I could hear. But it worried me. I didn’t
associate the names with those men you had told me about. Perhaps
because the phrase ‘turned loose’ didn’t mean anything to me. But I
came out here to tell you, just the same. It wasn’t so much what the
fellow on the store steps said, as the scared way he said it, that
frightened me. Oh, is there any real danger of----”

“Nonsense!” laughed Trent. “There’s no danger at all. And you’re not
to give the matter another minute of your precious thought. But it was
bully of you to come out here to warn me--to care enough to----”

“You’re making light of it, just to make me stop worrying!” she
accused. “I know you are! Won’t you please notify the police about
their threat? Won’t you go armed? Won’t you lock your house ever so
carefully and keep indoors after dark? And----”

“And wear warm flannels next to my skin, all summer?” supplemented
Trent, with vast solemnity. “And carry an umbrella and wear rubbers if
the day is at all stormy? And----”

“Stop!” she commanded, a hint of tears in her troubled young voice.
“You’re making fun of me!”

“Heaven forbid!” he disclaimed, piously.

“You are!” she accused. “And you’re doing it to lead me to think you
aren’t in any danger; so that I won’t worry. But there _is_ danger!
And I know it. I’m positive of it, now that you’ve told me who those
men really are. Oh, can’t you----”

“Listen!” he begged. “You’re getting all wrought up over nothing,
Ruth. It’s wonderful to have you bother your head over my safety. But
I’m not going to let you do it. Here’s the idea: Hegan and Gates
belonged to the ‘Riverside Gang,’ over in South Boone. The gang was
cleared out some years ago. Some of its members went to jail. The
police had nothing definite on those two; so they let them alone. They
picked up a living by their wits, as semi-stationary tramps and they
kept their petty thefts from being found out. Then, when they’d sent
me to prison--they’d had it in for me ever since the time I caught
them near my hen-roost and ordered them off my land, to the
accompaniment of a stray kick or so--they went into the business on a
larger scale, using my house as a place to store their plunder and to
hide out in, when the neighbours might be suspecting them of a share
in the robberies. When Buff and I collared them they went all to
pieces and confessed everything. Just as I told you, before. Now, I
leave it to you if two such pitifully cowardly sneak thieves are
likely to risk another jail sentence by trying to harm me. It’s
ridiculous. Just the same, I’m as much your debtor for warning me, as
if the danger were real.”

Ruth had dismounted, during the talk. Now, turning to the horse, she
prepared to get into the saddle once more. But first she bent down and
laid her soft cheek against the delighted Buff’s head. Under cover of
the collie’s glad whimper of friendliness she whispered very low:

“Take care of him, Buff! Oh, take care of him--for _me_.”

Then, with assumed lightness, she said, as Trent lifted her to the
saddle:

“Probably you’re right. But it didn’t do any harm to warn you. I’m
sorry if I’ve seemed foolish. Good-bye!”

The little black horse cantered away. Michael Trent and Buff stood in
the middle of the road watching the girl out of sight. Then Trent
turned slowly to his chum.

“Buff, old man,” said he, “we made a good bluff of it just now, you
and I. All the same, it’s up to us both to keep our eyes open for a
while. Hegan and Gates were soaked with cheap whisky and sodden and
jumpy after a week’s carouse, when the chief of police ‘sweated’ them.
And he sure did ‘sweat’ them good and hard. It smashed their nerve.
Because they were in prime shape to have it smashed. And that’s how he
got them to go all to pieces and confess. That and the goods he found
on them. And, besides, he told each of them separately that the other
one had squealed; and made them sore on each other that way.

“But that wasn’t like either Gates or Hegan to give in. When they were
normal, they were as tough a pair of birds as I care to see. They’ve
had nearly three years to sober up in and get back their nerve by hard
work and plain food and no drink, Buff. And unless I’ve got them both
sized up all wrong, they’ve been spending most of that three years in
planning how to get back at the man who spoiled their game and
thrashed them and got them put away.

“They’ve had plenty of time to store up venom, Buff. And plenty of
venom to store up. Yes, and a good alibi, too, to clear them if
anything happens to me. Buff, we aren’t going to be fools enough to
worry. But we’ll keep awake, just the same. And, Lord, but wasn’t it
glorious of her to care enough about me to come ’way out here and warn
me! Buff, she knew what I meant, too, when I told her about having the
right pretty soon to ‘ask a question.’ I wonder if I’m pig-headed not
to have asked it long ago instead of waiting till I had something
besides my measly self to offer?”

During his mumbled address to the wistfully listening dog he had been
moving homeward. Now, standing on his neat porch, the man looked about
him, over his well-kept farm and its trim buildings; with a little
throb of pride as he contrasted it with the way the home had looked on
his return from prison three years earlier. The world, all at once,
seemed to him a wonderful place to live in, and life seemed
unbelievably sweet. His glance strayed down the long, yellow road
toward the old Brander place, and his lean face softened with a glow
that transfigured it.

Early the following morning Michael Trent set off down the same yellow
road toward Boone Lake for the monthly market day. But the patch of
road directly in front of him was no longer yellow. It was filled
with jogging and tossing billows of greyish-white.

Forty sheep, consigned to the market, were moving in close formation
in front of their staff-swinging master. For one reason alone did they
keep this close formation or, indeed, keep to the narrow road at all.

That one reason was Buff. The collie, with calm generalship, was
herding and driving them. And he was doing it to such perfection as to
make Trent’s rearguard task a sinecure.

For more than thirty months now Buff had been the lonely Trent’s
closest chum and almost his only companion. With true collie
efficiency, the dog had learned his hard and confusing farm lessons
from the master, who never lost his temper with him and who never
dealt unjustly by him. The bond between the two had sharpened and
increased Buff’s naturally “human” tendencies, and had brought out in
him the great soul and uncanny brain wherewith nature had endowed him.
A one-man dog, he idolised Trent and served him with joyous zeal.

Trent and Buff guided their woolly charges through the single winding
street of Boone Lake, now beginning to fill with market day traffic,
and on to the fenced-in market square. There they herded the forty
silly sheep in one corner of the livestock enclosure, a rod or two
distant from a second and much larger flock.

The owner of this second flock--a drover named Bayne--had no dog to
reinforce his shepherding. Instead, three of his hired men were busily
running and shouting along the wabbly borders of the hemmed-in flock.

Trent observed that they were not keeping their sheep in the best
order, and that they seemed to be wilfully exciting instead of calming
the big flock. At this he wondered, even as he had wondered when these
same shepherds had been equally awkward at two former market
days--days whereon Trent himself had had no sheep to sell.

He had heard rumours--odd, unconfirmed gossip--about this Bayne’s
methods. And, when he was not watching the antics of the three clumsy
shepherds, he observed Bayne’s craggy and shifty-eyed face with covert
interest.

A half-hour later, as a third huddle of sheep were driven into the
enclosure, there was a new commotion among Bayne’s flock.

All three shepherds dashed into the jostling mass as in an effort to
calm the pestered beasts. Instead, the noisy move stampeded the entire
flock. They scattered broadcast through the entire enclosure.

The new arrival saw the panic. He jumped ahead of his own bunch of
sheep as they were filing in, and drove them precipitately out of the
square, standing at the opening to see that none of Bayne’s stampeding
flock should follow. Thus, by rare presence of mind--and perhaps
having also had experience with Bayne--he avoided any chance of his
sheep mingling with the runaways.

Michael Trent was less fortunate. Full tilt into the very midst of his
orderly flock charged some fifty of Bayne’s stampeders, a shepherd at
their heels yelling to them to stop. The shepherd’s voice and
excitement had merely the effect of urging them on. Trent, watching,
wondered wrathfully why so stupid a man should be placed in charge of
any market consignment.

Ragged and lean were the newcomers, of mixed blood and in bad
condition; as was the way with Bayne’s livestock. They were not to be
compared to Trent’s fine merinos, either in blood or in
condition--assuredly not in value.

Into and through the Trent flock swarmed the invaders. In ten seconds
the two flocks were inextricably intertangled. In vain did Buff seek
to restore order. He could do nothing against three men--four now, for
Bayne had joined the bedlam--whose yells and crazy rushes frustrated
his every movement. The dog looked up in angry bewilderment at Trent,
mutely begging for advice as to how the snarl might be straightened
out.

But Trent did not see the appealing glance. His mind and eyes were too
completely taken up in staring at Bayne and the latter’s three men.

For in a flash the quartet had changed from impotently roaring and
running idiots, to swiftly certain and efficient shepherds. With
splendid skill and speed they were quelling the stampede, separating
the two flocks and driving their own sheep to their allotted corner of
the enclosure. Their command of the situation was something to admire.

Presently the Bayne flock was in its place, orderly and safe, with two
shepherds in front of it to prevent further panic flight. Trent
glanced back at his own flock, attracted to them by a sudden stir
among the forty.

Buff, leaving his master, had plunged into the flock and was busily at
work, but for what purpose Trent could not guess. Then, almost at
once, he was out of the compact flock again, driving in front of him
six sheep, which he detached from the remaining thirty-four, and sent
helter skelter out into the middle of the square.

Still wondering if his wise dog had lost his wits, Trent chanced to
take special note of the six sheep as they hurtled past him. And his
face went blank. The six were dirty, thin, undersized, sparse of
wool. They were as different from his own plump flock as a scavenger
horse from a Derby winner.

Before Trent could speak or move, Buff had deserted the six ragged
specimens, leaving them bleating forlornly in the centre of the
square.

And he had bounded straight at Bayne’s close-huddled flock. At one
leap he was on the backs of the sheep which formed the outer wall of
the mass. He did not even waste time to plough through their
tight-held front rank.

Over their backs he ran; and on until he vanished into the milling sea
of wool.

Then, while Bayne and his three shepherds still shouted in
uncomprehending dismay, the dog appeared again on one edge of the
flock. Moving slowly, by reason of the press around and ahead of him,
he emerged from the bunch, driving two sheep. Fat they were and of
heavy wool, undoubted merinos both. Across the narrow space Buff
headed them and drove them into his master’s flock. Then, on the
instant, he was in the Bayne flock again, running once more over the
scared backs of many sheep and dropping to earth in the middle of the
throng.

A second time he emerged from the huddle, again with two fat and
woolly merinos ahead of him. Eluding Bayne, who rushed down on him
with staff upraised, Buff galloped the two into his master’s corner,
and was back again, without pausing, in front of Bayne’s flock.

But this time his self-imposed job was no sinecure. Bayne and the
three shepherds had shaken off their amaze and were ready for him.
Shouting and threatening they advanced on the eager dog.

Trent, leaving his sheep in care of an official of the market, sprang
to Buff’s aid. But the dog did not wait for him. Instead, the collie
made a growling dash at Bayne’s booted legs.

Bayne jumped aside to guard his endangered shanks, and smote at the
attacking collie with his staff. The blow did not land;--Buff was no
longer there. Eluding the swung cudgel with wolfish agility, he darted
into the gap in the line--the gap made by Bayne’s sideways jump--and
was at the fiercely guarded flock once more.

As Buff reappeared, after an interval, with another pair of sheep
herded ahead of him, Bayne and the shepherds were waiting for him. But
so was Trent. A shepherd made a lunging rush at the two salvaged
sheep. Bayne aimed a murderous blow at the dog.

Trent, with ludicrous ease, tripped the awkwardly charging shepherd
and sent him asprawl on the ground. Trent’s staff met the descending
stick of Bayne, and the latter’s weapon was shattered by the impact.

In practically the same gesture, Trent leaped between his dog and the
two remaining shepherds, menacing them with staff and voice, and
holding them in check while the collie cantered the rescued sheep back
into Trent’s flock.

Bayne, swearing and mouthing, strode in pursuit. He was met by a
crouching collie, who faced him with an expression that looked like a
smile and which was not a smile.

Bayne hesitated, whirling on the tranquil Trent.

“Your cur’s stolen six of my sheep!” he thundered in righteous
indignation. “I’ll----”

“No, you won’t, Mr. Bayne,” gently contradicted Trent, his pleasant
voice slow and drawling. “Stop a second and cool off, and you’ll let
the matter drop. You’ll let it go as a mistake of your men’s in
separating the two flocks. Men often make mistakes, you know. Buff
never does. There are six sheep straying over yonder--six thin,
cross-bred sheep. Not merinos. They are yours.”

“I tell you--” spluttered Bayne, though visibly uneasy at Trent’s
manner and at the crowd that was collecting three deep around them.

“No,” intervened Trent. “Don’t tell me, Mr. Bayne; don’t bother to. I
see it was a mistake. Just as you are beginning to see it. There’s no
sin in a mistake. Though there’s always sure to be a mistake in a
sin. My sheep are safe. So are yours. Let the matter drop. I’ve seen
stampedes of your flocks before. And I’ve heard of them, too. This
time no harm’s done. That’s all, I think.”

“I’ll get a court order for my sheep your cur run off!” flared Bayne
in a last rally; and he turned to his shepherds, commanding:

“Here, boys, go and get them sheep he run into that bunch. Get ’em!”

“Speaking of court orders,” said Trent, still in the same cool, slow
tones of indifference and interposing his own lithe body beside the
bristling Buff’s to the hesitant advance of the shepherds--“speaking
of court orders, Mr. Bayne, when you get yours, be sure to tell the
judge that I’m ready to show him the secret mark on each and every one
of my sheep, to prove they’re mine. Now, if your men care to keep on
edging toward my flock, Buff and I will try to entertain them as best
we can till the police come up.”

Bayne glowered horribly into the smilingly level eyes that met his
glare so tranquilly. Then, with a grunt, he turned back to his own
corner, the three shepherds trailing after him.

Behind his calm exterior Michael Trent drew a long breath of relief.
These forty sheep of his were culled from the two new flocks he had so
recently purchased. None of them bore a mark. The only “secret mark”
on them was Buff’s unerring knowledge of their identity. Trent stooped
and petted the collie lovingly on the head and stroked the massive
ruff.

“That’s how Mr. Bayne makes money, old man,” he whispered. “One of his
several hundred ways. We couldn’t have proved he didn’t have six fat
merinos in that mangy bunch of sheep. And his shepherds would have
sworn to them. Figure out the price-difference between six of our best
sheep and six of Bayne’s scarecrows, and you’ll know to a penny how
much cash you’ve saved me to-day, Buff.”

The collie did not get the sense of one word in five. But he realised
he had somehow made Trent very proud of him and that he was being
praised. So for a moment he forgot to be stately and aloof. He wagged
his tail wildly and caught Trent’s caressing hand between his mighty
jaws in well-simulated savageness, pretending to bite it ferociously,
while not exerting the pressure of a fraction of an ounce. Which was
one of Buff’s many modes of showing affection for the pleasant-voiced
man who was his master and his god.

Dusk had fallen when Trent and Buff turned in at the gate of the
silent farmhouse. The day had been prosperous. The merinos had brought
a well-nigh record price--the whole forty having been bought by an
up-country stock farm man. Thus, Trent’s investment in them had turned
into an unexpectedly quick and large profit.

Also, he had been congratulated by a dozen fellow sheep raisers on his
victory over Bayne. He had banked his market cheque--the Boone Lake
Bank remaining open until seven in the evening on market days--and had
spent a blissful half-hour on the Hammerton porch with Ruth on the way
home. Now, comfortably tired and buoyed by an equally comfortable
sense of well-being, he lounged up the short path leading from the
road to his house. As he reached the fence gate he had bidden Buff
fetch the cows from their upland pasturage and drive them to the barn.
He himself went around to the side door, for the milk pails that were
kept in the kitchen during the day.

He unlocked and opened the door and stepped in. As he did so a bag was
thrown over his head, and the upper part of his body--a bag whose
bottom was soaked in something that smelt like crushed apples. A rope
was flung about his arms at the same moment and its noose ran tight.

Vainly, Trent stamped and writhed to free himself. His wiry strength
was pinioned and cramped by the noose and the impeding bag. More of
the apple-smelling liquid was dashed into his face through the sack’s
loose meshes. Then, as he still struggled and choked, something
crashed down upon his skull.

Buff trotted obediently across the road toward the hill pasture. Like
his master, Buff had had a happy and busy day. He had been praised
much and petted much by Trent, and had had a truly marvellous dinner
at the Boone Lake Hotel. He was complacently at peace with the world.

Then all at once he was not at peace with anything. For, far behind
him, he heard the noise of scuffling feet and of a loud, choking gasp.
And his weird sixth sense told him his master was in trouble.

Wheeling, he set off for the house at a tearing run. Excited as he
was, he was aware of a strange and vaguely remembered foot-scent as he
whirled in through the gate and up the path. His faint memory of the
scent was hostile. He could not remember why.

At a bound he reached the open kitchen door. Trent was lying inert and
crumpled on the floor. Two men were bending over him. And, as he
charged, Buff caught their scent.

Like a rabid wolf he hurled himself upon the nearest of the men. His
teeth closed in Hegan’s shoulder with the bone-crushing grip of his
pit terrier ancestors. At the same moment Gates drew a pistol and
fired point blank at the leaping dog.

Buff’s muscles collapsed. He slumped to the floor and lay lifelessly
across the body of his master.

“What’d you shoot for, you chucklehead!” panted Hegan, nursing his
rent shoulder. “Want to bring all Boone Lake down on us?”

“Only way to get him!” retorted Gates. “He’d ‘a’ chewed us both into
Hamburg steak if I hadn’t.”

Quickly and deftly the two worked. First assuring themselves that no
one had heard the shot, they went through the house and through
Trent’s clothes. Then, their loot gathered, they carried it to the
barn and stowed it in Trent’s new car. After which, under cover of
darkness and carrying Trent between them, they loaded their victim
into the tonneau, covering him with a blanket. Then, while Hegan
groaningly and laboriously cleaned away the tell-tale blood spots and
other marks of struggle, Gates scowled down at the motionless huddle
of tawny soft fur.

“Got to lug him along with us, too, I s’pose?” he grunted. “Can’t
leave him here.”

“Get a stone,” commanded Hegan--“a big one. Tie it around his neck.
Then drop him down the well.”

Gates groped around the steps until he found one of the old-time door
stones, and in another minute or so this was firmly affixed to Buff’s
collar by a stout rope. As Gates picked up the heavy dog and carried
him puffingly to the well the telephone bell rung.

Tossing dog and stone over the well curb, Gates bolted for the house
in sudden fright. Hegan had already gone into the hall, and was
lifting the instrument from its table.

“Hallo!” he grunted in a stifled voice as he motioned Gates to
silence.

His face cleared, and he made answer to the query at the far end:

“Yep, this is Michael Trent. Yes? No, I won’t be here. Nope. I’m just
starting off on a motor trip up country. I may go a couple of thousand
miles before I get back. Maybe I won’t ever come back. I’m dead sick
of this hole. Yep. Good-bye.”

He hung up the receiver.

“Corking good alibi!” he chuckled gleefully. “Some feller that Trent
sold some sheep to to-day. Don’t seem to know Trent well. Didn’t
suspicion the voice. Now, when Trent and his car are missing,
nobody’ll ask nosey questions. Come along!”

They hurried to the barn, backed the laden car out, and drove away
into the night.

Not for some minutes did Buff recover consciousness from the bullet
graze that had rapped his skull so hard as to stun him and to gash the
silken fur above his eye.

He woke in decided discomfort; his head was still in dire pain, and he
was fastened securely in one spot.

When Michael Trent had had his farm drinking water tested, a year
earlier, he had learned that the well showed strong traces of stable
drainage. Wherefore, the well had been filled up, to within two yards
of the surface, and a new well had been dug on higher ground behind
the house.

Thus it was that Buff woke to find himself sprawling on a pile of
rubble, with a short rope attaching him to a large stone.

Indignantly the collie set to work gnawing the rope in two. This
accomplished, he got dizzily to his feet. A rush and a scramble, and
he was up the stone-lined wall of the well and on firm ground above.

Straight to the house he ran, his teeth gleaming, his ruff abristle.
At the kitchen door he halted. The door was shut; he could not get in.
But his scent told him Trent was no longer there. His scent told him
more--much more. It confirmed his memory of his master’s two
assailants, and stamped their odour for ever in his mind. Their steps
led him to the barn whither they had carried Trent. The senseless
man’s clothing had brushed the lintel of the barn door as they had
lifted him into the car. Buff looked wildly about him, sniffing the
air, his tense brain telling him much.

Then a red light began to smoulder in his deep-set eyes. Out into the
high road he dashed, not running now like a collie, but like a timber
wolf. As he ran he paused but once, and then he waited only long
enough to throw his head aloft and shatter the night silences with a
howl as hideous and discordant as it was ear-splitting.

A mile away a drowsy farmer dropped his weekly paper with a shiver.

“If I was back on the frontier,” he mused to his startled wife, “I’d
say that was a mad wolf a-howlin’--and I’d say the hunt was up!”




CHAPTER THREE: MASTERLESS!


Now this is the story of the masterless wanderings of Buff.

Long and unavailingly did Buff follow the track of the car which had
borne away the man who was his god. Dizzy from his wound, faint from
loss of blood, heart-broken and frantic at the vanishing of his
master, the collie sped in pursuit. The scent was fresh in his
nostrils--the scent of the kidnapped man and of his abductors, and the
familiar odour of Trent’s car.

Mile after mile galloped Buff through the summer night; trusting
wholly to his sense of smell. With the peculiar mile-eating canter of
his wolf-ancestors, he stuck to the trail, even when the car’s track
ceased to furrow the dusty country road and passed clean through a
busy little city.

Through the city’s myriad odours and distractions, Buff stuck to the
scent of his master’s car. Other cars--hundreds of them--had laced the
trail. The asphalt’s smell of gasoline and grease was sickeningly
acute in the dog’s nostrils, confusing and sometimes all but blotting
out the scent he was following. Yet never quite did Buff lose the
track.

Under the lamps of motor-trucks and trolley cars he flashed, swerving
barely far enough out of their way to save himself from death; then
ever picking up the scent again.

Once a troop of small boys gave chase, realising the chances of reward
that lay in the capture of so fine a dog. But Buff, with that odd and
choppy wolf-stride of his, soon out-distanced them. And they threw
stones, futilely, in the wake of the flying tawny shape.

Again, a Great Dane whirled out of a dooryard and pursued the passing
collie. Buff was aware of the larger dog’s presence only when a spring
and a snarl warned him to wheel, in bare time to avoid the full shock
of the Dane’s charge.

Buff had no time for fighting. Paying no further heed to the attacking
giant, he swerved from the assault, caught the trail again, and
increased his pace. But the Great Dane would not have it so. His
instincts of a bully were aroused by the meek flight of this stranger
dog from his onset. And he pursued at top speed.

A motor-bus, whirring out from a side street, checked Buff’s flight
for an instant, by barring the way. Before he could get into his
stride again, the Dane had hurled himself upon the fugitive, bearing
him to the ground, in the slime and mud of the greasy street.

By the time Buff’s tawny back smote the asphalt, he was master of the
situation. Furious at this abominable delay he reverted to type--or to
two types.

It was his wolf-ancestry that lent him the wit and the nimbleness to
spin to his feet, under the big assailant’s lunging body, and to find
by instinct the hind leg tendon of the lumbering brute. All this, in
one lightning swirl, and before the Dane could slacken his own pace.

But it was his pit terrier strain that made him set his curved
eye-teeth deep and firmly in that all-important tendon, and to hold
his grip with a vise-like steadfastness and might, while he ground his
jaws slowly together.

Almost before the smitten mongrel could shriek forth his agony and
fear, before the toppling gigantic body could crash to the ground, the
fierce-grinding jaws had met in the centre of the thing they gripped.
And, leaving behind him the crippled and howling bully, Buff slipped
through the human crowd that had begun to collect; and was casting
about once more for the ever-fainter trail of Trent’s car.

In a moment he had found it. And he sped along in renewed zest.

Through the city and out into its straggling suburbs galloped Buff.
There, a mile beyond, was a wayside garage, with one or two
ramshackle buildings on either side of it. Behind them a rotting dock
nosed its way out into the river. Here, at times, tugs and tenders and
lighters touched; on their way between the city and the ocean harbour,
eight miles to southward.

At the garage the trail ended. Here had halted Michael Trent’s car.

Buff ran twice around the closed garage. His nostrils told him the car
was inside that dark and deserted building. He had followed it twenty
miles or more. He was worn out from the run. Yet here the scent of his
adored master was stronger than it had been anywhere along the way.

The dog scratched imperiously at the garage door. The sagging wood
shook and grumbled under the impact. But it held firm. Nor did anyone
come from inside to answer the summons. Frightened at the silence, yet
certain of the scent he sought, Buff circled the building once more,
nose to earth, steps uncertain, head darting from side to side.

The quest did not bring to his senses any trace of Trent. But it did
bring to him a dual odour that set the dog’s ruff to bristling, and
his teeth to glinting from under his uncurled lip. For here, side by
side, had trodden Hegan and Gates. Not more than an hour earlier they
had walked here, their heels striking deep in the dirt, as though
they carried between them some heavy weight. They had walked thus to
the dock and to its outer edge.

Baffled, the collie made his way back to the garage. There, distinct
through the reek of gas and oil and dead tobacco and dried grease, he
caught again the scent of his master. With a little whimper of
eagerness, Buff paused beneath a shut and locked window, some three
feet from the ground. He gathered his waning strength for one more
effort, and sprang upward.

Through the thin and cracked glass and the rotting sash he clove his
way, alighting on the slimy concrete floor of the garage amid a shower
of window particles.

The glass, by some minor miracle, scarce cut the dog. Apart from a
scratch or two on his pads and a shallow cut on the nose, he was none
the worse for his dive through the shaky casement.

The instant he touched ground, Buff was in new search of his master’s
scent. And at once he found it.

There were three cars in the garage. Two of them were old and battered
and in parlous condition. The third was still new. And to this new car
Buff ran.

It was Michael Trent’s car. Empty as it was now--even of cushions and
dashboard equipments, and shorn of its license numbers--Buff knew it
at a single sniff. He knew more. He knew that in this car’s muddied
tonneau, little over half an hour ago, Trent had been lying. Yes, and
that Gates and Hegan had been occupying the front seat. Also that the
nasty smell of some medicine or drug was strong in the tonneau.

But the one thing that interested Buff was Michael Trent’s recent
presence there. Being only a real-life dog and not a story-book
detective, it occurred quite naturally to Buff that where Trent had so
lately been, he would in time be again.

Trent had left the car. That was evident. But doubtless he would
return to it. Every day he used this car. And, of course, he would
come back to it, soon or late. Wherefore, as Trent’s trail led no
farther, there seemed nothing for Buff to do but to wait for him here.

Accordingly, the collie stepped up on the running board, and through
the open doorway of the tonneau. Stretching himself out there, as
close as possible to the space where Trent had lain, Buff began his
vigil--waiting in worried patience for the return of the man whom he
had chosen as his deity.

And so in time he fell asleep; worn-out nature renewing itself in his
tired body and building up again the strong young tissues and the
wonted vigour of frame and of brain.

Fast as the dog had run, and with as few delays, yet he had arrived
far too late to ameliorate or even share his master’s doom. Fast as a
collie can run--and no dog but the greyhound can outstrip him--yet a
new and desperately driven motor-car can cover thrice the same ground
in far less time than can he.

Moreover, Buff had wasted many precious minutes in senselessness, in
the waterless well, and many more in gnawing through the rope, and in
casting about the farmhouse and in the yard for Trent’s trail. More
than an hour ahead of him, Gates and Hegan had reached their
destination. They had disposed of the stolen car, borne off the
valuables they had taken from Trent’s home and from his body, and did
all else they had planned in advance to do. The only creature with a
clue to the victim’s whereabouts had come up an hour too late.

It was daylight when Buff awoke. He was stiff and drowsy. The bullet
graze and the glass cut on his head were throbbing. He was thirsty,
too, and hungry. He did not wake, of his own accord, but through force
of habit, as the crunching of human feet reached his sleeping senses.

He lifted his head. Steps were clumping up to the garage door, and a
key was at work in the padlock. Buff was keenly interested.

A dog awakens instantly and with all his faculties acute. With him
there is none of the owlish stupidity and dazedness which marks the
transition from sleep to awake, among humans. At one instant he is
fast asleep; at the next he is wide awake. And so it was with Buff.

He was interested now at the sound of steps, because he hoped one of
the two men whose tread he heard might be Michael Trent. But at once
he knew it was not. Trent’s step was as familiar to Buff as was
Trent’s scent. And neither of these two approaching persons had a
semblance to Trent’s light, springy stride. Indeed, before the garage
door opened more than an inch, Buff’s nostrils told him that these
newcomers were total strangers to him.

One of the two men was elderly and disreputable. The other, a mere
boy, had not lived long enough to look as thoroughly disreputable as
did his companion, but very evidently he had done his best along that
line in the few years allotted him.

The older man was approaching Trent’s car, talking over his shoulder
to the youth.

“Put them new license plates on this, first thing you do,” he
commanded. “Then get a chisel and see what you can do with the motor
number. And we’ll have to----”

He stopped with much abruptness. As he had been speaking he had
advanced to Trent’s car and had laid a careless hand on the swinging
tonneau door. At the same moment he was aware of a tawny shape, bloody
of head, that arose from the depths of the tonneau; teeth bared and
eyes menacing.

This car belonged to Michael Trent as much as did the Trent farmhouse.
Long since, Buff had learned that it was his sacred duty to guard the
one as rigidly as the other. And here this stranger was laying an
impious hand on the machine!

At the apparition of the threatening head and at the sound of the
equally threatening growl, the man recoiled from the car, jerking back
his dirty hand from the door as suddenly as if the latter had turned
into a snake.

Open-mouthed, the two men surveyed Buff. Quietly, but not at all
friendlily, the collie returned their stare. He had no quarrel with
either of them. For all he knew or cared, this might be their rightful
home. So long as they should abstain from touching or otherwise
molesting Trent’s car, he was content to let them alone. But his pose
and expression made it very clear that he expected the same sort of
treatment from them and that he was calmly ready to enforce such
treatment.

“It’s--it’s--why, it’s a dog!” cleverly observed the youth, breaking
the momentary silence of surprise. “It’s----”

“It’s a collie,” amended his senior, finding his voice, and his wits
together. “A top-notcher, at that. Must have sneaked in here while we
was closin’ up last night. A dog like that is worth a big heap of
cash. And most likely there’ll be a reward offered for him. See, he’s
got a good collar on. And he’s chawed his rope through. He’s worth
keepin’ till called for. Go, catch him, sonny. And tie him up yonder,
till we c’n take him over to the house.”

The man spoke wheedlingly to his young companion. But the lad had
noted his sire’s own reception from Buff. And, modestly, he hung back.
At the other’s repeated and sterner mandate, the youth remarked:

“Think I’ll run up home for breakfast. I’ll be back in ten minutes.
You might tie him up, yourself, while I’m gone. I ain’t much used to
dogs.”

The older man scowled; then his brow cleared.

“We’ll both go up to breakfast,” he decreed. “We’ll lock this feller
in here while we’re gone. On the way back I’ll stop for Joe Stears.
He’s got a passel of dogs; and he und’stands handlin’ ’em. Come on.”

Compromising thus, they departed, closing and locking the garage door
behind them. Neither of them having gone to the far side of the room,
they did not see the broken sash and the mess of glass on the floor--a
bit of wreckage hidden from their view by the three cars.

For a few minutes after they left him, Buff lay still. Then he got up,
stretched fore and aft, collie fashion, and stepped down to the
concrete floor. Making his way across to a water-tub, he drank long
and deep. Then he stood irresolute.

He had been in this ill-smelling place for many hours. Michael Trent
had not returned to his car. Michael Trent’s odour had grown
faint--almost imperceptible. There was no reason, after all, to
believe that Trent would come back here. A few months ago he had taken
his old car to a garage and had never gone back for it. Perhaps that
was what he would do in the present case.

Meanwhile, Buff was bitterly homesick for his master. And Buff was
worried, to the depths of his soul, as to what might have befallen
Trent at the hands of the two men with whom the dog associated his
master’s departure--the men he was learning to hate with a mortal
hatred because he knew them for his master’s enemies.

By loitering here, he could get no trace of Trent, nor of the men who
had carried him away. Refreshed and once more alert, he prepared to
take up his quest again.

An easy leap carried Buff out through the smashed window, and to
freedom. As he stood in the road, hesitant, he saw bearing down toward
him at a run the two men who had just left the garage, and with them a
third man, who carried a rope and a club.

As the trio very evidently meant to seize him, and as he had no reason
for staying there in the road to be caught, the collie set off across
the nearest field at a hard-gallop, heading for a distant patch of
woods. The men gave chase. But, without bothering to increase his
speed, he soon left; them panting and swearing, far in the rear.
Presently, they gave up the pursuit.

Midway in the field, Buff scared up an unwary young rabbit. At sight
of the pneumatically bouncing cottontail, the collie remembered he
himself had eaten nothing in nearly twenty-four hours. Like a furry
whirlwind, he was after the rabbit. Fifty yards on, a swirl in the
long grass and a few red-stained leaves marked the abrupt end of the
race. And Buff found himself supplied with a toothsome breakfast.

Thus began the collie’s first day of utter loneliness; a day of bleak
misery and bewilderment, of biting grief. He ranged the country for
miles on either side for a trace of his master. He followed several
motor-cars, on various highways, because of their vague resemblance to
Trent’s.

Once he ran rapturously for a quarter-mile, in pursuit of a
well-set-up man who was taking a cross-country tramp; and whom, in the
distance, his near-sighted eyes mistook for his master. The wind being
in the wrong direction, Buff was not aware of his error until he had
careered to within fifty feet of the stranger. Then, head and brush
drooping, he slunk away, heavy of heart and heedless of the man’s
kindly hail.

Under cover of darkness, that evening, the collie made a detour that
brought him back to the garage where last he had seen Trent’s car.
Whether he hoped Trent might have come back there, or whether perhaps
the desolate dog craved the faint scent of his master on the tonneau
door and flooring--in any event, he leaped in through the unmended
window of the garage, and sought to locate the stolen car.

The car was no longer there. After the deft underground method
employed by professional automobile thieves and receivers of such
booty, the car had already been passed along the line to its next
resting-place.

A boy, coming home late from the near-by city, chanced to be passing
the unlit garage. From the cavernous depths of the building burst
forth into the still night a hideous sound--the anguish howl of a
wolf or of a masterless and wretched collie.

While the boy still stood shivering in terror at the eerie sound, a
dark shape hurtled out through the window and vanished into the
surrounding blackness.

And now began Buff’s tortured experience as a stray--as a leal one-man
dog whose master is gone. Goaded on ever by that vague hope of
somewhere finding Trent, and the scarce lesser hope of finding and
wreaking vengeance on the men he associated with Trent’s
disappearance, the great collie wandered aimlessly over the face of
the countryside.

Unhappiness and the nerve-wrack of his endless quest lent him a
strange furtiveness, and made him revert in a measure to the wild.
Always searching--always avoiding his own kind and humans--he grew
gaunt and lean. Living by his wits, in summer the forests gave him
enough food to support life. He became craftily adept in catching
rabbits and squirrels, and even occasional young birds. He did not
starve, for the wolf-brain lent him the gift of foraging; although his
farm training held him aloof from hen-roost and stall and fold, in his
food-hunts.

Almost at once he skirted the city and guided himself back to Boone
Lake, nearly thirty miles from where the trail had ended. The feat
was not difficult, and he consumed less than a single night on the
journey.

Reaching his master’s farm at grey of dawn, Buff found the house and
outbuildings deserted. The weeds had crept thick among the once trim
crops, and there was an air of desolation brooding over the land.

Buff could not know that of all Boone Lake, Ruth Hammerton alone had
refused to accept as true the report that Michael Trent had left home
of his own accord. She had visited the deserted farm with her father,
as soon as the story had been repeated to her, and had prevailed on
Mr. Hammerton to send one of his farm-hands to transfer to the
Hammertons’ place Trent’s suffering livestock for safe-keeping.

It was enough for the collie to know his master was not at home, and
that he had not been at home since the night of his kidnapping. Buff
did not belong to the silly and professionally loyal type of dog that
curls itself on its owner’s vacant doorstep and starves to death.

There was no time to think of such selfish matters as death, while
Michael Trent remained to be found and his two enemies to be tracked
down.

So, aimlessly, he took up his search.

That night he circled Boone Lake, investigating every house and path
that Trent had been wont to frequent, visiting first the Hammerton
place and last the market square--the scene of his triumph over Bayne,
the drover.

Dawn found him miles away, ever seeking, ever wandering, living on
slain forest creatures, obsessed and haunted by his overmastering
impulse to find Trent.

Once, as he trotted along the ridge of a wooded hill, Buff saw in the
valley below a farmer trying with pitiable ill-success to round up a
flock of sixty sheep that had bolted through the pasture gate and were
scattering over the surrounding fields and woods; instead of marching
toward their distant fold, whose gate stood invitingly open.

Moved by an instinct he did not stay to define or to resist, the
collie swept down the ridge and into the valley below. The harassed
farmer beheld descending on his stampeded flock a bolt of
tawny-and-white lightning that whirled in and out among the galloping
strays as if bent on their wholesale destruction.

While the man was yelling his lungs out and seeking a stone wherewith
to brain the marauder, he suddenly came to a foolish halt, and stood
gaping at the spectacle before him.

The supposedly rabid and murderous dog was rounding up the scattered
flock with uncanny skill and speed, marshalling them into the narrow
road, driving strays back into the column and moving the whole woolly
throng steadily and decorously toward the fold.

Arrived at the gate, one wether bolted past it, and ten other sheep
followed his lead. The wether did not go forty feet before he and his
fellow-truants found themselves confronted by a large and indignant
collie, who forced them with gentle relentlessness to wheel in their
tracks and rejoin the flock.

Tongue out, tail wagging, Buff stood at the gate of the fold, holding
his prisoners from passing out again until the puffing and marvelling
farmer came running up.

The man paused to fasten the gate before turning his full attention on
the wonderful collie. But by the time the gate was made fast the dog
was a hundred yards down the road, trotting lazily back toward the
ridge. Not by so much as a turn of his classic head did he show he
heard the frantic and cajoling shouts the farmer sent after him.

On another late afternoon, ten miles from there, a farmer’s child was
piloting her father’s eleven cows and two calves home along the road
from pasture. Three men, passing in a small motor-truck, halted,
jumped to the ground, seized the pair of calves and prepared to sling
them into the truck.

The child screamed in terrified appeal, and caught hold of one of the
men by the arm, while the herd of cows ran in panic through fields and
woods.

The man shook off the child’s convulsive hold with a vehemence that
sent her flat in the dust of the road.

And on the same instant a huge and lean and hairy beast burst through
a roadside thicket and flung himself on the man, bearing him to earth
by the sheer weight of his assault.

By the time the thief had landed, rolling and yelling, in the roadway,
Buff had deserted him, and was at another of the trio. And this was
the collie of it. A bulldog secures his grip and holds it till
doomsday. A collie, fighting, is everywhere at once. The collie strain
in Buff told him his opponents were three, and that there was no sense
in devoting himself over-long to any one of them at the expense of the
rest. So he was raging at the second man’s throat before the first
fairly realised what had attacked him.

The third man, however, had a trifle more time on his hands than had
either of his companions. And, wisely, he utilised that second of time
in dropping the calf he had caught and in making one flying leap for
the seat of the truck.

There, as fast as they could beat off the furry demon that was rending
their flesh and clothes, the two others joined him. Leaving the
calves to run free, the men set the machine into rapid motion and
rattled off down the road.

Buff did not follow. Already he was in the thickets again, rounding up
the gawkily galloping cows. And presently he had them back in the
highway, in orderly alignment and walking stolidly homeward.

Dropping back beside the still weeping child, Buff licked her
frightened face with his pink tongue, wagged his tail and his entire
body reassuringly, and then thrust his muzzle into her trembling
little hand. Thus, her father, having witnessed the scene from afar,
came hurrying up, to find his cattle safe and in the road, and his
erstwhile terrified daughter hugging a huge collie frantically and
kissing the silken crest of the dog’s head in an agony of gratitude
and love.

But, as the farmer himself sought to catch hold of the dog, Buff
showed his white teeth in a wild-beast snarl that made the man start
back.

Taking advantage of this momentary check, the collie bounded off into
the bushes and was gone.

Buff himself could not have explained the unwonted wildness and
ferocity that seemed to have taken hold of him in his wanderings. For
the first three years or so of his life--indeed, until Gates’s pistol
shot had stunned him--he had known nothing but friendliness and good
treatment. And, except toward tramps and like prowlers, he had never
felt hatred. Though he had always been a one-man dog, he had shown no
ill-temper toward those who sought to make friends with him.

Yet now, as evidenced by his snarl at the father of the child who was
caressing him, he had neither lot nor part with mankind at large. His
every hope and yearning were centred on the finding of his master. And
the wolf strain in his make-up thrilled almost as keenly to his
longing to encounter the men with whom he associated the disappearance
of Trent.

For the rest of humanity he felt no interest. Not even toward Ruth
Hammerton, who had reigned second to Trent in his heart.

Twice during his months as a tramp dog, Buff revisited Boone
Lake--casting about the farm, trotting at midnight through the
village, hanging wistfully around the Hammerton place for nearly an
hour. But before dawn he was far away again.

Most of his travelling was done by night or in dusk and at grey
daybreak. For experience had taught him that the open ways are not
safe for an unattached dog by sunlight.

A lesser dog might readily have attached himself to one of the various
friendly folk who chanced to meet him and to give him a kindly word
or call. A lesser dog, too, might have chosen a home at one of the
farms scattered through the broad stretch of country Buff traversed.
At any of a dozen places his beauty and his prowess at herding would
have won for the collie a warm and lasting welcome.

But none of this was for Buff. He had known but one master. Losing
Trent, he was fated to be forever masterless, unless he should chance
to find the man he had lost. And, being only a dog, he knew no better
way of finding him than by this everlasting and aimless search.

On a late September afternoon, he was roused from a troubled nap in
the long grass and bushes at the verge of a field, by the sound of a
mad-galloping horse and of a woman’s brave yet frightened calls to the
runaway. Looking over the fringe of grass, towards the road, a furlong
distant, he saw a fast-moving cloud of yellow-grey dust, which
resolved itself into a hazy screen for a horse and light buggy.

The horse--a young and nervous brute--had taken fright at the running
of a woodchuck across the road under his feet, and had sprung forward
with a suddenness that snapped his check-rein. The swinging check
smote him resoundingly again and again, on the neck and across the
face, turning his first fright into panic, and making useless the
efforts of the driver to bring him down.

A woman was driving. She was neither young nor beautiful. She had
self-possession, and she had a more than tolerable set of driving
hands. She was keeping the maddened horse more or less in the road,
and was sawing with valorous strength on one rein while she held the
other steady. Which was all the good it did her. For the brute had the
bit between his teeth.

Buff arrived at the road-edge just as one of the two light reins broke
under the undue strain put on it.

Before the driver could lighten the pull on the remaining rein its
impulse had jerked the horse’s low-laid head far to one side. His
rushing body prepared to follow the lead of his head towards a steep
roadside bank some ten feet deep, with a scattering of broken rock at
the bottom.

Then it was that the horse became dimly aware of a furry shape which
whizzed in front of him on that side, and of a flying head that struck
for his nose. A stinging slash on the left nostril sent the runaway
veering from the bank-edge, and plunging toward the telegraph pole on
the other side of the road. He was met and turned again by a second
slash from one of the collie’s curved eye-teeth. On the same moment
Buff stopped slashing and let his bulldog ancestry take control.

Thus the horse was assailed by a full double set of teeth that buried
themselves in his bleeding nostrils, and that hung on.

The wild steed sought to fling up his head to shake off this
anguishing weight of seventy odd pounds. But he could not shake
himself free. He checked his furious pace and reared, striking out
with his forefeet, and threatening to pitch backward into the buggy.

But a fierce wrench of the hanging jaws and a wriggle of the
intolerable weight brought him down on all fours again. At once Buff
released his grip and stood in front of the trembling horse. The
runaway made as though to plunge forward. But he flinched at the
memory of the dog’s attack and at the threat of its renewal.

While he hesitated, dancing, pawing, and in momentary cessation of his
run, the woman slipped from the seat to the ground and ran to his
head. With practised strength she shook the bit into place and held
fast. The horse jerked back. Buff nipped his heel, and instantly was
at his bloody nose, again.

The runaway, conquered and shivering, lashed out with one foreleg in a
last hopeless display of terrified anger. His shod hoof smote the
unprepared collie in the side. With a gasping sound, Buff rolled over
into the ditch, two ribs broken and a foot crushed.

Tying the horse to a telegraph pole, the woman went over to where the
wounded collie lay. In strong, capable arms, that were wondrous
gentle, she lifted him and bore him to the buggy. Laying him tenderly
on the floor of the vehicle, she returned to the horse’s head, untied
the cowed and trembling steed, and began to lead him homeward.

Ten minutes later she turned in at a lane leading to a rambling, low
farmhouse. And in another five minutes Buff was reclining on the
kitchen floor, the woman’s husband working skilfully over his
injuries, while the matron poured out the tale of his heroism and
cleverness.

“I know what dog this is, too,” she finished. “I’m sure I know. It
must be the same one that fought those thieves away from Sol Gilbert’s
cows over to Pompton, last week, when Sol’s girl was driving them
home. Mrs. Gilbert told me about it at the Grange, Monday. And he’s
likely the dog that rounded up those sheep for Parkins--or whatever
his name was--at Revere. You read me about it in the _Bulletin_, don’t
you remember? The letter Parkins wrote to the editor about it? I know
it must be the same one. It isn’t likely there’s more than one dog in
Passaic County with the sense to do all three of those things. He must
be like those knight-errant folks in Sylvia’s school book, who used to
go through the country rescuing folks that were in distress. The best
in the house isn’t any too good for him.”

“He’ll get it,” curtly promised her husband, without looking up from
his task. “It’s lucky I’ve had experience, though, in patching up
busted critters. Because this one is needing a lot of patching. Say!
Notice how he don’t even let a whimper out of him? This rib-setting
must hurt like fury, too. Acts more like a bulldog than a collie. I’m
going to advertise him. And if the owner shows up, I’ll offer him a
hundred dollars for the dog. He’ll be worth it, and a heap more, to
me, herding and such. _So_, old feller! Now for the smashed foot.
Don’t seem to be any big bones broke there.”

The weeks that followed were more nearly pleasant to Buff than had
been any space of time since Trent’s disappearance. He was perforce at
rest, while his fractured ribs and then his broken foot slowly mended.
And all that time he was fed up and petted and made much of, in a way
that would have turned most invalids’ heads.

It was well, after his months of restless searchings, to come to a
halt here in this abode of comfort and kindliness; to be petted again
by a woman’s soft hand, to eat cooked food once more, to be praised
and to feel himself gloriously welcome.

Buff’s craving ambition, to find Trent and to run to earth his two
enemies, was less acute in these drowsy days of convalescence. His
sick soul seemed to be returning to normal along with his sick body.

By the time Buff could walk with any degree of comfort again, the
morning frost lay heavy on the fields. The dog went out for a brief
stroll with the farmer and his wife. To their delight, he did not try
to run away, but accompanied them home and lay down contentedly on the
doorstep.

After that, no further guard was kept over him. It was understood that
he would stay with the people who had succoured and healed him.

One cold night in late autumn the dog accompanied his host, as usual,
on the evening rounds of barns and outbuildings. As they were
returning towards the warm red glow of the lamplit kitchen windows,
Buff came to a dead stop.

A slight shudder ran through him. He lifted his delicate nose and
sniffed the frosty air. He smelt nothing. He sniffed merely in an
effort to corroborate in some way by scent the strange impulse which
was taking possession of him--an impulse he could not resist.

“Come along, Shep, old boy!” coaxed the farmer, arriving at the
doorstep and turning back towards the collie. “Supper’s ready. What’s
the matter?”

Slowly, very slowly, Buff approached the man. Timidly, almost
remorsefully, he licked the outstretched hand. Then, throwing back his
magnificent head, he made the frost-chilled stillnesses of the autumn
night re-echo with a hideously discordant and ear-torturing wolf-howl.

“Why, Shep,” exclaimed the farmer in amaze, “whatever ails you?
What’s----”

He broke off in the midst of his bewildered query and raised his voice
in a shout of summons to the dog. For, like a streak of tawny light,
Buff had whirled out of the dooryard and was fleeing up the road.

He heard the eager call of the man who had cured him and befriended
him and given him a happy home. But he heard--far more clearly--a
soundless call that urged him forward.

Guided only by mystic collie instinct and by that weird impulse which
had taken possession of him, he fled through the night at breakneck
speed, headed unswervingly for Boone Lake, full thirty miles away.

On the same night--after a cautious absence of several months--Con
Hegan and Billy Gates ventured to return to their former homes in the
Boone Lake suburbs.




CHAPTER FOUR: THE END OF THE TRAIL


Ruth Hammerton hurried into her father’s study on her return from the
post-office, whither she had fared for the evening mail.

Her dark face was aglow with a colour that had been foreign to it for
many a long week--a colour that softened and mellowed the new lines of
leanness and of sorrow in cheek and brow. Her eyes were alight with
nervous eagerness.

Mr. Hammerton looked up in surprise from a heap of papers on his desk,
as his daughter burst so unceremoniously in upon him. A month earlier
he had been appointed local justice of the peace. His new duties still
called for much night work, in the way of study and preparation for
the next day’s court duties. So it was with a slight frown that he
greeted this sudden interruption of his labours.

“I’ve just come from the post-office!” began Ruth eagerly. “As I was
coming out two men almost bumped into me. I looked back, as they
slouched into the store and sat down by the stove. They had a huge
bulldog at their heels. I heard one of the loafers there hail them by
name. They were Con Hegan and Billy Gates. A boy told me they had
come back to Boone Lake to-day. He said it was their first visit here
since they got out of prison. He----”

“Pshaw!” fumed Hammerton. “So those two crooks are back here, are
they? That means more lawlessness! Just as I was congratulating myself
that it was becoming a law-abiding and decent community at last! I
wish----”

“You don’t understand!” broke in the girl. “You don’t see what I mean.
You don’t get the significance of it. And yet I’ve been all over it
with you so often! I----”

“Over what?” demanded Hammerton, nettled by her air of excited
mystery. “Please explain what you’re driving at. I’m tremendously busy
to-night and----”

“Michael Trent was the means of Hegan and Gates going to prison,” she
hurried on. “They swore they would get him for it. We have proof of
that. The very night after they were set free Michael disappeared. And
now they are back here again, after four months! Don’t you see----”

“I see you are trying to lure me into that same endless old argument
again,” returned Hammerton with a glance of regret at his piled-up
work. “But really, I can’t see why these two jailbirds’ appearance in
town to-night should have flustered you so. There was no foul play
connected with Trent’s disappearance. I’ve explained that to you,
over and over. Calvin Greer called him up on the telephone that
evening. Trent told Calvin he was sick of Boone Lake and that he was
starting off on a long motor tour up country. He said if he liked it
up there he’d settle somewhere in the north counties and never come
back. Next day he and his automobile were gone. Where is the mystery?”

“Where?” she repeated miserably. “Why, everywhere! The whole thing is
a mystery. In the first place, I rode over to see Calvin Greer, at his
stock farm. He had never met Michael till that day, and he wasn’t at
all familiar with Michael’s voice. But he told me it sounded rougher
and hoarser over the phone than when he talked to him face to face.
And he----”

“That’s no proof. Many people’s voices sound altogether different over
the phone. Or Trent may have had a cold. There’s no mystery about it,
I tell you. Most assuredly there’s nothing to connect Hegan and Gates
with the affair. As to----”

“You knew Michael,” she went on. “You knew him well and you liked him.
Tell me, was he the sort of man to go away like that and not have the
courtesy to say good-bye to us? Was he? He stopped here--he and
Buff--you remember, on his way home from the market square that
evening. He sat and chatted with us for half an hour or so. He didn’t
say a word about going away. Instead, he arranged to go horseback
riding with me the next day. Yet less than half an hour later,
apparently, he tells Calvin Greer he’s leaving Boone Lake--perhaps
forever. Is that----”

“Men do queer things,” said Hammerton, turning back to his papers. “I
can’t agree with you that there’s any mystery about it, daughter.
Certainly no mystery that would justify the law in suspecting----”

“You know what care he took of his livestock,” pursued Ruth. “Is it
likely--is it possible--that he would have left his sheep and cattle
to starve, his cows unmilked and his horses with empty mangers? Would
he have gone away like that, of his own accord, and let all his
livestock starve to death? For they would have starved to death out
there on that solitary farm if you and I hadn’t gone to get them and
bring them here.”

“That’s the only part of the whole thing that I can’t understand,”
assented Hammerton. “He treated his livestock as other people treat
their pets. It wasn’t like him to leave them to starve. Out there they
might have gone hungry till they died before any neighbour would have
been likely to happen in and find them. Even if he hadn’t been so fond
of them, it doesn’t make sense for a man to leave such valuable
property to die of neglect. To say nothing of the ruin of his year’s
crops through his absence. Why, if you hadn’t wheedled me into having
his crops looked after, the year would have been a total loss to his
farm. As it is----”

“Then,” she declared triumphantly, “since you admit he wouldn’t have
done such a thing of his own accord----”

“I don’t admit it. I only say I can’t understand it. But it happened.
We have proof of that. He went away in his car. And he took Buff along
with him. If he had left Buff there I could have seen, perhaps, where
the mystery came in. For he and that collie were chums. But he took
Buff with him. And he took along everything of portable value in his
house, too. No, that doesn’t look like foul play. He did it
deliberately, whatever his motive may have been. Took along his dog
and his valuables and drove away in his own car. The car couldn’t have
been stolen, either. For he told Greer over the phone----”

“If it was Michael who told----”

“We don’t know his motive,” summed up Hammerton. “But we do know he
went of his own accord. There is ample proof of that. As for
connecting Gates and Hegan with----”

“He did not go of his own accord!” announced the girl, deathly white,
her eyes ablaze, as she towered over her wondering father. “And I
have every reason to know he didn’t. I don’t want to tell why I know
it. But I must, if I want you to get the truth out of those two
assassins. I know Michael Trent did not leave here of his own accord.
I know it because he loved me. A man doesn’t run away like that
from----”

“What?” shouted Hammerton in astonishment. “He--you say he----”

“I say he loved me,” reiterated the girl, her sweet voice held steady
by a great effort. “And no man will go away willingly from a woman he
loves as Michael loved me. Most of all, he won’t go away and fail to
send any kind of word.”

“You never told me!” accused her father indignantly. “You never----”

“Michael never told me,” she retorted.

“Then how----”

“He never told me in so many words,” she went on. “Yet I knew it. A
woman always knows. He loved me. And he was waiting until he could put
his farm on a better paying basis before he told me of it. Now,
perhaps, you’ll believe me when I say he’d never have gone away like
that unless he had been kidnapped or killed.”

Long and silently Hammerton stared at his daughter, dazed by the
revelation. Then he said, hesitantly:

“If I’d known--if you had told me--but----”

“But now that you do know,” she persisted, “you’ll get the truth from
Hegan and Gates? You’ll start the machinery of the law to working;
and----”

“Dear,” he said gently, “there’s nothing I can do. There is no shadow
of proof that either of those men was concerned in----”

“As you choose!” she exclaimed, turning to leave the room. “Since you
won’t interrogate them, I am going to. I’m going back to the
post-office to find them. If they aren’t there, I’m going to find
where they live and go----”

“Are you crazy?” stormed Hammerton, jumping up to bar her way. “You
surely can’t mean to do an insane thing like that! I won’t permit it!”

“Then interrogate them yourself, as a magistrate of this county!” she
bade him. “Because if you don’t do it, I shall. If it is insane, let
it be insane. In these past months I have had enough to drive a wiser
woman insane. I love Michael Trent. I _love_ him, I tell you! And if
he is on earth I shall find him, now that I have a clue.”

Hammerton stared wonderingly down upon his wontedly placid daughter.
Then he caught her into his arms and held her close to his heart for a
moment. Releasing her, he crossed to the telephone and called up Roy
Saunders, the Boone Lake chief of police.

“Saunders?” he queried. Then: “Judge Hammerton speaking. Hegan and
Gates are in town again. I want a talk with them. You’ll find them at
the post-office. Will you bring them up here to my study? As soon as
you can, please? No, there’s no warrant out for them. But I don’t
think they’ll be fools enough to refuse to come here. Thanks.”

He set down the telephone and passed his arm again round the girl.
Ruth, her self-control giving way, wept convulsively on his breast.

“There! There!” Hammerton murmured. “Try to get hold of yourself,
darling! They’ll be here in a few minutes. And our one chance is to
keep cool. I--I haven’t much faith in our success with them. It’s only
fair to tell you that, Ruth. And I’ve no legal right to question them
at all. I’m doing it to save you from doing it. Try to be brave, if
nothing comes of our talk with them.”

Airily, not to say jauntily, Con Hegan and Billy Gates strolled up the
village street and into the highroad leading to the Hammerton place.
To one side of the unconcerned pair strode Saunders, the truculent but
puzzled chief of police.

The men had grinned mirthfully at Saunders’ command that they
accompany him to the magistrate’s home. They had complied without a
single demur. And they lightened the tedium of the walk by guying the
pompous police chief in a way that reduced him to sullen homicidal
yearnings.

Marshalled by Saunders, they lounged through the doorway in the wake
of a servant and were ushered into Hammerton’s study at the extreme
rear of the house.

They found Hammerton seated at his desk, looking very magisterial
indeed. At a far end of the room, her face in the shadows, sat Ruth.

“Here they are, Your Honour!” proclaimed the chief of police, ranging
his two grinning charges side by side in front of the desk.

“Yep,” cheerily assented Hegan. “Here we are, Judge. We was planning
to bolt. But this vigilant chief kind of overawed us. We was afraid he
might cry if we stood him on his head and lit out.”

“Or,” supplemented Gates, “he’d maybe have hit one of us a crool slap
on the wrist as we run past him. Or he might go to where we live and
bust one of our umbrellas, to punish us. So we stuck.”

“The judge looks pretty near as terrifyin’ as the chief,” confided
Hegan to his companion in a loud whisper and shaking with simulated
awe. “Most likely he keeps a ’lectric chair in his kitchen. We’d best
be p’lite to him.”

Hammerton checked an angry forward movement on the part of Saunders
and addressed the grinning prisoners.

“I have no legal right to enforce replies to the questions I am going
to ask you,” he said quietly. “But it is only fair to tell you what
rights I do possess. It is within my jurisdiction to commit you both,
here and now, for vagrancy, since you have no visible means of support
in this village. And before the thirty-day vagrancy term can expire
there will be some new charge. So, to avoid these annoyances, I advise
you to wipe those grins off your faces and to drop the attempt to
insult anyone here and to answer the questions I shall put to you.
Otherwise, you will leave here with handcuffs on and will proceed to
the lock-up; thence to come before me in the morning on a vagrancy
charge.”

The men looked at each other uncertainly. Gates seemed to be measuring
the distance to the study door. Unobtrusively, Hammerton took a pistol
from the drawer of his desk and laid it in his lap. Instantly the two
men stiffened and lost their jauntily insolent manner.

“There’s no call to threaten us, Judge,” said Hegan, nervously. “We’re
glad to answer any questions you care to spring on us. As for
vagrancy--well, we’re no vags. We just got home to-day and, of course,
we haven’t had time to look round us for any steady work yet.
But----”

“You were let out of Logan Prison on the twenty-sixth of last July,”
interposed Hammerton. “Where did you go from there? I mean as soon as
you were let out.”

“We went straight to Paterson,” returned Hegan. “We got out of Logan
at ten, on the morning of the twenty-sixth. We took the noon train to
Paterson. We got work there and we stayed on the job till yesterday,
when the works shut down for the winter. Then we come back here.”

“You hadn’t been here since you were sent to prison?”

“Not till we got here this morning from Paterson. No, Judge.”

“H’m! You were not here on the twenty-seventh of July? You are certain
of that?”

“Certain sure, Judge!” declared Gates. “We wouldn’t be likely to
forget if we had. This is our home town. We was kind of ashamed to
come back, right off, after they turned us loose from the hoosgow. So
we----”

“You have not been in or near Boone Lake since you were released from
prison--until to-day?” insisted Hammerton.

“No, Your Honour, we ain’t. And we c’n prove it. We went straight to
Paterson; and there we----”

“Then,” spoke up Ruth, coming forward, “how did two reputable
witnesses happen to see you at Mr. Michael Trent’s farm late on the
afternoon of July twenty-seventh?”

Hegan gulped. Gates, however, answered suavely:

“Flash your witnesses on us, ma’am. If they seen us here or in this
county that day they sure got good eyes. They----”

“Yep!” supplemented Hegan. “Who’s your witnesses? Who are they?”

Hammerton and Saunders were looking at the troubled girl in surprise.
With true feminine quibble for truth, she had put the statement in the
form of a query in speaking of the witnesses whose identity she had
just invented. The failure of her ruse distressed her keenly, even
while the memory of Hegan’s start and his scared gulp made her doubly
certain she was on the right track.

“Guess you never took a course of poker playing, at school, ma’am,”
chuckled Gates, reading her face with all the trained skill of a true
panhandler.

“Shut up, you!” grunted Saunders in wrath.

He glowered upon the suave Gates, who promptly turned his respectful
gaze to the magistrate’s face. Hammerton, frowning perplexedly,
opened his lips for further query, even while he realised the utter
uselessness of trying to catch such skilled offenders by any questions
he might have the wit to frame.

Before he could speak a maid rushed wildly into the room. With a
manifest effort, she came to a halt inside the doorway and stood as
though trying to announce some guest. But the guest himself entered
the room, close at her heels.

       *       *       *       *       *

Steadily, through the gathering darkness, Buff had run, his first mad
pace settling down into the choppy little mile-eating stride of the
trotting wolf pack. And so he kept on, ever headed for Boone Lake,
moving swervelessly and with deceptive quickness.

Stars came out. A fat moon began to butt its way up over the eastern
horizon mists. Here and there, as the pad-pad-pad of the collie’s
tireless feet pattered along the frozen road, a farm dog would bark
challenge or dart out in pursuit. But no challenge bark checked Buff’s
obsessed flight. Nor did any of the pursuing curs catch up with him.

Now and then, along the state road, motor cars would meet or pass him.
The dog moved aside barely far enough to miss the whirring wheels, but
did not falter in his run.

Once, as he padded through a village, some fool, catching sight of
him, noted his tense pose and the arrow-like straightness of his
course and raised the shout of “Mad dog!”

This asinine cry lurks ever in the back of the human throat, ready and
eager to spring into life at the slightest provocation. And woe to the
harmlessly running or perhaps sick dog at whom it is howled! At once
the hue-and-cry is ready to start in murderous pursuit. No question is
asked. Nobody stops to realise that there are probably not two
actually rabid dogs in any one state in the Union in the course of any
two years, and that a genuinely hydrophobic dog is no more in
condition to chase and attack people than is a typhoid patient.

But in Buff’s case the shout was raised too late. The tawny-and-white
shape sped on through the dim moonlight and out of sight before the
hue-and-cry was fairly up. And he did not so much as glance back to
note the progress of the useless pursuit.

As he turned off the state road, taking the macadam byway which led
towards Trent’s farm, the collie dropped to a wavering halt, his
sensitive nostrils pulsing. A scent had come to him, though it was
still too elusive to register clearly in the eager brain.

Twenty doubtful steps Buff took along the byway, until he came to a
point where a field path from a cross-road a mile away intersected it.
At the intersection the scent struck him with a force that dizzied
him. Nostrils to earth, he found that a man had left this path for the
byroad not ten minutes earlier.

The knowledge did amazing things to the dog. For an instant he
shivered as though with a physical convulsion. His breath came in long
gasps. A whine in his throat shook itself forth in an eerie note that
belonged to no normal beast.

Then, like a whirlwind, he was off, down the byway; nose to earth,
body flat and flying. Half a mile farther on, the rush of his madly
scampering feet came to the ears of a man who was plodding wearily
toward the farm--a man thin and shabby, who walked as though
completing an exhausting journey. In the middle of the road the man
paused and glanced back. Adown the moonlit byway was dashing a
tawny-and-white creature, flat to earth in its speed.

Fifty yards from the man Buff lifted his head as he galloped. The
scent--any dog’s strongest quality--told him he might now rely on
sight, which is the weakest of a dog’s senses. At what he saw, the
collie gave tongue.

Not in the hideous wolf howl or in whimper did Buff speak now, but in
a cry that was human and rending--a cry that tore at the listener’s
heartstrings by reason of its awful intensity.

Delirious--screaming, writhing, panting--Buff flung himself on the man
he had tracked. He was at the end of the trail! And what he found
there drove him quite insane.

Up into Michael Trent’s dusty arms the dog sprang--a vibrant mass of
mad ecstasy. Moaning, crying, sobbing like a human child, Buff sought
to lick his master’s haggard face and to pat him in a hundred places
at once with the whirling paws.

Almost thrown off his balance by the impact, Trent spoke to the collie
in wondering delight. And the sound of the tired voice sent Buff into
a new frenzy of rapture. Dropping to earth, he whizzed round and round
Trent in a bewildering gyroscopic flight, stomach to ground, tongue
and throat clamorous with hoarse joy.

Presently, flinging himself at his master’s feet, the dog lay there,
moaning and sobbing, his swift tongue caressing the man’s dusty shoes,
his furry body quivering from nose to tail in hysterical bliss. There
he lay while Trent leaned over and laid both calloused hands on his
head, stroking him and talking to him in the pleasant, slow tones the
collie loved.

“Buff!” muttered the man, swallowing hard. “_Buff!_ Why, I didn’t
think anyone on earth cared that much about anything! Come up here,
old friend! You’re shaking as if you had ague. How did you find me?
Have you been waiting at home for me ever since? Or have you been
living with--with her?”

Buff, his paroxysm spent, crouched at Trent’s feet, his silken head
pressed against his master’s knee, his upraised eyes scanning the
man’s face in adoration. From time to time he shivered and moaned.

He had come to the end of the trail--the gloriously happy end of the
horrible long trail. And he understood now why his queer sixth sense
had summoned him hither, from the far-off farm where for weeks he had
lived so placidly. The master-call had come to him. He had obeyed it.
For it had been stronger than he.

And it had led him to his god. That was all Buff knew or cared to
know.

And now, still talking to his dog, still petting him, Michael Trent
took up again his homeward trudge. But there was life in his step.
Fatigue seemed to have fallen away from him. The ludicrous worship of
a dog had somehow made life over and had changed depression to hope.

Following his old custom--immemorial among lonely men who own
dogs--Trent talked to Buff as they went along, as though to another
human--knowing the collie could not get the sense of one word in ten,
yet glad to have this vent for his own yearning for expression.

“The start of it all is pretty hazy to me, Buff,” he rambled on, in
the soft monotone that was music to the dog. “I saw Hegan and Gates in
the doorway. One minute I was fighting with them. The next minute I
was in the smelly fo’cas’le of a tramp steamship. I was sick. And I
was aching all over. I had been shanghaied. The next three months were
unadulterated hell. We were bound for Honolulu by way of the Horn,
Buff. And the crew was only one degree better than the captain and the
mate. Let’s let it go at that.

“A chap named Carney and I got to be pals. We broke ship together
at San Francisco on the way back. And we made most of the
transcontinental trip on brake beams. Brake beams aren’t flowery beds
of ease, Buff. Keep off them. Carney had got a bit of the story about
me, from a man who was the mate’s pal between voyages. It seems a
fellow who was in prison down at Logan with Gates and Hegan helped
them engineer my shanghaiing. He told them where to take me. And they
loaded me on a launch of his, down the river to the harbour and sold
me to the captain. He was just weighing anchor. And he was
short-handed.

“Hegan and Gates were planning to keep me out of the way and to let
my stock starve and my crops go to wrack--as most likely they have,
for nobody was likely to get to our out-of-the-way farm in time to
prevent it. Then they were going to lay low for a few months, and
after that they were coming back to Boone Lake and set fire to the
house and barns. Most likely they’ve done it before now. Nice
home-coming, hey, Buff? We’re dead broke, most likely, you and I. But
we’ve got each other, anyhow. And that’s more than I dared hope for.”

He was turning in at the gateway of his farm as he finished the
rambling tale. Buff thrust his nose into his master’s hand and whined
softly. Then, in a trice the collie had stiffened to attention and
darted forward through the shadows towards a patch of white that
emerged from the darkness of the dooryard.

When Gates and Hegan came home to Boone Lake that day they brought
with them a new possession in the shape of a mongrel bulldog of huge
proportions and with a local fame for being one of the “dirtiest”
fighters that ever set upon a weaker foe. Planning to carry out their
amiable intent of firing Trent’s house and barns late in the night,
they had stationed this dog in their victim’s dooryard that evening,
to scare off any possible tramp or other intruder who might be
intending to make the deserted house a resting place. They had no
desire for such witnesses; the penalty for arson being somewhat
drastic in their home state.

It was this guardian dog that came tearing forward now to repel the
two intruders, as Trent and Buff turned into the dooryard. Buff,
guessing his ferocious intent and resenting another and hostile dog’s
presence in his own beloved bailiwick, flew eagerly to meet him. An
instant later the two beasts came together with a clash; and a right
energetic dog fight was raging at Trent’s feet.

Buff, for all his fury, fought with brain as well as brawn, against
his heavier assailant.

There never yet was a bulldog that could, in the open, seize a collie
that was aware of his assault and that wished to elude it.

Buff nimbly sprang aside as the bulldog rushed and let the other
hurtle past him. But the bulldog did not go scatheless. As he lumbered
past, a slash from Buff’s curved eyetooth ploughed a long and deep red
furrow along his shoulder and back. And, as he turned, Buff’s slash
laid open a similar cut at one side of the enemy’s stomach. The collie
danced out of reach of the clashing jaws that sought to grab him
before he could jump back.

When the jaws clamped together the collie’s throat was not there. Even
as his opponent struck a second time Buff flung himself on the ground
and dived for the heavy forelegs in front of him.

Buff’s teeth closed on the bulldog’s right foreleg. And, but for his
own strong strain of collie blood, the fight must have ended then and
there. For a bulldog would have gained this foreleg grip and would
have hung onto it, heedless of the fact that his own spine and the
back of his neck were within easy reach of the foe.

Wherefore, merely giving the forefoot an agonising bite as he went, he
continued his diving rush. Under and between the bowed forelegs of the
bulldog he slipped, eel-like, in swift elusiveness, slashing the
other’s underbody again as he went, and emerged safe on the far side
of the enemy.

Back and forth over the frost-slippery, moon-lit grass raged the
fight, the frantic clawing of feet and Buff’s own staccato snarls and
the thud of clashing bodies alone breaking the night silences. Twice
the bulldog well-nigh secured his coveted throat hold--a hold that
must speedily have left Buff gasping out his life through a severed
jugular.

A third time the bulldog charged for the throat. Buff reared, twisting
sidewise to avoid the charge and at the same time to counter on the
panting and lumbering body. But he did not take account of the
slipperiness of the frosty, dead grass.

The collie’s hind legs slid from under him. Down he went, asprawl on
his back, under this sudden loss of his precarious balance. As quick
as a cat he had spun to his feet again. But the instant of wasted time
had sufficed for the enemy.

The bulldog, lunging murderously for the exposed throat, missed his
mark by reason of Buff’s swirling motion of scrambling to his feet
again. Yet this time the ravening jaws did not close on air or on fur.
Instead they buried themselves in Buff’s upper right foreleg, almost
at the junction of leg and body.

Helpless to break free, Buff ceased to thrash about. He felt the
locked jaws begin to grind, deep and deeper towards the bone. He felt
his enemy’s braced pressure brought to bear upon the imperilled
foreleg.

Then his wolf brain told him what to do. He struck straight for the
nose and upper jaw of the bulldog. He did not slash, as does a collie.
He bent down and secured his grip as would a bulldog.

The bulldog, his own hold secure in the collie’s upper foreleg, was
aware of a terribly painful grip on his tender nose, a grip that waxed
sterner and more tense all the time, a grip also that was shutting off
his breathing power.

In the anguish of choking, the bulldog let go Buff’s foreleg and
shook himself furiously to get free of that encumbering hold. As he
shook he gave tone, emitting a most horrendous yell of pain and rage.

Then for the first time Trent was able in the elusive moonlight and
shadow bars to see how the fight was going or to intervene without
peril of injuring his own dog. But as he bent down to drag the
squirming bulldog away he saw he was too late. Buff’s grinding jaws
had found the jugular. The fight was over. The victor stood up,
panting and weary, and looked down at the inert mass that had so
lately been a mighty fighting machine.

Half an hour later, shaved and clean, Michael Trent set forth for Ruth
Hammerton’s home. Buff, wholly rested from his battle, trotted happily
at his master’s heels. The maid at Hammertons’ gaped wordlessly at
sight of the visitor.

Buff, as politeness bade him, wagged his tail and took a step towards
her. The maid, by nature, was built for endurance rather than speed.
Yet, recovering from her shock, she jumped at least a foot from the
veranda floor; and she made a sound better fitted to a turkey whose
tail feathers have been grabbed than to a decorous household servant.

After which she bolted into the house and down the hall towards the
study. Trent hesitated as to whether or not he ought to follow. But
Buff took matters into his own hands. At the opening of the front door
he caught the scent of Hammerton’s two convict visitors. And down the
long hall he went like a thunderbolt.

Trent, in consternation, dashed after him. But he did not catch up
with the collie until Buff halted, perforce, at the doorway which the
maid’s ample body was just then blocking. As he strove to wriggle past
into the room Trent came alongside and seized the inexplicably excited
dog firmly by the collar. This precaution saved the life of Con Hegan,
who chanced to be standing nearest to the door.

It was Billy Gates who broke the brief spell. Even as Ruth started
forward, with a choking little cry, towards Trent, the convict’s nerve
and brain suddenly collapsed. Waving a tremulous arm at the raging
Buff, Gates babbled in horror:

“Take him away! For the Lord’s sake, take him away! That’s no dog!
It’s a devil! A--a ghost! I--I shot him and I buried him in a--a
forty-foot well with a rope and a stone on his neck! Take him away!
He’s come back for me!”

At a nod from Hammerton the chief of police shoved Hegan into an
adjoining room. Then, wheeling on the gibbering and helpless Gates,
Trent said sternly:

“Now, talk! The whole truth, mind you, unless you want me to let
this--this ghost loose at you! _Talk!_”

And Gates talked. Drunk with superstitious horror, he talked and
continued to talk. Even the sight of Hammerton taking swift notes did
not deter him.

As the chief of police strutted back to the lock-up, propelling his
handcuffed prisoners before him, he tried hard not to look at a shaded
corner of the moonlit veranda--a corner wherein a maid and a man were
seated very close together, with a big collie curled up in drowsy
contentment at their feet.




“SOMETHING”


A dog is only a dog. But a collie is--a collie. Says the Scotch
proverb:

“_A collie has the brain of a man, and the ways of a woman!_”

This is the story of Dick Snowden’s collie, Jock--and of--Something.
You can believe the tale or not, as you choose. But if you know
collies, you will think twice before you pooh-pooh it as rankly
impossible. Moreover, in its chief--and strangest--happenings, it
chances to be true.

It began when Dick Snowden’s pretty girl-wife was lying in the centre
of a huge white bed, and when she was watching the world glide past
her and not much caring how soon it might glide altogether away from
her.

Cuddled close to her in the enormous bed was a white-swathed bundle of
tiny humanity that smelled of talcum powder and of sachet and was a
week old.

The coming of Baby Marise into the ken of mankind had well-nigh cost
the life of Klyda Snowden, her girl-mother. There were no
complications; there was nothing the learned doctors could put a name
to. But Klyda had suffered much and had been through much. She was
very, very tired. So tired was she that it did not seem worth while to
pick up the bulky burden of life again.

It was much easier to lie still, with half-shut eyes, and feel herself
drifting lazily out of life. Dully, she knew the baby was hers, that
it was the precious little daughter for whose advent she and Dick had
for months been planning so happily. She knew, too, that the lean and
bronzed man who spent so many miserable hours at her bedside was her
worshipped husband, Dick.

Yes, she was quite sane. But she was so tired that none of the
real-life things, in which usually she revelled, were worth living
for. Mentally, she knew that the future was bright for her and for
Dick and for their baby. Physically, she was not interested in
anything but drowsing.

It was on the afternoon of the eighth day of Baby Marise’s life that
Dick came into the room carrying a covered wicker basket. Klyda had no
interest in him or in what he was carrying--even when he set down the
basket on the edge of the bed and lifted its cover. Sleepily she
looked at him, ready to drop into another doze.

Into the opened basket went Dick Snowden’s hand, to take out the
contents. But the contents saved him the effort.

Out from the depths of the basket sprang a fluffy gold-and-white ball
of dynamic energy. It wavered dizzily on the wicker edge, then
catapulted clumsily to the counterpane, where it caught sight of
Klyda’s colourless little face set in a halo of tumbled sunlit hair.

With the awkward canter of a badly made patent toy, the ball of fluff
danced sidewise up the counterpane until it reached the white little
face, which it proceeded to lick ecstatically with a very small and
very pink tongue.

By this time Klyda’s weary brain had registered the fact that the new
arrival was a two-months-old collie pup--also that it was doubtless
the same collie pup which Dick had promised, a month ago, to buy for
her.

The gift was one on which Klyda had set her heart; from the day she
and her husband had chanced to pass by some neighbouring collie
kennels and had seen a litter of month-old puppies playing with their
dam in one of the wire runs. Instantly, she had taken a violent fancy
to this particular pup. It was then too young to leave its mother, but
Dick had secured the owner’s promise to sell it to him, as soon as the
youngster should be weaned.

The promise had delighted Klyda. She had named the puppy Jock and had
decreed that he should be Baby’s guardian and chum.

Yet, since then, so many things had happened! And now the arrival of
the once-coveted pup meant nothing to Klyda at all--except that she
did not like to have her wan face licked, nor to be patted at by a set
of clumsy and shapeless white forepaws.

She frowned slightly and hoped Dick would take the obstreperous puppy
away. But at sight of her frown the puppy evidently mistook the slight
facial contortion for an invitation to play, for he braced himself on
all four shapeless legs and made threatening little rushes at the
frowning face, accenting his attacks with ferocious baby barks.

In spite of herself Klyda felt a vague amusement at the pup’s silly
antics. She reached out a weak white hand to pet him. At the touch,
Jock forgot he was a lion or whatever other furious wild beast he was
pretending to be. He remembered only that he was very young and very
far from home and mother, and that the caress of the tired hand was
sweet. With a cluck of contentment, he cuddled close to Klyda’s face
and curled up for a nap.

Dick, glad to have aroused his apathetic wife’s interest to even so
mild an extent, stooped to pick up the puppy and carry him away. But
Jock was in no hurry to go. So piteously did he look to Klyda for
rescue that she bade her husband leave him there for the time.
Whereat, by way of showing his thanks, Jock began again to play with
her hand as it lay idle on the quilt.

Up to this time everybody had moved on tiptoe about the sick-room, and
had talked in undertones. But Jock was no respecter of silence. He
gambolled and barked to his heart’s content. Partly amused and partly
annoyed by his bumptiousness, Klyda found herself for the first time
unable to sink at will into that dreamy apathy of hers. It is hard to
dream, when a tiny furry whirlwind is charging at one or is professing
to believe that one’s white fingers are a mortal foe to be nibbled and
threatened.

Thus it was, against her own will, that Klyda Snowden was shaken from
her semi-coma. After that, youth and nature combined to keep her from
sinking back into it. Probably she would have gotten well, anyhow. And
certainly a noisy collie pup is not to be prescribed as a temporary
roommate for a sick girl. But the fact remained that Klyda “turned the
corner,” that very day, and forthwith grew better.

She had not discovered a new zest in life. Her husband and her
new-born child furnished that. But she had been deprived of the luxury
of drifting away. Action and annoyance and clownish gambols had
chanced to supply the needed impetus to bring her back to normality.

Yet Dick and she always attributed her rally to the arrival of Jock.
And they loved him accordingly. Instead of living in the green-painted
kennel in the garden and seeing his owners for only a casual hour or
so each day, he was brought up in the house and with hourly human
companionship.

That sort of thing has a queerly humanising influence on a dog,
especially if the dog be a thoroughbred collie.

From earliest puppyhood Jock learned to know the human voice in all
its phases, and to read from experience its many shades of meaning. He
learned, too, from constant hearing, the meanings of many simple words
and phrases. He learned still more of human nature--all of which was
wholly natural and has occurred to hundreds of house-bred collies.

From the first, Jock adopted Baby Marise as his particular deity. He
would lie for hours at the foot of her crib, or would walk in sedate
slowness at the side of her perambulator, in preference to a woodland
race or even a romp with Dick or Klyda.

Yet between him and Dick there was a strange bond of sympathy. Dearly
as the dog loved Klyda and Marise, he was closer to Dick than to
either of them. He would lie with his eyes on the man’s face, watching
its every change; and seemed to be studying him to the very soul.
Even as a puppy, Jock used to do this.

A scowl on Dick’s brow would bring him forward with a rush, to offer
canine sympathy or to rub his nose consolingly against his master’s
hand. He would go into ecstasies of joyous excitement when Dick
laughed or smiled. And, as the dog grew older, he seemed able to see
past mere facial expression and to read Dick’s varying moods, even
when those moods gave no visible sign of expression.

All of this seemed nothing short of magic to the Snowdens, though it
is a common enough phenomenon to anyone who has been much with
collies.

It was when Baby Marise was a harum-scarum girl of four, and when Jock
was a stately giant in his early maturity, that something happened
which the Snowdens never tired of talking about.

Dick started at sunrise for a day’s trout-fishing along a brook which
ran through a wild tract of meadow and forest, some three miles above
the Snowden place. Jock, as his master set forth, galloped
enthusiastically ahead, eager for the prospective walk. But Dick
whistled him back. The man did not desire to have wary trout scared
away by the occasional plunges of a seventy-pound collie into the
brook.

“No,” he said, as if talking to a fellow-human. “Not to-day, old man!
Stay here and look after the place.”

Crestfallen yet philosophical, Jock trotted back to the veranda and
lay down, his deep brown eyes following pathetically the receding
figure of his master, hoping against hope that Dick might relent and
summon him to follow. Then Marise came down to breakfast with Klyda,
and Jock proceeded to devote himself to their society.

It was about four o’clock that afternoon when Klyda was awakened from
a nap on the porch by the sudden rising of the collie from his
resting-place on the mat near her. Jock had been asleep; yet something
had startled him in an instant from his repose and had changed a
sedately slumbering collie into a creature of puppylike excitability.
Every hair on the dog’s shaggy ruff was abristle. His eyes were
glinting as with pain. He burst into a salvo of frantic barking and
dashed across to where Klyda lay.

Catching the hem of the astonished woman’s skirt in his teeth, he
tugged at her dress, backing away with a suddenness that all but threw
her to the floor.

“Jock!” expostulated Klyda, recovering her balance and trying to
extricate the skirt from his grip. “Jock, have you gone crazy?”

Jock’s answer was to release his hold on the skirt-hem, and to gallop
off the porch and out onto the drive which led to the highway. There
he halted, barked in imperious summons and darted back to Klyda.
Catching her skirt again between his jaws, he sought to draw her out
onto the driveway with him.

Laughing at her pet’s odd behaviour, Klyda went down the steps to the
drive. Instantly Jock let go of her skirt and ran fifty feet towards
the main road. There, halting again, he turned and barked. As the
woman still did not follow, he ran back, seized her skirt in his teeth
again and tried to draw her onward.

This time Klyda did not refuse to follow. A queer notion had possessed
her--a notion that Jock was not doing these unaccountable things for a
mere lark or to lure her into a romp. It was not at all like the
dignified collie to behave this way. Calling to her brother--who was
reading, indoors--to join her, she set forth in the wake of the dog.

The moment the two humans started toward him, Jock ceased to bark in
that frantic and panic-urged fashion. He wheeled and galloped off,
straight across country. Every few hundred yards he would pause to
make sure the others were still following, and to let them come
nearer. Then he would be off again.

A wearisome walk he led the puzzled Klyda and her grumbling brother.
In a precise line he travelled, turning aside for no hillock or rock
or tangle of undergrowth.

“For goodness’ sake!” panted the brother, once, as he looked ruefully
down at his buckskin shoes which had just plodded through a corner of
swamp-land. “For goodness’ sake, Klyda, let’s stop this fool ramble!
The idiot of a dog will probably halt in front of some oak where he’s
treed a cat, and he’ll want us to dislodge his quarry for him. On a
red-hot day like this, what’s the earthly sense of following a----”

“He hasn’t treed a cat,” was Klyda’s reply. “He hasn’t treed anything.
He’s been with me, all day. I don’t know why he is acting like this.
But I know Jock, and I know he’s got some good reason for being so
eager for me to follow him. If you’re tired----”

“Oh, I’ll trail along, if you’re going to!” grunted her brother.
“Only, if he leads us over into the next county and then turns around
and leads us back, just for fun--well, I warn you I’ll guy you for the
rest of your days for being so silly as to--Hello!” he broke off.
“Here’s where we’ll have to wade!”

They had come out of the woods at the verge of a wide brook. Klyda
gave a little start as she saw it, and lost her colour.

“Why, this is Snake Brook!” she cried. “Dick and I have been here a
dozen times. But we’ve always come by way of the road. I didn’t know
it was in this direction. I----”

“Well?” queried her brother. “Even at that, what’s the excitement?
There’s nothing so very dramatic, is there, in coming upon Snake
Brook? It’s----”

“It’s where Dick came to fish to-day,” said Klyda, her pallor
increasing. “Jock has led us here, and----”

“And that’s the thrilling end of our quest?” interrupted her brother
with a growl of disgust. “Jock got lonely for his master, and he’s
dragged us through marsh and brambles, all this way, just for a sweet
family reunion! Lord!”

“No,” contradicted Klyda, her voice not quite steady, “no! See, he
hasn’t crossed the brook. He’s running along it, on this side. And now
he’s stopped again for us to follow him. Come!”

She set off at a run along the pebbly and winding margin of the brook.
Jock, as she started, wheeled again and vanished into a copse of
shrubbery which ran down from a steep bank to the edge of the water.

Ten seconds later the two heard the collie’s voice upraised once more,
this time in a quavering wolf-howl of anguish. And no longer did the
undergrowth crackle at his charging progress. He had come to a halt
somewhere.

“The cur’s stumbled into a hornets’ nest,” guyed the brother, laughing
loudly to subdue a prickly feeling that ran along his spine at sound
of that eerie cry.

But Klyda did not answer. She was plunging headlong through the
bushes, panting and gasping with her own violent efforts to reach the
spot where Jock awaited her.

Out in a little clearing, beside the brook, and at the base of a
ten-foot cliff-bank, she came upon the dog. He was standing guard over
a body that sprawled inertly, half in the water at the cliff-foot, a
splintered fishing rod at its side.

There lay Dick Snowden, his leg broken in two places by his tumble
from the bank. In falling, his head had struck against a water-edge
boulder. The impact had caused concussion of the brain. Nor did the
victim recover consciousness until an hour after they had gotten him
home.

People who did not understand collies used to smile politely and lift
their brows when the Snowdens told how Jock had brought aid to the
stricken master, of whose plight the dog could not possibly have known
through any explainable channels.

Some of these people agreed with Klyda’s brother, who always insisted
there was nothing mysterious or occult about the matter. They
explained that Jock had waxed lonely for his absent master and had
tried to coax Klyda into going with him to meet the returning
fisherman,--and that the accident to Dick had been a mere coincidence,
quite outside the dog’s calculations.

They did not explain how Jock knew the precise direction in which Dick
had gone that day, nor why, during Snowden’s previous and succeeding
absences from home, the collie made no such effort to follow him.

Klyda and Dick did not bother to argue with these sceptics. They knew
Jock; other people did not.

“It wasn’t coincidence,” was all Klyda would say when outsiders sought
to convince her. “It was--_Something_.”

And so the years went on at the Snowden home, pleasantly and
uneventfully. Baby Marise was a leggy and big-eyed girl of nine, and
Jock was in the full hale prime of latter middle age. Dick and Klyda
were sweethearts, as ever. They and their child and their huge
gold-and-white dog formed a close corporation that made home life very
beautiful for all four of them.

Then, over the smugly complacent land, rang a bugle-call. Half the
world was sick unto death with the Hun pestilence, and America alone
could stay the hideous disease’s assault on humanity. America alone
could cure a dying world. To achieve this Heaven-sent miracle, the
lives of thousands of brave men were needed. And at the terrible blast
of the bugle-call these men responded in millions.

Dick Snowden was one of them.

There were tears at the Snowden home when Dick first went thence to
the officers’ training-camp. There was dire loneliness after he had
gone.

But there were no tears when, at the end of his last furlough, Captain
Richard Snowden said good-bye to his family and embarked for France.

There were no tears, then. There was a hero-smile on Klyda’s drawn
lips. Baby Marise tried to smile, too. And at least she did not
cry--which was very brave indeed. Jock looked long and gravely up into
Snowden’s forcedly gay face; and laid his splendid head against his
master’s khaki knee as Dick said to him:

“Good-bye, old chap! Take care of them till I come back. You’re the
man of the house, remember, while I’m gone.”

No, there were no tears when Captain Dick Snowden sailed gallantly
away to fight the grey-clad pests which were engulfing the world. But
there was a deadly and bitter loneliness that swooped down on the
once-merry little household and gripped it by the throat--a
loneliness that deepened and grew more cruelly hard to bear as the
dreary weeks sagged on.

Jock, with his queer collie sixth sense, felt acutely the changed
atmosphere of the place. He sought, in a thousand unobtrusive ways, to
console and cheer his mistress and Marise. And he seemed to have
understood Dick’s parting charge to him to assume the responsibilities
of “the man of the house.” Always Jock had been a fiery guardian of
the home in the matter of warding off intruders. Nowadays his jealous
guardianship became an obsession.

Voluntarily abandoning his lifelong nightly resting-place on the rug
outside the door of Klyda’s room, he took to sleeping on the veranda.
Nor was his sleep heavy. A dozen times a night the wakeful Klyda could
hear the big dog get to his feet and start off on a thorough patrol of
the grounds.

This sentry-go accomplished, he would circle the porch and return to
his doormat bed for another fitful snooze. But the very slightest
sound was enough to awaken him and to bring him at once to fierce
alertness. The step of a belated wayfarer on the highroad beyond,--the
faintest stir of one of the sleepers within the house,--any of a
hundred negligible noises of the night,--sufficed to rouse him to his
duty.

In the daytime, Jock was seldom more than arm’s-length from Klyda or
Marise. With cold suspicion his melancholy dark eyes would follow the
motions of each casual visitor or tradesman. Yes, Jock was taking his
job seriously.

On the rare occasions when a letter from France reached the place, he
knew of its arrival before the mail was sorted. It would thrill him
and set him to barking wildly and to scampering about the house like a
joy-crazed puppy. He seemed to know the occasion was one of rapture
for them all.

“The minute the letters are handed in at the door,” Klyda boasted to
her brother, “even before any of us have time to look them over, Jock
always knows whether or not there’s a letter from Dick.”

“Why shouldn’t he?” demanded the sceptic. “A collie has a wolf’s power
of scent. He can smell the touch of Dick’s hand on the envelope. It’s
perfectly normal.”

“No,” denied Klyda, musingly, “it isn’t normal. It’s--_Something!_”

Then, late of a September night, the household was jolted from slumber
by a clangour of barking from the porch.

To one who understands collies, there is as much difference in a dog’s
various modes of barking as in the inflections of a human voice. For
example, there is the gay bark of greeting, there is the sharply
imperative bark of challenge, there is the noisily swaggering bark of
sheer excitement, and there is the acute and agonised bark that tells
of stark emotion.

Jock’s bark to-night had the timbre of that with which, long ago, he
had summoned Klyda to the aid of her injured husband at Snake Brook.
And the sound went through the lonely wife’s soul like a knife-thrust.

She sprang out of bed and, in dressing-gown and slippers, ran out to
the porch. As on that earlier day, Jock was awaiting her in fevered
excitement. Catching the hem of her wrapper, he tugged. Then, dropping
the wrapper, he galloped up the driveway and wheeled about to face her
with a bark of summons.

To-night Klyda needed no second invitation to follow him. Bewildered,
trembling, yet trusting to the collie’s intuition, she stumbled along
in the direction Jock led. And, leaving the driveway, he was
travelling due northeast.

Well did Klyda know she was moving northeastward. For, by dint of
compass and maps, she had long since figured out for herself the
approximate direction of France in relation to her home. And always
she faced in that direction when she knelt to pray for Dick.

For perhaps half a mile the dog continued his progress, at first in
mad eagerness, but presently in growing indecision and irresolution.

At last he stopped, sniffed the air through vertically lifted
nostrils, then trotted back to Klyda. Head a-droop, tail dragging,
every line of his grand body expressing the utmost miserable
dejection, he crept up to Klyda and crouched before her, his head on
her foot. He shuddered, as if in pain; and then whimpered softly,
lifting his head for a moment and peering to the northeast.

He had failed. He had awakened with the sudden knowledge of his
master’s peril. He had followed the urge of the call. And all at once
he had realised that for some reason he could not hope to lead his
mistress to the man who so sorely needed her aid. Perplexed,
heartsick, he had crawled back; helpless to do more.

Again, Klyda’s brother scoffed at his sister’s certainty that
something was amiss with Snowden. So did all others to whom the
unhappy woman told the tale. They still scoffed at the idea of any
premonition on the part of the dog--but there was an awed note behind
their scoffing--when, a few weeks later, a shaky scrawl was received
from the absentee; a scrawl written in a base hospital:

    “I am laid by the heels for a day or two by a handful of rather
    nasty little shrapnel-bites that Herr Fritz sprayed me with
    three nights ago during a reconnoitre. Nothing serious--so
    you’re not to worry your dear self. I’ll be as good as new in a
    week or two. The surgeon says so. He says I’ll be lucky if I’m
    able to claim a wound-chevron on the strength of such a piker
    injury.

     “Here is a funny bit of mental delusion that may amuse you:
     When I toppled over and lay there in No Man’s Land,--before my
     men could find me and bring me in,--there was an ungodly lot of
     racket from the Hun batteries. It almost deafened me. But
     through it all I believed I could hear--as distinctly as ever I
     heard anything--the wild barking of old Jock.

     “Wasn’t that a quaint trick for a wounded man’s brain to play?
     Jock has a pretty thunderous bark, but its echo could hardly
     travel three thousand miles and reach me above the roar of the
     boche batteries. Yet I heard it. It wasn’t his usual bark,
     either. It sounded the way it did the time Marise fell down the
     well, and as it sounded when the house caught fire in the night
     and he roused us barely in time to put out the blaze. I must
     have been a bit delirious, of course. But it gave me a queer
     homey feeling to hear the dear old fellow’s voice--even if I
     didn’t hear it.”

Klyda looked at the date on the letter. Then she subtracted three days
therefrom and computed the time difference between her home and
northern France. Then she turned to the little desk-calendar on which,
superstitiously, she had marked with a cross the date of her awakening
by Jock. After that she showed her brother the letter and the
calendar. As I have said, he still scoffed. But there was something
of awe in his manner.

It was a shock to Klyda to know her adored soldier was wounded. Yet it
was also a joy to know that he was not only in no danger from his
wound, but that he was kept, perforce, out of battle, for a time. This
knowledge, and the relief from her weeks of foreboding, gave Klyda a
curious sense of peace which had not been hers in many a day. Her
spirits rebounded to a lightness which was almost hysterical. As the
day wore on, her unnatural gaiety and her sense of nearness to Dick
increased.

Early in the evening she left the house and strolled out into the
white autumn moonlight. She was restless, and she wanted solitude and
exercise. Jock rose from his bed on the doormat and ranged alongside
her for the anticipated walk.

Crossing the stretch of moon-soaked turf, the two made their way
towards a rustic summer-house that stood on a knoll at the far end of
the grounds. Here, with Dick, they had been wont to sit, daily, to
watch the sunset. And to the old trysting-place, Klyda now strolled.

Jock, like herself, had been gay all day; ever since the arrival of
the pencil scrawl from Dick. It was with difficulty now that he curbed
his exuberant pace to keep time with hers.

They reached the summer-house on the knoll. There, Klyda stood for an
instant in silence, to gaze dreamily over the moon-swept hills. The
night was deathly still.

Then, of a sudden, the silences were shattered by a sound that wailed
forth in hideous cadences from hill to hill; re-echoing until the
placid night fairly screamed with it. Klyda gasped aloud at the horror
of the plangent din, and she spun about to locate its cause.

There in the moonlight twenty feet away from her stood Jock. The dog’s
every muscle was tense, as if with torture. His head was flung back.
From his cavernous throat was issuing a series of long-drawn howls,
slow, earsplitting, raucous,--howls of mortal anguish.

“Jock!” panted Klyda in swift terror. “_Jock!_”

(At the same moment, in a base hospital near Meran-en-Laye, a nurse
was drawing the top of a cotton sheet over a face whose eyes would no
longer need the light of day. The nurse was saying to a fellow-worker,
as she performed the grim duty:

“Poor fellow! He was doing so nicely, too, till the blood poison set
in.... Say, Nora, did I hear a dog howling, just then, or are my
nerves going bad?”)

At the quick appeal in Klyda’s voice Jock ceased his hideous lament
and stood trembling, with head bent almost to the ground. Then,
through her moment of dread, that same strange sense of nearness to
her husband came back upon the woman, but fiftyfold stronger than ever
before since his departure. Through no volition of her own, she heard
herself whisper timidly:

“_Dick?_”

As she spoke, the collie raised his head, as in joyous greeting. He
came swiftly over to where his mistress stood.

But it was not towards her he was moving. Nor was it at her that his
rapturously welcoming gaze was turned.

The dog was hurrying, with eyes aglint and plumy tail waving, toward a
spot directly beside her. Thus had he advanced, many a time, to greet
his master, when Dick had returned from brief absences and when Jock
had seen him standing there with his arm thrown protectingly about his
wife and his eyes smiling down into hers.

To humans, the tensely waiting woman would have seemed to be standing
there in the moonlight, alone. But it was not into empty space that
the advancing dog gazed so eagerly.

No one, seeing the collie then, could have doubted for an instant that
Jock was looking at--_Something!_




CHUMS


Arnon Flint had not volunteered to take the money-satchel to the bank.
Indeed, he had tried hard to crawl out of the errand.

A tennis-hour, with a swim to follow, had beckoned right alluringly to
him. There was no fun in missing all this and taking a hot
trolley-ride into town just for the honour of acting as bearer, to the
bank, of the church bazaar’s satchelful of change and small bills.

Arnon said so, with engaging frankness, at lunch that noon, when his
mother told him of the task that had been deputed to him. Whereat his
father looked up gloweringy; from his task of plate-clearing, and
added his quota to the argument:

“As long as you eat my bread, you’ll obey my orders, and your
mother’s, too. I don’t want to hear any grumbling. You’ll take that
money to the bank, and you’ll get a receipt for it. And you’ll look
sharp to get there before three, too. Let it go at that!”

For perhaps thirty seconds, Arnon wisely “let it go at that.” Then
human endurance broke down before equally human indignation.

“You talk a lot about my eating your bread,” sniffed the boy. “But it
isn’t my fault I eat it. If you’d let me take a job, instead of making
me get ready to go to that measly old college, I’d have been eating my
own bread by this time.”

“You’d be wasting another man’s time and money instead of mine,”
retorted his father. “And you’d be back on my hands inside of a week.
No, thanks. You’re going to college--if ever you have sense enough to
pass your entrance exams. College may make a man of you. Nothing else
will. In the meantime, you’ll do something for your keep, besides
sulking. For instance, you’ll take the bazaar’s ninety-eight dollars
to the bank, this afternoon. And you’ll do it without any more
whining.”

As he stood, jammed with eight other people upon the interurban
trolley-car’s back platform that afternoon, Arnon morosely went over
in his mind this lunch-table dialogue. He fell to chewing on the
unpalatable mess of grievances that had led up to the scene. And he
was hot and sick with resentment.

       *       *       *       *       *

Some conscienceless liar once said that schooldays are the happiest
time in life. That same liar would make Ananias or Munchausen look
like the original Truthful James. In many ways, the school-years of a
growing boy are worse than a term in prison.

They are perhaps a delight to the model youth. But to the average lad
they hold more torture than any grown man could endure. It is only the
miraculous elastic power of youth that makes them bearable. It is the
distorting and falsifying magic of retrospect that gives them their
only charm.

A grown man, let us say, is in disgrace. If worst comes to worst, he
can vanish; and he can start life, afresh, somewhere else, with a
clean slate.

Let a boy fall into disgrace at school or at home. What road of escape
is open to him? Not one. He is much more at the mercy of parent and
teacher than any convict is at his warden’s mercy. There are strict
laws governing the treatment of prisoners by their keepers. But,
within normal bounds, no law holds back a teacher or a parent--or
both--from making a boy’s life a continuous Hades.

Add to all this the fact that every one of youth’s countless
misfortunes is a hopeless black tragedy in its victim’s eyes, and
perhaps you will understand why boyhood is not a ceaseless delight. If
any man of thirty-six were subjected to the tyranny, the terrors, the
bitter dependence, the unescapable and heavy penalties for petty
faults that encompass the average half-grown boy, he would go insane
in a night. There is no appeal, no way out, for the boy who is in a
scrape. For a man, in such trouble, there are fifty exits.

Small wonder that so many lads yearn for a chance to make their own
way in the world, and that they shrink in loathing from the proposed
college course which will keep them in penniless slavery during four
more endless years!

They have not yet the wit to understand that the so-called Higher
Education is often a pompously windy fetish; whose chief advantage
consists in the fact that it enables its possessors to look down on
its non-possessors.

This philosophy is faulty, of course. It is also non-essential to the
story; except that it throws a light on Arnon Flint’s mental processes
as he stood there, the hated money-satchel at his feet, trying to keep
his balance on the crowded rear platform of the trolley-car.

People were forever boarding or leaving the car. A dozen times, Arnon
was shoved from one spot to another as his fellow-standees milled and
jostled about him. Always, with his toe, he managed to push the
satchel to his new standing place. He could not stoop to pick it up.
The platform was too crowded. He could not even stoop down far enough
to keep his eye on the bag. But he kept in constant touch with it by
means of his boot-toe.

At the ball-ground gate, on the outskirts of the town, three-fourths
of the passengers debarked. As the car started on, its rear platform
was empty except for Arnon and the conductor and a sawdusty man in
overalls.

Breathing was easier now. So was standing. A few blocks farther on, a
woman got out, leaving a seat vacant on the rear bench. Arnon spied
the seat and prepared to take it. As a preliminary, he bent to pick up
the satchel from between his toes.

“Drop that, sonny!” exhorted the sawdusty man in overalls.

At the same moment Arnon was aware that his fingers had met around a
canvas strap and not around the satchel’s leathern handle. He peered
down, in dull amaze.

Between his feet was a carpenter’s kit. The money-bag was nowhere in
sight.

The thing he had been guarding with his toes was this kit. Someone had
long since taken away the satchel. It is an old trick, this “lifting”
of a bag from the floor of a crowded vehicle. But to youth no
misfortunes are old. All of them have the horrible charm of novelty.

The satchel was gone. And it had not been taken by mistake. For the
sawdusty man’s kit was the sole bit of luggage on the platform.

The satchel was gone. And with it was gone the ninety-eight dollars
collected, the night before, at the church bazaar--the charity money
that had been entrusted to Arnon Flint to take to bank--the money
which, just then, represented Arnon Flint’s honour.

Now, as any sane reader will know, the one simple and natural thing
for the boy to do was to notify the police and thence to go home and
tell his parents what had happened. His father was moderately
well-to-do, and readily could have made up the deficit.

Yes, that would have been the one normal thing for Arnon to do:--to go
home and confess. And--his first name being neither Rollo nor
Percival--it is the very thing he did not do.

From across the eternal chasm which divides boyhood from middle age,
the lad’s right course seems absurdly simple. But to no boy, and to no
one who recalls the mental agony of boyhood disgraces, will it appear
so. As wisely ask an unsuspected sinner to write out a list of his
misdeeds and to mail them to his wife and to the police.

Arnon had a lively imagination. He had no trouble at all in picturing
the scene of his home-coming with such tidings as were his. He, who
had begged to go to work,--whose father had fifty times told him he
had not enough level-headedness or sense of responsibility to hold a
job for one week,--he must go home and admit his father was right.

He--whose weekly spending money was just seventy-five cents--must
confess he had lost ninety-eight dollars. The magnitude of the sum
gripped him with panic force. A few minutes ago he had regarded the
bag’s contents as merely a heavy mass of small change. Now he knew it
for Wealth.

The knowledge that he had committed no sin did not buoy him up in the
very least. A consciousness of innocence is an excellent anchor, no
doubt. But what good is an anchor after the ship has sunk?

Blindly illogical fright seized the boy as he thought of reporting the
loss of such a fortune--and of the present penalty and the
interminable naggings to follow. The Unknown has a host of terrors
lurking at its heels. But, once or twice in a lifetime, these are
outweighed by the more tangible terrors of the Known. Which accounts
for suicides.

Beyond, lay the Unknown. Behind, lay the Known. Arnon Flint, in a rush
of consequence-fear, chose the Unknown.

In his pocket was the best part of three dollars, the sum still left
from his month’s allowance received that morning. He stayed on the
trolley-car until it reached the railroad station. Then he entered the
station and bought a ticket for Silk City--one hundred and twenty
miles to westward. Three and a half hours later, he stepped down upon
the Union Station platform in Silk City.

       *       *       *       *       *

His plan was made. There was always work for willing hands. Arnon knew
there was. He knew it because he had read it--yawningly but
repeatedly--in _The Boys’ Uplift Magazine_, a dreary juvenile monthly
for which his father had subscribed in Arnon’s name.

Arnon intended to get a fair-paying job, work hard, live frugally and
save that lost ninety-eight dollars as quickly as possible. When he
should have saved it, he would send it home to make up the
church-bazaar deficit. At the same time, he could lay pipes for his
own immune home-coming. The plan was perfectly feasible. In the
meanwhile, Arnon had eighteen cents in his pocket.

Now, it would be most laudable at this point to say that Arnon’s
search for work was at once rewarded by a good job and that his
industry and talents won him swift promotion; until at last he was
Silk City’s merchant king. _The Boys’ Uplift Magazine_ would probably
be eager to print such a yarn. But the temptation must be fought down.
This is merely the true account of one unlucky boy’s life in a strange
city. So, back again to our story.

Eighteen cents is a wabbly foundation for a fortune. Arnon had enough
sense to waste none of it in buying a night’s lodging. The weather was
hot. He had had plenty of experience in camping. So, after buying a
big bag of broken soda-crackers and a wedge of dryish cheese for eight
cents, he began to scout for a camp-site. An hour’s wandering brought
him to the very place for his needs.

Silk City was a “boom-burg.” Thus, its east end chanced still to be
unfinished. Indeed, this section was all but untouched by the hand of
man. Arnon left behind him the business blocks, the tangle of
residence streets, the scattered tenements and hovels; and came at
last to a dreary stretch of Common whither even the hopeful
development-company promoter had not yet ventured.

A corner of the Common, nearest the junction of two unpaved
cross-streets, had been used as a dumping ground. Here Arnon Flint
found his “house.” This was an overturned piano box, one of whose
sides was caved in. It was a heavy, cumbrous rickety thing. Yet, by
use of all his care and strength, Arnon managed to roll and drag and
shove it into a shallow sand-pit, a hundred yards from the street.
Here he righted the box, planted its base as deeply as possible in the
scooped-out sand at the pit’s bottom and went back to the dump in
search of boards to reinforce its crack-strewn roof, and for jute and
straw to serve as a bed.

By sunset he had rigged up a fairly watertight abode, six feet long by
four wide and five in height, with a soft, if bumpy, carpeting of
straw and jute. And, as he proved by further scouting, the shack was
invisible from the street.

Then he tramped to a leaking hydrant, a quarter-mile distant, washed
and scoured a small and a large can (both battered but leakless) he
had found on the dump; and carried home his night’s supply of clean
water. After which he sat down in the doorway of his piano-box shack
and prepared his evening meal.

Dusk was creeping over the day. Back at home, just now, the family
were sitting down to a repast of fricasseed chicken and dumplings and
pie and all sorts of things.

Still, crackers and cheese and fresh water are not to be despised as
an evening meal--particularly when they are spiced with adventure and
reinforced by the hunger of a hustling day.

So it was not the frugality of his meal that made the fare so hard
for Arnon to eat. At first he did not know just what caused the lump
in his throat and what made even the tiniest morsel of food impossible
to swallow. Being only a normal boy, he had never so much as heard of
psychology. Nor was there any psychologist there to prate of
“reaction” and “nerve exhaustion” and of any of the dozen kindred
causes which made the lad feel as he did. One of these causes alone
did Arnon understand. And this one--to which he would not confess--was
bitter, lonely homesickness.

He had cut himself loose from everything and everybody. He was an
exile and on the threshold of a new world. For all he knew, he might
also be a fugitive from justice. For, when the money’s loss should be
discovered, the bazaar people would probably think him a defaulter and
set the police after him.

Three hours earlier Arnon had felt himself a true blend of martyr and
explorer. Now he was all at once aware that he was just a lonesome and
heavy-hearted boy who had no one to love him and whose only home was a
smelly packing box. The lump in Arnon’s throat began to swell to
unbelievable size. And the eyes wherewith he gazed up over the
pit-edge at the dying day, grew foolishly misted.

This would never do!

Angrily he cleared his throat and winked very fast indeed. Then he
forced himself to day-dreams of the splendid job he was going to win
on the morrow and of the brevity of the time that must pass before he
should save up ninety-eight dollars and be able to go home. But the
effort was a pitiful failure. The lump nearly strangled him. And the
mist would not behave itself and keep out of his silly eyes.

Just then came the diversion that saved him from the eternal shame of
crying. The dusky skyline at the edge of the shallow pit was broken
suddenly by a small dark silhouette. The boy winked away his rising
tears once more, and stared. There at the top, looking inquisitively
down, head on one side, stood a dog--not much of a dog, perhaps, for
looks or for contour or for size, but still a dog; certainly not a
wolf or a lion, as the lad’s worn-out nerves had at first made him
think.

Presently a second dog came alongside the first. Together they blinked
down at the lonely youngster. Arnon returned their gaze with keen
interest. There was still light enough for him to gain a clear view of
his two guests.

The first dog was a black-and-tan. At least, he was more black-and-tan
than anything else. He held one forefoot gingerly in air, as though he
were lame. And his left ear had evidently been chewed off, as to tip.
The second dog was a pale grey--formerly white--and had longish hair.
He was of the general build and specifications of a Dandy Dinmont. He
and the black-and-tan were about of a height. Both were collarless,
wolf-thin and of a totally disreputable aspect.

Every city has scores of such strays--forlorn mongrels that eke out a
rickety living on the dumps and in garbage cans until they fall prey
to dogcatcher or police or vivisector, or until a gang of pursuing
boys frighten them into a blind panic and thereby start a new mad-dog
scare,--a scare which wins a credit-mark for the fearless bluecoat
whose pistol is emptied into the harmless and terrified little
fugitive.

Yes, to a dog-fancier’s eye, Arnon Flint’s visitors were merely a
brace of fleasome mongrels. To Arnon, though, they meant all the
difference between abject loneliness and loving companionship.

Timidly the boy chirped to the dogs. Up went their ears. He groped for
a chipped soda-cracker, broke it in half and held out the two pieces
to them. At his gesture, the dogs instinctively shrank back--a result
of the piteous experience which had taught them that a movement of the
human arm is far more likely to mean a flung stone than a proffered
dainty.

But it had been a barren day on the dumps. And the sight and smell of
food were mighty temptations. Also, the boy was talking to them in a
wondrous friendly way. And--whether they can understand words or
not--dogs can read the human voice as can few humans themselves.

In Arnon’s call the two strays recognised not only friendship, but
appeal. They recognised the tones of a fellow-stray. Here was no
little devil, coaxing them into range in order to tie a tin can or a
firecracker to their stumpy tails. This lad was as much a waif as was
either of them. And he craved chumship, even as did they.

Slowly, hesitatingly, mincingly, the puppies slid down the pit-bank
into the hollow. Nervously, yet greedily, they nipped the offered
fragments of the big soda-cracker. Ravenously they ate. Then, as their
fears lessened, they fawned upon the human for more food. Arnon, as
they chewed the cracker-bits, ran his fingers gently along their ears
and backs, scratching their heads; all the while talking to them. At
first they flinched a little from the unwonted caress. But soon they
courted it.

The boy, of a sudden, found himself not only happy, but ravenously
hungry. He and his two pets finished the crackers and cheese with a
zest. Then all three curled up close together in the straw and went to
sleep.

At sunrise Arnon awoke. Both the dogs were already astir. As he raised
his head and sat looking bewilderedly about, they ran frisking up to
him.

And thus began the life of the three chums--in the sand-pit’s
piano-box shack. It was a wonderful life for all of them. For Arnon,
the dogs’ presence was a veritable godsend.

The boy set forth early that first morning, to look for a job.
Naturally, he did not find one. Not only do business houses cut down
their working force in summer, instead of adding to it; but a boy with
no references has, at best, a hard time in landing a steady
position,--especially if he stammers and grows red when he is asked
where he lives and the name of his father.

No, in spite of _The Boys’ Uplift Magazine_, no kindly merchant was so
impressed by Arnon’s manliness and good manners as to offer to teach
him the business from the bottom up, with a view of making him, later
on, a partner.

Arnon, after a half-day’s futile job-hunt, began to see how matters
stood. He was sore inclined to give up the fight and to tramp all the
way back to his parents’ home. But at once he remembered he could not.
He had responsibilities,--responsibilities he could not shirk. At the
shack his two dog-chums were waiting for his return. He could not take
them a hundred and twenty miles, afoot. He had no means of feeding
them on the way, even if no farm dogs should kill them or rural
poundmasters seize them. No, they relied on him. And he had no right
to fail them. He must stick.

       *       *       *       *       *

That afternoon, by three hours of hanging around the Union Station, he
cleared up twenty cents, carrying suit-cases and opening motorcar
doors. He stopped at a tenement-district grocery, on his way back to
the sand-pit, and continued his journey with a very respectable armful
of provisions.

As he neared the Common, Arnon quickened not only his steps but his
heartbeats. Suppose he were wrong in his estimate of his two new
friends. Suppose they were only of the cadging, garbage-snooping type,
and had deserted the shack the moment his back had been turned! The
thought sickened him. It was for his dogs, not for himself, he had
been working that day.

He reached the sand-pit edge and halted. At the same instant two furry
little whirlwinds burst forth fro

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