Part 12

“Mr. Gierson declares that a small disk of metal was suspended from the throat of the brute.”

Jamie laid down the paper and went into executive session with his own inner consciousness. A disk of metal, suspended from the throat of an animal, means but one thing. It is a license tag. Never has such a tag been fastened to a wolf.

Back into Mackellar’s memory came the picture of a poor shivering waif from whose meagre and almost naked throat hung a huge collar; a collar affixed by wire which was wound into such sparse strands of hair as could be made to support it.

On the morning after the next snowfall, Jamie took a day off. Carrying only a collar and chain and a muzzle, he fared forth into the woods. All day he hunted. He found nothing.

A week later came another snowfall in the night. Next morning Mackellar set forth again; this time letting his little son Donald come along. He had told his family the far-fetched suspicion that had dawned upon him, and Donald had clamoured to join the hunt.

On his first search, Jamie had quartered the country to west of the ridge. To-day he climbed the rocks and made his way into the rolling land below. Skirting Blake’s Woods, he was moving on toward the farms when, in the fresh snow, he came upon the tracks he sought. For an hour he followed them. Apparently they led nowhere. At least, they doubled twice upon themselves and then vanished on a long outcrop of snowless rock which stretched back into Blake’s Woods.

Tiring of this fruitless way of spending the morning, Donald strayed from his father. Into the woods he wandered. And presently he sighted the dancing platform amid its tangle of dead weeds. Running over to it, the boy climbed thereon. Then, striking an attitude, he began to harangue an invisible audience, from the platform edge; after the manner of a cart-tail political orator he had observed with emulous delight.

“My friends!” he shrilled, from memory, “Our anc’st’rs fit fer the lib’ty we enjoy! Are we goin’ to—? _Ouch!_ Hey, Daddy!”

One rhetorically stamping little foot had smashed through the rotten boarding. Nor could Donald draw it out. At the yell of fright, Jamie came running. But, a few yards from his son, Mackellar slid to a stop. His eyes were fixed on an opening just below the boy’s imprisoned foot; an opening from which the passage of Donald’s advancing body had cleared aside some of the tangled weeds. From the tip of a ragged lath, at the edge of this aperture, fluttered a tuft of tawny hair.

Pulling Donald free, Mackellar got down on all fours and peeped into the space beneath the platform. For a few seconds he could see nothing. Then, as his eyes accustomed themselves to the dimness, he descried two greenish points of light turned toward him from the farthest corner of the lair.

“Bobby?” called the man doubtfully.

The cornered dog heard the name. It roused vague half memories. The memories were not pleasant; though the voice had in it a friendliness that stirred the collie strangely.

Bobby crouched the closer to earth and his lips writhed back from murderous white teeth. The man called again; in the same friendly, coaxing voice. Then he began to crawl forward a foot or so. Behind him the excited boy was blocking the only way out of the den.

The Lochinvar Bobby of ten months ago would have cowered whimperingly in his corner, waiting for capture. He might even have pleaded for mercy by rolling over on his back.

The Lochinvar Bobby of to-day was quite another creature. He laid out his plan of campaign, and then in the wink of an eye he carried it into effect.

With a rabid snarl he charged the advancing man. As Jamie braced himself to fend off the ravening jaws, the dog veered sharply to one side and dashed for the opening. Instinct told him the boy would be easier to break past than the man.

But it was not Jamie Mackellar’s first experience with fighting or playing dogs. As Bobby veered, Jamie slewed his own prostrate body to the same side and made a grab for the fast-flying collie. His fingers closed and tightened around Bobby’s left hind leg, just below the hock.

With a snarl, Bobby wheeled and drove his jaws at the captor’s wrist; in a slash which might well have severed an artery. But, expecting just such a move, Jamie was ready with his free hand. Its fingers buried themselves in the avalanche of fur to one side of Bobby’s throat. The slashing eye-teeth barely grazed the pinioning wrist. And Bobby thrashed furiously from side to side, to free himself and to rend his enemy.

Mackellar’ s expert hands found grips to either side of the whirling jaws, and he held on. Bit by bit, bracing himself with all his wiry strength, he backed out; dragging the frantic beast behind him.

Five minutes later, at the expense of a few half-averted bites, he had the muzzle tight-bound in place and was leading the exhausted and foaming collie toward Midwestburg. Bobby held back, he flung himself against the chain, he fought with futile madness against the gentle skill of his master.

Then shuddering all over he gave up the fight. Head and tail a-droop, he suffered himself to be led to prison.

“It’s Lochinvar Bobby, all right!” the wondering Jamie was saying to his son in intervals of lavishing kindly talk and pats on the luckless dog. "The collar and tag prove that. But if it wasn’t for them, I’d swear it couldn’t be the same. It’s—it’s enough to take a body’s breath away, Donald! I’ve followed the dog game from the time I was born, but I never set eyes on such a collie in all my days. Just run your hand through that coat! Was there ever another like it? And did you ever see such bone and head? He’s—Lord, to think how he looked when that Frayne crook sawed him off on me! It’s a miracle he lived through the first winter. I never heard of but one other case like it. And that happened up in Toronto, if I remember right.

“Now, listen, sonny: I’m not honing to be sued for damages by every farmer in the county. So let’ em keep on looking for their wolf. This is a dog I bought last year. He’s been away in the country till now. That’s the truth. And the rest is nobody’s business. But—but if it keeps me speiring for a week, to figger it out, I’m going to hit on some way to let Mr. Lucius Frayne, Esquire, see he hasn’t stung me so hard as he thought he did!”

For two days Bobby refused to eat or drink. In the stout inclosure built for him in Mackellar’s back yard he stood, head and tail a-droop, every now and then shivering as if with ague. Then, little by little, Jamie’s skilled attentions did their work. The wondrous lure of human fellowship, the joy of cooked food, and the sense of security against harm, and, above all, a collie’s ancestral love for the one man he chooses for his god—these wrought their work.

In less than a fortnight Bobby was once more a collie. The spirit of the wild beast had departed from him; and he took his rightful place as the chum of the soft-voiced little Scot he was learning to worship. Yes, and he was happy,—happier than ever before;—happy with a new and strangely sweet contentment. He had come into a collie’s eternal heritage.

The Westminster Kennel Club’s annual dog show at Madison Square Garden, in New York, is the foremost canine classic of America and, in late years, of the whole world.

A month before that year’s Westminster Show, Lucius Frayne received a letter which made the wontedly saturnine sportsman laugh till the tears spattered down his nose. The joke was too good to keep to himself. So he shouted for Roke, and bade the kennel man share the fun of it with him.

He read aloud, cacklingly, to the listening Roke:

Mr. Lucius Frayne, My dear Sir:

Last year, out to the Midwestburg show, here, you sold me a fine puppy of your Ch. Lochinvar King. And as soon as I could raise the price you sent him on here to me. I would of written to you when I got him, to thank you and to say how pleased I was with him and how all my friends praised him. But I figured you’re a busy man and you haven’t got any waste time to spend in reading letters about how good your dogs are. Because you know it already. And so I didn’t write to you. But I am writing to you now. Because this is business.

You know what a grand pup Bobby was when you sent him to me? Well to my way of thinking he has developed even better than he gave promise to. And some of my friends say the same. To my way of thinking he is the grandest collie in North America or anywhere else to-day. He is sure one grand dog. He turned out every bit as good as you said he would. He’s better now than he was at five months.

I want to thank you for letting me have such a dog, Mr. Frayne. Just as you said, he is of Champion timber. Now this brings me to the business I spoke about.

Granther used to tell me how the gentry on the other side would bet with each other on their dogs at the shows. Six months ago my Aunt Marjorie died and she willed me nine hundred dollars ($900). It is in bank waiting for a good investment for it. Now here is an investment that seems to me a mighty safe one. Me knowing Bobby as I do. A fine sporting investment. And I hope it may please you as well. I am entering Bobby for Westminster. I read in _Dog News_ that you are expecting to enter Champion Lochinvar King there, with others of your string. So here is my proposition.

I propose you enter King for “Open, Sable-and-White” and “Open, Any Colour,” these being the only regular classes a sable champion is eligible for. I will enter Bobby in the same classes, instead of “Novice” as I was going to. And I will wager you six hundred dollars ($600) even, that the judge will place Bobby above King. I am making this offer knowing how fine King is but thinking my dog is even better. For Bobby has really improved since a pup. My wife thinks so too.

If this offer pleases you, will you deposit a certified check of six hundred dollars ($600) with the editor of _Dog News_? He is a square man as every one knows and he will see fair play. He has promised me he will hold the stakes. I am ready to deposit my certified check for six hundred dollars ($600) at once. I would like to bet the whole nine hundred dollars ($900). Knowing it a safe investment. Knowing Bobby like I do. But my wife doesn’t want me to bet it at all and so we are compromising on six hundred dollars ($600).

Please let me hear from you on this, Mr. Frayne. And I thank you again for how you treated me as regards Bobby. I hope to repay you at Westminster by letting you see him for yourself.

Your ob’t servant, James A. Mackellar.

Yes, it was a long letter. Yet Frayne skipped no word of it. And Roke listened, as to heavenly music.

“Talk about Lochinvar luck!” chortled Frayne as he finished. “The worst pup we ever bred; and we sold him for one-fifty! And now he is due to fetch us another six hundred, in dividends. He—”

“You’re going to cover his bet?” queried Roke. “Good! I was afraid maybe you’d feel kind of sorry for the poor cuss, and—”

“Unless I break both wrists, in the next hour,” announced Frayne, “that certified check will start for the _Dog News_ office by noon. It’s the same old wheeze: A dub has picked up a smattering of dog talk; he thinks he knows it all. He buys a bum pup with a thundering pedigree. The pedigree makes him think the pup is a humdinger. He brags about it to his folks. They think anything that costs so much must be the best ever, no matter how it looks. And he gets to believing he’s got a world beater. Then—”

“But, boss,” put in Roke with happy unction, “just shut your eyes and try to remember how that poor mutt looked! And the boob says he’s ‘even better than he gave promise to be.’ Do you get that? Yet you hear a lot about Scotchmen being shrewd! Gee, but I wish you’d let me have a slice of that $600 bet! I’d—”

“No,” said Frayne judicially. “That’s my own meat. It was caught in my trap. But I tell you what you can do: Wait till I send my check and till it’s covered, and then write to Mackellar and ask him if he’s willing to bet another $150, on the side, with you. From the way he sounds, you ought to have it easy in getting him to make the side bet. He needn’t tell his wife. Try it anyhow; if you like.”

Roke tried it. And, after ridiculously small objection on Jamie’s part, the side bet was recorded and its checks were posted with the editor of _Dog News_. Once more Lucius Frayne and his faithful kennel man shook hands in perfect happiness.

To the topmost steel rafters, where the grey February shadows hung, old Madison Square Garden echoed and reverberated with the multi-keyed barks of some two thousand dogs. The four-day show had been opened at ten o’clock of a slushy Wednesday morning. And as usual the collies were to be judged on the first day.

Promptly at eleven o’clock the clean-cut collie judge followed his steward into the ring. The leather-lunged runner passed down the double ranks of collie benches, bawling the numbers for the Male Puppy Class.

The judge had a reputation for quickness, as well as for accuracy and honesty. The Open classes, for male dogs, were certain to come up for verdict within an hour, at most.

Seven benches had been thrown into one, for the Frayne dogs. At its back ran a strip of red silk, lettered in silver: “LOCHINVAR COLLIE KENNELS.” Seven high-quality dogs lay or sat in this space de luxe. In the centre—his name on a bronze plate above his head—reclined Lochinvar King.

In full majesty of conscious perfection he lay there; magnificent as a Numidian lion, the target for all eyes. Conditioned and groomed to the minute, he stood out from his high-class kennel-mates like a swan among cygnets.

Frayne, more than once in the show’s first hour or so, left his much-admired benches; for a glance at a near-by unoccupied space, numbered 568. Here, according to the catalogue, should be benched Lochinvar Bobby.

But Bobby was nowhere to be seen.

Congratulating himself on his own craft in having inserted a forfeit clause in the bet agreement, Frayne was none the less disappointed that the fifth-rate mutt had not shown up.

He longed for a chance to hear the titter of the railbirds; when the out-at-elbow, gangling, semi-hairless little nondescript should shamble into the ring. Bobby’s presence would add zest to his own oft-told tale of the wager.

According to American Kennel Club rules, a dog must be on its bench from the moment the exhibition opens until the close, excepting only when it is in the ring or at stated exercise periods. That rule, until recently, has been most flagrantly disregarded by many exhibitors. In view of this, Frayne made a trip to the exercise room and then through the dim-lit stalls under the main floor.

As he came back from a fruitless search for Bobby or for Mackellar, he passed the collie ring. “Limit; Dogs,” was chalked on the blackboard. Two classes more—“Open, Merle,” and "Open, Tricolour"—and then King must enter the ring for “Open, Sable.” Frayne hurried to the Lochinvar benches, where Roke and another kennel man were fast at work putting finishing touches to King’s toilet.

The great dog was on his feet, tense and eager for the coming clash. Close behind the unseeing Roke, and studying King with grave admiration, stood Jamie Mackellar.

“Hello, there!” boomed Frayne with loud cordiality, bearing down upon the little man. “Get cold feet? I see your dog’s absent. Remember, you forfeit by absence.”

“Yes, sir,” said Jamie with meekness, taking off his hat to the renowned sportsman, and too confused in fumbling with its wabbly brim to see the hand which Frayne held out to him. “Yes, sir. I remember the forfeit clause, sir. I’m not forfeiting. Bobby is here.”

“Here? Where? I looked all over the—”

“I hired one of the cubby-hole rooms upstairs, sir; to keep him in, nights, while he’s here. And I haven’t brought him down to his bench yet. You see, he—he ain’t seen many strangers. And you’ll remember, maybe, that he used to be just a wee peckle shy. So I’m keeping him there till it is time to show him. My boy, Donald, is up, now, getting him ready. They’ll be down presently, sir. I think you’ll be real pleased with how Bobby looks.”

"I’m counting on a heap of pleasure," was Frayne’s cryptic reply, as he turned away to mask a grin of utter joy.

Five grey dogs were coming down the aisle to their benches. The Merle Class had been judged and the Tricolours were in the ring. There were but four of these.

In another handful of minutes the “Open, Sable” Class was called. It was the strongest class of the day. It contained no less than three champions; in addition to four less famous dogs, like Bobby;—seven entries in all.

Six of these dogs were marched into the ring. The judge looked at the steward, for the “all-here” signal. As he did so, the seventh entrant made his way past the gate crowd and was piloted into the ring by a small and cheaply clad man.

While the attendant was slipping the number board on Mackellar’s arm, Lucius Frayne’s eyes fell upon Lochinvar Bobby. So did those of the impatient judge and the ninety out of every hundred of the railbirds.

Through the close-packed ranks of onlookers ran a queer little wordless mutter—the most instinctive and therefore the highest praise that can be accorded.

Alertly calm of nerve, heedless of his surroundings so long as his worshipped god was crooning reassurances to him, Bobby stood at Mackellar’s side.

His incredible coat was burnished like old bronze. His head was calmly erect, his mighty frame steady. His eyes, with true eagle look, surveyed the staring throng.

Never before, in all the Westminster Club’s forty-odd shows, had such a collie been led into the ring. Eugenic breeding, wise rationing and tireless human care had gone to the perfecting of other dogs. But Mother Nature herself had made Lochinvar Bobby what he was. She had fed him bountifully upon the all-strengthening ration of the primal beast; and she had given him the exercise-born appetite to eat and profit by it. Her pitiless winter winds had combed and winnowed his coat as could no mortal hand, giving it thickness and length and richness beyond belief. And she had moulded his growing young body into the peerless model of the Wild.

Then, because he had the loyal heart of a collie and not the incurable savagery of the wolf, she had awakened his soul and made him bask rapturously in the friendship of a true dog-man. The combination was unmatchable.

“Walk your dogs, please,” ordered the judge, coming out of his momentary daze.

Before the end of the ring’s first turn, he had motioned Frayne and Mackellar to take their dogs into one corner. He proceeded to study the five others; awarding to two of them the yellow third-prize ribbon and the white reserve, and then ordering the quintet from the ring. After which he beckoned Bobby and King to the judging block.

In the interim, Frayne had been staring goggle-eyed at the Midwestburg collie. He tried to speak; but he could not. A hundred thoughts were racing dumbly through his bemused brain. He stood agape, foolish of face.

Jamie Mackellar was pleasantly talkative.

“A grand class, this,” he confided to his voiceless comrade. “But, first crack, Judge Breese had the eye to single out our two as so much the best that he won’t size ’em up with the others. How do you like Bobby, sir? Is he very bad? Don’t you think, maybe, he’s picked up, just a trifle, since you shipped him to me? He’s no worse, anyhow, than he was then, is he?”

Frayne gobbled, wordlessly.

“This is the last time I’ll show him, for a while, Mr. Frayne,” continued Jamie, a grasping note coming into his timid voice. “The cash I’m due to collect from you and Mr. Roke will make enough, with the legacy and what I’ve saved, to start me in business with a truck of my own. Bobby and I are going into partnership. And we’re going to clean up. Bobby is putting seven hundred and fifty dollars and to-day’s cash prizes into the firm. He and I are getting out of the show-end of collie breeding, for a time. The more we see of some of you professionals, the better we like cesspools. If dogs weren’t the grandest animals the good Lord ever put on earth, a few of the folks who exploit them would have killed the dog game long ago. It—. Judge Breese is beckoning for us!”

Side by side, the two glorious collies advanced to the judging block. Side by, side, at their handlers’ gestures, they mounted it. And again from the railbirds arose that queer wordless hum. Sire and son, shoulder to shoulder, faced the judge.

And, for the first time in his unbroken career of conquest, Lochinvar King looked almost shabby; beside the wondrous young giant he had sired. His every good point—and he had no others—was bettered by Bobby.

As a matter of form, Breese went over both dogs with meticulous care; testing coat-texture, spring of ribs, action, soundness of bone, carriage, facial expression, and the myriad other details which go into the judging of a show dog. Long he faced them, crouching low and staring into their deep-set eyes; marking the set and carriage of the tulip ears; comparing point with point; as becomes a man who is about to give victory to an Unknown over a hitherto Invincible.

Then with a jerk of his head he summoned the steward with the judging book and ribbons. And, amid a spontaneous rattle of applause, Jamie Mackellar led his splendid dog to the far end of the ring, with one hand; while in the fingers of the other fluttered a strip of gold-lettered dark blue ribbon.

Back came both collies for the “Open, Any Colour Class,” and the verdict was repeated; as it was repeated in the supreme “Winners’” Class which followed. “Winners’” Class carried, with its rosette and cash specials, a guerdon of five points toward Bobby’s championship.

Then followed the rich harvest of other cash specials in the collie division, including $25 for “Best of Breed,” and for the next three days even fatter gleanings from among the variety classes and unclassified specials. These last awards ranged from five dollars to twenty-five dollars apiece; apart from a valiseful of silver cups and like trophies which are more beautiful than pawnable.

On Saturday, Jamie Mackellar and Bobby took the midnight train for Midwestburg; richer by almost nine hundred dollars for their New York sojourn.

Rolling sweetly around in Jamie’s memory was a brief talk he had had with Roke, an hour before the close of the show. Sent as emissary by Frayne, the kennel manager had offered Mackellar a flat two thousand dollars for the sensational young prize winner.

“We’re not parting company, Bobby and I,” Jamie had made civil answer. “Thanking you and your boss just as much. But tell Mr. Frayne if ever I breed a pup as good as Bobby was when he came to me, he can have it for an even hundred and fifty. I wouldn’t want such a fine chap to think I’m not just as clean a sportsman as what he is!”

SEVEN: “One Minute Longer”

SEVEN: “One Minute Longer”

Wolf was a collie, red-gold and white of coat, with a shape more like his long-ago wolf ancestors’ than like a domesticated dog’s. It was from this ancestral throw-back that he was named Wolf.

He looked not at all like his great sire, Sunnybank Lad, nor like his dainty, thoroughbred mother, Lady. Nor was he like them in any other way, except that he inherited old Lad’s staunchly gallant spirit and loyalty and uncanny brain. No, in traits as well as in looks, he was more wolf than dog. He almost never barked, his snarl supplying all vocal needs.