Part 5

Lad’s spirits arose with a bound. His ruse had succeeded. He had reawakened in this easily-discouraged chum a new interest in the game. And he gambolled across the lawn, fairly wriggling with delight. He did not wish to make his friend lose interest again. So instead of dashing off at full speed, he frisked daintily, just out of reach of the clawing hand.

And in this pleasant fashion the two playfellows covered a hundred yards of ground. More than once, the man came within an inch of his quarry. But always, by the most imperceptible spurt of speed, Laddie arranged to keep himself and his dear satchel from capture.

Then, in no time at all, the game ended; and with it ended Lad’s baby faith in the friendliness and trustworthiness of all human nature.

Realising that the sound of his own stumbling running feet and the intermittent flashes of his torch might well awaken some light sleeper in the house, the thief resolved on a daring move. This creature in front of him,—dog or bear or goat, or whatever it was,—was uncatchable. But by sending a bullet through it, he could bring the animal to a sudden and permanent stop.

Then, snatching up his bag and running at top speed, he himself could easily win clear of the Place before any one of the household should appear. And his car would be a mile away before the neighbourhood could be aroused. Fury at the weird beast and the wrenching strain on his own nerves lent eagerness to his acceptance of the idea.

He reached back again for his pistol, whipped it out, and, coming to a standstill, aimed at the pup. Lad, waiting only to bound over an obstruction in his path, came to a corresponding pause, not ten feet ahead of his playmate.

It was an easy shot. Yet the bullet went several inches above the obligingly waiting dog’s back. Nine men out of ten, shooting by moonlight or by flashlight, aim too high. The thief had heard this old marksman-maxim fifty times. But, like most hearers of maxims, he had forgotten it at the one time in his speckled career when it might have been of any use to him.

He had fired. He had missed. In another second, every sleeper in the house and in the gate-lodge would be out of bed. His night’s work was a blank, unless—

With a bull rush he hurled himself forward at the interestedly waiting Lad. And, as he sprang, he fired again. Then several things happened.

Every one, except movie actors and newly-appointed policemen, knows that a man on foot cannot shoot straight, unless he is standing stock still. Yet, as luck would have it, this second shot found a mark where the first and better aimed bullet had gone wild.

Lad had leaped the narrow and deep ditch left along the lawn-edge by workers who were putting in a new water-main for the Place. On the far side of this obstacle he had stopped, and had waited for his friend to follow. But the friend had not followed. Instead, he had been somehow responsible for a spurt of red flame and for a most thrilling racket. Lad was more impressed than ever by the man’s wondrous possibilities as a midnight entertainer. He waited, gaily expectant, for more. He got it.

There was a second rackety explosion and a second puff of lightning from the man’s outflung hand. But, this time, something like a red-hot whip-lash smote Lad with horribly agonising force athwart the right hip.

The man had done this,—the man whom Laddie had thought so friendly and playful!

He had not done it by accident. For his hand had been outflung directly at the pup, just as once had been the arm of the kennelman, back at Lad’s birthplace, in beating a disobedient mongrel. It was the only beating Lad had ever seen. And it had stuck, shudderingly, in his uncannily sensitive memory. Yet now, he himself had just had a like experience.

In an instant, the pup’s trustful friendliness was gone. The man had come on the Place, at dead of night, and had struck him. That must be paid for! Never would the pup forget his agonising lesson that night intruders are not to be trusted or even to be tolerated. Within a single second, he had graduated from a little friend of all the world, into a vigilant watchdog.

With a snarl, he dropped the bag and whizzed forward at his assailant. Needle-sharp milkteeth bared, head low, ruff abristle, friendly soft eyes as ferocious as a wolf’s, he charged.

There had been scarce a breathing-space between the second report of the pistol and the collie’s counter-attack. But there had been time enough for the onward-plunging thief to step into the narrow lip of the water-pipe ditch. The momentum of his own rush hurled the upper part of his body forward. But his left leg, caught between the ditch-sides, did not keep pace with the rest of him. There was a hideous snapping sound, a screech of mortal anguish; and the man crashed to earth, in a dead faint of pain and shock,—his broken left leg still thrust at an impossible angle in the ditch.

Lad checked himself midway in his own fierce charge. Teeth bare, throat agrowl, he hesitated. It had seemed to him right and natural to assail the man who had struck him so painfully. But now this same man was lying still and helpless under him. And the sporting instincts of a hundred generations of thoroughbreds cried out to him not to mangle the defenceless.

Wherefore, he stood, irresolute; alert for sign of movement on the part of his foe. But there was no such sign. And the light bullet-graze on his hip was hurting like the very mischief.

Moreover, every window in the house beyond was blossoming forth into lights. There were sounds,—reassuring human sounds. And doors were opening. His deities were coming forth.

All at once, Laddie stopped being a vengeful beast of prey; and remembered that he was a very small and very much hurt and very lonely and worried puppy. He craved the Mistress’s dear touch on his wound, and a word of crooning comfort from her soft voice. This yearning was mingled with a doubt less perhaps he had been transgressing the Place’s Law, in some new way; and lest he might have let himself in for a scolding. The Law was still so queer and so illogical!

Lad started toward the house. Then, pausing, he picked up the bag which had been so exhilarating a plaything for him this past few minutes and which he had forgotten in his pain.

It was Lad’s collie way to pick up offerings (ranging from slippers to very dead fish) and to carry them to the Mistress. Sometimes he was petted for this. Sometimes the offering was lifted gingerly between aloof fingers and tossed back into the lake. But, nobody could well refuse so jingly and pretty a gift as this satchel.

The Master, sketchily attired, came running down the lawn, flashlight in hand. Past him, unnoticed, as he sped toward the ditch, a collie pup limped;—a very unhappy and comfort-seeking puppy who carried in his mouth a blood-spattered brown bag.

“It doesn’t make sense to me!” complained the Master, next day, as he told the story for the dozenth time, to a new group of callers. “I heard the shots and I went out to investigate. There he was lying half in and half out of the ditch. The fellow was unconscious. He didn’t get his senses back till after the police came. Then he told some babbling yarn about a creature that had stolen his bag of loot and that had lured him to the ditch. He was all unnerved and upset, and almost out of his head with pain. So the police had little enough trouble in ‘sweating’ him. He told everything he knew. And there’s a wholesale round-up of the motor-robbery bunch going on this afternoon as a result of it. But what I can’t understand—”

"It’s as clear as day," insisted the Mistress, stroking a silken head that pressed lovingly against her knee. “As clear as day. I was standing in the doorway here when Laddie came pattering up to me and laid a little satchel at my feet. I opened it, and—well, it had everything of value in it that had been in the safe over there. That and the thief’s story make it perfectly plain. Laddie caught the man as he was climbing out of that window. He got the bag away from him; and the man chased him, firing as he went. And he stumbled into the ditch and—”

“Nonsense!” laughed the Master. “I’ll grant all you say about Lad’s being the most marvellous puppy on earth. And I’ll even believe all the miracles of his cleverness. But when it comes to taking a bag of jewelry from a burglar and then enticing him to a ditch and then coming back here to you with the bag—”

“Then how do you account—?”

“I don’t. None of it makes sense to me. As I just said. But,—whatever happened, it’s turned Laddie into a real watchdog. Did you notice how he went for the police when they started down the drive, last night? We’ve got a watchdog at last.”

“We’ve got more than a watchdog,” amended the Mistress. “An ordinary watchdog would just scare away thieves or bite them. Lad captured the thief and then brought the stolen jewelry back to us. No other dog could have done that.”

Lad, enraptured by the note of praise in the Mistress’s soft voice, looked adoringly up into the face that smiled so proudly down at him. Then, catching the sound of a step on the drive, he dashed out to bark in murderous fashion at a wholly harmless delivery boy whom he had seen every day for weeks.

A watchdog can’t afford to relax vigilance, for a single instant,—especially at the responsible age of five months.

THREE: The Meanest Man

THREE: The Meanest Man

The big collie lay at ease, his tawny-and-white length stretched out in lazy luxury across the mouth of the lane which led from the Hampton highroad to Link Ferris’ hillside farmhouse.

Of old, this lane had been rutted and grass-hummocked and bordered by tangles of rusty weeds. Since Link and his farm had taken so decided a brace, the weeds had been cut away. This without even a hint from the county engineer, who of old had so often threatened to fine Link for leaving them standing along the highway at his land’s edge. The lane had been graded and ditched, too, into a neatness that went well with the rest of the place.

But—now that Link Ferris had taken to himself a wife, as efficient as she was pretty—it had been decreed by young Mrs. Ferris that the lane’s entrance should be enhanced still further by the erecting of two low fieldstone piers, one on either side, and that the hollow at the top of each pier should be filled with loam for the planting of nasturtiums.

It was on this decorative job that Link was at work to-day. His collie, Chum, was always near at hand wherever his master chanced to be toiling. And Chum, now, was lying comfortably on the soft earth of the lane head, some fifty feet from where Link wrought with rock and mortar.

Up the highroad, from Hampton village a mile below, jogged a bony yellow horse, drawing a ramshackle vehicle which looked like the ghost of a delivery wagon. The wagon had a sharp tilt to one side. For long years it had been guiltless of paint. Its canvas sides were torn and stained. Its rear was closed by a wabbly grating. The axles and whiffletree emitted a combination of grievously complaining squeaks from the lack of grease. And other and still more grievous noises issued from the grated recesses of the cart.

On the sagging seat sprawled a beefy man whose pendulous cheeks seemed the vaster for the narrowness of his little eyes. These eyes were wandering inquiringly from side to side along Link’s land boundary, until they chanced to light upon the recumbent collie. Then into their shallow recesses glinted a look of sharp interest. It was on this collie’s account that the man had driven out from Hampton to-day. His drive was a reconnoitre.

He clucked his bony steed to a faster jog, his gaze fixed with growing avidity on the dog. As he neared the mouth of the lane, he caught sight of Link and the narrow orbs lost a shade of their jubilance.

So might a pedestrian’s eyes have glinted at sight of a dollar bill on the sidewalk in front of him. So might the glint have clouded on seeing the bill’s owner reaching down for his property. The simile is not far-fetched, for the driver, on viewing Chum, had fancied he beheld the equivalent of several dollars.

He was Eben Shunk, official poundmaster and dog catcher of Hampton Borough. Each and every stray dog caught and impounded by him meant the sum of one dollar to be paid him, in due form, by the Hampton Borough treasurer. And the fact that Chum’s sturdy master was within hail of the invitingly supine collie vexed the thrifty soul of Eben Shunk.

Yet there was hope. And upon this hope Eben staked his chances for the elusive dollar and for the main object of his visit—which was no mere dollar. Briefly, in his mind, he reviewed the case and the possibilities and laid out his plan of campaign. Halting his bony horse at the mouth of the lane, he hailed Link.

“Look-a-here!” he called. “Did you take out a license for that big mutt of your’n yet?”

Link glanced up from his work, viewed the visitor with no semblance of favour and made curt reply.

“I didn’t. And he ain’t.”

“Huh?” queried Mr. Shunk, puzzled at this form of answer.

“I didn’t license him,” expounded Link, “and he ain’t a mutt. If that’s all you’ve stopped your trav’lin’ m’nagerie at my lane for, you can move it on as quick as you’re a mind to.”

He bent over his work again. But Eben Shunk did not take the hint.

“’Cordin’ to the laws an’ statoots of the Borough of Hampton, county of P’saic, state of Noo Jersey,” proclaimed the dog catcher with much dignity, “it’s my perk’s’t an’ dooty to impound each an’ every unlicensed dog found in the borough limits.”

“Well,” assented Link, “go on and impound ’em, then. Only don’t pester me about it. I’m not int’rested. S’pose you get that old bag of bones to haul your rattletrap junk cart somewheres else! I’m busy.”

"Bein’ a smarty won’t get you nowheres!" declared Shunk. “If your dog ain’t licensed, it’s my dooty to impound him. He—”

“Here!” snapped Link. “You got your answer on that when you tackled my wife about it down to her father’s store last week. She told me all about it. You came a-blusterin’ in there while she was buyin’ some goods and while Chum was standin’ peaceful beside her. You said if he wasn’t licensed he’d be put in pound. And if it hadn’t been for her dad and the clerk throwin’ you out of the store, you’d ’a’ grabbed him, then and there. She told you, then, that we pay the state and county tax on the dog and that the law doesn’t compel us to pay any other tax or any license fee for him. If your borough council wanted to get some easy graft by passing an ordinance for ev’ry res’dent of Hampton Borough to pay one dollar a year license fees on their dogs—well, that’s their business. It’s not mine. My home’s not in the borough and—”

"Some says it is an’ some says it ain’t," interrupted Shunk. “The south bound’ry of the borough was shifted, by law, last month. An’ the line takes in more’n a half-acre of your south woodlot. So you’re a res’d’nt of—”

"I don’t live in my south woodlot," contradicted Link, “nor yet within half a mile of it. I—”

“That’s for the courts to d’cide,” said Shunk. “Pers’n’lly, I hold you’re a borough res’d’nt. An’ since you ain’t paid your fee, your dog is forf’t to—”

“I see!” put in Ferris. “You’ll grab the dog and you’ll get your dirty dollar fee from the borough treasury. Then if the law decides my home is out of the borough, you’ll still have your money. You’re a clever man, Shunk.”

“Well,” averred the dog catcher, mildly pleased with the compliment, “it ain’t for me to say as to that. But there don’t many folks find me a-nappin’, I’m sittin’ here to tell all an’ sundry. Now, ’bout that dog—”

“Yes,” repeated Link admiringly, “you’re a mighty clever man! Only I’ve figgered that you aren’t quite clever enough to spell your own name right. Folks who know you real well think you’ve got an ‘h’ in it that ought to be a ‘k.’ But that’s no fault of yours, Shunk. You do your best to live up to the name you ought by rights to have. So—”

"You’ll leave my name be!" thundered the dog catcher.

“I sure will,” assented Link. “By the way, did you ever happen to hear how near you came to not gettin’ this office of dog catcher down at Hampton?”

“No,” grunted the other, “I didn’t hear nothin’ of the kind. An’ it ain’t true. Mayor Wipple app’inted me, same week as he took office—like he had promised he would if I’d git my brother an’ the three boys to vote for him an’ if I’d c’ntribbit thutty-five dollars to his campaign fund. There wasn’t ever any doubt I’d git the app’intment.”

“Oh, yes, there was,” cheerily denied Link, with a sidelong glance at his pretty wife and her six-year-old sister, Olive Chatham, who were advancing along the lane from the house to note the progress of the stonework piers. "There was a lot of doubt. If it hadn’t been for just one thing you’d never have landed the job.

“It was this way,” he continued, winking encouragement to Mrs. Ferris who had come to a momentary and disapproving halt at sight of her husband’s uninvited guest. “The day after Wipple was elected mayor, I asked him who he was aiming to appoint to the high and loocrative office of dog catcher. He told me he was goin’ to appoint you. I says to him, ‘But Eben Shunk’s the meanest man in town!’ And Wipple answers ‘I know he is. He’s as mean as pussly. That’s why I’ve picked him out for dog catcher. No decent feller would take such a dirty job.’ That’s what Mayor Wipple told me, Shunk. So you see if you hadn’t happened to be the meanest man in Hampton, you’d never ’a’ got—”

"It’s a durn lie!" bellowed the irate Shunk. “It’s a lie! Wipple never said no such a thing. He—”

"What’s in the wagon, there?" spoke up little Olive Chatham, as a dolorous whimpering rose from the depths of the covered cart. “It sounds awful unhappy.”

“It _is_ ‘awful unhappy,’ Baby,” answered her brother-in-law. “Mr. Shunk has been on his rounds, picking up some more poor little stray curs, along the road. He’s going to carry them to a filthy pen in his filthy back yard and leave them to starve and be chewed by bigger dogs there, while he pikes off to get his dollar, each, for them. Then, if they aren’t claimed and licensed in twenty-four hours, he’s going to—”

“Link!” interposed Dorcas, his wife, warningly, as she visualised the effect of such a word picture on her little sister’s tender heart.

But Olive had heard enough to set her baby eyes ablaze with indignation. Wheeling on Link, she demanded:

“Why don’t you whip him and let out all those poor little dogs? And then why don’t you go and put him in prison for—”

“Hush, dear!” whispered Dorcas, drawing the little girl close to her. “Better run back to the house now! That isn’t a nice sort of man for you to be near.”

Eben Shunk caught the low-spoken words. They served to snap the last remaining threads of the baited dog catcher’s temper. His fists clenched and he took a step toward Ferris. But the latter’s lazily wiry figure did not seem to lend itself to the idea of passivity under punishment. Shunk’s angry little eyes fell on the collie.

“That dog of your’n ain’t licensed,” he said. “He’s layin’ out on the public road. An’ I’m goin’ to take him along.”

“Go ahead,” vouchsafed Link indifferently, with a covert glance of reassurance at his scandalised wife, who had made a family idol of Chum. “He’s there. Nobody’s stoppin’ you.”

Pleased at meeting with no stouter resistance from the owner, Shunk took a step toward the recumbent collie. Little Olive cried out in hot protest. Link bent over her and whispered in her ear. The child’s face lost its look of panic and shone with pleased interest as she watched Eben bear down upon his victim. Ferris whistled hissingly between his teeth—an intermittent staccato blast. Then he, too, turned an interested gaze on the impending capture.

Chum had not enjoyed the past few minutes at all. His loafing inspection of his master’s job had been interrupted by the arrival of this loud-voiced stranger. He did not like the stranger. Chum decided that, at his first glimpse and scent of the man—and the dog catcher’s voice had confirmed the distaste. Shunk belonged to the type which sensitive dogs hate instinctively. But Chum was too well versed in the guest law to molest or snarl at any one with whom Link was in seemingly amicable talk. So he had paid no overt heed to the fellow.

There were other and more interesting things, moreover, which had caught Chum’s attention. The sounds and scents from the wagon’s unseen interior carried to him a message of fear, of pain, of keen sorrow. Chum had half-risen, to investigate. Link, noting the action, had signalled the dog to lie down again. And Chum, as always, had obeyed.

But now, through his sullen brooding, pierced a sound that set every one of the collie’s lively nerves aquiver. It was a hissing whistle—broken and staccato. It was a signal Link had made up, years ago—a signal which always brought the dog to him on the gallop. For that signal meant no summons to a romp. It spelled mischief. For example, when cattle chanced to stroll in from the highway, that whistle signified leave for the dog to run them, pell-mell, down the road, with barks and nips—instead of driving them decorously and slowly, as he drove his own master’s cows. It had a similar message when tramp or mongrel invaded the farm.

At the sound of it, now, Chum was on his feet in an instant. He found himself confronting the obnoxious stranger, who was just reaching forward to clutch him.

Chum eluded the man and started toward Link. Shunk made a wild grab for him. Chum’s ruff—a big handful of it—was seized in the clutching fingers. Again sounded that queer whistle. This time—thanks to the years of close companionship between dog and master—Chum caught its purport. Evidently, it had something to do with Shunk, with the man who had laid hold on him so unceremoniously.

Chum glanced quickly at Link. Ferris was grinning. With an imperceptible nod of the head he indicated Shunk. The dog understood. At least, he understood enough for his own purposes. The law was off of this disgusting outlander. Ferris was trying to enlist the collie’s aid in harrying him. It was a right welcome task.

In a flash, Chum had twisted his silken head. A single slash of his white eyetooth had laid open the fat wrist of the fat hand that gripped him. Shunk, with a yell, loosed his hold and jumped back. He caught the echo of a smothered chuckle from Link and turned to find the Ferrises and the child surveying the scene with happy excitement—looking for all the world like three people at an amusing picture show. The dog catcher bolted for his wagon and plunged the lacerated arm into the box beneath the seat. Thence he drew it forth, clutching in his hand a coil of noosed rope and a strong oversized landing net.

“Tools of his trade!” explained Link airily, to his wife and Olive.

As he spoke, Ferris made a motion of his forefinger toward the tensely expectant dog and thence toward the lane. The gesture was familiar from sheep herding experience. At once, Chum darted back a few yards and stood just inside the boundaries of his master’s land. A clucking sound from Link told him where to halt. And the collie stood there, tulip ears cocked, plumy tail awag, eyes abrim with mischief, as he waited his adversary’s next move. Seldom did Chum have so appreciative an audience to show off before.

Shunk, rope and net in hand, bore down upon his prey. As he came on he cleared decks for action by yanking his coat off and slinging it across one shoulder. Thus his arms would work unimpeded. So eagerly did he advance to the hunt that he paid no heed to Link. Wherefore, he failed to note a series of unobtrusive gestures and clucks and nods with which Link guided his furtively observing dog.