Lad: A Dog

by Albert Payson Terhune

  With a reverberating snort the Wall Street Farmer dropped the cigar butt and shook his anguished hand rapidly up and down, in the first sting of pain. The loose fingers slapped together like the strands of an obese cat-o’-nine-tails.

  And this was the gesture which Lochinvar beheld, as he turned to catch the signal for his next move.

  Now, the frantic St. Vitus shaking of the hand and arm, accompanied by a clumsy step-dance and a mouthful of rich oaths, forms no signal known to the very cleverest of “working”collies. Neither does the inserting of two burned fingers into the signaler’s mouth—which was the second motion the Merle noted.

  Ignorant as to the meaning of either of these unique signals the dog stood, puzzled. The Wall Street Farmer recovered at once from his fit of babyish emotion, and motioned his dog to go on to the next post.

  The Merle did not move. Here, at last, was a signal he understood perfectly well. Yet, after the manner of the best-taught “working” dogs, he had been most rigidly trained from earliest days to finish the carrying out of one order before giving heed to another.

  He had received the signal to go in one direction. He had obeyed. He had then received the familiar signal to halt and to await instructions. Again he had obeyed. Next he had received a wildly emphatic series of signals whose meaning he could not read. A long course of training told him he must wait to have these gestures explained to him before undertaking to obey the simple signal that had followed.

  This, in his training kennel, had been the rule. When a pupil did not understand an order he must stay where he was until he could be made to understand. He must not dash away to carry out a later order that might perhaps be intended for some other pupil.

  Wherefore, the Merle stood stock-still. The Wall Street Farmer repeated the gesture of pointing toward the next post. Inquiringly, Lochinvar watched him. The Wall Street Farmer made the gesture a third time—to no purpose other than to deepen the dog’s look of inquiry. Lochinvar was abiding, steadfastly, by his hard-learned lessons of the Scottish moorland days.

  Someone in the crowd tittered. Someone else sang out delightedly:

  “Lad wins!”

  The Wall Street Farmer heard. And he proceeded to mislay his easily losable self-control. Again, these inferior countryfolk seemed about to wrest from him a prize he had deemed all his own, and to rejoice in the prospect.

  “You mongrel cur!” he bellowed. “Get along there!’

  This diction meant nothing to Lochinvar, except that his owner’s temper was gone—and with it his scanty authority.

  Glure saw red—or he came as near to seeing it as can anyone outside a novel. He made a plunge across the quadrangle, seized the beautiful Merle by the scruff of the neck and kicked him.

  Now, here was something the dog could understand with entire ease. This loud-mouthed vulgarian giant, whom he had disliked from the first, was daring to lay violent hands on him—on Champion Lochinvar III, the dog-aristocrat that had always been handled with deference and whose ugly temper had never been trained out of him.

  As a growl of hot resentment went up from the onlookers, a far more murderously resentful growl went up from the depths of Lochinvar’s furry throat.

  In a flash, the Merle had wrenched free from his owner’s neck grip. And, in practically the same moment, his curved eyeteeth were burying themselves deep in the calf of the Wall Street Farmer’s leg.

  Then the trainer and the Judge seized on the snarlingly floundering pair. What the outraged trainer said, as he ran up, would have brought a blush to the cheek of a waterside bartender. What the Judge said (in tone of no regret, whatever) was:

  “Mr. Glure, you have forfeited the match by moving more than three feet from the central post. But your dog had already lost it by refusing to ‘work’ at your command. Lad wins the Maury Trophy.”

  So it was that the Gold Hat, as well as the modest little silver “Best Collie” cup, went to The Place that night. Setting the golden monstrosity on the trophy shelf, the Master surveyed it for a moment, then said:

  “That Gold Hat is even bigger than it looks. It is big enough to hold a thousand yards of surgical dressings; and gallons of medicine and broth, besides. And that’s what it is going to hold. Tomorrow I’ll send it to Vanderslice, at the Red Cross Headquarters.”

  “Good!” applauded the Mistress. “Oh, good! Send it in Lad’s name.”

  “I shall. I’ll tell Vanderslice how it was won; and I’ll ask him to have it melted down to buy hospital supplies. If that doesn’t take off its curse of unsportsmanliness, nothing will. I’ll get you something to take its place, as a trophy.”

  But there was no need to redeem that promise. A week later, from Headquarters, came a tiny scarlet enamel cross, whose silver back bore the inscription:

  “To SUNNYBANK LAD; in memory of a generous gift to Humanity.”

  “Its face-value is probably fifty cents, Lad, dear,” commented the Mistress, as she strung the bit of scarlet on the dog’s shaggy throat. “But its heart value is at least a billion dollars. Besides—you can wear it. And nobody, outside a nightmare, could possibly have worn kind, good Mr. Hugh Lester Maury’s Gold Hat. I must write to Mr. Glure and tell him about it. How tickled he’ll be! Won’t he, Laddie?”

  9

  SPEAKING OF UTILITY

  THE MAN HUDDLED FROWZILY IN THE TREE CROTCH, LIKE A rumpled and sick raccoon. At times he would crane his thin neck and peer about him, but more as if he feared rescue than as though he hoped for it.

  Then, before slumping back to his sick-raccoon pose, he would look murderously earthward and swear with lurid fervor.

  At the tree foot the big dog wasted neither time nor energy in frantic barking or in capering excitedly about. Instead, he lay at majestic ease, gazing up toward the treed man with grave attentiveness.

  Thus, for a full half hour, the two had remained—the treer and the treed. Thus, from present signs, they would continue to remain until Christmas.

  There is, by tradition, something intensely comic in the picture of a man treed by a dog. The man, in the present case, supplied the only element of comedy in the scene. The dog was anything but comic, either in looks or in posture.

  He was a collie, huge of bulk, massive of shoulder, deep and shaggy of chest. His forepaws were snowy and absurdly small. His eyes were seal-dark and sorrowful—eyes that proclaimed not only an uncannily wise brain, but a soul as well. In brief, he was Lad; official guard of The Place’s safety.

  It was in this role of guard that he was now serving as jailer to the man he had seen slouching through the undergrowth of the forest which grew close up to The Place’s outbuildings.

  From his two worshiped deities—the Mistress and the Master—Lad had learned in puppyhood the simple provisions of the Guest Law. He knew, for example, that no one openly approaching the house along the driveway from the furlong-distant highroad was to be molested. Such a visitor’s advent—especially at night—might lawfully be greeted by a salvo of barks. But the barks were a mere announcement, not a threat.

  On the other hand, the Law demanded the instant halting of all prowlers, or of anyone seeking to get to the house from road or lake by circuitous and stealthy means. Such roundabout methods spell Trespass. Every good watchdog knows that. But wholly good watchdogs are far fewer than most people—even their owners—realize. Lad was one of the few.

  Today’s trespasser had struck into The Place’s grounds from an adjoining bit of woodland. He had moved softly and obliquely and had made little furtive dashes from one bit of cover to another, as he advanced toward the outbuildings a hundred yards north of the house.

  He had moved cleverly and quietly. No human had seen or heard him. Even Lad, sprawling half-asleep on the veranda, had not seen him. For, in spite of theory, a dog’s eye by daylight is not so keen or so farseeing as is a human’s. But the wind had brought news of a foreign presence on The Place—a presence which Lad’s hasty glance at driveway and lake edge did not verify.

&nb
sp; So the dog had risen to his feet, stretched himself, collie, fashion, fore and aft, and trotted quickly away to investigate. Scent, and then sound, taught him which way to go.

  Two minutes later he changed his wolf trot to a slow and unwontedly stiff-legged walk, advancing with head lowered, and growling softly far down in his throat. He was making straight for a patch of sumac, ten feet in front of him and a hundred feet behind the stables.

  Now, when a dog bounds toward a man, barking and with head up, there is nothing at all to be feared from his approach. But when the pace slackens to a stiff walk and his head sinks low, that is a very good time, indeed, for the object of his attentions to think seriously of escape or of defense.

  Instinct or experience must have imparted this useful truth to the lurker in the sumac patch, for as the great dog drew near the man incontinently wheeled and broke cover. At the same instant Lad charged.

  The man had a ten-foot start. This vantage he utilized by flinging himself bodily at a low-forked hickory tree directly in his path.

  Up the rough trunk to the crotch he shinned with the speed of a chased cat. Lad arrived at the tree bole barely in time to collect a mouthful of cloth from the climber’s left trouser ankle.

  After which, since he was not of the sort to clamor noisily for what lurked beyond his reach, the dog yawned and lay down to keep guard on his arboreal prisoner. For half an hour he lay thus, varying his vigil once or twice by sniffing thoughtfully at a ragged scrap of trouser cloth between his little white forepaws. He sniffed the thing as though trying to commit its scent to memory.

  The man did not seek help by shouting. Instead, he seemed oddly willing that no other human should intrude on his sorry plight. A single loud yell would have brought aid from the stables or from the house or even from the lodge up by the gate. Yet, though the man must have guessed this, he did not yell. Instead, he cursed whisperingly at intervals and snarled at his captor.

  At last, his nerve going, the prisoner drew out a jackknife, opened a blade at each end of it and hurled the ugly missile with all his force at the dog. As the man had shifted his position to get at the knife, Lad had risen expectantly to his feet with some hope that his captive might be going to descend.

  It was lucky for Lad that he was standing when the knife was thrown, for the aim was not bad, and a dog lying down cannot easily dodge. A dog standing on all fours is different, especially if he is a collie.

  Lad sprang to one side instinctively as the thrower’s arm went back. The knife whizzed, harmless, into the sumac patch. Lad’s teeth bared themselves in something that looked like a smile and was not. Then he lay down again on guard.

  A minute later he was up with a jump. From the direction of the house came a shrill whistle followed by a shout of “Lad! La-ad!”

  It was the Master calling him. The summons could not be ignored. Usually it was obeyed with eager gladness, but now—Lad looked worriedly up into the tree. Then, coming to a decision, he galloped away at top speed.

  In ten seconds he was at the veranda where the Master stood talking with a newly arrived guest. Before the Master could speak to the dog, Lad rushed up to him, whimpering in stark appeal, then ran a few steps toward the stables, paused, looked back and whimpered again.

  “What’s the matter with him?” loudly demanded the guest—an obese and elderly man, right sportily attired. “What ails the silly dog?”

  “He’s found something,” said the Master. “Something he wants me to come and see—and he wants me to come in a hurry.”

  “How do you know?” asked the guest.

  “Because I know his language as well as he knows mine,” retorted the Master.

  He set off in the wake of the excited dog. The guest followed in more leisurely fashion complaining:

  “Of all the idiocy! To let a measly dog drag you out of the shade on a red-hot day like this just to look at some dead chipmunk he’s found!”

  “Perhaps,” stiffly agreed the Master, not slackening his pace. “But if Lad behaves like that, unless it’s pretty well worth while, he’s changed a lot in the past hour. A man can do worse sometimes than follow a tip his dog gives him.”

  “Have it your own way,” grinned the guest. “Perhaps he may lead us to a treasure cave or to a damsel in distress. I’m with you.”

  “Guy me if it amuses you,” said the Master.

  “It does,” his guest informed him. “It amuses me to see any grown man think so much of a dog as you people think of Lad. It’s maudlin.”

  “My house is the only one within a mile on this side of the lake that has never been robbed,” was the Master’s reply. “My stable is the only one in the same radius that hasn’t been rifled by harness and tire thieves. Thieves who seem to do their work in broad daylight, too, when the stables won’t be locked. I have Lad to thank for all that. He—”

  The dog had darted far ahead. Now he was standing beneath a low-forked hickory tree staring up into it.

  “He’s treed a cat!” guffawed the guest, his laugh as irritating as a kick. “Extra! Come out and get a nice sunstroke, folks! Come and see the cat Lad has treed!”

  The Master did not answer. There was no cat in the tree. There was nothing visible in the tree. Lad’s aspect shrank from hope to depression. He looked apologetically at the Master. Then he began to sniff once more at a scrap of cloth on the ground.

  The Master picked up the cloth and presently walked over to the tree. From a jut of bark dangled a shred of the same cloth. The Master’s hand went to Lad’s head in approving caress.

  “It was not a cat,” he said. “It was a man. See the rags of—”

  “Oh, piffle!” snorted the guest. “Next you’ll be reconstructing the man’s middle name and favorite perfume from the color of the bark on the tree. You people are always telling about wonderful stunts of Lad’s. And that’s all the evidence there generally is to it.”

  “No, Mr. Glure,” denied the Master, taking a strangle hold on his temper. “No. That’s not quite all the evidence that we have for our brag about Lad. For instance, we had the evidence of your own eyes when he herded that flock of stampeded prize sheep for you last spring, and of your own eyes again when he won the ‘Gold Hat’ cup at the Labor Day Dog Show. No, there’s plenty of evidence that Lad is worth his salt. Let it go at that. Shall we get back to the house? It’s fairly cool on the veranda. By the way, what was it you wanted me to call Lad for? You asked to see him. And—”

  “Why, here’s the idea,” explained Glure as they made their way through the heat back to the shade of the porch. “It’s what I drove over here to talk with you about. I’m making the rounds of all this region. And, say, I didn’t ask to see Lad. I asked if you still had him. I asked because—”

  “Oh,” apologized the Master. “I thought you wanted to see him. Most people ask to if he doesn’t happen to be round when they call. We—”

  “I asked you if you still had him,” expounded Mr. Glure, “because I hoped you hadn’t. I hoped you were more of a patriot.”

  “Patriot?” echoed the Master, puzzled.

  “Yes. That’s why I’m making this tour of the country: to rouse dog owners to a sense of their duty. I’ve just formed a local branch of the Food Conservation League and—”

  “It’s a splendid organization,” warmly approved the Master, “but what have dog owners to—”

  “To do with it?” supplemented Glure. “They have nothing to do with it, more’s the pity. But they ought to. That’s why I volunteered to make this canvass. It was my own idea. Some of the others were foolish enough to object, but as I had founded and financed this Hampton branch of the League—”

  “What ‘canvass’ are you talking about?” asked the Master, who was far too familiar with Glure’s ways to let the man become fairly launched on a paean of self-adulation. “You say it’s ‘to rouse dog owners to a sense of their duty.’ Along what line? We dog men have raised a good many thousand dollars this past year by our Red Cross shows and by ou
r subscriptions to all sorts of war funds. The Blue Cross, too, and the Collie Ambulance Fund have—”

  “This is something better than the mere giving of surplus coin,” broke in Glure. “It is something that involves sacrifice. A needful sacrifice for our country. A sacrifice that may win the war.”

  “Count me in on it, then!” cordially approved the Master. “Count in all real dog men. What is the ‘sacrifice’?”

  “It’s my own idea,” modestly boasted Glure, adding: “That is, of course, it’s been agitated by other people in letters to newspapers and all that, but I’m the first to go out and put it into actual effect.”

  “Shoot!” suggested the weary Master.

  “That’s the very word!” exclaimed Glure. “That’s the very thing I want dog owners to combine in doing. To shoot! ”

  “To—what?”

  “To shoot—or poison—or asphyxiate,” expounded Glure, warming to his theme. “In short, to get rid of every dog.”

  The Master’s jaw swung ajar and his eyes bulged. His face began to assume an unbecoming bricky hue. Glure went on:

  “You see, neighbor, our nation is up against it. When war was declared last month it found us unprepared. We’ve got to pitch in and economize. Every mouthful of food wasted here is a new lease of life to the Kaiser. We’re cutting down on sugar and meat and fat, but for every cent we save that way we’re throwing away a dollar in feeding our dogs. Our dogs that are a useless, senseless, costly luxury! They serve no utilitarian end. They eat food that belongs to soldiers. I’m trying to brighten the corner where I am by persuading my neighbors to get rid of their dogs. When I’ve proved what a blessing it is I’m going to inaugurate a nation-wide campaign from California to New York, from—”

  “Hold on!” snapped the Master, finding some of his voice and, in the same effort, mislaying much of his temper. “What wall-eyed idiocy do you think you’re trying to talk? How many dog men do you expect to convert to such a crazy doctrine? Have you tried any others? Or am I the first mark?”