Lad: A Dog

by Albert Payson Terhune

  “Done what?” insisted the Master, impatient of the man’s noise and fury.

  “What dog?” asked the Mistress, at the same time.

  “Are you talking about Lad? If you are—”

  “I’m talkin’ about your big brown collie cur!” snorted Titus. “He’s gone an’ killed four of my best sheep. Did it in the night an’ early this mornin’. My man here caught him at the last of ’em, an’ drove him off just as he was finishin’ the poor critter. He got away with the rest of ’em.”

  “Nonsense!” denied the Master. “You’re talking rot. Lad wouldn’t touch a sheep. And—”

  “That’s what all folks say when their dogs or their children is charged with doin’ wrong!” scoffed Romaine. “But this time it won’t do no good to—”

  “You say this happened last night?” interposed the Mistress.

  “Yes, it did. Last night an’ early in the mornin’, too. Schwartz, here—”

  “But Lad sleeps in the house, every night,” objected the Mistress. “He sleeps under the piano, in the music room. He has slept there every night since he was a puppy. The maid who dusts the downstairs rooms before breakfast lets him out, when she begins work. So he—”

  “Bolster it up any way you like! broke in Romaine. ”He was out last night, all right. An’ early this morning, too.”

  “How early?” questioned the Master.

  “Five o’clock,” volunteered Schwartz, speaking up from behind his employer. “I know, because that’s the time I get up. I went out, first thing, to open the barnyard gate and drive the sheep to the pasture. First thing I saw was that big dog growling over a sheep he’d just killed. He saw me, and he wiggled out through the barnyard bars—same way he had got in. Then I counted the sheep. One was dead—the one he had just killed—and three were gone. We’ve been looking for their bodies ever since, and we can’t find them.”

  “I suppose Lad swallowed them,” ironically put in The Place’s foreman. “That makes about as much sense as the rest of the yarn. The Old Dog would no sooner—”

  “Do you really mean to say you saw Lad—saw and recognized him—in Mr. Titus’s barnyard, growling over a sheep he had iust killed?” demanded the Mistress.

  “I sure do,” affirmed Schwartz. “And I—”

  “An’ he’s ready to go on th’ stand an’ take oath to it!” supplemented Titus. “Unless you’ll pay me the damages out of court. Them sheep cost me exac‘ly $12.10 a head, in the Pat’son market, one week ago. An’ sheep on the hoof has gone up a full forty cents more since then. You owe me for them four sheep exac’ly—”

  “I owe you not one red cent!” denied the Master. “I hate law worse than I hate measles. But I’ll fight that idiotic claim all the way up to the Appellate Division before I’ll—”

  The Mistress lifted a little silver whistle that hung at her belt and blew it. An instant later Lad came galloping gaily up the lawn from the lake, adrip with water from his morning swim. Straight at the Mistress’ summons he came, and stood, expectant, in front of her, oblivious of others.

  The great dog’s mahogany-and-snow coat shone wetly in the sunshine. Every line of his splendid body was tense. His eyes looked up into the face of the loved Mistress in eager anticipation. For a whistle call usually involved some matter of more than common interest.

  “That’s the dog!” cried Schwartz. “That’s the one. He has washed off the blood. But that is the one. I would know him anywhere at all. And I knew him, already. And Mr. Romaine told me to be looking out for him, about the sheep, too. So I—”

  The Master had bent over Lad, examining the dog’s mouth. “Not a trace of blood or of wool!” he announced. “And look how he faces us! If he had anything to be ashamed of—”

  “I got a witness to prove he killed my sheep,” cut in Romaine. “Since you won’t be honest enough to square the case out of court, then the law’ll take a tuck in your wallet for you. The law will look after a poor man’s int‘rest. I don’t wonder there’s folks who want all dogs done ’way, with. Pesky curs! Here, the papers say we are short on sheep, an’ they beg us to raise ‘em, because mutton is worth double what it used to be, in open market. Then, when I buy sheep, on that say-so, your dog gets four of ’em the very first week. Think what them four sheep would ’a meant to—”

  “I’m sorry you lost them,” the Master interrupted. “Mighty sorry. And I’m still sorrier if there is a sheep-killing dog at large anywhere in this region. But Lad never—”

  “I tell ye, he did!” stormed Titus. “I got proof of it. Proof good enough for any court. An’ the court is goin’ to see me righted. It’s goin’ to do more. It’s goin’ to make you shoot that killer, there, too. I know the law. I looked it up. An’ the law says if a sleep-killin’ dog—”

  “Lad is not a sheep-killing dog!” flashed the Mistress.

  “That’s what he is!” snarled Romaine. “An’, by law, he’ll be shot as sech. He—”

  “Take your case to law, then!” retorted the Master, whose last shred of patience went by the board, at the threat. “And take it and yourself off my Place! Lad doesn’t ‘run’ sheep. But, at the word from me, he’ll ask nothing better than to ‘run’ you and your hired man every step of the way to your own woodshed. Clear out!”

  He and the Mistress watched the two irately mumbling intruders plod out of sight up the drive. Lad, at the Master’s side, viewed the accusers’ departure with sharp interest. Schooled in reading the human voice, he had listened alertly to the Master’s speech of dismissal. And, as the dog listened, his teeth had come slowly into view from beneath a menacingly upcurled lip. His eyes, half-shut, had been fixed on Titus with an expression that was not pretty.

  “Oh, dear!” sighed the Mistress miserably, as she and her husband turned indoors and made their way toward the breakfast room. “You were right about ‘good old Mr. Trouble dropping in on us.’ Isn’t it horrible? But it makes my blood boil to think of Laddie being accused of such a thing. It is crazily absurd, of course. But—”

  “Absurd?” the Master caught her up. “It’s the most absurd thing I ever heard of. If it was about any other dog than Lad, it would be good for a laugh. I mean, Romaine’s charge of the dog’s doing away with no less than four sheep and not leaving a trace of more than one of them. That, alone, would get his case laughed out of court. I remember, once in Scotland, I was stopping with some people whose shepherd complained that three of the sheep had fallen victim to a ‘killer.’ We all went up to the moor pasture to look at them. They weren’t a pretty sight, but they were all there. A dog doesn’t devour a sheep he, kills. He doesn’t even lug it away. Instead, he just—”

  “Perhaps you’d rather describe it after breakfast,” suggested the Mistress, hurriedly. “This wretched business has taken away all of my appetite that I can comfortably spare.”

  At about mid-morning of the next day, the Master was summoned to the telephone.

  “This is Maclay,” said the voice at the far end.

  “Why, hello, Mac!” responded the Master, mildly wondering why his old fishing crony, the village’s local Peace Justice, should be calling him up at such an hour. “If you’re going to tell me this is a good day for small-mouth bass to bite I’m going to tell you it isn’t. It isn’t because I’m up to my neck in work. Besides, it’s too late for the morning fishing, and too early for the bass to get up their afternoon appetites. So don’t try to tempt me into—”

  “Hold on!” broke in Maclay. “I’m not calling you up for that. I’m calling up on business; rotten unpleasant business, too.”

  “What’s wrong?” asked the Master.

  “I’m hoping Titus Romaine is,” said the Justice. “He’s just been here—with his hired man as witness—to make a complaint about your dog, Lad. Yes, and to get a court order to have the old fellow shot, too.”

  “What!” sputtered the Master. “He hasn’t actually—”

  “That’s just what he’s done,” said Maclay. “He claims Lad ki
lled four of his new sheep night before last, and four more of them this morning or last night. Schwartz swears he caught Lad at the last of the killed sheep both times. It’s hard luck, old man, and I feel as bad about it as if it were my own dog. You know how strong I am for Lad. He’s the greatest collie I’ve known, but the law is clear in such—”

  “You speak as if you thought Lad was guilty!” flamed the Master. “You ought to know better than that. He—”

  “Schwartz tells a straight story,” answered Maclay, sadly, “and he tells it under oath. He swears he recognized Lad first time. He says he volunteered to watch in the barnyard last night. He had had a hard day’s work and he fell asleep while he was on watch. He says he woke up in gray dawn to find the whole flock in a turmoil, and Lad pinning one of the sheep to the ground. He had already killed three. Schwartz drove him away. Three of the sheep were missing. One Lad had just downed was dying. Romaine swears he saw Lad ‘running’ his sheep last week. It—”

  “What did you do about the case?” asked the dazed Master.

  “I told them to be at the courtroom at three this afternoon with the bodies of the two dead sheep that aren’t missing, and that I’d notify you to be there, too.”

  “Oh, I’ll be there!” snapped the Master. “Don’t worry. And it was decent of you to make them wait. The whole thing is ridiculous! It—”

  “Of course,” went on Maclay, “either side can easily appeal from any decision I make. That is as regards damages. But, by the township’s new sheep laws, I’m sorry to say there isn’t any appeal from the local Justice’s decree that a sheep-killing dog must be shot at once. The law leaves me no option if I consider a dog guilty of sheep-killing. I have to order such a dog put to death at once. That’s what’s making me so blue. I’d rather lose a year’s pay than have to order old Lad killed.”

  “You won’t have to,” declared the Master, stoutly, albeit he was beginning to feel a nasty sinking in the vicinity of his stomach.

  “We’ll manage to prove him innocent. I’ll stake anything you like on that.”

  “Talk the case over with Dick Colfax or any other good lawyer before three o’clock,” suggested Maclay. “There may be a legal loophole out of the muddle. I hope to the Lord there is.”

  “We’re not going to crawl out through any ‘loopholes,’ Lad and I,” returned the Master. “We’re going to come through, clean. See if we don’t!”

  Leaving the telephone, he went in search of the Mistress, and more and more disheartened told her the story.

  “The worst of it is,” he finished, “Romaine and Schwartz seem to have made Maclay believe their fool yarn.”

  “That is because they believe it, themselves,” said the Mistress, “and because, just as soon as even the most sensible man is made a Judge, he seems to lose all his common sense and intuition and become nothing but a walking statute book. But you—you think for a moment, do you, that they can persuade Judge Maclay to have Lad shot?”

  She spoke with a little quiver in her sweet voice that roused all the Master’s fighting spirit.

  “This Place is going to be in a state of siege against the entire law and militia of New Jersey,” he announced, “before one bullet goes into Lad. You can put your mind to rest on that. But that isn’t enough. I want to clear him. In these days of ‘conservation’ and scarcity, it is a grave offense to destroy any meat animal. And the loss of eight sheep in two days—in a district where there has been such an effort made to revive sheep raising—”

  “Didn’t you say they claim the second lot of sheep were killed in the night and at dawn, just as they said the first were?” interposed the Mistress.

  “Why, yes. But-”

  “Then,” said the Mistress, much more comfortably, “we can prove Lad’s alibi just as I said yesterday we could. Marie always lets him out in the morning when she comes downstairs to dust these lower rooms. She’s never down before six o’clock; and the sun, nowadays, rises long before that. Schwartz says he saw Lad both times in the early dawn. We can prove, by Marie, that Lad was safe here in the house till long after sunrise.”

  Her worried frown gave way to a smile of positive inspiration. The Master’s own darkening face cleared.

  “Good!” he approved. “I think that cinches it. Marie’s been with us for years. Her word is certainly as good as a farmhand’s. Even Maclay’s ‘judicial temperament’ will have to admit that. Send her in here, won’t you?”

  When the maid appeared at the door of the study a minute later, the Master opened the examination with the solemn air of a legal veteran.

  “You are the first person down here in the morning, aren’t you, Marie?” he began.

  “Why, yes, sir,” replied the wondering maid. “Yes, always, except when you get up early to go fishing or when-”

  “What time do you get down here in the morning?” pursued the Master.

  “Along about six o’clock, sir, mostly,” said the maid, bridling a bit as if scenting a criticism of her work hours.

  “Not earlier than six?” asked the Master.

  “No, sir,” said Marie, uncomfortably. “Of course, if that’s not early enough, I suppose I could—”

  “It’s quite early enough,” vouchsafed the Master. “There is no complaint about your hours. You always let Lad out as soon as you come into the music room?”

  “Yes, sir,” she answered, “as soon as I get downstairs. Those were the orders, you remember.”

  The Master breathed a silent sigh of relief. The maid did not get downstairs until six. The dog, then, could not get out of the house until that hour. If Schwartz had seen any dog in the Romaine barnyard at daybreak, it assuredly was not Lad. Yet, racking his brain, the Master could not recall any other dog in the vicinity that bore even the faintest semblance to his giant collie. And he fell to recalling—for his happy memories of Bob, Son of Battle-that “killers” often travel many miles from home to sate their mania for sheep-slaying.

  In any event, it was no concern of his if some distant collie, drawn to the slaughter by the queer “sixth” collie sense, was killing Romaine’s new flock of sheep. Lad was cleared. The maid’s very evidently true testimony settled that point.

  “Yes, sir,” rambled on Marie, beginning to take a faint interest in the examination now that it turned upon Lad whom she loved. “Yes, sir, Laddie always comes out from under his piano the minute he hears my step in the hall outside. And he always comes right up to me and wags that big plume of a tail of his, and falls into step alongside of me and walks over to the front door, right beside me all the way. He knows as much as many a human, that dog does, sir.”

  Encouraged by the Master’s approving nod, the maid ventured to enlarge still further upon the theme.

  “It always seems as if he was welcoming me downstairs, like,” she resumed, “and glad to see me. I’ve really missed him quite bad this past few mornings.” The approving look on the Master’s face gave way to a glare of utter blankness.

  “This past few mornings?” he repeated, blitheringly. “What do you mean?”

  “Why,” she returned, flustered afresh by the quick change in her interlocutor’s manner. “Ever since those French windows are left open for the night—same as they always are when the hot weather starts in, you know, sir. Since then, Laddie don’t wait for me to let him out. When he wakes up he just goes out himself. He used to do that last year, too, sir. He—”

  “Thanks,” muttered the Master, dizzily. “That’s all. Thanks. ”

  Left alone, he sat slumped low in his chair, trying to think. He was as calmly convinced as ever of his dog’s innocence, but he had staked everything on Marie’s court testimony. And now that testimony was rendered worse than worthless.

  Crankily he cursed his own fresh-air mania which had decreed that the long windows on the ground floor be left open on summer nights. With Lad on duty, the house was as safe from successful burglary in spite of these open windows, as if guarded by a squad of special policemen. And th
e night air, sweeping through, kept it pleasantly cool against the next day’s heat. For this same coolness, a heavy price was now due.

  Presently the daze of disappointment passed leaving the Master pulsing with a wholesome fighting anger. Rapidly he revised his defense and, with the Mistress’ far cleverer aid, made ready for the afternoon’s ordeal. He scouted Maclay’s suggestion of hiring counsel and vowed to handle the defense himself. Carefully he and his wife went over their proposed line of action.

  Peace Justice Maclay’s court was held daily in a rambling room on an upper floor of the village’s Odd Fellows’ Hall. The proceedings there were generally marked by shrewd sanity rather than by any effort at formalism. Maclay, himself, sat at a battered little desk at the room’s far end, his clerk using a corner of the same desk for the scribbling of his sketchy notes.

  In front of the desk was a rather long deal table with kitchen chairs around it. Here, plaintiffs and defendants and prisoners and witnesses and lawyers were wont to sit, with no order of precedence or of other formality. Several other chairs were ranged irregularly along the wall to accommodate any overflow of the table’s occupants.

  Promptly at three o’clock that afternoon, the Mistress and the Master entered the courtroom. Close at the Mistress’ side —though held by no leash—paced Lad. Maclay and Romaine and Schwartz were already on hand. So were the clerk and the constable and one or two idle spectators. At a corner of the room, wrapped in burlap, were huddled the bodies of the two slain sheep.

  Lad caught the scent of the victims the instant he set foot in the room, and he sniffed vibrantly once or twice. Titus Romaine, his eyes fixed scowlingly on the dog, noted this, and he nudged Schwartz in the ribs to call the hired man’s attention to it.

  Lad turned aside in fastidious disgust from the bumpy burlap bundle. Seeing the Judge and recognizing him as an old acquaintance, the collie wagged his plumed tail in gravely friendly greeting and stepped forward for a pat on the head.

  “Lad!” called the Mistress, softly.