Such a leap could readily have carried it across double the s.p.a.ce which lay between it and Cyril. But not one-third of that s.p.a.ce was covered in the lightning pounce.
From the upper air,--apparently from nowhere,--a huge s.h.a.ggy body launched itself straight downward. As unerringly as the swoop of an eagle, the down-whizzing bulk flew. It smote the leaping wildcat, in mid-flight.
A set of mighty jaws,--jaws that could crack a beef-bone as a man cracks a filbert,--clove deep and unerringly into the cat"s back, just behind the shoulders. And those jaws flung all their strength into the ravening grip.
A squall,--hideous in its unearthly clangor,--split the night silences.
The maddened cat whirled about, spitting and yowling; and set its foaming teeth in the dog"s fur-armored shoulder. But before the terrible curved claws could be called into action, Lad"s rending jaws had done their work upon the spine.
To the verge of the narrow ledge the two combatants had rolled in their unloving embrace. Its last lurch of agony carped the stricken wildcat over the edge and out the ninety-foot drop into the ravine. Lad was all-but carried along with his adversary. He clawed wildly with his toes for a purchase on the smooth cliff wall; over which his hindquarters had slipped. For a second he hung, swaying, above the abyss.
Cyril, scared into semi-insanity by sight of the sudden brief battle, had caught up a stick from the rubbish at his feet. With this, not at all knowing what he did, he smote the struggling Lad with every atom of his feeble force, over the head.
Luckily for the gallant dog, the stick was rotten. It broke, in the blow; but not before its impact had well-nigh destroyed Lad"s precarious balance.
One clawing hindfoot found toe-room in a flaw of rock. A tremendous heave of all his strained muscles; and Lad was scrambling to safety on the ledge.
Cyril"s last atom of vigor and resistance had gone into that panic blow at the dog. Now, the child had flung himself helplessly down, against the wall of the ledge; and was weeping in delirious hysterics. Lad moved over to him; hesitated a moment, looking wistfully upward at the solid ground above. Then, he seemed to decide which way his duty pointed. Lying down beside the freezing child, he pressed his great s.h.a.ggy body close to Cyril"s; protecting him from the swirling snow and from the worst of the cold.
The dog"s dark, deep-set eyes roved watchfully toward the crevice, alert for sign of any other marauder that might issue forth. His own s.h.a.ggy shoulder was hurting him, annoyingly, from the wildcat"s bite.
But to this he gave no heed. Closer yet, he pressed his warm, furry body to the ice-cold youngster; fending off the elements as valorously as he had fended off the wildcat.
The warmth of the great body began to penetrate Cyril"s numbed senses.
The child snuggled to the dog, gratefully. Lad"s pink tongue licked caressingly at the white face; and the collie whimpered crooning sympathy to the little sufferer.
So, for a time the dog and the child lay there; Cyril"s numb body warming under the contact.
Then, at a swift intake of the windy air, Lad"s whimper changed to a thunder of wild barking. His nostrils had told him of the search party"s approach, a few hundred yards to the windward.
Their dispiritingly aimless hunt changing into a scrambling rush in the direction whence came the faint-heard barks, the searchers trooped toward the ledge.
"Here we are!" shrilled the child, as the Master"s halloo sounded directly above. "Here we are! Down here! A--a lion tackled us, awhile back. But we licked him;--I and Laddie!"
CHAPTER VII. The Juggernaut
Long shadows were stretching lazily athwart the lawn from the gnarled old giant trees. Over the whole drowsing world brooded the solemn hush of late summer afternoon.
An amber light hung in the sleepy air; touching with gold the fire-blue lake, the circle of lovingly protecting green hills; the emerald slope which billowed up from the water-edge to the red-roofed gray house in its setting of ancient oaks.
On the bare flooring, in the coolest corner of the veranda, two collies lay sprawled. They were fast asleep; which means that they were ready to come back to complete wakefulness at the first untoward sound.
Of the two slumbrous collies, one was slenderly graceful of outline; gold-and-white of hue. She was Lady; imperious and temperamental wisp of thoroughbred caninity.
The second dog had been crowded out of the shadiest spot of the veranda, by his mate; so that a part of his burnished mahogany coat was under the direct glare of the afternoon sun. Shimmering orange tints blazed back the reflection of the torrid light.
He was Sunnybank Lad; eighty-pound collie; tawny and powerful; with absurdly tiny white forepaws and with a Soul looking out from his deep-set dark eyes. Chum and housemate he was to his two human G.o.ds;--a dog, alone of all worshipers, having the privilege of looking on the face of his G.o.ds and of communing with them without the medium of priest or of prayer.
Lady, only, of the Place"s bevy of Little People, refused from earliest puppyhood to acknowledge Lad"s benevolent rulership. She bossed and teased and pestered him, unmercifully. And Lad not only let her do all this, but he actually reveled in it. She was his mate. More,--she was his idol. This idolizing of one mate, by the way, is far less uncommon among dogs than we mere humans realize.
The summer afternoon hush was split by the whirring chug of a motor-car; that turned in from the highroad, two hundred yards beyond the house, and started down through the oak grove, along the winding driveway. Immediately, Lady was not only awake, but on her feet, and in motion. A furry gold-white whirlwind, she flashed off of the vine-shaded veranda and tore at top speed up the hill to meet the coming car.
No, it was not the Mistress and the Master whose approach stirred the fiery little collie to lightning activity. Lad knew the purr of the Place"s car and he could distinguish it from any other, as far as his sensitive ears could catch its sound. But to Lady, all cars were alike; and all were signals for wild excitement.
Like too many other collies, she had a mania for rushing at any motor vehicle, and for whizzing along beside it, perilously close to its fast-moving wheels, barking and screaming hysterically and bounding upward at its polished sides.
Nor had punishment and scolding cured her of the trait. She was an addict at car-chasing. She was wholly incurable. There are such dogs.
Soon or late, many of them pay high for the habit.
In early days, Lad also had dashed after motors. But a single sharp lecture from the Master had taught him that this was one of the direst breaches of the Place"s simple Law. And, thenceforth,--though he might tremble with eagerness,--he stood statue-still when an automobile spun temptingly past him.
More,--he had cured pup after pup, at the Place, of car-chasing. But Lady he could not cure; though he never gave up the useless attempt.
Down the drive came a delivery truck; driven fast and with none too great skill. Before it had covered half the distance between gate and house, Lady was alongside. A wheel grazed her shoulder fur as, deftly, she slipped from in front of the vehicle and sprang up at its tonneau.
With a ceaseless fanfare of barks,--delirious in her excitement,--she circled the car; springing, dodging, wheeling.
The delivery boy checked speed and shouted futile warnings to the insane collie. As he slowed down a bit on the steep grade, Lady hurled herself in front of the machine, as though taunting it for cowardice in abating its hot pace on her account.
Again and again had she run, head on, at advancing cars. It seemed to delight her when such cars slackened speed or swerved, in order not to kill her.
Now, as she whizzed backward, her vibrant muzzle a bare six inches from the shiny buffer, one of her flying feet slipped in a mud rut. Her balance gone, she tumbled.
A collie down is a collie up, in less than a second. But there was still less than a second"s s.p.a.ce between to overthrown Lady and the car"s front wheels.
The boy slammed on the emergency brake. Through his mind ran the formless thought of his fate at the hands of his employer when he should return to the store with tidings that he had run over and killed a good customer"s costly collie; and on the customer"s own grounds.
In that single breathless instant, a huge mahogany-and-snow shape flashed forward, into the path of the machine.
Lad, following his mate, had tried to shoulder her aside and to herd her too far back from the drive for any possible return to the danger zone, until the car should have pa.s.sed. More than once, at other times, had he done this. But, today, she had eluded his mighty shoulder and had flung herself back to the a.s.sault.
As she fell, she rolled over, twice, from her own momentum. The second revolution left her directly in front of the skidding wheels. One of them had actually touched her squirming spine; when white teeth gripped her by the scruff of the neck. Those teeth could crush a mutton-bone as a child cracks a peanut. But, on Lady, today, their power was exerted only to the extent of lifting her, in one swift wrench, clear of the ground and high in air.
The mischievous collie flew through s.p.a.ce like a lithe ma.s.s of golden fluff; and came to earth, in a heap, at the edge of the drive; well clear of the menacing wheels. With Lad, it fared otherwise.
The great dog had braced himself, with all his might, for the muscle-wrenching heave. Wherefore, he had no chance to spring clear, in time to avoid the car. This, no doubt, he had realized, when he sprang to his adored mate"s rescue. For Lad"s brain was uncanny in its cleverness. That same cleverness, more likely than mere chance,--now came to his own aid.
The left front wheel struck him and struck him fair. It hit his ma.s.sive shoulder, dislocating the joint and knocking the eighty-pound dog p.r.o.ne to earth, his ruff within an inch of the wheel. There was no time to gather his feet under him or to coerce the dislocated shoulder into doing its share toward lifting him in a sideways spring that should carry him out of the machine"s way. There was but one thing Lad could do. And he did it.
His body in a compact bunch, he rolled midway between the wheels; making the single revolution at a speed the eye could scarce follow,--a speed which jerked him from under the impending left wheel which already had smitten him down.
Over him slid the wheel-locked car, through the mud of a recent rain; while the boy clung to the emergency brake and yelled.
Over him and past him skidded the car. It missed the prostrate dog,--missed him with all four wheels; though the rear axle"s housing smeared his snowy ruff with a blur of black grease.
On went the machine for another ten feet, before it could halt. Then a chalk-faced delivery boy peered backward in fright,--to see Lad getting painfully to his feet and holding perplexedly aloft his tiny right forepaw in token of the dislocated shoulder.
The delivery boy saw more. In a swirl of black bad temper, Lady had gathered herself up from the ditch where Lad"s toss had landed her.
Without a moment"s pause she threw herself upon the luckless dog whose rough toss had saved her life. Teeth aglint, growling ferociously, she dug her fangs into the hurt shoulder and slung her whole weight forward in the bite.