"I"d be willing to bet a year"s pay it "all started" about six feet from sh.o.r.e in this lake," responded the Master, "and about a fortnight ago."
But he spoke it in the depths of his own guiltily exultant heart.
Outwardly, he merely grinned; and said with vacuous conviction:
"Laddie, you"re a grand dog. And,--if you didn"t win that cup from Lochaber King in one way, you certainly won it in another!"
CHAPTER IV. Hero-Stuff
Life was monstrous pleasant, for Lad, at the Place. And never, except in early puppyhood, was he lonely. Never until the Master was so foolish as to decide in his own shallow human mind that the big collie would be happier with another collie for comrade and mate.
After that, loneliness more than once crept into Laddie"s serene life; and into the dark sorrowful eyes behind which lurked a soul. For, until one has known and relied on the companionship of one"s kind, there can be no loneliness.
The Master made another blunder--this one on his own account and on the Mistress"s,--when he bought a second collie, to share Lad"s realm of forest and lawn and lake. For, it is always a mistake to own two dogs at a time. A single dog is one"s chum and guard and worshiper. If he be rightly treated and talked to and taught, he becomes all-but human.
Because he is forced to rely solely on humans, for everything. And his mind and heart respond to this. There is no divided allegiance.
One dog in a home is worth ten times as much to his owners, in every way, as are two or more dogs. Especially if the one dog be such a collie as Sunnybank Lad. This the Master was due to discover.
On a sloppy and drippy and muggy afternoon, late in October,--one of those days n.o.body wants,--the Master came home from town; his fall overcoat showing a decided list to starboard in the shape of an egregiously bulged side-pocket.
The Mistress and Lad, as ever, came forth to greet the returning man.
Lad, with the gayly trumpeting bark which always he reserved for the Mistress or the Master after an absence of any length, cavorted rapturously up to his deity. But, midway in his welcoming advance, he checked himself; sniffing the sodden October air, and seeking to locate a new and highly interesting scent which had just a.s.sailed his sensitive nostrils.
The Master put an end to the mystery, forthwith, by reaching deep into his overcoat"s swollen pocket and fishing out a grayish golden ball of squirming fluff.
This handful of liveliness he set gingerly on the veranda floor; where it revealed itself as an eight-weeks old collie pup.
"Her name is "Lady,"" expounded the Master, as he and the Mistress gazed interestedly down upon the sprawling and wiggling puppy. "Her pedigree reads like a page in Burke"s Peerage. She--"
He paused. For Lad had moved forward to where the infant collie was trying valiantly to walk on the slippery boards. The big dog regarded the puppy; his head on one side, his tulip ears c.o.c.ked; his deep-set eyes friendily curious. This was Lad"s first experience with one of the young of his species. And he was a bit puzzled; albeit vastly interested.
Experimentally, he laid one of his tiny white forepaws lightly on the mite"s fuzzy shoulder. Instantly, the puppy growled a falsetto warning to him to keep his distance. Lad"s plumed tail began to wag at this sign of spirit in the pigmy. And, with his curved pink ribbon of tongue, he essayed to lick the shivering Lady. A second growl rewarded this attention. And Lady sought to avoid further contact with the s.h.a.ggy giant, by scrambling at top speed to the edge of the veranda.
She miscalculated the distance or else her nearsighted baby eyes failed to take account of the four-foot drop to the gravel drive below. Too late, she tried to check her awkward rush. And, for a moment, her fat little body swayed perilously on the brink.
The Mistress and the Master were too far away to catch her in time to prevent a fall which might well have entailed a broken rib or a wrenched shoulder. But Lad was nearer. Also, he moved faster.
With the speed of lightning, he made a dive for the tumbling Lady. As tenderly as if he were picking up a ball of needles, he caught her by the scruff of the neck, lifting her in the air and depositing her at the Mistress"s feet.
The puppy repaid this life-saving exploit by growling still more wrathfully and by snapping in helpless menace at the big dog"s nose.
But Lad was in no wise offended. Deaf to the praise of the Mistress,--a praise which ordinarily threw him into transports of embarra.s.sed delight,--he stood over the rescued pup; every inch of his magnificent body vibrant with homage and protectiveness.
From that hour, Lad was the adoring slave of Lady.
He watched over her, in her increasingly active rambles about the Place. Always, on the advent of doubtful strangers, he interposed his own furry bulk between her and possible kidnaping. He stood beside her as she lapped her bread-and-milk or as she chewed laboriously at her fragment of dog-biscuit.
At such times, he proved himself the mortal foe of Peter Grimm, the Mistress"s temperamental gray kitten, with whom he was ordinarily on very comfortable terms. Peter Grimm was the one creature on the Place whom Lady feared. On the day after her arrival, she essayed to worry the haughty catkin. And, a second later, the puppy was nursing a brace of deep red scratches at the tip of her inquiring black nostrils.
Thereafter, she gave Peter Grimm a wide berth. And the cat was wont to take advantage of this dread by making forays on Lady"s supper dish.
But, ever, Lad would swoop down upon the marauder, as Lady cowered whimperingly back on her haunches; and would harry the indignant cat up the nearest tree; herding her there until Lady had licked the dish clean.
Lad went further, in his fealty to the puppy. Sacrificing his own regal dignity, he would romp with her, at times when it would have been far more comfortable to drowse. He bore, without murmur, her growling a.s.saults on his food; amusedly standing aside while she annexed his supper"s choicest bits.
He endured, too, her occasional flurries of hot temper; and made no protest when Lady chose to wreak some grievance against life by flying at him with bristling ruff and jaws asnarl. Her keen little milk teeth hurt like the mischief, when they dug into his ears or his paws, in one of these rage-gusts. But he did not resent the pain or the indignity by so much as drawing back out of harm"s way. And, afterward, when quick repentance replaced anger and she strove to make friends with him again, Lad was inordinately happy.
To both the Mistress and the Master, from the very outset, it was plain that Lady was not in any way such a dog as their beloved Lad. She was as temperamental as Peter Grimm himself. She had hair-trigger nerves, a swirlingly uncertain temper that was scarce atoned for by her charm and lovableness; and she lacked Lad"s stanchness and elusive semi-human quality. The two were as different in nature as it is possible for a couple of well-brought-up thoroughbred collies to be. And the humans"
hearts did not go out to Lady as to Lad. Still, she was an ideal pet, in many ways. And, Lad"s utter devotion to her was a full set of credentials, by itself.
Autumn froze into winter. The trees turned into naked black ghosts; or, rather, into many-stringed harps whereon the northwest gales alternately shrieked and roared. The fire-blue lake was a sheet of leaden ice, twenty inches thick. The fields showed sere and grayly lifeless in the patches between sodden snow-swathes. Nature had flown south, with the birds; leaving the northern world a lifeless and empty husk, as deserted as last summer"s robin-nests.
Lady, in these drear months of a dead world, changed as rapidly as had the smiling Place. From a shapeless gray-gold fuzzy baby, she grew lank and leggy. The indeterminate fuzz was buried under a shimmering gold-and-white coat of much beauty. The muskrat face lengthened and grew delicately graceful, with its long muzzle and exquisite profile.
Lady was emerging from clownish puppyhood into the charm of youth. By the time the first anemones carried G.o.d"s message of spring through the forests" lingering snow-pall, she had lost her adolescent gawkiness and was a slenderly beautiful young collie; small and light of bone, as she remained to the day of her death, but with a slimness which carried with it a hint of lithe power and speed and endurance.
It was in the early spring that the Master promoted Lady from her winter sleeping-quarters in the tool-house; and began to let her spend more and more time indoors.
Lady had all the promise of becoming a perfect housedog. Fastidious, quick to learn, she adapted herself almost at once to indoor life. And Lad was overjoyed at her admission to the domain where until now he had ruled alone. Personally, and with the gravity of an old-world host, he conducted her from room to room. He even offered her a snoozing-place in his cherished "cave," under the piano, in the music room the spot of all others dearest to him.
But it was dim and cheerless, under the piano; or so Lady seemed to think. And she would not go there for an instant. She preferred the disreputable grizzly-bear rug in front of the living room hearth. And, temporarily deserting his loved cave, Lad used to lie on this rug at her side; well content when she edged him off its downy center and onto the b.u.mpy edges.
All winter, Lady"s sleeping quarters had been the tool-house in the back garden, behind the stables. Here, on a sweet-smelling (and flea-averting) bed of cedar shavings, she had been comfortable and wholly satisfied. But, at once, on her promotion, she appeared to look upon the once-homelike tool-house as a newly rich daylaborer might regard the tumbledown shack where he had spent the days of his poverty.
She avoided the tool-house; and even made wide detours to avoid pa.s.sing close to it. There is no more thoroughgoing sn.o.b, in certain ways, than a high-bred dog. And, to Lady, the tool-house evidently represented a humiliating phase of her outlived past.
Yet, she was foredoomed to go back to the loathed abode. And her return befell in this way:
In the Master"s study was something which Lady considered the most enthrallingly wonderful object on earth. This was a stuffed American eagle; mounted, rampant and with outflung wings, on a papier-mache stump.
Why the eagle should have fascinated Lady more than did the leopard-or-bear rugs or other chase-trophies, in the various downstairs rooms, only Lady herself could have told. But she could not keep her eyes off of it. Tiptoeing to the study door, she used to stand for half an hour at a time staring at the giant bird.
Once, in a moment of audacity, she made a playful little rush at it.
Before the Master could intervene, Lad had dashed between her and the sacred trophy; and had shouldered her gently but with much firmness out of the room; disregarding her little swirl of temper at the interference.
The Master called her back into the study. Taking her up to the eagle, he pointed at it, and said, with slow emphasis:
"Lady! Let it ALONE! Let--it--ALONE!"
She understood. For, from babyhood, she had learned, by daily practice, to understand and interpret the human voice. Politely, she backed away from the alluring bird. Snarling slightly at Lad, as she pa.s.sed him in the doorway, she stalked out of the room and went out on the veranda to sulk.
"I"m glad I happened to be here when she went for the eagle," said the Master, at lunch that day. "If I hadn"t, she might have tackled it sometime, when n.o.body was around. And a good lively collie pup could put that bit of taxidermy out of commission in less than five seconds.
She knows, now, she mustn"t touch it."
He spoke smugly; his lore on the subject being bounded by his experiences in teaching Lad the simple Law of the Place. Lad was one of the rare dogs to whom a single command or prohibition was enough to fix a lesson in his uncannily wise brain for life. Lady was not. As the Master soon had occasion to learn.
Late one afternoon, a week afterward, the Mistress had set forth on a round of neighborhood calls. She had gone in the car; and had taken Lad along. The Master, being busy and abhorring calls, had stayed at home.
He was at work in his study; and Lady was drowsing in the cool lower hall.
A few minutes before the Mistress was due to return for dinner, a whiff of acrid smoke was wafted to the man"s nostrils.