Across the lawn and door-yard and around the end of the stables thundered Lad. With the speed of a charging bull he came on. Before he reached the burning shack, he knew more of his mate"s plight and peril than any human could have known.
Around the small building he whirled, so close to it that the flames at its base seared his mighty coat and blistered and blackened his white paws.
Then, running back a yard or so, he flung his eighty-pound weight crashingly at the fastened door. The door, as it chanced, was well-nigh the only solid portion of the shack. And it held firm, under an impact that bruised the flying dog and which knocked him breathless to the fire-streaked ground.
At sound of her mate"s approach, Lady had ceased wailing. Lad could hear her terrified whimpers as she danced frantically about on the red-hot boards. And the knowledge of her torture drove him momentarily insane.
Staggering up from his fall, he flung his splendid head back and, with muzzle to the clouded skies, he tore to shreds the solemn silences of the spring night with a wolf-howl; hideous in its savage grief, deafeningly loud.
As though the awesome yell had cleared his brain, he sprang to his feet amid the stinging embers; steady, alert, calm; with no hint of despair or of surrender.
His smarting eyes fixed themselves on the single dusty window of the tool-house. Its sill was a full five feet above ground. Its four small panes were separated by a wide old-fashioned cross-piece of hardwood and putty. The putty, from age, was as solid as cement. The whole window was a bare sixteen by twenty inches.
Lad ran back, once more, a few feet; his gaze fixed appraisingly on the window and measuring his distance with the sureness of a sharpshooter.
The big collie had made up his mind. His plan was formed. And as he was all-wise, with the eerie wisdom of the highest type of collie, there can be scant doubt he knew just what that plan entailed.
It was suicide. But, oh, it was a glorious suicide! Compared to it the love-sacrifices of a host of Antonys and Abelards and Romeos are but petty things. Indeed, its nearest approach in real life was perhaps Moore"s idiotically beautiful boast:
Through the fiery furnace your steps I"ll pursue; To find you and save you:--or perish there, too!
The great dog gathered himself for the insane hero-deed. His s.h.a.ggy body whizzed across the scarlet pattern of embers; then shot into the air. Straight as a flung spear he flew; hurtling through the flame-fringed billows of smoke.
Against the shut window he crashed, with the speed of a catapult.
Against it he crashed; and clean through it, into the h.e.l.l of smoke and fire and strangulation inside the shack.
His head had smashed the strong cross-piece of wood and dried putty and had crumpled it like so much wet paper. His giant shoulders had ripped the window-frame clean of its screws. Into the burning room spun Lad, amid a hail of broken gla.s.s and splintered wood.
To the fire-eaten floor he was hurled, close to his cowering and whimpering mate. He reeled to his feet, and stood there, shoulder to shoulder with Lady. His work was done.
And, yet, it was not in Sunnybank Lad"s nature to be such a fool as is the usual melodrama hero. True, he had come to share Lady"s fate, if he could not rescue her. Yet, he would not submit tamely to death, until every resource had been tried.
He glanced at the door. Already he had found by harsh experience that his strength availed nothing in the battering down of those strong panels. And he peered up, through the swirling red smoke, toward the oblong of window, whereby he had made his tumultuous entrance to the death-trap.
Again, he must have known how hopeless of achievement was the feat he was about to try. But, as ever, mere obstacles were not permitted to stand in Lad"s way.
Wheeling, he seized Lady by the nape of the neck. With a mighty heave, he swung her clear of the hot floor. Gathering all his fierce strength into one sublime effort, he sprang upward toward the window; his mate hanging from his iron jaws.
Yes, it was a ridiculous thing to attempt. No dog, with thrice Lad"s muscular strength, could have accomplished the impossibility of springing out through that high, narrow window, carrying a weight of fifty pounds between his teeth.
Lad"s leap did not carry him half the distance he had aimed for. Back to the floor he fell, Lady with him.
Maddened by pain and by choking and by stark terror, Lady had not the wit to realize what Lad was attempting. All she knew was that he had seized her roughly by the neck, and had leaped in air with her; and had then brought her bangingly down upon the torturing hot boards. And her panic was augmented by delirious rage.
At Lad"s face she flew, snarling murderously. One slash of her curving eyetooth laid bare his cheek. Then she drove for his throat.
Lad stood stock still. His only move was to interpose his s.h.a.ggy shoulder to her ravening jaws. And, deep into the fur and skin and flesh of his shoulder her furious teeth sh.o.r.e their way.
It would have been child"s play for him to have shaken her off and to have leaped to safety, alone, through the sash-less window.
Yet he stood where he was; his sorrowful eyes looking tenderly down upon the maddened youngster who was tearing into him so ferociously.
And that was the picture the Master beheld; as he flung open the door and blinked gaspingly through the smoke for the dog he had locked in.
Brought out of bed, on the jump, by Lad"s unearthly wolf howl, he had smelt the smoke and had run out to investigate. But, not until he unbarred the tool-house door did he guess that Lady was not the burning shack"s only prisoner.
"It"ll be another six months before your wonderful coat grows out again, Laddie dear," observed the Mistress, next day, as she renewed the smelly wet cloths on Lad"s burned and gla.s.s-cut body. "Dr. Hopper says so. But he says the rest of you will be as well as ever, inside of a fortnight. And he says Lady will be well, before you will. But, honestly, you"ll never look as beautiful, again, to me, as you do this very minute. He--he said you look like a scarecrow. But you don"t. You look like a--like a--a-What gorgeously splendid thing DOES he look like, dear?" she appealed to her husband.
"He looks," replied the Master, after deep thought, "he looks like LAD.
And that"s about the highest praise I know how to give him;--or give to anyone."
CHAPTER V. The Stowaway
There were but three collies on the Place, in those days. Lad; his dainty gold-and-white mate, Lady; and their fluffy and fiery wisp of a son, little Wolf.
When Wolf was a spoiled and obstreperous puppy of three months or so, Lady was stricken with distemper and was taken to a veterinary hospital. There, for something more than three months she was nursed through the scourging malady and through the ch.o.r.ea and pneumonia which are so p.r.o.ne to follow in distemper"s dread wake.
Science amuses itself by cutting up and otherwise torturing helpless dogs in the unholy name of vivisection. But Science has not yet troubled itself to discover one certain cure or preventive for the distemper which yearly robs thousands of homes of their loved canine pets and guards. Apparently it is pleasanter for scientists to watch a screaming dog writhe under the knife in a research laboratory than to trouble about finding a way to abolish distemper; and thus of ridding the dog world of its worst scourge.
This is a digression from our story. But perhaps it is worth your remembering,--you who care about dogs.
Altogether, Lady was away from the Place for fifteen weeks.
And, in her absence, the unhappy Lad took upon himself the task of turning little Wolf from a pest into something approaching a decent canine citizen. It was no sinecure, this educating of the hot-tempered and undisciplined youngster. But Lad brought to it an elephantine patience and an uncannily wise brain. And, by the time Lady was brought back, cured, the puppy had begun to show the results of his sire"s stern teachings.
Indeed, Lady"s absence was the best thing that could have befallen Wolf. For, otherwise, his training must needs have devolved upon the Mistress and the Master. And no mere humans could have done the job with such grimly gentle thoroughness as did Lad. Few dogs, except pointers or setters or collies, will deign to educate their puppies to the duties of life and of field and of house. But Lad had done the work in a way that left little to be asked for.
When Lady came home, her flighty brain seemed to have forgotten the fact that young Wolf was her once-adored son. Of her earlier capricious devotion to him, no trace remained. She sniffed in stand-offish inquiry at him; as at a stranger. And the scatterbrain pup remembered her no better than she remembered him. There is a wide gulf in intelligence between a three-month puppy and one six months old.
Yet,--perhaps because they were both excitable and mischievous and loved romping,--and because each was a novelty to the other--mother and son quickly formed a new friendship. From the more sedate and discipline-enforcing Lad, the youngster turned eagerly to chum-ship with this flighty gold-white stranger. And Lady, for similar reason, seemed to find ten times as much congeniality and fun in romping with Wolf as in playing with the less galvanically agile Lad.
In brief, Lady and little Wolf became inseparable companions;--this to the semi-exclusion of Lad.
The great collie did not resent this exclusion; nor did he try to regain his fast-slipping hold on Wolf"s affections. Yet, in fashion that was more pathetic than ludicrous, he sought to win back Lady"s waning affection. A bit clumsily, he tried to romp and gambol with her, as did Wolf. He tried to interest her, as of yore, in following his lead in break-neck forest gallops after rabbits or in gloriously exhilarating swims in the fire-blue lake at the foot of the lawn. To the pityingly on-looking Mistress and Master, he seemed like some general or statesman seeking to unbend in the games and chatter of a party of high school boys and girls.
But it was no use.
True, in the cross-country runs or the swirling charges after rabbits, neither Lady nor Wolf could keep up with Lad"s flying stride. And a long swim, which scarce breathed Lad, would exhaust either or both of them.
But, they were young; and he was middle-aged. And, as in human relationships, that one sentence told the whole tragic story.
As well expect a couple of flyaway children to give up a game of tag in order to listen to the solemn discourse of an elderly uncle; as to make the fun-loving Lady and Wolf widen their selfish comradeship to include in it the steadier and older and infinitely wiser Lad.
Perforce, Lad was thrown more and more on the society of the Mistress and the Master. And, in their friendship, he was happy;--until he would chance to see his mate and his little son playing in wild ecstasy with a stick or ball, and would frisk bulkily over to join them. In a bare second or two, the demeanor of both showed him just what a grossly unwelcome interloper he was.
Whereat, after a wistfully miserable glance from one to the other of the exclusive pair, Lad would trot slowly back to his human deities; and, with a queerly sobbing little sigh, he would curl up at the Mistress"s feet.