Peter Grimm, the Mistress"s cynical and temperamental gray cat, was picking its dainty way across the lawn as Lad emerged from the house.
Ordinarily, Lad regarded Peter Grimm with a cold tolerance. But now, he dashed at the cat with a semblance of stark wrath. Like a furry whirlwind he bore down upon the amazed feline. The cat, in dire offense, scratched his nose with a quite unnecessary virulence and fled up a tree, spitting and yowling, tail fluffed out as thick as a man"s wrist.
Seeing that Peter Grimm had resorted to unsportsmanly tactics by scrambling whither he could not follow, Lad remembered the need for silence and forbore to bark threats at his escaped victim. Instead, he galloped to the rear of the house where stood the dairy.
The dairy door was on the latch. With his head Lad b.u.t.ted it open and ran into the stone-floored room. A line of full milk-pans were ranged side by side on a shelf. Rising on his hind-legs and bracing his forepaws on the shelf, Lad seized edges of the deep pans, one after another, between his teeth, and, with a succession of sharp jerks brought them one and all clattering to the floor.
Scampering out of the dairy, ankle deep in a river of spilt milk, and paying no heed to the cries of the scandalized cook, he charged forth in the open again. His eye fell on a red cow, tethered by a long chain in a pasture-patch beyond the stables.
She was an old acquaintance of his, this cow. She had been on The Place since before he was born. Yet, to-day Lad"s spear knew no brother. He tore across the lawn and past the stables, straight at the astonished bovine. In terror, the cow threw up her tail and sought to lumber away at top speed. Being controlled by her tether she could run only in a wide circle. And around and around this circle Lad drove the bellowing brute as fast as he could make her run, until the gardener came panting to her relief.
But neither the gardener nor any other living creature could stay Lad"s rampage that day. He fled merrily up to the Lodge at the gate, burst into its kitchen and through to the refrigerator. There, in a pan, he found a raw leg of mutton. Seizing this twelve-pound morsel in his teeth and dodging the indignant housewife, he careered out into the highway with his prize, dug a hole in the roadside ditch and was gleefully preparing to bury the mutton therein, when its outraged owner rescued it.
A farmer was jogging along the road behind a half-dozing horse. A painful nip on the rear hind-leg turned the nag"s drowsy jog into a really industrious effort at a runaway. Already, Lad had sprung clear of the front wheel. As the wagon b.u.mped past him, he leaped upward; deftly caught a hanging corner of the lap-robe and hauled it free of the seat.
Robe in mouth, he capered off into a field; playfully keeping just out of the reach of the pursuing agrarian; and at last he deposited the stolen treasure in the heart of a bramble-patch a full half-mile from the road.
Lad made his way back to The Place by a wide detour that brought him through the grounds of a neighbor of the Master"s.
This neighbor owned a dog--a mean-eyed, rangy and mangy pest of a brute that Lad would ordinarily have scorned to notice. But, most decidedly, he noticed the dog now. He routed it out of its kennel and bestowed upon it a thrashing that brought its possessor"s entire family shrieking to the scene of conflict.
Courteously refusing to carry the matter further, in face of a half-dozen shouting humans, Lad cantered homeward.
From the clothes-line, on the drying-ground at The Place, fluttered a large white object. It was palpably a nurse"s uniform--palpably _the_ nurse"s uniform. And Lad greeted its presence there with a grin of pure bliss.
In less than two seconds the uniform was off the line, with three huge rents marring its stiff surface. In less than thirty seconds, it was reposing in the rich black mud on the verge of the lake, and Lad was rolling playfully on it.
Then he chanced to remember his long-neglected enemies, the squirrels, and his equally-neglected prey, the rabbits. And he loped off to the forest to wage gay warfare upon them. He was gloriously, idiotically, criminally happy. And, for the time, he was a fool.
All day long, complaints came pouring in to the Master. Lad had destroyed the whole "set" of cream. Lad had chased the red cow till it would be a miracle if she didn"t fall sick of it. Lad had scared poor dear little Peter Grimm so badly that the cat seemed likely to spend all the rest of its nine lives squalling in the tree-top and crossly refusing to come down.
Lad had spoiled a Sunday leg of mutton, up at the Lodge. Lad had made a perfectly respectable horse run madly away for nearly twenty-five feet, and had given the horse"s owner a blasphemous half-mile run over a plowed field after a cherished and ravished lap-robe. Lad had well-nigh killed a neighbor"s particularly killable dog. Lad had wantonly destroyed the nurse"s very newest and most expensive uniform. All day it was Lad--Lad--Lad!
Lad, it seemed, was a storm-center, whence radiated complaints that ran the whole gamut from tears to lurid profanity; and, to each and every complainant, the Master made the same answer:
"Leave him alone. We"re just out of h.e.l.l--Lad and I! He"s doing the things I"d do myself, if I had the nerve."
Which, of course, was a manifestly asinine way for a grown man to talk.
Long after dusk, Lad pattered meekly home, very tired and quite sane. His spell of imbecility had worn itself out. He was once more his calmly dignified self, though not a little ashamed of his babyish pranks, and mildly wondering how he had come to behave so.
Still, he could not grieve over what he had done. He could not grieve over anything just yet. The Mistress was alive! And while the craziness had pa.s.sed, the happiness had not. Tired, drowsily at peace with all the world, he curled up under the piano and went to sleep.
He slept so soundly that the locking of the house for the night did not rouse him. But something else did. Something that occurred long after everyone on The Place was sound asleep. Lad was joyously pursuing, through the forest aisles of dreamland, a whole army of squirrels that had not sense enough to climb trees--when in a moment, he was wide awake and on guard. Far off, very far off, he heard a man walking.
Now, to a trained dog there is as much difference in the sound of human footfalls as, to humans, there is a difference in the aspect of human faces. A belated countryman walking along the highway, a furlong distant, would not have awakened Lad from sleep. Also, he knew and could cla.s.sify, at any distance, the footsteps of everyone who lived on The Place. But the steps that had brought him wide awake and on the alert to-night, did not belong to one of The Place"s people; nor were they the steps of anybody who had a right to be on the premises.
Someone had climbed the fence, at a distance from the drive, and was crossing the grounds, obliquely, toward the house. It was a man, and he was still nearly two hundred yards away. Moreover, he was walking stealthily; and pausing every now and then as if to reconnoiter.
No human, at that distance, could have heard the steps. No dog could have helped hearing them. Had the other dogs been at home instead of at the boarding-kennels, The Place would by this time have been re-echoing with barks. Both scent and sound would have given them ample warning of the stranger"s presence.
To Lad, on the lower floor of the house, where every window was shut, the aid of scent was denied. Yet his sense of hearing was enough. Plainly, he heard the softly advancing steps--heard and read them. He read them for an intruder"s--read them for the steps of a man who was afraid to be heard or seen, and who was employing all the caution in his power.
A booming, trumpeting bark of warning sprang into Lad"s throat--and died there. The sharp command "_Quiet!_" was still in force. Even in his madness, that day, he had uttered no sound. He strangled back the tumultuous bark and listened in silence. He had risen to his feet and had come out from under the piano. In the middle of the living-room he stood, head lowered, ears p.r.i.c.ked. His ruff was abristle. A ridge of hair rose grotesquely from the s.h.a.ggy ma.s.s of coat along his spine. His lips had slipped back from his teeth. And so he stood and waited.
The shuffling, soft steps were nearer now. Down through the trees they came, and then onto the springy gra.s.s of the lawn. Now they crunched lightly on the gravel of the drive. Lad moved forward a little and again stood at attention.
The man was climbing to the veranda. The vines rustled ever so slightly as he brushed past them. His footfall sounded lightly on the veranda itself.
Next there was a faint clicking noise at the old-fashioned lock of one of the bay windows. Presently, by half inches, the window began to rise. Before it had risen an inch, Lad knew the trespa.s.ser was a negro. Also that it was no one with whose scent he was familiar.
Another pause, followed by the very faintest scratching, as the negro ran a knife-blade along the crack of the inner wooden blinds in search of the catch.
The blinds parted slowly. Over the window-sill the man threw a leg. Then he stepped down, noiselessly into the room.
He stood there a second, evidently listening.
And, before he could stir or breathe, something in the darkness hurled itself upon him.
Without so much as a growl of warning, eighty pounds of muscular, hairy energy smote the negro full in the chest. A set of hot-breathing jaws flashed for his jugular vein, missed it by a half-inch, and the graze left a red-hot searing pain along the negro"s throat. In the merest fraction of a moment, the murderously snapping jaws sank into the thief"s shoulder. It is collie custom to fight with a running accompaniment of snarling growls. But Lad did not give voice. In total silence he made his onslaught. In silence, he sought and gained his hold.
The negro was less considerate of the Mistress" comfort. With a screech that would have waked every mummy in Egypt, he reeled back, under that first unseen impact, lost his balance and crashed to the hardwood floor, overturning a table and a lamp in his fall. Certain that a devil had attacked him there in the black darkness, the man gave forth yell after yell of mortal terror. Frantically, he strove to push away his a.s.sailant and his clammy hand encountered a ma.s.s of fur.
The negro had heard that all the dogs on The Place had been sent away because of the Mistress" illness. Hence his attempt at burglary. Hence also, his panic fear when Lad had sprung on him.
But with the feel of the thick warm fur, the man"s superst.i.tious terror died. He knew he had roused the house; but there was still time to escape if he could rid himself of this silent, terrible creature. He staggered to his feet. And, with the knife he still clutched, he smote viciously at his a.s.sailant.
Because Lad was a collie, Lad was not killed then and there. A bulldog or a bull-terrier, attacking a man, seeks for some convenient hold. Having secured that hold--be it good or bad--he locks his jaws and hangs on. You can well-nigh cut his head from his body before he will let go. Thus, he is at the mercy of any armed man who can keep cool long enough to kill him.
But a collie has a strain of wolf in his queer brain. He seeks a hold, it is true. But at an instant"s notice, he is ready to shift that hold for a better. He may bite or slash a dozen times in as many seconds and in as many parts of the body. He is everywhere at once--he is nowhere in particular. He is not a pleasant opponent.
Lad did not wait for the negro"s knife to find his heart. As the man lunged, the dog transferred his profitless shoulderhold to a grip on the stabbing arm. The knife blade plowed an ugly furrow along his side. And the dog"s curved eye-tooth slashed the negro"s arm from elbow to wrist, clean through to the bone.
The knife clattered to the floor. The negro wheeled and made a leap for the open window; he had not cleared half the s.p.a.ce when Lad bounded for the back of his neck. The dog"s upper set of teeth raked the man"s hard skull, carrying away a handful of wool and flesh; and his weight threw the thief forward on hands and knees again. Twisting, the man found the dog"s furry throat; and with both hands sought to strangle him; at the same time backing out through the window. But it is not easy to strangle a collie. The piles of tumbled ruff-hair form a protection no other breed of dog can boast. Scarcely had the hands found their grip when one of them was crushed between the dog"s vise-like jaws.
The negro flung off his enemy and turned to clear the veranda at a single jump. But before he had half made the turn, Lad was at his throat again, and the two crashed through the vines together and down onto the driveway below. The entire combat had not lasted for more than thirty seconds.
The Master, pistol and flashlight in hand, ran down to find the living-room amuck with blood and with smashed furniture, and one of the windows open. He flashed the electric ray through the window. On the ground below, stunned by striking against a stone jardiniere in his fall, the negro sprawled senseless upon his back. Above him was Lad, his searching teeth at last having found their coveted throat-hold. Steadily, the great dog was grinding his way through toward the jugular.
There was a deal of noise and excitement and light after that. The negro was trussed up and the local constable was summoned by telephone. Everybody seemed to be doing much loud talking.
Lad took advantage of the turmoil to slip back into the house and to his "cave" under the piano; where he proceeded to lick solicitously the flesh wound on his left side.
He was very tired; and he was very unhappy and he was very much worried. In spite of all his own precautions as to silence, the negro had made a most unG.o.dly lot of noise. The commandment "_Quiet!_" had been fractured past repair. And, somehow, Lad felt blame for it all. It was really his fault--and he realized it now--that the man had made such a racket. Would the Master punish him? Perhaps. Humans have such odd ideas of Justice. He----
Then it was that the Master found him; and called him forth from his place of refuge. Head adroop, tail low, Lad crept out to meet his scolding. He looked very much like a puppy caught tearing a new rug.
But suddenly, the Master and everyone else in the room was patting him and telling him how splendid he was. And the Master had found the deep scratch on his side and was dressing it, and stopping every minute or so, to praise him again. And then, as a crowning reward, he was taken upstairs for the Mistress to stroke and make much of.