As he swung shut the veranda door behind him, Something arose stiffly from a porch rug--Something the Master looked at in a daze of unbelief.
It was a dog--yet no such dog as had ever before sullied the cleanness of The Place"s well-scoured veranda.
The animal"s body was lean to emaciation. The head was swollen--though, apparently, the swelling had begun to recede. The fur, from spine to toe, from nose to tail-tip, was one solid and shapeless ma.s.s of caked mud.
The Master sat down very suddenly on the veranda floor beside the dirt-encrusted brute, and caught it in his arms, sputtering disjointedly:
"Lad!--_Laddie!_--Old _friend!_ You"re alive again!
You"re--you"re--_alive!_"
Yes, Lad had known enough to creep away to the woods to die. But, thanks to the wolf-strain in his collie blood, he had also known how to do something far wiser than die.
Three days of self-burial, to the very nostrils, in the mysteriously healing ooze of the marshes, behind the forest, had done for him what such mud-baths have done for a million wild creatures. It had drawn out the viper-poison and had left him whole again--thin, shaky on the legs, slightly swollen of head--but _whole_.
"He"s--he"s awfully dirty, though! Isn"t he?" commented the guest, when an idiotic triumph-yell from the Master had summoned the whole family, in sketchy attire, to the veranda. "Awfully dirty and----"
"Yes," curtly a.s.sented the Master, Lad"s head between his caressing hands. ""Awfully dirty." That"s why he"s still alive."
CHAPTER IV
HIS LITTLE SON
Lad"s mate Lady was the only one of the Little People about The Place who refused to look on Lad with due reverence. In her frolic-moods she teased him unmercifully; in a prettily imperious way she bossed and bullied him--for all of which Lad adored her. He had other reasons, too, for loving Lady--not only because she was dainty and beautiful, and was caressingly fond of him, but because he had won her in fair mortal combat with the younger and showier Knave.
For a time after Knave"s routing, Lad was blissfully happy in Lady"s undivided comradeship. Together they ranged the forests beyond The Place in search of rabbits. Together they sprawled shoulder to shoulder on the disreputable old fur rug in front of the living-room fire. Together they did joyous homage to their G.o.ds, the Mistress and the Master.
Then in the late summer a new rival appeared--to be accurate, three rivals. And they took up all of Lady"s time and thought and love. Poor old Lad was made to feel terribly out in the cold. The trio of rivals that had so suddenly claimed Lady"s care were fuzzy and roly-poly, and about the size of month-old kittens. In brief, they were three thoroughbred collie puppies.
Two of them were tawny brown, with white forepaws and chests. The third was not like Lad in color, but like the mother--at least, all of him not white was of the indeterminate yellowish mouse-gray which, at three months or earlier, turns to pale gold.
When they were barely a fortnight old--almost as soon as their big mournful eyes opened--the two brown puppies died. There seemed no particular reason for their death, except the fact that a collie is always the easiest or else the most impossible breed of dog to raise.
The fuzzy grayish baby alone was left--the puppy which was soon to turn to white and gold. The Mistress named him "Wolf."
Upon Baby Wolf the mother-dog lavished a ridiculous lot of attention--so much that Lad was miserably lonely. The great collie would try with pathetic eagerness, a dozen times a day, to lure his mate into a woodland ramble or into a romp on the lawn, but Lady met his wistful advances with absorbed indifference or with a snarl.
Indeed when Lad ventured overnear the fuzzy baby, he was warned off by a querulous growl from the mother or by a slash of her shiny white teeth.
Lad could not at all understand it. He felt no particular interest--only a mild and disapproving curiosity--in the shapeless little whimpering ball of fur that nestled so helplessly against his beloved mate"s side. He could not understand the mother-love that kept Lady with Wolf all day and all night. It was an impulse that meant nothing to Lad.
After a week or two of fruitless effort to win back Lady"s interest, Lad coldly and wretchedly gave up the attempt. He took long solitary walks by himself in the forest, retired for hours at a time to sad brooding in his favorite "cave" under the living-room piano, and tried to console himself by spending all the rest of his day in the company of the Mistress and the Master. And he came thoroughly to disapprove of Wolf. Recognizing the baby intruder as the cause of Lady"s estrangement from himself, he held aloof from the puppy.
The latter was beginning to emerge from his newborn shapelessness. His coat"s texture was changing from fuzz to silk. Its color was turning from gray into yellow. His blunt little nose was lengthening and growing thin and pointed. His b.u.t.ter-ball body was elongating, and his huge feet and legs were beginning to shape up. He looked more like a dog now, and less like an animated m.u.f.f. Also within Wolf"s youthful heart awoke the devil of mischief, the keen urge of play. He found Lady a pleasant-enough playfellow up to a certain point. But a painfully sharp pinch from her teeth or a reproving and breath-taking slap from one of her forepaws was likely to break up every game that she thought had gone far enough; when Wolf"s clownish roughness at length got on her hair-trigger nerves.
So, in search of an additional playmate, the frolicsome puppy turned to Lad, only to find that Lad would not play with him at all. Lad made it very, very clear to everyone--except to the fool puppy himself--that he had no desire to romp or to a.s.sociate in any way with this creature which had ousted him from Lady"s heart! Being cursed with a soul too big and gentle to let him harm anything so helpless as Wolf, he did not snap or growl, as did Lady, when the puppy teased. He merely walked away in hurt dignity.
Wolf had a positive genius for tormenting Lad. The huge collie, for instance, would be snoozing away a hot hour on the veranda or under the wistaria vines. Down upon him, from nowhere in particular, would pounce Wolf.
The puppy would seize his sleeping father by the ear, and drive his sharp little milk-teeth fiercely into the flesh. Then he would brace himself and pull backward, possibly with the idea of dragging Lad along the ground.
Lad would wake in pain, would rise in dignified unhappiness to his feet and start to walk off--the puppy still hanging to his ear. As Wolf was a collie and not a bulldog, he would lose his grip as his fat little body left the ground. Then, at a clumsy gallop, he would pursue Lad, throwing himself against his father"s forelegs and nipping the slender ankles. All this was torture to Lad, and dire mortification too--especially if humans chanced to witness the scene. Yet never did he retaliate; he simply got out of the way.
Lad, nowadays, used to leave half his dinner uneaten, and he took to moping in a way that is not good for dog or man. For the moping had in it no ill-temper--nothing but heartache at his mate"s desertion, and a weary distaste for the puppy"s annoying antics. It was bad enough for Wolf to have supplanted him in Lady"s affection, without also making his life a burden and humiliating him in the eyes of his G.o.ds.
Therefore Lad moped. Lady remained nervously fussy over her one child. And Wolf continued to be a lovable, but unmitigated, pest. The Mistress and the Master tried in every way to make up to Lad for the positive and negative afflictions he was enduring, but the sorrowing dog"s unhappiness grew with the days.
Then one November morning Lady met Wolf"s capering playfulness with a yell of rage so savage as to send the puppy scampering away in mortal terror, and to bring the Master out from his study on a run. For no normal dog gives that hideous yell except in racking pain or in illness; and mere pain could not wring such a sound from a thoroughbred.
The Master called Lady over to him. Sullenly she obeyed, slinking up to him in surly unwillingness. Her nose was hot and dry; her soft brown eyes were glazed, their whites a dull red. Her dense coat was tumbled.
After a quick examination, the Master shut her into a kennel-room and telephoned for a veterinary.
"She is sickening for the worst form of distemper," reported the vet"
an hour later, "perhaps for something worse. Dogs seldom get distemper after they"re a year old, but when they do it"s dangerous. Better let me take her over to my hospital and isolate her there. Distemper runs through a kennel faster than cholera through a plague-district. I may be able to cure her in a month or two--or I may not. Anyhow, there"s no use in risking your other dogs" lives by leaving her here."
So it was that Lad saw his dear mate borne away from him in the tonneau of a strange man"s car.
Lady hated to go. She whimpered and hung back as the vet" lifted her aboard. At sound of her whimper Lad started forward, head low, lips writhing back from his clenched teeth, his s.h.a.ggy throat vibrant with growls. At a sharp word of command from the Master, he checked his onset and stood uncertain. He looked at his departing mate, his dark eyes abrim with sorrow, then glanced at the Master in an agony of appeal.
"It"s all right, Laddie," the Master tried to console him, stroking the dog"s magnificent head as he spoke. "It"s all right. It"s the only chance of saving her."
Lad did not grasp the words, but their tone was rea.s.suring. It told him, at least, that this kidnaping was legal and must not be prevented. Sorrowfully he watched the chugging car out of sight, up the drive. Then with a sigh he walked heavily back to his "cave"
beneath the piano.
Lad, alone of The Place"s dogs, was allowed to sleep in the house at night, and even had free access to that dog-forbidden spot, the dining-room. Next morning, as soon as the doors were opened, he dashed out in search of Lady. With some faint hope that she might have been brought back in the night, he ransacked every corner of The Place for her.
He did not find Lady. But Wolf very promptly found Lad. Wolf was lonely, too--terribly lonely. He had just spent the first solitary night of his three-month life. He missed the furry warm body into whose shelter he had always cuddled for sleep. He missed his playmate--the pretty mother who had been his fond companion.
There are few things so mournful as the eyes of even the happiest collie pup; this morning, loneliness had intensified the melancholy expression in Wolf"s eyes. But at sight of Lad, the puppy gamboled forward with a falsetto bark of joy. The world was not quite empty, after all. Though his mother had cruelly absented herself, here was a playfellow that was better than nothing. And up to Lad frisked the optimistic little chap.
Lad saw him coming. The older dog halted and instinctively turned aside to avoid the lively little nuisance. Then, halfway around, he stopped and turned back to face the puppy.
Lady was gone--gone, perhaps, forever. And all that was left to remind Lad of her was this b.u.mptious and sharp-toothed little son of hers.
Lady had loved the youngster--Lady, whom Lad so loved. Wolf alone was left; and Wolf was in some mysterious way a part of Lady.
So, instead of making his escape as the pest cantered toward him, Lad stood where he was. Wolf bounded upward and as usual nipped merrily at one of Lad"s ears. Lad did not shake off his tormentor and stalk away. In spite of the pain to the sensitive flesh, he remained quiet, looking down at the joyful puppy with a sort of sorrowing friendliness. He seemed to realize that Wolf, too, was lonely and that the little dog was helpless.
Tired of biting an unprotesting ear, Wolf dived for Lad"s white forelegs, gnawing happily at them with a playfully unconscious throwback to his wolf ancestors who sought thus to disable an enemy by breaking the foreleg bone. For all seemingly aimless puppy-play had its origin in some ancestral custom.
Lad bore this new bother unflinchingly. Presently Wolf left off the sport. Lad crossed to the veranda and lay down. The puppy trotted over to him and stood for a moment with ears c.o.c.ked and head on one side as if planning a new attack on his supine victim; then with a little satisfied whimper, he curled up close against his father"s s.h.a.ggy side and went to sleep.
Lad gazed down at the slumberer in some perplexity. He seemed even inclined to resent the familiarity of being used for a pillow. Then, noting that the fur on the top of the puppy"s sleepy head was rumpled, Lad bent over and began softly to lick back the tousled hair into shape with his curving tongue--his raspberry-pink tongue with the single queer blue-black blot midway on its surface. The puppy mumbled drowsily in his sleep and nestled more snugly to his new protector.
And thus Lad a.s.sumed formal guardianship of his obstreperous little son. It was a guardianship more staunch by far than Lady"s had been of late. For animal mothers early wear out their zealously self-sacrificing love for their young. By the time the latter are able to shift for themselves, the maternal care ceases. And, later on, the once-inseparable relationship drops completely out of mind.