Sputtering and panting, Lad made for sh.o.r.e. Presently he reached the ice-ledge that lay between him and the bank. He reached it just as the Master, squirming along, face downward and at full length, began to work his way out over the swaying sh.o.r.e-ice toward him.
Twice the big dog raised himself almost to the top of the ledge. Once the ice broke under his weight, dousing him. The second time he got his fore-quarters well over the top of the ledge, and he was struggling upward with all his tired body when the Master"s hand gripped his soaked ruff.
With this new help, Lad made a final struggle--a struggle that laid him gasping but safe on the slushy surface of the thicker ice. Backward over the few yards that still separated them from land he and the Master crawled to the bank.
Lad was staggering as he started forward to greet the Mistress, and his eyes were still dim and bloodshot from his fearful ordeal. Midway in his progress toward the Mistress another dog barred his path--a dog that fell upon him in an ecstasy of delighted welcome.
Lad cleared his water-logged nostrils for a growl of protest. He had surely done quite enough for Wolf this day, without the puppy"s trying to rob him now of the Mistress" caress. He was tired, and he was dizzy; and he wanted such petting and comfort and praise as only the worshipped Mistress could give.
Impatience at the puppy"s interference cleared the haze a little from Lad"s brain and eyes. He halted in his shaky walk and stared, dumfounded. This dog which greeted him so rapturously was not Wolf. It was--why, it was--Lady! Oh, it was _Lady!_
"We"ve just brought her back to you, old friend," the Master was telling him. "We went over for her in the car this morning. She"s all well again, and----"
But Lad did not hear. All he realized--all he wanted to realize--was that his mate was ecstatically nipping one of his ears to make him romp with her.
It was a sharp nip; and it hurt like the very mischief.
Lad loved to have it hurt.
CHAPTER V
FOR A BIT OF RIBBON
Lad had never been in a city or in a crowd. To him the universe was bounded by the soft green mountains that hemmed in the valley and the lake. The Place stood on the lake"s edge, its meadows running back to the forest. There were few houses nearer than the mile-distant village. It was an ideal home for such a dog as Lad, even as Lad was an ideal dog for such a home.
A guest started all the trouble--a guest who spent a week-end at The Place and who loved dogs far better than he understood them. He made much of Lad, being loud-voiced in his admiration of the stately collie. Lad endured the caresses when he could not politely elude them.
"Say!" announced the guest just before he departed, "If I had a dog like Lad, I"d "show" him--at the big show at Madison Square, you know. It"s booked for next month. Why not take a chance and exhibit him there? Think what it would mean to you people to have a Westminster blue ribbon the big dog had won! Why, you"d be as proud as Punch!"
It was a careless speech and well meant. No harm might have come from it, had not the Master the next day chanced upon an advance notice of the dog-show in his morning paper. He read the press-agent"s quarter-column proclamation. Then he remembered what the guest had said. The Mistress was called into consultation. And it was she, as ever, who cast the deciding vote.
"Lad is twice as beautiful as any collie we ever saw at the Show," she declared, "and not one of them is half as wise or good or _human_ as he is. And--a blue ribbon is the greatest honor a dog can have, I suppose. It would be something to remember."
After which, the Master wrote a letter to a friend who kept a show kennel of Airedales. He received this answer:
"I don"t pretend to know anything, professionally, about collies--Airedales being my specialty. But Lad is a beauty, as I remember him, and his pedigree shows a bunch of old-time champions. I"d risk it, if I were you. If you are in doubt and don"t want to plunge, why not just enter him for the Novice cla.s.s?
That is a cla.s.s for dogs that have never before been shown. It will cost you five dollars to enter him for a single cla.s.s, like that. And in the Novice, he won"t be up against any champions or other dogs that have already won prizes. That will make it easier. It isn"t a grueling compet.i.tion like the "Open" or even the "Limit." If he wins as a Novice, you can enter him, another time, in something more important. I"m inclosing an application-blank for you to fill out and send with your entrance-fee, to the secretary. You"ll find his address at the bottom of the blank. I"m showing four of my Airedales there--so we"ll be neighbors."
Thus encouraged, the Master filled in the blank and sent it with a check. And in due time word was returned to him that "Sunnybank Lad"
was formally entered for the Novice cla.s.s, at the Westminster Kennel Club"s annual show at Madison Square Garden.
By this time both the Mistress and the Master were infected with the most virulent type of the Show Germ. They talked of little else than the forthcoming Event. They read all the dog-show literature they could lay hands on.
As for Lad, he was mercifully ignorant of what was in store for him.
The Mistress had an inkling of his fated ordeal when she read the Kennel Club rule that no dog could be taken from the Garden, except at stated times, from the moment the show should begin, at ten A.M. Wednesday morning, until the hour of its close, at ten o"clock Sat.u.r.day night. For twelve hours a day--for four consecutive days--every entrant must be there. By paying a forfeit fee, dog owners might take their pets to some nearby hotel or stable, for the remainder of the night and early morning--a permission which, for obvious reasons, would not affect most dogs.
"But Lad"s never been away from home a night in his life!" exclaimed the Mistress in dismay. "He"ll be horribly lonely there, all that while--especially at night."
By this time, with the mysterious foreknowledge of the best type of thoroughbred collie, Lad began to be aware that something unusual had crept into the atmosphere of The Place. It made him restless, but he did not a.s.sociate it with himself--until the Mistress took to giving him daily baths and brushings.
Always she had brushed him once a day, to keep his s.h.a.ggy coat fluffy and burnished; and the lake had supplied him with baths that made him as clean as any human. But never had he undergone such searching ma.s.sage with comb and brush as was now his portion. Never had he known such soap-infested scrubbings as were now his daily fate, for the week preceding the show.
As a result of these ministrations his wavy fur was like spun silk in texture; and it stood out all over him like the hair of a Circa.s.sian beauty in a dime museum. The white chest and forepaws were like snow. And his sides and broad back and mighty shoulders shone like dark bronze.
He was magnificent--but he was miserable. He knew well enough, now, that he was in some way the center of all this unwonted stir and excitement which pervaded The Place. He loathed change of any sort--a thoroughbred collie being ever an ultra-conservative. This particular change seemed to threaten his peace; also it kept his skin sc.r.a.ped with combs and his hair redolent of nasty-smelling soaps.
To humans there was no odor at all in the naphtha soap with which the Mistress lathered the dog, and every visible atom of it was washed away at once with warm water. But a human"s sense of smell, compared with the best type of collie"s, is as a purblind puppy"s power of sight in comparison to a hawk"s.
All over the East, during these last days before the Show, hundreds of high-bred dogs were undergoing preparation for an exhibition which to the beholder is a delight--and which to many of the canine exhibits is a form of unremitting torture. To do justice to the Master and the Mistress, they had no idea--then--of this torture. Otherwise all the blue ribbons ever woven would not have tempted them to subject their beloved chum to it.
In some kennels Airedales were "plucked," by hand, to rid them of the last vestige of the soft gray outer coat which is an Airedale"s chief natural beauty--and no hair of which must be seen in a show.
"Plucking" a dog is like pulling live hairs from a human head, so far as the sensation goes. But show-traditions demand the anguish.
In other kennels, bull-terriers" white coats were still further whitened by the harsh rubbing of pipeclay into the tender skin.
Sensitive tails and still more sensitive ears were sandpapered, for the victims" greater beauty--and agony. Ear-interiors, also, were shaved close with safety-razors.
Murderous little "knife-combs" were tearing blithely away at collies"
ear-interiors and heads, to "barber" natural furriness into painful and unnatural trimness. Ears were "scrunched" until their wearers quivered with stark anguish--to impart the perfect tulip-shape; ordained by fashion for collies.
And so on, through every breed to be exhibited--each to its own form of torment; torments compared to which Lad"s gentle if bothersome brushing and bathing were a pure delight!
Few of these ruthlessly "prepared" dogs were personal pets. The bulk of them were "kennel dogs"--dogs bred and raised after the formula for raising and breeding prize hogs or chickens, and with little more of the individual element in it. The dogs were bred in a way to bring out certain arbitrary "points" which count in show-judging, and which change from year to year.
Brain, fidelity, devotion, the _human_ side of a dog--these were totally ignored in the effort to breed the perfect physical animal.
The dogs were kept in kennel-buildings and in wire "runs" like so many pedigreed cattle--looked after by paid attendants, and trained to do nothing but to be the best-looking of their kind, and to win ribbons. Some of them did not know their owners by sight--having been reared wholly by hirelings.
The body was everything; the heart, the mind, the namelessly delightful quality of the master-raised dog--these were nothing. Such traits do not win prizes at a bench-show. Therefore fanciers, whose sole aim is to win ribbons and cups, do not bother to cultivate them. (All of this is extraneous; but may be worth your remembering, next time you go to a dog-show.)
Early on the morning of the Show"s first day, the Mistress and the Master set forth for town with Lad. They went in their little car, that the dog might not risk the dirt and cinders of a train.
Lad refused to eat a mouthful of the tempting breakfast set before him that day. He could not eat, when foreboding was hot in his throat. He had often ridden in the car. Usually he enjoyed the ride; but now he crawled rather than sprang into the tonneau. All the way up the drive, his great mournful eyes were turned back toward the house in dumb appeal. Every atom of spirit and gayety and dash were gone from him. He knew he was being taken away from the sweet Place he loved, and that the car was whizzing him along toward some dreaded fate. His heart was sick within him.
To the born and bred show-dog this is an everyday occurrence--painful, but inevitable. To a chum-dog like Lad, it is heartbreaking. The big collie buried his head in the Mistress" lap and crouched hopelessly at her feet as the car chugged cityward.
A thoroughly unhappy dog is the most thoroughly unhappy thing on earth. All the adored Mistress" coaxings and pettings could not rouse Lad from his dull apathy of despair. This was the hour when he was wont to make his stately morning rounds of The Place, at the heels of one of his two deities. And now, instead, these deities were carrying him away to something direfully unpleasant. A lesser dog would have howled or would have struggled crazily to break away. Lad stood his ground like a furry martyr, and awaited his fate.
In an hour or so the ride ended. The car drew up at Madison Square--beside the huge yellowish building, arcaded and Diana-capped, which goes by the name of "Garden" and which is as nearly historic as any landmark in feverish New York is permitted to be.
Ever since the car had entered Manhattan Island, unhappy Lad"s nostrils had been aquiver with a million new and troublous odors. Now, as the car halted, these myriad strange smells were lost in one--an all-pervasive scent of dog. To a human, out there in the street, the scent was not observable. To a dog it was overwhelming.
Lad, at the Master"s word, stepped down from the tonneau onto the sidewalk. He stood there, dazedly sniffing. The plangent roar of the city was painful to his ears, which had always been attuned to the deep silences of forest and lake. And through this din he caught the m.u.f.fled noise of the chorused barks and howls of many of his own kind.
The racket that bursts so deafeningly on humans as they enter the Garden, during a dog-show, was wholly audible to Lad out in the street itself. And, as instinct or scent makes a hog flinch at going into a slaughterhouse, so the gallant dog"s spirit quailed for a moment as he followed the Mistress and the Master into the building.