There was a sound as of a cavalry regiment galloping through shallow water. That and a queerly ecstatic growl. And the collie was gone.
As fast as possible the two men made for the base of the knoll. They had drawn forth their electric torches; and these now made the progress much swifter and easier.
Nevertheless, before the Master had set foot on the first bit of firm ground, all pandemonium burst forth amid the darkness, above and in front of him.
The turmoil"s multiple sounds were indescribable, blending into one wild cacophony the yells and stamping of a fear-demented man, the bleats of sheep, the tearing of underbrush--through and above and under all--a hideous subnote as of a rabid beast worrying its prey.
It was this undercurrent of sound which put wings on the tired feet of Maclay and the Master, as they dashed up the knoll and into the path leading east from it. It spoke of unpleasant--not to say gruesome--happenings. So did the swift change of the victim"s yells from wrath to mortal terror.
"Back Lad!" called the Master, pantingly, as he ran. "Back! Let him _alone!_"
And as he cried the command he rounded a turn in the wooded path.
p.r.o.ne on the ground, writhing like a cut snake and frantically seeking to guard his throat with his slashed forearm, sprawled Schwartz. Crouching above him--right unwillingly obeying the Master"s belated call--was Lad.
The dog"s great coat was a-bristle. His bared teeth glinted white and blood-flecked in the electric flare. His soft eyes were blazing.
"Back!" repeated the Master. "Back here!"
Absolute obedience was the first and foremost of The Place"s few simple dog-rules. Lad had learned it from earliest puppyhood. The collie, still shaking all over with the effort of repressing his fury, turned slowly and came over to his Master. There he stood stonily awaiting further orders.
Maclay was on his knees beside the hysterically moaning German roughly telling him that the dog would do him no more damage, and at the same time making a quick inspection of the injuries wrought by the slashing white fangs in the shielding arm and its shoulder.
"Get up!" he now ordered. "You"re not too badly hurt to stand. Another minute and he"d have gotten through to your throat, but your clothes saved you from anything worse than a few ugly flesh-cuts. Get up! Stop that yowling and get up!"
Schwartz gradually lessened his dolorous plaints under the stern authority of Maclay"s exhortations. Presently he sat up nursing his lacerated forearm and staring about him. At sight of Lad he shuddered.
And recognizing Maclay he broke into violent and fatly-accented speech.
"Take witness, Judge!" he exclaimed. "I watched the barnyard to-night and I saw that schweinhund steal another sheep. I followed him and when he got here he dropped the sheep and went for me. He----"
"Very bad, Schwartz!" disgustedly reproved Maclay. "Very bad, indeed. You should have waited a minute longer and thought up a better one. But since this is the yarn you choose to tell, we"ll look about and try to verify it. The sheep, for instance--the one you say Lad carried all the way here and then dropped to attack you. I seem to have heard a sheep bleating a few moments ago. Several sheep in fact. We"ll see if we can"t find the one Lad stole."
Schwartz jumped nervously to his feet.
"Stay where you are!" Maclay bade him. "We won"t bother a tired and injured man to help in our search."
Turning to the Master, he added:
"I suppose one of us will have to stand guard over him while the other one hunts up the sheep. Shall I----"
"Neither of us need do that," said the Master. "Lad!"
The collie started eagerly forward, and Schwartz started still more eagerly backward.
"Watch him!" commanded the Master. "_Watch_ him!"
It was an order Lad had learned to follow in the many times when the Mistress and the Master left him to guard the car or to do sentry duty over some other article of value. He understood. He would have preferred to deal with this enemy according to his own lights. But the Master had spoken. So, standing at view, the collie looked longingly at Schwartz"s throat.
"Keep perfectly still!" the Master warned the prisoner, "and perhaps he won"t go for you. Move, and he most surely will. _Watch_ him, Laddie!"
Maclay and the Master left the captive and his guard, and set forth on a flashlight-illumined tour of the knoll. It was a desolate spot, far back in the swamp and more than a mile from any road; a place visited not three times a year, except in the shooting season.
In less than a half-minute the plaintive ba-a-a of a sheep guided the searchers to the left of the knoll where stood a thick birch-and-alder copse. Around this they circled until they reached a narrow opening where the branch-ends, several feet above ground, were flecked with hanks of wool.
Squirming through the aperture in single file, the investigators found what they sought.
In the tight-woven copse"s center was a small clearing. In this, was a rudely wattled pen some nine feet square; and in the pen were bunched six sheep.
An occasional scared bleat from deeper in the copse told the whereabouts of the sheep Schwartz had taken from the barnyard that night and which he had dropped at Lad"s onslaught before he could put it in the pen. On the ground, just outside the enclosure, lay the smashed lantern.
"Sheep on the hoof are worth $12.50 per, at the Paterson Market,"
mused the Master aloud, as Maclay blinked owlishly at the treasure trove. "There are $75 worth of sheep in that pen, and there would have been three more of them before morning if we hadn"t b.u.t.ted in on Herr Schwartz"s overtime labors. To get three sheep at night, it was well worth his while to switch suspicion to Lad by killing a fourth sheep every time, and mangling its throat with a stripping-knife.
Only, he mangled it too efficiently. There was too much _Kultur_ about the mangling. It wasn"t ragged enough. That"s what first gave me my idea. That, and the way the missing sheep always vanished into more or less thin air. You see, he probably----"
"But," sputtered Maclay, "why four each night? Why----"
"You saw how long it took him to get one of them here," replied the Master. "He didn"t dare to start in till the Romaines were asleep, and he had to be back in time to catch Lad at the slaughter before t.i.tus got out of bed. He wouldn"t dare hide them any nearer home. t.i.tus has spent most of his time both days in hunting for them. Schwartz was probably waiting to get the pen nice and full. Then he"d take a day off to visit his relatives. And he"d round up this tidy bunch and drive them over to the Ridgewood road, through the woods, and so on to the Paterson Market. It was a pretty little scheme all around."
"But," urged Maclay, as they turned back to where Lad still kept his avid vigil, "I still hold you were taking big chances in gambling $1000 and your dog"s life that Schwartz would do the same thing again within twenty-four hours. He might have waited a day or two, till----"
"No," contradicted the Master, "that"s just what he mightn"t do. You see, I wasn"t perfectly sure whether it was Schwartz or Romaine--or both--who were mixed up in this. So I set the trap at both ends. If it was Romaine, it was worth $1000 to him to have more sheep killed within twenty-four hours. If it was Schwartz--well, that"s why I made him try to hit Lad and why I made him try to kick me. The dog went for him both times, and that was enough to make Schwartz want him killed for his own safety as well as for revenge. So he was certain to arrange another killing within the twenty-four hours if only to force me to shoot Lad. He couldn"t steal or kill sheep by daylight. I picked the only hours he could do it in. If he"d gotten Lad killed, he"d probably have invented another sheep-killer dog to help him swipe the rest of the flock, or until Romaine decided to do the watching.
We----"
"It was clever of you," cordially admitted Maclay. "Mighty clever, old man! I----"
"It was my wife who worked it out, you know," the Master reminded him. "I admit my own cleverness, of course, only (like a lot of men"s money) it"s all in my wife"s name. Come on, Lad! You can guard Herr Schwartz just as well by walking behind him. We"re going to wind up the evening"s fishing trip by tendering a surprise party to dear genial old Mr. t.i.tus Romaine. I hope the flashlights will hold out long enough for me to get a clear look at his face when he sees us."
CHAPTER XI
WOLF
There were but three collies on The Place in those days. There was a long shelf in the Master"s study whereupon shimmered and glinted a rank of silver cups of varying sizes and shapes. Two of The Place"s dogs had won them all.
Above the shelf hung two huge picture-frames. In the center of each was the small photograph of a collie. Beneath each likeness was a certified pedigree, a-bristle with the red-letter names of champions. Surrounding the pictures and pedigrees, the whole remaining s.p.a.ce in both frames was filled with blue ribbons--the very meanest bit of silk in either was a semi-occasional "Reserve Winners"--while, strung along the tops of the frames from side to side, ran a line of medals.
Cups, medals, and ribbons alike had been won by The Place"s two great collies, Lad and Bruce. (Those were their "kennel names." Their official t.i.tles on the A. K. C. registry list were high-sounding and needlessly long.)
Lad was growing old. His reign on The Place was drawing toward a benignant close. His muzzle was almost snow-white and his once graceful lines were beginning to show the oncoming heaviness of age. No longer could he hope to hold his own, in form and carriage, with younger collies at the local dog-shows where once he had carried all before him.
Bruce--"Sunnybank Goldsmith"--was six years Lad"s junior. He was tawny of coat, kingly of bearing; a dog without a fault of body or of disposition; stately as the boar-hounds that the painters of old used to love to depict in their portraits of monarchs.
The Place"s third collie was Lad"s son, Wolf. But neither cup nor ribbon did Wolf have to show as an excuse for his presence on earth, nor would he have won recognition in the smallest and least exclusive collie-show.
For Wolf was a collie only by courtesy. His breeding was as pure as was any champion"s, but he was one of those luckless types to be found in nearly every litter--a throwback to some forgotten ancestor whose points were all defective. Not even the glorious pedigree of Lad, his father, could make Wolf look like anything more than he was--a dog without a single physical trait that followed the best collie standards.