Chapter VI: Part 6

As a result, his depredations, thereafter, left no uproar behind them. Also, he learned presently the vulpine art of hoarding;—in other words, when safety permitted, to stay on the ground until he had not only slain but eaten one chicken, and then to carry another bird back to his lair for future use. It cut down the peril of over-many trips to neighbouring coops.

In time, he learned to rely less and less on the close-guarded chickens in the vicinity of his den, and to quarter the farm country for a radius of ten or more miles in search of food. The same queer new instinct taught him infinite craft in keeping away from humans and in covering his tracks.

He was doing no more than are thousands of foxes throughout the world. There was no miracle in his new-found deftness as a forager. Nature was merely telling her ancient and simple secrets to a wise little brain no longer too clogged by association with mankind to learn them.

There was a profitable side line to Bobby’s chicken hunts. The wilder woods, back of Midwestburg, abounded in rabbits for such as had the wit to find them. And Bobby acquired the wit.

Incredibly soon, he learned the wolf’s art of tracking a cottontail and of stalking the prey until such moment as a lightning dash and a blood-streaked swirl in the snow marked the end of the chase. Squirrels, too, and an occasional unwary partridge or smaller bird, were added to the collie’s menu. And more than once, as he grew stronger, Bobby lugged homeward over his shoulder a twenty-pound lamb from some distant sheepfold.

Nature had played a vilely cruel trick on Lochinvar Bobby by bringing him into the world as the puny and defective runt of a royal litter. She had threatened his life by casting him loose in the winter woods. But at that point Nature seemed to repent of her unkindness to the poor helpless atom of colliehood. For she taught him the closest-guarded secrets of her awful Live-On-One-Another ritual.

As winter grew soggy at the far approach of spring, Bobby found less and less trouble in making a nightly run of thirty miles in search of meals or in carrying back to his lair the heaviest of burdens.

Feasting on raw meat—and plenty of it—living in the open, with the icy cold for his bedfellow, he was taking one of the only two courses left to those who must forage or die. Readily enough he might have dwindled and starved. The chill weather might have snuffed out his gangling life. Instead, the cold and the exposure, and the needful exercise, and the life according to forest nature, and the rich supply of meat that was his for the catching—all these had worked wonders on the spindling runt.

His narrow chest had filled out, from much lung work. His shoulders, from the same cause and from incessant night running, had taken on a splendid breadth. His gawkily shambling body grew rapidly. The overshot puppy jaw was levelling. And as his frame grew it shaped itself along lines of powerful grace, such as Nature gives to the leopard and to the stag. Incessant exposure to the cold had changed his sparse covering of hair to a coat whose thickness and length and texture would have been the wonder of the dog-show world. In brief, his mode of life was achieving for him what all the kennel experts and vets unhung could not have accomplished.

It had been a case of kill or cure. Bobby was cured.

After the departure of the snows and the zero nights, and before the leafage made secret progress safe through forest and meadow, Bobby knew a period of leanness. True, he foraged as before, but he did it at far greater risk and with less certainty of results.

For—he could not guess why—the countryside was infested nowadays with armed men; men who carried rifle or shot-gun and who not only scoured hill and valley by daylight but lurked outside chicken coops and sheepfolds by night.

Of course, by day Bobby could avoid them—and he did—by lying close in his den. And at night his amazingly keen sense of smell enabled him to skirt them, out of gun-shot range, as they waited at barn door or at fold gate. But such necessity for caution played havoc with his chances for easily acquired food. And for the most part he had to fall back on rabbit-catching or to travelling far afield. This, until the thickening of foliage made his hunting excursions safer from detection by human eye.

There was sufficient reason for all this patrolling of the district. During the past few months word had seeped through the farm country that a wolf was at large in the long wolfless region; and that he was slaughtering all manner of livestock, from pullets to newborn calves.

No dog, it was argued, could be the killer. For no known dog could slay so silently and cover his tracks with such consummate skill. Nor could a fox carry away a lamb of double its own weight. The marauder must be a wolf. And old-timers raked up yarns of the superhumanly clever exploits of lone wolves, in the days when populous Midwestburg was a trading post.

The county Grange took up the matter and offered a bounty of fifty dollars for the wolf’s scalp and ears. It was a slack time on the farms—the period between woodcutting and early planting. It was a slack time in Midwestburg, too; several mills having shut down for a couple of months.

Thus, farmers and operatives amused themselves by making a try for the fifty dollars and for the honour of potting the super-wolf. It was pleasant if profitless sport for the hunters. But it cut down Bobby’s rations; until farm work and reopening mills called off the quest. Then life went on as before; after a buckshot graze on the hip had taught the collie to beware of spring guns and to know their scent.

So the fat summer drowsed along. And so autumn brought again to the northern air the tang which started afresh the splendid luxuriance of the tawny coat which Bobby had shed during the first weeks of spring.

Late in December the dog had a narrow escape from death. A farmer, furious at the demise of his best Jersey calf, went gunning afresh for the mysterious wolf. With him he took along a German police dog—this being before the days when that breed was de-Germanised into the new title of “shepherd dog.” He had borrowed the police dog for the hunt, lured by its master’s tales of his pet’s invincible ferocity.

Man and dog had searched the woods in vain all day, some five miles to north of Bobby’s cave. At early dusk they were heading homeward through a rock gulch.

The wind was setting strong from the north. Midway through the gulch the police dog halted, back abristle, growling far down in his throat. The man looked up.

As he did so, Bobby topped the cliff which formed the gulch’s northerly side. The collie was on his way to a farm in the valley beyond, which he had not visited for so long a time that its occupants might reasonably be supposed to have relaxed some of their unneighbourly vigilance. The wind from the north kept him from smelling or hearing the two in the gully a hundred feet to south of him.

Yet, reaching the summit, Bobby paused; his wonted caution bidding him search the lower grounds for sign of danger, before travelling farther by fading daylight in such an exposed position.

It was then that the farmer saw him clearly, for the best part of two seconds, silhouetted against the dying sunset. The man knew little enough of collies, and less of wolves. And his mental vision was set for a wolf. Thus, to the best of his belief, a wolf was what he saw. But he saw also something he had not expected to see.

The last rays of the sun glinted on a bit of metal that swung beneath Bobby’s shaggy throat; metal that had been worn bright by constant friction with the dog’s ruff.

Thanks to the twist of wire which had been fastened into his hair, Bobby had not slipped the leathern collar wherewith Frayne had equipped him. And later his swelling muscular neck had been large enough to hold it on. From its ring the old license tag still dangled.

Up went the farmer’s gun. He fired both barrels. As he pressed the two triggers at once, the police dog made a rush for the collie. The farmer chanced to be just in front of his canine companion. The police dog sought a short cut, to reach his foe, by diving between the marksman’s slightly spread legs. The two gun barrels were fired straight upward into the sky; and the tripped-up hunter sat down with extreme suddenness on a pointed jut of rock.

By the time he could focus his maddened gaze on the cliff-top again, Bobby had vanished. The police dog was charging over the summit at express-train speed. The farmer shook an impotent fist after the disappearing spoiler of his aim.

“I hope he licks the life out of you if you ever catch up with him, you bunglin’ fool!” he bellowed.

His wish came true. Next day, in a hollow, a mile farther on, the body of the police dog was found, a score of slashes on his greyish hide and one through his jugular. No police dog ever lived that could catch up with a galloping collie who did not want to be caught. Bobby had varied a career of profit with a moment or two of real pleasure.

Two days later, in the Midwestburg _Herald_, Jamie Mackellar read the account of this fragmentary drama. He scanned it with no deep interest. Tales of the wolf had grown stale to _Herald_ readers. But suddenly his attention focused itself on the line:

“Mr. Gierson declares that a small disk of metal was suspended from the throat of the brute.”

Jamie laid down the paper and went into executive session with his own inner consciousness. A disk of metal, suspended from the throat of an animal, means but one thing. It is a license tag. Never has such a tag been fastened to a wolf.

Back into Mackellar’s memory came the picture of a poor shivering waif from whose meagre and almost naked throat hung a huge collar; a collar affixed by wire which was wound into such sparse strands of hair as could be made to support it.

On the morning after the next snowfall, Jamie took a day off. Carrying only a collar and chain and a muzzle, he fared forth into the woods. All day he hunted. He found nothing.

A week later came another snowfall in the night. Next morning Mackellar set forth again; this time letting his little son Donald come along. He had told his family the far-fetched suspicion that had dawned upon him, and Donald had clamoured to join the hunt.

On his first search, Jamie had quartered the country to west of the ridge. To-day he climbed the rocks and made his way into the rolling land below. Skirting Blake’s Woods, he was moving on toward the farms when, in the fresh snow, he came upon the tracks he sought. For an hour he followed them. Apparently they led nowhere. At least, they doubled twice upon themselves and then vanished on a long outcrop of snowless rock which stretched back into Blake’s Woods.

Tiring of this fruitless way of spending the morning, Donald strayed from his father. Into the woods he wandered. And presently he sighted the dancing platform amid its tangle of dead weeds. Running over to it, the boy climbed thereon. Then, striking an attitude, he began to harangue an invisible audience, from the platform edge; after the manner of a cart-tail political orator he had observed with emulous delight.

“My friends!” he shrilled, from memory, “Our anc’st’rs fit fer the lib’ty we enjoy! Are we goin’ to—? _Ouch!_ Hey, Daddy!”

One rhetorically stamping little foot had smashed through the rotten boarding. Nor could Donald draw it out. At the yell of fright, Jamie came running. But, a few yards from his son, Mackellar slid to a stop. His eyes were fixed on an opening just below the boy’s imprisoned foot; an opening from which the passage of Donald’s advancing body had cleared aside some of the tangled weeds. From the tip of a ragged lath, at the edge of this aperture, fluttered a tuft of tawny hair.

Pulling Donald free, Mackellar got down on all fours and peeped into the space beneath the platform. For a few seconds he could see nothing. Then, as his eyes accustomed themselves to the dimness, he descried two greenish points of light turned toward him from the farthest corner of the lair.

“Bobby?” called the man doubtfully.

The cornered dog heard the name. It roused vague half memories. The memories were not pleasant; though the voice had in it a friendliness that stirred the collie strangely.

Bobby crouched the closer to earth and his lips writhed back from murderous white teeth. The man called again; in the same friendly, coaxing voice. Then he began to crawl forward a foot or so. Behind him the excited boy was blocking the only way out of the den.

The Lochinvar Bobby of ten months ago would have cowered whimperingly in his corner, waiting for capture. He might even have pleaded for mercy by rolling over on his back.

The Lochinvar Bobby of to-day was quite another creature. He laid out his plan of campaign, and then in the wink of an eye he carried it into effect.

With a rabid snarl he charged the advancing man. As Jamie braced himself to fend off the ravening jaws, the dog veered sharply to one side and dashed for the opening. Instinct told him the boy would be easier to break past than the man.

But it was not Jamie Mackellar’s first experience with fighting or playing dogs. As Bobby veered, Jamie slewed his own prostrate body to the same side and made a grab for the fast-flying collie. His fingers closed and tightened around Bobby’s left hind leg, just below the hock.

With a snarl, Bobby wheeled and drove his jaws at the captor’s wrist; in a slash which might well have severed an artery. But, expecting just such a move, Jamie was ready with his free hand. Its fingers buried themselves in the avalanche of fur to one side of Bobby’s throat. The slashing eye-teeth barely grazed the pinioning wrist. And Bobby thrashed furiously from side to side, to free himself and to rend his enemy.

Mackellar’ s expert hands found grips to either side of the whirling jaws, and he held on. Bit by bit, bracing himself with all his wiry strength, he backed out; dragging the frantic beast behind him.

Five minutes later, at the expense of a few half-averted bites, he had the muzzle tight-bound in place and was leading the exhausted and foaming collie toward Midwestburg. Bobby held back, he flung himself against the chain, he fought with futile madness against the gentle skill of his master.

Then shuddering all over he gave up the fight. Head and tail a-droop, he suffered himself to be led to prison.

“It’s Lochinvar Bobby, all right!” the wondering Jamie was saying to his son in intervals of lavishing kindly talk and pats on the luckless dog. "The collar and tag prove that. But if it wasn’t for them, I’d swear it couldn’t be the same. It’s—it’s enough to take a body’s breath away, Donald! I’ve followed the dog game from the time I was born, but I never set eyes on such a collie in all my days. Just run your hand through that coat! Was there ever another like it? And did you ever see such bone and head? He’s—Lord, to think how he looked when that Frayne crook sawed him off on me! It’s a miracle he lived through the first winter. I never heard of but one other case like it. And that happened up in Toronto, if I remember right.

“Now, listen, sonny: I’m not honing to be sued for damages by every farmer in the county. So let’ em keep on looking for their wolf. This is a dog I bought last year. He’s been away in the country till now. That’s the truth. And the rest is nobody’s business. But—but if it keeps me speiring for a week, to figger it out, I’m going to hit on some way to let Mr. Lucius Frayne, Esquire, see he hasn’t stung me so hard as he thought he did!”

For two days Bobby refused to eat or drink. In the stout inclosure built for him in Mackellar’s back yard he stood, head and tail a-droop, every now and then shivering as if with ague. Then, little by little, Jamie’s skilled attentions did their work. The wondrous lure of human fellowship, the joy of cooked food, and the sense of security against harm, and, above all, a collie’s ancestral love for the one man he chooses for his god—these wrought their work.

In less than a fortnight Bobby was once more a collie. The spirit of the wild beast had departed from him; and he took his rightful place as the chum of the soft-voiced little Scot he was learning to worship. Yes, and he was happy,—happier than ever before;—happy with a new and strangely sweet contentment. He had come into a collie’s eternal heritage.

The Westminster Kennel Club’s annual dog show at Madison Square Garden, in New York, is the foremost canine classic of America and, in late years, of the whole world.

A month before that year’s Westminster Show, Lucius Frayne received a letter which made the wontedly saturnine sportsman laugh till the tears spattered down his nose. The joke was too good to keep to himself. So he shouted for Roke, and bade the kennel man share the fun of it with him.

He read aloud, cacklingly, to the listening Roke:

Mr. Lucius Frayne, My dear Sir:

Last year, out to the Midwestburg show, here, you sold me a fine puppy of your Ch. Lochinvar King. And as soon as I could raise the price you sent him on here to me. I would of written to you when I got him, to thank you and to say how pleased I was with him and how all my friends praised him. But I figured you’re a busy man and you haven’t got any waste time to spend in reading letters about how good your dogs are. Because you know it already. And so I didn’t write to you. But I am writing to you now. Because this is business.

You know what a grand pup Bobby was when you sent him to me? Well to my way of thinking he has developed even better than he gave promise to. And some of my friends say the same. To my way of thinking he is the grandest collie in North America or anywhere else to-day. He is sure one grand dog. He turned out every bit as good as you said he would. He’s better now than he was at five months.

I want to thank you for letting me have such a dog, Mr. Frayne. Just as you said, he is of Champion timber. Now this brings me to the business I spoke about.

Granther used to tell me how the gentry on the other side would bet with each other on their dogs at the shows. Six months ago my Aunt Marjorie died and she willed me nine hundred dollars ($900). It is in bank waiting for a good investment for it. Now here is an investment that seems to me a mighty safe one. Me knowing Bobby as I do. A fine sporting investment. And I hope it may please you as well. I am entering Bobby for Westminster. I read in _Dog News_ that you are expecting to enter Champion Lochinvar King there, with others of your string. So here is my proposition.

I propose you enter King for “Open, Sable-and-White” and “Open, Any Colour,” these being the only regular classes a sable champion is eligible for. I will enter Bobby in the same classes, instead of “Novice” as I was going to. And I will wager you six hundred dollars ($600) even, that the judge will place Bobby above King. I am making this offer knowing how fine King is but thinking my dog is even better. For Bobby has really improved since a pup. My wife thinks so too.

If this offer pleases you, will you deposit a certified check of six hundred dollars ($600) with the editor of _Dog News_? He is a square man as every one knows and he will see fair play. He has promised me he will hold the stakes. I am ready to deposit my certified check for six hundred dollars ($600) at once. I would like to bet the whole nine hundred dollars ($900). Knowing it a safe investment. Knowing Bobby like I do. But my wife doesn’t want me to bet it at all and so we are compromising on six hundred dollars ($600).

Please let me hear from you on this, Mr. Frayne. And I thank you again for how you treated me as regards Bobby. I hope to repay you at Westminster by letting you see him for yourself.

Your ob’t servant,
James A. Mackellar.

Yes, it was a long letter. Yet Frayne skipped no word of it. And Roke listened, as to heavenly music.

“Talk about Lochinvar luck!” chortled Frayne as he finished. “The worst pup we ever bred; and we sold him for one-fifty! And now he is due to fetch us another six hundred, in dividends. He—”

“You’re going to cover his bet?” queried Roke. “Good! I was afraid maybe you’d feel kind of sorry for the poor cuss, and—”

“Unless I break both wrists, in the next hour,” announced Frayne, “that certified check will start for the _Dog News_ office by noon. It’s the same old wheeze: A dub has picked up a smattering of dog talk; he thinks he knows it all. He buys a bum pup with a thundering pedigree. The pedigree makes him think the pup is a humdinger. He brags about it to his folks. They think anything that costs so much must be the best ever, no matter how it looks. And he gets to believing he’s got a world beater. Then—”

“But, boss,” put in Roke with happy unction, “just shut your eyes and try to remember how that poor mutt looked! And the boob says he’s ‘even better than he gave promise to be.’ Do you get that? Yet you hear a lot about Scotchmen being shrewd! Gee, but I wish you’d let me have a slice of that $600 bet! I’d—”

“No,” said Frayne judicially. “That’s my own meat. It was caught in my trap. But I tell you what you can do: Wait till I send my check and till it’s covered, and then write to Mackellar and ask him if he’s willing to bet another $150, on the side, with you. From the way he sounds, you ought to have it easy in getting him to make the side bet. He needn’t tell his wife. Try it anyhow; if you like.”

Roke tried it. And, after ridiculously small objection on Jamie’s part, the side bet was recorded and its checks were posted with the editor of _Dog News_. Once more Lucius Frayne and his faithful kennel man shook hands in perfect happiness.

To the topmost steel rafters, where the grey February shadows hung, old Madison Square Garden echoed and reverberated with the multi-keyed barks of some two thousand dogs. The four-day show had been opened at ten o’clock of a slushy Wednesday morning. And as usual the collies were to be judged on the first day.

Promptly at eleven o’clock the clean-cut collie judge followed his steward into the ring. The leather-lunged runner passed down the double ranks of collie benches, bawling the numbers for the Male Puppy Class.

The judge had a reputation for quickness, as well as for accuracy and honesty. The Open classes, for male dogs, were certain to come up for verdict within an hour, at most.

Seven benches had been thrown into one, for the Frayne dogs. At its back ran a strip of red silk, lettered in silver: “LOCHINVAR COLLIE KENNELS.” Seven high-quality dogs lay or sat in this space de luxe. In the centre—his name on a bronze plate above his head—reclined Lochinvar King.

In full majesty of conscious perfection he lay there; magnificent as a Numidian lion, the target for all eyes. Conditioned and groomed to the minute, he stood out from his high-class kennel-mates like a swan among cygnets.

Frayne, more than once in the show’s first hour or so, left his much-admired benches; for a glance at a near-by unoccupied space, numbered 568. Here, according to the catalogue, should be benched Lochinvar Bobby.

But Bobby was nowhere to be seen.

Congratulating himself on his own craft in having inserted a forfeit clause in the bet agreement, Frayne was none the less disappointed that the fifth-rate mutt had not shown up.

He longed for a chance to hear the titter of the railbirds; when the out-at-elbow, gangling, semi-hairless little nondescript should shamble into the ring. Bobby’s presence would add zest to his own oft-told tale of the wager.

According to American Kennel Club rules, a dog must be on its bench from the moment the exhibition opens until the close, excepting only when it is in the ring or at stated exercise periods. That rule, until recently, has been most flagrantly disregarded by many exhibitors. In view of this, Frayne made a trip to the exercise room and then through the dim-lit stalls under the main floor.

As he came back from a fruitless search for Bobby or for Mackellar, he passed the collie ring. “Limit; Dogs,” was chalked on the blackboard. Two classes more—“Open, Merle,” and "Open, Tricolour"—and then King must enter the ring for “Open, Sable.” Frayne hurried to the Lochinvar benches, where Roke and another kennel man were fast at work putting finishing touches to King’s toilet.

The great dog was on his feet, tense and eager for the coming clash. Close behind the unseeing Roke, and studying King with grave admiration, stood Jamie Mackellar.

“Hello, there!” boomed Frayne with loud cordiality, bearing down upon the little man. “Get cold feet? I see your dog’s absent. Remember, you forfeit by absence.”

“Yes, sir,” said Jamie with meekness, taking off his hat to the renowned sportsman, and too confused in fumbling with its wabbly brim to see the hand which Frayne held out to him. “Yes, sir. I remember the forfeit clause, sir. I’m not forfeiting. Bobby is here.”

“Here? Where? I looked all over the—”

“I hired one of the cubby-hole rooms upstairs, sir; to keep him in, nights, while he’s here. And I haven’t brought him down to his bench yet. You see, he—he ain’t seen many strangers. And you’ll remember, maybe, that he used to be just a wee peckle shy. So I’m keeping him there till it is time to show him. My boy, Donald, is up, now, getting him ready. They’ll be down presently, sir. I think you’ll be real pleased with how Bobby looks.”

"I’m counting on a heap of pleasure," was Frayne’s cryptic reply, as he turned away to mask a grin of utter joy.

Five grey dogs were coming down the aisle to their benches. The Merle Class had been judged and the Tricolours were in the ring. There were but four of these.

In another handful of minutes the “Open, Sable” Class was called. It was the strongest class of the day. It contained no less than three champions; in addition to four less famous dogs, like Bobby;—seven entries in all.

Six of these dogs were marched into the ring. The judge looked at the steward, for the “all-here” signal. As he did so, the seventh entrant made his way past the gate crowd and was piloted into the ring by a small and cheaply clad man.

While the attendant was slipping the number board on Mackellar’s arm, Lucius Frayne’s eyes fell upon Lochinvar Bobby. So did those of the impatient judge and the ninety out of every hundred of the railbirds.

Through the close-packed ranks of onlookers ran a queer little wordless mutter—the most instinctive and therefore the highest praise that can be accorded.

Alertly calm of nerve, heedless of his surroundings so long as his worshipped god was crooning reassurances to him, Bobby stood at Mackellar’s side.

His incredible coat was burnished like old bronze. His head was calmly erect, his mighty frame steady. His eyes, with true eagle look, surveyed the staring throng.

Never before, in all the Westminster Club’s forty-odd shows, had such a collie been led into the ring. Eugenic breeding, wise rationing and tireless human care had gone to the perfecting of other dogs. But Mother Nature herself had made Lochinvar Bobby what he was. She had fed him bountifully upon the all-strengthening ration of the primal beast; and she had given him the exercise-born appetite to eat and profit by it. Her pitiless winter winds had combed and winnowed his coat as could no mortal hand, giving it thickness and length and richness beyond belief. And she had moulded his growing young body into the peerless model of the Wild.

Then, because he had the loyal heart of a collie and not the incurable savagery of the wolf, she had awakened his soul and made him bask rapturously in the friendship of a true dog-man. The combination was unmatchable.

“Walk your dogs, please,” ordered the judge, coming out of his momentary daze.

Before the end of the ring’s first turn, he had motioned Frayne and Mackellar to take their dogs into one corner. He proceeded to study the five others; awarding to two of them the yellow third-prize ribbon and the white reserve, and then ordering the quintet from the ring. After which he beckoned Bobby and King to the judging block.

In the interim, Frayne had been staring goggle-eyed at the Midwestburg collie. He tried to speak; but he could not. A hundred thoughts were racing dumbly through his bemused brain. He stood agape, foolish of face.

Jamie Mackellar was pleasantly talkative.

“A grand class, this,” he confided to his voiceless comrade. “But, first crack, Judge Breese had the eye to single out our two as so much the best that he won’t size ’em up with the others. How do you like Bobby, sir? Is he very bad? Don’t you think, maybe, he’s picked up, just a trifle, since you shipped him to me? He’s no worse, anyhow, than he was then, is he?”

Frayne gobbled, wordlessly.

“This is the last time I’ll show him, for a while, Mr. Frayne,” continued Jamie, a grasping note coming into his timid voice. “The cash I’m due to collect from you and Mr. Roke will make enough, with the legacy and what I’ve saved, to start me in business with a truck of my own. Bobby and I are going into partnership. And we’re going to clean up. Bobby is putting seven hundred and fifty dollars and to-day’s cash prizes into the firm. He and I are getting out of the show-end of collie breeding, for a time. The more we see of some of you professionals, the better we like cesspools. If dogs weren’t the grandest animals the good Lord ever put on earth, a few of the folks who exploit them would have killed the dog game long ago. It—. Judge Breese is beckoning for us!”

Side by side, the two glorious collies advanced to the judging block. Side by, side, at their handlers’ gestures, they mounted it. And again from the railbirds arose that queer wordless hum. Sire and son, shoulder to shoulder, faced the judge.

And, for the first time in his unbroken career of conquest, Lochinvar King looked almost shabby; beside the wondrous young giant he had sired. His every good point—and he had no others—was bettered by Bobby.

As a matter of form, Breese went over both dogs with meticulous care; testing coat-texture, spring of ribs, action, soundness of bone, carriage, facial expression, and the myriad other details which go into the judging of a show dog. Long he faced them, crouching low and staring into their deep-set eyes; marking the set and carriage of the tulip ears; comparing point with point; as becomes a man who is about to give victory to an Unknown over a hitherto Invincible.

Then with a jerk of his head he summoned the steward with the judging book and ribbons. And, amid a spontaneous rattle of applause, Jamie Mackellar led his splendid dog to the far end of the ring, with one hand; while in the fingers of the other fluttered a strip of gold-lettered dark blue ribbon.

Back came both collies for the “Open, Any Colour Class,” and the verdict was repeated; as it was repeated in the supreme “Winners’” Class which followed. “Winners’” Class carried, with its rosette and cash specials, a guerdon of five points toward Bobby’s championship.

Then followed the rich harvest of other cash specials in the collie division, including $25 for “Best of Breed,” and for the next three days even fatter gleanings from among the variety classes and unclassified specials. These last awards ranged from five dollars to twenty-five dollars apiece; apart from a valiseful of silver cups and like trophies which are more beautiful than pawnable.

On Saturday, Jamie Mackellar and Bobby took the midnight train for Midwestburg; richer by almost nine hundred dollars for their New York sojourn.

Rolling sweetly around in Jamie’s memory was a brief talk he had had with Roke, an hour before the close of the show. Sent as emissary by Frayne, the kennel manager had offered Mackellar a flat two thousand dollars for the sensational young prize winner.

“We’re not parting company, Bobby and I,” Jamie had made civil answer. “Thanking you and your boss just as much. But tell Mr. Frayne if ever I breed a pup as good as Bobby was when he came to me, he can have it for an even hundred and fifty. I wouldn’t want such a fine chap to think I’m not just as clean a sportsman as what he is!”

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SEVEN: “One Minute Longer”

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SEVEN: “One Minute Longer”

Wolf was a collie, red-gold and white of coat, with a shape more like his long-ago wolf ancestors’ than like a domesticated dog’s. It was from this ancestral throw-back that he was named Wolf.

He looked not at all like his great sire, Sunnybank Lad, nor like his dainty, thoroughbred mother, Lady. Nor was he like them in any other way, except that he inherited old Lad’s staunchly gallant spirit and loyalty and uncanny brain. No, in traits as well as in looks, he was more wolf than dog. He almost never barked, his snarl supplying all vocal needs.

The Mistress or the Master or the Boy—any of these three could romp with him, roll him over, tickle him, or subject him to all sorts of playful indignities. And Wolf entered gleefully into the fun of the romp. But let any human, besides these three, lay a hand on his slender body, and a snarling plunge for the offender’s throat was Wolf’s invariable reply to the caress.

It had been so since his puppyhood. He did not fly at accredited guests, nor, indeed, pay any heed to their presence, so long as they kept their hands off him. But to all of these the Boy was forced to say at the very outset of the visit:

“Pat Lad and Bruce all you want to, but please leave Wolf alone. He doesn’t care for people. We’ve taught him to stand for a pat on the head, from guests,—but don’t touch his body.”

Then, to prove his own immunity, the Boy would proceed to tumble Wolf about, to the delight of them both.

In romping with humans whom they love, most dogs will bite, more or less gently,—or pretend to bite,—as a part of the game. Wolf never did this. In his wildest and roughest romps with the Boy or with the Boy’s parents, Wolf did not so much as open his mighty jaws. Perhaps because he dared not trust himself to bite gently. Perhaps because he realised that a bite is not a joke, but an effort to kill.

There had been only one exception to Wolf’s hatred for mauling at strangers’ hands. A man came to The Place on a business call, bringing along a chubby two-year-old daughter. The Master warned the baby that she must not go near Wolf, although she might pet any of the other collies. Then he became so much interested in the business talk that he and his guest forgot all about the child.

Ten minutes later the Master chanced to shift his gaze to the far end of the room. And he broke off, with a gasp, in the very middle of a sentence.

The baby was seated astride Wolf’s back, her tiny heels digging into the dog’s sensitive ribs, and each of her chubby fists gripping one of his ears. Wolf was lying there, with an idiotically happy grin on his face and wagging his tail in ecstasy.

No one knew why he had submitted to the baby’s tugging hands, except because she _was_ a baby, and because the gallant heart of the dog had gone out to her helplessness.

Wolf was the official watch-dog of The Place; and his name carried dread to the loafers and tramps of the region. Also, he was the Boy’s own special dog. He had been born on the Boy’s tenth birthday, five years before this story of ours begins; and ever since then the two had been inseparable chums.

One sloppy afternoon in late winter, Wolf and the Boy were sprawled, side by side; on the fur rug in front of the library fire. The Mistress and the Master had gone to town for the day. The house was lonely, and the two chums were left to entertain each other.

The Boy was reading a magazine. The dog beside him was blinking in drowsy comfort at the fire. Presently, finishing the story he had been reading, the Boy looked across at the sleepy dog.

“Wolf,” he said, “here’s a story about a dog. I think he must have been something like you. Maybe he was your great-great-great-great-grandfather. He lived an awfully long time ago—in Pompeii. Ever hear of Pompeii?”

Now, the Boy was fifteen years old, and he had too much sense to imagine that Wolf could possibly understand the story he was about to tell him. But, long since, he had fallen into a way of talking to his dog, sometimes, as if to another human. It was fun for him to note the almost pathetic eagerness wherewith Wolf listened and tried to grasp the meaning of what he was saying. Again and again, at sound of some familiar word or voice inflection, the collie would pick up his ears or wag his tail, as if in the joyous hope that he had at last found a clue to his owner’s meaning.

“You see,” went on the Boy, “this dog lived in Pompeii, as I told you. You’ve never been there, Wolf.”

Wolf was looking up at the Boy in wistful excitement, seeking vainly to guess what was expected of him.

“And,” continued the Boy, “the kid who owned him seems to have had a regular knack for getting into trouble all the time. And his dog was always on hand to get him out of it. It’s a true story, the magazine says. The kid’s father was so grateful to the dog that he bought him a solid silver coller. Solid silver! Get that, Wolfie?”

Wolf did not “get it.” But he wagged his tail hopefully, his eyes alight with bewildered interest.

“And,” said the Boy, “what do you suppose was engraved on the collar? Well, I’ll tell you: ‘_This dog has thrice saved his little master from death. Once by fire, once by flood, and once at the hands of robbers!_’ How’s that for a record, Wolf? For _one_ dog, too!”

At the words “Wolf” and “dog,” the collie’s tail smote the floor in glad comprehension. Then he edged closer to the Boy as the narrator’s voice presently took on a sadder note.

“But at last,” resumed the Boy, “there came a time when the dog couldn’t save the kid. Mount Vesuvius erupted. All the sky was pitch-dark, as black as midnight, and Pompeii was buried under lava and ashes. The dog could easily have got away by himself,—dogs can see in the dark, can’t they, Wolf?—but he couldn’t get the kid away. And he wouldn’t go without him. You wouldn’t have gone without me, either, would you, Wolf? Pretty nearly two thousand years later, some people dug through the lava that covered Pompeii. What do you suppose they found? Of course they found a whole lot of things. One of them was that dog—silver collar and inscription and all. He was lying at the feet of a child. The child he couldn’t save. He was one grand dog—hey, Wolf?”

The continued strain of trying to understand began to get on the collie’s high-strung nerves. He rose to his feet, quivering, and sought to lick the Boy’s face, thrusting one upraised white forepaw at him in appeal for a handshake. The Boy slammed shut the magazine.

“It’s slow in the house, here, with nothing to do,” he said to his chum. “I’m going up the lake with my gun to see if any wild ducks have landed in the marshes yet. It’s almost time for them. Want to come along?”

The last sentence Wolf understood perfectly. On the instant he was dancing with excitement at the prospect of a walk. Being a collie, he was of no earthly help in a hunting-trip; but, on such tramps, as everywhere else, he was the Boy’s inseparable companion.

Out over the slushy snow the two started, the Boy with his light single-barrelled shotgun slung over one shoulder, the dog trotting close at his heels. The March thaw was changing to a sharp freeze. The deep and soggy snow was crusted over, just thick enough to make walking a genuine difficulty for both dog and Boy.

The Place was a promontory that ran out into the lake, on the opposite bank from the mile-distant village. Behind, across the highroad, lay the winter-choked forest. At the lake’s northerly end, two miles beyond The Place, were the reedy marshes where, a month hence, wild duck would congregate. Thither, with Wolf, the Boy ploughed his way through the biting cold.

The going was heavy and heavier. A quarter-mile below the marshes the Boy struck out across the upper corner of the lake. Here the ice was rotten at the top, where the thaw had nibbled at it, but beneath it was still a full eight inches thick; easily strong enough to bear the Boy’s weight.

Along the grey ice-field the two plodded. The skim of water, which the thaw had spread an inch thick over the ice, had frozen in the day’s cold spell. It crackled like broken glass as the chums walked over it. The Boy had on big hunting-boots. So, apart from the extra effort, the glass-like ice did not bother him. To Wolf it gave acute pain. The sharp particles were forever getting between the callous black pads of his feet, pricking and cutting him acutely.

Little smears of blood began to mark the dog’s course but it never occurred to Wolf to turn back, or to betray by any sign that he was suffering. It was all a part of the day’s work—a cheap price to pay for the joy of tramping with his adored young master.

Then, forty yards or so on the hither side of the marshes, Wolf beheld a right amazing phenomenon. The Boy had been walking directly in front of him, gun over shoulder. With no warning at all, the youthful hunter fell, feet foremost, out of sight, through the ice.

The light shell of new-frozen water that covered the lake’s thicker ice also masked an air-hole nearly three feet wide. Into this, as he strode carelessly along, the Boy had stepped. Straight down he had gone, with all the force of his hundred-and-twenty pounds and with all the impetus of his forward stride.

Instinctively, he threw out his hands to restore his balance. The only effect of this was to send the gun flying ten feet away.

Down went the Boy through less than three feet of water (for the bottom of the lake at this point had started to slope upward towards the marshes) and through nearly two feet more of sticky marsh mud that underlay the lake-bed.

His outflung hands struck against the ice on the edges of the air-hole, and clung there.

Sputtering and gurgling, the Boy brought his head above the surface and tried to raise himself by his hands, high enough to wriggle out upon the surface of the ice. Ordinarily, this would have been simple enough for so strong a lad. But the glue-like mud had imprisoned his feet and the lower part of his legs; and held them powerless.

Try as he would, the Boy could not wrench himself free of the slough. The water, as he stood upright, was on a level with his mouth. The air-hole was too wide for him, at such a depth, to get a good purchase on its edges and lift himself bodily to safety.

Gaining such a finger-hold as he could, he heaved with all his might, throwing every muscle of his body into the struggle. One leg was pulled almost free of the mud, but the other was driven deeper into it. And, as the Boy’s fingers slipped from the smoothly wet ice-edge, the attempt to restore his balance drove the free leg back, knee-deep into the mire.

Ten minutes of this hopeless fighting left the Boy panting and tired out. The icy water was numbing his nerves and chilling his blood into torpidity. His hands were without sense of feeling, as far up as the wrists. Even if he could have shaken free his legs from the mud, now, he had not strength enough left to crawl out of the hole.

He ceased his useless frantic battle and stood dazed. Then he came sharply to himself. For, as he stood, the water crept upward from his lips to his nostrils. He knew why the water seemed to be rising. It was not rising. It was he who was sinking. As soon as he stopped moving, the mud began, very slowly, but very steadily, to suck him downward.

This was not a quicksand, but it was a deep mud-bed. And only by constant motion could he avoid sinking farther and farther down into it. He had less than two inches to spare, at best, before the water should fill his nostrils; less than two inches of life, even if he could keep the water down to the level of his lips.

There was a moment of utter panic. Then the Boy’s brain cleared. His only hope was to keep on fighting—to rest when he must, for a moment or so, and then to renew his numbed grip on the ice-edge and try to pull his feet a few inches higher out of the mud. He must do this as long as his chilled body could be scourged into obeying his will.

He struggled again, but with virtually no result in raising himself. A second struggle, however, brought him chin-high above the water. He remembered confusedly that some of these earlier struggles had scarce budged him, while others had gained him two or three inches. Vaguely, he wondered why. Then turning his head, he realised.

Wolf, as he turned, was just loosing his hold on the wide collar of the Boy’s mackinaw. His cut forepaws were still braced against a flaw of ragged ice on the air-hole’s edge, and all his tawny body was tense.

His body was dripping wet, too. The Boy noted that; and he realised that the repeated effort to draw his master to safety must have resulted, at least once, in pulling the dog down into the water with the floundering Boy.

“Once more, Wolfie! _Once more!_” chattered the Boy through teeth that clicked together like castanets.

The dog darted forward, caught his grip afresh on the edge of the Boy’s collar, and tugged with all his fierce strength; growling and whining ferociously the while.

The Boy seconded the collie’s tuggings by a supreme struggle that lifted him higher than before. He was able to get one arm and shoulder clear. His numb fingers closed about an up-thrust tree-limb which had been washed down stream in the autumn freshets and had been frozen into the lake ice.

With this new purchase, and aided by the dog, the Boy tried to drag himself out of the hole. But the chill of the water had done its work. He had not the strength to move farther. The mud still sucked at his calves and ankles. The big hunting-boots were full of water that seemed to weigh a ton.

He lay there, gasping and chattering. Then through the gathering twilight, his eyes fell on the gun, lying ten feet away.

“Wolf!” he ordered, nodding towards the weapon. “Get it! _Get_ it!”

Not in vain had the Boy talked to Wolf, for years, as if the dog were human. At the words and the nod, the collie trotted over to the gun, lifted it by the stock, and hauled it awkwardly along over the bumpy ice to his master, where he laid it down at the edge of the air-hole.

The dog’s eyes were cloudy with trouble, and he shivered and whined as with ague. The water on his thick coat was freezing to a mass of ice. But it was from anxiety that he shivered, and not from cold.

Still keeping his numb grasp on the tree-branch, the boy balanced himself as best he could, and thrust two fingers of his free hand into his mouth to warm them into sensation again.

When this was done, he reached out to where the gun lay, and pulled its trigger. The shot boomed deafeningly through the twilight winter silences. The recoil sent the weapon sliding sharply back along the ice, spraining the Boy’s trigger finger and cutting it to the bone.

“That’s all I can do,” said the Boy to himself. “If any one hears it, well and good. I can’t get at another cartridge. I couldn’t put it into the breech if I had it. My hands are too numb.”

For several endless minutes he clung there, listening. But this was a desolate part of the lake, far from any road; and the season was too early for other hunters to be abroad. The bitter cold, in any case, tended to make sane folk hug the fireside rather than to venture so far into the open. Nor was the single report of a gun uncommon enough to call for investigation in such weather.

All this the Boy told himself, as the minutes dragged by. Then he looked again at Wolf. The dog, head on one side, still stood protectingly above him. The dog was cold and in pain. But, being only a dog, it did not occur to him to trot off home to the comfort of the library fire and leave his master to fend for himself.

Presently, with a little sigh, Wolf lay down on the ice, his nose across the Boy’s arm. Even if he lacked strength to save his beloved master, he could stay and share the Boy’s sufferings.

But the Boy himself thought otherwise. He was not at all minded to freeze to death, nor was he willing to let Wolf imitate the dog of Pompeii by dying helplessly at his master’s side. Controlling for an instant the chattering of his teeth, he called:

“Wolf!”

The dog was on his feet again at the word; alert, eager.

“Wolf!” repeated the boy. “_Go!_ Hear me? _Go!_”

He pointed homeward.

Wolf stared at him, hesitant. Again the Boy called in vehement command, “_Go!_”

The collie lifted his head to the twilight sky with a wolf-howl hideous in its grief and appeal—a howl as wild and discordant as that of any of his savage ancestors. Then, stooping first to lick the numb hand that clung to the branch, Wolf turned and fled.

Across the cruelly sharp film of ice he tore, at top speed, head down; whirling through the deepening dusk like a flash of tawny light.

Wolf understood what was wanted of him. Wolf always understood. The pain in his feet was as nothing. The stiffness of his numbed body was forgotten in the urgency for speed.