Bruce Part 5

"He's a thoroughbred," crossly protested the Master. "I have his certified pedigree. There's no better blood in--"

"I don't care what his ancestors were," snapped the judge. "He's a throw-back to the dinosaur or the Great Auk. And I won't judge him as a collie. Take him out of the ring. You're delaying the others."

A judge's decision is final. Red with angry shame and suppressing an unworthy desire to kick the luckless Bruce, the Master led the pup back to his allotted bench. Bruce trotted cheerily along with a maddening air of having done something to be proud of. Deaf to the Mistress's sympathy and to her timidly voiced protests, the Master scrawled on an envelope-back the words "For Sale. Name Your Own Price," and pinned it on the edge of the bench.

"Here endeth the first lesson in collie-raising, so far as The Place is concerned," he decreed, stalking back to the ringside to watch the rest of the judging.

The Mistress lingered behind, to bestow a furtive consolatory pat upon the disqualified Bruce. Then she joined her husband beside the ring.

It was probably by accident that her skirt brushed sharply against the bench-edge as she went--knocking the "For Sale" sign down into the litter of straw below.

But a well-meaning fellow-exhibitor, across the aisle, saw the bit of paper flutter floorward. This good soul rescued it from the straw and pinned it back in place.

(The world is full of helpful folk. That is perhaps one reason why the Millennium's date is still so indefinite.)

An hour later, a man touched the Master on the arm.

"That dog of yours, on Bench 48," began the stranger, "the big pup with the 'For Sale' sign on his bench. What do you want for him?"

The Mistress was several feet away, talking to the superintendent of the show. Guiltily, yet gratefully, the Master led the would-be purchaser back to the benches, without attracting his wife's notice.

A few minutes afterward he returned to where she and the superintendent were chatting.

"Well," said the Master, trying to steel himself against his wife's possible disappointment, "I found a buyer for Bruce--a Dr. Halding, from New York. He likes the pup. Says Bruce looks as if he was strong and had lots of endurance. I wonder if he wants him for a sledge-dog.

He paid me fifteen dollars for him; and it was a mighty good bargain. I was lucky to get more than a nickel for such a cur."

The Master shot forth this speech in almost a single rapid breath.

Then, before his wife could reply,--and without daring to look into her troubled eyes,--he discovered an acquaintance on the far side of the ring and bustled off to speak to him. The Master, you see, was a husband, not a hero.

The Mistress turned a worried gaze on the superintendent.

"It was best, I suppose," she said bravely. "We agreed he must be sold, if the judge decided he was not any good. But I'm sorry. For I'm fond of him. I'm sorry he is going to live in New York, too. A big city is no place for a big dog. I hope this Dr. Halding will be nice to the poor puppy."

"Dr.--WHO?" sharply queried the superintendent, who had not caught the name when the Master had spoken it in his rapid-fire speech. "Dr.

Halding? Of New York? Huh!

"You needn't worry about the effect of city life on your dog," he went on with venomous bitterness. "The pup won't have a very long spell of it. If I had my way, that man Halding would be barred from every dog-show and stuck in jail. It's an old trick of his, to buy up thoroughbreds, cheap, at shows. The bigger and the stronger they are, the more he pays for them. He seems to think pedigreed dogs are better for his filthy purposes than street curs. They have a higher nervous organism, I suppose. The swine!"

"What do you mean?" asked the Mistress, puzzled by his vehemence. "I don't--"

"You must have heard of Halding and his so-called 'research work,'" the superintendent went on. "He is one of the most notorious vivisectionists in--"

The superintendent got no further. He was talking to empty air. The Mistress had fled. Her determined small figure made a tumbled wake through the crowd as she sped toward Bruce's bench. The puppy was no longer there. In another second the Mistress was at the door of the building.

A line of parked cars was stretched across the opposite side of the village street. Into one of these cars a large and loose-jointed man was lifting a large and loose-jointed dog. The dog did not like his treatment, and was struggling pathetically in vain awkwardness to get free.

"Bruce!" called the Mistress, fiercely, as she dashed across the street.

The puppy heard the familiar voice and howled for release. Dr. Halding struck him roughly over the head and scrambled into the machine with him, reaching with his one disengaged hand for the self-starter b.u.t.ton.

Before he could touch it, the Mistress was on the running-board of the car.

As she ran, she had opened her wristbag. Now, flinging on the runabout's seat a ten and a five-dollar bill, she demanded--

"Give me my dog! There is the money you paid for him!"

"He isn't for sale," grinned the Doctor. "Stand clear, please. I'm starting."

"You're doing nothing of the sort," was the hot reply. "You'll give back my dog! Do you understand?"

For answer Halding reached again toward his self-starter. A renewed struggle from the whimpering puppy frustrated his aim and forced him to devote both hands to the subduing of Bruce. The dog was making frantic writhings to get to the Mistress. She caught his furry ruff and raged on, sick with anger.

"I know who you are and what you want this poor frightened puppy for.

You shan't have him! There seems to be no law to prevent human devils from strapping helpless dogs to a table and torturing them to death in the unholy name of science. But if there isn't a corner waiting for them, below, it's only because Hades can't be made hot enough to punish such men as they ought to be punished! You're not going to torture Bruce. There's your money. Let go of him."

"You talk like all silly, sloppy sentimentalists!" scoffed the Doctor, his slight German accent becoming more noticeable as he continued: "A woman can't have the intellect to understand our services to humanity.

We--"

"Neither have half the real doctors!" she flashed. "Fully half of them deny that vivisection ever helped humanity. And half the remainder say they are in doubt. They can't point to a single definite case where it has been of use. Alienists say it's a distinct form of mental perversion,--the craving to torture dumb animals to death and to make scientific notes of their sufferings."

"Pah!" he sniffed. "I--"

She hurried on

"If humanity can't be helped without cutting live dogs and kittens to shreds, in slow agony--then so much the worse for humanity! If you vivisectors would be content to practice on one another--or on condemned murderers,--instead of on friendly and innocent dogs, there'd be no complaint from any one. But leave our pets alone. Let go of my puppy!"

By way of response the Doctor grunted in lofty contempt. At the same time he tucked the wriggling dog under his right arm, holding him thus momentarily safe, and pressed the self-starter b.u.t.ton.

There was a subdued whir. A move of Halding's foot and a release of the brake, and the car started forward.

"Stand clear!" he ordered. "I'm going."

The jolt of the sudden start was too much for the Mistress's balance on the running-board. Back she toppled. Only by luck did she land on her feet instead of her head, upon the greasy pavement of the street.

But she sprang forward again, with a little cry of indignant dismay, and reached desperately into the moving car for Bruce, calling him eagerly by name.

Dr. Halding was steering with his left hand, while his viselike right arm still encircled the protesting collie. As the Mistress ran alongside and grasped frantically for her doomed pet, he let go of Bruce for an instant, to fend off her hand--or perhaps to thrust her away from the peril of the fast-moving mud-guards. At the Mistress's cry--and at the brief letup of pressure caused by the Doctor's menacing gesture toward the unhappy woman--Bruce's long-sleeping soul awoke. He answered the cry and the man's blow at his deity in the immemorial fas.h.i.+on of all dogs whose human G.o.ds are threatened.

There was a snarling wild-beast growl, the first that ever had come from the clownlike puppy's throat,--and Bruce flung his unwieldy young body straight for the vivisector's throat.

Halding, with a vicious fist-lunge, sent the pup to the floor of the car in a crumpled heap, but not before the curving white eyeteeth had slashed the side of the man's throat in an ugly flesh-wound that drove its way dangerously close to the jugular.

Half stunned by the blow, and with the breath knocked out of him, Bruce none the less gathered himself together with lightning speed and launched his bulk once more for Halding's throat.

This time he missed his mark--for several things happened all at once.

At the dog's first onslaught, Halding's foot had swung forward, along with his fist, in an instinctive kick. The kick did not reach Bruce.

But it landed, full and effectively, on the accelerator.

The powerful car responded to the touch with a bound. And it did so at the very moment that the flash of white teeth at his throat made Halding s.n.a.t.c.h his own left hand instinctively from the steering-wheel, in order to guard the threatened spot.