Bruce Part 6

A second later the runabout crashed at full speed into the wall of a house on the narrow street's opposite side.

The rest was chaos.

When a crowd of idlers and a policeman at last righted the wrecked car, two bodies were found huddled inertly amid a junk-heap of splintered gla.s.s and s.h.i.+vered wood and twisted metal. The local ambulance carried away one of these limp bodies. The Place's car rushed the smash-up's other senseless victim to the office of the nearest veterinary. Dr.

Halding, with a shattered shoulder-blade and a fractured nose and jaw and a mild case of brain-concussion,--was received as a guest of honor at the village hospital.

Bruce, his left foreleg broken and a nasty a.s.sortment of gla.s.s-cuts marring the fluffiness of his fur, was skillfully patched up by the vet' and carried back that night to The Place.

The puppy had suddenly taken on a new value in his owners' eyes--partly for his gallantly puny effort at defending the Mistress, partly because of his pitiful condition. And he was nursed, right zealously, back to life and health.

In a few weeks, the plaster cast on the convalescent's broken foreleg had been replaced by a bandage. In another week or two the vet'

p.r.o.nounced Bruce as well as ever. The dog, through habit, still held the mended foreleg off the ground, even after the bandage was removed.

Whereat, the Master tied a bandage tightly about the uninjured foreleg.

Bruce at once decided that this, and not the other, was the lame leg; and he began forthwith to limp on it. As it was manifestly impossible to keep both forelegs off the ground at the same time when he was walking, he was forced to make use of the once-broken leg. Finding, to his amaze, that he could walk on it with perfect ease, he devoted his limping solely to the well leg. And as soon as the Master took the bandage from that, Bruce ceased to limp at all.

Meanwhile, a lawyer, whose name sounded as though it had been culled from a Rhine Wine list, had begun suit, in Dr. Halding's name, against the Mistress, as a "contributory cause" of his client's accident. The suit never came to trial. It was dropped, indeed, with much haste. Not from any change of heart on the plaintiff's behalf; but because, at that juncture, Dr. Halding chanced to be arrested and interned as a dangerous Enemy Alien. Our country had recently declared war on Germany; and the belated spy-hunt was up.

During the Federal officers' search of the doctor's house, for treasonable doc.u.ments (of which they found an ample supply), they came upon his laboratory. No fewer than five dogs, in varying stages of hideous torture, were found strapped to tables or hanging to wall-hooks. The vivisector bewailed, loudly and gutturally, this cruel interruption to his researches in Science's behalf.

One day, two months after the accident, Bruce stood on all four feet once more, with no vestige left of scars or of lameness. And then, for the first time, a steady change that had been so slow as to escape any one's notice dawned upon the Mistress and the Master. It struck them both at the same moment. And they stared dully at their pet.

The shapeless, b.u.mptious, foolish Pest of two months ago had vanished.

In his place, by a very normal process of nature-magic, stood a magnificently stately thoroughbred collie.

The big head had tapered symmetrically, and had lost its puppy formlessness. It was now a head worthy of Landseer's own pencil. The bonily awkward body had lengthened and had lost its myriad k.n.o.bs and angles. It had grown ma.s.sively graceful.

The former thatch of half-curly and indeterminately yellowish fuzz had changed to a rough tawny coat, wavy and unbelievably heavy, stippled at the ends with glossy black. There was a strange depth and repose and Soul in the dark eyes--yes, and a keen intelligence, too.

It was the old story of the Ugly Duckling, all over again.

"Why!" gasped the Mistress. "He's--he's BEAUTIFUL! And I never knew it."

At her loved voice the great dog moved across to where she sat. Lightly he laid one little white paw on her knee and looked gravely up into her eyes.

"He's got sense, too," chimed in the Master. "Look at those eyes, if you doubt it. They're alive with intelligence. It's--it's a miracle! He can't be the same worthless whelp I wanted to get rid of! He CAN'T!"

And he was not. The long illness, at the most formative time of the dog's growth, had done its work in developing what, all the time, had lain latent. The same illness--and the long-enforced personal touch with humans--had done an equally transforming work on the puppy's undeveloped mind. The Thackeray-Was.h.i.+ngton-Lincoln-Bismarck simile had held good.

What looked like a miracle was no more than the same beautifully simple process which Nature enacts every day, when she changes an awkward and dirt-colored cygnet into a glorious swan or a leggily gawky colt into a superb Derby-winner. But Bruce's metamorphosis seemed none the less wonderful in the eyes of the two people who had learned to love him.

Somewhere in the hideous wreck of Dr. Halding's motorcar the dog had found a soul--and the rest had followed as a natural course of growth.

At the autumn dog-show, in Hampton, a "dark-sable-and-white" collie of unwonted size and beauty walked proudly into the ring close to the Mistress's side, when the puppy cla.s.s was called--a cla.s.s that includes all dogs under twelve months old. Six minutes later the Mistress was gleesomely accepting the first-prize blue ribbon, for "best puppy,"

from Judge Symonds' own gnarled hand.

Then came the other cla.s.ses for collies--"Novice," "Open," "Limit,"

"Local," "American Bred." And as Bruce paced majestically out of the ring at last, he was the possessor of five more blue ribbons--as well as the blue Winner's rosette, for "best collie in the show."

"Great dog you've got there, madam!" commented Symonds in solemn approval as he handed the Winner's rosette to the Mistress. "Fine dog in every way. Fine promise. He will go far. One of the best types I've--"

"Do you really think so?" sweetly replied the Mistress. "Why, one of the foremost collie judges in America has gone on record as calling him a 'measly St. Bernard monstrosity.'"

"No?" snorted Symonds, incredulous. "You don't say so! A judge who would speak so, of that dog, doesn't understand his business. He--"

"Oh, yes, he does!" contradicted the Mistress, glancing lovingly at her handful of blue ribbons. "I think he understands his business very well indeed--NOW!"

CHAPTER III. The War Dog

The guest had decided to wait until next morning, before leaving The Place, instead of following his first plan of taking a night train to New York. He was a captain in our regular army and had newly come back from France to forget an a.s.sortment of shrapnel-bites and to teach practical tactics to rookies.

He reached his decision to remain over night at The Place while he and the Mistress and the Master were sitting on the vine-hung west veranda after dinner, watching the flood of sunset change the lake to molten gold and the sky to pink fire. It would be pleasant to steal another few hours at this back-country House of Peace before returning to the humdrum duties of camp. And the guest yielded to the temptation.

"I'm mighty glad you can stay over till morning," said the Master.

"I'll send word to Roberts not to bring up the car."

As he spoke, he scrawled a penciled line on an envelope-back; then he whistled.

From a cool lounging-place beneath the wistaria-vines arose a huge collie--stately of form, dark brown and white of coat, deep-set of eye and with a head that somehow reminded one of a Landseer engraving. The collie trotted up the steps of the veranda and stood expectant before the Master. The latter had been folding the envelope lengthwise. Now he slipped it through the ring in the dog's collar.

"Give it to Roberts," he said.

The big collie turned and set off at a hand-gallop.

"Good!" approved the guest. "Bruce didn't seem to be in any doubt as to what you wanted him to do. He knows where Roberts is likely to be?"

"No," said the Master. "But he can track him and find him, if Roberts is anywhere within a mile or so from here. That was one of the first things we taught him--to carry messages. All we do is to slip the paper into his collar-ring and tell him the name of the person to take it to.

Naturally, he knows us all by name. So it is easy enough for him to do it. We look on the trick as tremendously clever. But that's because we love Bruce. Almost any dog can be taught to do it, I suppose. We--"

"You're mistaken!" corrected the guest. "Almost any dog CAN'T be taught to. Some dogs can, of course; but they are the exception. I ought to know, for I've been where dog-couriers are a decidedly important feature of trench-warfare. I stopped at one of the dog-training schools in England, too, on my way back from Picardy, and watched the teaching of the dogs that are sent to France and Flanders. Not one in ten can be trained to carry messages; and not one in thirty can be counted on to do it reliably. You ought to be proud of Bruce."

"We are," replied the Mistress. "He is one of the family. We think everything of him. He was such a stupid and awkward puppy, too! Then, in just a few months, he shaped up, as he is now. And his brain woke."

Bruce interrupted the talk by reappearing on the veranda. The folded envelope was still in the ring on his collar. The guest glanced furtively at the Master, expecting some sign of chagrin at the collie's failure.

Instead, the Master took the envelope, unfolded it and glanced at a word or two that had been written beneath his own scrawl; then he made another penciled addition to the envelope's writing, stuck the twisted paper back into the ring and said--

"Roberts."

Off trotted Bruce on his second trip.

"I had forgotten to say which train you'll have to take in the morning," explained the Master. "So Roberts wrote, asking what time he was to have the car at the door after breakfast. It was careless of me."

The guest did not answer. But when Bruce presently returned,--this time with no paper in his collar-ring,--the officer pa.s.sed his hand appraisingly through the dog's heavy coat and looked keenly down into his dark eyes.

"Gun-shy?" asked the guest. "Or perhaps he's never heard a gun fired?"