Further Adventures of Lad Part 10

Now, to every dweller in the country, there is one all-present peril; namely, fire. And, the fear of this is always lurking worriedly in the back of a rural householder's brain. A vagrant breath of smoke, in the night, is more potent to banish sleep and to start such a man to investigating his house and grounds than would be any and every other alarm known to mortals.

Even now, in broad daylight, the faint reek was enough to bring the Master's mind back to earth and the Master's body to its feet.

Sniffing, he went out to find the cause of the smell. The chimneys and the roof and the windows of the house showing no sign of smoke, he explored farther; and presently located the odor's origin in a small brush-fire at some distance behind the stables. Two of the men were raking pruned vine-suckers and leaves onto the blaze. The wind set away from the house and stables. There was nothing to worry over. Ashamed of his own fussiness, the Master went back to his work.

As he pa.s.sed the open study window, on his way indoors, a motion inside made him stop. He was just in time to see Lady trot into the room, crouch playfully, and then spring full at the stuffed eagle.

His shout deflected the young dog's leap, and kept her merrily outstretched jaws from closing on the bird. As it was, the impact knocked the eagle and the papier-mache stump to the floor; with much clatter and dust.

The Master vaulted in through the window; arriving on the study floor almost as soon as did the overthrown bird. Lady was slinking out into the hall; crestfallen and scared. The Master collared her and brought her back to the scene of her mischief.

The collie had disobeyed him. Flagrantly she had sinned in a.s.sailing the bird; after his injunction of "Let it alone!" There could be no doubt, from her wriggling aspect of guilt, that she knew she was doing wrong. Worse, she had taken sneaky advantage of his absence in order to spring at the eagle. And disgust warred with the Master's normal indignation.

Speaking as quietly as he could bring himself to speak, he told Lady what she had done and what a rotten thing it had been. As he talked to the utterly crestfallen pup, he was ransacking a drawer of his desk in search of a dogwhip he had put there long ago and had never had occasion to use.

Presently, he found it. Pointing to the overthrown trophy, he brought the lash down across the shrinking collie's loins. He did not strike hard. But he struck half a dozen times; and with glum knowledge that it was the only course to take.

Never before in her eight foolish months of life, had Lady known the meaning of a blow. While the whip-slashes were too light to do more than sting her well-mattressed back, yet the humiliation of them seared deep into her sensitive nature. No sound did she utter. But she cowered flat to the floor; and trembled as if in a hard chill.

The whipping was over, in a few seconds. Again the Master explained to her what it had been inflicted for. Then, calling her to follow, he led the way out of doors and toward the stables. Stomach to earth, the shamed and miserable Lady writhed along, close at his heels.

The Master pa.s.sed the stables and walked toward the brush fire, where the two men were still at work. But he did not go within a hundred feet of the fire. Turning, after he had left the stables behind him, he made for the tool-house.

Lady saw whither he was bound. She ceased to follow. Wheeling about, she trotted stealthily back toward the stables. Reaching the tool-house door, the Master opened it and whistled to the unhappy young collie.

Lady was nowhere in sight. At a second summons, she appeared from around the corner of the stables; moving close to the ground, and with many wriggles of protest. Twice, she stopped; and looked appealingly at the man.

The Master hardened his soul against the prettily pathetic appeal in her eyes and actions; and called her to him again. His own momentary anger against the luckless youngster was gone,--the more so since the eagle had not been damaged by its fall,--but he knew it was needful to impress strongly on Lady the fact of her punishment. This for her own sake as much as for his; since a housedog is worthless until it learns that each and every indoor object must be respected and held sacred from mutilation.

Wherefore, he was minded to spare Lady from any future punishment by making this present lesson sink deep into her brain. Disregarding her manifest aversion for the tool-house, he motioned her into it and shut the door behind her.

"You'll stay there, till morning," he told her, as he closed the window and glanced in at the forlorn little wisp of fur and misery. "You'll be comfortable. And the open s.p.a.ces under the roof will give you all the air you want. I don't dare leave this window open, for fear you might be able to jump out. You've had your supper. And there's a pan of fresh water in there. You'll be no worse off there than you were all winter.

A night in jail may teach you to be a decent, house-broke dog; and not a mutt."

As he was on the way back to his study, in the sunset, the car came down the drive, bearing the Mistress. Lad was seated in solemn joy on the front seat, at her side. The big collie loved motoring. And, as a rule, he was relegated to the back seat. But when the Mistress went out alone, his was the tremendously-enjoyed privilege of sitting in front, beside her.

"I had to lick Lady," reported the Master, shamefacedly, as he helped his wife from the car. "She went for the eagle in my study. You remember how I scolded her for that, last week, don't you? Well, that's all the good it did. And I had to whip her. I hated to. I'm glad you weren't here to look unhappy about it. Then I shut her up for the night in the tool-house. She--"

He broke off, to look at Lad.

As the collie had jumped down from the car and had started toward the house, he had struck Lady's trail; and he had followed it. It had led him to the tool-house. Finding Lady was locked inside and unhappy, he had come galloping back to the Master.

Standing in front of the man, and whining softly, he was scanning the faces of his two deities with troubled eagerness. Evidently, he considered that Lady had been locked in by mistake; and he was pleading for her release. As these humans did not seem to catch the idea his eyes and expression conveyed, he trotted a few steps toward the tool-house and then paused to look invitingly back at them.

Twice he did this. Then, coming up to the Master, he caught the latter's coat-hem lightly between his teeth and tugged on it as he backed toward the tool-house.

"No, old friend," said the Master, petting the silken head so appealingly upraised to him. "I know what you're getting at. But I can't let her out. Tomorrow morning. Not till then. Come on up to dinner."

Unwillingly and with wistful backward looks, Lad followed the Mistress and the Master to the house and into the dining room and to his wonted place on the floor at the Master's left side. But, more than once during the meal, the man caught the collie's eyes fixed on him in worried supplication; and was hard put to it not to grant the plea which fairly clamored in his chum's mute gaze.

After dinner, when the Mistress and the Master set off on their usual evening walk, Lad was not on hand to accompany them. As a rule, he was all around them and in front and behind, in a series of gay rushes, as they started on these walks. But not until the Master called him, tonight, did he appear. And then he came up dolorously from the tool-house.

Lad did not understand, at all, what was wrong. He knew only that Lady had been shut up in a place she detested and that she was horribly unhappy and that the Master would not let her out. It perplexed him; and it made him increasingly wretched. Not only did he miss his playfully capricious young mate, but her unhappiness made him heartsick.

Vainly, he tried to plead with the Master for her release, as the walk began; and again at its end.

There were such a lot of things in the world that even the cleverest collie could not make head or tail of! And most of these things were sad.

That night, when the house was shut, Lad crept as usual into his cave under the piano. And he lay down with a sigh, his great head between his two absurdly small white forepaws. As a rule, before going to sleep for the night, Lad used to spend much time in licking those same snowy forepaws into s.h.i.+ning cleanliness. The paws were his one gross vanity; and he wasted more than an hour a day in keeping them spotlessly white.

But tonight he was too depressed to think of anything but the whimpering little dog imprisoned down in the tool-house.

After a while, he fell asleep.

A true watchdog sleeps with all his senses or the very edge of wakefulness. And when he wakens, he does not waken as do we humans;--yawningly, dazedly, drunk with slumber. At one moment he is sound asleep. At the next he is broad awake; with every faculty alert.

So ever it was, with Lad. So it was with him, this night. An hour before dawn, he woke with sharp suddenness; and at once he was on his feet; tense, on guard. He did not know what had roused him. Yet, now that he was awake, two of his senses recorded something which banished from him all thought of further sleep.

To his ears came a far-off m.u.f.fled wail;--a wail which held more than unhappiness;--a wail which vibrated with real terror. And he knew the voice for Lady's.

To his sensitive nostrils, through the intervening distance and the obstructing walls and windows, drifted a faint reek of smoke.

Now, the smoke-smell, by itself, meant nothing whatever to Lad. All evening a trace of it had hung in the air; from the brush fire. And, in any case, this whiff was too slight to have emanated from the house or from any spot near the house. Yet, taken together with Lady's cry of fear--

Lad crossed to the front door, and scratched imperiously at it. The locked door did not yield to his push. Too sensible to keep on at a portal he could not open, he ran upstairs, to the closed door of the Master's room. There, again he scratched; this time harder and more loudly. Twice and thrice he scratched; whining under his breath.

At last the deep-slumbering Master heard him. Rousing himself, and still three-quarters asleep, he heard not only the scratching and the whimper but, in the distance, Lady's wail of fear. And, sleep-drugged, he mumbled:

"Shut up, Laddie!--I hear her.--Let her howl.--If she's lonely, down there, she'll--she'll remember the lesson--all the better. Go downstairs and--be quiet!"

He fell sound asleep again. Obedient to the slumbrous mandate, Lad turned and pattered mournfully away. But, he was not content to return to his own nap, with that terror-cry of Lady's echoing in his ears. And he made a second attempt to get out.

At each side of the piano, in the music room, was a long French window.

Often, by day, Lad used to pa.s.s in or out of these door-like windows.

He knew that they, as well as the doors, were a recognized means of exit. Now, with eagerly scratching paw, he pushed at the nearest of them.

The house was but carelessly locked at night. For Lad's presence downstairs was a better burglar-preventive than the best bolts ever forged. Tired and drowsy, the Master, this night, had neglected to bar the French windows.

The window gave, at Lad's vehement scratch; and swung outward on its hinges. A second later, the big dog was running at top speed toward the tool-house.

Now, the ways of the most insignificant brushfire are beyond the exact wisdom of man. Especially in droughty weather. When they knocked off work for the day, the two laborers had gone back to the blaze beyond the tool-house and conscientiously had scattered and stamped on its last visible remnants. The Master, too, coming home from his evening walk, had glanced toward the back garden and had seen no telltale spark to hint at life in the trampled fire.

Nevertheless, a sc.r.a.p of ember, hidden from the men's gaze beneath a handful of dead leaves had refused to perish with its comrade-sparks.

And, in the course of five hours, an industrious little flicker had ignited other bits of brush and of dried leaf.a.ge and last year's weed stumps. The wind was in the north. And it had guided the course of the crawling thread of red. The advancing line had thrown out tendrils of scarlet, as it went.

Most of these had died, in the plowed ground. One had not. It had crept on, half-extinguished at times and again snapping merrily, until it had reached the tool-house. The shed-like room stood on low joists, with a clear s.p.a.ce ten inches high between its flimsy board floor and the ground. And, in this s.p.a.ce, the leaves of the preceding autumn had drifted in windrows. The persevering spark did the rest.

Lady woke from a fitful doze, to find herself choking from smoke. The boards of the floor were too hot for endurance. Between their cracks thin wavery slices of smoke were pouring upward into the room. The leaves had begun to ignite the floor-boards and the lower part of the ramshackle building's thin walls.

While the pain and humiliation of her whipping had not been able to wring a sound from the young thoroughbred, yet fright of this sort was afar different thing. Howling with panic terror, she dashed about the small enclosure, clawing frantically at door and scantling. Once or twice she made half-hearted effort to spring up at the closed window.

But, from lack of running-s.p.a.ce as well as from lack of nerve to make the high leap, she failed.