<hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></SPAN>CHAPTER VI<br/> LOST!</h2>
<p>Four of us were discussing abstract themes,
idly, as men will, after a good dinner and
in front of a country-house fire. Someone
asked:</p>
<p>"What is the saddest sight in everyday life? I
don't mean the most gloomily tragic, but the
saddest?"</p>
<p>A frivolous member of the fireside group cited
a helpless man between two quarreling women. A
sentimentalist said:</p>
<p>"A lost child in a city street."</p>
<p>The Dog-Master contradicted:</p>
<p>"A lost <i>dog</i> in a city street."</p>
<p>Nobody agreed with him of course; but that was
because none of the others chanced to know dogs—to
know their psychology—their souls, if you
prefer. The dog-man was right. A lost dog in a
city street is the very saddest and most hopeless
sight in all a city street's abounding everyday sadness.</p>
<p>A man between two quarreling women is an<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</SPAN></span>
object piteous enough, heaven knows. Yet his
plight verges too much on the grotesque to be
called sad.</p>
<p>A lost child?—No. Let a child stand in the middle
of a crowded sidewalk and begin to cry. In
one minute fifty amateur and professional rescuers
have flocked to the Lost One's aid. An hour, at
most, suffices to bring it in touch with its frenzied
guardians.</p>
<p>A lost dog?—Yes. No succoring cohort surges
to the relief. A gang of boys, perhaps, may give
chase, but assuredly not in kindness. A policeman
seeking a record for "mad dog" shooting—a professional
dog-catcher in quest of his dirty fee—these
will show marked attention to the wanderer.
But, again, not in kindness.</p>
<p>A dog, at some turn in the street, misses his
master—doubles back to where the human demigod
was last seen—darts ahead once more to find him,
through the press of other human folk—halts, hesitates,
begins the same maneuvers all over again;
then stands, shaking in panic at his utter aloneness.</p>
<p>Get the look in his eyes, then—you who do not
mind seeing such things—and answer, honestly: Is
there anything sadder on earth? All this, before
the pursuit of boys and the fever of thirst and the
final knowledge of desolation have turned him from
a handsome and prideful pet into a slinking outcast.</p>
<p>Yes, a lost dog is the saddest thing that can meet
the gaze of a man or woman who understands dogs.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</SPAN></span>
As perhaps my story may help to show—or perhaps
not.</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<p>Lad had been brushed and bathed, daily, for a
week, until his mahogany-and-snow coat shone.
All this, at The Place, far up in the North Jersey
hinterland and all to make him presentable for the
Westminster Kennel Show at New York's Madison
Square Garden. After which, his two gods, the
Mistress and the Master took him for a thirty-mile
ride in The Place's only car, one morning.</p>
<p>The drive began at The Place—the domain
where Lad had ruled as King among the lesser folk
for so many years. It ended at Madison Square
Garden, where the annual four-day dog show was
in progress.</p>
<p>You have read how Lad fared at that show—how,
at the close of the first day, when he had two
victories to his credit, the Mistress had taken pity
on his misery and had decreed that he should be
taken home, without waiting out the remaining
three days of torture-ordeal.</p>
<p>The Master went out first, to get the car and
bring it around to the side exit of the Garden.
The Mistress gathered up Lad's belongings—his
brush, his dog biscuits, etc., and followed, with Lad
himself.</p>
<p>Out of the huge building, with its reverberating
barks and yells from two thousand canine throats,
she went. Lad paced, happy and majestic, at her<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</SPAN></span>
side. He knew he was going home, and the unhappiness
of the hideous day dropped from him.</p>
<p>At the exit, the Mistress was forced to leave a
deposit of five dollars, "to insure the return of the
dog to his bench" (to which bench of agony she
vowed, secretly, Lad should never return). Then
she was told the law demands that all dogs in New
York City streets shall be muzzled.</p>
<p>In vain she explained that Lad would be in the
streets only for such brief time as the car would
require to journey to the One Hundred and Thirtieth
Street ferry. The door attendant insisted that
the law was inexorable. So, lest a policeman hold
up the car for such disobedience to the city statutes,
the Mistress reluctantly bought a muzzle.</p>
<p>It was a big, awkward thing, made of steel, and
bound on with leather straps. It looked like a rat-trap.
And it fenced in the nose and mouth of its
owner with a wicked criss-cross of shiny metal
bars.</p>
<p>Never in all his years had Lad worn a muzzle.
Never, until to-day, had he been chained. The
splendid eighty-pound collie had been as free of
The Place and of the forests as any human; and
with no worse restrictions than his own soul and
conscience put upon him.</p>
<p>To him this muzzle was a horror. Not even the
loved touch of the Mistress' dear fingers, as she
adjusted the thing to his beautiful head, could
lessen the degradation. And the discomfort of it<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</SPAN></span>—a
discomfort that amounted to actual pain—was
almost as bad as the humiliation.</p>
<p>With his absurdly tiny white forepaws, the huge
dog sought to dislodge the torture-implement. He
strove to rub it off against the Mistress' skirt. But
beyond shifting it so that the forehead strap
covered one of his eyes, he could not budge it.</p>
<p>Lad looked up at the Mistress in wretched appeal.
His look held no resentment, nothing but sad entreaty.
She was his deity. All his life she had
given him of her gentleness, her affection, her sweet
understanding. Yet, to-day, she had brought him
to this abode of noisy torment, and had kept him
there from morning to dusk. And now—just as
the vigil seemed ended—she was tormenting him,
to nerve-rack, by this contraption she had fastened
over his nose. Lad did not rebel. But he besought.
And the Mistress understood.</p>
<p>"Laddie, dear!" she whispered, as she led him
across the sidewalk to the curb where the Master
waited for the car. "Laddie, old friend, I'm just
as sorry about it as you are. But it's only for a
few minutes. Just as soon as we get to the ferry,
we'll take it off and throw it into the river. And
we'll never bring you again where dogs have to
wear such things. I promise. It's only for a few
minutes."</p>
<p>The Mistress, for once, was mistaken. Lad was
to wear the accursed muzzle for much, <i>much</i> longer
than "a few minutes."</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>"Give him the back seat to himself, and come in
front here with me," suggested the Master, as the
Mistress and Lad arrived alongside the car. "The
poor old chap has been so cramped up and pestered
all day that he'll like to have a whole seat to stretch
out on."</p>
<p>Accordingly, the Mistress opened the door and
motioned Lad to the back seat. At a bound the
collie was on the cushion, and proceeded to curl up
thereon. The Mistress got into the front seat with
the Master. The car set forth on its six-mile run
to the ferry.</p>
<p>Now that his face was turned homeward, Lad
might have found vast interest in his new surroundings,
had not the horrible muzzle absorbed all his
powers of emotion. The Milan Cathedral, the Taj
Mahal, the Valley of the Arno at sunset—these be
sights to dream of for years. But show them to a
man who has an ulcerated tooth, or whose tight,
new shoes pinch his soft corn, and he will probably
regard them as Lad just then viewed the twilight
New York streets.</p>
<p>He was a dog of forest and lake and hill, this
giant collie with his mighty shoulders and tiny white
feet and shaggy burnished coat and mournful eyes.
Never before had he been in a city. The myriad
blended noises confused and deafened him. The
myriad blended smells assailed his keen nostrils.
The swirl of countless multicolored lights stung and
blurred his vision. Noises, smells and lights were<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</SPAN></span>
all jarringly new to him. So were the jostling
masses of people on the sidewalk and the tangle and
hustle of vehicular traffic through which the Master
was threading the car's way with such difficulty.</p>
<p>But, newest and most sickening of all the day's
novelties was the muzzle.</p>
<p>Lad was quite certain the Mistress did not realize
how the muzzle was hurting him nor how he detested
it. In all her dealings with him—or with
anyone or anything else—the Mistress had never
been unkind; and most assuredly not cruel. It must
be she did not understand. At all events, she had
not scolded or forbidden, when he had tried to rub
the muzzle off. So the wearing of this new torture
was apparently no part of the Law. And Lad felt
justified in striving again to remove it.</p>
<p>In vain he pawed the thing, first with one foot,
then with both. He could joggle it from side to side,
but that was all. And each shift of the steel bars
hurt his tender nose and tenderer sensibilities worse
than the one before. He tried to rub it off against
the seat cushion—with the same distressing result.</p>
<p>Lad looked up at the backs of his gods, and
whined very softly. The sound went unheard, in the
babel of noise all around him. Nor did the Mistress,
or the Master turn around, on general principles, to
speak a word of cheer to the sufferer. They were
in a mixup of crossways traffic that called for every
atom of their attention, if they were to avoid col<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</SPAN></span>lision.
It was no time for conversation or for dog-patting.</p>
<p>Lad got to his feet and stood, uncertainly, on the
slippery leather cushion, seeking to maintain his
balance, while he rubbed a corner of the muzzle
against one of the supports of the car's lowered top.
Working away with all his might, he sought to get
leverage that would pry loose the muzzle.</p>
<p>Just then there was a brief gap in the traffic. The
Master put on speed, and, darting ahead of a delivery
truck, sharply rounded the corner into a side
street.</p>
<p>The car's sudden twist threw Lad clean off his
precarious balance on the seat, and hurled him
against one of the rear doors.</p>
<p>The door, insecurely shut, could not withstand the
eighty-pound impact. It burst open. And Lad was
flung out onto the greasy asphalt of the avenue.</p>
<p>He landed full on his side, in the muck of the
roadway, with a force that shook the breath clean
out of him. Directly above his head glared the twin
lights of the delivery truck the Master had just
shot past. The truck was going at a good twelve
miles an hour. And the dog had fallen within
six feet of its fat front wheels.</p>
<p>Now, a collie is like no other animal on earth.
He is, at worst, more wolf than dog. And, at best,
he has more of the wolf's lightning-swift instinct
than has any other breed of canine. For which
reason Lad was not, then and there, smashed, flat<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</SPAN></span>
and dead, under the fore-wheels of a three-ton
truck.</p>
<p>Even as the tires grazed his fur, Lad gathered
himself compactly together, his feet well under him,
and sprang far to one side. The lumbering truck
missed him by less than six inches. But it missed
him.</p>
<p>His leap brought him scramblingly down on all
fours, out of the truck's way, but on the wrong side
of the thoroughfare. It brought him under the very
fender of a touring car that was going at a good
pace in the opposite direction. And again, a leap
that was inspired by quick instinct alone, lifted the
dog free of this newest death-menace.</p>
<p>He halted and stared piteously around in search
of his deities. But in that glare and swelter of
traffic, a trained human eye could not have recognized
any particular car. Moreover, the Mistress
and Master were a full half-block away, down the
less crowded side street, and were making up for
lost time by putting on all the speed they dared,
before turning into the next westward traffic-artery.
They did not look back, for there was a car directly
in front of them, whose driver seemed uncertain
as to his wheel control, and the Master was manœuvering
to pass it in safety.</p>
<p>Not until they had reached the lower end of
Riverside Drive, nearly a mile to the north, did
either the Master or Mistress turn around for a
word with the dog they loved.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>Meantime, Lad was standing, irresolute and panting,
in the middle of Columbus Circle. Cars of a
million types, from flivver to trolley, seemed to be
whizzing directly at him from every direction at
once.</p>
<p>A bound, a dodge, or a deft shrinking back would
carry him out of one such peril—barely out of it—when
another, or fifty others, beset him.</p>
<p>And, all the time, even while he was trying to
duck out of danger, his frightened eyes and his
pulsing nostrils sought the Mistress and the Master.</p>
<p>His eyes, in that mixture of flare and dusk, told
him nothing except that a host of motors were
likely to kill him. But his nose told him what it
had not been able to tell him since morning—namely,
that, through the reek of gasoline and horseflesh
and countless human scents, there was a nearness
of fields and woods and water. And, toward
that blessed mingling of familiar odors he dodged
his threatened way.</p>
<p>By a miracle of luck and skill he crossed Columbus
Circle, and came to a standstill on a sidewalk,
beside a low gray stone wall. Behind the wall, his
nose taught him, lay miles of meadow and wood and
lake—Central Park. But the smell of the Park
brought him no scent of the Mistress nor of the
Master. And it was they—infinitely more than his
beloved countryside—that he craved. He ran up
the street, on the sidewalk, for a few rods, hesitant,
alert, watching in every direction. Then, perhaps<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</SPAN></span>
seeing a figure, in the other direction, that looked
familiar, he dashed at top speed, eastward, for half
a block. Then he made a peril-fraught sortie out
into the middle of the traffic-humming street, deceived
by the look of a passing car.</p>
<p>The car was traveling at twenty miles an hour.
But, in less than a block, Lad caught up with it.
And this, in spite of the many things he had to
dodge, and the greasy slipperiness of the unfamiliar
roadway. An upward glance, as he came alongside
the car, told him his chase was in vain. And he
made his precarious way to the sidewalk once more.</p>
<p>There he stood, bewildered, heartsick—lost!</p>
<p>Yes, he was lost. And he realized it—realized
it as fully as would a city-dweller snatched up by
magic and set down amid the trackless Himalayas.
He was lost. And Horror bit deep into his soul.</p>
<p>The average dog might have continued to waste
energy and risk life by galloping aimlessly back and
forth, running hopefully up to every stranger he
met; then slinking off in scared disappointment and
searching afresh.</p>
<p>Lad was too wise for that. He was lost. His
adored Mistress had somehow left him; as had the
Master; in this bedlam place—all alone. He stood
there, hopeless, head and tail adroop, his great heart
dead within him.</p>
<p>Presently he became aware once more that he was
still wearing his abominable muzzle. In the stress
of the past few minutes Lad had actually forgotten<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</SPAN></span>
the pain and vexation of the thing. Now, the memory
of it came back, to add to his despair.</p>
<p>And, as a sick animal will ever creep to the
woods and the waste places for solitude, so the
soul-sick Lad now turned from the clangor and
evil odors of the street to seek the stretch of country-land
he had scented.</p>
<p>Over the gray wall he sprang, and came earthward
with a crash among the leafless shrubs that
edged the south boundary of Central Park.</p>
<p>Here in the Park there were people and lights
and motor-cars, too, but they were few, and they
were far off. Around the dog was a grateful
darkness and aloneness. He lay down on the dead
grass and panted.</p>
<p>The time was late February. The weather of
the past day or two had been mild. The brown-gray
earth and the black trees had a faint odor
of slow-coming spring, though no nostrils less
acute than a dog's could have noted it.</p>
<p>Through the misery at his heart and the carking
pain from his muzzle, Lad began to realize that
he was tired, also that he was hollow from lack of
food. The long day's ordeal of the dog show had
wearied him and had worn down his nerves more
than could a fifty-mile run. The nasty thrills of the
past half-hour had completed his fatigue. He had
eaten nothing all day. Like most high-strung dogs
at a show, he had drunk a great deal of water and
had refused to touch a morsel of food.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>He was not hungry even now for, in a dog,
hunger goes only with peace of mind, but he was
cruelly thirsty. He got up from his slushy couch
on the dead turf and trotted wearily toward the
nearest branch of the Central Park lake. At the
brink he stooped to drink.</p>
<p>Soggy ice still covered the lake, but the mild
weather had left a half-inch skim of water over
it. Lad tried to lap up enough of this water to
allay his craving thirst. He could not.</p>
<p>The muzzle protruded nearly an inch beyond his
nose. Either through faulty adjustment or from
his own futile efforts to scrape it off, the awkward
steel hinge had become jammed and would not open.
Lad could not get his teeth a half-inch apart.</p>
<p>After much effort he managed to protrude the
end of his pink tongue and to touch the water with
it, but it was a painful and drearily slow process
absorbing water drop by drop in this way. More
through fatigue than because his thirst was slaked,
he stopped at last and turned away from the lake.</p>
<p>The next half-hour was spent in a diligent and
torturing and wholly useless attempt to rid himself
of his muzzle.</p>
<p>After which the dog lay panting and athirst
once more; his tender nose sore and bruised and
bleeding; the muzzle as firmly fixed in place as
ever. Another journey to the lake and another
Tantalus-effort to drink—and the pitifully harassed
dog's uncanny brain began to work.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>He no longer let himself heed the muzzle. Experience
of the most painful sort had told him he
could not dislodge it nor, in that clamorous and ill-smelling
city beyond the park wall, could he hope
to find the Mistress and the Master. These things
being certain, his mind went on to the next step,
and the next step was—Home!</p>
<p>Home! The Place where his happy, beautiful
life had been spent, where his two gods abode,
where there were no clang and reek and peril as
here in New York. Home!—The House of
Peace!</p>
<p>Lad stood up. He drew in great breaths of the
muggy air, and he turned slowly about two or
three times, head up, nostrils aquiver. For a full
minute he stood thus. Then he lowered his head
and trotted westward. No longer he moved uncertainly,
but with as much sureness as if he were
traversing the forest behind The Place—the forest
that had been his roaming-ground since puppyhood.</p>
<p>(Now, this is not a fairy story, nor any other
type of fanciful yarn, so I do not pretend to account
for Lad's heading unswervingly toward the
northwest in the exact direction of The Place, thirty
miles distant, any more than I can account for the
authenticated case of a collie who, in 1917, made
his way four hundred miles from the home of a
new owner in southern Georgia to the doorstep of
his former and better loved master in the mountains
of North Carolina; any more than I can ac<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</SPAN></span>count
for the flight of a homing pigeon or for that
of the northbound duck in Spring. God gives to
certain animals a whole set of mystic traits which
He withholds utterly from humans. No dog-student
can doubt that, and no dog-student or deep-delving
psychologist can explain it.)</p>
<p>Northwestward jogged Lad, and in half a mile
he came to the low western wall of Central Park.
Without turning aside to seek a gateway, he cleared
the wall and found himself on Eighth Avenue in
the very middle of a block.</p>
<p>Keeping on the sidewalk and paying no heed to
the few pedestrians, he moved along to the next
westward street and turned down it toward the
Hudson River. So calmly and certainly did he
move that none would have taken him for a lost
dog.</p>
<p>Under the roaring elevated road at Columbus
Avenue, he trotted; his ears tormented by the
racket of a train that reverberated above him; his
sense so blurred by the sound that he all but forgot
to dodge a southbound trolley car.</p>
<p>Down the cross street to Amsterdam Avenue he
bore. A patrolman on his way to the West Sixty-ninth
Street police station to report for night duty,
was so taken up by his own lofty thoughts that
he quite forgot to glance at the big mud-spattered
dog that padded past him.</p>
<p>For this lack of observation the patrolman was
destined to lose a good opportunity for fattening<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</SPAN></span>
his monthly pay. Because, on reaching the station,
he learned that a distressed man and woman had
just been there in a car to offer a fifty-dollar reward
for the finding of a big mahogany-and-white
collie, answering to the name of "Lad."</p>
<p>As the dog reached Amsterdam Avenue a high
little voice squealed delightedly at him. A three-year-old
baby—a mere fluff of gold and white and
pink—was crossing the avenue convoyed by a fat
woman in black. Lad was jogging by the mother
and child when the latter discovered the passing
dog.</p>
<p>With a shriek of joyous friendliness the baby
flung herself upon Lad and wrapped both arms
about his shaggy neck.</p>
<p>"Why <i>doggie!</i>" she shrilled, ecstatically. "Why,
dear, <i>dear</i> doggie!"</p>
<p>Now Lad was in dire haste to get home, and
Lad was in dire misery of mind and body, but his
big heart went out in eagerly loving answer to the
impulsive caress. He worshipped children, and
would cheerfully endure from them any amount
of mauling.</p>
<p>At the baby embrace and the baby voice, he
stopped short in his progress. His plumy tail
wagged in glad friendliness; his muzzled nose
sought wistfully to kiss the pink little face on a
level with his own. The baby tightened her hug,
and laid her rose leaf cheek close to his own.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>"I love you, Miss Doggie!" she whispered in
Lad's ear.</p>
<p>Then the fat woman in black bore down upon
them. Fiercely, she yanked the baby away from
the dog. Then, seeing that the mud on Lad's
shoulder had soiled the child's white coat, she
whirled a string-fastened bundle aloft and brought
it down with a resounding thwack over the dog's
head.</p>
<p>Lad winched under the heavy blow, then hot
resentment blazed through his first instant of
grieved astonishment. This unpleasant fat creature
in black was not a man, wherefore Lad contented
himself by baring his white teeth, and with growling
deep menace far down in his throat.</p>
<p>The woman shrank back scared, and she
screamed loudly. On the instant the station-bound
patrolman was beside her.</p>
<p>"What's wrong, ma'am?" asked the bluecoat.</p>
<p>The woman pointed a wobbly and fat forefinger
at Lad, who had taken up his westward journey
again and was halfway across the street.</p>
<p>"Mad dog!" she sputtered, hysterically. "He—he
bit me! Bit <i>at</i> me, anyhow!"</p>
<p>Without waiting to hear the last qualifying sentence,
the patrolman gave chase. Here was a chance
for honorable blotter-mention at the very least. As
he ran he drew his pistol.</p>
<p>Lad had reached the westward pavement of
Amsterdam Avenue and was in the side street be<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</SPAN></span>yond.
He was not hurrying, but his short wolf-trot
ate up ground in deceptively quick time.</p>
<p>By the time the policeman had reached the west
corner of street and avenue the dog was nearly a
half-block ahead. The officer, still running, leveled
his pistol and fired.</p>
<p>Now, anyone (but a very newly-appointed patrolman
or a movie-hero) knows that to fire a shot
when running is worse than fatal to any chance
of accuracy. No marksman—no one who has the
remotest knowledge of marksmanship—will do such
a thing. The very best pistol-expert cannot hope
to hit his target if he is joggling his own arm and
his whole body by the motion of running.</p>
<p>The bullet flew high and to the right, smashing
a second-story window and making the echoes resound
deafeningly through the narrow street.</p>
<p>"What's up?" excitedly asked a boy, who stood
beside a barrel bonfire with a group of chums.</p>
<p>"Mad dog!" puffed the policeman as he sped past.</p>
<p>At once the boys joined gleesomely in the chase,
outdistancing the officer, just as the latter fired a
second shot.</p>
<p>Lad felt a white-hot ridge of pain cut along his
left flank like a whip-lash. He wheeled to face
his invisible foe, and he found himself looking at
a half-dozen boys who charged whoopingly down
on him. Behind the boys clumped a man in blue
flourishing something bright.</p>
<p>Lad had no taste for this sort of attention.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</SPAN></span>
Always he had loathed strangers, and these new
strangers seemed bent on catching him—on barring
his homeward way.</p>
<p>He wheeled around again and continued his westward
journey at a faster pace. The hue-and-cry
broke into louder yells and three or four new recruits
joined the pursuers. The yap of "Mad dog!
<i>Mad dog!</i>" filled the air.</p>
<p>Not one of these people—not even the policeman
himself—had any evidence that the collie was
mad. There are not two really rabid dogs seen at
large in New York or in any other city in the
course of a year. Yet, at the back of the human
throat ever lurks that fool-cry of "Mad dog!"—ever
ready to leap forth into shouted words at the
faintest provocation.</p>
<p>One wonders, disgustedly, how many thousand
luckless and totally harmless pet dogs in the course
of a year are thus hunted down and shot or kicked
or stoned to death in the sacred name of Humanity,
just because some idiot mistakes a hanging tongue
or an uncertainty of direction for signs of that
semi-phantom malady known as "rabies."</p>
<p>A dog is lost. He wanders to and fro in bewilderment.
Boys pelt or chase him. His tongue
lolls and his eyes glaze with fear. Then, ever, rises
the yell of "Mad Dog!" And a friendly, lovable
pet is joyfully done to death.</p>
<p>Lad crossed Broadway, threading his way
through the trolley-and-taxi procession, and gal<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</SPAN></span>loped
down the hill toward Riverside Park. Close
always at his heels followed the shouting crowd.
Twice, by sprinting, the patrolman gained the front
rank of the hunt, and twice he fired—both bullets
going wide. Across West End Avenue and across
Riverside Drive went Lad, hard-pressed and fleeing
at top speed. The cross-street ran directly down
to a pier that jutted a hundred feet out into the
Hudson River.</p>
<p>Along this pier flew Lad, not in panic terror,
but none the less resolved that these howling New
Yorkers should not catch him and prevent his going
home.</p>
<p>Onto the pier the clattering hue-and-cry followed.
A dock watchman, as Lad flashed by,
hurled a heavy joist of wood at the dog. It
whizzed past the flying hind legs, scoring the barest
of misses.</p>
<p>And now Lad was at the pier end. Behind him
the crowd raced; sure it had the dangerous brute
cornered at last.</p>
<p>On the string-piece the collie paused for the
briefest of moments glancing to north and to south.
Everywhere the wide river stretched away, unbridged.
It must be crossed if he would continue
his homeward course, and there was but one way
for him to cross it.</p>
<p>The watchman, hard at his heels, swung upward
the club he carried. Down came the club with<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</SPAN></span>
murderous force—upon the stringpiece where Lad
had been standing.</p>
<p>Lad was no longer there. One great bound had
carried him over the edge and into the black water
below.</p>
<p>Down he plunged into the river and far, far
under it, fighting his way gaspingly to the surface.
The water that gushed into his mouth and nostrils
was salty and foul, not at all like the water of the
lake at the edge of The Place. It sickened him.
And the February chill of the river cut into him
like a million ice-needles.</p>
<p>To the surface he came, and struck out valorously
for the opposite shore much more than a
mile away. As his beautiful head appeared, a yell
went up from the clustering riff-raff at the pier
end. Bits of wood and coal began to shower the
water all around him. A pistol shot plopped into
the river a bare six inches away from him.</p>
<p>But the light was bad and the stream was a tossing
mass of blackness and of light-blurs, and presently
the dog swam, unscathed, beyond the range
of missiles.</p>
<p>Now a swim of a mile or of two miles was no
special exploit for Lad—even in ice-cold water, but
this water was not like any he had swum in. The
tide was at the turn for one thing, and while, in
a way, this helped him, yet the myriad eddies and
cross-currents engendered by it turned and jostled
and buffeted him in a most perplexing way. And<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</SPAN></span>
there were spars and barrels and other obstacles
that were forever looming up just in front of him
or else banging against his heaving sides.</p>
<p>Once a revenue cutter passed not thirty feet
ahead of him. Its wake caught the dog and sucked
him under and spun his body around and around
before he could fight clear of it.</p>
<p>His lungs were bursting. He was worn out. He
felt as sore as if he had been kicked for an hour.
The bullet-graze along his flank was hurting him
as the salt water bit into it, and the muzzle half-blinded,
half-smothered him.</p>
<p>But, because of his hero heart rather than
through his splendid strength and wisdom, he
kept on.</p>
<p>For an hour or more he swam until at last his
body and brain were numb, and only the mechanical
action of his wrenched muscles held him in
motion. Twice tugs narrowly escaped running him
down, and in the wake of each he waged a fearful
fight for life.</p>
<p>After a century of effort his groping forepaws
felt the impact of a submerged rock, then of
another, and with his last vestige of strength Lad
crawled feebly ashore on a narrow sandspit at the
base of the elephant-gray Palisades. There, he collapsed
and lay shivering, panting, struggling for
breath.</p>
<p>Long he lay there, letting Nature bring back<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</SPAN></span>
some of his wind and his motive-power, his shaggy
body one huge pulsing ache.</p>
<p>When he was able to move, he took up his
journey. Sometimes swimming, sometimes on
ground, he skirted the Palisades-foot to northward,
until he found one of the several precipice-paths
that Sunday picnickers love to climb. Up this
he made his tottering way, slowly; conserving his
strength as best he could.</p>
<p>On the summit he lay down again to rest. Behind
him, across the stretch of black and lamp-flecked
water, rose the inky skyline of the city with
a lurid furnace-glow between its crevices that
smote the sky. Ahead was a plateau with a downward
slope beyond it.</p>
<p>Once more, getting to his feet, Lad stood and
sniffed, turning his head from side to side, muzzled
nose aloft. Then, his bearings taken, he set off
again, but this time his jog-trot was slower and
his light step was growing heavier. The terrible
strain of his swim was passing from his mighty
sinews, but it was passing slowly because he was
so tired and empty and in such pain of body and
mind. He saved his energies until he should have
more of them to save.</p>
<p>Across the plateau, down the slope, and then
across the interminable salt meadows to westward
he traveled; sometimes on road or path, sometimes
across field or hill, but always in an unswerving
straight line.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>It was a little before midnight that he breasted
the first rise of Jersey hills above Hackensack.
Through a lightless one-street village he went,
head low, stride lumbering, the muzzle weighing
a ton and composed of molten iron and hornet
stings.</p>
<p>It was the muzzle—now his first fatigue had
slackened—that galled him worst. Its torture was
beginning to do queer things to his nerves and
brain. Even a stolid, nerveless dog hates a muzzle.
More than one sensitive dog has been driven crazy
by it.</p>
<p>Thirst—intolerable thirst—was torturing Lad.
He could not drink at the pools and brooks he
crossed. So tight-jammed was the steel jaw-hinge
now that he could not even open his mouth to pant,
which is the cruelest deprivation a dog can suffer.</p>
<p>Out of the shadows of a ramshackle hovel's front
yard dived a monstrous shape that hurled itself
ferociously on the passing collie.</p>
<p>A mongrel watchdog—part mastiff, part hound,
part anything you choose—had been dozing on his
squatter-owner's doorstep when the pad-pad-pad of
Lad's wearily-jogging feet had sounded on the road.</p>
<p>Other dogs, more than one of them, during the
journey had run out to yap or growl at the
wanderer, but as Lad had been big and had followed
an unhesitant course they had not gone to
the length of actual attack.</p>
<p>This mongrel, however, was less prudent. Or,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</SPAN></span>
perhaps, dog-fashion, he realized that the muzzle
rendered Lad powerless and therefore saw every
prospect of a safe and easy victory. At all events,
he gave no warning bark or growl as he shot forward
to the attack.</p>
<p>Lad—his eyes dim with fatigue and road dust,
his ears dulled by water and by noise—did not hear
nor see the foe. His first notice of the attack was
a flying weight of seventy-odd pounds that crashed
against his flank. A double set of fangs in the
same instant, sank into his shoulder.</p>
<p>Under the onslaught Lad fell sprawlingly into
the road on his left side, his enemy upon him.</p>
<p>As Lad went down the mongrel deftly shifted
his unprofitable shoulder grip to a far more promisingly
murderous hold on his fallen victim's throat.</p>
<p>A cat has five sets of deadly weapons—its
four feet and its jaws. So has every animal on
earth—human and otherwise—except a dog. A
dog is terrible by reason of its teeth. Encase the
mouth in a muzzle and a dog is as helpless for
offensive warfare as is a newborn baby.</p>
<p>And Lad was thus pitiably impotent to return
his foe's attack. Exhausted, flung prone to earth,
his mighty jaws muzzled, he seemed as good as
dead.</p>
<p>But a collie down is not a collie beaten. The
wolf-strain provides against that. Even as he fell
Lad instinctively gathered his legs under him as
he had done when he tumbled from the car.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>And, almost at once, he was on his feet again,
snarling horribly and lunging to break the mongrel's
throat-grip. His weariness was forgotten and his
wondrous reserve strength leaped into play. Which
was all the good it did him; for he knew as well
as the mongrel that he was powerless to use his
teeth.</p>
<p>The throat of a collie—except in one small vulnerable
spot—is armored by a veritable mattress
of hair. Into this hair the mongrel had driven
his teeth. The hair filled his mouth, but his grinding
jaws encountered little else to close on.</p>
<p>A lurching jerk of Lad's strong frame tore loose
the savagely inefficient hold. The mongrel sprang
at him for a fresh grip. Lad reared to meet him,
opposing his mighty chest to the charge and snapping
powerlessly with his close-locked mouth.</p>
<p>The force of Lad's rearing leap sent the mongrel
spinning back by sheer weight, but at once he drove
in again to the assault. This time he did not give
his muzzled antagonist a chance to rear, but sprang
at Lad's flank. Lad wheeled to meet the rush and,
opposing his shoulder to it, broke its force.</p>
<p>Seeing himself so helpless, this was of course the
time for Lad to take to his heels and try to outrun
the enemy he could not outfight. To stand
his ground was to be torn, eventually, to death.
Being anything but a fool Lad knew that; yet he
ignored the chance of safety and continued to fight
the worse-than-hopeless battle.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>Twice and thrice his wit and his uncanny swiftness
enabled him to block the big mongrel's rushes.
The fourth time, as he sought to rear, his hind
foot slipped on a skim of puddle-ice.</p>
<p>Down went Lad in a heap, and the mongrel
struck.</p>
<p>Before the collie could regain his feet the
mongrel's teeth had found a hold on the side of
Lad's throat. Pinning down the muzzled dog, the
mongrel proceeded to improve his hold by grinding
his way toward the jugular. Now his teeth encountered
something more solid than mere hair.
They met upon a thin leather strap.</p>
<p>Fiercely the mongrel gnawed at this solid obstacle,
his rage-hot brain possibly mistaking it for
flesh. Lad writhed to free himself and to regain
his feet, but seventy-five pounds of fighting weight
were holding his neck to the ground.</p>
<p>Of a sudden, the mongrel growled in savage
triumph. The strap was bitten through!</p>
<p>Clinging to the broken end of the leather the
victor gave one final tug. The pull drove the steel
bars excruciatingly deep into Lad's bruised nose
for a moment. Then, by magic, the torture-implement
was no longer on his head but was dangling
by one strap between the muzzled mongrel's
jaws.</p>
<p>With a motion so swift that the eye could not
follow it, Lad was on his feet and plunging deliriously
into the fray. Through a miracle, his<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</SPAN></span>
jaws were free; his torment was over. The joy
of deliverance sent a glow of Berserk vigor sweeping
through him.</p>
<p>The mongrel dropped the muzzle and came
eagerly to the battle. To his dismay he found himself
fighting not a helpless dog, but a maniac wolf.
Lad sought no permanent hold. With dizzying
quickness his head and body moved—and kept
moving, and every motion meant a deep slash or
a ragged tear in his enemy's short-coated hide.</p>
<p>With ridiculous ease the collie eluded the mongrel's
awkward counter-attacks, and ever kept boring
in. To the quivering bone his short front
teeth sank. Deep and bloodily his curved tusks
slashed—as the wolf and the collie alone can slash.</p>
<p>The mongrel, swept off his feet, rolled howling
into the road; and Lad tore grimly at the exposed
under-body.</p>
<p>Up went a window in the hovel. A man's voice
shouted. A woman in a house across the way
screamed. Lad glanced up to note this new diversion.
The stricken mongrel yelping in terror and
agony seized the second respite to scamper back
to the doorstep, howling at every jump.</p>
<p>Lad did not pursue him, but jogged along on
his journey without one backward look.</p>
<p>At a rivulet, a mile beyond, he stopped to drink.
And he drank for ten minutes. Then he went on.
Unmuzzled and with his thirst slaked, he forgot
his pain, his fatigue, his muddy and blood-caked<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</SPAN></span>
and abraded coat, and the memory of his nightmare
day.</p>
<p>He was going home!</p>
<p>At gray dawn the Mistress and the Master
turned in at the gateway of The Place. All night
they had sought Lad; from one end of Manhattan
Island to the other—from Police Headquarters to
dog pound—they had driven. And now the Master
was bringing his tired and heartsore wife home to
rest, while he himself should return to town and
to the search.</p>
<p>The car chugged dispiritedly down the driveway
to the house, but before it had traversed half the
distance the dawn-hush was shattered by a thundrous
bark of challenge to the invaders.</p>
<p>Lad, from his post of guard on the veranda, ran
stiffly forward to bar the way. Then as he ran
his eyes and nose suddenly told him these mysterious
newcomers were his gods.</p>
<p>The Mistress, with a gasp of rapturous unbelief,
was jumping down from the car before it came to
a halt. On her knees, she caught Lad's muddy and
bloody head tight in her arms.</p>
<p>"Oh, Lad;" she sobbed incoherently. "Laddie!
<i>Laddie!</i>"</p>
<p>Whereat, by another miracle, Lad's stiffness and
hurts and weariness were gone. He strove to lick
the dear face bending so tearfully above him.
Then, with an abandon of puppylike joy, he rolled
on the ground waving all four soiled little feet in<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</SPAN></span>
the air and playfully pretending to snap at the
loving hands that caressed him.</p>
<p>Which was ridiculous conduct for a stately and
full-grown collie. But Lad didn't care, because it
made the Mistress stop crying and laugh. And that
was what Lad most wanted her to do.</p>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />