Lad: A Dog Part 28

THE KILLER

One of the jolliest minutes in Lad's daily cross-country tramp with the Mistress and the Master was his dash up Mount Pisgah. This "mount" was little more than a foothill. It was treeless, and covered with short gra.s.s and mullein; a slope where no crop but buckwheat could be expected to thrive. It rose out of the adjoining mountain forests in a long and sweeping ascent.

Here, with no trees or undergrowth to impede him, Lad, from puppyhood, had ordained a racecourse of his own. As he neared the hill he would always dash forward at top speed; flying up the rise like a tawny whirlwind, at unabated pace, until he stopped, panting and gloriously excited, on the summit; to await his slower-moving human escorts.

One morning in early summer, Lad, as usual, bounded ahead of the Mistress and the Master, as they drew near to the treeless "mount."

And, as ever, he rushed gleefully forward for his daily breather, up the long slope. But, before he had gone fifty yards, he came to a scurrying halt, and stood at gaze. His back was bristling and his lips curled back from his white teeth in sudden annoyance.

His keen nostrils, even before his eyes, told him something was amiss with his cherished race-track. The eddying s.h.i.+ft of the breeze, from west to north, had brought to his nose the odor which had checked his onrush; an odor that wakened all sorts of vaguely formless memories far back in Lad's brain; and which he did not at all care for.

Scent is ten times stronger, to a dog, than is sight. The best dog is near sighted. And the worst dog has a magic sense of smell. Wherefore, a dog almost always uses his nose first and his eyes last. Which Lad now proceeded to do.

Above him was the pale green hillside, up which he loved to gallop.

But its surface was no longer smoothly unenc.u.mbered. Instead, it was dotted and starred--singly or in groups--with fluffy grayish-white creatures.

Lad was almost abreast of the lowest group of sheep when he paused.

Several of the feeding animals lifted their heads, snortingly, from the short herbage, at sight of him; and fled up the hill. The rest of the flock joined them in the silly stampede.

The dog made no move to follow. Instead, his forehead creased and his eyes troubled, he stared after the gray-white surge that swept upward toward the summit of his favored coursing ground. The Mistress and the Master, too, at sight of the woolly avalanche, stopped and stared.

From over the brow of Mount Pisgah appeared the non-picturesque figure of a man in blue denim overalls--one t.i.tus Romaine, owner of the spa.r.s.e-gra.s.sed hill. Drawn by the noisy multiple patter of his flock's hoofs, he emerged from under a hilltop boulder's shade; to learn the cause of their flight.

Now, in all his life, Lad had seen sheep just once before. That one exception had been when Hamilcar Q. Glure, "the Wall Street Farmer,"

had corralled a little herd of his prize Merinos, overnight, at The Place, on the way to the Paterson Livestock Show. On that occasion, the sheep had broken from the corral, and Lad, acting on ancestral instinct, had rounded them up, without injuring or scaring one of them.

The memory was not pleasing to Lad, and he wanted nothing more to do with such stupid creatures. Indeed, as he looked now upon the sheep that were obstructing his run, he felt a distinct aversion to them. Whining a little, he trotted back to where stood the Mistress and the Master. And, as they waited, t.i.tus Romaine bore wrathfully down upon them.

"I've been expectin' something like that!" announced the land-owner.

"Ever since I turned these critters out here, this mornin'. I ain't surprised a bit. I----"

"What is it you've been expecting, Romaine?" asked the Master. "And how long have you been a sheep-raiser? A sheep, here in the North Jersey hinterland, is as rare as----"

"I been expectin' some savage dog would be runnin' 'em," retorted the farmer. "Just like I've read they do. An' now I've caught him at it!"

"Caught _whom?_--at _what?_" queried the perplexed Mistress; failing to note the man's baleful glower at the contemptuous Lad.

"That big ugly brute of your'n, of course," declared Romaine. "I caught him, red-handed, runnin' my sheep. He----"

"Lad did nothing of the kind," denied the Mistress. "The instant he caught sight of them he stopped running. Lad wouldn't hurt anything that is weak and helpless. Your sheep saw him and they ran away. He didn't follow them an inch."

"I seen what I seen," cryptically answered the man. "An' I give you fair warnin', if any of my sheep is killed, I'll know right where to come to look for the killer."

"If you mean Lad----" began the Master, hotly.

But the Mistress intervened.

"I am glad you have decided to raise sheep, Mr. Romaine," she said. "Everyone ought to, who can. I read, only the other day, that America is using up more sheep than it can breed; and that the price of fodder and the scarcity of pasture were doing terrible things to the mutton-and-wool supply. I hope you'll have all sorts of good luck. And you are wise to watch your sheep so closely. But don't be afraid of Lad harming any of them. He wouldn't, for worlds, I know. Because I know Lad. Come along, Laddie!" she finished, as she turned to go away.

But t.i.tus Romaine stopped her.

"I've put a sight of money into this flock of sheep," he declared.

"More'n I could reely afford. An' I've been readin' up on sheep, too. I've been readin' that the worst en'my to sheep is 'pred'tory dogs.' An' if that big dog of your'n ain't 'pred'tory,' then I never seen one that was. So I'm warnin' you, fair----"

"If your sheep come to any harm, Mr. Romaine," returned the Mistress, again forestalling an untactful outbreak from her husband, "I'll guarantee Lad will have nothing to do with it."

"An' I'll guarantee to have him shot an' have you folks up in court, if he does," chivalrously retorted Mr. t.i.tus Romaine.

With which exchange of goodfellows.h.i.+p, the two groups parted, Romaine returning to his scattered sheep, while the Mistress, Lad at her heels, lured the Master away from the field of encounter. The Master was fuming.

"Here's where good old Mr. Trouble drops in on us for a nice long visit!" he grumbled, as they moved homeward. "I can see how it is going to turn out. Because a few stray curs have chased or killed sheep, now and then, every decent dog is under suspicion as a sheep-killer. If one of Romaine's wethers gets a scratch on its leg, from a bramble, Lad will be blamed. If one of the mongrels from over in the village should chase his sheep, Lad will be accused. And we'll be in the first 'neighborhood squabble' of our lives."

The Master spoke with a pessimism his wife did not share, and which he, himself, did not really believe. The folk at The Place had always lived in goodfellows.h.i.+p and peace with their few rural neighbors, as well as with the several hundred inhabitants of the mile-distant village, across the lake. And, though livestock is the foundation of ninety rustic feuds out of ninety-one, the dogs of The Place had never involved their owners in any such row.

Yet, barely three days later, t.i.tus Romaine bore down upon The Place, before breakfast, breathing threatenings and complaining of slaughter.

He was waiting on the veranda in blasphemous converse with The Place's foreman, when the Master came out. At t.i.tus's heels stood his "hired man"--a huge and sullen person named Schwartz, who possessed a scarce-conquered accent that fitted the name.

"Well!" orated Romaine, in glum greeting, as he sighted the Master.

"Well, I guessed right! He done it, after all! He done it. We all but caught him, red-handed. Got away with four of my best sheep!

Four of 'em. The cur!"

"What are you talking about?" demanded the Master, as the Mistress, drawn by the visitor's plangent tones, joined the veranda-group.

"'Bout that ugly big dog of your'n!" answered Romaine. "I knew what he'd do, if he got the chance. I knew it, when I saw him runnin' my poor sheep, last week. I warned you then. The two of you. An' now he's done it!"

"Done what?" insisted the Master, impatient of the man's noise and fury.

"What dog?" asked the Mistress, at the same time.

"Are you talking about Lad? If you are----"

"I'm talkin' about your big brown collie cur!" snorted t.i.tus. "He's gone an' killed four of my best sheep. Did it in the night an' early this mornin'. My man here caught him at the last of 'em, an' drove him off, just as he was finis.h.i.+n' the poor critter. He got away with the rest of 'em."

"Nonsense!" denied the Master. "You're talking rot. Lad wouldn't touch a sheep. And----"

"That's what all folks say when their dogs or their children is charged with doin' wrong!" scoffed Romaine. "But this time it won't do no good to----"

"You say this happened last night?" interposed the Mistress.

"Yes, it did. Last night an' early in the mornin', too. Schwartz, here----"

"But Lad sleeps in the house, every night," objected the Mistress. "He sleeps under the piano, in the music room. He has slept there every night since he was a puppy. The maid who dusts the downstairs rooms before breakfast lets him out, when she begins work. So he----"

"Bolster it up any way you like!" broke in Romaine. "He was out last night, all right. An' early this morning, too."

"How early?" questioned the Master.

"Five o'clock," volunteered Schwartz, speaking up, from behind his employer. "I know, because that's the time I get up. I went out, first thing, to open the barnyard gate and drive the sheep to the pasture. First thing I saw was that big dog growling over a sheep he'd just killed. He saw me, and he wiggled out through the barnyard bars--same way he had got in. Then I counted the sheep. One was dead,--the one he had just killed--and three were gone. We've been looking for their bodies ever since, and we can't find them."