Lad: A Dog (26 page)

“I've been expectin' something like that!” announced the landowner. “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 yourn, 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 Titus 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 yourn 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. Titus Romaine.

With which exchange of goodfellowship, 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 goodfellowship 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, Titus Romaine bore down upon The Place, before breakfast, breathing threats and complaining of slaughter.

He was waiting on the veranda in blasphemous converse with The Place's foreman, when the Master came out. At Titus's heels stood his “hired man”—a huge and sullen person named Schwartz.

“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 yourn!” 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 Titus. “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 finishin' 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.”

“I suppose Lad swallowed them,” ironically put in The Place's foreman. “That makes about as much sense as the rest of the yarn. The Old Dog would no sooner—”

“Do you really mean to say you saw Lad—saw and
recognized
him—in Mr. Titus's barnyard, growling over a sheep he had iust killed?” demanded the Mistress.

“I sure do,” affirmed Schwartz. “And I—”

“An' he's ready to go on th' stand an' take oath to it!” supplemented Titus. “Unless you'll pay me the damages out of court. Them sheep cost me exac‘ly $12.10 a head, in the Pat'son market, one week ago. An' sheep on the hoof has gone up a full forty cents more since then. You owe me for them four sheep exac'ly—”

“I owe you not one red cent!” denied the Master. “I hate law worse than I hate measles. But I'll fight that idiotic claim all the way up to the Appellate Division before I'll—”

The Mistress lifted a little silver whistle that hung at her belt and blew it. An instant later Lad came galloping gaily up the lawn from the lake, adrip with water from his morning swim. Straight at the Mistress' summons he came, and stood, expectant, in front of her, oblivious of others.

The great dog's mahogany-and-snow coat shone wetly in the sunshine. Every line of his splendid body was tense. His eyes looked up into the face of the loved Mistress in eager anticipation. For a whistle call usually involved some matter of more than common interest.

“That's the dog!” cried Schwartz. “That's the one. He has washed off the blood. But that is the one. I would know him anywhere at all. And I knew him, already. And Mr. Romaine told me to be looking out for him, about the sheep, too. So I—”

The Master had bent over Lad, examining the dog's mouth. “Not a trace of blood or of wool!” he announced. “And look how he faces us! If he had anything to be ashamed of—”

“I got a witness to prove he killed my sheep,” cut in Romaine. “Since you won't be honest enough to square the case out of court, then the law'll take a tuck in your wallet for you. The law will look after a poor man's int‘rest. I don't wonder there's folks who want all dogs done 'way, with. Pesky curs! Here, the papers say we are short on sheep, an' they beg us to raise ‘em, because mutton is worth double what it used to be, in open market. Then, when I buy sheep, on that say-so, your dog gets four of 'em the very first week. Think what them four sheep would 'a meant to—”

“I'm sorry you lost them,” the Master interrupted. “Mighty sorry. And I'm still sorrier if there is a sheep-killing dog at large anywhere in this region. But Lad never—”

“I tell ye, he
did!”
stormed Titus. “I got proof of it. Proof good enough for any court. An' the court is goin' to see me righted. It's goin' to do more. It's goin' to make you shoot that killer, there, too. I know the law. I looked it up. An' the law says if a sleep-killin' dog—”

“Lad is not a sheep-killing dog!” flashed the Mistress.

“That's what he is!” snarled Romaine. “An', by law, he'll be shot as sech. He—”

“Take your case to law, then!” retorted the Master, whose last shred of patience went by the board, at the threat. “And take it and yourself off my Place! Lad doesn't ‘run' sheep. But, at the word from me, he'll ask nothing better than to ‘run' you and your hired man every step of the way to your own woodshed. Clear out!”

He and the Mistress watched the two irately mumbling intruders plod out of sight up the drive. Lad, at the Master's side, viewed the accusers' departure with sharp interest. Schooled in reading the human voice, he had listened alertly to the Master's speech of dismissal. And, as the dog listened, his teeth had come slowly into view from beneath a menacingly upcurled lip. His eyes, half-shut, had been fixed on Titus with an expression that was not pretty.

“Oh, dear!” sighed the Mistress miserably, as she and her husband turned indoors and made their way toward the breakfast room. “You were right about ‘good old Mr. Trouble dropping in on us.' Isn't it horrible? But it makes my blood boil to think of Laddie being accused of such a thing. It is crazily absurd, of course. But—”

“Absurd?” the Master caught her up. “It's the most absurd thing I ever heard of. If it was about any other dog than Lad, it would be good for a laugh. I mean, Romaine's charge of the dog's doing away with no less than four sheep and not leaving a trace of more than one of them. That, alone, would get his case laughed out of court. I remember, once in Scotland, I was stopping with some people whose shepherd complained that three of the sheep had fallen victim to a ‘killer.' We all went up to the moor pasture to look at them. They weren't a pretty sight, but they were all
there.
A dog doesn't devour a sheep he, kills. He doesn't even lug it away. Instead, he just—”

“Perhaps you'd rather describe it
after
breakfast,” suggested the Mistress, hurriedly. “This wretched business has taken away all of my appetite that I can comfortably spare.”

At about mid-morning of the next day, the Master was summoned to the telephone.

“This is Maclay,” said the voice at the far end.

“Why, hello, Mac!” responded the Master, mildly wondering why his old fishing crony, the village's local Peace Justice, should be calling him up at such an hour. “If you're going to tell me this is a good day for small-mouth bass to bite I'm going to tell you it isn't. It isn't because I'm up to my neck in work. Besides, it's too late for the morning fishing, and too early for the bass to get up their afternoon appetites. So don't try to tempt me into—”

“Hold on!” broke in Maclay. “I'm not calling you up for that. I'm calling up on business; rotten unpleasant business, too.”

“What's wrong?” asked the Master.

“I'm hoping Titus Romaine is,” said the Justice. “He's just been here—with his hired man as witness—to make a complaint about your dog, Lad. Yes, and to get a court order to have the old fellow shot, too.”

“What!” sputtered the Master. “He hasn't actually—”

“That's just what he's done,” said Maclay. “He claims Lad killed four of his new sheep night before last, and four more of them this morning or last night. Schwartz swears he caught Lad at the last of the killed sheep both times. It's hard luck, old man, and I feel as bad about it as if it were my own dog. You know how strong I am for Lad. He's the greatest collie I've known, but the law is clear in such—”

“You speak as if you thought Lad was guilty!” flamed the Master. “You ought to know better than that. He—”

“Schwartz tells a straight story,” answered Maclay, sadly, “and he tells it under oath. He swears he recognized Lad first time. He says he volunteered to watch in the barnyard last night. He had had a hard day's work and he fell asleep while he was on watch. He says he woke up in gray dawn to find the whole flock in a turmoil, and Lad pinning one of the sheep to the ground. He had already killed three. Schwartz drove him away. Three of the sheep were missing. One Lad had just downed was dying. Romaine swears he saw Lad ‘running' his sheep last week. It—”