Part 15 (1/2)

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.

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 marksmans.h.i.+p--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.

The bullet flew high and to the right, smas.h.i.+ng a second-story window and making the echoes resound deafeningly through the narrow street.

”What's up?” excitedly asked a boy, who stood beside a barrel bonfire with a group of chums.

”Mad dog!” puffed the policeman as he sped past.

At once the boys joined gleesomely in the chase, outdistancing the officer, just as the latter fired a second shot.

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 flouris.h.i.+ng something bright.

Lad had no taste for this sort of attention. Always he had loathed strangers, and these new strangers seemed bent on catching him--on barring his homeward way.

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! _Mad dog!_” filled the air.

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.

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.”

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.

Lad crossed Broadway, threading his way through the trolley-and-taxi procession, and galloped 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.

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.

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.

And now Lad was at the pier end. Behind him the crowd raced; sure it had the dangerous brute cornered at last.

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.

The watchman, hard at his heels, swung upward the club he carried.

Down came the club with murderous force--upon the stringpiece where Lad had been standing.

Lad was no longer there. One great bound had carried him over the edge and into the black water below.

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.

To the surface he came, and struck out valorously for the opposite sh.o.r.e much more than a mile away. As his beautiful head appeared, a yell went up from the cl.u.s.tering 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.

But the light was bad and the stream was a tossing ma.s.s of blackness and of light-blurs, and presently the dog swam, unscathed, beyond the range of missiles.

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 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.

Once a revenue cutter pa.s.sed 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.

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.