Part 21 (2/2)

”Champion Lochinvar III,” was the answer. ”Glure bought him by cable. Paid $7000 for him. That eclipses Untermeyer's record price of $6500 for old Squire of Tytton. The dog arrived last week. He's here. A big Blue Merle. You ought to look him over. He's a wonder.

He----”

”_Oh!_” exploded the Mistress. ”You can't mean it. You _can't!_ Why, it's the most--the most hideously unsportsmanlike thing I ever heard of in my life! Do you mean to tell me Mr. Glure put up this sixteen hundred-dollar cup and then sent for the only dog that could fulfill the Trophy's conditions? It's unbelievable!”

”It's Glure,” tersely replied the Superintendent. ”Which perhaps comes to the same thing.”

”Yes!” spoke up the Master harshly, entering the talk for the first time, and tearing his disgusted attention from the Gold Hat. ”Yes, it's Glure, and it's unbelievable! And it's worse than either of those, if anything can be. Don't you see the full rottenness of it all? Half the world is starving or sick or wounded. The other half is working its fingers off to help the Red Cross make Europe a little less like h.e.l.l; and, when every cent counts in the work, this--this Wall Street Farmer spends sixteen hundred precious dollars to buy himself a Gold Hat; and he does it under the auspices of the Red Cross, in the holy name of charity. The unsportsmanlikeness of it is nothing to that. It's--it's an Unpardonable Sin, and I don't want to endorse it by staying here. Let's get Lad and go home.”

”I wish to heaven we could!” flamed the Mistress, as angry as he. ”I'd do it in a minute if we were able to. I feel we're insulting loyal old Lad by making him a party to it all. But we can't go. Don't you see?

Mr. Glure is unsportsmanlike, but that's no reason we should be. You've told me, again and again, that no true sportsman will back out of a contest just because he finds he has no chance of winning it.”

”She's right,” chimed in the Superintendent. ”You've entered the dog for the contest, and by all the rules he'll have to stay in it. Lad doesn't know the first thing about 'working.' Neither does the only other local entrant that the first two rules have left in the compet.i.tion. And Lochinvar is perfect at every detail of sheep-work. Lad and the other can't do anything but swell his victory. It's rank bad luck, but----”

”All right! All right!” growled the Master. ”We'll go through with it. Does anyone know the terms of a 'Kirkaldie a.s.sociation's Preliminaries,' for 'Working Sheepdog Trials?' My own early education was neglected.”

”Glure's education wasn't,” said the Superintendent. ”He has the full set of rules in his brand new Sportsman Library. That's, no doubt, where he got the idea. I went to him for them this morning, and he let me copy the laws governing the preliminaries. They're absurdly simple for a 'working' dog and absurdly impossible for a non-worker. Here, I'll read them over to you.”

He fished out a folded sheet of paper and read aloud a few lines of pencil-scribblings:

”Four posts shall be set up, at ninety yards apart, at the corners of a square enclosure. A fifth post shall be set in the center. At this fifth post the owner or handler of the contestant shall stand with his dog. Nor shall such owner or handler move more than three feet from the post until his dog shall have completed the trial.

”Guided only by voice and by signs, the dog shall go alone from the center-post to the post numbered '1.' He shall go thence, in the order named, to Posts 2, 3 and 4, without returning to within fifteen feet of the central post until he shall have reached Post 4.

”Speed and form shall count as seventy points in these evolutions.

Thirty points shall be added to the score of the dog or dogs which shall make the prescribed tour of the posts directed wholly by signs and without the guidance of voice.”

”There,” finished the superintendent, ”you see it is as simple as a kindergarten game. But a child who had never been taught could not play Puss-in-the-Corner.' I was talking to the English trainer that Glure bought along with the dog. The trainer tells me Lochinvar can go through those maneuvers and a hundred harder ones without a word being spoken. He works entirely by gestures. He watches the trainer's hand. Where the hand points he goes. A snap of the fingers halts him.

Then he looks back for the next gesture. The trainer says it's a delight to watch him.”

”The delight is all his,” grumbled the Master. ”Poor, poor Lad! He'll get bewildered and unhappy. He'll want to do whatever we tell him to, but he can't understand. It was different the time he rounded up Glure's flock of sheep--when he'd never seen a sheep before. That was ancestral instinct. A throwback. But ancestral instinct won't teach him to go to Post 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. He----”

”h.e.l.lo, people!” boomed a jarringly cordial voice. ”Welcome to the Towers!”

Bearing down upon the trio was a large person, round and yellow of face and clad elaborately in a morning costume that suggested a stud-groom with ministerial tendencies. He was dressed for the Occasion. Mr. Glure was always dressed for the Occasion.

”h.e.l.lo, people!” repeated the Wall Street Farmer, alternately pump-handling the totally unresponsive Mistress and Master. ”I see you've been admiring the Maury Trophy. Magnificent, eh? Oh, Maury's a prince, I tell you! A prince! A bit eccentric, perhaps--as you'll have guessed by the conditions he's put up for the cup. But a prince. A prince! We think everything of him on the Street. Have you seen my new dog? Oh, you must go and take a look at Lochinvar! I'm entering him for the Maury Trophy, you know.”

”Yes,” a.s.sented the Master dully, as Mr. Glure paused to breathe. ”I know.”

He left his exultant host with some abruptness, and piloted the Mistress back to the Collie Section. There they came upon a scene of dire wrath. Disgruntled owners were loudly denouncing the Maury conditions-list, and they redoubled their plaint at sight of the two new victims of the trick.

Folk who had bathed and brushed and burnished their pets for days, in eager antic.i.p.ation of a neighborhood contest, gargled in positive hatred at the glorious Merle. They read the pink slips over and over with more rage at each perusal.

One pretty girl had sat down on the edge of a bench, gathering her beloved gold-and-white collie's head in her lap, and was crying unashamed. The Master glanced at her. Then he swore softly, and set to work helping the Mistress in the task of fluffing Lad's glossy coat to a final soft s.h.a.gginess.

Neither of them spoke. There was nothing to say; but Lad realized more keenly than could a human that both his G.o.ds were wretchedly unhappy, and his great heart yearned pathetically to comfort them.

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