Part 24 (1/2)
”Good!” applauded the Mistress. ”Oh, _good!_ send it in Lad's name.”
”I shall. I'll tell Vanderslice how it was won; and I'll ask him to have it melted down to buy hospital supplies. If that doesn't take off its curse of unsportsmanliness, nothing will. I'll get you something to take its place, as a trophy.”
But there was no need to redeem that promise. A week later, from Headquarters, came a tiny scarlet enamel cross, whose silver back bore the inscription:
”_To SUNNYBANK LAD; in memory of a generous gift to Humanity._”
”Its face-value is probably fifty cents, Lad, dear,” commented the Mistress, as she strung the bit of scarlet on the dog's s.h.a.ggy throat. ”But its heart value is at least a billion dollars. Besides--you can wear it. And n.o.body, outside a nightmare, could possibly have worn kind, good Mr. Hugh Lester Maury's Gold Hat. I must write to Mr. Glure and tell him all about it. How tickled he'll be!
Won't he, Laddie?”
CHAPTER IX
SPEAKING OF UTILITY
The man huddled frowzily in the tree crotch, like a rumpled and sick racc.o.o.n. At times he would crane his thin neck and peer about him, but more as if he feared rescue than as though he hoped for it.
Then, before slumping back to his sick-racc.o.o.n pose, he would look murderously earthward and swear with lurid fervor.
At the tree foot the big dog wasted neither time nor energy in frantic barking or in capering excitedly about. Instead, he lay at majestic ease, gazing up toward the treed man with grave attentiveness.
Thus, for a full half-hour, the two had remained--the treer and the treed. Thus, from present signs, they would continue to remain until Christmas.
There is, by tradition, something intensely comic in the picture of a man treed by a dog. The man, in the present case, supplied the only element of comedy in the scene. The dog was anything but comic, either in looks or in posture.
He was a collie, huge of bulk, ma.s.sive of shoulder, deep and s.h.a.ggy of chest. His forepaws were snowy and absurdly small. His eyes were seal-dark and sorrowful--eyes that proclaimed not only an uncannily wise brain, but a soul as well. In brief, he was Lad; official guard of The Place's safety.
It was in this role of guard that he was now serving as jailer to the man he had seen slouching through the undergrowth of the forest which grew close up to The Place's outbuildings.
From his two wors.h.i.+pped deities--the Mistress and the Master--Lad had learned in puppyhood the simple provisions of the Guest Law. He knew, for example, that no one openly approaching the house along the driveway from the furlong-distant highroad was to be molested. Such a visitor's advent--especially at night--might lawfully be greeted by a salvo of barks. But the barks were a mere announcement, not a threat.
On the other hand, the Law demanded the instant halting of all prowlers, or of anyone seeking to get to the house from road or lake by circuitous and stealthy means. Such roundabout methods spell Trespa.s.s. Every good watchdog knows that. But wholly good watchdogs are far fewer than most people--even their owners--realize. Lad was one of the few.
To-day's trespa.s.ser had struck into The Place's grounds from an adjoining bit of woodland. He had moved softly and obliquely and had made little furtive dashes from one bit of cover to another, as he advanced toward the outbuildings a hundred yards north of the house.
He had moved cleverly and quietly. No human had seen or heard him. Even Lad, sprawling half-asleep on the veranda, had not seen him. For, in spite of theory, a dog's eye by daylight is not so keen or so far-seeing as is a human's. But the wind had brought news of a foreign presence on The Place--a presence which Lad's hasty glance at driveway and lake edge did not verify.
So the dog had risen to his feet, stretched himself, collie-fas.h.i.+on, fore and aft, and trotted quickly away to investigate. Scent, and then sound, taught him which way to go.
Two minutes later he changed his wolf trot to a slow and unwontedly stiff-legged walk, advancing with head lowered, and growling softly far down in his throat. He was making straight for a patch of sumac, ten feet in front of him and a hundred feet behind the stables.
Now, when a dog bounds toward a man, barking and with head up, there is nothing at all to be feared from his approach. But when the pace slackens to a stiff walk and his head sinks low, that is a very good time, indeed, for the object of his attentions to think seriously of escape or of defense.
Instinct or experience must have imparted this useful truth to the lurker in the sumac patch, for as the great dog drew near the man incontinently wheeled and broke cover. At the same instant Lad charged.
The man had a ten-foot start. This vantage he utilized by flinging himself bodily at a low-forked hickory tree directly in his path.
Up the rough trunk to the crotch he s.h.i.+nned with the speed of a chased cat. Lad arrived at the tree bole barely in time to collect a mouthful of cloth from the climber's left trouser ankle.