Part 28 (1/2)

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.