After pausing near the front entrance to accustom their ears to the frightful din and to take a snapshot of the trophy-case, the two newspaper men had wandered down the first aisle into which their non-enthusiastic feet had chanced to stray. There, suddenly, Graham saw one of the “human-interest bits” for which he was always hunting.
Midway in an aisle labelled COLLIE SECTION sat a tired man, a typical mountaineer, beside a huge collie. And to the civilly interested dog the mountaineer was exhibiting pridefully a silver cup; larger than any in the trophy-case. He was talking to the dog, too, in a confidential whisper; evidently telling the collie what a splendid victory he had scored and how proud of him his master was.
Here was human-interest stuff, if ever Graham had seen it!
“Cup for best collie in the show?” asked Graham of the scowling hill-billy.
“Yep!” snapped Jeff Titus, defiantly.
“Good boy!” exclaimed Graham, seeking by effusive geniality to break down the mountaineer’s surly reserve. “He’s sure one peach of a dog! What’s his name? And what’s yours?”
“His name,” said Jeff with perilous courtesy, “is Robin—Robin Adair. He b’longs to my wife, Miz Jeff Titus—up Keytesville-way. She’s sick, to home. I’m showin’ him fer her. Got any more questions to pester me with, b’fore——”
“Would you mind holding up the cup, a second?” wheedled Graham, scribbling with a chewed pencil on a doubled wad of copy paper. “So! Thanks!”
Still defiantly, Jeff had held forward the cup for inspection, his free arm around the majestic Robin’s shoulders. The camera clicked. Titus did not hear it, through the noise of a hundred barks and yelps. Besides, he was focusing his indignant attention on this slick-spoken opponent of his.
“Wal?” he demanded truculently. “Anything more you-all wants o’ me? He’s our dawg. An’ he’s good enough for us. If you-all don’t like him none——”
“But I do!” effused Graham. “A great dog, Mr. Titus! And”—his eye running along the collie section—“he must be close to championship standard, to have beaten all of these beauties. I’d like to ask you——”
“I ain’t got nothin’ more to say!” growled Jeff, half rising, and his yellow eyetooth began to show under his upcurling lip. “An’ if you-all is aimin’ to start trouble ’bout this yer cup——”
Graham was not aiming to start trouble. Not at all did he like the new expression, nor the voice, of this sulking hill-billy he had sought to patronise. With a signal to the photographer he moved rapidly away, continuing his progress down the aisle.
Jeff glared after him. If the man were going to inform the committee that Titus had bought a cup when he had not been able to win one, why, let him do it! Jeff wasn’t going to run away. So he held his ground, feeling very wrathful, but somewhat scared. He restored the cup to its wrappings. It would be handier to carry it, that way, should he be ejected from the show on account of his fraud.
But no one ejected him. Except that people paused now and then, through the course of the day, to stare amusedly at poor Robin (and to straighten their faces in comical haste as they encountered Jeff’s glower), no one molested Titus.
At four in the afternoon Jeff’s raw nerves could stand the strain no longer. Untying Robin from the bench, he led him to the entrance of the hall. There he sought the superintendent of the show.
“When c’n me an’ my dawg git outen here an’ traipse home?” he asked.
“No dog is supposed to leave the building before ten o’clock to-night, when the show ends,” replied the superintendent, adding with a cryptic glance at Robin: “But I don’t think I need hold your entry to those rules. Go when you like.”
The cup under his arm and Robin at his heels, Jeff departed. He had come to town on mule-back, the dog running alongside. Even at the best pace he could scarce hope to get home very much before midnight. He had come to Duneka on the preceding day and had planned to stay until next morning. But, already, his imagination was afire with the thought of bursting in on Eve that very night, with the glittering trophy. So he bent his steps towards the stable where he housed his mule.
Across the fair-grounds, from the cityward gate, a bevy of barelegged newsboys was scampering, with armfuls of newspapers—copies of the Chronicle’s first afternoon edition. One of them ran past Jeff.
Jeff’s keen mountaineer eyes chanced on a dark blotch near the bottom of the swaying sheet’s first page. With an unbelieving gasp, he stopped short in his tracks and bawled to the fleeing newsboy to come back.
The boy returned, holding out the paper. Jeff snatched it from him, riveting his incredulous gaze upon that dark blotch on the front page. The blotch, at close range, resolved itself into a two-column cut—a picture of Robin, lying majestically at full length in his bench, his trustful gaze fixed on the lank man who squatted beside him and who held aloft an ornate silver cup!
Above the cut ran the caption:
“A PRIZE-WINNER AND HIS PRIZE.”
Beneath the picture were the lines:
“Mrs. Jeff Titus’ Robin Adair; Winner of cup for Best Collie in Show.”
Doubled, in single-column space under this, was one of the two-stick “human-interest” stories with which Graham was wont to strew the Chronicle’s pages. Jeff’s fascinated eyes tore themselves from the picture and caught a glimpse of his own name midway of this explanatory yarn. He read the sentence containing the name, then the next line or so. Slowly and painfully he spelled out:
Mr. Titus exhibited the dog for his wife, who is ill at their Keytesville home. With characteristic mountaineer modesty, Mr. Titus refused to sound his splendid exhibit’s praises. When congratulated by throngs of admirers who paid homage to the peerless Robin Adair, Mr. Titus’ sole comment on Robin’s sensational victory was:
“He’s good enough for us!”
Robin Adair was good enough for the judges, too, and good enough to win over one of the finest aggregations of high-bred collies ever shown in this part of the South.
The brief story switched back to the human-interest note—to the man’s evident rapture in the triumph of his sick wife’s pet, and his shy pride in the magnificent cup. But Jeff read no more just then.
Whirling on the impatiently waiting newsboy, he demanded thickly:
“Gimme all them newspapers you’re totin’! An’ then scuttle off an’ fetch me a dozen more! Scat!”
Again he stared in idiotic bliss at the smudged two-column cut. What did it matter to Jeff Titus that the picture and its erroneous caption were to be “lifted out” of the next edition, and that Graham was to incur the sharpest call-down of his career, for the break he had made?
Not three copies of the Chronicle a week made their way to Keytesville. And, even should the next day’s full account of the dog-show reach the Titus region, no mountaineer in the State would possess the technical show-lore to decipher the cryptic “summary of wins” and thus learn of Robin’s defeat.
No: in the mountains, the printed word was accepted as gospel fact—by those who had education to read it. And its pictures were accepted as such by those who had not bothered to master the effete arts of reading and writing. Jeff was going to take home enough papers to go around the whole sparse neighbourhood, in addition to those which were to be mailed to Eve’s people at Louisville and to any other distant kin or friends of hers. Not in the very least did Jeff Titus understand the meaning of this newspaper tribute. Nor did he bother his overwrought brain about it. He had the required “good news” for Eve. He had printed and pictured proofs thereof. If this didn’t help along her tardy cure, by leaps and bounds—
“I ain’t never lied to her yet, Robin!” he informed the prize-winner as they ambled homeward at dusk over the purpling miles of hilly trail. “Nor yet I don’t aim to, now. We’ll walk in on her, with the cup. An’ when she asks, all pleased an’ tickled-like, ‘Why, whatever is this yer fer?’ we’ll jest stick a copy of the noospaper up in front of her. I’m bettin’ the R’cordin’ Angel is due to strain his pore ears till they ache him, if he ‘lots on ketchin’ me tellin’ a lie to that Gawd-blessed gal!”
“ONE MINUTE LONGER”
WOLF was a collie, red-gold and white of coat, with a shape more like his long-ago wolf ancestors’ than like a domesticated dog’s. It was from this ancestral throw-back that he was named Wolf.
He looked not at all like his great sire, Sunnybank Lad, nor like his dainty, thoroughbred mother, Lady. Nor was he like them in any other way, except that he inherited old Lad’s staunchly gallant spirit and loyalty, and uncanny brain. No, in traits as well as in looks, he was more wolf than dog. He almost never barked, his snarl supplying all vocal needs.
The Mistress or the Master or the Boy—any of these three could romp with him, roll him over, tickle him, or subject him to all sorts of playful indignities. And Wolf entered gleefully into the fun of the romp. But let any human, besides these three, lay a hand on his slender body, and a snarling plunge for the offender’s throat was Wolf’s invariable reply to the caress.
It had been so since his puppyhood. He did not fly at accredited guests, nor, indeed, pay any heed to their presence, so long as they kept their hands off him. But to all of these the Boy was forced to say at the very outset of the visit:
“Pat Lad and Bruce all you want to, but please leave Wolf alone. He doesn’t care for people. We’ve taught him to stand for a pat on the head, from guests,—but don’t touch his body.”
Then, to prove his own immunity, the Boy would proceed to tumble Wolf about, to the delight of them both.
In romping with humans whom they love, most dogs will bite, more or less gently,—or pretend to bite,—as a part of the game. Wolf never did this. In his wildest and roughest romps with the Boy or with the Boy’s parents, Wolf did not so much as open his mighty jaws. Perhaps because he dared not trust himself to bite gently. Perhaps because he realised that a bite is not a joke, but an effort to kill.
There had been only one exception to Wolf’s hatred for mauling at strangers’ hands. A man came to The Place on a business call, bringing along a chubby two-year-old daughter. The Master warned the baby that she must not go near Wolf, although she might pet any of the other collies. Then he became so much interested in the business talk that he and his guest forgot all about the child.
Ten minutes later the Master chanced to shift his gaze to the far end of the room. And he broke off, with a gasp, in the very middle of a sentence.
The baby was seated astride Wolf’s back, her tiny heels digging into the dog’s sensitive ribs, and each of her chubby fists gripping one of his ears. Wolf was lying there, with an idiotically happy grin on his face and wagging his tail in ecstasy.
No one knew why he had submitted to the baby’s tugging hands, except because she was a baby, and because the gallant heart of the dog had gone out to her helplessness.
Wolf was the official watch-dog of The Place; and his name carried dread to the loafers and tramps of the region. Also, he was the Boy’s own special dog. He had been born on the Boy’s tenth birthday, five years before this story of ours begins; and ever since then the two had been inseparable chums.
One sloppy afternoon in late winter, Wolf and the Boy were sprawled, side by side, on the fur rug in front of the library fire. The Mistress and the Master had gone to town for the day. The house was lonely, and the two chums were left to entertain each other.
The Boy was reading a magazine. The dog beside him was blinking in drowsy comfort at the fire. Presently, finishing the story he had been reading, the Boy looked across at the sleepy dog.
“Wolf,” he said, “here’s a story about a dog. I think he must have been something like you. Maybe he was your great-great-great-great-grandfather. He lived an awfully long time ago—in Pompeii. Ever hear of Pompeii?”
Now, the Boy was fifteen years old, and he had too much sense to imagine that Wolf could possibly understand the story he was about to tell him. But, long since, he had fallen into a way of talking to his dog, sometimes, as if to another human. It was fun for him to note the almost pathetic eagerness wherewith Wolf listened and tried to grasp the meaning of what he was saying. Again and again, at sound of some familiar word or voice inflection, the collie would pick up his ears or wag his tail, as if in the joyous hope that he had at last found a clue to his owner’s meaning.
“You see,” went on the Boy, “this dog lived in Pompeii, as I told you. You’ve never been there, Wolf.”
Wolf was looking up at the Boy in wistful excitement, seeking vainly to guess what was expected of him.
“And,” continued the Boy, “the kid who owned him seems to have had a regular knack for getting into trouble all the time. And his dog was always on hand to get him out of it. It’s a true story, the magazine says. The kid’s father was so grateful to the dog that he bought him a solid silver collar. Solid silver! Get that, Wolfie?”
Wolf did not “get it.” But he wagged his tail hopefully, his eyes alight with bewildered interest.
“And,” said the Boy, “what do you suppose was engraved on the collar? Well, I’ll tell you: ‘This dog has thrice saved his little master from death. Once by fire, once by flood, and once at the hands of robbers!’ How’s that for a record, Wolf? For one dog, too!”
At the words “Wolf” and “dog,” the collie’s tail smote the floor in glad comprehension. Then he edged closer to the Boy as the narrator’s voice presently took on a sadder note.
“But at last,” resumed the Boy, “there came a time when the dog couldn’t save the kid. Mount Vesuvius erupted. All the sky was pitch-dark, as black as midnight, and Pompeii was buried under lava and ashes. The dog could easily have got away by himself,—dogs can see in the dark, can’t they, Wolf?—but he couldn’t get the kid away. And he wouldn’t go without him. You wouldn’t have gone without me, either, would you, Wolf? Pretty nearly two thousand years later, some people dug through the lava that covered Pompeii. What do you suppose they found? Of course they found a whole lot of things. One of them was that dog—silver collar and inscription and all. He was lying at the feet of a child. The child he couldn’t save. He was one grand dog—hey, Wolf?”
The continued strain of trying to understand began to get on the collie’s high-strung nerves. He rose to his feet, quivering, and sought to lick the Boy’s face, thrusting one upraised white forepaw at him in appeal for a handshake. The Boy slammed shut the magazine.
“It’s slow in the house, here, with nothing to do,” he said to his chum. “I’m going up the lake with my gun to see if any wild ducks have landed in the marshes yet. It’s almost time for them. Want to come along?”
The last sentence Wolf understood perfectly. On the instant he was dancing with excitement at the prospect of a walk. Being a collie, he was of no earthly help in a hunting-trip; but, on such tramps, as everywhere else, he was the Boy’s inseparable companion.
Out over the slushy snow the two started, the Boy with his light single-barrelled shotgun slung over one shoulder, the dog trotting close at his heels. The March thaw was changing to a sharp freeze. The deep and soggy snow was crusted over, just thick enough to make walking a genuine difficulty for both dog and Boy.
The Place was a promontory that ran out into the lake, on the opposite bank from the mile-distant village. Behind, across the highroad, lay the winter-choked forest. At the lake’s northerly end, two miles beyond The Place, were the reedy marshes where, a month hence, wild duck would congregate. Thither, with Wolf, the Boy ploughed his way through the biting cold.
The going was heavy and heavier. A quarter-mile below the marshes the Boy struck out across the upper corner of the lake. Here the ice was rotten at the top, where the thaw had nibbled at it, but beneath it was still a full eight inches thick; easily strong enough to bear the Boy’s weight.
Along the grey ice-field the two plodded. The skim of water, which the thaw had spread an inch thick over the ice, had frozen in the day’s cold spell. It crackled like broken glass as the chums walked over it. The Boy had on big hunting-boots. So, apart from the extra effort, the glass-like ice did not bother him. To Wolf it gave acute pain. The sharp particles were forever getting between the callous black pads of his feet, pricking and cutting him acutely.
Little smears of blood began to mark the dog’s course; but it never occurred to Wolf to turn back, or to betray by any sign that he was suffering. It was all a part of the day’s work—a cheap price to pay for the joy of tramping with his adored young master.
Then, forty yards or so on the hither side of the marshes, Wolf beheld a right amazing phenomenon. The Boy had been walking directly in front of him, gun over shoulder. With no warning at all, the youthful hunter fell, feet foremost, out of sight, through the ice.
The light shell of new-frozen water that covered the lake’s thicker ice also masked an air-hole nearly three feet wide. Into this, as he strode carelessly along, the Boy had stepped. Straight down he had gone, with all the force of his hundred-and-twenty pounds and with all the impetus of his forward stride.
Instinctively, he threw out his hands to restore his balance. The only effect of this was to send the gun flying ten feet away.
Down went the Boy through less than three feet of water (for the bottom of the lake at this point had started to slope upward towards the marshes) and through nearly two feet more of sticky marsh mud that underlay the lake-bed.
His outflung hands struck against the ice on the edges of the air-hole, and clung there.
Sputtering and gurgling, the Boy brought his head above the surface and tried to raise himself by his hands, high enough to wriggle out upon the surface of the ice. Ordinarily, this would have been simple enough for so strong a lad. But the glue-like mud had imprisoned his feet and the lower part of his legs; and held them powerless.
Try as he would, the Boy could not wrench himself free of the slough. The water, as he stood upright, was on a level with his mouth. The air-hole was too wide for him, at such a depth, to get a good purchase on its edges and lift himself bodily to safety.
Gaining such a finger-hold as he could, he heaved with all his might, throwing every muscle of his body into the struggle. One leg was pulled almost free of the mud, but the other was driven deeper into it. And, as the Boy’s fingers slipped from the smoothly wet ice-edge, the attempt to restore his balance drove the free leg back, knee-deep into the mire.
Ten minutes of this hopeless fighting left the Boy panting and tired out. The icy water was numbing his nerves and chilling his blood into torpidity. His hands were without sense of feeling, as far up as the wrists. Even if he could have shaken free his legs from the mud, now, he had not strength enough left to crawl out of the hole.
He ceased his uselessly frantic battle and stood dazed. Then he came sharply to himself. For, as he stood, the water crept upward from his lips to his nostrils. He knew why the water seemed to be rising. It was not rising. It was he who was sinking. As soon as he stopped moving, the mud began, very slowly, but very steadily, to suck him downward.
This was not a quicksand, but it was a deep mud-bed. And only by constant motion could he avoid sinking farther and farther down into it. He had less than two inches to spare, at best, before the water should fill his nostrils; less than two inches of life, even if he could keep the water down to the level of his lips.
There was a moment of utter panic. Then the Boy’s brain cleared. His only hope was to keep on fighting—to rest when he must, for a moment or so, and then to renew his numbed grip on the ice-edge and try to pull his feet a few inches higher out of the mud. He must do this as long as his chilled body could be scourged into obeying his will.
He struggled again, but with virtually no result in raising himself. A second struggle, however, brought him chin-high above the water. He remembered confusedly that some of these earlier struggles had scarce budged him, while others had gained him two or three inches. Vaguely, he wondered why. Then turning his head, he realised.
Wolf, as he turned, was just loosing his hold on the wide collar of the Boy’s mackinaw. His cut forepaws were still braced against a flaw of ragged ice on the air-hole’s edge, and all his tawny body was tense.
His body was dripping wet, too. The Boy noted that; and he realised that the repeated effort to draw his master to safety must have resulted, at least once, in pulling the dog down into the water with the floundering Boy.
“Once more, Wolfie! Once more!” chattered the Boy through teeth that clicked together like castanets.
The dog darted forward, caught his grip afresh on the edge of the Boy’s collar, and tugged with all his fierce strength; growling and whining ferociously the while.
The Boy seconded the collie’s tuggings by a supreme struggle that lifted him higher than before. He was able to get one arm and shoulder clear. His numb fingers closed about an upthrust tree-limb which had been washed down stream in the autumn freshets and had been frozen into the lake ice.
With this new purchase, and aided by the dog, the boy tried to drag himself out of the hole. But the chill of the water had done its work. He had not the strength to move farther. The mud still sucked at his calves and ankles. The big hunting-boots were full of water that seemed to weigh a ton.
He lay there, gasping and chattering. Then, through the gathering twilight, his eyes fell on the gun, lying ten feet away.
“Wolf!” he ordered, nodding towards the weapon. “Get it! Get it!”
Not in vain had the Boy talked to Wolf, for years, as if the dog were human. At the words and the nod, the collie trotted over to the gun, lifted it by the stock, and hauled it awkwardly along over the bumpy ice to his master, where he laid it down at the edge of the air-hole.
The dog’s eyes were cloudy with trouble, and he shivered and whined as with ague. The water on his thick coat was freezing to a mass of ice. But it was from anxiety that he shivered, and not from cold.
Still keeping his numb grasp on the tree-branch, the boy balanced himself as best he could, and thrust two fingers of his free hand into his mouth to warm them into sensation again.
When this was done, he reached out to where the gun lay, and pulled its trigger. The shot boomed deafeningly through the twilight winter silences. The recoil sent the weapon sliding sharply back along the ice, spraining the Boy’s trigger finger and cutting it to the bone.
“That’s all I can do,” said the Boy to himself. “If anyone hears it, well and good. I can’t get at another cartridge. I couldn’t put it into the breech if I had it. My hands are too numb.”
For several endless minutes he clung there, listening. But this was a desolate part of the lake, far from any road; and the season was too early for other hunters to be abroad. The bitter cold, in any case, tended to make sane folk hug the fireside rather than to venture so far into the open. Nor was the single report of a gun uncommon enough to call for investigation in such weather.
All this the Boy told himself, as the minutes dragged by. Then he looked again at Wolf. The dog, head on one side, still stood protectingly above him. The dog was cold and in pain. But, being only a dog, it did not occur to him to trot off home to the comfort of the library fire and leave his master to fend for himself.
Presently, with a little sigh, Wolf lay down on the ice, his nose across the Boy’s arm. Even if he lacked strength to save his beloved master, he could stay and share the Boy’s sufferings.
But the Boy himself thought otherwise. He was not at all minded to freeze to death, nor was he willing to let Wolf imitate the dog of Pompeii by dying helplessly at his master’s side. Controlling for an instant the chattering of his teeth, he called:
“Wolf!”
The dog was on his feet again at the word; alert, eager.
“Wolf!” repeated the Boy. “Go! Hear me? Go!”
He pointed homeward.
Wolf stared at him, hesitant. Again the Boy called in vehement command, “Go!”
The collie lifted his head to the twilight sky with a wolf-howl hideous in its grief and appeal—a howl as wild and discordant as that of any of his savage ancestors. Then, stooping first to lick the numb hand that clung to the branch, Wolf turned and fled.
Across the cruelly sharp film of ice he tore, at top speed, head down; whirling through the deepening dusk like a flash of tawny light.
Wolf understood what was wanted of him. Wolf always understood. The pain in his feet was as nothing. The stiffness of his numbed body was forgotten in the urgency for speed.
The Boy looked drearily after the swift-vanishing figure which the dusk was swallowing. He knew the dog would try to bring help; as has many another and lesser dog in times of need. Whether or not that help could arrive in time, or at all, was a point on which the Boy would not let himself dwell. Into his benumbed brain crept the memory of an old Norse proverb he had read in school:
“Heroism consists in hanging on, one minute longer.”
Unconsciously he tightened his feeble hold on the tree-branch and braced himself.
From the marshes to The Place was a full two miles. Despite the deep and sticky snow, Wolf covered the distance in less than nine minutes. He paused in front of the gate-lodge, at the highway entrance to the drive. But the superintendent and his wife had gone to Paterson, shopping, that afternoon.
Down the drive to the house he dashed. The maids had taken advantage of their employers’ day in New York, to walk across the lake to the village, to a motion-picture show.
Wise men claim that dogs have not the power to think or to reason things out in a logical way. So perhaps it was mere chance that next sent Wolf’s flying feet across the lake to the village. Perhaps it was chance, and not the knowledge that where there is a village there are people.
Again and again, in the car, he had sat upon the front seat alongside the Mistress when she drove to the station to meet guests. There were always people at the station. And to the station Wolf now raced.
The usual group of platform idlers had been dispersed by the cold. A solitary baggageman was hauling a trunk and some boxes out of the express-coop on to the platform; to be put aboard the five o’clock train from New York.
As the baggageman passed under the clump of station lights, he came to a sudden halt. For out of the darkness dashed a dog. Full tilt, the animal rushed up to him and seized him by the skirt of the overcoat.
The man cried out in scared surprise. He dropped the box he was carrying and struck at the dog, to ward off the seemingly murderous attack. He recognised Wolf, and he knew the collie’s repute.
But Wolf was not attacking. Holding tight to the coat-skirt, he backed away, trying to draw the man with him, and all the while whimpering aloud like a nervous puppy.
A kick from the heavy-shod boot broke the dog’s hold on the coat-skirt, even as a second yell from the man brought four or five other people running out from the station waitingroom.
One of these, the telegraph operator, took in the scene at a single glance. With great presence of mind he bawled loudly:
“Mad dog!”
This, as Wolf, reeling from the kick, sought to gain another grip on the coat-skirt. A second kick sent him rolling over and over on the tracks, while other voices took up the panic cry of “Mad dog!”
Now, a mad dog is supposed to be a dog afflicted by rabies. Once in ten thousand times, at the very most, a mad-dog hue-and-cry is justified. Certainly not oftener. A harmless and friendly dog loses his master on the street. He runs about, confused and frightened, looking for the owner he has lost. A boy throws a stone at him. Other boys chase him. His tongue hangs out, and his eyes glaze with terror. Then some fool bellows:
“Mad dog!”
And the cruel chase is on—a chase that ends in the pitiful victim’s death. Yes, in every crowd there is a voice ready to raise that asinine and murderously cruel shout.
So it was with the men who witnessed Wolf’s frenzied effort to take aid to the imperilled Boy.
Voice after voice repeated the cry. Men groped along the platform edge for stones to throw. The village policeman ran puffingly upon the scene, drawing his revolver.
Finding it useless to make a further attempt to drag the baggageman to the rescue, Wolf leaped back, facing the ever larger group. Back went his head again in that hideous wolf-howl. Then he galloped away a few yards, trotted back, howled once more, and again galloped lakeward.
All of which only confirmed the panicky crowd in the belief that they were threatened by a mad dog. A shower of stones hurtled about Wolf as he came back a third time to lure these dull humans into following him.
One pointed rock smote the collie’s shoulder, glancingly, cutting it to the bone. A shot from the policeman’s revolver fanned the fur of his ruff, as it whizzed past.
Knowing that he faced death, he nevertheless stood his ground, not troubling to dodge the fusillade of stones, but continuing to run lakeward and then trot back, whining with excitement.
A second pistol-shot flew wide. A third grazed the dog’s hip. From all directions people were running towards the station. A man darted into a house next door, and emerged carrying a shotgun. This he steadied on the veranda-rail not forty feet away from the leaping dog, and made ready to fire.
It was then the train from New York came in. And, momentarily, the sport of “mad-dog” killing was abandoned, while the crowd scattered to each side of the track.
From a front car of the train the Mistress and the Master emerged into a bedlam of noise and confusion.
“Best hide in the station, Ma’am!” shouted the telegraph operator, at sight of the Mistress. “There is a mad dog loose out here! He’s chasing folks around, and——”
“Mad dog!” repeated the Mistress in high contempt. “If you knew anything about dogs, you’d know mad ones never ‘chase folks around,’ any more than diphtheria patients do. Then——”
A flash of tawny light beneath the station lamp, a scurrying of frightened idlers, a final wasted shot from the policeman’s pistol,—as Wolf dived headlong through the frightened crowd towards the voice he heard and recognised.
Up to the Mistress and the Master galloped Wolf. He was bleeding, his eyes were bloodshot, his fur was rumpled. He seized the astounded Master’s gloved hand lightly between his teeth and sought to pull him across the tracks and towards the lake.
The Master knew dogs. Especially he knew Wolf. And without a word he suffered himself to be led. The Mistress and one or two inquisitive men followed.
Presently, Wolf loosed his hold on the Master’s hand and ran on ahead, darting back every few moments to make certain he was followed.
“Heroism—consists—in—hanging—on—one—minute—longer,” the Boy was whispering deliriously to himself for the hundredth time; as Wolf pattered up to him in triumph, across the ice, with the human rescuers a scant ten yards behind.
THE FOUL FANCIER
IN the sixth round of his fight with Kid Feltman, the end came. And it was not at all the end that anybody but Dan Rorke and Keegan, his manager, looked for.
For the outclassed and battered and wabbling Rorke won.
Two minutes earlier, no one in the Pastime Athletic Club auditorium would have bet a cancelled lottery ticket on Rorke’s chances. And the result left the crowd as puzzled as was the raging Feltman himself.
No; Rorke did not see one sweet face in the throng—a face that nerved him to superhuman effort and victory. Nor did he spur himself to a Herculean last stand that won him the fight. That was not Dan Rorke’s way. And most assuredly it was not the way of his manager and mentor, Red Keegan. The victory was won by subtler and less hackneyed methods.
Here, in brief, was the procedure:
At the end of the fifth round Dan had slumped back to his corner, dizzy and gone. Red Keegan’s practised eye summed up his condition as it had summed up his chances during the past two rounds. And he whispered:
“Time’s come for it, Danny boy! He’s too many for you.”
Danny boy needed no further amplifying of the order. Twenty times in the gym, under Keegan’s shrewd tutelage, he had rehearsed what now he was about to do.
Rorke rose sluggishly, groggily, staggeringly, to the summons for the sixth round. He swayed drunkenly towards the centre of the ring. Seeing which, the crowd screeched to Feltman to sail in and finish him. Obligingly, Feltman prepared to obey the behest of his patrons. He took no chances of a possible trick by laying himself open. But, with all the zest that could include caution, he went for his worn-down opponent.
Rorke met the onslaught right gamely. He called on all his waning strength for one last desperate rally. And the crowd did homage to his gameness by howling approval.
Feltman was a wise man. He knew this false burst of power could not last. Sooner than waste himself in fighting back he covered and waited for the momentary flash to burn out.
But the cheering of the fickle crowd was too much for him. And after an instant of blocking and retreating he met the pathetically brief rally, foot to foot.
There was a flurrying exchange of close-quarters blows, Rorke spinning about so that his back was towards the referee. And, as he spun, Rorke screamed out in mortal agony. His gloved hands flew heavenward, pawing the air.
He sank to the canvas floor, doubled up like a jack-knife; his hands clutching spasmodically at his abdomen some two or three inches below the belt.
Feltman stepped back in astonishment. He had not struck below the belt. He could not account for Rorke’s posture of anguish. But for the fallen man’s face both Feltman and the perplexed referee would have branded the squirming and groaning antics as a pure fake. But there was nothing fakelike in the face that twitched above the writhing body. Rorke’s swarthy visage had gone green white. It had the ghastly hue of death.
On the instant Red Keegan was leaning over the ropes, shaking his fist in Feltman’s face, and squalling shrilly:
“Foul! Did y’see that, Mister Referee? Y’saw it! Y’couldn’t miss seeing it! Foul! Look at the poor lad, will you? He’s dying!”
The referee, Honest Roy Constantin, lived up to the record that had given him his nickname. Rorke was rolling about the floor in torment. His face was better indorsement of his condition than would have been fifty doctors’ certificates. Only by a foul could such agony have been caused.
Not alone was Rorke’s manager claiming it, but fifty voices from boxes and bleachers were taking up the yell in the wontedly sheeplike fashion of fight fans. Honest Roy himself had been behind Rorke at the moment the blow was struck. But he had seen that Feltman was leading for the body. And he could deduce the rest.
While Kid Feltman frothed at the mouth with impotent fury, Honest Roy Constantin thereupon awarded the fight to Rorke—on a flagrant foul. And the whole thing was done on the strength of Rorke’s facial aspect. If Constantin had chanced to be an actor instead of a poolroom czar he would never have been taken in by so simple a trick. For even in those days it was a common ruse on the stage.
Dan Rorke, at the outset of the round, had drawn in a deep breath; and he had held it. This, together with his wild exertions, had turned his complexion to a purple red. Then, suddenly, as he fell, he had relaxed his muscles and his breath; and had at once taken another breath and had rolled his eyes upward. The receding blood had left his face a chalky green. Long rehearsed acting had done the rest. After that first frenzied glare at the referee he had let his head droop and had hidden his slowly incarnadining cheeks from further view. The one glimpse of his corpse-like face was enough for Honest Roy.
“You see, Danny,” apologised Keegan, when he had half carried his principal to the dressing room, “it was the only way out. We either misjudged that Feltman bird wrong or else we overplayed the big improvement you’ve been making these past few months. One or the other. It don’t matter which. The way it lays, you ain’t good enough—not yet—to go up against a top-notcher like him. I seen that before you’d been in the ring two rounds. He was a-eating you up. It was either pull the good old foul claim or stand for a knock-out. I didn’t dast give you the office for any funny business. Not with Honest Roy refereeing. He’s a crank on square fighting, Roy Constantin is. He’d ‘a’ spotted any of our best ones. So I had to frame it, other way round. But it was a close call, at that!”
When Red Keegan picked Dan Rorke out of the night-shift puddler crew at the Pitvale Steel Works he did so after a long psychological study. This study dealt much with the young middleweight’s rugged strength and gameness and his natural skill as a fighter. But it concerned itself equally with Rorke’s innate gifts for more subtle things; among the rest, a certain crude ability for acting. Then he had moulded the ignorant boy according to his own wily plans.
As a man, Keegan was not a marked success. As a crooked diplomatist, he had sparks of genius. Too fragile and too timid to hit a blow himself, he was a born ring general. And it was his joy and his talent to study out more foul tactics than occur to the normal fighter’s bovine brain in the course of a life-time.
None of these manœuvres came under the head of “rough stuff” or even of “coarse work.” There was a finesse to them all. They could be pulled—rightly learned by the right man—under the very nose of the average referee.
Not once, but six times, had Dan Rorke gone into the ring, coached by Keegan, and bested men who were his superiors. He had done it by a succession of crafty and murderous fouls, which the referee failed to bring home to him.
Twice, by unobtrusive butting, in the course of a clinch, he had ripened his half-stunned antagonist for an easy knock-out. Again, he had driven his specially shod heel down on the instep of Spider Boyce with such scientific force as to make the sufferer drop his guard long enough to let in a haymaker to the jaw. Surreptitious kneeing was another of his arts.
All these tricks seem broad and obvious in the telling. So would a full description of the method whereby a conjurer hauls a kicking rabbit out of an empty hat. It is all in the way it is done. And, thanks to Red Keegan’s tireless rehearsing and to his own peculiar talents, Rorke did it in a way to defy casual detection.
When an overkeen referee happened to be the third man in the ring there were other tactics to fall back on. In such event and with a too formidable opponent, there were still divers means for wooing victory—the claim of foul and the white-faced anguish, for example. Twice before, in other sections of the fight map, had Rorke and Keegan worked this bit of acting.
As a result Dan Rorke was rising fairly fast in his profession. He was not of championship timber. He would never develop into such a contender; nor does one real-life fighter in fifty. But he was good enough to do all manner of things to dozens of fairly good men in the rank and file of the middleweight army. And the dollars were drifting in.
To Dan Rorke himself—fresh from the puddling gang, and seeing the fight game only through Red Keegan’s gimlet eyes—there was nothing wrong or even doubtful in his own methods. He took his orders from Keegan; and his share of the cash profits. He did not bother his thick head about ethics.
It was a week after the Rorke-Feltman battle, and while Kid Feltman was still making the sporting world ring with his cries of trickery and his clamour for a return match. Rorke and his manager had gone back to their home town of Pitvale; not only for a needed rest, but to let certain unjust and cruel accusations blow over. Rorke, some months earlier, had been installed in the biggest room of the manager’s Pitvale bungalow; and had settled thus in the first semblance of a home he had ever known since his graduation from the orphan asylum, twelve years agone. Behind the bungalow was the rickety barn which served as his training quarters.
Dan’s old fellow toilers of the Pitvale Steel Works had bet loyally on their former associate in his fight with the redoubtable Feltman. Even though their paladin had won on a foul, still he had won, and they had cashed in on their bets. Gratitude welled high in their souls. And it took a practical form.
On the morning of the eighth day after the match, a delegation of five puddlers invaded the Keegan bungalow at breakfast time; escorting among them a big young collie dog, gold and white in hue, classic in outline, kingly in bearing.
The pup had belonged to the foreman of the night shift, who was taking a job somewhere out West and could not carry his pet along. So the boys had bought him cheap; and now presented him in due and ancient form to Dan Rorke, as a pledge of their hero worship.
In all his twenty-four years Rorke never before had had a dog of his very own. Such luxuries had not been encouraged at the orphan asylum, nor at any of the steel-works boarding houses where he had since lived.
Now, at sight of the splendid beast, the friendship of a normal man for a good dog woke within him. In spite of Keegan’s sour protests, the pup was installed in the bungalow as a permanent member of the household. In honour of the champion who just then was the idol of Rorke’s profession, the newcomer received the historic name of “Jeff.”
An instant and perfect liking sprang up between Jeff and his middleweight master. From the first the two were inseparable. For some reason best known to himself, the young collie accepted the fighter as his one and eternal lord; and lavished on him a single-hearted devotion he had never granted to his former uninterested owner.
To Rorke the dog was a revelation. His starved heart went out to the collie’s staunch friendliness. His sluggish imagination was stirred to unguessed depths by the dog’s flashes of cleverness and of gay loyalty. His vanity—and something deeper—was touched to the quick by the deathless worship in his pet’s eyes.
If Dan Rorke strayed through the town, for the sake of giving the Pitvalians the privilege of gazing on their foremost citizen, Jeff was always trotting gravely at his side. If he suppled his hard muscles by a ten-mile hike through woodland and over mountain, the collie’s plumed tail was ever just ahead, as pacemaker for the trip.
At meals Jeff stretched himself out on the floor beside Rorke’s chair, scorning to beg, but eagerly receptive of such food bits as were tossed to him. At night the dog slept outside Rorke’s door, a keenly alert sentinel over his master’s rest.
Once, down on Main Street, a Rorke fan swatted the fighter applaudingly on the back. In practically the same instant the swatter was on his own back in the street, with Jeff’s teeth menacing him. The collie had misunderstood the motive of the blow, and, after the manner of his kind, had sprung to his demigod’s defence.
This sealed once and forever Rorke’s love for Jeff. The dog had risked dire punishment to ward off a fancied danger from him. It was wonderful—tremendous! Dan told of it, for the next six weeks, whenever he could find anyone to listen to his marvellous yarn. And he added so many unconscious details in the repeated telling that late comers in the succession of listeners were left with a vague impression that Jeff had beaten off fully a dozen armed men who had assailed the fighter.
Keegan used to groan in spirit whenever Dan pointed out Jeff to some chance caller and began the oft-told saga. One dog man earned Rorke’s lifelong hatred and the many-adjectived appellation of liar by his tactlessness in saying:
“Why, most any good purp will do as much as that; if he thinks someone’s trying to hurt the feller that owns him.”
Dan Rorke was calmly certain that no other dog on earth would have had the pluck and the loyalty to do it. And gradually Jeff became to him a sort of fetish for everything that was noblest. Which perhaps was quite as natural as that a high-bred collie should deem Dan Rorke worthy of adoration.
On a slippery and slushy morning in early spring, some six months after dog and man formed their lifepartnership, Dan started through a corner of Pitvale for his daily hike. He had just won a foul-incrusted battle and had not yet signed up for another. In the interval before hard training should set in, he was keeping in shape by means of these daily tramps and by a little gym work.
He and Jeff came abreast of Vining’s livery stable, and were about to swing past it when out through the open doorway flashed something tawny and big and ponderous. In other words, Vining’s vile-tempered old mongrel English mastiff had caught scent of the approaching collie and had dashed forth to do battle with the stranger.
That was a cute trick of Vining’s dog. He was a terror in the neighbourhood; this huge mastiff with the quarter streak of St. Bernard and the temper of a sick wildcat. And for years he had maintained his repute as local bully.
Even now, when age and weight were beginning to slow him down, he still revelled in the prospect of springing out upon some unwary and less warlike dog as it passed the stable; and doing his industrious best to kill it.
As it chanced, this was a street seldom used by Rorke. And Jeff and the mastiff had never before met. Jeff, mincing along on fastidious white toes through the slush, close behind his master, had no warning of the attack. The first hint of danger came when, out of the ever-watchful corner of his slanting dark eye, he chanced to see the whizzing brindled bulk bearing down upon him. There was no time to get out of the way; even had Jeff been of the breed that gets out of the way when peril shows its shining face. To the average dog, there would have been no chance to prepare for the impact. But the best type of collie is not an average dog. In his brain, though never in his heart, he harks back to his wolf ancestors.
It was this ancient wolf strain, now, that made the sedately pacing Jeff spin sidewise as though on a pivot; letting the mastiff fly past him, the flaring jaws missing his head by an inch.
The mastiff whirled, almost in mid-air, and came back to the assault. But as he charged a second time Jeff was not there. The collie had not run; he had merely side-stepped. And in the same motion his white eyetooth scored a deep furrow in the side of the charging foe.
Dan Rorke had swung aloft his walking stick to stop the unequal fight and rescue his chum, for he had heard of the brindled monster’s prowess. But at this move from Jeff he let his striking arm drop, idle, and he sputtered aloud in stark admiration:
“Footwork, b’gee! And countering, too! Lord, but Jim Corbett might ‘a’ been proud of that stunt!”
Again the mastiff was charging in; lurching craftily, to drive his nimbler foe into the angle of door and wall, and thus to corner him and render his footwork useless. Jeff saw through the ruse, but he saw too late to escape.
Now, the collie was a scant eighteen months old. His chest and shoulders had not yet gained the proportions that would be theirs in another two years. Moreover, this was his first battle. Left to himself, he would never have sought trouble; for he was a friendly and frolicsome youngster who had met with nothing but kindliness in all his brief life.
But his every muscle and joint was as lithe as oiled whipcord. There was not a fleck of loose flesh on his wiry sixty-six-pound body. And behind his conscious brain burned not only the battle prowess but the uncanny shrewdness of his ancient vulpine forbears.
Back in the wilderness days, the wolf that could not hold his own in warfare and be ready for all surprises, was the wolf that died exceeding young and left no progeny. The wolf that won the right to have descendants was the wolf brave enough and quick-witted enough to transmit his life-saving traits to those descendants.
All this a thousand years ago; and Dan Rorke’s pet collie was profiting by it.
When the mastiff charged him Jeff acted on pure instinct. Having shown his resentment at the effort to chew him up, he was now quite content to let the quarrel rest where it was. But apparently this dog mountain who had attacked him would not have it so. In fact, the mastiff had cornered him. And the only road to safety was to go through a foe nearly twice as big as himself.
This looked like an impossible task, yet Jeff tackled it. His hind quarters were wedged between the open door and the street wall. In front was the mastiff. The big dog was not charging now. No need to waste speed and rashness on a helplessly cornered victim. Head down, legs crouched, the mastiff crept on his waiting prey. There was a hideous menace in the crawlingly savage advance.
Up went Dan Rorke’s stick again. Dan had gripped the weapon by the ferrule and he was measuring the distance between its clubbed handle and the giant mongrel’s head. But, as before, he did not strike; for there was no need.
The mastiff gathered himself for a death spring. But Jeff sprang without waiting to gather himself. Jeff did not spring aloft, as did the other. He dived under the rearing forelegs, slashing one of them to the bone as he sped.
The mastiff snapped murderously at his whizzing foe, as Jeff passed under him. His ravening teeth closed on nothing but a bunch of golden ruff hair instead of reaching their goal in the collie’s vertebræ. And the mouthful of fur was his sole asset from the encounter.
Roaring aloud with rage and with the pain of his flesh wounds, the mongrel bounded out of the corner and made for his escaped victim. Now Jeff had fought his way out of the trap at no worse loss than a bunch of neck hair. The whole world lay before him as an avenue of retreat. No domestic animal but the greyhound can pass a strong young collie in a footrace. And assuredly this unwieldy mastiff could never have hoped to overhaul him.
But a queer change had come to the friendly youngster during that ugly moment in the corner. He, who had always been on jolly terms with everyone, had been set upon in unprovoked fashion while he was minding his own business. He had been threatened with death; for a less clever dog than Jeff could not have failed to read red murder in the mastiff’s bloodshot eyes.
More, a wad of his fur had been yanked out in most painful fashion. And, for the first time in his eighteen pleasant months of life, hot wrath surged up in the collie’s friendly heart. This giant was not going to treat him so and get away with it scot-free. The battle yell of his wolf ancestors burst from Jeff’s furry throat.
As the mastiff turned he faced a wholly different antagonist from the astonished puppy he had set upon in the corner. Ruff abristle, head down, snowy fangs glinting from under his upwrithing lip, young Jeff flew to meet him like a fluffy catapult. And a truly epochal fight was on.
The mastiff went at his work with veteran ferocity and method, born of fifty death fights. But he had run up against something unique in his long experience. Jeff was not there. Or rather, Jeff was everywhere at once and nowhere in particular. He was in and out and over and under; never wasting time in seeking for a permanent hold, but nipping, tearing or slashing, and then striking at almost the same instant for some totally different part of the mongrel’s big body.
The mastiff reared and thrashed about, ever striving to pin his eel-like adversary under him; to crush him down by dint of vast weight; to pinion him while the heavy foam-flecked jaws should find their death-hold. But Jeff had an annoying fashion of not staying in any one place long enough to be annihilated. And at every impact his white teeth were leaving their red mark.
“It’s—it’s Corbett and Sullivan, all over again!” blithered Dan Rorke, his expert eye following each move, his soul afire with prideful ecstasy at his untried chum’s marvellous war genius. “Will you look at that footwork!” he exhorted high heaven and the fast-gathering knot of spectators.
Then his triumph song became a grunt.
The mastiff, in one of his mad lunges, had found his mark. His jaws closed on Jeff’s furpadded shoulder; and he hung on. With one wrench of his bull head he bore the slighter dog to earth and began to grind his jaws into the shoulder he had seized.
For a moment Jeff writhed and flung himself about impotently in the fearsome grip. In that instant of futile heaving his eyes sought and met Rorke’s. And in the flashing gaze there was no tinge of fear or of appeal. It was as though he tried to assure the man that he had fought his best and that he was sorry he could do no better.
But before Dan’s stick could go up there was a new flurry of fur and flesh, and Jeff’s sharp teeth had sunk in agonising style deep into one of the mongrel’s thick pads. The pain was so sudden and acute that the mastiff loosed his merciless shoulder grip, to lunge for the collie’s head. And in that brief instant Jeff was not only on his feet and free, but was back at the assault with all his primal zest.
The mastiff, bleeding and almost breathless, reared for another attack. His cut hind foot clawed at a film of ice on the slippery pavement. He lost his balance and fell floundering on his back in the slush. For a second he lay there, stunned, for his head had hit the edge of the open door as he fell, and his brindled throat was exposed and defenceless.
“Now’s your chance, Jeff!” chortled Rorke deliriously. “Finish him!”
But the collie did not take the chance. As the mongrel tumbled backward, Jeff had darted in at him. But, when he saw the huge brute prone and helpless on the ground, the collie for some innate sportsmanly reason forbore to fly at the inviting throat and rip out the jugular.
Instead, looking down in grave wonder at the sprawling and kicking mastiff, Jeff took a step backward and stood, ears cocked, head on one side, slender body still braced for action, waiting for the fallen dog to rise.
Dan gasped. Then he swore aloud.
The worn-out mongrel staggered to his feet, all the fight knocked out of him by the stunning head blow and by loss of blood. Jeff danced forward afresh to the fray. But, tail between legs, the mastiff turned and limped off into the stable. His back and the slipping hind legs offered rare chance for the victor to clinch his hard-won conquest. But Jeff only stared in mild interest after his beaten enemy. Then, limping a bit from his shoulder wound and panting fast from his fierce exertions, he trotted over to Dan Rorke and thrust his wet muzzle into his master’s hand as if in quest of sympathy or praise.
He got both.
Fairly crowing with exultation Dan dropped his stick and flung both arms about his scarred pet in a breath-taking bear hug.
“Gee, but you’re the real thing, Jeffie!” he carolled, fondling the inordinately happy dog. “Of all the pups that ever happened you’re—you’re that pup! Say”—appealing to the crowd—“did you birds ever see the like of this feller’s footwork? Did you? And did you see how he wouldn’t pitch into that big stiff when he was down and out? Some white man, I’ll say! Come on home, Jeff! That shoulder of yourn will stand some patching. C’mon, Champ! Gee, but I sure named you after the right man! There ain’t anything double your weight can lay a glove on you!”
Red Keegan pattered home excitedly from a morning visit to the Pitvale Hotel. In his hand he was brandishing a telegram that had been received at the hotel telegraph desk while he was there. He made his way on hurrying feet to the barn back of the bungalow, which served his fighters as a gym, and where, at this time of day, Rorke was reasonably certain to be dawdling with the punching bag.
He came upon Dan, kneeling beside his collie and washing out lovingly a deeply ragged cut in the dog’s right shoulder. At sight of the manager Rorke broke forth into a gleeful recital of the bout between Jeff and the mastiff. But he had scarcely gotten through the first sentence when Keegan cut him short.
“That c’n wait!” decreed the manager, waving the telegram. “This can’t. Listen! I’ve cinched Feltman, at last. For right here in Pitvale. Main bout for the Athaletic Carn’val, next month. Four thousand dollars! Biggest purse ever! Those carn’val guys don’t seem to care how they spend it. And they count on your being a star attraction, here in Pitvale. Remember we figgered they’d do that.”
“Uh-huh,” assented Rorke, unimpressed. “But say, Red, you’d ought to ‘a’ seen the way Jeff lit into him, after he’d fought his way out of that corner! He——”
“Shut up!” commanded Keegan, with the exquisite courtesy of his kind. “Here we’re landing the biggest thing we’ve ever pulled off, and you go gassing ’bout a measly dog fight! I tell you——”
“Well,” retorted Dan, nettled at his manager’s tone and still more at his total dearth of appreciation for Jeff, “I don’t see as there’s anything to put on a silk shirt for, in the bunch of news you’ve lugged home with you. When I fought Feltman, back in August, you and Bud Curly would ‘a’ had to carry me out’n the ring, heels forward, if we hadn’t been able to swing that white-in-the-face claim of foul. I’ve gone ahead some since then, I know that, but I don’t figger I’ve gone ahead far enough to stop Kid Feltman. And we can’t try the same white-face stunt a second time on him. He’ll be watching for it. So will the ref’ree, whoever he is. You act like you’d brang home a gold mine, Red. Looks to me like you’d carted back a hornets’ nest. How’s the purse going to be split? A lad like Feltman’ll want to——”
“Danny,” interposed Keegan with weary scorn, “you talk even foolisher’n you look. And you look foolisher’n any other man the Lord ever bothered to pin a face onto. I told you, a month ago, the way I was aiming to work this thing. If you’ve got more int’rest in how you’re bandaging that cur’s shoulder than in the way we’re due to make a killing, there’s no use going over it all again to you. I remember, last time, you were so busy teaching Jeff to speak for bones that you didn’t more’n half listen to me. And now I s’pose I got to say it all over again.”
He sighed. It was the sigh of a martyr. But Dan did not answer. With worried tenderness he was twining about Jeff’s hurt shoulder a festoon of witch-hazel-soaked bandage. With patience—an ostentatious and grunt-punctuated patience—Keegan waited until the first-aid task was ended and the bandaged collie was curled up at his master’s feet. Then he spoke.
“Feltman’s been after that return fight with us,” he began with laboured detail and as if talking to a mental defective, “till he’s got so he’d pretty near be willing to get into the ring with you blindfold and with both hands tied behind him. Maybe you know that, if you know anything. Which you don’t. He’s itching to square himself for that won-on-foul of ours. And I’ve been letting him itch, till he wouldn’t gag on terms. But, at that, it’s a miracle we’ve landed him. Anyone with a grain of sense ought to see through it.
“First, I juggle the carn’val crowd into making him and his manager stand for Sol Kampfmuller as ref’ree. If there’s anything Sol knows less about than ref’reeing a fight I’d like to know what it is. Being sporting ed’tor of the Chronicle here, he thinks he knows it all, and that what he don’t know he suspects. I’ve seen him ref’ree two fights. Why, that poor Ocity wouldn’t know a foul if it was printed out for him on a raised map! Anyone could get by with murder, with him as ref’ree. It’s ’most a shame to try the real classy stunts on him. Any raw work’d do.
“Feltman’s nearer a top-notcher than ever you’ll get to be in fifty years, but he’s a numbwit. You could hit him with an axe in the ring, before he’d find out he was being fouled. So there’s your comb’nation—a chucklehead ref’ree and a fair-fighting guy who don’t know how to watch out for fouls. And then there’s you, who I’ve learned to be the best lad at slick fouling in the whole business.
“Why, it’s too easy! It’s a crime. You c’n cripple or dizzy him in the very first round if you’ve a mind to. And as often after that as you need. Then, keep remembering that four-thousand-dollar purse, with eighty per cent for the winner. And even a minus-brain like yours ought to be able to figger out the answer. We’ll start you training, to-morrow. I’ve a couple of corking new ones I’ve worked out lately. One of ’em’s a killer. And both of ’em smooth enough to get past most any ref’ree, let alone Sol Kampfmuller and that carn’val crowd. We’ll work ’em out and brush up on a few of the old ones too. So——”
“Funny thing!” spoke up Rorke, his hand on the dog’s head. “Funny think ’bout Jeffie, here! He had a dandy chance to rip the throat out of that Vining dog; and he wouldn’t do it, just because the dog was down and couldn’t help himself! What d’you think of that, Red? Just because the other dog was down. No ref’ree to penalise him for fouling, either. He just stepped back, kind of polite like, and——”
“For the love of Mike!” groaned the irate manager, “will you stop jawing about that bum cur and——”
“Then,” pursued Rorke serenely, “when Vining’s dog turned tail and sneaked away, Jeff had the chance of his life to tear in and do all sorts of damage. But he didn’t. Wouldn’t fight foul—the grand little cuss!”
Rorke fell silent. The manager stared at him in lofty and wordless contempt, but Dan did not see him. Still patting Jeff’s head aimlessly and brooding over the couchant dog with puckered half-shut eyes, he sat there. Dan Rorke was thinking; and thought, to him, was as difficult as it was rare. Presently he spoke again—in a rumbling, ruminating mutter.
“Wouldn’t fight foul, Jeff wouldn’t,” he repeated. “Fought like a bearcat, so long as the scrap was even. But not a foul stunt from first to last. Wouldn’t win on a foul. He couldn’t tell but what that big mutt would get up and tear him in half, like he’d just come plenty close to doing. But Jeff wouldn’t tackle him while he was down. Wouldn’t——”
“Say!” put in Keegan. “I’m going to the house to write a letter and then send off a wire. Keep right on talking, please, all the while I’m gone. Keep on telling about that dog fight. Then, by the time I get back, maybe the most of it will have got out’n your system and you can think of real things again. So long.”
Dan Rorke did not obey his manager’s elephantinely sarcastic request to go on talking of the dog fight in Keegan’s half-hour absence. But he did the next thing—he went on thinking about it. At least his wontedly sluggish thoughts fixed themselves on one detail of the fray, clinging to it like leeches and sending forth ramifications into the far and unused recesses of his brain.