His Dog — 2 - The Battle

At this show of resistance his two comrades, as by concerted signal, threw themselves upon him.

With a yell of angry fright Link collapsed to earth under the dual impact.

CHAPTER II.

The Battle He felt one of the men pinion his waving arms, while the other crouched on his legs and proceeded to unpin the money pocket.

Ferris struggled for an instant in futile fury, trying to shout for help.

The call was strangled in his throat.

But the help came to him, none the less.

Scarce three seconds had passed since the attempt to rob him had set Link into action and had wrung from him that yell of consternation.

But in answer came a swirling patter of feet on the road, a snarl like a wolf's, a shape that catapulted through the dark.

Sixty pounds of fur-swathed dynamic muscle smote athwart the shoulders of the man who was unfastening the cash pocket's pin.

The impact hurled the fellow clean off his crouching balance and sent him sprawling, face downward, his outflung hands splashing in the margin of the lake.

Before he could roll over or so much as stir, a set of white fangs met in his shoulder-flesh.

And he testified to his injury by an eldritch screech of pain and terror that echoed far across the water.

His companion, rallying from the momentary shock, left Ferris and charged at the prostrate thief's assailant.

But Chum met him, with a fierce eagerness, more than half way.

A true collie--thanks to his strain of wolf bloodfights as does no other dog.

What he lacks in stubborn determination he atones for by swiftness and by his uncanny brain power.

A bulldog, for example, would have flown to his master's relief quite as readily as did Chum.

But a bulldog would have secured the first convenient hold and would have hung on to that hold, whether it were at his victim's throat or only on the slack of his trousers--until someone should hammer him into senselessness.

Chum--collie-fashion--was everywhere at once, using his brain far more than his flying jaws.

Finding the grip in his foe's shoulder did not prevent the man from twisting round to grapple him, the collie shifted that grip with lightning speed, and with one of his gleaming eyeteeth slashed his opponent's halfturned cheek from eye to chin.

Then he bored straight for the jugular.

It was at this crisis that he sensed, rather than saw, the other man rushing at him.

Chum left his fallen antagonist and whirled about to face the new enemy.

As he was still turning, he sprang far to one side, in bare time to elude a swinging kick aimed at his head.

Then, before the thief could recover the balance endangered by so mighty a kick, the collie had whirled in and sunk his teeth deep in the man's calf.

The bitten man let out a roar of pain, and smote wildly at the dog's face with both swinging fists.

Chum leaped back out of range, and then, with the same bewildering speed, flashed in again and buried his curved fangs in the nearest of the two flailing forearms.

The first victim of the collie's attack was scrambling to his feet.

So was Link Ferris.

Sobered enough to recognize his beloved dog, he also saw the newrisen thief catch up a broken fence rail, brandish it aloft and charge upon the collie, who was still battling merrily with the second man.

To Link it seemed that nothing could save Chum from a backbreaking blow from the huge club.

Instinctively he ran at the wielder of the formidable weapon.

Staggering and sick and two-thirds drunk, Ferris, nevertheless, made valiant effort to save the dog that was fighting so gallantly for him.

His lurching rush carried him across the narrow road and to the lake edge, barely in time to intercept the swinging sweep of the fence rail.

It caught him glancingly across the side.

And its force carried him clean off his none-too-steady feet.

Down went Ferris--down and backward.

His body plunged noisily into the water.

Chum had wheeled to face the rail's brandisher.

But at sight of his master's sudden immersion in the lake, he quitted the fray.

At top speed the dog cleared the bank and jumped down into the water in pursuit of Ferris.

It evidently dawned on both men at once that there had been a good deal of noise, for what was to have been a silent and decorous holdup.

Also that a raging collie is not a pleasant foe.

The racket might well draw interference from outside.

The dog was overhard to kill, and his bites were murderous.

The game had ceased to be worth the candle.

By common impulse the pair took to their heels.

Link Ferris, head down in the cold water, was strangling in his maudlin efforts to right himself.

He dug both hands into the lake-bottom mud and strove to gain the surface.

But the effort was too much for him.

A

second frantic heave had better results.

And vaguely he knew why.

For Chum had managed to get a firm hold on the shoulder of his master's coat--twelve inches under water--and had braced himself with all his wiry strength for a tug which should lift Ferris to the surface.

This added leverage barely made Link's own struggle a success.

The half-drowned man regained his footing.

Floundering waist-deep in water, he clambered up the steeply shelving bank to shore.

There at the road's edge he lay, gasping and sputtering and fighting for breath.

Chum had been pulled under and out of his depth by Link's exertions.

Now, coming to the surface, he swam to shore and trotted up the bank to the road.

Absurdly lank and small, with his soaking coat plastered close to his slim body, he stood over his prostrate master.

The dog's quick glare up and down the road told him his foes were gone.

His incredible sense of hearing registered the far-off pad-pad-pad of fast-retreating human feet, and showed him the course the two men were taking.

He would have liked to give chase.

It had been a good fight--lively and exciting withal--and Chum wished he might carry it into the enemies' own country.

But his god was lying helpless at his feet and making queer sounds of distress.

The dog's place was here.

The joy of battle must be foregone.

Solicitously Chum leaned over Ferris and sought to lick the sufferer's face.

As he did so his supersensitive nostrils were smitten by an odor which caused the collie to shrink back in visible disgust.

The sickly, pungent smell of whisky on Ferris's labored breath nauseated Chum.

He stood, head recoiled, looking down at Link in bewilderment.

There were many things, this night, which Chum did not understand.

First of all, he had been grieved and offended that Ferris should have locked him in the kitchen instead of taking him along as usual on his evening stroll.

It had been lonely in the unlighted kitchen.

Link had not ordered the dog to stay there.

He had simply shut Chum in and left him.

So, tiring at last of solitude, the collie had leaped lightly out of the nearest window.

The window had been open.

Its thin mosquito net covering had not served in the least as a deterrent to the departing Chum.

To pick up his master's trail--and to hold to it even when it merged with a score of others at the edge of the village--had been absurdly simple.

The trail had led to a house with closed doors.

So, after circling the tavern to find if his master had gone out by any other exit, Chum had curled himself patiently on the doorstep and had waited for Link to emerge.

Several people had come in and out while he lay there.

But all of them had shut the door too soon for him to slip inside.

At last Ferris had appeared between his two new friends.

Chum had been friskily happy to see his long-absent god again.

He had sprung forward to greet Link.

Then, his odd collie sense had told him that for some reason this staggering and hiccuping creature was not the master whom he knew and loved.

This man was strangely different from the Link Ferris whom Chum knew.

Puzzled, the dog had halted and had stood irresolute.

As he stood there, Ferris had stumbled heavily over him, hurting the collie's ribs and his tender flesh; and had meandered on without so much as a word or a look for his pet.

Chum, still irresolute and bewildered, had followed at a distance the swaying progress of the trio, until Link's yell and the attack had brought him in furious haste to Ferris's rescue.

Link presently recovered enough of his breath to enable him to move.

The ducking in icy water had cleared his bemused brain.

Approximately sober, he got to his feet and stood swaying and dazed.

As he rose, his groping hand closed over something cold and hard that had fallen to the ground beside him.

And he recognized it.

So he picked it up and stuck it into his pocket.

It was a pint flask of whisky--one he had received as a farewell gift from his two friends as the three had left the tavern.

It had been an easy gift for the men to make.

For they were confidently certain of recovering it a few minutes later when they should go through their victim's clothes.

Dawning intelligence told Link he had not come through the adventure very badly, after all--thanks to Chum.

Ferris well understood now why the thieves had picked acquaintance with him at sight of his money, and why they had gotten him drunk.

The memory of what he had escaped gave him a new qualm of nausea.

The loss of his cash would have meant suspended credit at the store and the leanest three months he had ever known.

But soon the joy in his triumph wiped out this thought.

The native North Jersey mountaineer has a peculiar vein of cunning which makes him morbidly eager to get the best of anyone at all--even if the victory brings him nothing worth while.

Link Ferris had had an evening of limitless liquor.

He still had a pint of whisky to take home.

And it had cost him not a cent, except for his first two rounds of drinks.

He had had his spree.

He still had all his check money.

And he had a flask of whisky.

True, he had been roughly handled.

And he had had a ducking in the lake.

But those were his sole liabilities.

They were insignificant by comparison to his assets.

He grinned in smug self-gratulation.

Then his eye fell on Chum, standing ten feet away, looking uncertainly at him.

Chum!

To Chum he owed it all!

He owed the dog his money, perhaps his very life.

Yes--as he rehearsed the struggle to get out of the lake--he owed the collie his life as well as his victory over the holdup men.

To Chum!

A great wave of love and gratitude surged up in Ferris.

He had a sloppily idiotic yearning to throw his arms about the dog's furry neck and kiss him.

But he steadied himself and chirped to the collie to come nearer.

Slowly, with queer reluctance, Chum obeyed.

"Listen," mumbled Link incoherently, "I saved you from dying from a bust leg and hunger the night I fust met you, Chummie.

An' tonight you squared the bill by saving me from drownin'.

But I'm still a whole lot in your debt, friend.

I owe you for all the cash in my pocket an'--an' for a pint of the Stuff that Killed Father--an'--an' maybe for a beatin' that might of killed me.

Chum, I guess God did a real day's work when He built you.

I--I--Let it go at that.

Only I ain't forgettin'.

Nor yet I ain't li'ble to forget.

Come on home.

I'm a-gittin' the chatters!"

He had been stroking the oddly unresponsive dog's head as he spoke.

Now, for the first time, Link realized that the night was cool, that his drenched clothes were like ice on him, and that the cold and the shock reaction were giving him a sharp congestive chill.

Walking fast to restore circulation to his numbed body he made off for his distant farmhouse, Chum pattering along at his heels.

The rapid walk set him into a glow.

But by the time he had reached home and had stripped off his wet clothes and swathed himself in a rough blanket, his racked nerves reasserted themselves.

He craved a drink--a number of drinks--to restore his wonted poise.

Lighting the kitchen lamp, he set the whisky bottle on the table and put a thick tumbler alongside it.

Chum was lying at his master's feet.

In front of Ferris was a pint of good cheer.

The lamplight made the kitchen bright and cozy.

Link felt a sense of utter well-being pervade him.

This was home--this was the real thing.

Three successive and man-size drinks of whisky presently made it seem more and more the real thing.

They made all things seem possible, and most things highly desirable.

Link wanted to sing.

And after two additional drinks he gratified this taste by lifting his voice in a hiccup-punctuated ditty addressed to one Jenny, whom the singer exhorted to wait till the clouds rolled by.

He was following this appeal by a rural lyric which recited in somewhat wearisome tonal monotony the adventures of a Little Black Bull that came Over the Mountain, when he observed that Chum was no longer lying at his feet.

Indeed, the dog was in a far corner of the room, pressed close to the closed outer door, and with crest and ruff a-droop.

Puzzled by his pet's defection, Link imperiously commanded Chum to return to his former place.

The collie, in most unwilling obedience, turned about and came slowly toward the drinker.

Every line of Chum's splendid body told of reluctance to approach his master.

The deep-set, dark eyes were eloquent of a frightened disgust.

He looked at Ferris as at some loathely stranger.

The glad light of loyalty, which always had transfigured his visage when Link called to him, was woefully lacking.

Drunk as he was Ferris could not help noticing the change.

And he marveled at it.

"Whasser matter?"

he demanded truculently.

"What ails yer?

C'm here, I'm tellin' you!"

He stretched out his hand in rough caress to the slowly approaching collie.

Chum shrank back from the touch as a child from a dose of castor oil.

There was no fear now in his aspect.

Only disgust and a poignant unhappiness.

And, all suddenly, Link Ferris understood.

He himself did not know how the knowledge came to him.

A canine psychologist might perhaps have told him that there is always an occult telepathy between the mind of a thoroughbred dog and its master, a power which gives them a glimpse into each other's processes of thought.

But there was no such psychologist there to explain the thing.

Nor did Link need it explained.

It was enough for him that he knew.

He knew, as by revelation, that his adoring dog now shunned him because Link was drunk.

From the first, Chum's look of utter worship and his eagerly happy obedience had been a joy to Link.

The subtly complete change in his worshiper's demeanor jarred sharply on the man's raw nerves.

He felt vaguely unclean--shamed.

The contempt of such of his pious human neighbors as had passed him in the road during his sprees had affected Link not at all.

Nor now could he understand the queer feeling of humiliation that swept over him at sight of the horrified repugnance in the eyes of this mere brute beast.

It roused him to a gust of hot vexation.

"Shamed of me, are you?"

he grunted fiercely.

"A dirty four-legged critter's 'shamed of a he-man, hey?

Well, we'll lick that out of you, dam' soon!"

Lurching to his feet, he snatched up a broom handle.

He waved it menacingly over the dog.

Chum gave back not an inch.

Under the threat of a beating he stood his ground, his brave eyes steadfast, and, lurking in their mystic depths, that same glint of sorrowful wonder and disgust.

Up whirled the broomstick.

But when it fell it did not smite athwart the shoulders of the sorrowing dog.

Instead, it clattered harmlessly to the board floor.

And to the floor also slumped Link Ferris, his nerve all gone, his heart soggy with sudden remorse.

To his knees thudded the man, close beside the collie.

From Link's throat were bursting great strangled sobs which tortured his whole body and made his speech a tangled jumble that was not pretty to hear.

"Chum!"

he wailed brokenly, clutching the dog's huge ruff in both shaky hands.

"Chum, old friend!

Gawd forgive me!

You saved me from drowndin' an' from goin' broke, this night!

You been the only friend that ever cared a hang if I was alive or dead!

An'--an' I was goin' to lick you!

I was goin' to lambaste you.

Because I was a beastlier beast than YOU be.

I was goin' to do it because you was so much better than me that you was made sick by my bein' a hawg.

An' I was mad at you fer it.

I'm--oh, I'm shameder than you are!

Chum!

Honest to Gawd, I am!

Won't you make friends again?

PLEASE, Chum!"

Now, of course, this was a most ridiculous and maudlin way to talk.

Moreover, no man belongs on his knees beside a dog, even though the man be a sot and the dog a thoroughbred.

In his calmer moments Link Ferris would have known this.

A high-bred collie, too, has no use for sloppy emotion, but shuns its exhibition well-nigh as disgustedly as he shuns a drunkard.

Yet, for some illogical reason, Chum did not seek to withdraw his aristocratic self from the shivering clutch of the repentant souse.

Instead, the expression of misery and repugnance fled as if by magic from his brooding eyes.

Into them in its place leaped a light of keen solicitude.

He pressed closer to the swayingly kneeling man, and with upthrust muzzle sought to kiss the blubbering face.

The whisky reek was as strong as ever.

But something in Chum's soul was stronger.

He seemed to know that the maudlin Unknown had vanished, and that his dear master was back again--his dear master who was in grievous trouble and who must be comforted.

Wherefore, the sickening liquor fumes no longer held him aloof from Link.

Just as the icy lake had not deterred him from springing into the water after his drowning god, although, like most collies, Chum hated to swim.

Link, through his own nervous collapse, recognized the instant change in Chum's demeanor, and read it aright.

It strengthened the old bond between himself and the dog.

It somehow gave him a less scornful opinion of himself.

Presently he got to his feet, and with the collie at his side went back to the table, where stood the threeparts-empty flask.

His face working, Link opened the window and poured what was left of the whisky out on the ground.

There was nothing dramatic about his action.

Rather it was tinged by very visible regret.

Turning back to Chum, he said sheepishly: "There it goes.

An' I ain't sayin' I'm tickled at wastin' such good stuff.

But--somehow I guess we've come to a showdown, Chum; you an' me.

If I stick to booze, I'm li'ble to see you looking at me that queer way an' sidlin' away from me all the time; till maybe at last you'd get plumb sick of me for keeps, an' light out.

An'--I'd rather have YOU than the booze, since I can't have both of you.

Bein' only a dawg and never havin' tasted good red liquor, you can't know what a big bouquet I'm a-throwin' at you when I say that, neither.

I--Oh, let's call it a day and go to sleep."

Next morning, in the course of nature, Link Ferris worked with a splitting headache.

He carried it and a bad taste in his mouth, for the best part of the day.

But it was the last drink headache which marred his labor, all that long and happy summer.

His work showed the results of the change.

So did the meager hill farm.

So did Link's system and his pocketbook.

As he was a real, live human and not a temperance tract hero, there were times when he girded bitterly at his self-enforced abstinence.

Where were times, too--when he had a touch of malaria and again when the cutworms slaughtered two rows of his early tomatoes--when he yearned unspeakably for the solace of an evening at the Hampton tavern.

He had never been a natural drinker.

Like many a better man he had drunk less for what he sought to get than for what he sought to forget.

And with the departure of loneliness and the new interest in his home, he felt less the need for wet conviviality and for drugging his fits of melancholy.

The memory of Chum's grieving repulsion somehow stuck in Ferris's mind.

And it served as a brake, more than once, to his tavernward impulses.

Two or three times, also, when Link's babyish gusts of destructive bad temper boiled to the surface at some setback or annoyance, much the same wonderingly distressed look would creep into the collie's glance--a look as of one who is revolted by a dear friend's failure to play up to form.

And to his own amused surprise, Ferris found himself trying to curb these outbursts.

To the average human, a dog is only a dog.

To Ferris, this collie of his was the one intimate friend of his life.

Unversed in the ways of dogs, he overestimated Chum, of course, and valued his society and his good opinion far more highly than the average man would have done.

Thus, perhaps, his desire to stand well in the dog's esteem had in it more that was commendable than ludicrous.

Or perhaps not.

If the strange association did much for Link, it did infinitely more for Chum.

He had found a master who had no social interests in life beyond his dog, and who could and did devote all his scant leisure hours to association with that dog.

Chum's sagacity and individuality blossomed under such intensive tutelage, as might that of a clever child who is the sole pupil of its teacher.

Link did not seek to make a trick dog of his pet.

He taught Chum to shake hands, to lie down, to "speak" and one or two more simple accomplishments.

It was by talking constantly to the collie, as to a fellow human, that he broadened the dog's intelligence.

Chum grew to know and to interpret every inflection of Ferris's voice, every simple word he spoke and every gesture of his.

Apart from mere good fellowship the dog was proving of great use on the farm.

Morning and night, Chum drove the sheep and the cattle to their respective pastures and then back to the barnyard at night.

At the entrances to the pastures, now, Ferris had rigged up rude gates with "bar catch" fastenings--simple contrivances which closed by gravity and whose bars the dog was readily taught to shove upward with his nose.

It was thus a matter of only a few days to teach Chum to open or close the light gates.

This trick has been taught to countless collies, of course, in Great Britain, and to many here.

But Link did not know that.

He felt like another Columbus or Edison, at his own genius in devising such a scheme; and he felt an inordinate pride in Chum for learning the simple exploit so quickly.

Of old, Link had fretted at the waste of time in taking out the sheep and cows and in going for them at night.

This dual duty was now a thing of the past.

Chum did the work for him, and reveled in the excitement of it.

Chum also--from watching Link perform the task twice--had learned to drive the chickens out of the garden patches whenever any of them chanced to stray thither, and to scurry into the cornfield with harrowing barks of ejection when a flock of crows hovered hungrily above the newly-planted crops.

All of which was continual amusement to Chum, and a tremendous help to his owner.

Link, getting over his initial wonder at the dog's progress, began to take these accomplishments as a matter of course.

Indeed, he was sometimes perplexed at the otherwise sagacious dog's limitations of brain.

For example, Chum loved the fire on the chilly evenings such as creep over the mountain region even in midsummer.

He would watch Link replenish the blaze with fresh sticks whenever it sank low.

Yet, left to himself, he would let the fire go out, and he never knew enough to pick up a stick in his mouth and lay it on the embers.

This lack of reasoning powers in his pet perplexed Ferris.

Link could not understand why the same wit which sent Chum half a mile, of his own accord, in search of one missing sheep out of the entire flock, should not tell him that a fire is kept alive by the putting of wood on it.

In search of some better authority on dog intelligence, Link paid his first visit to Hampton's little public library.

There, shamefacedly, he asked the boy in charge for some books about dogs.

The youth looked idly for a few minutes in a crossindex file.

Then he brought forth a tome called "The Double Garden," written by someone who was evidently an Eyetalian or Polack or other foreigner, because he bore the grievously un-American name of "Maeterlinck".

"This is all I can find about dogs," explained the boy, passing the linen-jacketed little volume across the counter to Link.

"First story in it is an essay on 'Our Friend, the Dog,' the index says.

Want it?"

That evening, by his kitchen lamp, Ferris read laboriously the Belgian philosopher's dog essay.

He read it aloud--as he had taken to thinking aloud--for Chum's benefit.

And there were many parts of the immortal essay from which the man gleaned no more sense than did the collie.