Buff: A Collie and Other Dog-Stories — The Foul Fancier, Part 2

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.

These thoughts were not put into words.

But their gist may be translated roughly into English, somewhat as follows: Jeff had fought without training or precept.

He had followed his own instincts.

He had fought according to his nature.

Thus, he had fought fair.

He had fought clean.

Not only had he disdained to make use of any crooked advantage, but he had risked defeat and possible death sooner than to foul.

Jeff was a dog.

Dan Rorke was a man.

How did Dan Rorke win his fights?

Three out of four of them he won by clever fouling.

He fought crooked.

That was how he made his living--by tactics his own dog would not stoop to.

The collie looked on Dan as the greatest person under the sun.

Yet the dog fought square and Dan fought foul.

What was the answer?

It was a joke in fistic circles that Dan Rorke was the dirtiest fighter in that section of America; and that he managed to get away with it by sheer craftiness.

Dan had felt--still felt--a thrill of admiration for Jeff for fighting so fair.

Wasn’t it possible that the fight public might give that same sort of admiration to a man who was known to fight fair?

Going a tottering mental step farther, wasn’t it just barely possible that all reg’lar folks had that same little thrill of admiration for a fellow who was on the level in everything?

It was a funny idea, of course, but---- Then again it was great to have someone, even a dog, look up to anybody as Jeff looked up to his master; and to think that master was the best man alive.

What sort of mangy hypocrite was Dan Rorke to make his living crookedly, by super-fouling, while Jeff thought he was a saint?

The dog fought clean.

The man fought dirty.

Was the man lower than the dog?

It was a rotten thought.

But it had a whole lot of sense to it.

If Jeff, here, could risk death sooner than fight foul, what was the reason why Dan Rorke---- At this point in the argument Dan stopped and started all over, from the beginning.

He was on the third complete review of it when Red Keegan came bustling back.

“Well,” queried the manager briskly, “have you told yourself enough about the dog fight, so’s you c’n remember it a while without telling it again?

” “I--I guess so,” mumbled Dan uncertainly.

And he made excuse to get out of the way.

He was still thinking;

thinking hard and with a growing unhappiness.

His thoughts were not yet crystallisable into words.