Buff: A Collie and Other Dog-Stories — Buff: A Collie - The Fighting Strain, Part 2

It was market-day at the near-by town.

And this would not be the first or the tenth time a dog had been exhibited for sale in the market enclosure.

So, a hundred yards from his destination, the man lifted the pup from the too-tight crate and fastened a rope to his collar.

Then he prepared to lead his prize across to the market.

But a dog that has never before been led has to be trained to follow at the gentle tug of the leash.

This training sometimes takes only a few minutes, it is true.

But it is needful.

Now, never before had Buff been on the end of a leash.

He did not know what to do.

He had lost, moreover, his early liking for his captor, and he wanted to go home.

At first tug of the rope the puppy braced all four feet, and pulled back.

A tired-looking man, passing, in a still more tired-looking motor runabout, slowed his car at sight of the puppy’s resistance, and scanned Buff appraisingly.

A second and more vehement yank of the rope, accompanied by a mouthful of profanity from the hired man, brought renewed resistance from Buff, and brought the stranger’s slowing car to a complete stop.

Buff braced his feet and sought in vain to get some sort of purchase for his claws on the stone pavement.

His conductor gave the rope a vicious jerk and struck the puppy over the side of the head.

This was the first blow received by Buff in all his short life.

He did not at all grasp its meaning.

But it hurt like the mischief, and it set his delicate ears to ringing.

Incidentally, it brought the stranger, at one jump, out of his car and on to the narrow pathway.

“You idiot!

” exhorted he, striding up to the farm-hand.

“Don’t you know any better than to hit a collie over the head?

It might----” “Don’t you know no better’n to butt in?

” retorted the wrathful hired man.

“I’ll make this mangy cuss mind me, if I have to bust ev’ry bone in his wuthless carcass!

” By way of emphasising his intention, he lifted the amazed Buff clean off the ground on the end of the rope, and drew back one large-booted foot for a drop-kick at the swinging youngster that had dared to disobey him.

The kick might well have smashed every rib in the soft young body, besides rupturing its victim.

But it did not reach its mark.

The tired-looking man did two things, and he did them in practically the same gesture.

With his left hand he jerked the rope from the calloused hand that held it, and lowered Buff gently to earth.

With his right he caught the farm-hand deftly by the nape of the neck, spun him around, and bestowed upon him two swift but effective kicks.

Both kicks smote the amazed labourer approximately at the point where his short jacket’s hem met the seat of his trousers.

As his assailant at the same time released his hold of the shirt-collar, his victim collapsed in a blasphemous heap at the gutter-edge.

Buff had been watching the brief exhibition with keen interest.

Gradually it had been dawning on his unsophisticated mind that his escort was trying in some way to harm him, and that the stranger had not only averted the harm, but was punishing the aggressor.

So, in his babyhood, had Nina flown at a stable cat which had scratched Buff’s too-inquisitive nose.

Once more the puppy knew the glad thrill of having a protector.

As the fallen man scrambled to his feet, the stranger felt a cold and grateful little nose thrust into his palm.

Instinctively--and with unconscious proprietorship--his hand dropped lightly on the silken head of the dog.

But he kept his tired eyes unwaveringly on the man whom he had assaulted.

The latter was on his feet again, swearing and gesticulating.

But, all at once, in the middle of a contemplated rush at his antagonist, he checked himself and looked worriedly up and down the deserted lane.

In case of interference--in case of court proceedings--he might have trouble in explaining his possession of the dog.

A dozen persons in court might well recognise the puppy as belonging to Shawemere.

And there would be difficulties--all manner of difficulties--perhaps a jail term.

Decidedly it was a moment for wile, rather than for force.

There were worse things than a kick.

Jail was one of them.

“If you’re so stuck on the pup, why don’t you buy him?

” he whined.

“’Stead of pickin’ on a poor man what’s got a livin’ to earn?

He’s for sale.

” “I’m not buying livestock----” began the stranger.

Then he paused.

The silken head under his hand shifted, and the cold little nose again nuzzled his palm.

“If you ain’t buyin’,” retorted the farm-hand, “give him back to me, and I’ll take him to where I c’n git an offer on him.

” He snatched the rope before the tired-looking man was aware of the intention.

But Buff was aware of it--well aware of it.

As the rough fingers grabbed at his collar, the youngster growled fiercely and launched himself at the tyrant.

“Good!

” applauded the stranger, catching the angry puppy in mid-air and holding him under one arm.

“He’s got pluck!

That means you haven’t had him long.

If you had, you’d have cowed or killed him, or made him mean and savage.

He’s thoroughbred, too.

What do you want for him?

If the price is fair, I’ll buy.

If it isn’t, I’ll carry him to the nearest police-station.

Which is it to be?

” Out of a volley of indignant denial, punctuated by such stock phrases as, “I’m an honest man!

” and the like, came at last the grunted words: “Thutty dollars.

He’s wuth a sight more.

But he b’longs to my boy, and we’re movin’, so I gotta sell him, an----” “Here’s the cash,” interrupted the stranger, taking out some greasy notes.

“But, next time you steal a dog of this kind, just remember that thirty dollars is a fool’s offer.

It proves the dog is stolen.

There’s no use asking whom you stole him from.

If there were, I might be able to return him.

I had no idea of cluttering my life with anything again--even with a dog.

But if I don’t, you’ll maltreat him.

And he’s too good for that.

There are easier ways, you know, of showing how much inferior you are to a dog, than by kicking him.

” The stranger was doling out bill after bill from his thin roll.

Finishing, he stuck the rest of his money back into his pocket, picked up Buff, and started for his car.

Midway, he hesitated; and looked back at the gaping and muttering farm-hand.

“By the way,” he said carelessly, “think twice before you steal again.

Not for the sake of your alleged soul, but because it’s liable to land you in a cell.

Nothing is valuable enough to steal.

A cell isn’t a pleasant place to live in, either.

I know,” he added as an afterthought, “because I’ve just come out of one.

” He lifted Buff into the car, cranked the muddy and battered little vehicle, and climbed aboard.

Then, as the farm-hand still gaped at him with a new respect in the bulgingly bloodshot eyes, the stranger called back: “If you decide to tell this dog’s owner what has become of him, my name is Trent--Michael Trent.

And I live at Boone Lake, about fifty miles south of here.

At least, I used to--and I’m on my way back there.

” It was Buff’s first ride.

For a few minutes it startled him to see the countryside running backwards on either side of him, and to feel the bumping vibration and throb of the car under his feet.

But almost at once he felt the joy of the new sensation, as does the average dog that gets a chance to motor.

Besides, this rescuer of his was a most interesting person, a man whose latent strength appealed to Buff’s canine hero-worship; a man, too, who was unhappy.

And, with true collie perception, Buff realised and warmed to the human’s unhappiness.

Added to all this, Trent had a delightful way of taking one hand from the steering-wheel from time to time and patting or rumpling the puppy’s head.

Once the strong slender fingers found the name tag.

“‘Buff,’ hey?

” murmured Trent.

“Is that your name or the colour of the goods that were marked by this tag?

How about it, Buff?

” He accented the last word.

In response, Buff’s tail began to wag, and one forepaw went up to the man’s knee.

“‘Buff’ it is,” nodded Trent.

“And a good little name at that.

A good little name for a good little dog.

And now that I’ve gone broke, in buying you, will you please tell me what I’m going to do with you?

I’m an outcast, you know, Buff.

An Ishmaelite.

And I’m on my way back to my home-place to live things down.

It’ll be a tough job, Buff.

All kinds of rotten times ahead.

Want to face it with me?

” Much did Trent talk to the dog during that long and bumpy drive.

His voice was pleasant, to his little chum.

And it was the first time in Buff’s six months of life that a human had troubled to waste three sentences of speech on him.

The attention tickled the lonely pup.

His heart was warming more and more to this tired-eyed, quiet-voiced new master of his.

Closer he cuddled to the man’s knee, looking up into the prison-pale face with growing eagerness and interest.

There was a wistfulness in Buff’s deep-set eyes as he gazed.

With tense effort he was trying to grasp the meaning of the unknown words wherewith from time to time Trent favoured him.

The man noted the pathetic eagerness of look, and his own desolate heart warmed to this first interested listener he had encountered in more than a year.

He expanded under the flattering attention, and his talk waxed less disjointed.

“Yes,” he said presently, stroking the puppy’s head as it rested against his knee, “we’ve a tough row to hoe, you and I, Buff.

Just as I told you.

Since you’re so different from two-footed curs, that you’re willing to associate with a jail-bird, perhaps it’d amuse you to hear how I came to be one.

Eh, Buff?

” At each repetition of his name, Buff wagged his tail in delight at hearing at least one word whose meaning he knew.

“Not to take up too much of your time, Buff,” proceeded Trent, trying to negotiate a rutted bit of road with one hand while with the other he sought to ease the bumping of the car for the dog, “here’s the main idea: I’d just got that farm of mine on a paying basis, and changed it from a liability to something like an asset, when the smash-up came.

Just because I chose to play the fool.

It was down at the Boone Lake store one night.

I had walked into town for the mail.

It was being sorted.

And on the mail stage had come two biggish boxes of goods for Corney Fales.

He’s the storekeeper and postmaster there, Buff.

” Again, at his name, Buff wagged his tail and thrust his cold nose into Trent’s free hand.

“The boxes were left on the store porch while Fales sorted the mail,” went on Trent.

“It struck me it would be a corking joke to carry them out behind a clump of lilacs to one side of the store, where it was black dark that night.

I hid them there for the fun of hearing old Fales swear when he found them gone.

Well, he swore, good and plenty.

And by the time he’d sworn himself out, I’d had about enough of the joke.

And I was just going to tell him about it and help him carry the boxes back to the store, when a couple of chaps--that I’d ordered off my land the week before--stepped up and told him they’d seen me lug the boxes away in the dark.

So I went out to the lilac clump to get the stuff and carry it back to Fales.

“And, Buff, the boxes weren’t there.

They’d been stolen in dead earnest while I had been standing in the store laughing at Fales’s red-hot language.

It had been a silly joke, at best, for a grown man to play, Buff.

“And, anyhow, nobody but a born fool ever plays practical jokes.

Always remember that, Buff.

But you know how a fellow will limber up sometimes after a lonely day’s work, and how he’ll do silly things.

Well, that’s how it happened, Buff.

“Of course I owned up, and offered to pay the sixty dollars Fales said the goods were worth.

But he wouldn’t have it that way.

It seemed he’d been missing things for quite a while.

And his pig-headed brain got full of the idea I had taken them all, and that I’d pretended it was a joke when I was caught at last.

So he prosecuted.

And the county attorney was looking for a record.

And he got it, Buff.

He sure got it.

“I was sent up for eighteen months.

Just for being a fool.

And perhaps I’m a fool to go back now and pick up life again in a place where everyone thinks I’m a thief.

But that’s what I’m going to do, Buff.

I’m going to win through.

It’ll take a heap of time and a heap more nerve to do it.

But--well, we’re headed for Boone Lake.

The sooner we begin the fight the sooner we’ll win it.

” He paused, half ashamed of his babbling, yet half relieved at being able to speak out at last to some listener who did not greet the tale with a grin of incredulity.

Buff snuggled the closer to him, and licked his clenched hand as the pain underlying the light speech struck upon the collie’s sensitive perceptions.

“Good little pal!

” approved Trent, touched at the wordless sympathy and feeling somehow less desolate and miserable than he had felt for many a long month.

It was mid-afternoon when they drove through the edge of a rambling village and on for a mile or so to a lane that led into a neglected farm.

“This is home, Buff!

” announced Trent, his eyes dwelling with sharp unhappiness upon the tumbledown aspect of the deserted place.

“Home--including the mortgage that went on to it to pay for my lawyer.

Did you notice how those village people stared at us, and how they nudged each other?

Well, that’s just the first dose.

A sort of sample package.

Are you game to stand for the rest of it?

I am, if you are.

” Running the battered car into a shed, Trent lifted Buff to the ground and set off towards the closed and forbidding house.

Buff capered on ahead of him, trotting back at every ten paces to make sure his master was following.

Trent paused for a moment in the dooryard, to grope in his pocket for a key.

Buff had gained the summit of the low veranda.

As Trent halted, the pup took advantage of the delay to rest his car-cramped muscles by stretching out at full length on the narrow strip of porch.

Trent took a step forward, then stopped again; this time to stare in bewildered surprise at the collie.

For he noted that Buff was lying like a couchant lion, so far as his forequarters were concerned, but that his hind-legs were both stretched out straight behind him.

Now, as Trent’s dog-lore told him, that is a position in which no collie lies.

Nor does any dog lie with his hind legs out behind him, unless he has in his make-up a strong admixture of bulldog blood.

Yet, Trent’s dog-knowledge also told him that this was apparently a pure-bred collie; perfect in every point.

Wherefore, he stared in wonder at the phenomenon of Buff’s position.

Then, giving up the problem, he advanced into the house.

Buff, springing up at once, followed Trent inquisitively through the doorway, as the key turned noiselessly in the lock and the front door swung open under the pressure of the man’s knee.

Out gushed the musty odour that haunts unused country houses.

It filled Trent’s nostrils and deepened his sense of desolation.

But, mingled with the smell of emptiness and disuse, another and more definite scent assailed Trent’s nose.

It was the reek of tobacco--of rank pipe tobacco, at that.

Nor was it stale.

At the whiff of it Trent stiffened like a pointing dog.

His lips had been parted in a careless word to Buff.

Now he choked back the unborn syllables.

Treading on tiptoe, he made his way from room to room.

Buff, sensing the other’s efforts at silence, padded quietly at his heels.

As they moved along, Trent paused from time to time, to sniff the heavy air.

Presently he flung open a door, with no caution whatever, and sprang into a room beyond.

It was the kitchen he entered in this whirlwind fashion.

And he saw, as his nose had told him, that it was already occupied.

A mattress had been hauled hither from one of the bedrooms.

Sprawled thereon were two men.

One of them was snoring, the other was puffing at a clay pipe.

On the floor beside them lay a full sack.

Piled in a corner of the room was a heterogeneous stack of household articles--a clock, a silver candlestick, three gilt picture-frames, a plated soup-tureen, some spoons, and similar loot.

Trent had scarce time to note these facts and a heap of empty bottles in another corner, before the smoker had dropped his pipe with a grunt and sprung scramblingly to his feet.

The sleeping man, roused by his companion’s noise, sat up and blinked.

“H’m!

” mused Trent, as the two stared owlishly at him.

“I see.

You boys didn’t reckon on my time off for good behaviour, eh?

Thought I wasn’t due home for another month or so; and in the meantime this was a dandy place to hide in and to keep the stuff you steal?

Clever lads!

H’m!

” The two still blinked dully at him.

Evidently their density was intensified by the contents of some of the empty bottles lying near the mattress.

“I’m beginning to understand things,” pursued Trent evenly.

“You two testified you saw me take away those boxes from Fales’ store.

I went to prison on your testimony.

You had lived hereabouts all your lives, and there was nothing known against either of you.

So your word was good enough to send me up--while you pinched the boxes, and plenty of other things.

Since then”--with a glance at the plunder--“you seem to have gone into the business pretty extensively.

And you picked the safest place to keep it in.

Now, suppose you both----” He got no further.

By tacit consent, the two lurched to their feet and flung themselves upon him.

But, careless as had been his pose and his tone, Trent had not been napping.

Even as he spoke, he realised what a stroke of cleverness it would be for the men to overpower him and to claim that they had found him in his own house surrounded by these stolen goods.

It would be so easy a way to fix the blame of such recent robberies as had scourged Boone Lake on some unknown accomplice of Trent’s!

The craft that had once made them take advantage of his joke on Fales would readily serve them again.

But as they flung themselves on Trent, he was no longer there.

In fact, he was nowhere in particular.

Also he was everywhere.

Agile as a lynx, he was springing aside from their clumsy rush, then dashing in and striking with all his whalebone strength; dodging, blocking, eluding, attacking; all in the same dazzlingly swift set of motions.

It was a pretty sight.

A prolonged carouse on raw whisky is not the best training for body or for mind in an impromptu fight.

And the two trespassers speedily discovered this.

Their man was all over them, yet ever out of reach.

Too stupidly besotted to use teamwork, they impeded rather than reinforced each other.

Up and down the broad kitchen raged the trio.

Then, ducking a wild swing, Trent darted in and uppercut one of his antagonists.

The man’s own momentum, in the swing, added fifty per cent.

to the impetus of Trent’s blow.

Trent’s left fist caught his enemy flush on the jaw-point.

The man’s knees turned to tallow.

He slumped to the floor in a huddled heap.

Not so much as waiting to note the effect of his uppercut, Trent was at the other thief; rushing him off his feet and across the room with a lightning series of short-arm blows that crashed through the awkward defence and landed thuddingly on heart and wind.

In another few seconds the fight must have ended--and ended with a second clean knock-out--had not one of Trent’s dancing toes chanced to light on a smear of bacon fat on the smooth floor.

Up went both of his feet.

He struck ground on the back of his head, after the manner of a novice skater.

And, half stunned, he strove to rise.

But the impact had, for the moment, knocked the speed and the vigour out of him.

Before he could stagger half-way to his feet his opponent had taken dizzy advantage of the slip.

Snatching up one of the big bottles by the neck, the thief swung it aloft, measuring with his eye the distance and force needful to a blow over the head of the reeling and dazed Trent.

Then the blow fell.

But it did not fall upon Trent.

It missed him by an inch or more, and the bottle smashed into many pieces on the boards.

This through no awkwardness of the assailant, but because a new warrior had entered the fray.

A flash of gold and white spun through the air, as the bottle was brandished aloft; and a double set of white teeth buried themselves in the striking arm.

Buff, from the doorway, had been watching the battle with quivering excitement.

In his brief life he had never before seen prolonged strife among humans.

And he did not understand it.

To him it seemed these men must be romping, as he and the other inmates of the puppy run had been wont to romp.

And he watched the wild performance in breathless interest.

But, all at once, his master was down.

And, above him, his foe was brandishing something.

Thus menacingly had been raised the farm-hand’s arm when Buff was struck.

Surely this was not a romp!

His master was threatened.

And into the fight gallant young Buff hurled himself--attacking the arm that menaced the quiet-voiced man he was learning to adore.

Just below the elbow he found his grip.

Deep drove the sharp white teeth; not slashing, collie fashion, but with the grim holding power that had won a score of battles for old Upstreet Butcherboy.

On the swung canvas strip, a hundred of his bull-terrier ancestors had been made to strengthen the crushingly powerful jaw muscles they had bequeathed to Buff.

The pup’s forty pounds of squirming weight deflected the blow’s aim, and saved Trent’s skull from certain fracture.

The thief, in pain and terror, tore at the clinging furry body in frantic rage.

But the bulldog jaws were locked, and the fearless collie spirit refused to unlock them at the yells and the hammerings of the panic-stricken thief.

All this for the merest second.

Then, still dizzy, but himself again, Trent was up and at his foe.

The rest was conquest.

Hampered by the ferocious beast that clung to his right arm--weak from pain and exertion--the man was ridiculously easy to overcome.

“You’ve won your welcome, Buff, old chum!

” panted Trent, as he trussed up his prisoners, before marching them to the village.

“And you’ve saved a life I don’t value overmuch.

But you’ve done a lot more.

You’ve let me clear myself of the other charge.

These men will have to talk when the police sweat them.

And that will make life worth while for me again.

Yes, you’ve paid your way, all right!

Something tells me you and I are going to be the best pals ever.

But--where in blue blazes did a thoroughbred collie ever pick up that bulldog grip?

”