Buff: A Collie and Other Dog-Stories — Buff: A Collie - Masterless!, Part 1

CHAPTER THREE: MASTERLESS!

Now this is the story of the masterless wanderings of Buff.

Long and unavailingly did Buff follow the track of the car which had borne away the man who was his god.

Dizzy from his wound, faint from loss of blood, heart-broken and frantic at the vanishing of his master, the collie sped in pursuit.

The scent was fresh in his nostrils--the scent of the kidnapped man and of his abductors, and the familiar odour of Trent’s car.

Mile after mile galloped Buff through the summer night; trusting wholly to his sense of smell.

With the peculiar mile-eating canter of his wolf-ancestors, he stuck to the trail, even when the car’s track ceased to furrow the dusty country road and passed clean through a busy little city.

Through the city’s myriad odours and distractions, Buff stuck to the scent of his master’s car.

Other cars--hundreds of them--had laced the trail.

The asphalt’s smell of gasoline and grease was sickeningly acute in the dog’s nostrils, confusing and sometimes all but blotting out the scent he was following.

Yet never quite did Buff lose the track.

Under the lamps of motor-trucks and trolley cars he flashed, swerving barely far enough out of their way to save himself from death; then ever picking up the scent again.

Once a troop of small boys gave chase, realising the chances of reward that lay in the capture of so fine a dog.

But Buff, with that odd and choppy wolf-stride of his, soon out-distanced them.

And they threw stones, futilely, in the wake of the flying tawny shape.

Again, a Great Dane whirled out of a dooryard and pursued the passing collie.

Buff was aware of the larger dog’s presence only when a spring and a snarl warned him to wheel, in bare time to avoid the full shock of the Dane’s charge.

Buff had no time for fighting.

Paying no further heed to the attacking giant, he swerved from the assault, caught the trail again, and increased his pace.

But the Great Dane would not have it so.

His instincts of a bully were aroused by the meek flight of this stranger dog from his onset.

And he pursued at top speed.

A motor-bus, whirring out from a side street, checked Buff’s flight for an instant, by barring the way.

Before he could get into his stride again, the Dane had hurled himself upon the fugitive, bearing him to the ground, in the slime and mud of the greasy street.

By the time Buff’s tawny back smote the asphalt, he was master of the situation.

Furious at this abominable delay he reverted to type--or to two types.

It was his wolf-ancestry that lent him the wit and the nimbleness to spin to his feet, under the big assailant’s lunging body, and to find by instinct the hind leg tendon of the lumbering brute.

All this, in one lightning swirl, and before the Dane could slacken his own pace.

But it was his pit terrier strain that made him set his curved eye-teeth deep and firmly in that all-important tendon, and to hold his grip with a vise-like steadfastness and might, while he ground his jaws slowly together.

Almost before the smitten mongrel could shriek forth his agony and fear, before the toppling gigantic body could crash to the ground, the fierce-grinding jaws had met in the centre of the thing they gripped.

And, leaving behind him the crippled and howling bully, Buff slipped through the human crowd that had begun to collect; and was casting about once more for the ever-fainter trail of Trent’s car.

In a moment he had found it.

And he sped along in renewed zest.

Through the city and out into its straggling suburbs galloped Buff.

There, a mile beyond, was a wayside garage, with one or two ramshackle buildings on either side of it.

Behind them a rotting dock nosed its way out into the river.

Here, at times, tugs and tenders and lighters touched; on their way between the city and the ocean harbour, eight miles to southward.

At the garage the trail ended.

Here had halted Michael Trent’s car.

Buff ran twice around the closed garage.

His nostrils told him the car was inside that dark and deserted building.

He had followed it twenty miles or more.

He was worn out from the run.

Yet here the scent of his adored master was stronger than it had been anywhere along the way.

The dog scratched imperiously at the garage door.

The sagging wood shook and grumbled under the impact.

But it held firm.

Nor did anyone come from inside to answer the summons.

Frightened at the silence, yet certain of the scent he sought, Buff circled the building once more, nose to earth, steps uncertain, head darting from side to side.

The quest did not bring to his senses any trace of Trent.

But it did bring to him a dual odour that set the dog’s ruff to bristling, and his teeth to glinting from under his uncurled lip.

For here, side by side, had trodden Hegan and Gates.

Not more than an hour earlier they had walked here, their heels striking deep in the dirt, as though they carried between them some heavy weight.

They had walked thus to the dock and to its outer edge.

Baffled, the collie made his way back to the garage.

There, distinct through the reek of gas and oil and dead tobacco and dried grease, he caught again the scent of his master.

With a little whimper of eagerness, Buff paused beneath a shut and locked window, some three feet from the ground.

He gathered his waning strength for one more effort, and sprang upward.

Through the thin and cracked glass and the rotting sash he clove his way, alighting on the slimy concrete floor of the garage amid a shower of window particles.

The glass, by some minor miracle, scarce cut the dog.

Apart from a scratch or two on his pads and a shallow cut on the nose, he was none the worse for his dive through the shaky casement.

The instant he touched ground, Buff was in new search of his master’s scent.

And at once he found it.

There were three cars in the garage.

Two of them were old and battered and in parlous condition.

The third was still new.

And to this new car Buff ran.

It was Michael Trent’s car.

Empty as it was now--even of cushions and dashboard equipments, and shorn of its license numbers--Buff knew it at a single sniff.

He knew more.

He knew that in this car’s muddied tonneau, little over half an hour ago, Trent had been lying.

Yes, and that Gates and Hegan had been occupying the front seat.

Also that the nasty smell of some medicine or drug was strong in the tonneau.

But the one thing that interested Buff was Michael Trent’s recent presence there.

Being only a real-life dog and not a story-book detective, it occurred quite naturally to Buff that where Trent had so lately been, he would in time be again.

Trent had left the car.

That was evident.

But doubtless he would return to it.

Every day he used this car.

And, of course, he would come back to it, soon or late.

Wherefore, as Trent’s trail led no farther, there seemed nothing for Buff to do but to wait for him here.

Accordingly, the collie stepped up on the running board, and through the open doorway of the tonneau.

Stretching himself out there, as close as possible to the space where Trent had lain, Buff began his vigil--waiting in worried patience for the return of the man whom he had chosen as his deity.

And so in time he fell asleep; worn-out nature renewing itself in his tired body and building up again the strong young tissues and the wonted vigour of frame and of brain.

Fast as the dog had run, and with as few delays, yet he had arrived far too late to ameliorate or even share his master’s doom.

Fast as a collie can run--and no dog but the greyhound can outstrip him--yet a new and desperately driven motor-car can cover thrice the same ground in far less time than can he.

Moreover, Buff had wasted many precious minutes in senselessness, in the waterless well, and many more in gnawing through the rope, and in casting about the farmhouse and in the yard for Trent’s trail.

More than an hour ahead of him, Gates and Hegan had reached their destination.

They had disposed of the stolen car, borne off the valuables they had taken from Trent’s home and from his body, and did all else they had planned in advance to do.

The only creature with a clue to the victim’s whereabouts had come up an hour too late.

It was daylight when Buff awoke.

He was stiff and drowsy.

The bullet graze and the glass cut on his head were throbbing.

He was thirsty, too, and hungry.

He did not wake, of his own accord, but through force of habit, as the crunching of human feet reached his sleeping senses.

He lifted his head.

Steps were clumping up to the garage door, and a key was at work in the padlock.

Buff was keenly interested.

A dog awakens instantly and with all his faculties acute.

With him there is none of the owlish stupidity and dazedness which marks the transition from sleep to awake, among humans.

At one instant he is fast asleep; at the next he is wide awake.

And so it was with Buff.

He was interested now at the sound of steps, because he hoped one of the two men whose tread he heard might be Michael Trent.

But at once he knew it was not.

Trent’s step was as familiar to Buff as was Trent’s scent.

And neither of these two approaching persons had a semblance to Trent’s light, springy stride.

Indeed, before the garage door opened more than an inch, Buff’s nostrils told him that these newcomers were total strangers to him.

One of the two men was elderly and disreputable.

The other, a mere boy, had not lived long enough to look as thoroughly disreputable as did his companion, but very evidently he had done his best along that line in the few years allotted him.

The older man was approaching Trent’s car, talking over his shoulder to the youth.

“Put them new license plates on this, first thing you do,” he commanded.

“Then get a chisel and see what you can do with the motor number.

And we’ll have to----” He stopped with much abruptness.

As he had been speaking he had advanced to Trent’s car and had laid a careless hand on the swinging tonneau door.

At the same moment he was aware of a tawny shape, bloody of head, that arose from the depths of the tonneau; teeth bared and eyes menacing.

This car belonged to Michael Trent as much as did the Trent farmhouse.

Long since, Buff had learned that it was his sacred duty to guard the one as rigidly as the other.

And here this stranger was laying an impious hand on the machine!

At the apparition of the threatening head and at the sound of the equally threatening growl, the man recoiled from the car, jerking back his dirty hand from the door as suddenly as if the latter had turned into a snake.

Open-mouthed, the two men surveyed Buff.

Quietly, but not at all friendlily, the collie returned their stare.

He had no quarrel with either of them.

For all he knew or cared, this might be their rightful home.

So long as they should abstain from touching or otherwise molesting Trent’s car, he was content to let them alone.

But his pose and expression made it very clear that he expected the same sort of treatment from them and that he was calmly ready to enforce such treatment.

“It’s--it’s--why, it’s a dog!

” cleverly observed the youth, breaking the momentary silence of surprise.

“It’s----” “It’s a collie,” amended his senior, finding his voice, and his wits together.

“A top-notcher, at that.

Must have sneaked in here while we was closin’ up last night.

A dog like that is worth a big heap of cash.

And most likely there’ll be a reward offered for him.

See, he’s got a good collar on.

And he’s chawed his rope through.

He’s worth keepin’ till called for.

Go, catch him, sonny.

And tie him up yonder, till we c’n take him over to the house.

” The man spoke wheedlingly to his young companion.

But the lad had noted his sire’s own reception from Buff.

And, modestly, he hung back.

At the other’s repeated and sterner mandate, the youth remarked: “Think I’ll run up home for breakfast.

I’ll be back in ten minutes.

You might tie him up, yourself, while I’m gone.

I ain’t much used to dogs.

” The older man scowled; then his brow cleared.

“We’ll both go up to breakfast,” he decreed.

“We’ll lock this feller in here while we’re gone.

On the way back I’ll stop for Joe Stears.

He’s got a passel of dogs; and he und’stands handlin’ ’em.

Come on.

” Compromising thus, they departed, closing and locking the garage door behind them.

Neither of them having gone to the far side of the room, they did not see the broken sash and the mess of glass on the floor--a bit of wreckage hidden from their view by the three cars.

For a few minutes after they left him, Buff lay still.

Then he got up, stretched fore and aft, collie fashion, and stepped down to the concrete floor.

Making his way across to a water-tub, he drank long and deep.

Then he stood irresolute.

He had been in this ill-smelling place for many hours.

Michael Trent had not returned to his car.

Michael Trent’s odour had grown faint--almost imperceptible.

There was no reason, after all, to believe that Trent would come back here.

A few months ago he had taken his old car to a garage and had never gone back for it.

Perhaps that was what he would do in the present case.

Meanwhile, Buff was bitterly homesick for his master.

And Buff was worried, to the depths of his soul, as to what might have befallen Trent at the hands of the two men with whom the dog associated his master’s departure--the men he was learning to hate with a mortal hatred because he knew them for his master’s enemies.

By loitering here, he could get no trace of Trent, nor of the men who had carried him away.

Refreshed and once more alert, he prepared to take up his quest again.

An easy leap carried Buff out through the smashed window, and to freedom.

As he stood in the road, hesitant, he saw bearing down toward him at a run the two men who had just left the garage, and with them a third man, who carried a rope and a club.

As the trio very evidently meant to seize him, and as he had no reason for staying there in the road to be caught, the collie set off across the nearest field at a hard-gallop, heading for a distant patch of woods.

The men gave chase.

But, without bothering to increase his speed, he soon left; them panting and swearing, far in the rear.

Presently, they gave up the pursuit.

Midway in the field, Buff scared up an unwary young rabbit.

At sight of the pneumatically bouncing cottontail, the collie remembered he himself had eaten nothing in nearly twenty-four hours.

Like a furry whirlwind, he was after the rabbit.

Fifty yards on, a swirl in the long grass and a few red-stained leaves marked the abrupt end of the race.

And Buff found himself supplied with a toothsome breakfast.

Thus began the collie’s first day of utter loneliness; a day of bleak misery and bewilderment, of biting grief.

He ranged the country for miles on either side for a trace of his master.

He followed several motor-cars, on various highways, because of their vague resemblance to Trent’s. Once he ran rapturously for a quarter-mile, in pursuit of a well-set-up man who was taking a cross-country tramp; and whom, in the distance, his near-sighted eyes mistook for his master.

The wind being in the wrong direction, Buff was not aware of his error until he had careered to within fifty feet of the stranger.

Then, head and brush drooping, he slunk away, heavy of heart and heedless of the man’s kindly hail.

Under cover of darkness, that evening, the collie made a detour that brought him back to the garage where last he had seen Trent’s car.

Whether he hoped Trent might have come back there, or whether perhaps the desolate dog craved the faint scent of his master on the tonneau door and flooring--in any event, he leaped in through the unmended window of the garage, and sought to locate the stolen car.

The car was no longer there.

After the deft underground method employed by professional automobile thieves and receivers of such booty, the car had already been passed along the line to its next resting-place.

A boy, coming home late from the near-by city, chanced to be passing the unlit garage.

From the cavernous depths of the building burst forth into the still night a hideous sound--the anguish howl of a wolf or of a masterless and wretched collie.