Buff: A Collie and Other Dog-Stories — Buff: A Collie - Masterless!, Part 2

While the boy still stood shivering in terror at the eerie sound, a dark shape hurtled out through the window and vanished into the surrounding blackness.

And now began Buff’s tortured experience as a stray--as a leal one-man dog whose master is gone.

Goaded on ever by that vague hope of somewhere finding Trent, and the scarce lesser hope of finding and wreaking vengeance on the men he associated with Trent’s disappearance, the great collie wandered aimlessly over the face of the countryside.

Unhappiness and the nerve-wrack of his endless quest lent him a strange furtiveness, and made him revert in a measure to the wild.

Always searching--always avoiding his own kind and humans--he grew gaunt and lean.

Living by his wits, in summer the forests gave him enough food to support life.

He became craftily adept in catching rabbits and squirrels, and even occasional young birds.

He did not starve, for the wolf-brain lent him the gift of foraging; although his farm training held him aloof from hen-roost and stall and fold, in his food-hunts.

Almost at once he skirted the city and guided himself back to Boone Lake, nearly thirty miles from where the trail had ended.

The feat was not difficult, and he consumed less than a single night on the journey.

Reaching his master’s farm at grey of dawn, Buff found the house and outbuildings deserted.

The weeds had crept thick among the once trim crops, and there was an air of desolation brooding over the land.

Buff could not know that of all Boone Lake, Ruth Hammerton alone had refused to accept as true the report that Michael Trent had left home of his own accord.

She had visited the deserted farm with her father, as soon as the story had been repeated to her, and had prevailed on Mr. Hammerton to send one of his farm-hands to transfer to the Hammertons’ place Trent’s suffering livestock for safe-keeping.

It was enough for the collie to know his master was not at home, and that he had not been at home since the night of his kidnapping.

Buff did not belong to the silly and professionally loyal type of dog that curls itself on its owner’s vacant doorstep and starves to death.

There was no time to think of such selfish matters as death, while Michael Trent remained to be found and his two enemies to be tracked down.

So, aimlessly, he took up his search.

That night he circled Boone Lake, investigating every house and path that Trent had been wont to frequent, visiting first the Hammerton place and last the market square--the scene of his triumph over Bayne, the drover.

Dawn found him miles away, ever seeking, ever wandering, living on slain forest creatures, obsessed and haunted by his overmastering impulse to find Trent.

Once, as he trotted along the ridge of a wooded hill, Buff saw in the valley below a farmer trying with pitiable ill-success to round up a flock of sixty sheep that had bolted through the pasture gate and were scattering over the surrounding fields and woods; instead of marching toward their distant fold, whose gate stood invitingly open.

Moved by an instinct he did not stay to define or to resist, the collie swept down the ridge and into the valley below.

The harassed farmer beheld descending on his stampeded flock a bolt of tawny-and-white lightning that whirled in and out among the galloping strays as if bent on their wholesale destruction.

While the man was yelling his lungs out and seeking a stone wherewith to brain the marauder, he suddenly came to a foolish halt, and stood gaping at the spectacle before him.

The supposedly rabid and murderous dog was rounding up the scattered flock with uncanny skill and speed, marshalling them into the narrow road, driving strays back into the column and moving the whole woolly throng steadily and decorously toward the fold.

Arrived at the gate, one wether bolted past it, and ten other sheep followed his lead.

The wether did not go forty feet before he and his fellow-truants found themselves confronted by a large and indignant collie, who forced them with gentle relentlessness to wheel in their tracks and rejoin the flock.

Tongue out, tail wagging, Buff stood at the gate of the fold, holding his prisoners from passing out again until the puffing and marvelling farmer came running up.

The man paused to fasten the gate before turning his full attention on the wonderful collie.

But by the time the gate was made fast the dog was a hundred yards down the road, trotting lazily back toward the ridge.

Not by so much as a turn of his classic head did he show he heard the frantic and cajoling shouts the farmer sent after him.

On another late afternoon, ten miles from there, a farmer’s child was piloting her father’s eleven cows and two calves home along the road from pasture.

Three men, passing in a small motor-truck, halted, jumped to the ground, seized the pair of calves and prepared to sling them into the truck.

The child screamed in terrified appeal, and caught hold of one of the men by the arm, while the herd of cows ran in panic through fields and woods.

The man shook off the child’s convulsive hold with a vehemence that sent her flat in the dust of the road.

And on the same instant a huge and lean and hairy beast burst through a roadside thicket and flung himself on the man, bearing him to earth by the sheer weight of his assault.

By the time the thief had landed, rolling and yelling, in the roadway, Buff had deserted him, and was at another of the trio.

And this was the collie of it.

A bulldog secures his grip and holds it till doomsday.

A collie, fighting, is everywhere at once.

The collie strain in Buff told him his opponents were three, and that there was no sense in devoting himself over-long to any one of them at the expense of the rest.

So he was raging at the second man’s throat before the first fairly realised what had attacked him.

The third man, however, had a trifle more time on his hands than had either of his companions.

And, wisely, he utilised that second of time in dropping the calf he had caught and in making one flying leap for the seat of the truck.

There, as fast as they could beat off the furry demon that was rending their flesh and clothes, the two others joined him.

Leaving the calves to run free, the men set the machine into rapid motion and rattled off down the road.

Buff did not follow.

Already he was in the thickets again, rounding up the gawkily galloping cows.

And presently he had them back in the highway, in orderly alignment and walking stolidly homeward.

Dropping back beside the still weeping child, Buff licked her frightened face with his pink tongue, wagged his tail and his entire body reassuringly, and then thrust his muzzle into her trembling little hand.

Thus, her father, having witnessed the scene from afar, came hurrying up, to find his cattle safe and in the road, and his erstwhile terrified daughter hugging a huge collie frantically and kissing the silken crest of the dog’s head in an agony of gratitude and love.

But, as the farmer himself sought to catch hold of the dog, Buff showed his white teeth in a wild-beast snarl that made the man start back.

Taking advantage of this momentary check, the collie bounded off into the bushes and was gone.

Buff himself could not have explained the unwonted wildness and ferocity that seemed to have taken hold of him in his wanderings.

For the first three years or so of his life--indeed, until Gates’s pistol shot had stunned him--he had known nothing but friendliness and good treatment.

And, except toward tramps and like prowlers, he had never felt hatred.

Though he had always been a one-man dog, he had shown no ill-temper toward those who sought to make friends with him.

Yet now, as evidenced by his snarl at the father of the child who was caressing him, he had neither lot nor part with mankind at large.

His every hope and yearning were centred on the finding of his master.

And the wolf strain in his make-up thrilled almost as keenly to his longing to encounter the men with whom he associated the disappearance of Trent.

For the rest of humanity he felt no interest.

Not even toward Ruth Hammerton, who had reigned second to Trent in his heart.

Twice during his months as a tramp dog, Buff revisited Boone Lake--casting about the farm, trotting at midnight through the village, hanging wistfully around the Hammerton place for nearly an hour.

But before dawn he was far away again.

Most of his travelling was done by night or in dusk and at grey daybreak.

For experience had taught him that the open ways are not safe for an unattached dog by sunlight.

A lesser dog might readily have attached himself to one of the various friendly folk who chanced to meet him and to give him a kindly word or call.

A lesser dog, too, might have chosen a home at one of the farms scattered through the broad stretch of country Buff traversed.

At any of a dozen places his beauty and his prowess at herding would have won for the collie a warm and lasting welcome.

But none of this was for Buff.

He had known but one master.

Losing Trent, he was fated to be forever masterless, unless he should chance to find the man he had lost.

And, being only a dog, he knew no better way of finding him than by this everlasting and aimless search.

On a late September afternoon, he was roused from a troubled nap in the long grass and bushes at the verge of a field, by the sound of a mad-galloping horse and of a woman’s brave yet frightened calls to the runaway.

Looking over the fringe of grass, towards the road, a furlong distant, he saw a fast-moving cloud of yellow-grey dust, which resolved itself into a hazy screen for a horse and light buggy.

The horse--a young and nervous brute--had taken fright at the running of a woodchuck across the road under his feet, and had sprung forward with a suddenness that snapped his check-rein.

The swinging check smote him resoundingly again and again, on the neck and across the face, turning his first fright into panic, and making useless the efforts of the driver to bring him down.

A woman was driving.

She was neither young nor beautiful.

She had self-possession, and she had a more than tolerable set of driving hands.

She was keeping the maddened horse more or less in the road, and was sawing with valorous strength on one rein while she held the other steady.

Which was all the good it did her.

For the brute had the bit between his teeth.

Buff arrived at the road-edge just as one of the two light reins broke under the undue strain put on it.

Before the driver could lighten the pull on the remaining rein its impulse had jerked the horse’s low-laid head far to one side.

His rushing body prepared to follow the lead of his head towards a steep roadside bank some ten feet deep, with a scattering of broken rock at the bottom.

Then it was that the horse became dimly aware of a furry shape which whizzed in front of him on that side, and of a flying head that struck for his nose.

A stinging slash on the left nostril sent the runaway veering from the bank-edge, and plunging toward the telegraph pole on the other side of the road.

He was met and turned again by a second slash from one of the collie’s curved eye-teeth.

On the same moment Buff stopped slashing and let his bulldog ancestry take control.

Thus the horse was assailed by a full double set of teeth that buried themselves in his bleeding nostrils, and that hung on.

The wild steed sought to fling up his head to shake off this anguishing weight of seventy odd pounds.

But he could not shake himself free.

He checked his furious pace and reared, striking out with his forefeet, and threatening to pitch backward into the buggy.

But a fierce wrench of the hanging jaws and a wriggle of the intolerable weight brought him down on all fours again.

At once Buff released his grip and stood in front of the trembling horse.

The runaway made as though to plunge forward.

But he flinched at the memory of the dog’s attack and at the threat of its renewal.

While he hesitated, dancing, pawing, and in momentary cessation of his run, the woman slipped from the seat to the ground and ran to his head.

With practised strength she shook the bit into place and held fast.

The horse jerked back.

Buff nipped his heel, and instantly was at his bloody nose, again.

The runaway, conquered and shivering, lashed out with one foreleg in a last hopeless display of terrified anger.

His shod hoof smote the unprepared collie in the side.

With a gasping sound, Buff rolled over into the ditch, two ribs broken and a foot crushed.

Tying the horse to a telegraph pole, the woman went over to where the wounded collie lay.

In strong, capable arms, that were wondrous gentle, she lifted him and bore him to the buggy.

Laying him tenderly on the floor of the vehicle, she returned to the horse’s head, untied the cowed and trembling steed, and began to lead him homeward.

Ten minutes later she turned in at a lane leading to a rambling, low farmhouse.

And in another five minutes Buff was reclining on the kitchen floor, the woman’s husband working skilfully over his injuries, while the matron poured out the tale of his heroism and cleverness.

“I know what dog this is, too,” she finished.

“I’m sure I know.

It must be the same one that fought those thieves away from Sol Gilbert’s cows over to Pompton, last week, when Sol’s girl was driving them home.

Mrs. Gilbert told me about it at the Grange, Monday.

And he’s likely the dog that rounded up those sheep for Parkins--or whatever his name was--at Revere.

You read me about it in the _Bulletin_, don’t you remember?

The letter Parkins wrote to the editor about it?

I know it must be the same one.

It isn’t likely there’s more than one dog in Passaic County with the sense to do all three of those things.

He must be like those knight-errant folks in Sylvia’s school book, who used to go through the country rescuing folks that were in distress.

The best in the house isn’t any too good for him.

” “He’ll get it,” curtly promised her husband, without looking up from his task.

“It’s lucky I’ve had experience, though, in patching up busted critters.

Because this one is needing a lot of patching.

Say!

Notice how he don’t even let a whimper out of him?

This rib-setting must hurt like fury, too.

Acts more like a bulldog than a collie.

I’m going to advertise him.

And if the owner shows up, I’ll offer him a hundred dollars for the dog.

He’ll be worth it, and a heap more, to me, herding and such.

_So_, old feller!

Now for the smashed foot.

Don’t seem to be any big bones broke there.

” The weeks that followed were more nearly pleasant to Buff than had been any space of time since Trent’s disappearance.

He was perforce at rest, while his fractured ribs and then his broken foot slowly mended.

And all that time he was fed up and petted and made much of, in a way that would have turned most invalids’ heads.

It was well, after his months of restless searchings, to come to a halt here in this abode of comfort and kindliness; to be petted again by a woman’s soft hand, to eat cooked food once more, to be praised and to feel himself gloriously welcome.

Buff’s craving ambition, to find Trent and to run to earth his two enemies, was less acute in these drowsy days of convalescence.

His sick soul seemed to be returning to normal along with his sick body.

By the time Buff could walk with any degree of comfort again, the morning frost lay heavy on the fields.

The dog went out for a brief stroll with the farmer and his wife.

To their delight, he did not try to run away, but accompanied them home and lay down contentedly on the doorstep.

After that, no further guard was kept over him.

It was understood that he would stay with the people who had succoured and healed him.

One cold night in late autumn the dog accompanied his host, as usual, on the evening rounds of barns and outbuildings.

As they were returning towards the warm red glow of the lamplit kitchen windows, Buff came to a dead stop.

A slight shudder ran through him.

He lifted his delicate nose and sniffed the frosty air.

He smelt nothing.

He sniffed merely in an effort to corroborate in some way by scent the strange impulse which was taking possession of him--an impulse he could not resist.

“Come along, Shep, old boy!

” coaxed the farmer, arriving at the doorstep and turning back towards the collie.

“Supper’s ready.

What’s the matter?

” Slowly, very slowly, Buff approached the man.

Timidly, almost remorsefully, he licked the outstretched hand.

Then, throwing back his magnificent head, he made the frost-chilled stillnesses of the autumn night re-echo with a hideously discordant and ear-torturing wolf-howl.

“Why, Shep,” exclaimed the farmer in amaze, “whatever ails you?

What’s----” He broke off in the midst of his bewildered query and raised his voice in a shout of summons to the dog.

For, like a streak of tawny light, Buff had whirled out of the dooryard and was fleeing up the road.

He heard the eager call of the man who had cured him and befriended him and given him a happy home.

But he heard--far more clearly--a soundless call that urged him forward.

Guided only by mystic collie instinct and by that weird impulse which had taken possession of him, he fled through the night at breakneck speed, headed unswervingly for Boone Lake, full thirty miles away.

On the same night--after a cautious absence of several months--Con Hegan and Billy Gates ventured to return to their former homes in the Boone Lake suburbs.