Buff: A Collie and Other Dog-Stories — Buff: A Collie - The End of the Trail, Part 2

* * * * * Steadily, through the gathering darkness, Buff had run, his first mad pace settling down into the choppy little mile-eating stride of the trotting wolf pack.

And so he kept on, ever headed for Boone Lake, moving swervelessly and with deceptive quickness.

Stars came out.

A fat moon began to butt its way up over the eastern horizon mists.

Here and there, as the pad-pad-pad of the collie’s tireless feet pattered along the frozen road, a farm dog would bark challenge or dart out in pursuit.

But no challenge bark checked Buff’s obsessed flight.

Nor did any of the pursuing curs catch up with him.

Now and then, along the state road, motor cars would meet or pass him.

The dog moved aside barely far enough to miss the whirring wheels, but did not falter in his run.

Once, as he padded through a village, some fool, catching sight of him, noted his tense pose and the arrow-like straightness of his course and raised the shout of “Mad dog!

” This asinine cry lurks ever in the back of the human throat, ready and eager to spring into life at the slightest provocation.

And woe to the harmlessly running or perhaps sick dog at whom it is howled!

At once the hue-and-cry is ready to start in murderous pursuit.

No question is asked.

Nobody stops to realise that there are probably not two actually rabid dogs in any one state in the Union in the course of any two years, and that a genuinely hydrophobic dog is no more in condition to chase and attack people than is a typhoid patient.

But in Buff’s case the shout was raised too late.

The tawny-and-white shape sped on through the dim moonlight and out of sight before the hue-and-cry was fairly up.

And he did not so much as glance back to note the progress of the useless pursuit.

As he turned off the state road, taking the macadam byway which led towards Trent’s farm, the collie dropped to a wavering halt, his sensitive nostrils pulsing.

A scent had come to him, though it was still too elusive to register clearly in the eager brain.

Twenty doubtful steps Buff took along the byway, until he came to a point where a field path from a cross-road a mile away intersected it.

At the intersection the scent struck him with a force that dizzied him.

Nostrils to earth, he found that a man had left this path for the byroad not ten minutes earlier.

The knowledge did amazing things to the dog.

For an instant he shivered as though with a physical convulsion.

His breath came in long gasps.

A whine in his throat shook itself forth in an eerie note that belonged to no normal beast.

Then, like a whirlwind, he was off, down the byway; nose to earth, body flat and flying.

Half a mile farther on, the rush of his madly scampering feet came to the ears of a man who was plodding wearily toward the farm--a man thin and shabby, who walked as though completing an exhausting journey.

In the middle of the road the man paused and glanced back.

Adown the moonlit byway was dashing a tawny-and-white creature, flat to earth in its speed.

Fifty yards from the man Buff lifted his head as he galloped.

The scent--any dog’s strongest quality--told him he might now rely on sight, which is the weakest of a dog’s senses.

At what he saw, the collie gave tongue.

Not in the hideous wolf howl or in whimper did Buff speak now, but in a cry that was human and rending--a cry that tore at the listener’s heartstrings by reason of its awful intensity.

Delirious--screaming, writhing, panting--Buff flung himself on the man he had tracked.

He was at the end of the trail!

And what he found there drove him quite insane.

Up into Michael Trent’s dusty arms the dog sprang--a vibrant mass of mad ecstasy.

Moaning, crying, sobbing like a human child, Buff sought to lick his master’s haggard face and to pat him in a hundred places at once with the whirling paws.

Almost thrown off his balance by the impact, Trent spoke to the collie in wondering delight.

And the sound of the tired voice sent Buff into a new frenzy of rapture.

Dropping to earth, he whizzed round and round Trent in a bewildering gyroscopic flight, stomach to ground, tongue and throat clamorous with hoarse joy.

Presently, flinging himself at his master’s feet, the dog lay there, moaning and sobbing, his swift tongue caressing the man’s dusty shoes, his furry body quivering from nose to tail in hysterical bliss.

There he lay while Trent leaned over and laid both calloused hands on his head, stroking him and talking to him in the pleasant, slow tones the collie loved.

“Buff!

” muttered the man, swallowing hard.

“_Buff!

_ Why, I didn’t think anyone on earth cared that much about anything!

Come up here, old friend!

You’re shaking as if you had ague.

How did you find me?

Have you been waiting at home for me ever since?

Or have you been living with--with her?

” Buff, his paroxysm spent, crouched at Trent’s feet, his silken head pressed against his master’s knee, his upraised eyes scanning the man’s face in adoration.

From time to time he shivered and moaned.

He had come to the end of the trail--the gloriously happy end of the horrible long trail.

And he understood now why his queer sixth sense had summoned him hither, from the far-off farm where for weeks he had lived so placidly.

The master-call had come to him.

He had obeyed it.

For it had been stronger than he.

And it had led him to his god.

That was all Buff knew or cared to know.

And now, still talking to his dog, still petting him, Michael Trent took up again his homeward trudge.

But there was life in his step.

Fatigue seemed to have fallen away from him.

The ludicrous worship of a dog had somehow made life over and had changed depression to hope.

Following his old custom--immemorial among lonely men who own dogs--Trent talked to Buff as they went along, as though to another human--knowing the collie could not get the sense of one word in ten, yet glad to have this vent for his own yearning for expression.

“The start of it all is pretty hazy to me, Buff,” he rambled on, in the soft monotone that was music to the dog.

“I saw Hegan and Gates in the doorway.

One minute I was fighting with them.

The next minute I was in the smelly fo’cas’le of a tramp steamship.

I was sick.

And I was aching all over.

I had been shanghaied.

The next three months were unadulterated hell.

We were bound for Honolulu by way of the Horn, Buff.

And the crew was only one degree better than the captain and the mate.

Let’s let it go at that.

“A chap named Carney and I got to be pals.

We broke ship together at San Francisco on the way back.

And we made most of the transcontinental trip on brake beams.

Brake beams aren’t flowery beds of ease, Buff.

Keep off them.

Carney had got a bit of the story about me, from a man who was the mate’s pal between voyages.

It seems a fellow who was in prison down at Logan with Gates and Hegan helped them engineer my shanghaiing.

He told them where to take me.

And they loaded me on a launch of his, down the river to the harbour and sold me to the captain.

He was just weighing anchor.

And he was short-handed.

“Hegan and Gates were planning to keep me out of the way and to let my stock starve and my crops go to wrack--as most likely they have, for nobody was likely to get to our out-of-the-way farm in time to prevent it.

Then they were going to lay low for a few months, and after that they were coming back to Boone Lake and set fire to the house and barns.

Most likely they’ve done it before now.

Nice home-coming, hey, Buff?

We’re dead broke, most likely, you and I. But we’ve got each other, anyhow.

And that’s more than I dared hope for.

” He was turning in at the gateway of his farm as he finished the rambling tale.

Buff thrust his nose into his master’s hand and whined softly.

Then, in a trice the collie had stiffened to attention and darted forward through the shadows towards a patch of white that emerged from the darkness of the dooryard.

When Gates and Hegan came home to Boone Lake that day they brought with them a new possession in the shape of a mongrel bulldog of huge proportions and with a local fame for being one of the “dirtiest” fighters that ever set upon a weaker foe.

Planning to carry out their amiable intent of firing Trent’s house and barns late in the night, they had stationed this dog in their victim’s dooryard that evening, to scare off any possible tramp or other intruder who might be intending to make the deserted house a resting place.

They had no desire for such witnesses; the penalty for arson being somewhat drastic in their home state.

It was this guardian dog that came tearing forward now to repel the two intruders, as Trent and Buff turned into the dooryard.

Buff, guessing his ferocious intent and resenting another and hostile dog’s presence in his own beloved bailiwick, flew eagerly to meet him.

An instant later the two beasts came together with a clash; and a right energetic dog fight was raging at Trent’s feet.

Buff, for all his fury, fought with brain as well as brawn, against his heavier assailant.

There never yet was a bulldog that could, in the open, seize a collie that was aware of his assault and that wished to elude it.

Buff nimbly sprang aside as the bulldog rushed and let the other hurtle past him.

But the bulldog did not go scatheless.

As he lumbered past, a slash from Buff’s curved eyetooth ploughed a long and deep red furrow along his shoulder and back.

And, as he turned, Buff’s slash laid open a similar cut at one side of the enemy’s stomach.

The collie danced out of reach of the clashing jaws that sought to grab him before he could jump back.

When the jaws clamped together the collie’s throat was not there.

Even as his opponent struck a second time Buff flung himself on the ground and dived for the heavy forelegs in front of him.

Buff’s teeth closed on the bulldog’s right foreleg.

And, but for his own strong strain of collie blood, the fight must have ended then and there.

For a bulldog would have gained this foreleg grip and would have hung onto it, heedless of the fact that his own spine and the back of his neck were within easy reach of the foe.

Wherefore, merely giving the forefoot an agonising bite as he went, he continued his diving rush.

Under and between the bowed forelegs of the bulldog he slipped, eel-like, in swift elusiveness, slashing the other’s underbody again as he went, and emerged safe on the far side of the enemy.

Back and forth over the frost-slippery, moon-lit grass raged the fight, the frantic clawing of feet and Buff’s own staccato snarls and the thud of clashing bodies alone breaking the night silences.

Twice the bulldog well-nigh secured his coveted throat hold--a hold that must speedily have left Buff gasping out his life through a severed jugular.

A third time the bulldog charged for the throat.

Buff reared, twisting sidewise to avoid the charge and at the same time to counter on the panting and lumbering body.

But he did not take account of the slipperiness of the frosty, dead grass.

The collie’s hind legs slid from under him.

Down he went, asprawl on his back, under this sudden loss of his precarious balance.

As quick as a cat he had spun to his feet again.

But the instant of wasted time had sufficed for the enemy.

The bulldog, lunging murderously for the exposed throat, missed his mark by reason of Buff’s swirling motion of scrambling to his feet again.

Yet this time the ravening jaws did not close on air or on fur.

Instead they buried themselves in Buff’s upper right foreleg, almost at the junction of leg and body.

Helpless to break free, Buff ceased to thrash about.

He felt the locked jaws begin to grind, deep and deeper towards the bone.

He felt his enemy’s braced pressure brought to bear upon the imperilled foreleg.

Then his wolf brain told him what to do.

He struck straight for the nose and upper jaw of the bulldog.

He did not slash, as does a collie.

He bent down and secured his grip as would a bulldog.

The bulldog, his own hold secure in the collie’s upper foreleg, was aware of a terribly painful grip on his tender nose, a grip that waxed sterner and more tense all the time, a grip also that was shutting off his breathing power.

In the anguish of choking, the bulldog let go Buff’s foreleg and shook himself furiously to get free of that encumbering hold.

As he shook he gave tone, emitting a most horrendous yell of pain and rage.

Then for the first time Trent was able in the elusive moonlight and shadow bars to see how the fight was going or to intervene without peril of injuring his own dog.

But as he bent down to drag the squirming bulldog away he saw he was too late.

Buff’s grinding jaws had found the jugular.

The fight was over.

The victor stood up, panting and weary, and looked down at the inert mass that had so lately been a mighty fighting machine.

Half an hour later, shaved and clean, Michael Trent set forth for Ruth Hammerton’s home.

Buff, wholly rested from his battle, trotted happily at his master’s heels.

The maid at Hammertons’ gaped wordlessly at sight of the visitor.

Buff, as politeness bade him, wagged his tail and took a step towards her.

The maid, by nature, was built for endurance rather than speed.

Yet, recovering from her shock, she jumped at least a foot from the veranda floor; and she made a sound better fitted to a turkey whose tail feathers have been grabbed than to a decorous household servant.

After which she bolted into the house and down the hall towards the study.

Trent hesitated as to whether or not he ought to follow.

But Buff took matters into his own hands.

At the opening of the front door he caught the scent of Hammerton’s two convict visitors.

And down the long hall he went like a thunderbolt.

Trent, in consternation, dashed after him.

But he did not catch up with the collie until Buff halted, perforce, at the doorway which the maid’s ample body was just then blocking.

As he strove to wriggle past into the room Trent came alongside and seized the inexplicably excited dog firmly by the collar.

This precaution saved the life of Con Hegan, who chanced to be standing nearest to the door.

It was Billy Gates who broke the brief spell.

Even as Ruth started forward, with a choking little cry, towards Trent, the convict’s nerve and brain suddenly collapsed.

Waving a tremulous arm at the raging Buff, Gates babbled in horror: “Take him away!

For the Lord’s sake, take him away!

That’s no dog!

It’s a devil!

A--a ghost!

I--I shot him and I buried him in a--a forty-foot well with a rope and a stone on his neck!

Take him away!

He’s come back for me!

” At a nod from Hammerton the chief of police shoved Hegan into an adjoining room.

Then, wheeling on the gibbering and helpless Gates, Trent said sternly: “Now, talk!

The whole truth, mind you, unless you want me to let this--this ghost loose at you!

_Talk!

_” And Gates talked.

Drunk with superstitious horror, he talked and continued to talk.

Even the sight of Hammerton taking swift notes did not deter him.

As the chief of police strutted back to the lock-up, propelling his handcuffed prisoners before him, he tried hard not to look at a shaded corner of the moonlit veranda--a corner wherein a maid and a man were seated very close together, with a big collie curled up in drowsy contentment at their feet.