Lad, A Dog/Chapter X
One of the jolliest minutes in Lad’s daily cross-country tramp with the Mistress and the Master was his dash up Mount Pisgah. This “mount” was little more than a foothill. It was treeless, and covered with short grass and mullein; a slope where no crop but buckwheat could be expected to thrive. It rose out of the adjoining mountain forests in a long and sweeping ascent.
Here, with no trees or undergrowth to impede him, Lad, from puppyhood, had ordained a race-course of his own. As he neared the hill he would always dash forward at top speed; flying up the rise like a tawny whirlwind, at unabated pace, until he stopped, panting and gloriously excited, on the summit; to await his slower-moving human escorts. One morning in early summer, Lad, as usual, bounded ahead of the Mistress and the Master, as they drew near to the treeless “mount.” And, as ever, he rushed gleefully forward for his daily breather, up the long slope. But, before he had gone fifty yards, he came to a scurrying halt, and stood at gaze. His back was bristling and his lips curled back from his white teeth in sudden annoyance.
His keen nostrils, even before his eyes, told him something was amiss with his cherished race-track. The eddying shift of the breeze, from west to north, had brought to his nose the odor which had checked his onrush; an odor that wakened all sorts of vaguely formless memories far back in Lad’s brain; and which he did not at all care for.
Scent is ten times stronger, to a dog, than is sight. The best dog is near sighted. And the worst dog has a magic sense of smell. Wherefore, a dog almost always uses his nose first and his eyes last. Which Lad now proceeded to do.
Above him was the pale green hillside, up which he loved to gallop. But its surface was no longer smoothly unencumbered. Instead, it was dotted and starred—singly or in groups—with fluffy grayish-white creatures.
Lad was almost abreast of the lowest group of sheep when he paused. Several of the feeding animals lifted their heads, snortingly, from the short herbage, at sight of him; and fled up the hill. The rest of the flock joined them in the silly stampede.
The dog made no move to follow. Instead, his forehead creased and his eyes troubled, he stared after the gray-white surge that swept upward toward the summit of his favored coursing ground. The Mistress and the Master, too, at sight of the woolly avalanche, stopped and stared.
From over the brow of Mount Pisgah appeared the non-picturesque figure of a man in blue denim overalls—one Titus Romaine, owner of the sparse-grassed hill. Drawn by the noisy multiple patter of his flock’s hoofs, he emerged from under a hill-top boulder’s shade; to learn the cause of their flight.
Now, in all his life, Lad had seen sheep just once before. That one exception had been when Hamilcar Q. Glure, “the Wall Street Farmer,” had corralled a little herd of his prize Merinos, overnight, at The Place, on the way to the Paterson Livestock Show. On that occasion, the sheep had broken from the corral, and Lad, acting on ancestral instinct, had rounded them up, without injuring or scaring one of them.
The memory was not pleasing to Lad, and he wanted nothing more to do with such stupid creatures. Indeed, as he looked now upon the sheep that were obstructing his run, he felt a distinct aversion to them. Whining a little, he trotted back to where stood the Mistress and the Master. And, as they waited, Titus Romaine bore wrath fully down upon them.
“I’ve been expectin’ something like that!” announced the land-owner. “Ever since I turned these critters out here, this mornin’. I ain’t surprised a bit. I—”
“What is it you’ve been expecting, Romaine?” asked the Master. “And how long have you been a sheep-raiser? A sheep, here in the North Jersey hinterland, is as rare as—”
“I been expectin’ some savage dog would be runnin’ ’em,” retorted the farmer. “Just like I’ve read they do. An’ now I’ve caught him at it!”
“Caught whom?—at what?” queried the perplexed Mistress; failing to note the man’s baleful glower at the contemptuous Lad.
“That big ugly brute of your’n, of course,” declared Romaine. “I caught him, red-handed, runnin’ my sheep. He—”
“Lad did nothing of the kind,” denied the Mistress. “The instant he caught sight of them he stopped running. Lad wouldn’t hurt anything that is weak and helpless. Your sheep saw him and they ran away. He didn’t follow them an inch.”
“I seen what I seen,” cryptically answered the man. “An’ I give you fair warnin’, if any of my sheep is killed, I’ll know right where to come to look for the killer.”
“If you mean Lad—” began the Master, hotly.
But the Mistress intervened.
“I am glad you have decided to raise sheep, Mr. Romaine,” she said. “Everyone ought to, who can. I read, only the other day, that America is using up more sheep than it can breed; and that the price of fodder and the scarcity of pasture were doing terrible things to the mutton-and-wool supply. I hope you’ll have all sorts of good luck. And you are wise to watch your sheep so closely. But don’t be afraid of Lad harming any of them. He wouldn’t, for worlds, I know. Because I know Lad. Come along, Laddie!” she finished, as she turned to go away.
But Titus Romaine stopped her.
“I’ve put a sight of money into this flock of sheep,” he declared. “More’n I could reely afford. An’ I’ve been readin’ up on sheep, too. I’ve been readin’ that the worst en’my to sheep is ‘pred’tory dogs.’ An’ if that big dog of your’n ain’t ‘pred’tory,’ then I never seen one that was. So I’m warnin’ you, fair—”
“If your sheep come to any harm, Mr. Romaine,” returned the Mistress, again forestalling an untactful outbreak from her husband, “I’ll guarantee Lad will have nothing to do with it.”
“An’ I’ll guarantee to have him shot an’ have you folks up in court, if he does,” chivalrously retorted Mr. Titus Romaine.
With which exchange of goodfellowship, the two groups parted, Romaine returning to his scattered sheep, while the Mistress, Lad at her heels, lured the Master away from the field of encounter. The Master was fuming.
“Here’s where good old Mr. Trouble drops in on us for a nice long visit!” he grumbled, as they moved homeward. “I can see how it is going to turn out. Because a few stray curs have chased or killed sheep, now and then, every decent dog is under suspicion as a sheep-killer. If one of Romaine’s wethers gets a scratch on its leg, from a bramble, Lad will be blamed. If one of the mongrels from over in the village should chase his sheep, Lad will be accused. And we’ll be in the first ‘neighborhood squabble’ of our lives.”
The Master spoke with a pessimism his wife did not share, and which he, himself, did not really believe. The folk at The Place had always lived in goodfellowship and peace with their few rural neighbors, as well as with the several hundred inhabitants of the mile-distant village, across the lake. And, though livestock is the foundation of ninety rustic feuds out of ninety-one, the dogs of The Place had never involved their owners in any such row.
Yet, barely three days later, Titus Romaine bore down upon The Place, before breakfast, breathing threatenings and complaining of slaughter.
He was waiting on the veranda in blasphemous converse with The Place’s foreman, when the Master came out. At Titus’s heels stood his “hired man”—a huge and sullen person named Schwartz, who possessed a scarce-conquered accent that fitted the name.
“Well!” orated Romaine, in glum greeting, as he sighted the Master. “Well, I guessed right! He done it, after all! He done it. We all but caught him, red-handed. Got away with four of my best sheep! Four of ’em. The cur!”
“What are you talking about?” demanded the Master, as the Mistress, drawn by the visitor’s plangent tones, joined the veranda-group. ‘’Bout that ugly big dog of your’n!” answered Romaine. “I knew what he’d do, if he got the chance. I knew it, when I saw him runnin’ my poor sheep, last week. I warned you then. The two of you. An’ now he’s done it!”
“Done what?” insisted the Master, impatient of the man’s noise and fury.
“What dog?” asked the Mistress, at the same time.
“Are you talking about Lad? If you are—”
“I’m talkin’ about your big brown collie cur!” snorted Titus. “He’s gone an’ killed four of my best sheep. Did it in the night an’ early this mornin’. My man here caught him at the last of ’em, an’ drove him off, just as he was finishin’ the poor critter. He got away with the rest of ’em.”
“Nonsense!” denied the Master. “You’re talking rot. Lad wouldn’t touch a sheep. And—”
“That’s what all folks say when their dogs or their children is charged with doin’ wrong!” scoffed Romaine. “But this time it won’t do no good to—”
“You say this happened last night?” interposed the Mistress.
“Yes, it did. Last night an’ early in the mornin’, too. Schwartz, here—”
“But Lad sleeps in the house, every night,” objected the Mistress. “He sleeps under the piano, in the music room. He has slept there every night since he was a puppy. The maid who dusts the downstairs rooms before breakfast lets him out, when she begins work. So he—”
“Bolster it up any way you like!” broke in Romaine. “He was out last night, all right. An’ early this morning, too.”
“How early?” questioned the Master.
“Five o’clock,” volunteered Schwartz, speaking up, from behind his employer. “I know, because that’s the time I get up. I went out, first thing, to open the barnyard gate and drive the sheep to the pasture. First thing I saw was that big dog growling over a sheep he’d just killed. He saw me, and he wiggled out through the barnyard bars—same way he had got in. Then I counted the sheep. One was dead—the one he had just killed—and three were gone. We’ve been looking for their bodies ever since, and we can’t find them.”
“I suppose Lad swallowed them,” ironically put in The Place’s foreman. “That makes about as much sense as the rest of the yarn. The Old Dog would no sooner—”
“Do you really mean to say you saw Lad—saw and recognized him in Mr. Titus’s barnyard, growling over a sheep he had just killed?” demanded the Mistress.
“I sure do,” affirmed Schwartz. “And I—”
“An’ he’s ready to go on th’ stand an’ take oath to it!” supplemented Titus. “Unless you’ll pay me the damages out of court. Them sheep cost me exac’ly $12.10 a head, in the Pat’son market, one week ago. An’ sheep on the hoof has gone up a full forty cents more since then. You owe me for them four sheep exac’ly—”
“I owe you not one red cent!” denied the Master. “I hate law worse than I hate measles. But I’ll fight that idiotic claim all the way up to the Appellate Division before I’ll—”
The Mistress lifted a little silver whistle that hung at her belt and blew it. An instant later Lad came galloping gaily up the lawn from the lake, adrip with water from his morning swim. Straight, at the Mistress’ summons, he came, and stood, expectant, in front of her, oblivious of others.
The great dog’s mahogany-and-snow coat shone wetly in the sunshine. Every line of his splendid body was tense. His eyes looked up into the face of the loved Mistress in eager anticipation. For a whistle-call usually involved some matter of more than common interest.
“That’s the dog!” cried Schwartz, his thick voice betraying a shade more of its half-lost German accent, in the excitement of the minute. “That’s the one. He has washed off the blood. But that is the one. I could know him anywhere at all. And I knew him, already. And Mr. Romaine told me to be looking out for him, about the sheep, too. So I—”
The Master had bent over Lad. examining the dog’s mouth. “Not a trace of blood or of wool!” he announced. “And look how he faces us! If he had anything to be ashamed of—”
“I got a witness to prove he killed my sheep,” cut in Romaine. “Since you won’t be honest enough to square the case out of court, then the law’ll take a tuck in your wallet for you. The law will look after a poor man’s int’rest. I don’t wonder there’s folks who want all dogs done ’way with. Pesky curs! Here, the papers say we are short on sheep, an’ they beg us to raise ’em, because mutton is worth double what it used to be, in open market. Then, when I buy sheep, on that sayso, your dog gets four of ’em the very first week. Think what them four sheep would ’a meant to—”
“I’m sorry you lost them,” the Master interrupted. “Mighty sorry. And I’m still sorrier if there is a sheep-killing dog at large anywhere in this region. But Lad never—”
“I tell ye, he did!” stormed Titus. “I got proof of it. Proof good enough for any court. An’ the court is goin’ to see me righted. It’s goin’ to do more. It’s goin’ to make you shoot that killer, there, too. I know the law. I looked it up. An’ the law says if a sheep-killin’ dog—”
“Lad is not a sheep-killing dog!” flashed the Mistress.
“That’s what he is!” snarled Romaine. “An’, by law, he’ll be shot as sech. He—”
“Take your case to law, then!” retorted the Master, whose last shred of patience went by the board, at the threat. “And take it and yourself off my Place! Lad doesn’t ‘run’ sheep. But, at the word from me, he’ll ask nothing better than to ‘run’ you and your German every step of the way to your own woodshed. Clear out!”
He and the Mistress watched the two irately mumbling intruders plod out of sight up the drive. Lad, at the Master’s side, viewed the accusers’ departure with sharp interest. Schooled in reading the human voice, he had listened alertly to the Master’s speech of dismissal. And, as the dog listened, his teeth had come slowly into view from beneath a menacingly upcurled lip. His eyes, half shut, had been fixed on Titus with an expression that was not pretty.
“Oh, dear!” sighed the Mistress miserably, as she and her husband turned indoors and made their way toward the breakfast room. “You were right about ‘good old Mr. Trouble dropping in on us’ Isn’t it horrible? But it makes my blood boil to think of Laddie being accused of such a thing. It is crazily absurd, of course. But—”
“Absurd?” the Master caught her up. “It’s the most absurd thing I ever heard of. If it was about any other dog than Lad, it would be good for a laugh. I mean, Romaine’s charge of the dog’s doing away with no less than four sheep and not leaving a trace of more than one of them. That, alone, would get his case laughed out of court. I remember, once in Scotland, I was stopping with some people whose shepherd complained that three of the sheep had fallen victim to a ‘killer.’ We all went up to the moor-pasture to look at them. They weren’t a pretty sight, but they were all there. A dog doesn’t devour a sheep he kills. He doesn’t even lug it away. Instead, he just—”
“Perhaps you’d rather describe it after breakfast,” suggested the Mistress, hurriedly. “This wretched business has taken away all of my appetite that I can comfortably spare.”
At about mid-morning of the next day, the Master was summoned to the telephone.
“This is Maclay,” said the voice at the far end.
“Why, hello, Mac!” responded the Master, mildly wondering why his old fishing-crony, the village’s local Peace Justice, should be calling him up at such an hour. “If you’re going to tell me this is a good day for small-mouth bass to bite I’m going to tell you it isn’t. It isn’t because I’m up to my neck in work. Besides, it’s too late for the morning fishing, and too early for the bass to get up their afternoon appetites. So don’t try to tempt me into—”
“Hold on!” broke in Maclay. “I’m not calling you up for that. I’m calling up on business; rotten unpleasant business, too.”
“What’s wrong?” asked the Master.
“I’m hoping Titus Romaine is,” said the Justice. “He’s just been here—with his North Prussian hired man as witness—to make a complaint about your dog, Lad. Yes, and to get a court order to have the old fellow shot, too.”
“What!” sputtered the Master. “He hasn’t actually—”
“That’s just what he’s done,” said Maclay. “He claims Lad killed four of his new sheep night before last, and four more of them this morning or last night. Schwartz swears he caught Lad at the last of the killed sheep both times. It’s hard luck, old man, and I feel as bad about it as if it were my own dog. You know how strong I am for Lad. He’s the greatest collie I’ve known, but the law is clear in such—”
“You speak as if you thought Lad was guilty!” flamed the Master. “You ought to know better than that. He—”
“Schwartz tells a straight story,” answered Maclay, sadly, “and he tells it under oath. He swears he recognized Lad first time. He says he volunteered to watch in the barnyard last night. He had had a hard day’s work and he fell asleep while he was on watch. He says he woke up in gray dawn to find the whole flock in a turmoil, and Lad pinning one of the sheep to the ground. He had already killed three. Schwartz drove him away. Three of the sheep were missing. One Lad had just downed was dying. Romaine swears he saw Lad ‘running’ his sheep last week. It—”
“What did you do about the case?” asked the dazed Master.
“I told them to be at the courtroom at three this afternoon with the bodies of the two dead sheep that aren’t missing, and that I’d notify you to be there, too.”
“Oh, I’ll be there!” snapped the Master. “Don’t worry. And it was decent of you to make them wait. The whole thing is ridiculous! It—”
“Of course,” went on Maclay, “either side can easily appeal from any decision I make. That is as regards damages. But, by the township’s new sheep-laws, I’m sorry to say there isn’t any appeal from the local Justice’s decree that a sheep-killing dog must be shot at once. The law leaves me no option if I consider a dog guilty of sheep-killing. I have to order such a dog put to death at once. That’s what’s making me so blue. I’d rather lose a year’s pay than have to order old Lad killed.”
“You won’t have to,” declared the Master, stoutly; albeit he was beginning to feel a nasty sinking in the vicinity of his stomach.
“We’ll manage to prove him innocent. I’ll stake anything you like on that.”
“Talk the case over with Dick Colfax or any other good lawyer before three o’clock,” suggested Maclay. “There may be a legal loophole out of the muddle. I hope to the Lord there is.”
“We’re not going to crawl out through any ‘loopholes,’ Lad and I,” returned the Master. “We’re going to come through, clean. See if we don’t!”
Leaving the telephone, he went in search of the Mistress, and more and more disheartened told her the story.
“The worst of it is,” he finished, “Romaine and Schwartz seem to have made Maclay believe their fool yarn.”
“That is because they believe it, themselves,” said the Mistress, “and because, just as soon as even the most sensible man is made a Judge, he seems to lose all his common sense and intuition and become nothing but a walking statute-book. But you—you think for a moment, do you, that they can persuade Judge Maclay to have Lad shot?’
She spoke with a little quiver in her sweet voice that roused all the Master’s fighting spirit.
“This Place is going to be in a state of siege against the entire law and militia of New Jersey,” he announced, “before one bullet goes into Lad. You can put your mind to rest on that. But that isn’t enough. I want to clear him. In these days of ‘conservation’ and scarcity, it is a grave offense to destroy any meat-animal. And the loss of eight sheep in two days in a district where there has been such an effort made to revive sheep raising—”
“Didn’t you say they claim the second lot of sheep were killed in the night and at dawn, just as they said the first were?” interposed the Mistress.
“Why, yes. But—”
“Then,” said the Mistress, much more comfortably, “we can prove Lad’s alibi just as I said yesterday we could. Marie always lets him out in the morning when she comes downstairs to dust these lower rooms. She’s never down before six o’clock; and the sun, nowadays, rises long before that. Schwartz says he saw Lad both times in the early dawn. We can prove, by Marie, that Lad was safe here in the house till long after sunrise.”
Her worried frown gave way to a smile of positive inspiration. The Master’s own darkling face cleared.
“Good!” he approved. “I think that cinches it. Marie’s been with us for years. Her word is certainly as good as a Boche farmhand’s. Even Maclay’s ‘judicial temperament’ will have to admit that. Send her in here, won’t you?”
When the maid appeared at the door of the study a minute later, the Master opened the examination with the solemn air of a legal veteran.
“You are the first person down here in the mornings, aren’t you, Marie?” he began.
“Why, yes, sir,” replied the wondering maid. “Yes, always, except when you get up early to go fishing or when—”
“What time do you get down here in the mornings,” pursued the Master.
“Along about six o’clock, sir, mostly,” said the maid, bridling a bit as if scenting a criticism of her work-hours.
“Not earlier than six?” asked the Master.
“No, sir,” said Marie, uncomfortably. “Of course, if that’s not early enough, I suppose I could—”
“It’s quite early enough,” vouchsafed the Master. “There is no complaint about your hours. You always let Lad out as soon as you come into the music room?”
“Yes, sir,” she answered, “as soon as I get downstairs. Those were the orders, you remember.”
The Master breathed a silent sigh of relief. The maid did not get downstairs until six. The dog, then, could not get out of the house until that hour. If Schwartz had seen any dog in the Romaine barnyard at daybreak, it assuredly was not Lad. Yet, racking his brain, the Master could not recall any other dog in the vicinity that bore even the faintest semblance to his giant collie. And he fell to recalling—from his happy memories of “Bob, Son of Battle”—that “Killers” often travel many miles from home to sate their mania for sheep-slaying.
In any event, it was no concern of his if some distant collie, drawn to the slaughter by the queer “sixth” collie-sense, was killing Romaine’s new flock of sheep. Lad was cleared. The maid’s very evidently true testimony settled that point.
“Yes, sir,” rambled on Marie, beginning to take a faint interest in the examination now that it turned upon Lad whom she loved. “Yes, sir, Laddie always comes out from under his piano the minute he hears my step in the hall outside. And he always comes right up to me and wags that big plume of a tail of his, and falls into step alongside of me and walks over to the front door, right beside me all the way. He knows as much as many a human, that dog does, sir.”
Encouraged by the Master’s approving nod, the maid ventured to enlarge still further upon the theme.
“It always seems as if he was welcoming me downstairs, like,” she resumed, “and glad to see me. I’ve really missed him quite bad this past few mornings.” The approving look on the Master’s face gave way to a glare of utter blankness.
“This past few mornings?” he repeated, blitheringly. “What do you mean?”
“Why,” she returned, flustered afresh by the quick change in her interlocutor’s manner. “Ever since those French windows are left open for the night—same as they always are when the hot weather starts in, you know, sir. Since then, Laddie don’t wait for me to let him out. When he wakes up he just goes out himself. He used to do that last year, too, sir. He—”
“Thanks,” muttered the Master, dizzily. “That’s all. Thanks,”
Left alone, he sat slumped low in his chair, trying to think. He was as calmly convinced as ever of his dog’s innocence, but he had staked everything on Marie’s court testimony. And, now, that testimony was rendered worse than worthless.
Crankily he cursed his own fresh-air mania which had decreed that the long windows on the ground floor be left open on summer nights. With Lad on duty, the house was as safe from successful burglary in spite of these open windows, as if guarded by a squad of special policemen. And the night-air, sweeping through, kept it pleasantly cool against the next day’s heat. For this same coolness, a heavy price was now due.
Presently the daze of disappointment passed leaving the Master pulsing with a wholesome fighting-anger. Rapidly he revised his defense and, with the Mistress’ far cleverer aid, made ready for the afternoon’s ordeal. He scouted Maclay’s suggestion of hiring counsel and vowed to handle the defense himself. Carefully he and his wife went over their proposed line of action.
Peace Justice Maclay’s court was held daily in a rambling room on an upper floor of the village’s Odd Fellows’ Hall. The proceedings there were generally marked by shrewd sanity rather than by any effort at formalism. Maclay, himself, sat at a battered little desk at the room’s far end; his clerk using a corner of the same desk for the scribbling of his sketchy notes.
In front of the desk was a rather long deal table with kitchen chairs around it. Here, plaintiffs and defendants and prisoners and witnesses and lawyers were wont to sit, with no order of precedent or of other formality. Several other chairs were ranged irregularly along the wall to accommodate any overflow of the table’s occupants.
Promptly at three o’clock that afternoon, the Mistress and the Master entered the courtroom. Close at the Mistress’ side—though held by no leash—paced Lad. Maclay and Romaine and Schwartz were already on hand. So were the clerk and the constable and one or two idle spectators. At a corner of the room, wrapped in burlap, were huddled the bodies of the two slain sheep.
Lad caught the scent of the victims the instant he set foot in the room, and he sniffed vibrantly once or twice. Titus Romaine, his eyes fixed scowlingly on the dog, noted this, and he nudged Schwartz in the ribs to call the German’s attention to it.
Lad turned aside in fastidious disgust from the bumpy burlap bundle. Seeing the Judge and recognizing him as an old acquaintance, the collie wagged his plumed tail in gravely friendly greeting and stepped forward for a pat on the head.
“Lad!” called the Mistress, softly.
At the word the dog paused midway to the embarrassed Maclay’s desk and obediently turned back. The constable was drawing up a chair at the deal table for the Mistress. Lad curled down beside her, resting one snowy little forepaw protectingly on her slippered foot. And the hearing began.
Romaine repeated his account of the collie’s alleged depredations, starting with Lad’s first view of the sheep. Schwartz methodically retold his own story of twice witnessing the killing of sheep by the dog.
The Master did not interrupt either narrative, though, on later questioning he forced the sulkily truthful Romaine to admit he had not actually seen Lad chase the sheep-flock that morning on Mount Pisgah, but had merely seen the sheep running, and the dog standing at the hill-foot looking upward at their scattering flight. Both the Mistress and the Master swore that the dog on that occasion, had made no move to pursue or otherwise harass the sheep.
Thus did Lad win one point in the case. But, in view of the after-crimes wherewith he was charged, the point was of decidedly trivial value. Even if he had not attacked the flock on his first view of them he was accused of killing no less than eight of their number on two later encounters. And Schwartz was an eye-witness to this—Schwartz, whose testimony was as clear and as simple as daylight.
With a glance of apology at the Mistress, Judge Maclay ordered the sheep-carcasses taken from their burlap cerements and laid on the table for court-inspection.
While he and Schwartz arranged the grisly exhibits for the judge’s view, Titus Romaine expatiated loudly on the value of the murdered sheep and on the brutally useless wastage in their slaying. The Master said nothing, but he bent over each of the sheep, carefully studying the throat-wounds. At last he straightened himself up from his task and broke in on Romaine’s Antony-like funeral-oration by saying quietly:
“Your honor, these sheep’s throats were not cut by a dog. Neither by Lad nor by any ‘killer.’ Look for yourself. I’ve seen dog-killed sheep. The wounds were not at all like these.”
“Not killed by a dog, hey?” loudly scoffed Romaine. “I s’pose they was chewed by lightnin’, then? Or, maybe they was bit by a skeeter? Huh!”
“They were not bitten at all,” countered the Master. “Still less, were they chewed. Look! Those gashes are ragged enough, but they are as straight as if they were made by a machine. If ever you have seen a dog worry a piece of meat—”
“Rubbish!” grunted Titus. “You talk like a fool! The sheeps’ throats is torn. Schwartz seen your cur tear ’em. That’s all there is to it. Whether he tore ’em straight or whether he tore ’em crooked don’t count in Law. He tore ’em. An’ I got a reli’ble witness to prove it.”
“Your Honor,” said the Master, suddenly. “May I interrogate the witness?”
Maclay nodded. The Master turned to Schwartz, who faced him in stolid composure.
“Schwartz,” began the Master, “you say it was light enough for you to recognize the sheep-killing dog both mornings in Romaine’s barnyard. How near to him did you get?”
Schwartz pondered for a second, then made careful answer:
“First time, I ran into the barnyard from the house side and your dog cut and run out of it from the far side when he saw me making for him. That time, I don’t think I got within thirty feet of him. But I was near enough to see him plain, and I’d seen him often enough before on the road or in your car; so I knew him all right. The next time—this morning, Judge—I was within five feet of him, or even nearer. For I was near enough to hit him with the stick I’d just picked up and to land a kick on his ribs as he started away. I saw him then as plain as I see you. And nearer than I am to you. And the light was ’most good enough to read by, too.”
“Yes?” queried the Master. “If I remember rightly you told Judge Maclay that you were on watch last night in the cowshed, just alongside the barnyard where the sheep were; and you fell asleep; and woke just in time to see a dog—”
“To see your dog—” corrected Schwartz.
“To see a dog growling over a squirming and bleating sheep he had pulled down. How far away from you was he when you awoke?”
“Just outside the cowshed door. Not six feet from me. I ups with the stick I had with me and ran out at him and—”
“Were he and the sheep making much noise?”
“Between ’em they was making enough racket to wake a dead man,” replied Schwartz. “What with your dog’s snarling and growling, and the poor sheep’s bl’ats. And all the other sheep—”
“Yet, you say he had killed three sheep while you slept there—had killed them and carried or dragged their bodies away and come back again; and, presumably started a noisy panic in the flock every time. And none of that racket waked you until the fourth sheep was killed?”
“I was dog-tired,” declared Schwartz. “I’d been at work in our south-mowing for ten hours the day before, and up since five. Mr. Romaine can tell you I’m a hard man to wake at best. I sleep like the dead.”
“That’s right!” assented Titus. “Time an’ again, I have to bang at his door an’ holler myself hoarse, before I can get him to open his eyes. My wife says he’s the sleepin’est sleeper—”
“You ran out of the shed with your stick,” resumed the Master, “and struck the dog before he could get away? And as he turned to run you kicked him?”
“Yes, sir. That’s what I did.”
“How hard did you hit him?”
“A pretty good lick,” answered Schwartz, with reminiscent satisfaction. “Then I—”
“And when you hit him he slunk away like a whipped cur? He made no move to resent it? I mean, he did not try to attack you?”
“Not him!” asserted Schwartz, “I guess he was glad enough to get out of reach. He slunk away so fast, I hardly had a chance to land fair on him, when I kicked.”
“Here is my riding-crop,” said the Master. “Take it, please, and strike Lad with it just as you struck him—or the sheep-killing dog—with your stick. Just as hard. Lad has never been struck except once, unjustly, by me, years ago. He has never needed it. But if he would slink away like a whipped mongrel when a stranger hits him, the sooner he is beaten to death the better. Hit him exactly as you hit him this morning.”
Judge Maclay half-opened his lips to protest. He knew the love of the people of The Place for Lad, and he wondered at this invitation to a farm-hand to thrash the dog publicly. He glanced at the Mistress. Her face was calm, even a little amused. Evidently the Master’s request did not horrify or surprise her.
Schwartz’s stubby fingers gripped the crop the Master forced into his hand.
With true Teutonic relish for pain-inflicting, he swung the weapon aloft and took a step toward the lazily recumbent collie, striking with all his strength.
Then, with much-increased speed, Schwartz took three steps backward. For, at the menace, Lad had leaped to his feet with the speed of a fighting wolf, eluding the descending crop as it swished past him and launching himself straight for the wielder’s throat. He did not growl; he did not pause. He merely sprang for his assailant with a deadly ferocity that brought a cry from Maclay.
The Master caught the huge dog midway in his throatward flight.
“Down, Lad!” he ordered, gently.
The collie, obedient to the word, stretched himself on the floor at the Mistress’ feet. But he kept a watchful and right unloving eye on the man who had struck at him.
“It’s a bit odd, isn’t it,” suggested the Master, “that he went for you, like that, just now; when, this morning, he slunk away from your blow, in cringing fear?”
“Why wouldn’t he?” growled Schwartz, his stolid nerve shaken by the unexpected onslaught. “His folks are here to back him up, and everything. Why wouldn’t he go for me! He was slinky enough when I whaled him, this morning.”
“H’m!” mused the Master. “You hit a strong blow, Schwartz. I’ll say that, for you. You missed Lad, with my crop. But you’ve split the crop. And you scored a visible mark on the wooden floor with it Did you hit as hard as that when you struck the sheep-killer, this morning?”
“A sight harder, responded Schwartz. “My mad was up. I—”
“A dog’s skin is softer than a pine floor,” said the Master. “Your Honor, such a blow would have raised a weal on Lad’s flesh, an inch high. Would your Honor mind passing your hand over his body and trying to locate such a weal?”
“This is all outside the p’int!” raged the annoyed Titus Romaine. “You’re a-dodgin’ the issue, I tell ye. I—”
“If your Honor please!” insisted the Master.
The judge left his desk and whistled Lad across to him. The dog looked at his Master, doubtfully. The Master nodded. The collie arose and walked in leisurely fashion over to the waiting judge. Maclay ran an exploring hand through the magnificent tawny coat, from head to haunch; then along the dog’s furry sides. Lad hated to be handled by anyone but the Mistress or the Master. But at a soft word from the Mistress, he stood stock still and submitted to the inspection.
“I find no weal or any other mark on him,” presently reported the Judge.
The Mistress smiled happily. The whole investigation, up to this point, and further, was along eccentric lines she herself had thought out and had suggested to her husband. Lines suggested by her knowledge of Lad.
“Schwartz,” went on the Master, interrupting another fuming outbreak from Romaine, “I’m afraid you didn’t hit quite as hard as you thought you did, this morning; or else some other dog is carrying around a big welt on his flesh, to-day. Now for the kick you say you gave the collie. I—”
“I won’t copy that, on your bloodthirsty dog!” vociferated Schwartz. “Not even if the Judge jails me for contempt, I won’t. He’d likely kill me!”
“And yet he ran from you, this morning,” the Master reminded him. “Well, I won’t insist on your kicking Lad. But you say it was a light kick; because he was running away when it landed. I am curious to know just how hard a kick it was. In fact, I’m so curious about it that I am going to offer myself as a substitute for Lad. My riding boot is a good surface. Will you kindly kick me there, Schwartz; as nearly as possible with the same force (no more, no less) than you kicked the dog?”
“I protest!” shouted Romaine. “This measly tomfoolishness is—”
“If your Honor please!” appealed the Master sharply; turning from the bewildered Schwartz to the no less dismayed Judge.
Maclay was on his feet to overrule so strange a request. But there was keen supplication in the Master’s eye that made the Judge pause. Maclay glanced again at the Mistress. In spite of the prospect of seeing her husband kicked, her face wore a most pleased smile. The Judge noted, though, that she was stroking Lad’s head and that she was unobtrusively turning that head so that the dog faced Schwartz.
“Now, then!” adjured the Master. “Whenever you’re ready, Schwartz! A German doesn’t get a chance, like this, every day, to kick an American. And I’ll promise not to go for your throat, as Laddie tried to. Kick away!’
Awkwardly, shamblingly, Schwartz stepped forward. Urged on by his racial veneration for the Law—and perhaps not sorry to assail the man whose dog had tried to throttle him—he drew back his broganed left foot and kicked out in the general direction of the calf of the Master’s thick riding boot.
The kick did not land. Not that the Master dodged or blocked it. He stood moveless, and grinning expectantly.
But the courtroom shook with a wild-beast yell—a yell of insane fury. And Schwartz drew back his half-extended left foot in sudden terror; as a great furry shape came whizzing through the air at him.
The sight of the half-delivered kick, at his worshipped master, had had precisely the effect on Lad that the Mistress had foreseen when she planned the manœuver. Almost any good dog will attack a man who seeks to strike its owner. And Lad seemed to comprehend that a kick is a more contemptuous affront than is a blow.
Schwartz’s kick at the Master had thrown the adoring dog into a maniac rage against this defiler of his idol. The memory of Schwartz’s blow at himself was as nothing to it. It aroused in the collie’s heart a deathless blood-feud against the man. As the Mistress had known it would.
The Mistress’ sharp command, and the Master’s hastily outflung arm barely sufficed to deflect Lad’s charge. He writhed in their dual grasp, snarling furiously, his eyes red; his every giant muscle strained to get at the cowering Schwartz.
“We’ve had enough of this!” imperatively ordained Maclay, above the babel of Titus Romaine’s protests. “In spite of the informality of hearing, this is a court of law: not a dog-kennel. I—”
“I crave your Honor’s pardon,” apologized the Master. “I was merely trying to show that Lad is not the sort of dog to let a stranger strike and kick him as this man claims to have done with impunity. I think I have shown, from Lad’s own regrettable actions, that it was some other dog—if any—which cheered Romaine’s barnyard, this morning, and yesterday morning.
“It was your dog!” cried Schwartz, getting his breath, in a swirl of anger. “Next time I’ll be on watch with a shotgun and not a stick. I’ll—”
“There ain’t going to be no ‘next time’” asserted the equally angry Romaine. “Judge, I call on you to order that sheep-killer shot; an’ to order his master to indemnify me for th’ loss of my eight killed sheep!”
“Your Honor!” suavely protested the Master, “may I ask you to listen to a counter-proposition? A proposition which I think will be agreeable to Mr. Romaine, as well as to myself?”
“The only proposition I’ll agree to, is the shootin’ of that cur and the indemnifyin’ of me for my sheep!” persisted Romaine.
Maclay waved his hand for order; then, turning to the Master, said:
“State your proposition.”
“I propose,” began the Master, “that Lad be paroled, in my custody, for the space of twenty-four hours. I will deposit with the court, here and now, my bond for the sum of one thousand dollars; to be paid, on demand, to Titus Romaine; if one or more of his sheep are killed by any dog, during that space of time.”
The crass oddity of the proposal set Titus’s leathery mouth ajar. Even the Judge gasped aloud at its bizarre terms. Schwartz looked blank, until, little by little, the purport of the words sank into his slow mind. Then he permitted himself the rare luxury of a chuckle.
“Do I und’stand you to say,” demanded Titus Romaine, of the Master, “that if I’ll agree to hold up this case for twenty-four hours you’ll give me one thousan’ dollars, cash, for any sheep of mine that gets killed by dogs in that time?”
“That is my proposition,” returned the Master. “To cinch it, I’ll let you make out the written arrangement, your self. And I’ll give the court a bond for the money, at once, with instructions that the sum is to be paid to you, if you lose one sheep, through dogs, in the next day. I furthermore agree to shoot Lad, myself, if you lose one or more sheep in that time, and in that way, I’ll forfeit another thousand if I fail to keep that part of my contract. How about it?”
“I agree!” exclaimed Titus.
Schwartz’s smile, by this time, threatened to split his broad face across. Maclay saw the Mistress’ cheek whiten a little; but her aspect betrayed no worry over the possible loss of a thousand dollars and the far more painful loss of the dog she loved.
When Romaine and Schwartz had gone, the Master tarried a moment in the courtroom.
“I can’t make out what you’re driving at,” Maclay told him. “But you seem to me to have done a mighty foolish thing. To get a thousand dollars Romaine is capable of scouring the whole country for a sheep-killing dog. So is Schwartz—if only to get Lad shot. Did you see the way Schwartz looked at Lad as he went out? He hates him.”
“Yes,” said the Master. “And I saw the way Lad looked at him. Lad will never forget that kick at me. He’ll attack Schwartz for it, if they come together a year from now. That’s why we arranged it. Say, Mac; I want you to do me a big favor. A favor that comes within the square and angle of your work. I want you to go fishing with me, to-night. Better come over to dinner and be prepared to spend the night. The fishing won’t start till about twelve o’clock.”
“Twelve o’clock!” echoed Maclay. “Why, man, nothing but catfish will bite at that hour. And I—”
“You’re mistaken,” denied the Master. “Much bigger fish will bite. Much bigger. Take my word for that. My wife and I have it all figured out. I’m not asking you in your official capacity; but as a friend. I’ll need you, Mac. It will be a big favor to me. And if I’m not wrong, there’ll be sport in it for you, too. I’m risking a thousand dollars and my dog, on this fishing trip. Won’t you risk a night’s sleep? I ask it as a worthy and distressed—”
“Certainly,” assented the wholly perplexed Judge, impressed, “but I don’t get your idea at all. I—”
“I’ll explain it before we start,” promised the Master. “All I want, now, is for you to commit yourself to the scheme. If it fails, you won’t lose anything, except your sleep. Thanks for saying you’ll come.”
At a little after ten o’clock that night the last light in Titus Romaine’s farmhouse went out. A few moments later the Master got up from a rock on Mount Pisgah’s summit, on which he and Maclay had been sitting for the past hour. Lad, at their feet, rose expectantly with them.
“Come on, old Man,” said the Master. “Well drop down there, now. It probably means a long wait for us. But it’s better to be too soon than too late; when I’ve got so much staked. If we’re seen, you can cut and run. Lad and I will cover your retreat and see you aren’t recognized. Steady, there, Lad. Keep at heel.”
Stealthily the trio made their way down the hill to the farmstead at its farther base. Silently they crept along the outer fringe of the home-lot, until they came opposite the black-gabled bulk of the barn. Presently, their slowly cautious progress brought them to the edge of the barnyard, and to the rail fence which surrounds it. There they halted.
From within the yard, as the huddle of drowsy sheep caught the scent of the dog, came a slight stirring. But, after a moment, the yard was quiet again.
“Get that?” whispered the Master, his mouth close to Maclay ‘s ear. “Those sheep are supposed to have been raided by a killer-dog, for the past two nights. Yet the smell of a dog doesn’t even make them bleat. If they had been attacked by any dog, last night, the scent of Lad would throw them into a panic.”
“I get something else, too,” replied Maclay, in the same all-but soundless whisper. “And I’m ashamed I didn’t think of it before. Romaine said the dog wriggled into the yard through the bars, and out again the same way. Well, if those bars were wide enough apart for an eighty-pound collie, like Lad, to get through, what would there be to prevent all these sheep from escaping, the same way, any time they wanted to? I’ll have a look at those bars before I pass judgment on the case. I begin to be glad you and your wife coerced me into this adventure.”
“Of course, the sheep could have gotten through the same bars that the dog did,” answered the Master. “For, didn’t Romaine say the dog not only got through, but dragged three dead sheep through, after him, each night, and hid them somewhere, where they couldn’t be found? No man would keep sheep in a pen as open as all that. The entire story is full of air-holes.”
Lad, at a touch from his Master, had lain softly down at the men’s feet, beside the fence. And so, for another full hour, the three waited there.
The night was heavily overcast; and, except for the low drone of distant tree-toads and crickets, it was deathly silent. Heat lightning, once in a while, played dimly along the western horizon.
“Lucky for us that Romaine doesn’t keep a dog!” whispered Maclay. “He’d have raised the alarm before we got within a hundred yards of here.”
“He told my foreman he gave his mongrel dog away, when he stocked himself with sheep. And he’s been reading a lot of rot about dogs being non-utilitarian, too. His dog would have been anything but non-utilitarian, to-night.”
A touch on the sleeve from Maclay silenced the rambling whisper. Through the stillness, a house door shut very softly, not far away. An instant later, Lad growled throatily, and got to his feet, tense and fiercely eager.
“He’s caught Schwartz’s scent!” whispered the Master, exultantly. “Now, maybe you understand why I made the man try to kick me? Down, Lad! Quiet!”
At the stark command in the Master’s whisper, Lad dropped to earth again; though he still rumbled deeply in his throat, until a touch from the Master’s fingers and a repeated “Quiet” silenced him.
The hush of the night was disturbed, once more—very faintly. This time, by the muffled padding of a man’s bare feet, drawing closer to the barnyard. Lad as he heard it made as if to rise. The Master tapped him lightly on the head, and the dog sank to the ground again, quivering with hard-held rage.
The clouds had piled thicker. Only by a dim pulsing of far-away heat lightning could the watchers discern the shadowy outline of a man, moving silently between them and the far side of the yard. By the tiny glow of lightning they saw his silhouette.
By Lad’s almost uncontrollable trembling they knew who he must be.
There was another drowsy stirring of the sheep; checked by the reassuring mumble of a voice the animals seemed to know. And, except for the stealthy motion of groping feet, the barnyard seemed as empty of human life as before.
Perhaps a minute later another sulphur-gleam of lightning revealed the intruder to the two men who crouched behind the outer angle of the fence. He had come out of the yard, and was shuffling away. But he was fully a third wider of shoulder now, and he seemed to have two heads, as his silhouette dimly appeared and then vanished.
“See that?” whispered the Master. “He has a sheep slung over his back. Probably with a cloth wrapped around its head to keep it quiet. We will give him twenty seconds’ start and then—”
“Good!” babbled Maclay, in true buck-ague fever of excitement. “It’s worked out, to a charm! But how in the blazes can we track him through this dark? It’s as black as the inside of a cow. And if we show the flashlights—”
“Trust Lad to track him,” rejoined the Master, who had been slipping a leash around the dog’s low-growling throat. “That’s what the old fellow’s here for. He has a kick to punish. He would follow Schwartz through the Sahara desert, if he had to. Come on.”
Lad, at a word from the Master, sprang to the end of the leash, his mighty head and shoulders straining forward. The Master’s reiterated “Quiet!” alone kept him from giving tongue. And thus the trio started the pursuit.
Lad went in a geometrically straight line, swerving not an inch; with much difficulty held back to the slow walk on which the Master insisted. There was more than one reason for this insistence. Not only did the two men want to keep far enough behind Schwartz to prevent him from hearing their careful steps; but Lad’s course was so uncompromisingly straight that it led them over a hundred obstacles and gullies which required all sorts of skill to negotiate.
For at least two miles, the snail-like progress continued; most of the way through woods. At last, with a gasp, the Master found himself wallowing knee-deep in a bog. Maclay, a step behind him, also plunged splashingly into the soggy mire.
“What’s the matter with the dog?” grumpily demanded the Judge. “He’s led us into the Pancake Hollow swamp. Schwartz never in the world carried a ninety pound sheep through here.”
“Maybe not,” puffed the Master. “But he has carried it over one of the half-dozen paths that lead through this marsh. Lad is in too big a hurry to bother about paths. He—”
Fifty feet above them, on a little mid-swamp knoll, a lantern shone. Apparently, it had just been lighted. For it waxed brighter in a second or so. The men saw it and strode forward at top speed. The third step caused Maclay to stumble over a hummock and land, noisily, on all fours, in a mud-pool. As he fell, he swore—with a loud distinctness that rang through the swampy stillnesses, like a pistol shot.
Instantly, the lantern went out. And there was a crashing in among the bushes of the knoll.
“After him!” yelled Maclay, floundering to his feet. “He’ll escape! And we have no real proof who he is or—”
The Master, still ankle-high in sticky mud, saw the futility of trying to catch a man who, unimpeded, was running away, along a dry-ground path. There was but one thing left to do. And the Master did it.
Loosening the leash from the dog’s collar he shouted:
“Get him, Laddie! Get him!”
There was a sound as of a cavalry regiment galloping through shallow water. That and a queerly ecstatic growl. And the collie was gone.
As fast as possible the two men made for the base of the knoll. They had drawn forth their electric torches; and these now made the progress much swifter and easier.
Nevertheless, before the Master had set foot on the first bit of firm ground, all pandemonium burst forth amid the darkness, above and in front of him.
The turmoil’s multiple sounds were indescribable, blending into one wild cacophony the yells and stamping of a fear-demented man, the bleats of sheep, the tearing of underbrush—through and above and under all—a hideous subnote as of a rabid beast worrying its prey.
It was this undercurrent of sound which put wings on the tired feet of Maclay and the Master, as they dashed up the knoll and into the path leading east from it. It spoke of unpleasant—not to say gruesome—happenings. So did the swift change of the victim’s yells from wrath to mortal terror.
“Back Lad!” called the Master, pantingly, as he ran. “Back! Let him alone!”
And as he cried the command he rounded a turn in the wooded path.
Prone on the ground, writhing like a cut snake and frantically seeking to guard his throat with his slashed forearm, sprawled Schwartz. Crouching above him—right unwillingly obeying the Master’s belated call—was Lad.
The dog’s great coat was a-bristle. His bared teeth glinted white and blood-flecked in the electric flare. His soft eyes were blazing.
“Back!” repeated the Master. “Back here!”
Absolute obedience was the first and foremost of The Place’s few simple dog-rules. Lad had learned it from earliest puppyhood. The collie, still shaking all over with the effort of repressing his fury, turned slowly and came over to his Master. There he stood stonily awaiting further orders.
Maclay was on his knees beside the hysterically moaning German roughly telling him that the dog would do him no more damage, and at the same time making a quick inspection of the injuries wrought by the slashing white fangs in the shielding arm and its shoulder.
“Get up!” he now ordered. “You’re not too badly hurt to stand. Another minute and he’d have gotten through to your throat, but your clothes saved you from anything worse than a few ugly flesh-cuts. Get up! Stop that yowling and get up!”
Schwartz gradually lessened his dolorous plaints under the stern authority of Maclay’s exhortations. Presently he sat up nursing his lacerated forearm and staring about him. At sight of Lad he shuddered. And recognizing Maclay he broke into violent and fatly-accented speech.
“Take witness, Judge!” he exclaimed. “I watched the barnyard to-night and I saw that schweinhund steal another sheep. I followed him and when he got here he dropped the sheep and went for me. He—”
“Very bad, Schwartz!” disgustedly reproved Maclay. “Very bad, indeed. You should have waited a minute longer and thought up a better one. But since this is the yarn you choose to tell, we’ll look about and try to verify it. The sheep, for instance—the one you say Lad carried all the way here and then dropped to attack you. I seem to have heard a sheep bleating a few moments ago. Several sheep in fact. We’ll see if we can’t find the one Lad stole.”
Schwartz jumped nervously to his feet.
“Stay where you are!” Maclay bade him. “We won’t bother a tired and injured man to help in our search.”
Turning to the Master, he added:
“I suppose one of us will have to stand guard over him while the other one hunts up the sheep. Shall I—”
“Neither of us need do that,” said the Master. “Lad!”
The collie started eagerly forward, and Schwartz started still more eagerly backward.
“Watch him!” commanded the Master. “Watch him!”
It was an order Lad had learned to follow in the many times when the Mistress and the Master left him to guard the car or to do sentry duty over some other article of value. He understood. He would have preferred to deal with this enemy according to his own lights. But the Master had spoken. So, standing at view, the collie looked longily at Schwartz’s throat.
“Keep perfectly still!” the Master warned the prisoner, “and perhaps he won’t go for you. Move, and he most surely will. Watch him, Laddie!”
Maclay and the Master left the captive and his guard, and set forth on a flashlight-illumined tour of the knoll. It was a desolate spot, far back in the swamp and more than a mile from any road; a place visited not three times a year, except in the shooting season.
In less than a half-minute the plaintive ba-a-a of a sheep guided the searchers to the left of the knoll where stood a thick birch-and-alder copse. Around this they circled until they reached a narrow opening where the branch-ends, several feet above ground, were flecked with hanks of wool.
Squirming through the aperture in single file, the investigators found what they sought.
In the tight-woven copse’s center was a small clearing. In this, was a rudely wattled pen some nine feet square; and in the pen were bunched six sheep.
An occasional scared bleat from deeper in the copse told the whereabouts of the sheep Schwartz had taken from the barnyard that night and which he had dropped at Lad’s onslaught before he could put it in the pen. On the ground, just outside the enclosure, lay the smashed lantern.
“Sheep on the hoof are worth $12.50 per, at the Paterson Market,” mused the Master aloud, as Maclay blinked owlishly at the treasure trove. “There are $75 worth of sheep in that pen, and there would have been three more of them before morning if we hadn’t butted in on Herr Schwartz’s overtime labors. To get three sheep at night, it was well worth his while to switch suspicion to Lad by killing a fourth sheep every time, and mangling its throat with a stripping-knife. Only, he mangled it too efficiently. There was too much Kultur about the mangling. It wasn’t ragged enough. That’s what first gave me my idea. That, and the way the missing sheep always vanished into more or less thin air. You see, he probably—”
“But,” sputtered Maclay, “why four each night? Why—”
“You saw how long it took him to get one of them here,” replied the Master. “He didn’t dare to start in till the Romaines were asleep, and he had to be back in time to catch Lad at the slaughter before Titus got out of bed. He wouldn’t dare hide them any nearer home. Titus has spent most of his time both days in hunting for them. Schwartz was probably waiting to get the pen nice and full. Then he’d take a day off to visit his relatives. And he’d round up this tidy bunch and drive them over to the Ridgewood road, through the woods, and so on to the Paterson Market. It was a pretty little scheme all around.”
“But,” urged Maclay, as they turned back to where Lad still kept his avid vigil, “I still hold you were taking big chances in gambling $1000 and your dog’s life that Schwartz would do the same thing again within twenty-four hours. He might have waited a day or two, till—”
“No,” contradicted the Master, “that’s just what he mightn’t do. You see, I wasn’t perfectly sure whether it was Schwartz or Romaine—or both—who were mixed up in this. So I set the trap at both ends. If it was Romaine, it was worth $1000 to him to have more sheep killed within twenty-four hours. If it was Schwartz—well, that’s why I made him try to hit Lad and why I made him try to kick me. The dog went for him both times, and that was enough to make Schwartz want him killed for his own safety as well as for revenge. So he was certain to arrange another killing within the twenty-four hours if only to force me to shoot Lad. He couldn’t steal or kill sheep by daylight. I picked the only hours he could do it in. If he’d gotten Lad killed, he’d probably have invented another sheep-killer dog to help him swipe the rest of the flock, or until Romaine decided to do the watching. We—”
“It was clever of you,” cordially admitted Maclay. “Mighty clever, old man! I—”
“It was my wife who worked it out, you know,” the Master reminded him. “I admit my own cleverness, of course, only (like a lot of men’s money) it’s all in my wife’s name. Come on, Lad! You can guard Herr Schwartz just as well by walking behind him. We’re going to wind up the evening’s fishing trip by tendering a surprise party to dear genial old Mr. Titus Romaine. I hope the flashlights will hold out long enough for me to get a clear look at his face when he sees us.”