smoothly that scarcely a ripple flowed behind him, brought back a stick she cast. Then she pointed a floating stick out to him and he got that. He seemed eager to obey her, and if only he'd work that way for me I'd as soon enter him against any competition anywhere. I looked at my watch.
"Well, I'm glad somebody can play. But I'm a working man. I have to pick up a new dog."
"Can we take Buck?"
"Nope."
"Gee, you're mean."
But it's one of my rules that a new dog must come in as easily as possible. They're usually nervous anyway, after a long train ride and new surroundings, and taking another dog when I pick them up at the station only makes them more so. But I knew Sally couldn't resist having a look at a new dog any more than she can stop breathing. We locked Buck back in his run, and left him moaning while we climbed into the pickup.
"What is the new dog?" Sally asked.
"A Chesapeake. His name's Tsan-Lo."
Sally settled back in the seat and away we went.
The train was just pulling out when we got to the station. We walked around to the express platform, and sure enough, there was my dog in his crate. I whistled. Whoever crated the dog either had a lot of money to waste or else wanted to be absolutely sure that Tsan-Lo didn't get out. He was in a tubular steel crate, reinforced at the corners with steel blocks and the door had a double padlock on it. Dimly through the slats I made out the dog, lying down, and there was a big white sign riveted to the crate. "For Mr. Clinton Roberts. From Dr. Ibellius Grut."
And again, for some unknown reason, the hair at the nape of my neck bristled and cold chills ran up my spine. Even as he stood crated on the station platform, there was something about Tsan-Lo like nothing in any dog I'd ever seen. It wasn't what he did, for he did nothing except lie in the straw on the floor of his crate. But what came out of that crate—. I couldn't see it but I could feel it. It was as though this dog was directing at everything else some invisible aura, some mysterious waves. And it was at that moment, for the first time in my life, that I felt hate.
I do not mean that I hated. But I sensed that the air was charged with hate, viciousness, brutality, and concentrated fury in its most primitive and elemental form. It was emanating from the crate that housed Tsan-Lo. I shook my head, trying to shake such notions from it. Sober thought told me that the whole thing was silly, no dog was capable of the attributes with which I was crediting this one. But I could not shake it off, and unaccountably there rose before me a mental image of a papier mache creature I had seen in a museum. Tyrannosaurus, they had called it, a reconstruction of a monstrous prehistoric reptile with huge jaws and immense teeth. As I stood before it my imagination had given it life, and I clearly remembered experiencing the same sensations I felt now.
But it was still silly. What possible connection could there be between a prehistoric lizard and a Chesapeake dog? The one had become extinct long before man ever trod the earth, the other was a product of man. I had never seen the dog I could not handle, and I'd handle
