<hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></SPAN>CHAPTER IV<br/> HIS LITTLE SON</h2>
<p>Lad's mate Lady was the only one of the
Little People about The Place who refused
to look on Lad with due reverence. In her
frolic-moods she teased him unmercifully; in a
prettily imperious way she bossed and bullied him—for
all of which Lad adored her. He had other
reasons, too, for loving Lady—not only because
she was dainty and beautiful, and was caressingly
fond of him, but because he had won her in fair
mortal combat with the younger and showier
Knave.</p>
<p>For a time after Knave's routing, Lad was blissfully
happy in Lady's undivided comradeship. Together
they ranged the forests beyond The Place
in search of rabbits. Together they sprawled
shoulder to shoulder on the disreputable old fur
rug in front of the living-room fire. Together they
did joyous homage to their gods, the Mistress and
the Master.</p>
<p>Then in the late summer a new rival appeared—to
be accurate, three rivals. And they took up all
of Lady's time and thought and love. Poor old<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</SPAN></span>
Lad was made to feel terribly out in the cold. The
trio of rivals that had so suddenly claimed Lady's
care were fuzzy and roly-poly, and about the size
of month-old kittens. In brief, they were three
thoroughbred collie puppies.</p>
<p>Two of them were tawny brown, with white forepaws
and chests. The third was not like Lad in
color, but like the mother—at least, all of him
not white was of the indeterminate yellowish
mouse-gray which, at three months or earlier, turns
to pale gold.</p>
<p>When they were barely a fortnight old—almost
as soon as their big mournful eyes opened—the two
brown puppies died. There seemed no particular
reason for their death, except the fact that a collie
is always the easiest or else the most impossible
breed of dog to raise.</p>
<p>The fuzzy grayish baby alone was left—the puppy
which was soon to turn to white and gold. The
Mistress named him "Wolf."</p>
<p>Upon Baby Wolf the mother-dog lavished a
ridiculous lot of attention—so much that Lad was
miserably lonely. The great collie would try with
pathetic eagerness, a dozen times a day, to lure
his mate into a woodland ramble or into a romp
on the lawn, but Lady met his wistful advances
with absorbed indifference or with a snarl. Indeed
when Lad ventured overnear the fuzzy baby, he
was warned off by a querulous growl from the
mother or by a slash of her shiny white teeth.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>Lad could not at all understand it. He felt no
particular interest—only a mild and disapproving
curiosity—in the shapeless little whimpering ball of
fur that nestled so helplessly against his beloved
mate's side. He could not understand the mother-love
that kept Lady with Wolf all day and all night.
It was an impulse that meant nothing to Lad.</p>
<p>After a week or two of fruitless effort to win
back Lady's interest, Lad coldly and wretchedly
gave up the attempt. He took long solitary walks
by himself in the forest, retired for hours at a
time to sad brooding in his favorite "cave" under
the living-room piano, and tried to console himself
by spending all the rest of his day in the company
of the Mistress and the Master. And he came
thoroughly to disapprove of Wolf. Recognizing
the baby intruder as the cause of Lady's estrangement
from himself, he held aloof from the puppy.</p>
<p>The latter was beginning to emerge from his
newborn shapelessness. His coat's texture was
changing from fuzz to silk. Its color was turning
from gray into yellow. His blunt little nose was
lengthening and growing thin and pointed. His
butter-ball body was elongating, and his huge feet
and legs were beginning to shape up. He looked
more like a dog now, and less like an animated
muff. Also within Wolf's youthful heart awoke
the devil of mischief, the keen urge of play. He
found Lady a pleasant-enough playfellow up to a
certain point. But a painfully sharp pinch from her<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</SPAN></span>
teeth or a reproving and breath-taking slap from
one of her forepaws was likely to break up every
game that she thought had gone far enough; when
Wolf's clownish roughness at length got on her
hair-trigger nerves.</p>
<p>So, in search of an additional playmate, the
frolicsome puppy turned to Lad, only to find that
Lad would not play with him at all. Lad made
it very, very clear to everyone—except to the fool
puppy himself—that he had no desire to romp or
to associate in any way with this creature which
had ousted him from Lady's heart! Being cursed
with a soul too big and gentle to let him harm
anything so helpless as Wolf, he did not snap or
growl, as did Lady, when the puppy teased. He
merely walked away in hurt dignity.</p>
<p>Wolf had a positive genius for tormenting Lad.
The huge collie, for instance, would be snoozing
away a hot hour on the veranda or under the
wistaria vines. Down upon him, from nowhere in
particular, would pounce Wolf.</p>
<p>The puppy would seize his sleeping father by
the ear, and drive his sharp little milk-teeth fiercely
into the flesh. Then he would brace himself and
pull backward, possibly with the idea of dragging
Lad along the ground.</p>
<p>Lad would wake in pain, would rise in dignified
unhappiness to his feet and start to walk off—the
puppy still hanging to his ear. As Wolf was a
collie and not a bulldog, he would lose his grip as<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</SPAN></span>
his fat little body left the ground. Then, at a
clumsy gallop, he would pursue Lad, throwing himself
against his father's forelegs and nipping the
slender ankles. All this was torture to Lad, and
dire mortification too—especially if humans chanced
to witness the scene. Yet never did he retaliate;
he simply got out of the way.</p>
<p>Lad, nowadays, used to leave half his dinner
uneaten, and he took to moping in a way that is
not good for dog or man. For the moping had
in it no ill-temper—nothing but heartache at his
mate's desertion, and a weary distaste for the
puppy's annoying antics. It was bad enough for
Wolf to have supplanted him in Lady's affection,
without also making his life a burden and humiliating
him in the eyes of his gods.</p>
<p>Therefore Lad moped. Lady remained nervously
fussy over her one child. And Wolf continued
to be a lovable, but unmitigated, pest. The
Mistress and the Master tried in every way to make
up to Lad for the positive and negative afflictions
he was enduring, but the sorrowing dog's unhappiness
grew with the days.</p>
<p>Then one November morning Lady met Wolf's
capering playfulness with a yell of rage so savage
as to send the puppy scampering away in mortal
terror, and to bring the Master out from his study
on a run. For no normal dog gives that hideous
yell except in racking pain or in illness; and mere<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</SPAN></span>
pain could not wring such a sound from a thoroughbred.</p>
<p>The Master called Lady over to him. Sullenly
she obeyed, slinking up to him in surly unwillingness.
Her nose was hot and dry; her soft brown
eyes were glazed, their whites a dull red. Her
dense coat was tumbled.</p>
<p>After a quick examination, the Master shut her
into a kennel-room and telephoned for a veterinary.</p>
<p>"She is sickening for the worst form of distemper,"
reported the vet' an hour later, "perhaps
for something worse. Dogs seldom get distemper
after they're a year old, but when they do it's
dangerous. Better let me take her over to my
hospital and isolate her there. Distemper runs
through a kennel faster than cholera through a
plague-district. I may be able to cure her in a
month or two—or I may not. Anyhow, there's
no use in risking your other dogs' lives by leaving
her here."</p>
<p>So it was that Lad saw his dear mate borne
away from him in the tonneau of a strange man's
car.</p>
<p>Lady hated to go. She whimpered and hung
back as the vet' lifted her aboard. At sound of
her whimper Lad started forward, head low, lips
writhing back from his clenched teeth, his shaggy
throat vibrant with growls. At a sharp word of
command from the Master, he checked his onset
and stood uncertain. He looked at his departing<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</SPAN></span>
mate, his dark eyes abrim with sorrow, then
glanced at the Master in an agony of appeal.</p>
<p>"It's all right, Laddie," the Master tried to console
him, stroking the dog's magnificent head as
he spoke. "It's all right. It's the only chance of
saving her."</p>
<p>Lad did not grasp the words, but their tone was
reassuring. It told him, at least, that this kidnaping
was legal and must not be prevented. Sorrowfully
he watched the chugging car out of sight,
up the drive. Then with a sigh he walked heavily
back to his "cave" beneath the piano.</p>
<p>Lad, alone of The Place's dogs, was allowed to
sleep in the house at night, and even had free access
to that dog-forbidden spot, the dining-room. Next
morning, as soon as the doors were opened, he
dashed out in search of Lady. With some faint
hope that she might have been brought back in
the night, he ransacked every corner of The Place
for her.</p>
<p>He did not find Lady. But Wolf very promptly
found Lad. Wolf was lonely, too—terribly
lonely. He had just spent the first solitary night
of his three-month life. He missed the furry warm
body into whose shelter he had always cuddled for
sleep. He missed his playmate—the pretty mother
who had been his fond companion.</p>
<p>There are few things so mournful as the eyes
of even the happiest collie pup; this morning, loneliness
had intensified the melancholy expression in<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</SPAN></span>
Wolf's eyes. But at sight of Lad, the puppy gamboled
forward with a falsetto bark of joy. The
world was not quite empty, after all. Though his
mother had cruelly absented herself, here was a
playfellow that was better than nothing. And up
to Lad frisked the optimistic little chap.</p>
<p>Lad saw him coming. The older dog halted and
instinctively turned aside to avoid the lively little
nuisance. Then, halfway around, he stopped and
turned back to face the puppy.</p>
<p>Lady was gone—gone, perhaps, forever. And
all that was left to remind Lad of her was this
bumptious and sharp-toothed little son of hers.
Lady had loved the youngster—Lady, whom Lad
so loved. Wolf alone was left; and Wolf was in
some mysterious way a part of Lady.</p>
<p>So, instead of making his escape as the pest
cantered toward him, Lad stood where he was.
Wolf bounded upward and as usual nipped merrily
at one of Lad's ears. Lad did not shake off his
tormentor and stalk away. In spite of the pain
to the sensitive flesh, he remained quiet, looking
down at the joyful puppy with a sort of sorrowing
friendliness. He seemed to realize that Wolf, too,
was lonely and that the little dog was helpless.</p>
<p>Tired of biting an unprotesting ear, Wolf dived
for Lad's white forelegs, gnawing happily at them
with a playfully unconscious throwback to his wolf
ancestors who sought thus to disable an enemy by
breaking the foreleg bone. For all seemingly aim<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</SPAN></span>less
puppy-play had its origin in some ancestral
custom.</p>
<p>Lad bore this new bother unflinchingly. Presently
Wolf left off the sport. Lad crossed to the
veranda and lay down. The puppy trotted over
to him and stood for a moment with ears cocked
and head on one side as if planning a new attack
on his supine victim; then with a little satisfied
whimper, he curled up close against his father's
shaggy side and went to sleep.</p>
<p>Lad gazed down at the slumberer in some perplexity.
He seemed even inclined to resent the
familiarity of being used for a pillow. Then, noting
that the fur on the top of the puppy's sleepy head
was rumpled, Lad bent over and began softly to
lick back the tousled hair into shape with his
curving tongue—his raspberry-pink tongue with the
single queer blue-black blot midway on its surface.
The puppy mumbled drowsily in his sleep and
nestled more snugly to his new protector.</p>
<p>And thus Lad assumed formal guardianship of
his obstreperous little son. It was a guardianship
more staunch by far than Lady's had been of late.
For animal mothers early wear out their zealously
self-sacrificing love for their young. By the time
the latter are able to shift for themselves, the
maternal care ceases. And, later on, the once-inseparable
relationship drops completely out of
mind.</p>
<p>Paternity, among dogs, is, from the very first,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</SPAN></span>
no tie at all. Lad, probably, had no idea of his
relationship to his new ward. His adoption of
Wolf was due solely to his own love for Lady and
to the big heart and soul that stirred him into pity
for anything helpless.</p>
<p>Lad took his new duties very seriously indeed.
He not only accepted the annoyance of Wolf's undivided
teasing, but he assumed charge of the
puppy's education as well—this to the amusement
of everyone on The Place. But everyone's amusement
was kept from Lad. The sensitive dog
would rather have been whipped than laughed at.
So both the Mistress and Master watched the educational
process with outwardly straight faces.</p>
<p>A puppy needs an unbelievable amount of educating.
It is a task to wear threadbare the teacher's
patience and to do all kinds of things to the temper.
Small wonder that many humans lose patience and
temper during the process and idiotically resort to
the whip, to the boot-toe and to bellowing—in which
case the puppy is never decently educated, but
emerges from the process with a cowed and broken
spirit or with an incurable streak of meanness that
renders him worthless.</p>
<p>Time, patience, firmness, wisdom, temper-control,
gentleness—these be the six absolute essentials
for training a puppy. Happy the human who is
blessed with any three of these qualities. Lad,
being only a dog, was abundantly possessed of all
six. And he had need of them.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>To begin with, Wolf had a joyous yearning to
tear up or bury every portable thing that could
be buried or torn. He had a craze for destruction.
A dropped lace handkerchief, a cushion left on the
grass, a book or a hat lying on a veranda-chair—these
and a thousand other things he looked on
as treasure-trove, to be destroyed as quickly and
as delightedly as possible.</p>
<p>He also enjoyed taking a flying leap onto the
face or body of any hammock-sleeper. He would
howl long and lamentably, nearly every night, at
the moon. If the night were moonless, he howled
on general principles. He thrilled with bliss at a
chance to harry and terrify the chickens or peacocks
or pigeons or any others of The Place's Little
People that were safe prey for him. He tried this
form of bullying once—only once—on the Mistress'
temperamental gray cat, Peter Grimm. For
the rest of the day Wolf nursed a scratched nose
and a torn ear—which, for nearly a week, taught
him to give all cats a wide berth; or, at most, to
bark harrowingly at them from a safe distance.</p>
<p>Again, Wolf had an insatiable craving to find
out for himself whether or not everything on earth
was good to eat. Kipling writes of puppies' experiments
in trying to eat soap and blacking. Wolf
added to this limited fare a hundred articles, from
clothespins to cigars. The climax came when he
found on the veranda-table a two-pound box of
chocolates, from which the wrapping-paper and gilt<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</SPAN></span>
cord had not yet been removed. Wolf ate not only
all the candy, but the entire box and the paper and
the string—after which he was tumultuously and
horribly ill.</p>
<p>The foregoing were but a small percentage of
his gay sins. And on respectable, middle-aged Lad
fell the burden of making him into a decent canine
citizen. Lad himself had been one of those rare
puppies to whom the Law is taught with bewildering
ease. A single command or prohibition had
ever been enough to fix a rule in his almost uncannily
human brain. Perhaps if the two little brown
pups had lived, one or both of them might have
taken after their sire in character. But Wolf was
the true son of temperamental, wilful Lady, and
Lad had his job cut out for him in educating the
puppy.</p>
<p>It was a slow, tedious process. Lad went at it,
as he went at everything—with a gallant dash, behind
which was an endless supply of resource and
endurance. Once, for instance, Wolf leaped barkingly
upon a filmy square of handkerchief that had
just fallen from the Mistress' belt. Before the
destructive little teeth could rip the fine cambric
into rags, the puppy found himself, to his amazement,
lifted gently from earth by the scruff of his
neck and held thus, in midair, until he dropped
the handkerchief.</p>
<p>Lad then deposited him on the grass—whereupon
Wolf pounced once more upon the handkerchief,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</SPAN></span>
only to be lifted a second time, painlessly but terrifyingly,
above earth. After this was repeated
five times, a gleam of sense entered the puppy's
fluff-brain, and he trotted sulkily away, leaving the
handkerchief untouched.</p>
<p>Again, when he made a wild rush at the friendly
covey of peacock chicks, he found he had hurled
himself against an object as immobile as a stone
wall. Lad had darted in between the pup and the
chicks, opposing his own big body to the charge.
Wolf was bowled clean over by the force of the
impact, and lay for a minute on his back, the breath
knocked clean out of his bruised body.</p>
<p>It was a longer but easier task to teach him at
whom to bark and at whom not to bark. By a
sharp growl or a menacing curl of the lips, Lad
silenced the youngster's clamorous salvo when a
guest or tradesman entered The Place, whether on
foot or in a car. By his own thunderously menacing
bark he incited Wolf to a like outburst when
some peddler or tramp sought to slouch down the
drive toward the house.</p>
<p>The full tale of Wolf's education would require
many profitless pages in the telling. At times the
Mistress and the Master, watching from the sidelines,
would wonder at Lad's persistency and would
despair of his success. Yet bit by bit—and in a
surprisingly short time for so vast an undertaking—Wolf's
character was rounded into form. True,
he had the ever-goading spirits of a true puppy.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</SPAN></span>
And these spirits sometimes led him to smash even
such sections of the law as he fully understood.
But he was a thoroughbred, and the son of clever
parents. So he learned, on the whole, with gratifying
speed—far more quickly than he could have
been taught by the wisest human.</p>
<p>Nor was his education a matter of constant
drudgery. Lad varied it by taking the puppy for
long runs in the December woods and relaxed to
the extent of romping laboriously with him at
times.</p>
<p>Wolf grew to love his sire as he had never loved
Lady. For the discipline and the firm kindliness
of Lad were having their effect on his heart as
well as on his manners. They struck a far deeper
note within him than ever had Lady's alternating
affection and crossness.</p>
<p>In truth, Wolf seemed to have forgotten Lady.
But Lad had not. Every morning, the moment he
was released from the house, Lad would trot over
to Lady's empty kennel to see if by any chance she
had come back to him during the night. There was
eager hope in his big dark eyes as he hurried over
to the vacant kennel. There was dejection in every
line of his body as he turned away from his hopeless
quest.</p>
<p>Late gray autumn had emerged overnight into
white early winter. The ground of The Place lay
blanketed in snow. The lake at the foot of the
lawn was frozen solid from shore to shore. The<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</SPAN></span>
trees crouched away from the whirling north wind
as if in shame at their own black nakedness.
Nature, like the birds, had flown south, leaving the
northern world as dead and as empty and as cheerless
as a deserted bird's-nest.</p>
<p>The puppy reveled in the snow. He would roll
in it and bite it, barking all the while in an ecstasy
of excitement. His gold-and-white coat was
thicker and shaggier now, to ward off the stinging
cold. And the snow and the roaring winds were
his playfellows rather than his foes.</p>
<p>Most of all, the hard-frozen lake fascinated him.
Earlier, when Lad had taught him to swim, Wolf
had at first shrunk back from the chilly black water.
Now, to his astonishment, he could run on that
water as easily—if somewhat sprawlingly—as on
land. It was a miracle he never tired of testing.
He spent half his time on the ice, despite an occasional
hard tumble or involuntary slide.</p>
<p>Once and once only—in all her six-week absence
and in his own six-week loneliness—had Lad discovered
anything to remind him of his lost mate;
and that discovery caused him for the first time
in his blameless life to break the most sacred of
The Place's simple Laws—the inviolable Guest-Law.</p>
<p>It was on a day in late November. A runabout
came down the drive to the front door of the
house. In it rode the vet' who had taken Lady
away. He had stopped for a moment on his way<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</SPAN></span>
to Paterson, to report as to Lady's progress at his
dog-hospital.</p>
<p>Lad was in the living-room at the time. As a
maid answered the summons at the door, he walked
hospitably forward to greet the unknown guest.
The vet' stepped into the room by one door as the
Master entered it by the other—which was lucky
for the vet'.</p>
<p>Lad took one look at the man who had stolen
Lady. Then, without a sound or other sign of
warning, he launched his mighty bulk straight at
the vet's throat.</p>
<p>Accustomed though he was to the ways of dogs,
the vet' had barely time to brace himself and to
throw one arm in front of his throat. And then
Lad's eighty pounds smote him on the chest, and
Lad's powerful jaws closed viselike on the forearm
that guarded the man's throat. Deep into the
thick ulster the white teeth clove their way—through
ulster-sleeve and undercoat sleeve and the
sleeves of a linen shirt and of flannels—clear
through to the flesh of the forearm.</p>
<p>"<i>Lad!</i>" shouted the Master, springing forward.</p>
<p>In obedience to the sharp command, Lad loosed
his grip and dropped to the floor—where he stood
quivering with leashed fury.</p>
<p>Through the rage-mists that swirled over his
brain, he knew he had broken the Law. He had
never merited punishment. He did not fear it.
But the Master's tone of fierce disapproval cut the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</SPAN></span>
sensitive dog soul more painfully than any scourge
could have cut his body.</p>
<p>"Lad!" cried the Master again, in rebuking
amazement.</p>
<p>The dog turned, walked slowly over to the Master
and lay down at his feet. The Master, without
another word, opened the front door and pointed
outward. Lad rose and slunk out. He had been
ordered from the house, and in a stranger's
presence!</p>
<p>"He thinks I'm responsible for his losing Lady,"
said the vet', looking ruefully at his torn sleeve.
"That's why he went for me. I don't blame the
dog. Don't lick him."</p>
<p>"I'm not going to lick him," growled the Master.
"I'd as soon thrash a woman. Besides, I've just
punished him worse than if I'd taken an ax-handle
to him. Send me a bill for your coat."</p>
<p>In late December came a thaw—a freak thaw
that changed the white ground to brown mud and
rotted the smooth surface of the lake-ice to gray
slush. All day and all night the trees and the eaves
sent forth a dreary <i>drip-drip-drip</i>. It was the traditional
January Thaw—set forward a month.</p>
<p>On the third and last morning of the thaw Wolf
galloped down to the lake as usual. Lad jogged
along at his side. As they reached the margin,
Lad sniffed and drew back. His weird sixth sense
somehow told him—as it tells an elephant—that
there was danger ahead.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>Wolf, however, was at the stage of extreme
youth when neither dogs nor humans are bothered
by premonitions. Ahead of him stretched the huge
sheet of ice whereon he loved to gambol. Straightway
he frisked out upon it.</p>
<p>A rough growl of warning from Lad made him
look back, but the lure of the ice was stronger than
the call of duty.</p>
<p>The current, at this point of the lake, twisted
sharply landward in a half-circle. Thus, for a
few yards out, the rotting ice was still thick, but
where the current ran, it was thin, and as soggy
as wet blotting-paper—as Wolf speedily discovered.</p>
<p>He bounded on the thinner ice driving his hind
claws into the slushy surface for his second leap.
He was dismayed to find that the ice collapsed
under the pounding feet. There was a dull, sloppy
sound. A ten-foot ice-cake broke off from the
main sheet; breaking at once into a dozen smaller
cakes; and Wolf disappeared, tail first, into the
swift-running water beneath.</p>
<p>To the surface he came, at the outer edge of the
hole. He was mad, clear through, at the prank
his beloved lake had played on him. He struck
out for shore. On the landward side of the opening
his forefeet clawed helplessly at the unbroken
ledge of ice. He had not the strength or the wit
to crawl upon it and make his way to land. The
bitter chill of the water was already paralyzing
him. The strong current was tugging at his hind<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</SPAN></span>quarters.
Anger gave way to panic. The puppy
wasted much of his remaining strength by lifting
up his voice in ear-splitting howls.</p>
<p>The Mistress and the Master, motoring into the
drive from the highway nearly a quarter-mile distant,
heard the racket. The lake was plainly visible
to them through the bare trees, even at that distance,
and they took in the impending tragedy at a
glance. They jumped out of the car and set off
at a run to the water-edge. The way was long and
the ground was heavy with mud. They could not
hope to reach the lake before the puppy's strength
should fail.</p>
<p>But Lad was already there. At Wolf's first cry,
Lad sprang out on the ice that heaved and chucked
and cracked under his greater weight. His rush carried
him to the very edge of the hole, and there,
leaning forward and bracing all four of his absurdly
tiny white paws, he sought to catch the
puppy by the neck and lift him to safety. But
before his rescuing jaws could close on Wolf's fur,
the decayed ice gave way beneath his weight, and
the ten-foot hole was widened by another twenty
feet of water.</p>
<p>Down went Lad with a crash, and up he came,
in almost no time, a few feet away from where
Wolf floundered helplessly among the chunks of
drifting ice. The breaking off of the shoreward
mass of ice, under Lad's pressure, had left the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</SPAN></span>
puppy with no foothold at all. It had ducked him
and had robbed him even of the chance to howl.</p>
<p>His mouth and throat full of water, Wolf
strangled and splashed in a delirium of terror. Lad
struck out for him, butting aside the impending ice-chunks
with his great shoulders, and swimming
with a rush that lifted a third of his tawny body
out of water. His jaws gripped Wolf by the
middle of the back, and he swam thus with him
toward shore. At the edge of the shoreward ice
he gave a heave which called on every numbing
muscle of the huge frame, and which—in spite of
the burden he held—again lifted his head and
shoulders high above water.</p>
<p>He thus flung Wolf's body halfway up on the
ledge of ice. The puppy's flying forepaws chanced
to strike the ice-surface. His sharp claws bit into
its soft upper crust. With a frantic wriggle he
was out of the water and on top of this thicker
stratum of shore-ice, and in a second he had regained
shore and was careering wildly up the lawn
toward the greater safety of his kennel.</p>
<p>Yet, halfway in his flight, courage returned to
the sopping-wet baby. He halted, turned about
and, with a volley of falsetto barks, challenged the
offending water to come ashore and fight fair.</p>
<p>As Wolf's forepaws had gripped the ice, he had
further aided his climb to safety by thrusting
downward with his hind legs. Both his hind paws<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</SPAN></span>
had struck Lad's head, their thrust had driven Lad
clean under water. There the current caught him.</p>
<p>When Lad came up, it was not to the surface but
under the ice, some yards below. The top of his
head struck stunningly against the underpart of
the ice-sheet.</p>
<p>A lesser dog would then and there have given
up the struggle, or else would have thrashed about
futilely until he drowned. Lad, perhaps on instinct,
perhaps on reason, struck out toward the
light—the spot where the great hole had let in
sunshine through the gray ice-sheet.</p>
<p>The average dog is not trained to swim under
water. To this day, it is a mystery how Lad had
the sense to hold his breath. He fought his way
on, inch by inch, against the current, beneath the
scratching rough under-surface of the ice—always
toward the light. And just as his lungs must have
been ready to burst, he reached the open space.</p>
<p>Sputtering and panting, Lad made for shore.
Presently he reached the ice-ledge that lay between
him and the bank. He reached it just as the
Master, squirming along, face downward and at
full length, began to work his way out over the
swaying shore-ice toward him.</p>
<p>Twice the big dog raised himself almost to the
top of the ledge. Once the ice broke under his
weight, dousing him. The second time he got his
fore-quarters well over the top of the ledge, and<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</SPAN></span>
he was struggling upward with all his tired body
when the Master's hand gripped his soaked ruff.</p>
<p>With this new help, Lad made a final struggle—a
struggle that laid him gasping but safe on the
slushy surface of the thicker ice. Backward over
the few yards that still separated them from land
he and the Master crawled to the bank.</p>
<p>Lad was staggering as he started forward to
greet the Mistress, and his eyes were still dim and
bloodshot from his fearful ordeal. Midway in his
progress toward the Mistress another dog barred
his path—a dog that fell upon him in an ecstasy
of delighted welcome.</p>
<p>Lad cleared his water-logged nostrils for a
growl of protest. He had surely done quite enough
for Wolf this day, without the puppy's trying to
rob him now of the Mistress' caress. He was tired,
and he was dizzy; and he wanted such petting and
comfort and praise as only the worshipped Mistress
could give.</p>
<p>Impatience at the puppy's interference cleared the
haze a little from Lad's brain and eyes. He halted
in his shaky walk and stared, dumfounded. This
dog which greeted him so rapturously was not
Wolf. It was—why, it was—Lady! Oh, it was
<i>Lady!</i></p>
<p>"We've just brought her back to you, old friend,"
the Master was telling him. "We went over for
her in the car this morning. She's all well again,
and——"</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>But Lad did not hear. All he realized—all he
wanted to realize—was that his mate was ecstatically
nipping one of his ears to make him romp
with her.</p>
<p>It was a sharp nip; and it hurt like the very
mischief.</p>
<p>Lad loved to have it hurt.</p>
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