Lad: A Dog

Table of Contents

 

 

There are two things—and perhaps only two things—of which the best type of thoroughbred collie is abjectly afraid and from which he will run for his life. One is a mad dog. The other is a poisonous snake.

And when Lad spotted the copperhead not three feet away from him, with only Baby's fragile body as a barrier between them, he was tremulously, quakingly,
sickly
afraid.

Then the child's gaze fell on the snake, and Baby shrank back against Lad. The motion jerked the rug's fringe, disturbing the copperhead.

The snake coiled and drew back its three-cornered head. The child caught up a picture book and flung it at the serpent. Back went the triangular head and then it flashed forward, striking for the child's thin knee.

Then Baby was knocked flat by a mighty and hairy shape that lunged across towards her foe.

And the deadly copperhead's fangs sank deep into Lad's nose....

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First published in the United States of America by E. P. Dutton & Company, 1919 Published in Puffin Books, 1993

 

20

Copyright © E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1919, 1959 Copyright renewed E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1947 Copyright renewed E. P. Dutton, a division of NAL Penguin Inc., 1987

All rights reserved

 

LIBRARY Of CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBUCATION DATA

 

Terhune, Albert Payson, 1872-1942.
Lad, a dog / by Albert Payson Terhune;
illustrated by Sam Savitt. p. cm.
“First published in the United States of America by E.P. Dutton ... 1919”—T.p. verso.

Summary: Recounts the heroic and adventurous life of a thoroughbred
collie who was devoted to his Sunnybank Master and Mistress.

eISBN : 978-1-101-14246-2

 

1. Dogs—Juvenile fiction. [1. Dogs-Fiction.]

1. Savitt, Sam, ill. II. Title.

PZ10.3.T273Lad 1993

[Fic}—dc20 93-9365 CIP AC

 

LADY WAS AS MUCH A PART OF LAD'S EVERYDAY HAPPINESS as the sunshine itself. She seemed to him quite as perfect, and as gloriously indispensable. He could no more have imagined a Ladyless life than a sunless life. It had never occurred to him to suspect that Lady could be any less devoted than he—until Knave came to The Place.

Lad was an eighty-pound collie, thoroughbred in spirit as well as in blood. He had the benign dignity that was a heritage from endless generations of high-strain ancestors. He had, too, the gay courage of a d'Artagnan, and an uncanny wisdom. Also—who could doubt it, after a look into his mournful brown eyes—he had a Soul.

His shaggy coat, set off by the snowy ruff and chest, was like orange-flecked mahogany. His absurdly tiny forepaws—in which he took inordinate pride—were silver white.

Three years earlier, when Lad was in his first prime (before the mighty chest and shoulders had filled out and the tawny coat had waxed so shaggy), Lady had been brought to The Place. She had been brought in the Master's overcoat pocket, rolled up into a fuzzy gold-gray ball of softness no bigger than a half-grown kitten.

The Master had fished the month-old puppy out of the cavern of his pocket and set her down, asprawl and shivering and squealing, on the veranda floor. Lad had walked cautiously across the veranda, sniffed inquiry at the blinking pygmy who gallantly essayed to growl defiance up at the huge welcomer-and from that first moment he had taken her under his protection.

First it had been the natural impulse of the thoroughbred —brute or human—to guard the helpless. Then, as the shapeless yellow baby grew into a slenderly graceful collie, his guardianship changed to stark adoration. He was Lady's life slave.

And she bullied him unmercifully—bossed the gentle giant in a shameful manner, crowding him from the warmest spot by the fire, brazenly yet daintily snatching from between his jaws the choicest bone of their joint dinner, hectoring her dignified victim into lawn romps in hot weather when he would far rather have drowsed under the lakeside trees.

Her vagaries, her teasing, her occasional little flurries of temper, were borne by Lad not meekly, but joyously. All she did was, in his eyes, perfect. And Lady graciously allowed herself to be idolized, for she was marvelously human in some ways. Lad, a thoroughbred descended from a hundred generations of thoroughbreds, was less human and more disinterested.

Life at The Place was wondrous pleasant for both the dogs. There were thick woods to roam in, side by side; there were squirrels to chase and rabbits to trail, (Yes, and if the squirrels had played fair and had not resorted to unsportsmanly tactics by climbing trees when close pressed, there would doubtless have been squirrels to catch as well as to chase. As for the rabbits, they were easier to overtake. And Lady got the lion's share of all such morsels.)

There was the ice-cool lake to plunge into for a swim or a wallow, after a run in the dust and July heat. There was a deliciously comfortable old rug in front of the living room's open fire whereon to lie, shoulder to shoulder, on the nights when the wind screamed through bare trees and the snow scratched hungrily at the panes.

Best of all, to them both, there were the Master and the Mistress; especially the Mistress.

Any man with money to make the purchase may become a dog's
owner.
But no man—spend he ever so much coin and food and tact in the effort—may become a dog's
Master
without the consent of the dog. Do you get the difference? And he whom a dog once unreservedly accepts as Master is forever that dog's God.

To both Lad and Lady, from the first, the man who bought them was not the mere owner but the absolute Master. To them he was the unquestioned lord of life and death, the hearer and answerer, the Eternal Law; his the voice that must be obeyed, whatever the command.

From earliest puppyhood, both Lad and Lady had been brought up within the Law. As far back as they could remember, they had known and obeyed The Place's simple code.

For example: All animals of the woods might lawfully be chased; but the Mistress' prize chickens and the other little folk of The Place must be ignored no matter how hungry or how playful a collie might chance to be. A human, walking openly or riding down the drive into The Place by daylight, must not be barked at except by way of friendly announcement. But anyone entering the grounds from other ingress than the drive, or anyone walking furtively or with a tramp slouch, must be attacked at sight.

Also, the interior of the house was sacrosanct. It was a place for perfect behavior. No rug must be scratched, nothing gnawed or played with. In fact, Lady's one whipping had followed a puppy-frolic effort of hers to “worry” the huge stuffed bald eagle that stood on a papier-mâché stump in the Master's study, just off the big living room where the fireplace was.

That eagle, shot by himself as it raided the flock of prize chickens, was the delight of the Master's heart. And at Lady's attempt on it, he had taught her a lesson that made her cringe for weeks thereafter at bare sight of the dog whip. To this day, she would never walk past the eagle without making the widest possible detour around it.