Lad: A Dog (12 page)

The Master came back with a plumply tipped attendant. Lad was conducted through a babel of yapping and snapping thoroughbreds of all breeds, to a section at the Garden's northeast corner, above which, in large black letters on a white sign, was inscribed “COLLIES.” Here his conductors stopped before a compartment numbered “658.”

“Up, Laddie!” said the Mistress, touching the straw-carpeted bench.

Usually, at this command, Lad was wont to spring to the indicated height—whether car floor or table top—with the lightness of a cat. Now, one foot after another, he very slowly climbed into the compartment he was already beginning to detest—the cell which was planned to be his only resting spot for four interminable days. There he, who had never been tied, was ignominiously chained as though he were a runaway puppy. The insult bit to the depths of his sore soul. He curled down in the straw.

The Mistress made him as comfortable as she could. She set before him the breakfast she had brought and told the attendant to bring him some water.

The Master, meantime, had met a collie man whom he knew, and in company with this acquaintance he was walking along the collie section examining the dogs tied there. A dozen times had the Master visited dog shows; but now that Lad was on exhibition, he studied the other collies with new eyes.

“Look!” he said boastfully to his companion, pausing before a bench whereon were chained a half-dozen dogs from a single illustrious kennel. “These fellows aren't in it with old Lad. See—their noses are tapered like toothpicks, and the span of their heads, between the ears, isn't as wide as my palm; and their eyes are little and they slant like a China-man's; and their bodies are as curved as a greyhound's. Compared with Lad, some of them are freaks. That's all they are, just freaks—not all of them, of course, but a lot of them.”

“That's the idea nowadays,” laughed the collie man patronizingly. “The up-to-date collie—this year's style, at least —is bred with a borzoi (wolfhound) head and with graceful, small bones. What's the use of his having brain and scenting power? He's used for exhibition or kept as a pet nowadays—not to herd sheep. Long nose, narrow head—”

“But Lad once tracked my footsteps two miles through a snowstorm,” bragged the Master; “and again on a road where fifty people had walked since I had; and he understands the meaning of every simple word. He—”

“Yes?” said the collie man, quite unimpressed. “Very interesting—but not useful in a show. Some of the big exhibitors still care for sense in their dogs, and they make companions of them—Eileen Moretta, for instance, and Fred Leighton and one or two more; but I find most of the rest are just out for the prizes. Let's have a look at your dog. Where is he?”

On the way down the alley toward Cell 658 they met the worried Mistress.

“Lad won't eat a thing,” she reported, “and he wouldn't eat before we left home this morning, either. He drinks plenty of water, but he won't eat. I'm afraid he's sick.”

“They hardly ever eat at a show,” the collie man consoled her, “hardly a mouthful—most of the high-strung ones, but they drink quarts of water. This is your dog, hey?” he broke off, pausing at 658. “H'm!”

He stood, legs apart, hands behind his back, gazing down at Lad. The dog was lying, head between paws, as before. He did not so much as glance up at the stranger, but his great wistful eyes roved from the Mistress to the Master and back again. In all this horrible place they two alone were his salvation.

“H‘m!” repeated the collie man thoughtfully. “Eyes too big and not enough slanted. Head too thick for length of nose. Ears too far apart. Eyes too far apart, too. Not enough ‘terrier expression' in them. Too much bone, too much bulk. Wonderful coat, though—glorious coat! Best coat I've seen this five years. Great brush, too! What's he entered for? Novice, hey? May get a third with him at that. He's the true type—but old-fashioned. I'm afraid he's too old-fashioned for such fast company as he's in. Still, you never can tell. Only it's a pity he isn't a little more—”

“I wouldn't have him one bit different in any way!” flashed the Mistress. “He's perfect as he is. You can't see that, though, because he isn't himself now. I've never seen him so crushed and woebegone. I wish we had never brought him here.”

“You can't blame him,” said the collie man philosophically. “Why, just suppose
you
were brought to a strange place like this and chained into a cage and were left there four days and nights while hundreds of other prisoners kept screaming and shouting and crying at the top of their lungs every minute of the time! And suppose about a hundred thousand people kept jostling past your cage night and day, rubbering at you and pointing at you and trying to feel your ears and mouth, and chirping at you to shake hands, would
you
feel very hungry or very chipper? A four-day show is the most fearful thing a high-strung dog can go through—next to vivisection. A little one-day show, for about eight hours, is no special ordeal, especially if the dog's Master stays near him all the time; but a four-day show is—is Sheol! I wonder the S.P.C.A. doesn't do something to make it easier.”

“If I'd known—if we'd known—” began the Mistress.

“Most of these folks know!” returned the collie man. “They do it year after year. There's a mighty strong lure in a bit of ribbon. Why, look what an exhibitor will do for it! He'll risk his dog's health and make his dog's life a horror. He'll ship him a thousand miles in a tight crate from show to show. (Some dogs die under the strain of so many journeys.) And he'll pay five dollars for every class the dog's entered in. Some exhibitors enter a single dog in five or six classes. The Association charges one dollar admission to the show. Crowds of people pay the price to come in. The exhibitor gets none of the gate money. All he gets for his five dollars or his twenty-five dollars is an off chance at a measly scrap of colored silk worth maybe four cents. That, and the same off chance at a tiny cash prize that doesn't come anywhere near to paying his expenses. Yet, for all, it's the straightest sport on earth. Not an atom of graft in it, and seldom any profit.... So long! I wish you folks luck with 658.”

He strolled on. The Mistress was winking very fast and was bending over Lad, petting him and whispering to him. The Master looked in curiosity at a kennel man who was holding down a nearby collie while a second man was trimming the scared dog's feet and fetlocks with a pair of curved shears; and now the Master noted that nearly every dog but Lad was thus clipped as to ankle.

At an adjoining cell a woman was sifting almost a pound of talcum powder into her dog's fur to make the coat fluffier. Elsewhere similar weird preparations were in progress. And Lad's only preparation had been baths and brushing! The Master began to feel like a fool.

People all along the collie line presently began to brush dogs (smoothing the fur the wrong way to fluff it) and to put other finishing touches on the poor beasts' make-up. The collie man strolled back to 658.

“The Novice class in collies is going to be called presently,” he told the Mistress. “Where's your exhibition leash and choke collar? I'll help you put them on.”

“Why, we've only this chain,” said the Mistress. “We bought it for Lad yesterday, and this is his regular collar-though he never has had to wear it. Do we have to have another kind?”

“You don't have to unless you want to,” said the collie man, “but it's best—especially, the choke collar. You see, when exhibitors go into the ring, they hold their dogs by the leash close to the neck. And if their dogs have choke collars, why, then they've got to hold their heads high when the leash is pulled. They've got to, to keep from strangling. It gives them a fine, proud carriage of the head, that counts a lot with some judges. All dog photos are taken that way. Then the leash is blotted out of the negative. Makes the dog look showy, too—keeps him from slumping. Can't slump much when you're trying not to choke, you know.”

“It's horrible!
Horrible!”
shuddered the Mistress. “I wouldn't put such a thing on Lad for all the prizes on earth. When I read Davis' wonderful Bar
Sinister
story, I thought dog shows were a real treat to dogs. I see, now, they're—”

“Your class is called!” interrupted the collie man. “Keep his head high, keep him moving as showily as you can. Lead him close to you with the chain as short as possible. Don't be scared if any of the other dogs in the ring happen to fly at him. The attendants will look out for all that. Good luck.”

Down the aisle and to the wired gate of the northeastern ring the unhappy Mistress piloted the unhappier Lad. The big dog gravely kept beside her, regardless of other collies moving in the same direction. The Garden had begun to fill with visitors, and the ring was surrounded with interested “rail-birds.” The collie classes, as usual, were among those to be judged on the first day of the four.

Through the gate into the ring the Mistress piloted Lad. Six other Novice dogs were already there. Beautiful creatures they were, and all but one were led by kennel men. At the table, behind a ledger flanked by piles of multicolored ribbons, sat the clerk. Beside the platform stood a wizened and elderly little man in tweeds. He was McGilead, who had been chosen as judge for the collie division. He was a Scot, and he was also a man with stubborn opinions of his own as to dogs.

Around the ring, at the judge's order, the Novice collies were paraded. Most of them stepped high and fast and carried their heads proudly aloft—the thin choke collars cutting deep into their furry necks. One entered was a harumscarum puppy who writhed and bit and whirled about in ecstasy of terror.

Lad moved solemnly along at the Mistress' side. He did not pant or curvet or look showy. He was miserable and every line of his splendid body showed his misery. The Mistress, too, glancing at the more spectacular dogs, wanted to cry—not because she was about to lose, but because Lad was about to lose. Her heart ached for him. Again she blamed herself bitterly for bringing him here.

McGilead, hands in pockets, stood sucking at an empty brier pipe, and scanning the parade that circled around him. Presently he stepped up to the Mistress, checked her as she filed past him, and said to her with a sort of sorrowful kindness :

“Please take your dog over to the far end of the ring. Take him into the comer where he won't be in my way while I am judging.”

Yes, he spoke courteously enough, but the Mistress would rather have had him hit her across the face. Meekly she obeyed his command. Across the ring, to the very farthest comer, she went—poor beautiful Lad beside her, disgraced, weeded out of the competition at the very start. There, far out of the contest, she stood, a drooping little figure, feeling as though everyone was sneering at her dear dog's disgrace.

Lad seemed to sense her sorrow. For, as he stood beside her, head and tail low, he whined softly and licked her hand as if in encouragement. She ran her fingers along his silky head. Then, to keep from crying, she watched the other contestants.

No longer were these parading. One at a time and then in twos, the judge was standing them on the platform. He looked at their teeth. He pressed their heads between his hands. He “hefted” their hips. He ran his fingers through their coats. He pressed his palm upward against their underbodies. He subjected them to a score of such annoyances, but he did it all with a quick and sure touch that not even the crankiest of them could resent.

Then he stepped back and studied the quartet. After that he seemed to remember Lad's presence, and, as though by way of earning his fee, he slouched across the ring to where the forlorn Mistress was petting her dear disgraced dog.

Lazily, perfunctorily, the judge ran his hand over Lad, with absolutely none of the thoroughness that had marked his inspection of the other dogs. Apparently there was no need to look for the finer points in a disqualified collie. The sketchy examination did not last three seconds. At its end the judge jotted down a number on a pad he held. Then he laid one hand heavily on Lad's head and curtly thrust out his other hand at the Mistress.

“Can I take him away now?” she asked, still stroking Lad's fur.

“Yes,” rasped the judge, “and take this along with him.”

In his outstretched hand fluttered a little bunch of silk—dark blue, with gold lettering on it.

The blue ribbon! First prize in the Novice class! And this grouchy little judge was awarding it—to
Lad!

The Mistress looked very hard at the bit of blue and gold in her fingers. She saw it through a queer mist. Then, as she stooped to fasten it to Lad's collar, she furtively kissed the tiny white spot on the top of his head.

“It's something like the
Bar Sinister
victory after all!” she exclaimed joyously as she rejoined the delighted Master at the ring gate. “But, oh, it was terrible for a minute or two, wasn't it?”

Now, Angus McGilead, Esq. (late of Linlithgow, Scot land), had a knowledge of collies such as is granted to few men, and this very fact made him a wretchedly bad dog-show judge, as the Kennel Club, which—on the strength of his fame—had engaged his services for this single occasion, speedily learned. The greatest lawyer makes often the worst judge. Legal annals prove this; and the same thing applies to dog experts. They are sane rather than judicial.

McGilead had scant patience with the ultramodern, inbred and greyhoundlike collies which had so utterly departed from their ancestral standards. At one glimpse he had recognized Lad as a dog after his own heart—a dog that brought back to him the murk and magic of the Highland moors.

He had noted the deep chest, the mighty forequarters, the tiny white paws, the incredible wealth of outer- and undercoat, the brush, the grand head, and the soul in the eyes. This was such a dog as McGilead's shepherd ancestors had admitted as an honored equal, at hearth and board—such a dog, for brain and brawn and beauty, as a Highland master would no sooner sell than he would sell his own child.