CHAPTER V: A SECRET ADVENTURE
“The only place where two can live as cheap as one,” ruminated old Joel Fenno, pointing with his chewed pipestem, “is right yonder.”
He indicated Treve, lounging on the puncheon floor in front of the group. Treve had awakened with some abruptness from a snooze and was scratching busily; driving his right hindfoot with great vigor and speed into his furry body in the general direction of the short ribs. On the collie’s wontedly wise face was the grin of idiotic vacuity which goes with flea-scratching.
He was not looking his best or gracefulest or most sagacious, at the moment. Joel Fenno was sharply aware of his chum’s absurd aspect. For the benefit of the ranch guest, he sought to forestall any unfavorable comment on the dog.
“Yep,” he resumed, as Davids, the guest, eyed him in mild curiosity, “the only two, that can live as cheap as one, is not a spouse an’ a spousess; but a flea an’ a dog.”
Davids smiled politely. Royce Mack had read this joke aloud to his partner, from a year-old copy of The Country Gentleman, a month before. He forbore to encourage the old fellow’s rare trip into the realms of humor, now, by so much as a grin. But Davids followed up his own civil smile by saying:
“I’ve been looking at that collie of yours, off and on, ever since I got here. He’s a beauty. How’s he bred?”
“They say there’s beautiful things an’ useful things,” answered Fenno, surlily. “An’ I’ve allus found the beautiful things is no use and the useful things ain’t wuth lookin’ at. Yep, Treve must be ‘a beauty,’ all right, all right. For he’s no use to anybody. Jes’ eats and snores and loafs; an’ hunts fleas instead of sheep; an’ tries to make busy folks romp with him. Likewise he succeeds in making ’em do it; so far as Royce, here, is concerned. The work hours my partner wastes in playin’ and trampin’ an’ skylarkin’ with that measly cur—”
“How’s he bred?” repeated Davids, to stem the tide of Joel’s chronic complaints against Mack and the collie.
“Bred?” echoed Fenno. “Who? Royce? All fired ill bred, when he has a mind to be. An’ that’s about all the time. He—”
“I mean the collie. What is it you call him? Treve?”
“Treve? Bred? I don’t—”
“He means,” spoke up Royce Mack, from boyhood memories of pedigreed animals, in the East, “he means, who were Treve’s ancestors? We don’t know, Davids. A queer sort of English tourist hobo came here and sold him to us. The man absconded with all the cash in Joel’s vest and left the pup behind. As far as we know, Treve’s pedigree began on the ranch, here. Why?”
“Because,” said Davids, “he’s a high-bred dog. What’s more, he’s the true show-type of collie. He’s good enough to win a blue ribbon at any bench show in America. The hobo, most likely, stole him. Such dogs aren’t left to roam at will.”
Treve had ceased to pursue the wicked flea; or else his frantic clawing had dislodged the pest. For, with a lazy sigh, he resumed his nap on the cool puncheon. Stretched out there on his left side, silhouetted against the floor, he presented a picture to stir the heart of any collie-judge. The classic head might have been chiseled by a master-hand. The frame was mighty, yet as graceful as any greyhound’s. The coat was unbelievably heavy and it shone like burnished copper.
Joel eyed the couchant dog with outward sourness of visage; but with inward pride that Treve should have won such praise from this Eastern engineer who had halted at the Dos Hermanos ranch for the night. It was part of Fenno’s life-creed to maintain a continuous and universal grouchy disapproval of everything and everybody.
“Just what I’ve always said!” exulted Mack, at Davids’ endorsement of his pet. “I’ve always told Joel the dog was good enough to go to any A. K. C. show. He’s—”
“Yep!” snarled Fenno, “he’d make a show of us, all right. Why, most prob’ly they’d laugh him out of the place. Unless it was a flea-chasin’ match. Then he might—”
“If I were you,” put in Davids, addressing Mack and ignoring the peevish oldster, “I’d enter him for the big Dos Hermanos Show, up at La Cerra, next month. I was reading about it, on the way here. Quite a ‘spread’ on it in the Sunday Clarion. I’ll leave my copy of it with you, if you’d like to glance over it. They’re trying for a record entry. A big English judge is going to handle collies and one or two sporting breeds. On another page of the paper is a sort of primer for novice exhibitors; telling them how to enter their dogs for the show, whom to write to for premium lists and blanks, and all that, and how to make out the blanks. A lot of people don’t understand how to do it. Take my tip and enter Treve at La Cerra.”
“Huh!” snorted Joel, loudly.
“It’s only about a hundred miles from here,” pursued Davids. “You can make most of the trip by train; and get there in less than a day. Think it over. It’d be a fine thing to bring Treve home with a bunch of blue ribbons and maybe a big silver cup; and have all the papers printing his name. It’s as much of a triumph for a dog to win first prizes at such a show as for a man to be elected to Congress.”
Another derisive snort from Joel Fenno interrupted his homily and made Royce frown apologetically at the annoyed guest.
Now there was harrowing ridicule in Fenno’s snort. But in the heart of Fenno an astonishing impulse had swirled into life. The snort was designed to frighten this yearning impulse to death. It could not.
Whenever any one looked or spoke approvingly of Treve, old Fenno had something of the thrill that might come to a man at praise of a cherished brother. While he girded at this feeling, as babyishly absurd, he could not check it. He loved the big collie; and he was inordinately proud of him. That others should admire Treve seemed in a way a sort of backhanded compliment to himself—to Joel who had never in his life been admired or complimented.
And now, at Davids’ careless words, a glowing picture leaped into Fenno’s dazed mental vision—a picture of cheering throngs at the La Cerra show, all admiring and praising his victorious Treve. This and a crazy desire to take the collie there.
As if in contempt for his companions’ chatter about a mere dog, Joel got up, presently, and sauntered into the house. He strolled through the room he and Royce Mack had assigned to Davids for the night. There on the floor, alongside the engineer’s kitbag, lay the crumpled copy of the Clarion. Furtively, Joel pouched it and bore it to his own cubbyhole room. There, that night, long after the others were asleep, he crouched on his bunk and read and reread and sought to master the many bewildering bits of information as to the show and as to the mode of conducting dogshows in general.
Much was as Greek to him; until he figured it out with painful patience. Twice he flung the paper on the floor with a grunt of disgust. But ever that glowing vision of his chum’s triumphs goaded him on. Through the silent hours he continued to wrestle with the details; as simplified for the benefit of novices.
Once, during his reading, he looked up guiltily. In the doorway of his little room stood Treve, gravely inspecting him. The soft sound of rustled paper had roused the collie from his nightly slumber alongside Royce’s bunk. He had set forth to investigate. As Joel peered blinkingly toward him, Treve wagged his plumed tail and came mincing forward; thrusting his classic muzzle into the hand which Fenno instinctively stretched forth.
“Trevy,” whispered the old man, “how’d you like to hear all them folks clappin’ you an’ sayin’ what a grand dog you are? Hey? Think it over, Trevy. There needn’t anybody know, but you and me, Trevy. Royce has got to go to Omaha, with them sheep, next month. He’ll be gone for two days before this show-date an’ for a couple of days after it. Nobody’ll ever know, Trevy. I’ll tell the hands I’m goin’ to run up to Santa Clara to see about a bunch of merinos an’ that I’m totin’ you along to herd ’em. I—Oh, Trevy, we’re a pair of old fools, you an’ me! I never thought I’d be such a dodo-bird as to waste time an’ cash on a dog. I’m gettin’ in my dotage. Granther Hardin used to think he was a postage stamp, when he got old, Trevy. An’ he used to putter around, lookin’ for a env’lope big enough to stick himself to. They put him in a foolish house. I reckon I’m qualifyin’ for one, all right, all right. But—you’re sure a grand dog, Trevy!”
The modernized old Spanish city of La Cerra, at the westerly end of Dos Hermanos County, had come to life in a rackety way, as it did once a year when the annual three-day show of the Dos Hermanos Kennel Association brought to town thoroughbred dogs and humans of all shades of breeding.
It was to this show, two years earlier, that Fraser Colt had been taking his collie pup when the latter’s clash with a police dog in the baggage car had led to the temporary wrecking of one of his tulip ears; and when his resentment of Colt’s kick had led his owner to hurl him bodily out through the car’s open side door.
The memory of his own treatment at the hands—and boot toe—of the gross brute who had bought him on speculation and who had been taking him showward, rankled ever in the far-back recesses of Treve’s brain. Which is the way of a collie. The harsh memory had been glozed over by two years of friendly treatment. Treve himself was not aware it existed. But it was there, none the less.
Joel Fenno, daily, had been more and more ashamed of his queer impulse to take Treve to the show. But, daily, also, the show-virus had infected him, more and more. Any one who has shown dogs will understand. Ever he visualized a more and more gorgeous triumph for his secret chum.
The first twelve miles of the trip were made in the Dos Hermanos ranch’s wheezy little car—the same in which Joel had piloted his partner to Santa Carlotta, the day before; when Royce set forth on his Omaha journey. Treve sat proudly beside the ever-more nervous Fenno, on the car’s one shabby seat.
The dog was delighted at the jaunt, as is nearly every collie who is taken by his master on an outing. Instinctively, too, he felt Joel’s grouchily suppressed thrill of excitement, and responded to it with a quick gayety. Apparently this was some dazzlingly jolly adventure he and his friend were embarking on.
At Santa Carlotta they took the spur line train for an eighty-mile run. Sixty of these eighty miles were across dreary greenish gray desert, flower-splashed, yet as dismal as the Mojave itself;—rolling miles of sick alkaline sand, skunk-infected, habitat of rattlesnakes—a waste strewn with sagebrush and Joshua trees. A dead and fearsome stretch; steel-hard of outline, shrilly vivid of coloring.
Then came the steep upgrade, over an elephant-backed mountain’s swordcut pass; and a pitch down into the fertile valley whose nearest city was La Cerra.
Joel did not crate his dog; but sat on a trunk in the baggage car, with the collie curled up comfortably at his feet. The train-ride woke dim and not wholly pleasing memories in Treve. Something unpleasant had befallen him on such a ride. Once or twice he glanced up worriedly at the old man; only to be reassured by an awkward pat on the head or a grumbled word of friendliness.
It was so, too, after they had debarked and had found their way to the armory where the dogshow was in progress. As they entered the vast barnlike building, Treve’s ears and nostrils were assailed in a way that made him halt abruptly in his stately advance at Fenno’s side.
To him gushed the multiple plangent racket of hundreds of dogs barking in hundreds of keys. To a dog, even more than to a dogman, each bark carries its own translation. Treve read excitement in many of these barks that now yammered about his sensitive ears. In more, he read terror and loneliness and worried apprehension.
Also, the myriad blended odors of fellow-dogs rushed in upon him, dazing his senses with their incredible volume. It is through ears and nostrils that a dog receives his strongest impressions. And Treve was receiving more than he could assimilate.
His troubled, deepset eyes scanned Joel Fenno’s gnarled face for reassurance. The oldster was wellnigh as confused and scared as his dog. He was a dweller in the lonely places. Crowds confused and frightened him. Yet he rallied enough to pass his hand comfortingly over the silken head of the collie and to mutter something by way of encouragement. Then man and dog marched valiantly down the intersecting aisles of barking or yelling or silently unhappy exhibits, to the section labeled “Collies.”
There, Joel motioned Treve to jump up on the straw-littered bench that bore his number. He tied him; and tipped a lounging boy to get a panful of fresh water. The collie drank feverishly; but would touch none of the tempting meat scraps which Fenno produced from a greasy newspaper parcel for his benefit.
The great young dog did not cringe or shiver, amid this bedlam which tortured his sensitive soul and which was so hideous a contrast to his wonted life amid the sweet-scented silences. His head was erect. His dark eyes were steady. He was a good soldier. But—well, it was out of the question for him to swallow food, at such a place.
Joel looked about him. On either side of Treve’s bench, and across the aisle, other collies were tied in their stall-like benches. Fenno counted eighteen of them, in all. Some were snipe-nosed and fragile. Some were deep of chest and massive of coat and had strongly classic heads, much like Treve’s.
A few were snub-nosed and round-eyed and broad of skull. Old-fashioned types, these, and without chance of victory in any contested class.
Their like is seen at nearly every show. They are pets, loved by their masters or mistresses (oftenest mistresses), who think them wonderful. They are brought to shows in the futile hope that a blue ribbon or a cup may lend zest to their owners’ pride in them. To a judge who is luckless enough to have a soft heart, these poor dogs and their cruelly disappointed owners are the saddest features of an exhibition which, at best, is never lacking in sad features.
Fenno stood, eyeing the dogs around him. He had a refreshing ignorance of everything which constitutes a collie’s good or bad show points. All he knew was that Treve was the grandest dog on earth. He had come here to prove it to mankind at large. And the belief did not waver. Yet as he watched the handlers prepare their collies for the ring, he scowled. He had slicked Treve’s glorious coat down smooth, with much water. He knew that humans are supposed to have their hair slicked down when they want to look their best. And he supposed it was the same with dogs.
But now he saw men currying their dogs with expert touch; brushing the hair up and out; so that it should not cleave to the body and so that its texture and abundance might be fully seen by the judge. After watching this process for several minutes and catching sight of a collie poster on one of the benchbacks, Joel unearthed a mangy dandy-brush from his kitbag; and proceeded to fall to work right vigorously on Treve. The water had, for the most part, evaporated from the slicked coat. What was left of it made the coat and frill stand out with redoubled luxuriance as Joel brushed it upward.
Then Fenno scanned his neighbors, once more, for further tips in collie-dressing. He was vaguely aware that several spectators had paused at Treve’s bench, as they drifted past. They were eyeing the dog in open admiration. This pleased Joel, but it did not surprise him. To him it seemed only natural that people should stop to admire such a dog. Then he heard one of the spectators read aloud to another from a gray-backed catalog he held:
“‘217. J. Fenno. TREVE. Particulars Not Given. Entered in Class 68.’
“That’s funny!” went on the reader, looking up from the catalog’s meager information and studying afresh the collie in front of him. “That’s mighty funny, Chris! Here’s one of the best collies I’ve set eyes on. Class in every inch of him. He’ll give Champion Howgill Rival the tussle of his life, for Winners, to-day. And yet he isn’t even registered. ‘Particulars not given.’ It doesn’t seem possible the owner of a championship-timber collie, like that, shouldn’t know his pedigree and his breeder’s name. ‘Particulars not given.’ Gee! That’s the stock phrase they use for mutts. This dog’s a second Seedley Stirling. It doesn’t make sense. Who’s ‘J. Fenno,’ anyway? Ever hear of him?”
“Some yap, out here, who bought the dog as a month-old pup, I s’pose,” answered the man addressed, “and who doesn’t know what he’s got. I’m going to hunt him out, before the judging; and see what I can buy this collie for. Maybe I can pick him up for a song. It’s a cinch his value will boom, after he’s been judged. Everybody’ll be wanting him, then. I’m going on a still hunt, right away, for J. Fenno.”
“Meanin’ me?” asked Joel, turning on him with a sour suddenness that made the Easterner recoil an involuntary step. “I’m Fenno. An’ I’m the man you’ve got to go on a still hunt for, to buy this dog for a song.”
“No offense,” disclaimed the other, mistaking Joel’s normal manner for snarling displeasure. “I like this dog of yours. That is,” he hedged, craftily, “I like him in spots. He’s more good than bad. I don’t mind making you an offer for him, if you’ve got the sense to sell him cheap. How about it?”
“I don’t know how much cash you’re packin’ in that greasy old ill-fitting handmedown suit you’re wearin’,” replied Joel, with his wonted exquisite courtesy. “Nor yet I don’t know what value you place on the mortgaged hencoop you live in, back home. But the whole price won’t buy this collie of mine. Not if you throw in the million dollars diff’rence between your valuation of yourself and my valuation of you. Have I made it plain, friend? If I haven’t, I’ll try to speak less flatterin’ and talk turkey to you.”
Without awaiting reply he turned his lean back to the flustered Easterner. The move brought Fenno face to face with a stout man in vivid raiment.
“Selling that dog of yours?” queried the stout man, catalog in hand.
“Oh, you’re looking for a bargain, too, from the ‘yap,’ are you?” snorted Joel. “Before the judge c’n tell him he’s got a good dog? Well, the yap don’t need to be told. He knows it. That’s why he brang Treve here to-day. If your fat was wuth a hundred dollars a pound, you’d be a billionaire. But you wouldn’t be able to buy my dog. Get that?”
He was about to turn away from the stout personage, as from his former interlocutor, when he noted the man was no longer looking at him Instead, oblivious of the grouchy old hurler of insults, the stranger was once more studying Treve. In his plump face was a glint of perplexity, of struggling recollection.
Fraser Colt had an excellent memory. And the more he examined Treve, the closer he came to verifying a most improbable idea that had come to him, to-day, when first he caught sight of the collie reclining unhappily on the bench.
Back into his trained mind came the picture of a highbred collie pup, lying thus sorrowfully in Colt’s stuffy kennel yard, some two years earlier, after Fraser had picked him up at his first master’s forced sale. The dog’s markings and facial expression were unusual. It seemed impossible. Yet—
Half-unconscious of his own gesture, Fraser Colt stretched out his hand toward Treve’s shapely left ear. If there were sign of break or of ancient teeth-marks therein, the mystery was solved. If not—
Treve had lain resignedly in this place of turmoil, consoling himself by following with his sorrowful eyes the master who, for some unexplainable reason, had brought him here. Then, amid the million disturbing odors of the show, one special scent came to his nostrils in a way to annihilate his heed of all the rest.
Suspiciously, his eyes clouding with half-formulated and long-sleeping recollections, he sniffed the heavy air. At the same instant, came the sound of a voice that was more than vaguely distasteful to him. Into his friendly heart sprang a righteous anger—but against what or whom he scarcely knew.
Then he saw Colt. And sound and scent and sight brought his dormant memories wide awake. He knew the man. Even as he would have recognized Royce and Joel, whom he loved—even as he would have recognized and loved them after two years of absence—so now he knew and hated the man who had maltreated him so abominably as a defenseless puppy. Into the soft eyes flamed red rage.
All ignorant of the emotion he had aroused, Fraser Colt had stretched forth his plump hand, confidently, to inspect the collie’s left ear. The expert big fingers turned over the ear-tip. A glance showed Colt what he sought. There, faintly white, on the ear’s pinkish underside, were the harrow-marks of the police dog’s teeth. There, too, was a far fainter groove-mark where the plaster and splints had once remained for weeks on the healing ear. There could be no doubt.
This in less than a second. Before the big hand could be withdrawn, Treve had completed his recognition. More, he realized what liberty this loathed ex-owner of his was taking with him. The outstretched hand, too, was reminiscent of the brute blow that once had crashed against that mangled ear. And the dog’s hatred flamed into life.
His white eyeteeth slashed murderously. Colt’s thick sleeve and silken cuff were shorn, as by a razor-sweep. So little did cloth and silk deflect the slash that the eyetooth scored deep in the wide wrist; missing artery and major veins by a hairbreadth.
With a yell, Fraser Colt yanked back his hurt wrist. Yet swift as was his motion, it could not keep pace with the motion of the furious collie’s head. And, before the hand was out of reach, Treve’s front teeth had almost met in the fleshy heel of the thumb.
“You leave my dog be!” shrilled Joel, taking in only the fact that Colt had reached out and done some presumably painful thing to Treve, which the collie was trying angrily to punish.
He spoke too late. At the dog’s assault, Colt’s readily mislaid temper scattered beyond control. Still yelling with pain he kicked with all his might at the collie who ravened at him far over the pine footboard of the bench.
The kick was less well calculated than fervent. The fury-driven toe hit the top of the footboard; shattering the wood to splinters. But it missed Treve. As the leg was withdrawn, Treve exacted tribute from the ankle of the loud-patterned trousers; and his jaws raked the man’s shin, agonizingly.
But not until later did Fraser Colt have chance to note this latest hurt. For scarcely was the kick delivered when a lanky and wrinkled bulk had hurled itself cursingly at his fat throat.
Joel Fenno prided himself on his surly self-control. Yet when this big stranger kicked his beloved chum, self-control burst into a maniacal wrath that could find vent only in homicide.
He flung himself at the big man’s throat; gouging, tearing, hammering; and all the while keeping up a gruesome whimpering noise from between his hard-clenched teeth; unpleasantly like the sound made by a rabid beast worrying its prey.
Back, under that crazy onslaught, staggered the unprepared Colt. His heel caught in a bench support, before he could rally his balance. And he pitched backward onto the aisle floor. Not once had Fenno relinquished his attack on the face and throat of his foe. Now, landing atop the squirming bulk, he drove his fists madly into the upturned visage. As Colt sought to fend off the flailing fists, Joel lunged at his neck with yellowed teeth.
Above them, lurching far over the edge of the bench, Treve tugged and struggled roaringly to free himself and to join in the carnage. Foam spattered from his back-writhen lips. Added to his own hate of Colt was the fact that this man was fighting with Fenno, whom the dog loved. With all his weight and all his might be strove to break free from his chain. A hundred dogs added their din to his.
All at once, the bystanders stirred from their momentary trance of amaze. As crowds came running to the scene of strife, fifty hands dragged Joel away from his enemy and lifted him, yelling and twisting, to his feet. Others helped Fraser Colt to rise. Still others hung officiously to the arms of both combatants, to prevent a resumption of warfare. Scores of voices vociferated and questioned and babbled. Every dog in the show took up the racket, with full-throated barks and howls. Every human jabbered. No human could be heard.
Presently, into the ruck, two policemen shouldered their way; followed by the show’s superintendent. Out of the myriad simultaneous efforts at explanation and accusation, the police could gather only that a lantern-jawed old rancher had committed flagrant assault and battery upon Mr. Fraser Colt, a man well known to dozens present and vouched for by the superintendent. The rancher, presumably, was either drunk or insane.
His first madness dissipated, Joel stood trembling and sick; scared to the point of horror at what he had let himself in for; yet furious as ever at the assailant of his collie.
A policeman ended the uproar by taking hold of Joel’s collar and propelling him through the milling crowd to the door of the armory and thence out into the street, where a commandeered automobile bore captive and captor to the police station a mile away.
Twice, on his forced progress through the armory and once during the horrible station-ward drive, Fenno tried to plead with the officer to let him make some arrangement for the comfort of his dog, before going to jail. But the policeman, every time, shut him up and would not let him speak.
Joel sank down in a miserable and all but sobbing heap on the slat bed of his cell. Not for himself was his woe. He foresaw a long jail sentence. In the meantime, what was to become of Treve? Who would feed him? Who would see he got back to the ranch? At the close of the show, would the beautiful collie be thrust out into the streets of this strange city, a hundred miles from home; to fend for himself—he who had always been so well cared for?
Worse yet, would he fall into the hands of the man who had kicked him—the man who seemed all-powerful there at the show—the man who had secured Fenno’s arrest and who had, himself, gone scot free? He had kicked the collie; in the presence of Fenno. What might he not do to luckless Treve, now there was no one to protect the dog?
At the searing thought of his chum’s defenselessness, Joel groaned aloud, rocking back and forth on his hard seat.
“An’ it was all my own fault!” he mumbled, brokenly. “All my own foolishness! What’n blue blazes can I do? What—what IS there to do? Oh, Trevy, you trusted me! You was glad to come along with me. An’ see what I’ve made happen to you!”