As it chanced, this was a street seldom used by Rorke. And Jeff and the mastiff had never before met. Jeff, mincing along on fastidious white toes through the slush, close behind his master, had no warning of the attack. The first hint of danger came when, out of the ever-watchful corner of his slanting dark eye, he chanced to see the whizzing brindled bulk bearing down upon him. There was no time to get out of the way; even had Jeff been of the breed that gets out of the way when peril shows its shining face. To the average dog, there would have been no chance to prepare for the impact. But the best type of collie is not an average dog. In his brain, though never in his heart, he harks back to his wolf ancestors.
It was this ancient wolf strain, now, that made the sedately pacing Jeff spin sidewise as though on a pivot; letting the mastiff fly past him, the flaring jaws missing his head by an inch.
The mastiff whirled, almost in mid-air, and came back to the assault. But as he charged a second time Jeff was not there. The collie had not run; he had merely side-stepped. And in the same motion his white eyetooth scored a deep furrow in the side of the charging foe.
Dan Rorke had swung aloft his walking stick to stop the unequal fight and rescue his chum, for he had heard of the brindled monster’s prowess. But at this move from Jeff he let his striking arm drop, idle, and he sputtered aloud in stark admiration:
“Footwork, b’gee! And countering, too! Lord, but Jim Corbett might ‘a’ been proud of that stunt!”
Again the mastiff was charging in; lurching craftily, to drive his nimbler foe into the angle of door and wall, and thus to corner him and render his footwork useless. Jeff saw through the ruse, but he saw too late to escape.
Now, the collie was a scant eighteen months old. His chest and shoulders had not yet gained the proportions that would be theirs in another two years. Moreover, this was his first battle. Left to himself, he would never have sought trouble; for he was a friendly and frolicsome youngster who had met with nothing but kindliness in all his brief life.
But his every muscle and joint was as lithe as oiled whipcord. There was not a fleck of loose flesh on his wiry sixty-six-pound body. And behind his conscious brain burned not only the battle prowess but the uncanny shrewdness of his ancient vulpine forbears.
Back in the wilderness days, the wolf that could not hold his own in warfare and be ready for all surprises, was the wolf that died exceeding young and left no progeny. The wolf that won the right to have descendants was the wolf brave enough and quick-witted enough to transmit his life-saving traits to those descendants.
All this a thousand years ago; and Dan Rorke’s pet collie was profiting by it.