The supposedly rabid and murderous dog was rounding up the scattered flock with uncanny skill and speed, marshalling them into the narrow road, driving strays back into the column and moving the whole woolly throng steadily and decorously toward the fold.
Arrived at the gate, one wether bolted past it, and ten other sheep followed his lead. The wether did not go forty feet before he and his fellow-truants found themselves confronted by a large and indignant collie, who forced them with gentle relentlessness to wheel in their tracks and rejoin the flock.
Tongue out, tail wagging, Buff stood at the gate of the fold, holding his prisoners from passing out again until the puffing and marvelling farmer came running up.
The man paused to fasten the gate before turning his full attention on the wonderful collie. But by the time the gate was made fast the dog was a hundred yards down the road, trotting lazily back toward the ridge. Not by so much as a turn of his classic head did he show he heard the frantic and cajoling shouts the farmer sent after him.
On another late afternoon, ten miles from there, a farmer’s child was piloting her father’s eleven cows and two calves home along the road from pasture. Three men, passing in a small motor-truck, halted, jumped to the ground, seized the pair of calves and prepared to sling them into the truck.
The child screamed in terrified appeal, and caught hold of one of the men by the arm, while the herd of cows ran in panic through fields and woods.
The man shook off the child’s convulsive hold with a vehemence that sent her flat in the dust of the road.
And on the same instant a huge and lean and hairy beast burst through a roadside thicket and flung himself on the man, bearing him to earth by the sheer weight of his assault.
By the time the thief had landed, rolling and yelling, in the roadway, Buff had deserted him, and was at another of the trio. And this was the collie of it. A bulldog secures his grip and holds it till doomsday. A collie, fighting, is everywhere at once. The collie strain in Buff told him his opponents were three, and that there was no sense in devoting himself over-long to any one of them at the expense of the rest. So he was raging at the second man’s throat before the first fairly realised what had attacked him.
The third man, however, had a trifle more time on his hands than had either of his companions. And, wisely, he utilised that second of time in dropping the calf he had caught and in making one flying leap for the seat of the truck.