Buff: A Collie, and Other Dog-Stories

by Albert Payson Terhune

A third time the bulldog charged for the throat. Buff reared, twisting sidewise to avoid the charge and at the same time to counter on the panting and lumbering body. But he did not take account of the slipperiness of the frosty, dead grass.

The collie’s hind legs slid from under him. Down he went, asprawl on his back, under this sudden loss of his precarious balance. As quick as a cat he had spun to his feet again. But the instant of wasted time had sufficed for the enemy.

The bulldog, lunging murderously for the exposed throat, missed his mark by reason of Buff’s swirling motion of scrambling to his feet again. Yet this time the ravening jaws did not close on air or on fur. Instead they buried themselves in Buff’s upper right foreleg, almost at the junction of leg and body.

Helpless to break free, Buff ceased to thrash about. He felt the locked jaws begin to grind, deep and deeper towards the bone. He felt his enemy’s braced pressure brought to bear upon the imperilled foreleg.

Then his wolf brain told him what to do. He struck straight for the nose and upper jaw of the bulldog. He did not slash, as does a collie. He bent down and secured his grip as would a bulldog.

The bulldog, his own hold secure in the collie’s upper foreleg, was aware of a terribly painful grip on his tender nose, a grip that waxed sterner and more tense all the time, a grip also that was shutting off his breathing power.

In the anguish of choking, the bulldog let go Buff’s foreleg and shook himself furiously to get free of that encumbering hold. As he shook he gave tone, emitting a most horrendous yell of pain and rage.

Then for the first time Trent was able in the elusive moonlight and shadow bars to see how the fight was going or to intervene without peril of injuring his own dog. But as he bent down to drag the squirming bulldog away he saw he was too late. Buff’s grinding jaws had found the jugular. The fight was over. The victor stood up, panting and weary, and looked down at the inert mass that had so lately been a mighty fighting machine.

Half an hour later, shaved and clean, Michael Trent set forth for Ruth Hammerton’s home. Buff, wholly rested from his battle, trotted happily at his master’s heels. The maid at Hammertons’ gaped wordlessly at sight of the visitor.

Buff, as politeness bade him, wagged his tail and took a step towards her. The maid, by nature, was built for endurance rather than speed. Yet, recovering from her shock, she jumped at least a foot from the veranda floor; and she made a sound better fitted to a turkey whose tail feathers have been grabbed than to a decorous household servant.