“Look-a-here, you!” he rumbled in a blend of wrath and dazed incredulity. “What’s the meanin’ of this-yer? Are you aimin’ to doublecross me? My dawg’s wuth ten of them ornery critters. He’s a heap bigger’n an’ huskier, an’ he’s purtier to look at, too! What the blue blazes do you-all mean by treatin’ him thisaway, you hard-biled shrimp? He——”
With much dignity the little judge turned his back on the angry Titus and started across the ring. But before he had gone two steps Jeff was once more confronting him.
“Look-a-here!” snarled Titus, again, striving to keep himself in hand, “I ain’t goin’ to lay down under no frame-up! You judged crooked, with my dawg. I c’n prove it. Even if you didn’t have the sense to see he was the best of the hull bilin’, you was bound, anyhow, to give him the yaller ribbon fer third prize. An——”
“I was bound to do nothing of the sort!” rapped out the exasperated judge. “I am here to judge collies, not dinosaurs. I refuse to countenance the claim that your dog is a collie, by giving him a third-prize ribbon; even in a class of three. So, in this class, I have deliberately withheld the third prize. Your dog is not a collie. The Lord alone knows what he is, but he’s no collie. That’s all. Clear out!”
For a man with heart or imagination, there is no ordeal more irksome than to judge dogs. For, in almost every division, there is some such beast as Robin Adair;—a dog loved by his owners, who know nothing of shows or of show points. A judge, in fairness to the better exhibits, must pass over these poor animals; and thereby must cause heartache and shame to their pathetic owners. It is not a pleasant task. Nor is any phase of dog-judging pleasant. It is a thankless and nerve-racking job, at best; and it has a magic quality of turning one’s friends into enemies.
The little judge at the Duneka show was hardened by long practice. Also, he had all the bristling pluck of a rat-terrier. And he needed it in facing this lean giant in whose slit-eyes the murder-light was beginning to smoulder. Jeff half extended one windmill arm in the general direction of the judge’s throat. Then he checked himself.
It was going to be bad enough to slink home with no cup, but it would be ten-fold worse to go to the hoosgow for mayhem. He pictured sick Eve’s grief over such a disgrace, and his clenched hand dropped again to his side. Grappling with his temper, the mountaineer wheeled about and led the disqualified Robin out of the ring and back to the bench.
A sweet mess he had made of everything; he and that parson, up yonder!
They had wrought on Eve’s hopes and had made her so gloriously confident that her dear dog was going to sweep all before him and win the cup! She was lying at home, this minute, her big eyes shining with anticipation, her vivid mind picturing the triumph-scene at the show. How confidently she would be waiting for that cup!
Jeff had sought so enthusiastically to work out Stair’s theory of a “good news” cure! And how was the experiment to result? He must go home on the morrow and tell Eve not only that he had no cup to show her, but that the judge had actually refused Robin a third-prize ribbon, on the ground that the dog was a mongrel! What effect was that news going to have on a sick woman whose swift recovery depended on her spirits?