Further Adventures of Lad

by Albert Payson Terhune

He had been plodding peacefully along, bearing home a wonderful gift—a gift oftener confided to the care of storks than of collies—when he had been attacked from two sides in most unprovoked fashion. He had been struck! His blood surged hot.

There was no Law governing such a case. So, as usual in new crises, Lad proceeded to make his own Law and to put it into effect.

A deft turn of the head eluded Eitel's snatching hand. With the lightness of a feather, Lad deposited the bundle in the soft dust of the road. In practically, the same gesture, the dog's curving eye-tooth slashed Eitel's outstretched wrist to the bone.

Then, staggering under a second head-blow from Roodie, the collie wheeled with lightning-swift fury upon this more hostile of his two assailants.

Hurling himself at the man's throat, in silent ferocity, he well-nigh turned the nocturnal battle into a killing. But Roodie's left arm, by instinct, flew up to guard his threatened jugular.

Through coat and shirt and skin and flesh,—as in the case of Lady's slayer,—the great dog's teeth clove their way; their rending snap checked only by the bone of the forearm. The impetus of his eighty-pound body sent the man clean off his balance. And together the two crashed backward to the ground.

Lad was not of the bulldog breed which seeks and gains a hold and then hangs on to it with locked jaws. A collie fights with brain as much as with teeth. By the time he and Roodie struck the earth, Lad tore free from the unloving embrace and whizzed about to face the second of his foes.

Eitel had taken advantage of the moment's respite to seize with his uninjured hand his slashed wrist. Then, on second thought, he released the wounded wrist and bent over the baby; with a view to picking him up and regaining the comparative safety of the car's floor. But his well-devised maneuver was not carried out.

For, as he leaned over the bundle, extending his hands to pick it up, Lad's teeth drove fiercely into the section of Eitel's plump anatomy which chanced to be presented to him by the stooping down of the kidnaper. Deep clove his sharp fangs. Nor did Eitel Schwartz sit down again with any degree of comfort for many a long day.

With resounding howls of pain, Eitel thrashed up and down the road; endeavoring to shake off this rear attack. The noise awakened the baby; who added his wails to the din. Roodie got dizzily to his feet; his left forearm useless and anguished from the tearing of its muscles: