The Heart of a Dog

by Albert Payson Terhune

The Master lumbered along, through the rising drifts, as fast as he could. But the way was rough and the night was as black dark as it was cold. In a few rods, the dog had far outdistanced him. And, knowing how hard must be the trail to follow by sense of smell, he forbore to call back the questing collie, lest Lad lose the clue altogether. He knew the dog was certain to bark the tidings when he should come up with the fugitive.

The Master by this time began to share his wife’s worry. For the trail Lad was following led out of the grounds and across the highway, toward the forest.

The newborn snowstorm was developing into a very promising little blizzard. And the icy lash of the wind proved the fallacy of the old theory, “too cold to snow.” Even by daylight it would have been no light task to steer a true course through the whirling and blinding storm. In the darkness the man found himself stumbling along with drunkenly zigzag steps; his buffeted ears strained through the noise of the wind for sound of Lad’s bark.

But no such sound came to him. And, he realised that snow and adverse winds can sometimes muffle even the penetrating bark of a collie. The man grew frightened. Halting, he shouted with all the power of his lungs. No whimper from Cyril answered the hail. Nor, at his Master’s summons, did Lad come bounding back through the drifts. Again and again, the Master called.

For the first time in his obedient life, Lad did not, respond to the call. And the Master knew his own voice could not carry, for a single furlong, against wind and snowfall.

“I’ll go on for another half-hour,” he told himself, as he sought to discern the dog’s all-but obliterated footsteps through the deepening snow. “And then I’ll go back and raise a search party.”

He came to a bewildered stop. Fainter and more indistinguishable had Lad’s floundering tracks become. Now,—by dint of distance and snow,—they ceased to be visible in the welter of drifted whiteness under the glare of the Master’s flashlight.

“This means a search party,” decided the man.

And he turned homeward, to telephone for a posse of neighbours.

Lad, being only a dog, had no such way of sharing his burden. He had been told to find the child. And his simple code of life and of action left him no outlet from doing his duty; be that duty irksome or easy. So he kept on. Far ahead of the Master, his keen ears had not caught the sound of the shouts. The gale and the snow muffled them and drove them back into the shouter’s throat.