Three more shows, two of them three-point exhibitions and one a single-pointer, brought him seven more points toward the championship. Then, on the day of the “Collie Club of the Union’s” annual show, came the crowning triumph.
Thirty-two dogs were on hand, precisely the number, under the new rulings, to make it a five-point show. And Angus McGilead was the judge.
When McGilead gave Bruce the winner’s rosette, which marked also his winning of the championship, the pale and shrewd old eyes were misted ever so little, and the hard and thin mouth was set like a gash.
It was as proud a moment in the little judge’s life as in the Master’s. America once more had a champion collie—a young dog at that—at which McGilead could point with inordinate pride, when collie-folk fell to bewailing the decadence of the breed in the Linlithgow man’s adopted country.
“I gave him his first winners!” he bragged that night to a coterie of fellow countrymen, in a rare fit of expansiveness. “I gave him his first winners, first time ever he was showed. I said to myself when he swung into the ring that day—under twelve months old, mind you—I said: ‘Angus, lad, yon’s a dog!’ I said. ‘Watch him, Angus!’ I said. ‘For he’s going far, is yon tike,’ I said. And what’s he done? Won his championship in five shows. In less’n a year. And I’m the man who gave him the ‘winners’ that got him his championship. Watch him! He’s due to last for years longer and to clean up wherever he goes. Remember I said so, when you see him going through every bunch he’s shown against. He’s the grandest dog in America to-day, is Brucie.”
Again was the Scotchman’s forecast justified. At such few shows, during the next six years, as the Master found time to take him to, Bruce won prize after prize. Age did not seem to lessen his physical perfection. And the years added to the regal dignity that shone about him like an almost visible atmosphere.
Watching from the ring-side, or presiding in the ring Angus McGilead thrilled to the dog’s every victory as to the triumph of some loved friend. There was an odd bond between the great dog and the little judge. Except for the Mistress and the Master, the collie felt scant interest in humanity at large. A one-man dog, he received the pettings of outsiders and the handling of judges with lofty coldness.
But, at sight of McGilead, the plumed tail was at once awag. The deepset eyes would soften and brighten, and the long nose would wrinkle into a most engaging smile. Bruce loved to be talked to and petted by Angus. He carried his affection for the inordinately tickled judge to the point of trying to shake hands with him or romp with him in the ring; to the outward scandal and inward delight of the sombre Scot.
“Can’t you keep the beast from acting like he belonged to me, when I’m judging him?” grumpily complained McGilead, once to the Master. “A fine impression it makes, don’t it, on strangers, when they see him come wagging and grinning up to me and wanting to shake hands, or to roll over for me to play with him? One fool asked me, was it my own dog I gave the prize to. He said no outsider’s dog would be making such a fuss over a judge. Try to keep him in better order in the ring, or I’ll prove he isn’t mine, by ‘giving him the gate,’ one of these days. See if I don’t.”
But he never did. And the Master knew well that he never would. So it was that Bruce’s career as a winner continued unbrokenly, while other champions came and went.