Lad: A Dog Read Free

showing off his own heroism before her, and with the scamp dog’s innate craving to destroy, he sprang growling upon the eagle.
    Down tumbled the papier-mâché stump. Down crashed the huge stuffed bird with it; Knave’s white teeth buried deep in the soft feathers of its breast.
    Lady, horror-struck at this sacrilege, whimpered in terror. But her plaint served only to increase Knave’s zest for destruction.
    He hurled the bird to the floor, pinned it down with his feet and at one jerk tore the right wing from the body. Coughing out the mouthful of dusty pinions, he dug his teeth into the eagle’s throat. Again bracing himself with his forelegs on the carcass, he gave a sharp tug. Head and neck came away in his mouth. And then before he could drop the mouthful and return to the work of demolition, he heard the Master’s step.
    All at once, now, Knave proved he was less ignorant of the Law—or, at least, of its penalties—than might have been supposed from his act of vandalism. In sudden panic he bolted for the window, the silvery head of the eagle still, unheeded, between his jaws. With a vaulting spring, he shot out through the open casement, in his reckless eagerness to escape, knocking against Lady’s injured leg as he passed.
    He did not pause at Lady’s scream of pain, nor did he stop until he reached the chicken house. Crawling under this, he deposited the incriminating eagle head in the dark recess. Finding no pursuer, he emerged and jogged innocently back toward the veranda.
    The Master, entering the house and walking across the living room toward the stair, heard Lady’s cry. He looked around for her, recognizing from the sound that she must be in distress. His eye fell on Lad, crouching tense and eager in front of the shut study door.
    The Master opened the door and went into the study.
    At the first step inside the room he stopped, aghast. There lay the chewed and battered fragments of his beloved eagle. And there, in one corner, frightened, with guilt writ plain all over her, cowered Lady. Men have been “legally” done to death on far lighter evidence than encompassed her.
    The Master was thunderstruck. For more than two years Lady had had the free run of the house. And this was her first sin—at that, a sin unworthy any well-bred dog that has graduated from puppyhood and from milk teeth. He would not have believed it. He could not have believed it. Yet here was the hideous evidence, scattered all over the floor.
    The door was shut, but the window stood wide. Through the window, doubtless, she had gotten into the room. And he had surprised her at her vandal work before she could escape by the same opening.
    The Master was a just man—as humans go; but this was a crime the most maudlin dog-spoiler could not have condoned. The eagle, moreover, had been the pride of his heart —as perhaps I have said. Without a word, he walked to the wall and took down a braided dog whip, dust-covered from long disuse.
    Lady knew what was coming. Being a thoroughbred, she did not try to run, nor did she roll for mercy. She cowered, moveless, nose to floor, awaiting her doom.
    Back swished the lash. Down it came, whistling as a man whistles whose teeth are broken. Across Lady’s slender flanks it smote, with the full force of a strong driving arm. Lady quivered all over. But she made no sound. She who would whimper at a chance touch to her sore foot, was mute under human punishment.
    But Lad was not mute. As the Master’s arm swung back for a second blow, he heard, just behind, a low, throaty growl that held all the menace of ten thousand wordy threats.
    He wheeled about. Lad was close at his heels, fangs bared, eyes red, head lowered, tawny body taut in every sinew.
    The Master blinked at him, incredulous. Here was something infinitely more unbelievable than Lady’s supposed destruction of the eagle. The Impossible had come to pass.
    For, know well, a dog