Long shadows were stretching lazily athwart the lawn from the gnarled old giant trees. Over the whole drowsing world brooded the solemn hush of late summer afternoon.
An amber light hung in the sleepy air; touching with gold the fire-blue lake, the circle of lovingly protecting green hills;the emerald slope which billowed up from the water-edge to the red-roofed gray house in its setting of ancient oaks.
On the bare flooring, in the coolest corner of the veranda, two collies lay sprawled. They were fast asleep; which means that they were ready to come back to complete wakefulness at the first untoward sound.
Of the two slumbrous collies, one was slenderly graceful of outline; gold-and-white of hue. She was Lady; imperious and temperamental wisp of thoroughbred caninity.
The second dog had been crowded out of the shadiest spot of the veranda, by his mate; so that a part of his burnished mahogany coat was under the direct glare of the afternoon sun. Shimmering orange tints blazed back the reflection of the torrid light.
He was Sunnybank Lad; eighty-pound collie; tawny and powerful;with absurdly tiny white forepaws and with a Soul looking out from his deep-set dark eyes. Chum and housemate he was to his two human gods;--a dog, alone of all worshipers, having the privilege of looking on the face of his gods and of communing with them without the medium of priest or of prayer.
Lady, only, of the Place's bevy of Little People, refused from earliest puppyhood to acknowledge Lad's benevolent rulership. She bossed and teased and pestered him, unmercifully. And Lad not only let her do all this, but he actually reveled in it. She was his mate. More,--she was his idol. This idolizing of one mate, by the way, is far less uncommon among dogs than we mere humans realize.
The summer afternoon hush was split by the whirring chug of a motor-car; that turned in from the highroad, two hundred yards beyond the house, and started down through the oak grove, along the winding driveway. Immediately, Lady was not only awake, but on her feet, and in motion. A furry gold-white whirlwind, she flashed off of the vine-shaded veranda and tore at top speed up the hill to meet the coming car.
No, it was not the Mistress and the Master whose approach stirred the fiery little collie to lightning activity. Lad knew the purr of the Place's car and he could distinguish it from any other, as far as his sensitive ears could catch its sound. But to Lady, all cars were alike; and all were signals for wild excitement.
Like too many other collies, she had a mania for rushing at any motor vehicle, and for whizzing along beside it, perilously close to its fast-moving wheels, barking and screaming hysterically and bounding upward at its polished sides.
Nor had punishment and scolding cured her of the trait. She was an addict at car-chasing. She was wholly incurable. There are such dogs. Soon or late, many of them pay high for the habit.
In early days, Lad also had dashed after motors. But a single sharp lecture from the Master had taught him that this was one of the direst breaches of the Place's simple Law. And, thenceforth,--though he might tremble with eagerness,--he stood statue-still when an automobile spun temptingly past him.
More,--he had cured pup after pup, at the Place, of car-chasing.
But Lady he could not cure; though he never gave up the useless attempt.
Down the drive came a delivery truck; driven fast and with none too great skill. Before it had covered half the distance between gate and house, Lady was alongside. A wheel grazed her shoulder fur as, deftly, she slipped from in front of the vehicle and sprang up at its tonneau. With a ceaseless fanfare of barks, --delirious in her excitement,--she circled the car; springing, dodging, wheeling.
The delivery boy checked speed and shouted futile warnings to the insane collie. As he slowed down a bit on the steep grade, Lady hurled herself in front of the machine, as though taunting it for cowardice in abating its hot pace on her account.
Again and again had she run, head on, at advancing cars. It seemed to delight her when such cars slackened speed or swerved, in order not to kill her.
Now, as she whizzed backward, her vibrant muzzle a bare six inches from the shiny buffer, one of her flying feet slipped in a mud rut. Her balance gone, she tumbled.
A collie down is a collie up, in less than a second. But there was still less than a second's space between to overthrown Lady and the car's front wheels.
The boy slammed on the emergency brake. Through his mind ran the formless thought of his fate at the hands of his employer when he should return to the store with tidings that he had run over and killed a good customer's costly collie; and on the customer's own grounds.
In that single breathless instant, a huge mahogany-and-snow shape flashed forward, into the path of the machine.
Lad, following his mate, had tried to shoulder her aside and to herd her too far back from the drive for any possible return to the danger zone, until the car should have passed. More than once, at other times, had he done this. But, today, she had eluded his mighty shoulder and had flung herself back to the assault.
As she fell, she rolled over, twice, from her own momentum. The second revolution left her directly in front of the skidding wheels. One of them had actually touched her squirming spine;when white teeth gripped her by the scruff of the neck. Those teeth could crush a mutton-bone as a child cracks a peanut. But, on Lady, today, their power was exerted only to the extent of lifting her, in one swift wrench, clear of the ground and high in air.
The mischievous collie flew through space like a lithe mass of golden fluff; and came to earth, in a heap, at the edge of the drive; well clear of the menacing wheels. With Lad, it fared otherwise.
