Bruce.

by Albert Payson Terhune.

CHAPTER I. The Coming Of Bruce

She was beautiful. And she had a heart and a soul--which were a curse.

For without such a heart and soul, she might have found the tough life-battle less bitterly hard to fight.

But the world does queer things--d.a.m.nable things--to hearts that are so tenderly all-loving and to souls that are so trustfully and forgivingly friendly as hers.

Her "pedigree name" was Rothsay La.s.s. She was a collie--daintily fragile of build, sensitive of nostril, furrily tawny of coat. Her ancestry was as flawless as any in Burke's Peerage.

If G.o.d had sent her into the world with a pair of tulip ears and with a shade less width of brain-s.p.a.ce she might have been cherished and coddled as a potential bench-show winner, and in time might even have won immortality by the t.i.tle of "CHAMPION Rothsay La.s.s."

But her ears p.r.i.c.ked rebelliously upward, like those of her earliest ancestors, the wolves. Nor could manipulation lure their stiff cartilages into drooping as bench-show fashion demands. The average show-collie's ears have a tendency to p.r.i.c.k. By weights and plasters, and often by torture, this tendency is overcome. But never when the cartilage is as unyielding as was La.s.s's.

Her graceful head harked back in shape to the days when collies had to do much independent thinking, as sheep-guards, and when they needed more brainroom than is afforded by the borzoi skull sought after by modern bench-show experts.

Wherefore, La.s.s had no hope whatever of winning laurels in the show-ring or of attracting a high price from some rich fancier. She was tabulated, from babyhood, as a "second"--in other words, as a faulty specimen in a litter that should have been faultless.

These "seconds" are as good to look at, from a layman's view, as is any international champion. And their offspring are sometimes as perfect as are those of the finest specimens. But, lacking the arbitrary "points"

demanded by show-judges, the "seconds" are condemned to obscurity, and to sell as pets.

If La.s.s had been a male dog, her beauty and sense and lovableness would have found a ready purchaser for her. For nine pet collies out of ten are "seconds"; and splendid pets they make for the most part.

But La.s.s, at the very start, had committed the unforgivable sin of being born a female. Therefore, no pet-seeker wanted to buy her. Even when she was offered for sale at half the sum asked for her less handsome brothers, no one wanted her.

A mare--or the female of nearly any species except the canine--brings as high and as ready a price as does the male. But never the female dog. Except for breeding, she is not wanted.

This prejudice had its start in Crusader days, some thousand years ago.

Up to that time, all through the civilized world, a female dog had been more popular as a pet than a male. The Mohammedans (to whom, by creed, all dogs are unclean) gave their European foes the first hint that a female dog was the lowest thing on earth.

The Saracens despised her, as the potential mother of future dogs. And they loathed her accordingly. Back to Europe came the Crusaders, bearing only three lasting memorials of their contact with the Moslems.

One of the three was a sneering contempt for all female dogs.

There is no other pet as loving, as quick of wit, as loyal, as staunchly brave and as companionable as the female collie. She has all the male's best traits and none of his worst. She has more in common, too, with the highest type of woman than has any other animal alive.

(This, with all due respect to womanhood.)

Prejudice has robbed countless dog-lovers of the joy of owning such a pal. In England the female pet dog has at last begun to come into her own. Here she has not. The loss is ours.

And so back to La.s.s.

When would-be purchasers were conducted to the puppy-run at the Rothsay kennels, La.s.s and her six brethren and sisters were wont to come galloping to the gate to welcome the strangers. For the pups were only three months old--an age when every event is thrillingly interesting, and everybody is a friend. Three times out of five, the buyer's eye would single La.s.s from the rollicking and fluffy ma.s.s of puppyhood.

She was so pretty, so wistfully appealing, so free from fear (and from b.u.mptiousness as well) and carried herself so daintily, that one's heart warmed to her. The visitor would point her out. The kennel-man would reply, flatteringly--

"Yes, she sure is one fine pup!"

The purchaser never waited to hear the end of the sentence, before turning to some other puppy. The p.r.o.noun, "she," had killed forever his dawning fancy for the little beauty.

The four males of the litter were soon sold; for there is a brisk and a steady market for good collie pups. One of the two other females died.

La.s.s's remaining sister began to "shape up" with show-possibilities, and was bought by the owner of another kennel. Thus, by the time she was five months old, La.s.s was left alone in the puppy-run.

She mourned her playmates. It was cold, at night, with no other cuddly little fur-ball to snuggle down to. It was stupid, with no one to help her work off her five-months spirits in a romp. And La.s.s missed the dozens of visitors that of old had come to the run.

The kennel-men felt not the slightest interest in her. La.s.s meant nothing to them, except the work of feeding her and of keeping an extra run in order. She was a liability, a nuisance.

La.s.s used to watch with pitiful eagerness for the attendants'

duty-visits to the run. She would gallop joyously up to them, begging for a word or a caress, trying to tempt them into a romp, bringing them peaceofferings in the shape of treasured bones she had buried for her own future use. But all this gained her nothing.

A careless word at best--a grunt or a shove at worst were her only rewards. For the most part, the men with the feed-trough or the water-pail ignored her bounding and wrigglingly eager welcome as completely as though she were a part of the kennel furnishings. Her short daily "exercise scamper" in the open was her nearest approach to a good time.

Then came a day when again a visitor stopped in front of La.s.s's run. He was not much of a visitor, being a pallid and rather shabbily dressed lad of twelve, with a brand-new chain and collar in his hand.

"You see," he was confiding to the bored kennel-man who had been detailed by the foreman to take him around the kennels, "when I got the check from Uncle d.i.c.k this morning, I made up my mind, first thing, to buy a dog with it, even if it took every cent. But then I got to thinking I'd need something to fasten him with, so he wouldn't run away before he learned to like me and want to stay with me. So when I got the check cashed at the store, I got this collar and chain."

"Are you a friend of the boss?" asked the kennel-man.

"The boss?" echoed the boy. "You mean the man who owns this place? No, sir. But when I've walked past, on the road, I've seen his 'Collies for Sale' sign, lots of times. Once I saw some of them being exercised.

They were the wonderfulest dogs I ever saw. So the minute I got the money for the check, I came here. I told the man in the front yard I wanted to buy a dog. He's the one who turned me over to you. I wish--OH!" he broke off in rapture, coming to a halt in front of La.s.s's run. "Look! Isn't he a dandy?"

La.s.s had trotted hospitably forward to greet the guest. Now she was standing on her hind legs, her front paws alternately supporting her fragile weight on the wire of the fence and waving welcomingly toward the boy. Unknowingly, she was bidding for a master. And her wistful friendliness struck a note of response in the little fellow's heart.

For he, too, was lonesome, much of the time, as is the fate of a sickly only child in an overbusy home. And he had the true craving of the lonely for dog comradeship.

He thrust his none-too-clean hand through the wire mesh and patted the puppy's silky head. La.s.s wiggled ecstatically under the unfamiliar caress. All at once, in the boy's eyes, she became quite the most wonderful animal and the very most desirable pet on earth.

"He's great!" sighed the youngster in admiration; adding navely: "Is he Champion Rothsay Chief--the one whose picture was in The Bulletin last Sunday?"

The kennel-man laughed noisily. Then he checked his mirth, for professional reasons, as he remembered the nature of the boy's quest and foresaw a bare possibility of getting rid of the unwelcome La.s.s.

"Nope," he said. "This isn't Chief. If it was, I guess your Uncle d.i.c.k's check would have to have four figures in it before you could make a deal. But this is one of Chief's daughters. This is Rothsay La.s.s. A grand little girl, ain't she? Say,"--in a confidential whisper,--"since you've took a fancy for her, maybe I could coax the old man into lettin' you have her at an easy price. He was plannin' to sell her for a hundred or so. But he goes pretty much by what I say. He might let her go for--How much of a check did you say your uncle sent you?"

"Twelve dollars," answered the boy,--"one for each year. Because I'm named for him. It's my birthday, you know. But--but a dollar of it went for the chain and the collar. How much do you suppose the gentleman would want for Rothsay La.s.s?"

The kennel-man considered for a moment. Then he went back to the house, leaving the lad alone at the gate of the run. Eleven dollars, for a high-pedigreed collie pup, was a joke price. But no one else wanted La.s.s, and her feed was costing more every day. According to Rothsay standards, the list of brood-females was already complete. Even as a gift, the kennels would be making money by getting rid of the p.r.i.c.k-eared "second." Wherefore he went to consult with the foreman.

Left alone with La.s.s, the boy opened the gate and went into the run. A little to his surprise La.s.s neither shrank from him nor attacked him.

She danced about his legs in delight, varying this by jumping up and trying to lick his excited face. Then she thrust her cold nose into the cup of his hand as a plea to be petted.

When the kennel-man came back, the boy was sitting on the dusty ground of the run, and La.s.s was curled up rapturously in his lap, learning how to shake hands at his order.

"You can have her, the boss says," vouchsafed the kennel-man. "Where's the eleven dollars?"

By this graceless speech d.i.c.k Hazen received the key to the Seventh Paradise, and a life-membership in the world-wide Order of Dog-Lovers.

The homeward walk, for La.s.s and her new master, was no walk at all, but a form of spiritual levitation. The half-mile pilgrimage consumed a full hour of time. Not that La.s.s hung back or rebelled at her first taste of collar and chain! These petty annoyances went unfelt in the wild joy of a real walk, and in the infinitely deeper happiness of knowing her friendship-famine was appeased at last.

The walk was long for various reasons--partly because, in her frisking gyrations, La.s.s was forever tangling the new chain around d.i.c.k's thin ankles; partly because he stopped, every block or so, to pat her or to give her further lessons in the art of shaking hands. Also there were admiring boy-acquaintances along the way, to whom the wonderful pet must be exhibited.