It began with a gap in a line fence. The gap should never have been there. For, on the far side of it roamed creatures whose chief zest in life is the finding of such gaps and in breaking through for forage.
The Place's acreage ended, to northward, in the center of an oak grove whose northern half was owned by one Titus Romaine; a crabbed little farmer of the old school. Into his half of the grove, in autumn when mast lay thick and rich amid the tawny dead leaves, Romaine was wont to turn his herd of swine.
To Lad, the giant collie, this was always a trying season. For longer than he could remember, Lad had been the official watchdog of the Place. And his chief duties were to keep two-footed and four-footed strays from trespassing thereon.
To an inch, he knew the boundaries of the Master's land. And he knew that no human intruder was to be molested; so long as such intruder had the sense to walk straight down the driveway to the house. But woe to the tramp or other trespasser who chanced to come cross lots or to wander in any way off the drive! Woe also to such occasional cattle or other livestock as drifted in from the road or by way of a casual fence-gap!
Human invaders were to be met in drastic fashion. Quadruped trespassers were to be rounded up and swept at a gallop up the drive and out into the highroad. With cattle or with stray horses this was an easy job;. and it contained, withal, much fun;--at least, for Lad.
But, pigs were different.
Experience and instinct had taught Lad what few humans realize.
Namely, that of all created beasts, the pig is the worst and meanest and most vicious; and hardest to drive. When a horse or a cow, or a drove of them, wandered into the confines of the Place, it was simple and joyous to head them off, turn them, set them into a gallop and send them on their journey at top speed. It took little skill and less trouble to do this. Besides, it was gorgeous sport. But pigs--!
When a porker wriggled and hunched and nosed a space in the line fence, and slithered greasily through, Lad's work was cut out for him. It looked simple enough. But it was not simple. Nor was it safe.
In the first instance, pigs were hard to start running. Oftener than not they would stand, braced, and glare at the oncoming collie from out their evil little red-rimmed eyes; the snouts above the hideous masked tushes quivering avidly. That meant Lad must circle them, at whirlwind speed; barking a thunderous fanfare to confuse them; and watching his chance to flash in and nip ear or flank; or otherwise get the brutes to running.
And, even on the run, they had an ugly way of wheeling, at close quarters, to face the pursuer. The razor tushes and the pronged forefeet were always ready, at such times, to wreak death on the dog, unless he should have the wit and the skill and the speed to change, in a breath, the direction of his dash. No, pigs were not pleasant trespassers. There was no fun in routing them. And there was real danger.
Except by dint of swiftness and of brain; an eighty-pound collie has no chance against a six-hundred-pound pig. The pig's hide, for one thing, is too thick to pierce with an average slash or nip: And the pig is too close to earth and too well-balanced by build and weight, to be overturned: And the tushes and forefeet can move with deceptive quickness. Also, back of the red-rimmed little eyes flickers the redder spirit of murder.
Locomotive engineers say a cow on a track. is far less perilous to an oncoming train than is a pig. The former can be lifted, by the impact, and flung to one side. A pig, oftener than not, derails the engine. Standing with the bulk of its weight close to the ground, it is well-nigh as bad an obstacle to trains as would be a boulder of the same size. Lad had never met any engineers.
But he had identically their opinion of pigs.
In all his long life, the great collie had never known fear. At least, he never had yielded to it. Wherefore, in the autumns, he had attacked with gay zest such of Titus Romaine's swine as had found their way through the fence.
But, nowadays, there was little enough of gay zest about anything Laddie did. For he was old;--very, very old. He had passed the fourteenth milestone. In other words, he was as old for a dog as is an octogenarian for a man.
Almost imperceptibly, but to his indignant annoyance, age had crept upon the big dog; gradually blurring his long clean lines;silvering his muzzle and eyebrows; flecking his burnished mahogany coat with stipples of silver; spreading to greater size the absurdly small white forepaws which were his one gross vanity; dulling a little the preternaturally keen hearing and narrowing the vision.
Yes, Lad was old. And he was a bit unwieldy from weight and from age. No longer could he lead Wolf and Bruce in the forest rabbit chases. Wherefore he stayed at home, for the most part and seldom strayed far from the Mistress and the Master whom he worshiped.
Moreover, he deputed the bulk of trespass-repelling to his fiery little son, Wolf; and to the graver and sweeter Bruce;--"Bruce, the Beautiful."Which brings us by needfully prosy degrees to a morning, when two marauders came to the Place at the same time, if by different routes. They could not well have come at a more propitious time, for themselves; nor at a worse time for those whose domain they visited.
Bruce and Wolf had trotted idly off to the forest, back of the Place, for a desultory ramble in quest of rabbits or squirrels.
This they had done because they were bored. For, the Mistress and the Master had driven over for the morning mail; and Lad had gone with them, as usual. Had it been night, instead of morning, neither Wolf nor Bruce would have stirred a step from the grounds. For both were trained watchdogs, But, thus early in the day, neither duty nor companionship held them at home. And the autumn woods promised a half-hour of mild sport.
