Then, just as the sow was launching herself on the futilely snapping Lad, she was stupidly aware that the dog had somehow changed to three dogs. One of these three the Mistress was still holding. The two others, with excellent teamwork, were assailing the sow from opposite sides.
She came to a sliding stop in her charge; blinking in bewildered fury.
Bruce had caught her by the torn left ear; and was keeping easily out of her way, while he inflicted torture thereon. Wolf, like a furry whirlwind, had stopped only long enough to slash her bleeding nose to the bone; and now was tearing away at her hind leg in an industrious and very promising effort to hamstring her.
In front, Lad was still straining to break the Mistress's loving hold; and to get at his pestered enemy.
This was more than the huge porker had bargained for. Through all her murder-rage, she had sense enough to know she was outnumbered and beaten. She broke into a clumsy gallop; heading homeward.
But Bruce and Wolf would not have it so. Delightedly they tore in to the attack. Their slashing fangs and their keenly nipping front teeth were everywhere. They were all over her. In sudden panic, blinded by terror and pain, the sow put her six hundred pounds of unwieldy weight into the fastest motion she could summon. At a scrambling run, she set off, around the house; head down, bitten tail aloft; the two dogs at her bleeding haunches.
Dimly, she saw a big and black obstacle loom up in her path. It was coming noisily toward her. But she was going too fast and too blindly to swerve. And she met it, headlong; throwing her vast weight forward in an attempt to smash through it. At the same time, Wolf and Bruce left off harrying her flanks and sprang aside.
Dugan had reached the garage unseen. There, he had backed out the car, by hand; shoving it into the open, lest the motor-whirr give premature announcement of his presence. Then, as he boarded the machine and reached for the self-starter, all bedlam broke loose, from somewhere in the general direction of the house, fifty yards away.
Dugan, glancing up apprehensively, beheld the first phases of the fight. Forgetting the need of haste and of secrecy, he sat there, open-mouthed, watching a scrimmage which was beyond all his sporting experience and which thrilled him as no prize-fight had ever done. Moveless, wide eyed, he witnessed the battle.
But the arrival of the two other dogs and the flight of the sow roused him to a sense of the business which had brought him thither. The Mistress and the maids had no eyes or ears for anything but the wounded Lad. Dugan knew he could, in all probability, drive to the main road unnoticed; if he should keep the house between him and the women.
He pressed the self-starter; threw off the brake and put the car into motion. Then, as he struck the level stretch of driveway, back of the house, he stepped hard on the accelerator. Here, for a few rods, was danger of recognition; and it behooved him to make speed. He made it.
Forward bounded the car and struck a forty-mile gait. And around the house's far corner and straight toward Dugan came flying the sow and the two collies. The dogs, at sight of the onrushing car, sprang aside. The sow did not.
In the narrow roadway there was no room for Dugan to turn out.
Nor did he care to. Again and again he had run over dogs, without harming his car or slackening its pace. And of course it would be the same with a pig. He stepped harder on the accelerator.
Alf Dugan came to his senses in the hospital ward of the Paterson jail. He had not the faintest idea how he chanced to be there.
When they told him the car had turned turtle and that he and a broken-necked pig had been hauled out of the wreckage, he asked in all honesty:
"What car? What pig? Quit stringing me, can't you? Which of my legs did you say is bust, and which one is just twisted? They both feel as bad as each other. How'd I get here, anyhow? What happened me?"When the vet had worked over Lad for an hour and had patched him up and had declared there was no doubt at all about his getting well, Wolf and Bruce were brought in to see the invalid. The Mistress thought he might be glad to see them.
He was not.
Indeed, after one scornful look in their direction, Laddie turned away from the visitors, in cold disgust. Also, he was less demonstrative with the Mistress, than usual. Anyone could see his feelings were deeply hurt. And anyone who knew Lad could tell why.
He had borne the brunt of the fight. And, at the last, these lesser dogs had won the victory without his aid. Still worse, his beloved Mistress,--for whom he had so blithely staked his aged life,--the Mistress had held him back by force from joining in the delirious last phases of the battle. She had made him stand tamely by, while others finished the grand work he had begun.
It was not fair. And Laddie let everyone in sight know it was not fair; and that he had no intention of being petted into a good humor.
Still, when, by and by, the Mistress sat down on the floor beside him and told him what a darling and wonderful and heroic dog he was and how proud she felt of his courage, and when her dear hand rumpled the soft hair behind his ears,--well, somehow Lad found himself laying his head in her lap; and making croony low sounds at her and pretending to bite her little white hand.
It was always hard to stay offended at the Mistress.
