Free Lad: A Dog by Albert Payson Terhune Page A

without also making his life a burden and humiliating him in the eyes of his gods.
    Therefore Lad moped. Lady remained nervously fussy over her one child. And Wolf continued to be a lovable, but unmitigated, pest. The Mistress and the Master tried in every way to make up to Lad for the positive and negative afflictions he was enduring, but the sorrowing dog’s unhappiness grew with the days.
    Then one November morning Lady met Wolf’s capering playfulness with a yell of rage so savage as to send the puppy scampering away in mortal terror, and to bring the Master out from his study on a run. For no normal dog gives that hideous yell except in racking pain or in illness; and mere pain could not wring such a sound from a thoroughbred.
    The Master called Lady over to him. Sullenly she obeyed, slinking up to him in surly unwillingness. Her nose was hot and dry; her soft brown eyes were glazed, their whites a dull red. Her dense coat was tumbled.
    After a quick examination, the Master shut her into a kennel room and telephoned for a veterinary.
    â€œShe is sickening for the worst form of distemper,” reported the vet an hour later, “perhaps for something worse. Dogs seldom get distemper after they’re a year old, but when they do it’s dangerous. Better let me take her over to my hospital and isolate her there. Distemper runs through a kennel faster than cholera through a plague district. I may be able to cure her in a month or two—or I may not. Anyhow, there’s no use in risking your other dogs’ lives by leaving her here.”
    So it was that Lad saw his dear mate borne away from him in the tonneau of a strange man’s car.
    Lady hated to go. She whimpered and hung back as the vet lifted her aboard. At sound of her whimper Lad started forward, head low, lips writhing back from his clenched teeth, his shaggy throat vibrant with growls. At a sharp word of command from the Master, he checked his onset and stood uncertain. He looked at his departing mate, his dark eyes abrim with sorrow, then glanced at the Master in an agony of appeal.
    â€œIt’s all right, Laddie,” the Master tried to console him, stroking the dog’s magnificent head as he spoke. “It’s all right. It’s the only chance of saving her.”
    Lad did not grasp the words, but their tone was reassuring. It told him, at least, that this kidnaping was legal and must not be prevented. Sorrowfully he watched the chugging car out of sight, up the drive. Then with a sigh he walked heavily back to his “cave” beneath the piano.
    Lad, alone of The Place’s dogs, was allowed to sleep in the house at night, and even had free access to that dog-forbidden spot, the dining room. Next morning, as soon as the doors were opened, he dashed out in search of Lady. With some faint hope that she might have been brought back in the night, he ransacked every corner of The Place for her.
    He did not find Lady. But Wolf very promptly found Lad. Wolf was lonely, too—terribly lonely. He had just spent the first solitary night of his three-month life. He missed the furry warm body into which shelter he had always cuddled for sleep. He missed his playmate—the pretty mother who had been his fond companion.
    There are few things so mournful as the eyes of even the happiest collie pup; this morning, loneliness had intensified the melancholy expression in Wolf’s eyes. But at sight of Lad, the puppy gamboled forward with a falsetto bark of joy. The world was not quite empty, after all. Though his mother had cruelly absented herself, here was a playfellow that was better than nothing. And up to Lad frisked the optimistic little chap.
    Lad saw him coming. The older dog halted and instinctively turned aside to avoid the lively little nuisance. Then, halfway around, he stopped and turned back to face the puppy.
    Lady was gone—gone, perhaps, forever. And all that was left to remind Lad of her was this