Further Adventures of Lad Part 5

A whiff of breeze slapped the loosened scow, broadside on, and sent it drifting an inch or two away. As a result, Homer Wefers' large shoe-sole was planted on the edge of the prow, instead of its center.

His sole was slippery from the dew of the lawn. The prow's edge was still more slippery, from having been the scene of a recent fish-cleaning.

The constable's gangling body strove in vain to hold any semblance of balance. His foot slid out from its precarious perch, pus.h.i.+ng the boat farther into the lake. And the dignified officer flapped wildly in mid-air.

Not being built on a lighter-than-air principle, he failed to hold this undignified aerial pose for more than the tenth of a second. At the end of that time he plunged splas.h.i.+ngly into the lake, at a depth of something like eight feet of water.

"Good!" applauded the Master, as the Mistress gasped aloud in not wholly sorrowful surprise and as Lad ambled gayly down the lawn for a closer view of this highly diverting sight. "Good! I hope he ruins every st.i.tch he has on; and then gets rheumatism and tonsilitis. He--"

The Master's babbling jaw fell slack; and the pleased grin faded from his face.

Wefers had come to the surface, after his ducking. He was fully three yards beyond the dock and as far from his drifting scow. And he was doing all manner of sensational things with his lanky arms and legs and body. In brief, he was doing everything except swim.

It was this phenomenon which had wiped away the Master's grin of pure happiness.

Any man may fall into the water, and may present a most ludicrous spectacle in doing so. But, on the instant he comes to the surface, his very first motions will show whether or not he is a swimmer. It had not occurred to the Master that anyone reared in the North Jersey lake-country should not have at least enough knowledge of swimming to carry him a few yards. But, even as many sailors cannot swim a stroke, so many an inlander, born and brought up within sight of fresh water, has never taken the trouble to grasp the simplest rudiments of natation. And such a man, very evidently, was Homer Wefers, Towns.h.i.+p Head Constable.

His howl of cra.s.s panic was not needed to prove this to the Master. His every wild antic showed it. But that same terror-stricken screech was required to set forth the true situation to the one member of the trio who had learned from birth to judge by sound and by scent, rather than by mere sight.

With no good grace, the Master yanked off his own coat and waistcoat, and bent to unstrap his hiking boots. He did not relish the prospect of a wetting, for the mere sake of saving from death this atrocious trespa.s.ser. He knew the man could probably keep afloat for at least a minute longer. And he was not minded to shorten the period of fear by ripping off his own outer garments with any melodramatic haste.

As he undid the first boot-latchet, he felt the Mistress's tense fingers on his shoulder.

"Wait!" she exhorted

Astounded at this cold-blooded counsel from his tender-hearted wife, he looked up, and followed the direction of her eagerly pointing hand.

"Look!" she was exulting. "It'll all solve itself! See if it doesn't.

Look! He can't shoot Laddie, after--after--"

The Master was barely in time to see Lad swirl along the dock with express-train speed and spring far out into the lake.

The dog struck water, a bare ten inches from Wefers' madly tossing head. The constable, in his crazy panic, flung both bony arms about the dog. And, man and collie together disappeared under the surface, in a swirl of churned foam.

The Mistress cried aloud, at this hideous turn her pretty plan had taken. The Master, one shoe off and one shoe on, hobbled at top pace toward the dock.

As he reached the foot of the lawn, Lad's head and shoulders came into view above the little whirlpool caused by the sinking bodies' suction.

And, at the same moment, the convulsed features of Homer Wefers showed through the eddy. The man was thras.h.i.+ng and twisting in a way that turned the lake around him into a white maelstrom.

As the Master set foot on the dock he saw the Collie rush forward with an impetus that sent both s.h.a.ggy mahogany shoulders far out of water.

Striking with brilliant accuracy, the dog avoided Wefers' flailing arms and feet, and clinched his strong teeth into the back of the drowning man's collar.

Thus, Lad was safe from the blindly clinging arms and from a kick. He had chosen the one strategic hold; and he maintained it. A splas.h.i.+ng of the unwieldy body made both heads vanish under water, for a bare half-second, as the Master poised himself on the string-piece for a dive. But the dive was not made.

For the heads reappeared. And now, whether from palsy of fright or from belated intelligence,--Wefers ceased his useless struggles; though not his strangled shrieks for help. The collie, calling on all his wiry power, struck out for the dock; keeping the man's face above water, and tugging at his soggy weight with a scientific strength that sent the two, slowly but steadily, sh.o.r.eward.

After the few feet of the haul, Wefers went silent. Into his blankly affrighted face came a look of foolish bewilderment. The Master, remembering his wife's hint, and certain now of Lad's ability to complete the rescue, stood waiting on the string-piece. Once, for a second, Wefers' eyes met his; but they were averted in queer haste.

As Lad tugged his burden beneath the stringpiece, the Master bent down and gripped the sodden wet shoulders of the constable. One none-too-gentle heave, and Wefers was lying in a panting and dripping heap on the clean dock. Lad, relieved of his heavy load, swam leisurely around to sh.o.r.e. It had been a delightfully thrilling day, thus far, for the collie. But he was just a bit tired.

By the time the dazed constable was able to sit up and peer owlishly into the unloving faces of the Mistress and the Master, Lad had shaken himself thrice and was pattering across the dock toward the group. From the two humans, Wefers' gaze s.h.i.+fted to the oncoming dog. Then he glanced back at the sullen depths of lake water beyond the string-piece. Then he let his head sink on his chest. For perhaps a whole minute, he sat thus; his eyes shut, his breath still fast and hysterical.

n.o.body spoke. The Mistress looked down at the drenched man. Then she winked at the equally silent Master, and laid a caressing little hand on Lad's wet head. At length, Wefers lifted his face and glowered at the trio. But, as his eye met Lad's quizzically interested gaze, he fidgeted.

"Well?" prompted the Master, "do you want those cartridges back?"

Wefers favored him with a scowl of utter dislike. Then, his eyes again averted, the wet man mumbled:

"I come over here today, to do my dooty.--Dogs that get bit by mad dogs had ought to be shot.--I come over here to do my dooty. Likewise, I done it.--I shot that dog of yours that got bit, yest'day."

"Huh?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the Master.

"This dog here looks some like him," went on Wefers, sulkily. "But it ain't him. And I'll so report to the author'ties.--I done what I come to do. The case is closed. And-and-if you folks ever want to sell your dog, why,--well, I'll just go mortgage something and--and buy him off'n you!"

CHAPTER III. No Trespa.s.sing!

There were four of them; two gaudily-clad damsels and two men. The men, in their own way, were attired as gloriously as the maidens they were escorting. The quartet added generously to the glowing beauty of the summer day.

Down the lake they came, in a canoe modestly scarlet except for a single broad purple stripe under the gunwale. The canoe's tones blended sweetly with the pink parasol and blue picture hat of one of the women.

Stolid and unshaven fishermen, in drab scows, along the canoe's route, looked up from their lines, in bovine wonder at the vision of loveliness which swept resonantly past them. For the quartet were warbling. They were also doing queer musical stunts which are fondly miscalled "close harmony."

Thus do they and their kind pay homage to a divine day on a fire-blue lake, amid the hush of the eternal hills. Lesser souls may find themselves speaking in few and low-pitched words, under the holy spell of such surroundings. But to loftier types of holiday-seekers, the benignant silences of the wilderness are put there by an all-wise Providence for the purpose of being fractured by any racket denoting care-free merriment;--the louder the merrier. There is nothing so racket-breeding as a perfect day amid perfect scenery.

The four revelers had paddled down into the lake, on a day's picnicking. They had come from far up the Ramapo river; beyond Suffern.

And the long downstream jaunt had made them hungry. Wherefore, as they reached mid-lakes they began to inspect the wooded sh.o.r.es for an attractive luncheon-site. And they found what they sought.

A half-mile to southward, a gently rolling point of land pushed out into the lake. It was smooth-shaven and emerald-bright. It formed the lower end of a lawn; sloping gently downward, a hundred yards or more, from a gray old house which nestled happily among mighty oaks on a plateau at the low hill's summit.

The point (with its patch of beach-sand at the water's edge, and with comfortable shade from a lakeside tree or so), promised an ideal picnic-ground. The shaven gra.s.s not only offered fine possibilities for an after-luncheon snooze; but was the most convenient sort of place for the later strewing of greasy newspapers and j.a.panese napkins and wooden platters and crusts and chicken bones and the like.

Moreover, a severely plain "No Trespa.s.s" sign, at the lake-margin, would serve as ideal kindling for a jolly little camp-fire. There is always a zest in using trespa.s.s boards for picnic fires. Not only are they seasoned and painted in a way to cause quick ignition, but people laugh so appreciatively, when one tells, afterward, of the bit of jovial audacity.

Yes, this point was just the place for luncheon and for siesta. It might have been made to order. And by tacit consent the two paddlers sent their multi-chrome canoe sweeping toward it. Five minutes later, they had helped the girls ash.o.r.e and were lifting out the lunch-basket and various newspaper parcels and the red-and-purple cus.h.i.+ons.

With much laughter and a s.n.a.t.c.h or two of close harmony, the lunch was spread. One of the men picked out a place for the fire (against the trunk of a two-century oak; perhaps the millionth n.o.ble old tree to be threatened thus with death from care-free picnickers' fires) and the other man sauntered across to the trespa.s.s board to annex it for kindling.

Everything was so happy and so complete and everyone was having such a perfect time! Into such moments Fate loves best to toss Trouble. And, this day, Fate played true to form.

As the fire-maker's hand was laid on the trespa.s.s board, even as his inconsequential muscles were braced to rip it loose from its post,--a squeal from the girl in the blue picture hat and the Nile-green georgette waist, checked his mirthful activities.

Now, there was nothing remarkable in the fact that the chromatic la.s.s had squealed. Indeed, she and her equally fair companion had been squealing at intervals, all morning. But there was nothing coquettish or gay about this particular squeal. It savored rather of a screech. In its shrill note was a tiny thread of terror. And the two men wheeled about, to look.

The blue-hatted girl had paused in her dainty labor of helping to spread out the lunch; in order to peep inquisitively up the slope toward the tree-framed house above. It might be fun, after eating, to stroll up there and squint in through the veranda windows; or,--if no one was at home, to gather an armful of the roses that clambered over one end of the porch.

During that brief exploratory glance, her eye had been caught by something moving through the woods beyond.