Читать книгу The Critter and Other Dogs - Albert Payson Terhune - Страница 6

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He was not wanted. He was as unwanted as a wrinkle, or as a boost in the income tax. He was a collie pup—furry, pretty, eagerly friendly. His name was Kenneth.

He was given to Margaret Bryce by a man she detested. That was one reason why Kenneth was unwanted. Another reason was that Margaret was afraid of dogs and that neither of her parents had any experience or interest in them. Margaret was for sending Kenneth back at once—the moment the messenger boy deposited the small pup in the big basket at her feet on the veranda and handed her the note from Mallon.

But her parents would not have it so. They liked Mallon. They liked his gentleness with women, his outdoor ways, the tinge of the wild that seemed to cling to him. Besides, he had more money and more common sense about its use than has the average youth of twenty-seven. Wherefore they encouraged his visits to Mossmere, and they reproved Margaret for her unreasoning prejudice against him.

So now when, after one disgusted look into the shiny wicker basket, the girl demanded that the messenger take it back to the donor, both her father and her mother vetoed the return. For a wonder they managed to do so with such vehemence that Margaret yielded. But she yielded about as graciously as might a sick wildcat.

The messenger departed. Mr. Bryce opened the basket. Out onto the veranda floor floundered a mass of dynamically energetic fluff. The puppy was soft and fuzzy and adorably awkward. His eyes alone gave special promise of his future, for they were dark and wise and deep set. Around his ridiculously shapeless little neck was an enormous cerise bow tied with the inept fingers of a man little used to such exploits as the manipulating of cerise satin.

“He looks like a tipsy Teddy bear,” commented Margaret, eyeing poor little gamboling Kenneth without approval. “And this note is as absurd as the puppy. He says he is ‘sending me a chum’; and that ‘no gift in the world can be more precious to the right sort of girl than the right sort of collie.’ Then he speaks of me and the wretched cur as ‘thoroughbreds both.’ Did you ever hear such silliness?”

“Mallon meant it all right,” ventured Mr. Bryce.

“That’s the whole trouble with him,” complained Margaret. “He always means everything all right. Well, how about it, people? You said I mustn’t send the little brute back. I’m most certainly not going to take care of him. Daughterly obedience stops, one station short of that. Here he is. But I’ll be blest if I feed him or do anything for him! Ugh!”

This expletive was wrung from her by a violent onslaught from Kenneth himself. The puppy, freed of his basket, had explored with hesitant steps the expanses of the veranda. Then all at once remembering he was far from home and very, very lonely, he cantered gushingly up to the nearest human—for comfort and for petting.

This nearest human chanced to be Margaret. In active repulsion the girl shoved away the pudgily effusive youngster. The push sent him rolling over and over on his fat little back. As Kenneth gathered his feet under him, scared and amazed at such reception to his loving advances, the elderly gardener came plodding around the side of the house on his way to the orchard. Mr. Bryce hailed the interruption with relief.

“McLaren!” he called. “You’re a Scot. So you must know something of collies. They’re your national flower or something, aren’t they?”

“Yes, sir,” responded McLaren, solemnly; “cauliflower.”

At his own egregious witticism, the Scot began to laugh gruntingly with infinite relish.

Bryce, after blinking dazedly at him for a moment, granted a vague chuckle to the awful jest. Mrs. Bryce looked blank. Margaret walked coldly away. She did not believe in familiarity with servants.

“Well, here’s a Scotch collie puppy,” went on Bryce, “with a short body and a long pedigree. He has been given to Miss Bryce. She has no time to take care of him. Just lead him down to the barn and fix some kind of coop or corner for him and tell the cook to let you have food for him—table scraps or—or cauliflower, as you suggested. Or whatever collies are supposed to eat. See he’s well fed and looked after. He’s a valuable dog and all that.”

McLaren was gazing at the puppy with grave interest. Not so much was he noting the appealing little face and the unwieldy shape, as the broad shoulders and the deep chest and the rounded big bones and the glint in the wistful eyes. He was forecasting from these the dog that one day was to grow out of this pudgy huddle of flesh and fur.

The gardener snapped his fingers at Kenneth. The puppy was glad of any recognition at all after this brief visit among dogless aliens. He scampered across the slippery floor to his new friend, wagging his rudimentary tail and barking in falsetto friendliness. McLaren tucked the pup under his arm and started back toward the barn.

Thus Kenneth came into the hands of some one who detested him, and thence into the care of a man who knew and loved collies as only a Scot can hope to.

The disused carriage shed became Kenneth’s home, with a straw-heaped corner of it for his bed; and daily he fared forth with McLaren on the latter’s rounds of the garden. Patiently he would play about amid the flower borders or between furrows while McLaren worked; and from the man’s gruff voice he learned his first lessons in life and conduct.

Old McLaren was no sentimentalist. He was the sternest of disciplinarians. Even as he had disciplined and educated his own two sons until one of them had run away and the other had become a rugged pillar of the community, so he proceeded to educate and discipline Kenneth.

At Kenneth’s age one’s chief joys are to play hysterically and to eat inordinately and to sleep more than half the time and to get into any and every form of mischief. The eating and the sleeping were Kenneth’s in ample measure, with much exercise thrown in; for McLaren knew the mighty value of these things in shaping a growing collie’s body and upbuilding his health. But play was another matter, and mischief was barred. At an age when most pups know nothing more serious than a chase after their own tails Kenneth was learning the meaning of work. Also he was mastering many details as to behavior.

For example, to snatch up a dishcloth from the kitchen doorway or to roll merrily on the flower beds or to dig a tunnel under a rosebush or to yelp plaintively when put back into the shed or to chew holes in McLaren’s spare overalls—all these and many other things were deadly sins and punishable by stingingly sharp spankings across the loins with a bit of switch.

Then, too, when the puppy was in the midst of a romp, the detested word “Heel!” meant he must slink slowly along behind McLaren’s big shoes. And “Lie down!” and “Back!” and “Quiet, there!” and a host of other confusing mandates all had different and imperative meanings. So much must be learned—all of it distasteful.

For a space Kenneth was the most miserably unhappy collie pup in the state of New Jersey. Then, bit by bit, because he was a true collie, the brain of him awoke, and with it a glad zeal to serve this dour old man whom he had begun to love even more than he feared him. And the pup found himself trying eagerly to anticipate McLaren’s commands and in win from him a grunt of approval or a careless pat on the head.

Of all his lessons, he loved best the congenial art of retrieving. To rush after a thrown stick is inherent in the nature of nearly all normal pups. But to bring it back to the thrower and lay it meekly at his feet—this must be taught. It is so much more fun to gallop away with the stick and to pretend it is a deadly foe to be chewed and shaken. Yet, in a very few days, Kenneth acquired the art of retrieving and of retrieving well. Then, before the next step in his education could be taken, several untoward events happened.

First of all, old McLaren was laid by the heels with an attack of inflammatory rheumatism. The cook kept on feeding Kenneth at the disabled gardener’s orders and letting the pup out for an hour or two of exercise every day. But the lessons had stopped for a while, and Kenneth missed them. After two months of discipline he found his new freedom a bore, and he was lonely for the harsh old man who had done so much to make a self-respecting canine citizen of him.

A few days after McLaren fell ill the four Polack day laborers at Mossmere struck for extra pay and for six hours less work per week. They had chosen a bad time for the strike; for unemployment had begun to take the place of labor’s post-war golden days. And Bryce’s reply to their demand was to discharge all four of them.

This counter-move had not entered at all into their computations. Kilinski, the spokesman for the quartet, was jarred into a sudden loss of temper. In a bellowed avalanche of broken English, as he stood on the veranda edge, he cursed Bryce and all the latter’s family. Among his fellow Polacks, Kilinski had a high repute for invective. This fame he justified for the benefit of the three other laborers, who stood grouped at the foot of the porch steps.

Bryce, at the howled repetition of one especially virulent epithet, lost control of his own temper and drove his fist to the Polack’s jaw. Back over the edge of the top step reeled Kilinski, landing in the gritty gravel at the bottom of the veranda in a blaspheming heap. Instantly he was on his feet; nursing a bruised jaw with one hand, while with the other he waved on his three co-strikers to charge on the capitalist who had just assaulted him.

Mallon’s car, rounding the drive and coming to a halt in front of the steps, checked the rush. And Mallon himself, vaulting out of the runabout and reënforcing Bryce at the head of the steps, further discouraged the counter-attack. One by one, Kilinski last of all, the four slouched away.

“If I were you, sir,” counselled Mallon, “I’d have the village constable round up those fellows and get them run out of town. That last chap looked back at you in a way I’d hate to have my best enemy look at me. By the way, is Margaret at home, do you know?”

“I—I think so; I’m—I’m not sure,” stammered Bryce, dreading the ordeal of making his daughter consent to come downstairs and see the unwelcome caller.

“How’s the puppy coming on?” asked Mallon.

“I—I don’t know. First rate,” faltered Bryce with a guilty memory that he had not set eyes on Kenneth in weeks and that the girl most assuredly had not. “I’ll—I’ll send one of the maids to find Margaret. Will you come in, or would you rather——”

Margaret, ignorant of Mallon’s call, came sauntering out on the veranda. “What was all the noise about?” she inquired. “It sounded like a dozen people talking over crossed telephone wires. Did——”

Catching sight of Mallon, she paused. Then she forced herself to advance toward him with frigid semblance of hospitality.

“I didn’t know you were here,” said she. “Was it you and Dad who were doing all that frightful quarreling?”

“No, no,” hastily interposed Bryce with a guilty look at his barked knuckles. “The Polacks wanted a raise of pay. And when I wouldn’t give it to them Kilinski got noisy. So I had to send them packing. They——”

From somewhere in the rear of the house came a rapidly approaching clamor which could best be described by the old-fashioned stage directions: “Confused hubbub with-out.” The trio on the veranda turned instinctively in the direction of the racket.

A week earlier the Polacks and a gang of stonemasons from the village had finished erecting a building which was the joy of Bryce’s heart. It was a combination cow-barn and dairy and garage. It stood on a knoll, perhaps a hundred yards to the rear of the main house, hidden from it by an evergreen hedge through which wound a rear driveway. The top of the concrete building was surmounted by an enormous tank, still empty, which was planned to serve as reservoir for house and barns.

Kilinski and his crew had been cleaning up the débris around the new structure that morning when, on Bryce’s return from a drive to the village, they had stopped work to make their carefully planned request for more pay and shorter hours. In gaily anticipatory mood they had trooped to the veranda of the main house. In dire disorder and led by a cursing and bleeding spokesman they had drifted back thither now, to gather up their belongings and depart.

Striding once more ahead of the rest, Kilinski woke the echoes with his tale of grievance. He called down upon Bryce every anathema he could set his ready tongue to. He vowed by all the saints and demons of Poland to have revenge. And the more he talked, the more blindly furious he became. It is not easy to talk at the top of one’s lungs through a swollen jaw. But it tends to the increase of wrath.

Kenneth had just been let out for his morning run. He came capering up to the four fast-walking Polacks, galloping invitingly around them; patting his white forepaws upon the ground in playful fashion; mutely urging the men to romp with him. Life was lonely, with McLaren away.

But the four paid no heed to the friendly puppy. Once, it is true, when Kenneth’s gambols brought him within reach, Kilinski aimed a murderous kick at the pup. But the kick missed its mark, by reason of Kenneth’s elusive gait in circling the man. As the puppy had never been kicked, nor seen anyone kicked, he failed entirely to understand the meaning of the savage gesture.

On strode the four, Kenneth scampering gaily about them in quest of a playmate. As they reached the open door of the tool-shed, where were deposited their dinner-pails and coats, a nailed-up box caught Kilinski’s wrathful eye. Instantly he ceased his lurid monologue and stood stock-still, blinking at it. Through the rage-mists of his slow-working brain an idea was seeping, an idea so fascinating as to focus his every faculty. Gradually the idea took perfect form.

The tool-shed adjoined the new concrete building. The nailed-up box held what was left of a case of dynamite used by professional blasters in clearing away the hardpan rock for the structure’s foundations. The blasting gang were working in another part of the township that week, and had stored this dynamite, along with certain of their implements, in the woodshed; until they should return.

It was the sight of this box which gave Kilinski his masterly idea. Again and again he had watched the blasters drill rock holes and affix the old-fashioned caps to the dynamite sticks. In railroad construction jobs, too, he had handled dynamite for like purpose.

In another minute he was ripping off the nailed top of the box and gingerly drawing thence two sticks of dynamite in their paper cylinders. Then he bound together the two sticks and, delving in the box again, fished out a couple of caps and a coil of fuse. The blasters had used primitive methods, having no electric appliance for the discharge of their explosive and relying on time fuses.

Two of these sticks, with a three-minute fuse attached, tossed high in air and falling into the open and empty tank at the top of the new building, might be relied upon to change Bryce’s costly garage-barn into a heap of crumbled concrete. Dynamite explodes downward. And two sticks of the size manipulated by Kilinski were ample for such a work of destruction. The fact that six valuable cows and a team of work-horses were stabled in the building added zest to the vengeance scheme, as Kilinski proceeded to outline it to his fellow strikers.

The three entered enthusiastically into the plan. It seemed to them nothing short of inspired. Moreover, they decided its execution could not be proved against any of them. They would gather up all their own belongings first.

Then, as soon as the dynamite sticks should be tossed up into the tank, they would all four take to their heels, leaving the grounds by the back way, and could be a quarter-mile off before the three-minute fuse would have time to crawl to the explosive caps. It was a pretty idea, and safe withal. Nobody was within sight to spy or to tell tales.

Kenneth, with his head on one side and his furry ears cocked, stood watching interestedly the preparations. A collie, above all other dogs, is susceptible to even the best-concealed human excitement. The stark emotion of these four non-playful foreigners communicated itself at once to Kenneth. Eagerly he turned his dancing eyes from one to the other.

To save his life, he could not guess what it was that was thrilling the men so. One of them was pottering over a couple of long paper sticks, and jabbering to the others. Decidedly, there was nothing in such a scene to stir them so. Now if it had been a cat or a rabbit or even a stable rat which they were working over, that would have been quite another thing. Anyone could have understood the excitement then. But all that fuss over a couple of tied-together sticks!

In certain cases, of course, the presence of a stick was quite enough to rouse Kenneth to an ecstasy of thrills. But that was when McLaren was about to throw the stick for him to retrieve. And these glum men showed no sign of throwing the double stick. Instead, they were now tying to the end of it a thick string of some sort.

No; as far as Kenneth could gather there was no visible reason for them to take such tense interest in their queer form of play. If only they would stop pottering and throw the stick, there might be some sense to it.

Kenneth would have asked nothing better than to show off his new-learned talents at retrieving. He loved to retrieve. He loved it better than anything else McLaren had taught him.

But in the absence of any possible chance to show off or to romp he was keenly inquisitive as to the nature of the four men’s quivering interest in their task, and he pattered closer. All four of them trooped out of the tool-shed. Kilinski walked ahead of the others. He came to a pause just under the eaves of the new building.

There he looked all about him on every side. Then he stepped back a pace or two and brought the edge of the gaping tank within his range of vision. He gauged the distance with his eye and hefted the weight of the sticks. After which, taking out a card of matches, he struck one of them, shielding its first weak flame in the cup of his hand.

Lighting the end of the fuse, he waited only for the initial sputter of its powder. Then, shaking as if in a hard chill, he drew back his arm and hurled the twin sticks. This was the moment when the four had planned to run away. But not one of them could stir as they watched the white missile with its fizzing fuse. High in air it sped.

Kenneth had beheld the Polack’s actions with fast-growing elation. Kilinski had carried the sticks well out from his body, as McLaren was wont to do when showing Kenneth an object to be retrieved. Could it be, after all, that the man was going to throw the sticks for him? And then had come the familiar gesture of drawing back the arm and of flinging. Kenneth, on his hind legs with rapture, made a glad plunge forward. Then came sickening disappointment.

The man seemed to have made a mistake. Instead of throwing the stick out onto the grass, he had thrown it up in the air toward the top of the barn. That was not fair. For a moment Kenneth was bitterly chagrined. Then, in a flash, his hopes revived. Here was an angle of the retrieving game which McLaren had barely succeeded in teaching him when illness had stopped the lessons.

Having taught Kenneth to retrieve a stick thrown in the open, McLaren had taken the next step by throwing the stick over some obstacle and making the dog hunt for it on the other side by sense of smell. It had been hard at first for Kenneth to understand precisely what was expected of him when a stick vanished over a wall or hedge. But McLaren had been wise and patient, as all dog-teachers must be, and Kenneth had gained a tolerable knowledge of his duties in following the stick and nosing about in the grass until his scenting powers enabled him to locate it.

He had been doing this fairly well on the day McLaren fell sick. It seemed these foreigners were trying to make him do the same thing now. Hopefully, Kenneth’s nearsighted gaze followed the soaring of the dynamite. Up whizzed the tied sticks with their spitting wake of powder.

As he threw, Kilinski was aware of the nervous twitches in his arm. To offset them he put extra effort into the toss. Wherefore the dynamite did not drop gracefully into the opening. Instead, it cleared the top of the building by a matter of inches, and thumped to the ground on the far side.

Around the barn flashed Kenneth, in glad pursuit. True, this bundle had not been given him to smell before it was tossed, as when McLaren threw things for him to retrieve. But there was no need to smell it in order to identify the missile. The pup had caught the pungent reek of its powder tail. That was enough. He could find it. The smell was infinitely easier to locate than the faint human scent on the sticks and on the ball McLaren used in training him to fetch. There would be no difficulty at all in tracing it to the far side of the building or even to the far side of the county.

Away galloped Kenneth on his quest, unnoticed by the four men, who were staring owlishly at the tank edge, over which had disappeared the dynamite package. Kilinski, as usual, was first to recover his presence of mind. He had thrown too far. The only thing to do was to hurry around to the far side of the building, find the dynamite and make a second and more accurate cast. There would still be time enough, even if not quite so much time as he had hoped for. The same thought occurred to his companions. In single file the four started at a run around the barn, Kilinski in front.

But as he rounded the first corner of the building Kilinski came to so abrupt a halt as to make the three close-following men pile up against him with an unpremeditated bump that jarred him to the backbone and set his half-parted teeth clicking together so hard as to chip more than one of them. Kilinski had halted on his way to the dynamite, for the reason that the dynamite was also on its way to him.

Kenneth, dashing to the open space at the barn’s other side, had had not the slightest difficulty in locating the dynamite. He located it by sight as well as by scent, little more than a brace of seconds after it struck ground. He caught it up gleefully between his sharp little teeth and, whirling about, darted back at top speed toward the man who had been so obliging as to throw it for him.

The puppy was vastly proud of this new accomplishment of his. All he asked now was a chance to lay the recovered sticks at the feet of the thrower; and be petted and praised for his exploit. He had not in the least forgotten McLaren’s strict teachings to the effect that a retrieved stick must always be deposited thus at the thrower’s feet.

Halfway around the barn he met Kilinski face to face. He prepared to complete his retrieval work. Indeed, he checked his gallop almost as suddenly as Kilinski had checked his.

The sight of the advancing puppy, carrying enough dynamite to blow a hundred Polacks to Kingdom Come had smitten Kilinski as nothing short of a miracle. It was an impossible thing to have happened. He glared, goggle-eyed, at the frisking Kenneth. The fuse was sputtering merrily. To the men’s panic glance it seemed to have burned down to a hideously short stump.

Courteously, even smugly, Kenneth bent his head to lay the burden at Kilinski’s feet. But the Polack was in no mood to receive it. With a yell of sheer terror he turned and bolted, the three other men at his heels. At the heels of the four scampered Kenneth.

One cannot put down a stick at the feet of a man whose feet are carrying him in the opposite direction at the rate of nearly twenty miles an hour. Therefore Kenneth gave chase. It seemed there were points to this retrieving game which he had not yet mastered. But as those points seemed to comprise a gay footrace, Kenneth was not downhearted at the new development.

McLaren had instilled in the pup’s memory the rule of bringing back a thrown object, far too rigorously for Kenneth to forget or to fail in obeying the rule. He was going to place that sharp-smelling bundle at Kilinski’s feet; if he should have to chase the man into the next state in order to do it.

Meanwhile the race was jolly and invigorating, despite the somewhat inconvenient heaviness of his burden. And Kenneth entered with a will into the gladsome romp. Kilinski and his fellows ran, and they kept on running. Every time one of them would glance fearsomely back over his shoulder he would see the galloping puppy close behind and would note that the wind-fanned fuse was appallingly short. The rearmost Polack began to shriek. Two of the others followed his example. They rent the air with their panic screeches.

Kenneth was gloriously elated by the noise. Much he yearned to augment it by clamorous barking. But a canine burden bearer cannot bark if the burden chances to be between his teeth, and if it must not be laid down except at the feet of a man he cannot catch up with.

To Kilinski this stark pursuit had in it no element of play or of retrieving. The Polack could see nothing in it but the Incredible and the hand of Fate. He had sought to dynamite another’s property. And now, borne by a demon dog, the lighted dynamite was chasing him.

He redoubled his speed. But he gained pitiably little ground on the frisking pup. In an unconscious instant of self-protection the four men kept close together in their crazy run. They did not seek to scatter. In a scrambling bunch they fled. The same impulse, perhaps, guided mechanically their steps toward the main house; where were other humans and where perhaps might be aid.

Once, in a moment of fright courage, Kilinski stooped for a big stone and half turned to dash it at the pursuing dog. But as he looked over his shoulder to take aim he saw his brief pause had not only left him tailmost of the procession, but had brought Kenneth alongside. The fuse seemed all but touching the stick tips. Dropping the stone, Kilinski threw himself deliriously into the race again, adding his screeches to those of his comrades.

Kenneth was disappointed at this new burst of speed on the part of his quarry. When Kilinski had slowed down momentarily the puppy had supposed this to be the chance for depositing at his feet the ever-heavier bundle. But it seemed he had been mistaken. And though his baby strength was more and more taxed to carry such a weight, he kept gallantly on. The fumes of the powder, too, were beginning to get into his eyes and to choke him. The game no longer was pleasant.

Around the end of the main house tore the fugitives, howling at every jump. And close at their heels followed the weary little dog. This was the strange procession which greeted the gaze of Bryce and Margaret and Mallon from the veranda edge. Open-mouthed the spectators gaped at the weird sight.

Blindly Kilinski banged against the mudguard of Mallon’s runabout, on his flight toward the steps. Caroming from it, he lost his balance and sprawled full length, face downward, on the gravel of the drive. For perhaps a second the Polack lay there, half-stunned by the impact of his thick foreskull on the pebbles. Then he scrambled, crabwise, to his feet and bolted again; with fresh screeches of terror.

But that second’s delay was just long enough for the accomplishing of tired little Kenneth’s mission. Wearily yet daintily the dog laid down his sizzing burden at Kilinski’s feet.

Kenneth’s task was achieved. Well and snappily achieved, at that. He had followed McLaren’s teachings to the letter, as is the way of a rightly trained collie pup of the best sort. He had overcome all difficulties. He had found the thrown object. With much skill and effort he had brought it to the thrower’s feet.

Kenneth’s share in the tedious sport was at an end, unless the howling and sprinting Polack should choose to come back and toss the bundle for him again. But Kilinski seemed to have no such intent. He was making much progress in his merry race against death. His gibberings still assailed high heaven. He gave no sign of planning to continue his game with the puppy.

Kenneth was not sorry. The sticks had been increasingly heavy and unwieldy, and the powder reek had been detestable. Leaving the burden behind him, he trotted up the steps toward the three people at the summit.

Kilinski bestowed one more terrified backward glance upon his late pursuer. He saw the dynamite lying on the ground, its sizzing fuse well-nigh burned out. He saw the puppy had abandoned the game. With a yell of command to his fellows he made for the front gate, scarce slackening his pace. Not until all four were well down the highroad did they come to a shambling and jabbering standstill.

“What in the world—?” gasped Margaret, finding her voice as the last of the runners lumbered out of sight.

But a gurgle of horror from her father interrupted her and brought her wandering gaze to something at which his wavering finger was pointing: namely, a couple of sticks of dynamite tied together and bearing a nearly spent fuse.

The sticks were lying in the driveway not ten feet from the trio.

“Take her out into the open, somewhere,” shouted Mallon, catching sight of the explosives at the same time and gripping imperatively at Bryce’s shoulder. “Carry her! Run!”

As he spoke Mallon cleared the porch steps at a leap that brought him into the drive alongside the spitting fuse. In practically the same gesture he snatched up the dynamite sticks and wrenched the infinitesimal bit of fuse free from the tips. Then, to make assurance doubly sure, he flung the tied sticks with all his force as far as possible from the house.

Kenneth, pattering excitedly down the veranda steps, gave instant chase. But Mallon caught the flying pup expertly by the nape of the neck as he passed, and turned back to the porch.

Bryce had been too muddle-witted to follow Mallon’s instructions to hurry Margaret from under the veranda roof before the possible explosion should bring down that portion of the house on her. He and the girl stood, wide eyed, panting, their gaze fixed marvelingly on Mallon.

“It—it might have gone off while you held it,” breathed Margaret, catching her breath in something like a sob. “It——”

“A second later,” babbled her father, “and it would have exploded. It was touch and go. We owe you our——”

“Nonsense!” laughed Mallon, direfully embarrassed. “I’m only sorry I bawled at you so melodramatically. I was a bit rattled, I suppose. It was——”

“It was—it was magnificent!” declared Margaret, looking at him with an odd new expression he dared not believe he read aright. “It was—Oh, you’ll stay to lunch, won’t you—please? And—bring Kenneth in with you.”

“Say,” confided Bryce, an hour later, drawing Mallon out of earshot of the others. “I just phoned those two blasters who left the dynamite here last week. I gave them a bit of my mind, for storing explosives in my tool-house. And what do you suppose they told me? They’d left that box there because it had nothing in it but ‘duds,’ as they called them; dynamite sticks that were defective and wouldn’t go off. They put all the defective sticks from our blast work into the box, meaning to ship it back to the dealer when they got through the out-of-town job they’re on.”

Mallon whistled long and low. “All my scare for nothing,” he exclaimed. “Heavens! what a fool I made of myself!”

“I—I suggest,” ventured Bryce, “that we say nothing to Margaret. There’s no need, you know.”

“No need at all,” assented Mallon in a flash of sanity. “Besides—she’s asked me to stay on to dinner tonight. I think I’ll hunt up those two duds and have them framed.”