BUFF, A Collie and other dog-stories
About this ebook
NOW this is the story of the masterless wanderings of Buff.
Long and unavailingly did Buff follow the track of the car which had borne away the man who was his god. Dizzy from his wound, faint from loss of blood, heart-broken and frantic at the vanishing of his master, the collie sped in pursuit. The scent was fresh in his nostrils—the scent of the kidnapped man and of his abductors, and the familiar odour of Trent’s car.
Mile after mile galloped Buff through the summer night; trusting wholly to his sense of smell. With the peculiar mile-eating canter of his wolf-ancestors, he stuck to the trail, even when the car’s track ceased to furrow the dusty country road and passed clean through a busy little city.
Through the city’s myriad odours and distractions, Buff stuck to the scent of his master’s car. Other cars—hundreds of them—had laced the trail. The asphalt’s smell of gasoline and grease was sickeningly acute in the dog’s nostrils, confusing and sometimes all but blotting out the scent he was following. Yet never quite did Buff lose the track.
Under the lamps of motor-trucks and trolley cars he flashed, swerving barely far enough out of their way to save himself from death; then ever picking up the scent again.
Once a troop of small boys gave chase, realising the chances of reward that lay in the capture of so fine a dog. But Buff, with that odd and choppy wolf-stride of his, soon out-distanced them. And they threw stones, futilely, in the wake of the flying tawny shape.
Again, a Great Dane whirled out of a dooryard and pursued the passing collie. Buff was aware of the larger dog’s presence only when a spring and a snarl warned him to wheel, in bare time to avoid the full shock of the Dane’s charge.
Buff had no time for fighting. Paying no further heed to the attacking giant, he swerved from the assault, caught the trail again, and increased his pace. But the Great Dane would not have it so. His instincts of a bully were aroused by the meek flight of this stranger dog from his onset. And he pursued at top speed.
A motor-bus, whirring out from a side street, checked Buff’s flight for an instant, by barring the way. Before he could get into his stride again, the Dane had hurled himself upon the fugitive, bearing him to the ground, in the slime and mud of the greasy street.
By the time Buff’s tawny back smote the asphalt, he was master of the situation. Furious at this abominable delay he reverted to type—or to two types.
It was his wolf-ancestry that lent him the wit and the nimbleness to spin to his feet, under the big assailant’s lunging body, and to find by instinct the hind leg tendon of the lumbering brute. All this, in one lightning swirl, and before the Dane could slacken his own pace.
