Blondy Read online

  “Oh, Peter, you ain’t . . . ?” began Mrs. Zinn.

  Her husband silenced her with an ugly glance, then he opened the back door and tossed Blondy into the yard. The bull terrier landed lightly and running. He turned into a white streak that crashed against Gripper, turned the latter head over heels, and tumbled the shepherd into a corner. Blondy wheeled to finish the good work, but Gripper lay at his feet, abject upon his belly, with ears lowered, head pressed between his paws, wagging a conciliatory tail and whining a confession of shame, fear, and humility. Blondy leaped at him with a stiff-legged jump and snapped his teeth at the very side of one of those drooped ears, but Gripper only melted a little closer to the ground. For, a scant ten days before, he had seen that formidable warrior, the Chippings’s greyhound, throttled by the white destroyer. What chance would he have with his worn old teeth? He whined a sad petition through them, and, closing his eyes, he offered up a prayer to the god that watches over all good dogs: Never, never again would he rummage around a strange backyard, if only this one sin were forgiven.

  The door of the house slammed open; a terrible voice was shouting: “Take him, Blondy! Kill him, Blondy!”

  Blondy, with a moan of battle joy, rushed in again. His teeth clipped over the neck of Gripper, but the dreadful jaws did not close. For, even in this extremity, Gripper only whined and wagged his tail the harder. Blondy danced back.

  “You damn quitter!” yelled Peter Zinn. “Tear him to bits! Take him, Blondy!”

  The tail of Blondy flipped from side to side to show that he had heard. He was shuddering with awful eagerness, but Gripper would not stir.

  “Coward! Coward! Coward!” snarled Blondy. “Get up and fight. Here I am . . . half turned away . . . offering you the first hold . . . if you only dare to take it!”

  Never was anything said more plainly in dog talk, saving the pitiful response of Gripper: “Here I lie . . . kill me if you will. I am an old, old man with worn-out teeth and a broken heart.”

  Blondy stopped snarling and trembling. He came a bit nearer, and with his own touched the cold nose of Gripper. The old dog opened one eye.

  “Get up,” said Blondy very plainly. “But if you dare to come near my buried bone again, I’ll murder you, you old rip.” And he lay down above that hidden treasure, wrinkling his eyes and lolling out his tongue, which, as all dogs know, is a sign that a little gambol and play will not be amiss.

  “Dad!” cried Oliver Zinn. “He won’t touch Gripper. Is he sick?”

  “Come here!” thundered Zinn, and, when Blondy came, he kicked the dog across the kitchen and sent him crashing into the wall. “You yaller-hearted cur!” snarled Peter Zinn, and strode out of the house to go to work.

  His fury did not abate until he had delivered a shower of blows with a fourteen-pound sledge upon a bar of cold iron on his anvil, wielding the ponderous hammer with one capacious hand. After that he was able to try to think it out. It was very mysterious. For his own part, when he was enraged, it mattered not what crossed his path—old and young, weak and strong, they were grist for the mill of his hands and he ground them small, indeed. But Blondy, apparently, followed a different philosophy and would not harm those who were helpless.

  Then Peter Zinn looked down to the foot that had kicked Blondy across the room. He was tremendously unhappy. Just why, he could not tell, but he fumbled at the mystery all that day and the next. Every time he faced Blondy, the terrier seemed to have forgotten that brutal attack, but Peter Zinn was stabbed to the heart by a brand-new emotion—shame. And when he met Blondy at the gate on the second evening, something made him stoop and stroke the scarred head. It was the first caress. He looked up with a hasty pang of guilt and turned a dark red when he saw his wife watching from the window of the front bedroom. Yet, when he went to sleep that night, he felt that Blondy and he had been drawn closer together.

  The very next day the crisis came. He was finishing his lunch, when guns began to bark and rattle—reports with a metallic and clanging overtone which meant that rifles were in play, then a distant shouting rolled confusedly upon them. Peter Zinn called Blondy to his heels and went out to investigate.

  The first surmise that jumped into his mind had been correct. Jeff and Lew Minster had broken from jail, been headed off in their flight, and had taken refuge in the post office. There they held the crowd at bay, Jeff taking the front of the building and Lew the rear. Vacant lots surrounded the old frame shack since the general merchandise store burned down three years before, and the rifles of two expert shots commanded this no man’s land. It would be night before they could close in on the building, but, when night came, the Minster boys would have an excellent chance of breaking away with darkness to cover them.

  “What’ll happen?” asked Tony Jeffreys of the blacksmith as they sat at the corner of the hotel where they could survey the whole scene.

  “I dunno,” said Peter Zinn, as he puffed at his pipe. “I guess it’s up to the constable to show the town that he’s a hero. There he is now!”

  The constable had suddenly dashed out of the door of Sam Donoghue’s house, directly facing the post office, followed by four others, in the hope that he might take the defenders by surprise. But when men defend their lives, they are more watchful than wolves in the hungry winter of the mountains. A Winchester spoke from a window of the post office the moment the forlorn hope appeared. The first bullet knocked the hat from the head of Harry Daniels and stopped him in his tracks. The second shot went wide. The third knocked the feet from under the constable and flattened him in the road. This was more than enough. The remnant of the party took to its heels and regained shelter safely before the dust raised by his fall had ceased curling above the prostrate body of the constable.

  Tony Jeffreys had risen to his feet, repeating over and over an oath of his childhood—“Jiminy whiskers! Jiminy whiskers! They’ve killed poor Tom Frejus!”—but Peter Zinn, holding the tremblingly eager body of Blondy between his hands, jutted forth his head and grinned in a savage warmth of contentment.

  “He’s overdue,” was all he said.

  But Tom Frejus was not dead. His leg had been broken between the knee and hip, but he now reared himself upon both hands and looked about him. He had covered the greater part of the road in his charge. It would be easier to escape from fire by crawling close under the shelter of the wall of the post office than by trying to get back to Donoghue’s house. Accordingly, he began to drag himself forward. He had not covered a yard when the Winchester cracked again, and Tom crumpled on his face with both arms flung around his head.

  Peter Zinn stood up with a gasp. Here was something quite different. The constable was beaten, broken, and he reminded Zinn of one thing only—old Gripper cowering against the fence with Blondy, towering above, ready to kill. Blondy had been merciful, but the heartless marksman behind the window was still intent on murder. His next bullet raised a white furrow of dust near Frejus. Then a wild voice, made thin and high by the extremity of fear and pain, cleft through the air and smote the heart of Peter Zinn: “Help! For God’s sake, mercy!”

  Tom Frejus was crushed, indeed, and begging as Gripper had begged. A hundred voices were shouting with horror, but no man dared venture out in the face of that cool-witted marksman. Then Peter Zinn knew the thing that he had been born to do, for which he had been granted strength of hand and courage of heart. He threw his long arms out before him as though he were running to embrace a bodiless thing; a great wordless voice swelled in his breast and tore his throat; and he raced out toward the fallen constable.

  Some woman’s voice was screaming: “Back! Go back, Peter! Oh, God, stop him! Stop him!”

  Minster had already marked his coming. The rifle cracked, and a blow on the side of his head knocked Peter Zinn into utter blackness. A searing pain and the hot flow of blood down his face brought back his senses. He leaped to his feet again, heard a yelp of joy as Blondy danced away before him, then he drove past the writhing body of Tom Frejus. The gun spoke
again from the window; the red-hot torment stabbed him again, he knew not where. Then he reached the door of the building and gave his shoulder to it.

  It was a thing of paper that ripped open before him. He plunged through into the room beyond, where he saw the long, snarling face of the younger Minster in the shadow of a corner with the gleam of the leveled rifle barrel. He dodged as the gun spat fire, heard a brief and wicked humming beside his ear, then scooped up in one hand a heavy chair, and flung it at the gunman.

  Minster went down with his legs and arms sprawled in an odd position, and Peter Zinn gave him not so much as another glance for he knew that this part of his work was done.

  “Lew! Lew!” cried a voice from the back of the building. “What’s happened? What’s up? D’you want help?”

  “Aye!” shouted Peter Zinn. “He wants help. You damn’ murderer, it’s me . . . Peter Zinn! Peter Zinn!”

  He kicked open the door beyond and ran full into the face of a lightning flash. It withered the strength from his body. He slumped down on the floor with his loose shoulders resting against the wall. In a twilight dimness he saw big Jeff Minster standing in a thin swirl of smoke with the rifle muzzle twitching down and steadying for the finishing shot, but a white streak leaped through the doorway, over his shoulder, and flew at Minster.

  Before the sick eyes of Peter Zinn, the man and the dog whirled into a blur of darkness streaked with white. There passed two long, long seconds, thick with stampings, the wild curses of Jeff Minster, the deep and humming growl of Blondy. Moreover, out of the distance a great wave of voices was rising, sweeping toward the building.

  The eyes of Peter cleared. He saw Blondy fastened to the right leg of Jeff Minster above the knee. The rifle had fallen to the floor, and Jeff Minster, yelling with pain and rage, had caught out his hunting knife, had raised it. He stabbed. But still Blondy clung. “No, no!” screamed Peter Zinn.

  “Your damned dog first . . . then you,” gasped Minster.

  The weakness struck Zinn again. His great head lolled back on his shoulders. “God,” he moaned, “gimme strength! Don’t let Blondy die!”

  And strength poured hot upon his body, a strength so great that he could reach his hand to the rifle on the floor, gather it to him, put his finger on the trigger, and raise the muzzle, slowly, slowly, as though it weighed a ton.

  The knife had fallen again. It was a half-crimson dog that still clung to the slayer. Feet beat, voices boomed like a waterfall in the next room. Then, as the knife rose again, Zinn pulled the trigger, blind to his target, and, as the thick darkness brushed across his brain, he saw something falling before him.

  * * * *

  He seemed, after a time, to be walking down an avenue of utter blackness. Then a thin star ray of light glistened before him. It widened. A door of radiance opened through which he stepped and found himself—lying between cool sheets with the binding grip of bandages holding him in many places and, wherever the bandages held, the deep, sickening ache of wounds. Dr. Burney leaned above him, squinting as though Peter Zinn were far away. Then Peter’s big hand caught him.

  “Doc,” he said, “what’s happened? Gimme the worst of it.”

  “If you lie quiet, my friend,” said the doctor, “and husband your strength, and fight for yourself as bravely as you fought for Constable Frejus, you’ll pull through well enough. You have to pull through, Zinn, because this town has a good deal to say that you ought to hear. Besides. . . .”

  “Hell, man,” said Peter Zinn, the savage, “I mean the dog. I mean Blondy . . . how . . . what I mean to say is . . .”

  Then a great foreknowledge came upon Peter Zinn. His own life having been spared, fate had taken another in exchange, and Blondy would never lie warm upon his feet again. He closed his eyes and whispered huskily: “Say yes or no, Doc. Quick!”

  But the doctor was in so little haste that he turned away and walked to the door, where he spoke in a low voice.

  “He’s got to have help,” said Peter Zinn to his own dark heart. “He’s got to have help to tell me how a growed-up man killed a poor pup.”

  Footsteps entered. “The real work I’ve been doing,” said the doctor, “hasn’t been with you. Look up, Zinn!”

  Peter Zinn looked up, and over the edge of the doctor’s arm he saw a long, narrow white head, with a pair of brown-black eyes and a wistfully wrinkled forehead. Blondy, swathed in soft white linen, was laid upon the bed and crept up closer until the cold point of his nose, after his fashion, was hidden in the palm of the master’s hand. Now big Peter beheld the doctor through a mist spangled with magnificent diamonds, and he saw that Burney found it necessary to turn his head away. He essayed speech, which twice failed, but at the third effort he managed to say in a voice strange to himself: “Take it by and large, Doc, it’s a damn’ good old world.”