A Highland Collie - Originally Published as the Luck of the Laird

Albert Payson Terhune

Description

This early work by Albert Payson Terhune was originally published in 1917. 'A Highland Collie' is one of Terhune's well-loved canine stories. Terhune was a famous American author, dog breeder, and journalist, best known for his adventure novels about collies.

Sujets

• Classics
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 15 avril 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781473392557
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE
A Highland Collie
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AS
The Luck of the Laird
Copyright 2011 Read Books Ltd. This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any way without the express permission of the publisher in writing
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
CONTENTS
Albert Payson Terhune
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Albert Payson Terhune
Albert Payson Terhune was born on 21 st December 1872, in New Jersey, United States. Terhune s father was the Reverend Edward Payson Terhune and his mother, Mary Virginia Hawes, was a writer of household management books and pre-Civil War novels under the name Marion Harland. He was one of six children, having four sisters and one brother, but only two of his sisters survived until adulthood. Further tragedy beset the family when his own wife, Lorraine Bryson Terhune, died four days after giving birth to their only child. He later remarried Anice Terhune, but had no more children.
Terhune received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia University in 1893. The following year, he took a job as a reporter at the New York newspaper The Evening World , a position he held for the next twenty years. During this period, he began to publish works of fiction, such as Dr. Dale: A Story Without A Moral (1900), The New Mayor (1907), Caleb Conover, Railroader (1907), and The Fighter (1909). However, it was his short stories about his collie Lad, published in Red Book, Saturday Evening Post, Ladies Home Journal, Hartford Courant , and the Atlantic Monthly , that brought him mainstream success. A dozen of these tales were collected in to novel form and released as Lad: A Dog in 1919. This was a best-seller and in 1962 was adapted into a feature film. He went on to produce over thirty novels focussing on the lives of dogs and enjoyed much success in the genre.
Terhune s interest in canines was by no means restricted to fiction. He became a celebrated dog-breeder, specialising in rough collies, lines of which still exist in the breed today. Sunnybank kennels were the most famous collie kennels in the United States and the estate is now open to the public and known as Terhune Memorial Park. Terhune died on 18 th February 1942 and was buried at the Pompton Reformed Church in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey.

As much of my book as may be worth his approval is dedicated to
E UGENE F. S AXTON
Albert Payson Terhune Books:
THE BEST-LOVED DOG STORIES OF ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE BUFF, A COLLIE COLLIE TO THE RESCUE THE CRITTER A DOG NAMED CHIPS DOG OF THE HIGH SIERRAS FAITH OF A COLLIE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF LAD GRAY DAWN A HIGHLAND COLLIE LAD OF SUNNYBANK LOCHINVAR LUCK MY FRIEND THE DOG SUNNYBANK: HOME OF LAD TREVE THE WAY OF A DOG WOLF
A Highland Collie
CHAPTER ONE

I T WAS a raw February morning in Midwestbury when Rufus G. Belden, one of the two wealthiest and most powerful tycoons of that smoky metropolis, returned home in one of his nastiest tempers. Two Pullman porters, a dining-car waiter and several innocent train passengers had gratuitously experienced his foul mood as he journeyed from New York where he had been attending the annual Westminster Dog Show at Madison Square Garden.
Nor was the drive from the station to the Belden country estate any too pleasant for the family chauffeur, for not only had the great man ignored his pleasant greetings at the train-shed gate, but all the way home the rear-view mirror revealed the master hunched in glowering silence in the back seat. Anyone who knew Rufus G. Belden would have detected behind the lines of sullen rage that marked his fat, heavy face a trace of fear, perhaps even of panic.
His mansion, Beldencroft, and its two square miles of surrounding domain, was the show place of the state. The house looked like a cathedral whose strabismic designer had studied architecture in ancient Babylon. It was its obese owner s delight.
But Belden s chief pride and joy were centered in the ornate kennels that took up an acre of his landscaped grounds.
Here Rufus G. bred and raised for exhibition some of the most renowned collies in America. Ever it had been his yearning to be known as The Collie King as once his life-model, J. Pierpont Morgan, Sr., had been known.
He had succeeded almost according to his dreams. This through no dog-breeding genius of his own, but by reason of great good luck in having the services of one Jamie Mackellar, his soft-spoken little kennel manager of Scottish ancestry.
For years, Jamie s glorious collie, Champion Lochinvar Bobby, had headed the Beldencroft kennels. He had won prize after prize at a hundred dog shows from the Atlantic to the Pacific. But now Lochinvar Bobby was aging. His classic muzzle was silvered. He was taking on flesh. His show days were past. He was living out his last years in retirement as an honored and loved occupant of Jamie Mackellar s snug cottage behind the kennels.
Many another good collie there was at Beldencroft, but none as good as Bobby-none to be relied on to clean up all the best prizes at all the best shows.
Willard Ulrich, the lumber king, had begun to press Belden uncomfortably close for supremacy in the collie world, even as he was challenging Belden s long-undisputed supremacy in Midwestburg s financial and political fields.
For example, at the recent Westminster Dog Show, at New York, Ulrich s three newly imported collies had won with comparative ease over the best dogs from the Beldencroft kennels. Hence the return of Rufus G. Belden today to his manorial acres in such a vile mood.
Out of his limousine he debouched, like a sizzling onion from its shuck skin. Leaving Jamie Mackellar to go to the kennels and see after the welfare of the collies that had come from the show on the same train with Rufus G. and the little manager, the great man strode indoors.
In the front hall he paused in his wrathful progress toward his study. A reluctant half grin replaced his scowl. Light and fast steps were coming down the ugly marble staircase toward him. Then those same steps were carrying across the wide hallway a fluffy and dainty and altogether attractive girl of perhaps twenty.
Hello, daddy! she hailed the returned magnate, standing on tiptoe to kiss his florid cheek. I thought you were going to stay in New York an extra day, to celebrate. We-
There wasn t anything to celebrate, grunted Belden, his scowl coming back and driving away the grin his daughter s approach had evoked. Not a measly thing to celebrate. So Mackellar and I brought the dogs home. Phyll, it was a Waterloo! Ulrich swept the boards. We didn t get a look-in. One reserve winners and a few cheap specials. That was all. Ulrich nabbed winners in both male and female, and best of breed, besides. Everything! He-
Poor old daddy! soothed the girl. It was putrid hard luck. I m ever so sorry. But we-
Putrid hard luck is a sloppy mild name for it! stormed Belden in one of the gusts of noisy temper that made him hated by half his world and feared by most of the other half. It was a damn sight worse than that. I want to know why I m paying thirty thousand dollars a year for the upkeep and showing of my dogs, if I m to be licked to a frazzle by a tyro like Willard Ulrich. I mean to know the reason for that, Phyll. Just as I make it a rule to find out where the sagging spot is in any other detail of my business.
After all, she suggested, with a superiority that was maddening, a dog show is only just a dog show, and-
And a defeat is just as much a defeat at a dog show as at a national convention, and just as tough to swallow. I m going to put Jamie Mackellar on the carpet, and-
No, you re not, daddy! laughed the girl, speaking tolerantly as to a child in a tantrum. You know very well you re not. In the first place, Mackellar is the only person in the world, except me, who isn t the least tiny bit afraid of you. And second, because he s the only person on earth you have any respect for-including me. And third, because you know there isn t a better kennel chief in America than he is.
Rufus G. Belden glowered dourly down into his daughter s laughing face. He knew she was speaking the truth. He depended implicitly on little Mackellar and had boundless confidence in him. Nevertheless, Belden yearned for someone on whom to vent his peevish wrath. Phyllis went on, primly:
Besides, it s your own fault, your own pigheadedness. Mackellar told you, ages ago, that you needed new blood in the kennels and that the old Beldencroft strain was too closely inbred and that it was wearing out. He said Mr. Ulrich was importing the best dogs in Europe to improve his strain, and he advised you to do it, too. I heard him. And I heard Roy Garth tell you so, too. He-
Roy Garth? snorted Belden, with something of the air of a raging bull that sights at last a red rag for the venting of his temper. Roy Garth? That mangy little whippersnapper! I ll thank him to keep his asinine opinions to himself, if he wants to hold down his job as my secretary. What does that callow fool know about dogs-or about anything else? Hey? Tell me that! He s-
He knows enough about collies to hold a judging license from the American Kennel Club! spoke up Phyllis, her air of teasing tolerance tinged with sudden warmth. Jamie Mackellar himself says Roy has as good an eye for the true collie type as anyone he knows. He was brought up among collies. As for his not knowing anything else -well, he knows enough to hold his job as your secretary for two years, when you ve always fired every other secretary inside of six months. He s held it without cringing to you, either.
Abruptly Phyllis Belden walked away, her head high, her heels clicking on the slippery floor. Rufus G.