Gray Dawn

Albert Payson Terhune

• Publisher: Cornford Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781447472810
• eBook ISBN: 9781473392953
• Subtopic: Classics

This is the story of Gray Dawn, a collie who lived at Terhune's Sunnybank kennels and who likes to do things his own way. Initially believing Gray Dawn to be a hopeless case, the Master plans to sell the dog to another breeder despite his wife's protestations. But, after enacting a deed of great courage, Gray Dawn is spared at the last moment and wins the affection and respect of his master. A wonderfully heart-warming tale, this book will not disappoint fans of Terhune's delightful fiction and constitutes a must-have for any dog-lover. Albert Payson Terhune (1872 – 1942) was an American journalist, author, dog breeder, most famous for his books detailing the adventures of a collie named Lad. This book was originally published 1927 and is republished here with a new prefatory biography of the author.

CHAPTER ONE

SCARED STIFF

IT BEGAN on a villainously cold and sleety and tempest-twisted night in mid-December, one of those nights nobody wants. Across the frozen lake, from the white-capped Ramapo Mountains beyond, hooted a ruffianly gale that slapped along ahead of it a deluge of half-frozen rain.

Over the woods and the sweet lawns of The Place yelled the sleet-laden hurricane, buffeting the naked black tree boughs into a hideous goblin dance, hammering against the stanch old rambling gray stucco house with its festoons of seventy-year wistaria vines, wrenching at the shutters and shaking racketily the windowpanes.

The frozen ground was aglare with driven rain and with slush. Borne on the riot of wind and sleet, a spectacular December thunderstorm flashed and rumbled. In the North Jersey hill country minor thunderstorms are by no means rare in late autumn and early winter. But this one was as crashingly noisy and as pyrotechnic as though it marked the finish of a July hot spell.

The Sunnybank humans and the Sunnybank collies were roused from their gale-lullabyed sleep by the glare and din. The humans were vaguely aware of the phenomenon, and sank back to slumber, wondering drowsily at it. The kennel dogs reacted to it, each after his own nature. A thunderstorm terrifies some dogs to crazy panic; others it excites; a few are indifferent to it.

Wolf, official watchdog of The Place, lay quietly on his sheltered veranda mat, wakeful, alert, but giving no heed to the storm itself. His job was to guard, not to let mere electric tempests distract him. Terror never had found foothold in Wolf’s fiery soul.

At first hint of the far-off thunder—long before any human ear could have detected its approach, through the roar of wind and fanfare of sleety rain—Bruce awoke, on his rug in the Master’s study. Bruce was a gigantically graceful collie, flawless in body and mind and heart—such a dog for beauty and disposition as is found perhaps once in a generation.

In all normal crises he was calmly fearless. But thunderstorms were a dread to him. Now he got to his feet and pattered softly upstairs to the Mistress’s room. Without a sound to waken her, the great dog moved over to the side of her bed. He stood there, mute and miserable, his shaggy body pressed tremblingly close against the edge of the mattress, seeking comfort in his nearness to the sleeping woman.

Thus, ever, in thunderstorms, Bruce would hunt out the Mistress, and would stand as close to her as he could, throughout the time of fear. Though he was the Master’s dog and the Master’s worshiper, yet in such moments of stress it was the Mistress he came to for comfort. Perhaps, despite her gentleness, hers was the stronger character, and the psychic collie realized it.

Lad, too—up to the day of his death, three months earlier—had always hurried to the Mistress in moments of real or fancied danger. But in Lad’s case he had been the protector, not the protected. Lad, like Wolf, his son, had not known the meaning of fear. From puppyhood he had seemed to feel that the Mistress needed him to stand fiercely in front of her when hint of peril was at hand. At such times, woe to any stranger who should chance to come near her!

To-night another Sunnybank collie was sharing Bruce’s terror at the rackety thunderstorm. A hundred yards from the house was a snugly warm little building containing a blanket-bedded brood-nest. Here, for the past few nights, had slept Cleo, a gentle and wise, if temperamental, merle collie.

Wakened, like Bruce, by the first distant breath of the thunderstorm, Cleo had jumped up and had begun to trot nervously to and fro in the narrow confines of the nest. As the thunder waxed louder and as fitful glares of lightning illumined the world, Cleo’s nervousness swelled to fright. Around and around the nest she tore, whimpering piteously in fear.

At last, summoning all her panic strength, she hurled herself at the flimsy window, three feet above the level of the floor. Clumsily she leaped, goaded on by the fright that made her mad to escape from these close quarters and to hide from the lightning in some deeper and darker refuge.

Her gray body smote the window and crashed through it, carrying along broken glass and slivered casings. A gash across the nose and a nasty cut on the shoulder testified to her tumultuous plunge through the panes. Floundering she landed on the slush outside, sliding along for a yard or so, then colliding heavily with a heap of cordwood.

She gathered herself together, whining and shuddering. But before she could get into motion for a dash to some safer hiding place she was aware that the thunder and lightning had passed by. The gale was still screeching and the mingled rain and sleet were cascading down through the ice-chill air. But the thunderstorm had rolled on down the valley and had departed.

With the passing of noise and glare, Cleo’s panic terror left her. But she was too sick and in too much pain to force herself to the effort of leaping back through the shattered window to the warmth and dryness of her brood-nest. With a sobbing little whimper she cuddled down in a puddle of slush; and lay there.

Gray dawn had scarcely begun to creep sullenly up from the black east when the Master awoke. He woke thus early because something was troubling him. He did not know what it was. He lay there, dully trying to remember. Bit by bit it came to him. He remembered being half awakened by the thunderstorm and of wondering subconsciously whether he ought not to dress and go out to Cleo. He knew her horror of such storms.

He had been dead tired, and the thought had not roused him sufficiently to banish the sleep mists. But now it recurred to him with full force. Getting up, he huddled sketchily into a few clothes, thrust his bare feet into a pair of boots, and left the house at a run, heading for the brood-nest.

Twenty feet from the nest he came to a dum-founded halt.

There on the icy ground, her gray fur drenched, and half frozen, lay Cleo. At sight of the Master she did not spring up as usual and run to greet him. She contented herself with lifting her head and wagging a feeble tail in welcome.

Scattered around her in the slush lay eight inert and ratlike little creatures. They were thoroughbred collie puppies—Cleo’s and Bruce’s children—soaked and chilled and dead.

They were Cleo’s first babies. The young mother had had no idea how to save or nourish this sudden family of hers, nor even the wit to carry them in out of the downpour of killing sleet. Warmth and dryness are all-needful to newborn puppies. Warmth and dryness had been provided in advance for this litter whose advent had not been expected for another three or four days. But the thunderstorm had wrecked the careful plans of Cleo’s human guardians.

The Master saw the smashed window of the brood-nest. He noted the slash across Cleo’s nose and the glass scratch on her gray shoulder. He understood—now that it was too late for the understanding to do him any good.

Belatedly he sought to save a situation which his drowsiness had permitted. Ripping off his coat, he gathered up the eight chilly and wet morsels of flesh and fur and wrapped them tenderly in it. Then he turned toward the house, to try to warm one or more of them back to life by means of hot water and the kitchen oven.

He whistled to Cleo to get up and follow the coatful of frozen babies. Wearily she obeyed. As she got to her shaky legs something rolled out of the crease between her flank and her side. The Master chanced to see it, in the faint dawn light, and stooped to pick it up.

It was a male puppy, larger than any of the eight others. He was alive. He was warm. He was vigorous. By some stray instinct of maternity, when he was born, Cleo had nosed him against her furry side as she lay there. He had happened to slip down between her hip and her ribs. There he had lain, sheltered from the sleet, in a pocket of dry fur, whence he had fallen just now when his mother got up.

For an hour, in the kitchen, the Master and the Mistress and the maids and the superintendent of The Place wrought over the puppies. Eight of them could not be wooed back to life, by immersion in hot water, by manipul...

Table of contents

• Albert Payson Terhune
• CHAPTER ONE
• CHAPTER TWO
• CHAPTER THREE
• CHAPTER FOUR
• CHAPTER FIVE
• CHAPTER SIX
• CHAPTER SEVEN
• CHAPTER EIGHT
• CHAPTER NINE
• CHAPTER TEN
• AFTER-WORD