your glad young arms, and he cuddled and squirmed and licked your face;
and in an instant the subtle bonds of chumship were sealed forever. You
had chosen.
“I guess I’ll take this one,” you said to the owner.
And without again putting him down you carried him off, and home.
How unhappy he appeared to be, during his first day in his new place! He
whined and whimpered in his plaintive little tremolo, and although you
thrust a pannikin of milk under his ridiculous nose, and playmates from
far and near hastened over to inspect him and pay him tribute, he
refused to be appeased. He simply squatted on his uncertain, wabbly
haunches, and cried for “mama.”
[Illustration]
You fixed him an ideal nest in the barn; but it rather made your heart
ache—with that vague ache of boyhood—to leave him there alone for the
night, and you went back many times to induce him to feel better.
Finally, you were withheld by your father’s: “Oh, I wouldn’t keep
running out there so much, if I were you. Let him be, and pretty soon
he’ll curl up and go to sleep.”
[Illustration]
Sure enough, his high utterances ceased, and nothing more emanated from
him. Whereupon your respect for your father’s varied store of knowledge
greatly increased.
In the morning you hastened out before breakfast to assure yourself that
your charge had survived the night; and you found that he had. He was
all there, every ounce of him.
[Illustration]
What a wriggly, rolly, awkward lump of a pup he was, anyway! How
enormous were his feet, how flapping his ears, how whip-like his tail,
how unreliable his body, how erratic his legs! Yet he was pretty. He was
positively beautiful.
[Illustration]
Your mother could not resist him. Can a woman resist anything that is
young and helpless and soft and warm? With pictures in her mind of
ruined flowers and chewed-up household furnishings, she gingerly stooped
down to pet him; and at the touch of his silky coat she was captive.
“Nice doggy!” she cooed.
Upon which he ecstatically endeavored to swallow her finger, and smeared
her slippers with his dripping mouth, and peace was established.
Thereafter mother was his stoutest champion.
[Illustration]
The christening proved a matter requiring considerable discussion. When
it comes right down to it, a name for a dog is a difficult proposition.
It may be easy to name other persons’ dogs, but your own dog is
different.
Your father and mother, and even the hired girl, proposed names, all of
which you rejected with scorn, until, suddenly, into existence popped a
name which came like an old friend. You seized it, attached it to the
pup, and it just fitted. No longer was he to be referred to as “it,” or
“he,” or “the puppy.” He possessed a personality.
The hired girl—and in those days there were more “hired girls” than
“domestics”—was the last to yield to his sway. She did not like dogs or
cats about the house; dogs caused extra-work, and cats got under foot.
[Illustration]
But upon about the third morning after his arrival you caught her
surreptitiously throwing him a crust from among the table leavings that
she was bearing to the alley; and you knew that he had won her. Aye, he
had won her. You also found out that he much preferred a crust thus
flung to him from the garbage to any carefully prepared mess of more
wholesome food.
Probably this subtle flattery pleased the girl, for although her
grimness never vanished, once in a while you descried her smiling
through it, in the course of a trip to the back fence while the puppy
faithfully gamboled at her skirts in tumultuous expectation of another
fall of manna.
[Illustration]
He grew visibly—like the seed planted by the Indian fakir. Enormous
quantities of bread and milk he gobbled, always appearing in fear lest
the supply should sink through the floor before he had eaten his fill.
Between meals his body waned to ordinary size; but, mercy! what a
transformation as he ate! At these times it swelled and swelled, until,
the pan empty, the stomach full, its diameter far exceeded its length.
[Illustration]
However, there was a more permanent growth than this, as you discovered
when you awoke to the fact that his collar was too tight for him. So you
removed it, and in the interval between removing the old and getting the
new properly engraved, his neck expanded fully an inch. The old collar
would not meet around it when, as a test, you experimented.
[Illustration]
So good-by to the collar of puppyhood, and let a real dog’s collar
dangle about his neck. The step marked the change from dresses to
trousers.
[Illustration]
Not only bread and milk and other mushy non-stimulating stuff did he
eat, but he ate, or tried to eat, everything else within his reach.
Piece-meal, he ate most of the door-mat. He ate sticks of wood, both
hard and soft, seemingly preferring a barrel-stave. He ate leaves, and
stones, and lumps of dirt, and the heads off the double petunias and the
geraniums. He ate a straw hat and a slipper. He attempted the broom and
the clothes-line, the latter having upon it the week’s wash, thus adding
to the completeness of the menu.
[Illustration]
In his fondness for using his uneasy teeth, new and sharp, he would have
eaten you, did you not repeatedly wrest your anatomy from his tireless
jaws.
As it was, you bore over all your person, and particularly upon your
hands and calves, the prints of his ravaging, omnivorous mouth.
Your mother patiently darned your torn clothing, and submitted to having
her own imperiled and her ankles nipped; while your father time and
again gathered the scattered fragments of his evening paper, and from a
patchwork strove to decipher the day’s news.
[Illustration]
And “Look at him, will you!” cried the hired girl, delighted, indicating
him as he was industriously dragging her mop to cover.
* * * * *
Well, like the storied peach, he “grew, and grew.” Speedily he was too
large for you to hold in your arms, and although he insisted upon
climbing into your lap, you could no more accommodate him there than you
could a huge jellyfish. He kept slipping off, and was all legs.
He fell ill. Ah, those days of his distemper were anxious days! He
wouldn’t eat, and he wouldn’t play, and he wouldn’t do anything except
lie and feebly wag his tail, and by his dumbness place upon you the
terrible burden of imagining his condition inside.
Here came to the rescue the old gardener,—Uncle Pete, black as the ace
of spades,—who gave you the prescription of a nauseous yet simple remedy
which you were compelled lovingly and apologetically to administer three
times a day; and behold, the patient was cured. You didn’t blame him any
for rising from his bed; and you wouldn’t have blamed him any for
cherishing against you a strong antipathy, in memory of what you forced
down his throat. But he loved you just as much as ever.
[Illustration]
Now he developed roaming propensities, which took the form of foraging
expeditions. Once he brought back a five-pound roast of beef, his head
high in the air, and buried it in the garden. Diligent inquiry exposed
the fact that the beef had been intended by a neighbor for a dinner for
a family of six, and for subsequent relays of hash, etc. Your mother,
with profuse apologies, promptly sent over a substitute roast, the
original being badly disfigured.
Upon another occasion he conveyed into the midst of a group consisting
of your mother and father, and the minister, guest of honor, sitting on
the front porch, a headless chicken, still quivering. You were commanded
to return the fowl, if you could; and after making a canvass of the
neighborhood you found a man who, having decapitated a choice pullet,
and having turned for an instant to secure a pan of hot water, was
mystified, upon again approaching the block, to see, in all his level
back yard, not a vestige, save the head, of the feathered victim. When
you restored to him his property, he laughed, but not as if he enjoyed
it.
Along with his foraging bent, the dog acquired a passion for digging.
One day he accidentally discovered that he _could_ dig, and forthwith he
reveled in his new power. Huge holes marked where he had investigated
flower-beds or had insanely tried to tunnel under the house.
He grew in spirit as well as in stature. He had his first fight, and was
victorious, and for days and days went around with a chip on his
shoulder, which several lickings by bigger dogs did not entirely remove.
Out of that first fight and the ensuing responsibility of testing the
mettle of every canine whom he encountered came dignity, poise, and
courage. His puppy days were over. He had arrived at doghood.
[Illustration]
What sweet years followed! It was you and the dog, the dog and you, one
and inseparable. When you whistled, he came. All the blows you gave him
for his misdemeanors could not an iota influence him against you. Other
comrades might desert you for rivals of the moment, but the dog never!
To him you were supreme. You were at once his crony and his god.
[Illustration]
When you went upon an errand, the dog was with you. When you went
fishing or swimming or rambling, the dog was with you. When you had
chores to do, the dog was your comfort; and when you were alone after
dark he was your protection. With him in the room or by your side you
were not afraid.
When you had been away for a short time, who so rejoiced at your return
as the dog? Who so overwhelmed you with caresses? Not even your mother,
great as was her love for you.
[Illustration]
Did you want to frolic? The dog was ready. Did you want to mope? He
would mope, too. He was your twin self, and never failed.
* * * * *
The sun and you were up together on that summer morning, and the dog
joined you as soon as you threw open the barn door. Almost you had
caught him in bed, but not quite, although he had not had time to shake
himself, and thus make his toilet.
Intuition told him that such an early awakening meant for him a day’s
outing, and he leaped and barked and wagged his glee.
[Illustration]
You worked with a will, and when the hired girl summoned you to
breakfast the kitchen wood-box had been filled, and all the other jobs
laid out for you had been performed, and you were waiting. So was the
dog, but not for breakfast. He was waiting for _you_.
[Illustration]
How he gobbled down the scraps constituting his meal; never pausing to
chew, and frequently desisting in operations in order to run around the
house and investigate lest, by hook or crook, you might be slipping off
without his knowledge!
Now your boy companion’s whistle sounded in front; and hastily
swallowing your last mouthfuls, disregarding your mother’s implorations
to “eat a little more,” with the paper packages containing your lunch of
bread and butter and sugar and two hard-boiled eggs stuffed into your
pockets, sling-shot in hand, out you scampered; and the dog was there
before you.
[Illustration]
Along the street you, gaily hied, the three of you, until the
over-arching, dew-drenched elms and maples ended, and the board walk
ended, and you were in the country.
Civilization was behind you; all the world of field and wood was ahead.
[Illustration]
Don’t you remember how balmy was the air that wafted from the pastures
where the meadow larks piped and the bobolinks rioted and gurgled? Don’t
you remember how the blackbirds trilled in the willows, and the flicker
screamed in the cottonwoods? Don’t you remember how you tried fruitless
shots with your catapult, and how the dog vainly raced for the gophers
as he sped like mad far and wide?
Of course you do.
[Illustration]
The morning through you trudge, buoyant and tireless and fancy-free;
fighting Indians and bears and wildcats at will, yet still unscathed;
roving up hill and down again, scaling cliffs and threading valleys,
essaying perilous fords, and bursting the jungles of raspberry-bushes;
and you guess at noon, and sprawl in the shade, beside the creek, to
devour your provisions.
[Illustration]
During the morning, some of the time you have seen the dog, and some of
the time you have not. Where you have covered miles he has covered
leagues, and more than leagues; for a half-hour he will have disappeared
entirely, then, suddenly, right athwart your path he hustles past, in
his orbit, as though to let you know that he is hovering about.
While you are eating, here he comes. He seats himself expectantly before
you, with lolling tongue, and gulps half a slice of bread, and looks for
more. A dog’s only selfishness is his appetite. He will freeze for you,
drown for you, risk himself in a hundred ways for you, but in the matter
of food he will seize what he can get and all he can get, and you must
take care of yourself.
The lunch is finished, and the dog, after sniffing for the crumbs, sinks
down with his nose between his paws, to indulge in forty uneasy winks
until you indicate what is to be the next event upon your program.
Presently, however, with a little whine of restlessness, he is off.
You are off, too. It is the noon siesta. The air is sluggish. The birds
and the squirrels have relaxed, and the woods are subdued. The strident
_scrape_ of the locusts rises and falls, and the distant shouts of men
in harvest-fields float in upon your ear. You are burning hot; but the
water of the creek is cool—the only cool thing in your landscape. A
swim, a swim! Your whole being demands that you go in swimming.
[Illustration]
The dog already has been in a number of times, as his wet coat has
evidenced. Feverishly following the winding stream, envying the turtles
as they plunge in, upon your approach, you arrive at a bend where the
banks are high, and the current, swinging against them, halts and forms
an eddy. Here the depths are still and dark and beckoning.
To strip those smothering garments from your sunburnt body is the work
of but an instant, and in you souse, not without some misgiving as to
possible water-snakes and snapping turtles, but spurred by a keen
rivalry as to which shall “wet over” the first.
Oh, the glorious, vivifying thrill that permeates you as you part the
waters!
[Illustration]
The dog again! From the bank he surveys the proceedings with mingled
curiosity and apprehension, and finally, with a whine of excitement,
dashes into the shallows and makes for your side. You are neck-deep, and
he is swimming. His hair feels queer and clammy against your skin, and
his distended claws raise a welt upon your bare shoulder as he
affectionately tries to climb on top of you. You duck him, and grab at
his tail; and convinced that you are in no immediate danger, he plows
for the shore, where he contents himself with barking at you.
Despite the dog’s remonstrances and entreaties, you sported in that
blissful spot until the sun was well down the west; now you frolicked in
the cool eddy, now you dabbled amid the ripples of the shoals just
below, and now you dawdled on the warm, turfy banks. The dog stretched
himself by your clothing and went to sleep.
[Illustration]
At length, with blue lips and chattering teeth, and a ring of mud
encircling your mouth, marking where years later the badge of manhood
would appear, you donned your clothes, and, weak but peaceful, to the
rapture of the dog started homeward.
He did not know that you were going home. When you had left home in the
morning he did not know that you were coming here. He did not care then;
and he does not care now. You are doing something, and he is a partner
in it; and that is sufficient.
[Illustration]
Homeward, homeward, through woods and across meadows where the birds
were gathering their evening store and voicing their praises and thanks
because the sun had been so good. Homeward, homeward, not talking so
much as when your faces were turned the other way, not frisking so much
as formerly, and with the dog trotting soberly near your heels.
You were dead tired, the three of you.
When you were about a block from the house, the dog pricked up his ears
and trotted ahead, to wait for you at the gate. While you ate your
supper he slept on the back porch; and after his own supper he slinked
straight into the barn, to bed.
And soon, he in his nest up-stairs in the barn, you in your nest
up-stairs in the house, alike you were slumbering; for neither could
possibly sleep sounder than the other.
* * * * *
Years sped by, and the dog remained an integral part of the household.
Such a quaint, quizzical, knowing old chap, with an importance
ridiculous yet not unwarranted, with an individuality all his own,
thoroughly doggish, but well-nigh human. He was affectionate toward the
rest of the family, but you he adored. He might occasionally bluffly
growl at others, but never at you. You could make him do anything,
anything. To him you were perfect, omnipotent, and with you at hand he
was happy.
You emerged from the grammar school into the high school. Then arrived
that summer when you went to visit your aunt and uncle, and stayed three
weeks. You remember the visit, don’t you?
And when you disembarked at the station on your return, and your mother
was there to meet you, even while kissing her you looked for the dog.
“Where’s Don?” you asked.
“Why, John,” reproved your mother, as so often she had jokingly done
before, “do you think more of seeing your dog than of seeing me?”
This silenced you.
But when you had entered the yard, and next the house, ungreeted by the
familiar rush and volley of barks, you were impelled to inquire again:
“Where _is_ Don, mother?”
Mother put her arm around you, and laid her lips to your forehead; and
even before she spoke you felt what was coming.
“Johnny dear, you never will see Don any more,” she said; and she held
you close while you sobbed out your first real grief upon her breast.
When you could listen she told you all—how they had found him, lifeless,
where he had crawled under the porch; how they had buried him, decently
and tenderly, where you might see his grave and put up a headboard; how
they had kept the news from you, so that your visit should not be
spoiled; and how, all the way from the depot, her heart had ached for
you.
Thus the dog vanished from your daily life, and for weeks the house and
yard seemed very strange without him. Then, gradually, the feeling that
you were to come upon him unexpectedly around some corner wore off. You
grew reconciled.
But to this day you are constantly encountering him in dreamland. He
hasn’t changed, and in his sight apparently you haven’t changed. You are
once more boy and dog together. This leads you to hope and to
trust—indeed, to believe—that, notwithstanding your mother’s gentle
admonition, you _will_ see him again, in fact as well as fancy, after
all.
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IN THE ARENA
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: “‘WE GOT EACH OTHER DOWN’”]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IN THE ARENA
WHEN a boy retorted with the direct challenge, “An’ you da’sn’t back
it!” it was a case, if you did not wish to lose caste, of your either
taking the aggressive or effecting some honorable compromise.
It was difficult to explain to an outsider, to one not in sympathy with
the duello, the deep significance of “da’sn’t back it.” You felt the
term, but you could not elucidate it, save, to some extent, by example;
you yourself, with a red spot on your forehead, a scratch on your nose,
a torn collar to your waist, a rent in your knickerbockers, and a proud
spirit in your bosom, being the example.
“Now, I _should_ like to know what you were fighting about,” declared
your mother, holding you prisoner at her knee while she stitched your
collar so as to make you presentable for supper.
You squirmed, realizing the task before you.
“Well, we were playin’, an’ Ted he tripped me, an’ I said he did it on
purpose (an’ he did, too), an’ he said he didn’t an’ I said he did, an’
he said I was a liar an’ da’sn’t back it, an’ I went to back it, an’ he
hit me, an’—”
“But what _is_ to ‘back it’?” interrupted your mother.
“Why, to back it—to back it, you know. He said I da’sn’t _back it_, an’
I had to or else I’d be a coward, an’ he hit me, an’ I hit him, an’—”
“But how could you back being a liar? I don’t understand.”
She was a darling mother, yet at times surprisingly dense.
“I _did_ back it, though, just the same.” That ought to be exposition
enough, and you galloped on with your narrative: “An’ I hit him, an’ he
hit me right on the forehead,—but it didn’t hurt,—an’ I—an’ then we got
each other down, an’ I was gettin’ on top, an’ then the kids pulled him
off, an’ a man came by an’ wouldn’t let us fight any more. Ted’s ten,
an’ I’m only nine.”
Thus, with a little valorous touch, you finished your story. This much
you accomplished, even though you evidently had failed in bringing your
mother to a clear perception of “backing it.”
Father looked at you inquiringly.
“What’s that, John? Fighting! With whom?”
“John had a fight this afternoon; have you heard about it?” asked your
mother, gravely, of your father at supper.
[Illustration: “‘SAY, SPECK SAYS HE CAN LICK YOU’”]
It was a portentous moment.
“Ted Watson. He tripped me on purpose an’ nearly made me fall when I was
runnin’, an’ then he told me I da’sn’t back it. But we didn’t fight
long, ’cause a man came by an’ stopped us.”
“You can see he scratched his nose, and his collar was torn almost off
his shirt,” supplemented your mother.
“I tore _his_ collar, too—an’ I bet he’s goin’ to have a black eye,” you
hastened to state, in palliation.
“W-w-well, I’m astonished, John!” asserted your father, very solemnly.
You fastened your eyes upon your plate, and could think of nothing to
say in rebuttal. You had stalked homeward a hero, fondly expecting that
your parents would be proud of you, who, only nine, had combatted a boy
of ten, and were “gettin’ on top”; but witness how they had
wet-blanketed you!
“I told him that he ought to have refused to fight, and it would have
made the other little boy ashamed,” informed your mother.
“By all means,” approved your father.
Coming from your mother, the advice, while of course absurd, had not
seemed so strange; after all, she never had been a boy, and girls didn’t
fight; but your father’s traitorous acquiescence goaded you to
desperation.
“Did _you_ ever da’sn’t back it when you were a boy like me, papa?” you
appealed; and although you were not fully cognizant of the fact, you had
him hip and thigh.
He glanced at your mother, and had you been looking at him instead of
still eying your plate, you would have seen his mouth twitch in a funny
way.
“You do as mama says. She’s always right,” he answered, and you had a
dim suspicion that he was begging the question.
The little encounter between Ted and you was described much more quickly
than it had occurred. The duello as practised in your corps did not
admit of undue precipitancy in falling to blows. A certain amount of
palaver was obligatory first—an exchange of witticism and defiance,
beyond which, as often as not, one did not proceed.
When Ted had tripped you, and you had angrily accused him of having done
it on purpose, he had denied it just as angrily:
“Didn’t, neither!”
“Did’t, either!” said you.
“Didn’t, neither!” said he.
“Did’t, either!” said you.
“Didn’t, neither. You’re a liar!” said he.
“Did’t, either. You’re another!” said you.
“You’re another ’nother!” said he.
“You’re twice as big as anything you can call me!” said you—a crusher,
and quite unanswerable.
“You’re twice as big as that, an’ you da’sn’t back it!” said he, also
scoring a point.
[Illustration: “YOU LET YOUR FOLLOWING FEEL YOUR MUSCLE”]
“He says you da’sn’t back it! Ya-a-a-a-ah! he says you da’sn’t back it!”
gibed the boys about you, glorying in the crisis.
Ted and you were now uncomfortably in the center of a circle which was
ever being increased by the jubilant cries of “Fight! Fight!” which
summoned spectators from all quarters.
“G’wan an’ back it! You can lick him!” urged your supporters.
“Aw, he’s ’fraid to! He’s ’fraid to!” scoffed your rivals.
Ted and you, grimy fists doubled, not knowing exactly what to do, faced
each other. Neither of you wanted to fight. Fighting was being forced
upon you. You were to amuse the pitiless crowd.
“I ain’t, either, afraid,” you asserted sullenly.