“When’ll Mr. Ames be out?” Plunk asked.
“Let’s see,” says I, “this is the second day we’ve been here. It’ll be
five or six days before we can expect to see him.”
“So,” says Mark, “you’ve either got to s-s-stick it out till then or
walk to town.”
Plunk sort of flushed. “I wasn’t thinkin’ about gettin’ to town,” says
he. “I was hopin’ he’d remember to fetch a lantern or somethin’ to give
us a little light.”
“Send him a wireless,” says Binney.
“Or—” Mark began, but he never finished what he was going to say, for
the biggest sort of a barking and snarling and yelping started up in the
woods not farther off than you could throw a stone, and all of a sudden
something flashed out of the underbrush and came scurrying toward the
hotel. We all jumped to our feet.
Then something else burst out of the trees and tore after the first
thing that came. By that time we had sort of collected our senses and
could tell what was going on. It was a big, black dog chasing some
littler animal that seemed to bump and waddle and roll along, but made a
pretty fast gait at that. The dog was barking as hard as he could bark.
About fifty feet from us he caught up with the little animal and made a
jump for it. Well, sir, you never saw anything so funny in your life.
The dog no sooner touched the little animal than he sat right back on
his haunches like he was too astonished to live, and let out the
dismalest howl you ever heard. _Yip-yip-yi!_ he yelled. The little
animal didn’t run any more, but kind of curled up and waited. We went
running over to see the fight.
“What is it?” says Binney.
“Porcupine,” says Mark.
He was, and a fat old whopper, too, with enough quills on him to satisfy
a dozen dogs. But this dog wasn’t satisfied. After he got over his
surprise he seemed to get mad, and in he tore again. I expect he figured
the porcupine had hurt him by mistake. But he found out different. Mr.
Porcupine sort of humped up his back and you could hear his quills
rustle. Mr. Dog shoved his nose into them—and then pulled it out quick.
He was one disgusted dog, and I’m telling you that something besides his
feelings were hurt. He looked as if he were trying to grow some funny
sort of mustache. At first he didn’t know what to make of it; then he
sat back and began to paw at his muzzle. He pawed and pawed, and when he
found out pawing didn’t do any good he took to rolling, and while he
rolled he yipped and yelled. All of a sudden he remembered his dignity
and stood up. For a minute he looked at Mr. Porcupine, and all his mad
came back. It got the better of his good sense. He didn’t seem to
realize that the time had come to arbitrate, so he took another lick at
the porcupine, who was just beginning to move off as if it figured its
day’s work was done.
This time the dog stuck to it as long as he could, but that wasn’t very
long, and when he backed off he did it with his whole heart. He backed
off so hard that he sat right up on his tail for a minute and then
rolled over backward. If he could have seen himself he’d have been so
ashamed he wouldn’t have shown his face for a week, like proud dogs do
when something makes them look ridiculous.
He started running around on three legs and pawing at his nose with the
leg that was left. Then he stuck his muzzle against the ground and began
to spin around it in a circle like he was trying to _scour_ the quills
out. But anybody could see he was having hard luck at it. Mr. Porcupine
looked over his shoulder like he wasn’t so very much interested, and for
all the world he looked like he was grinning. Then he started to move
off slow. This time the dog jumped right on him with all four feet—and
from that time on you never heard such squawling in all your born days.
We were sorry for him. Anybody would have been, but he was so funny,
and, while he thrashed around so there wasn’t a thing we could do. So we
just stood there and laughed.
But in a minute we stopped laughing, stopped sudden, too, I can tell
you, for there, standing between us and the dog—almost like he had
dropped out of the sky—was a boy. We had been so busy watching the dog
and porcupine we hadn’t seen him come or which way he came from. The
first we knew there he stood with his arms folded, scowling at us.
He wasn’t as tall as Binney, but he was broader. He looked strong—and
for all his size, he looked sort of, well, I guess _stately_ is the only
word to describe it. He was foreign. His skin was dark, and his eyes
were black, and his hair was black and straight—and it wasn’t parted. I
wondered how Mark Tidd had figured _that_ out. He was angry, but for all
of that, and for all his color and his foreign look, he was handsome. He
stood there looking at us for a moment like he was making up his mind
what to do with us. Then he said in just as good English as any of us
could speak, only more careful, and sounding, somehow, as if he had to
remember and take pains to find the words:
“You have hurt my dog. How dare you hurt my dog?”
The way he spoke made you sort of jump.
“It was the p-p-porcupine,” says Mark, pointing to where the little
animal was scurrying away. “Your dog chased it and got quills in his
nose. We haven’t touched him.”
“You laughed at him when he was hurt.”
“Yes, and you’d have l-laughed, too. He isn’t hurt much. The quills will
come out easy, and in a day or two he’ll be as well as ever—and have a
l-lot more sense. He’ll know better than to tackle another p-porcupine.”
The boy looked at us, right in the eyes, without speaking for a couple
of minutes. I don’t remember ever to have had anybody look at me just
like that. It was a sort of judge-of-the-supreme-court look.
“What are you doing here?” he says, when he got through looking us over.
Mark Tidd grinned that jolly grin of his, the grin he gets on when he
wants to make friends or be particularly agreeable.
“Seems to me,” says he, “it’s up t-to you to t-t-tell us what _you_ are
d-d-doin’ here.” He was a little excited and stuttered like everything.
The boy looked puzzled. “Why do you speak like that?” he says. “I have
not before heard English spoken that way.”
Mark looked sort of taken back, and the rest of us laughed right out.
The boy drew himself toward us and clenched his fists.
“You laugh at me,” he said, taking a step toward us.
“No,” says I, “we were laughin’ at Mark Tidd. The joke was on him. He
stutters, you know.”
“Stutters? What is stutters?”
“Why, talks like you heard him. He can’t help it. It’s a sort of—of a
disease,” says I.
Mark got red and turned on me quick. “It ain’t a disease,” says he, “and
if it is it would do you g-g-good to catch it.”
“Never mind that,” says the boy, with a wave of his hand as if it didn’t
matter much, anyhow. “What are you doing here?”
“Havin’ a g-good time,” says Mark. “Not that it’s any of your
b-business. What are _you_ doin’ here? We rent this hotel and p-pay for
it. We’ve got a right to be here. What right have you to be prowlin’
around it?”
The boy stepped forward and spoke angry-like in some foreign language. I
guess he was mad and his English clean got away from him. He stopped of
a sudden and says so we could understand:
“I will show you to speak with more respect—” Then he shut up quick and
acted like he had let out something he didn’t want to, and muttered to
himself in his foreign language again.
“We’re just as respectful to you as you are t-t-to us,” says Mark. “We
d-don’t have to go out of our way to be r-r-respectful to any boy. You
might as well understand that on the start.”
The boy looked surprised. “Are you noble?” says he.
“N-noble?” says Mark, sort of puzzled. Then he grinned. “D’you mean do
we b’long to the nobility? If that’s it I calc’late we’re as noble as
they m-make ’em in these parts. I don’t call to mind anybody that’s
nobler.”
“Yes,” says Binney, “any of us is entitled to be President of the United
States—if we can get elected.”
“Oh,” says the boy. “I did not understand. I ask your pardon. I shall
not again commit the same offense.”
I didn’t quite catch what offense he was talking about, but I guess Mark
did, for he let on that it was all right as far as he was concerned.
“Say,” says Plunk, “what nationality are you, anyway? Injun?”
The boy got so straight his back was like to bust and he looked as proud
as the fellow who stuck in his thumb and pulled out a plum.
“I am Samurai,” he said.
“Don’t recollect ever hearin’ of ’em,” says Plunk. “I’ve heard of Sioux
and Pawnee and Iroquois and such, but Cooper nor nobody _I’ve_ read
mentioned Samurai.”
“He m-means Japanese,” says Mark, disgusted-like.
I guessed that myself, and had been wondering if he was the son of one
of the men Mark and I had seen on the road that morning. I was just
going to ask him when I thought I’d better wait and let Mark do the
talking.
“You’re a l-l-long ways from home,” says Mark.
“Yes,” says he, “a long way; a very long way.”
“Alone?” says Mark.
The boy frowned, then he looked sort of undecided and uncomfortable.
Finally he made up his mind to answer. “Yes,” says he, “alone.”
“Did you come way from Japan alone?” Plunk wanted to know.
“There are two ways to deal with a question one does not want to
answer,” says the boy. “One is to lie; the other is to keep silence. I
do not lie.”
“Um!” says I. “Guess that’s bein’ told to mind your own business.”
“For a cent I’d take a punch at him,” Plunk whispered.
“Best leave him alone. He might s’prise you,” says I.
“My name,” says Mark, “is Marcus Aurelius Fortunatus Tidd. My
f-f-friends call me Mark Tidd.”
“And mine,” says the boy, “is—” He stopped a second. “You may call me
Motu,” says he.
“It seems s-sort of funny for a Japanese boy to be up here in the
mountains all alone,” says Mark, and then added, sly-like, “dropping
daggers and taking fish and prowling around at night like he was afraid
of something.”
“I can tell you nothing. I am here because I must be here. Here I must
stay until—until something happens that will let me go away. That is all
I can say.”
“Um!” says Mark Tidd. “Well, Motu, I guess you’ll f-find it more
comfortable sleepin’ in a bed nights than prowlin’ around; and easier
and more f-fillin’ to eat with us than to skirmish up food for yourself.
There’s l-lots of room, and lots of f-f-food.” He stopped for a bit, and
then went on, more polite than I’d ever heard him, and as dignified as
Motu was. “It will give us pleasure to have you as our g-guest.”
Motu’s eyes shone, and he smiled. “I accept,” says he. “You do me a
great kindness. I am a stranger, far from home, and I cannot repay
except with thanks.”
“In this country,” says Mark, “thanks are good money to pay for
hospitality with any time.”
And that’s how we found the fellow who was sneaking around the hotel and
scaring the daylights out of us. It’s how he came to live there with us,
and it’s how we started a friendship with him that got to be one of the
things that we’re proudest of of anything in the world. Besides that,
it’s the reason why things happened to us that weren’t very pleasant
while they were going on, but which were plenty exciting—exciting and
some dangerous. It’s how Mark Tidd got another chance to show what a
head he’s got, and what backbone there is in him—and, I’m glad to say,
it gave the rest of us a little chance too, and we took advantage of it
in a way that we aren’t ashamed of. And in the very end it brought us
something that pretty nearly surprised us to death—something that I
don’t believe ever was had by four boys in the United States.
On the whole, it was a good thing that Motu’s dog chased the porcupine
and caught him—though the dog didn’t think so for a day or two.