TROUBLE BEGINS
During all these days Lumberlegs, the St. Bernard, grew mightily. When
he was a year old, he looked like an awkward young calf; but when his
second year was ended, he had the tawny head of a lioness, and his
body, well rounded yet muscular, was in keeping with his huge paws.
When he sat and Tommy stood, their heads were on a level, and when they
walked abroad together, Tommy tugging sturdily at his collar to keep
pace, they usually had the roadway to themselves, for Lumberlegs was
not only the largest inhabitant of Dogtown, but of the whole county,
and people made so many remarks about his size that Tommy dubbed him
Bigness.
[Illustration: _Lumberlegs and Tommy._]
These same people predicted that some day there would be a dog fight
at Happy Hall when Lumberlegs came to realize his strength, and the
feeling of jealousy that comes to a dog with full growth. Surely there
was material for both jealousy and a fight. Waddles loved Anne
with the sort of love that thinks it owns the object of its devotion;
Lumberlegs loved both Tommy and Anne in the same way; while Lily, the
bulldog, was devoted to Tommy alone, and deeply resented the coming of
Happy, who loved every one, as an infringement of her rights; so that
at the time Happy became the mother of Jack and Jill, and consequently
an object of much attention, there was a considerable strain upon dog
tempers.
At this point fate wisely stepped in as she often does, though tears
came with her. Lily broke one of the most rigid of dog laws, the
penalty for which is death--she defied an express train! In going with
Tommy and Anne to the town she did not follow the road and cross the
railway bridge with high safe sides, but lingered by the way, sniffing
here and then there until she lost sight of her friends, and took a
short cut across the fields that bordered the tracks, running between
the rails until she should reach a gap in the guard fence that opened
on the road the other side.
It was time for the morning express, the particular train that always
whistles as it turns the curve, and thrusts out an iron arm to grab the
mail bag, swinging from its gallows, while it drops another bag into a
rack beneath.
[Illustration]
It was always a puzzle to Tommy as to how the bag was seized without
missing, and he often coaxed Anne to wait on the bridge until the
train came, as there were little star-shaped openings in the iron work
through which he could see.
This morning they had crossed, and then hearing the train turned back.
Anne missing Lily looked up the hill for her, while Waddles, who, as a
matter of course, was one of the party, trotted soberly along toward
the village, where he would wait for his mistress upon the steps of
either the market or grocery store, according as he understood her
destination.
As the train reached the curve Tommy, whose eye was at the chink, gave
a shriek and dashed himself at the barrier, wailing: “Lily, Lily, my
Lily! She’ll be killed! O Anne, come quick!”
In reality, by this time Lily had crossed the rails and was quite safe,
but her master’s cry made her turn to locate him. Whether she thought
he was in pain or danger no one knows, but at that moment the train
rounded the curve, whistling furiously. To the bewildered dog it must
have been associated with her master’s scream or else sounded like
a challenge, for like a flash she turned and charged the monstrous
engine face to face. Tommy cast himself face downward on the roadway,
his tears making mud of the dust. Anne caught hold of the railing and
closed her eyes while the train thundered by underneath. Lily lay quite
still high up on the bank; the engine had been quickly merciful.
That afternoon Baldy buried Lily in the corner of the orchard pasture
where there was quite a company of pet animals, ranging from canaries,
with school slates for headstones, to Brownie, the dear old pony that
had belonged to Anne’s mother when a girl, and lived out a happy old
age in that very pasture. One thing about pet animals is that their
lives at best are so short, that we should treat them very kindly to
make up for it.
Some of the neighbours laughed at what they called Unhappy Hall
Cemetery, but Anne resented this with a good deal of spirit, saying, “I
think that it is very mean to love an animal one day, when it is alive
and can amuse you, and then throw it on the ash heap the next, just
because it’s dead and can’t help itself.”
Tommy still crying, and remorseful at perhaps having caused Lily’s
death by calling her at the wrong moment, insisted upon Miss Jule,
and his father, and mother attending her funeral. Anne made a wreath
of her best flowers, sacrificing four tea rosebuds and all of her
mignonette and heliotrope, but Tommy would have none of it. Instead, he
begged two beef bones from the cook, and tying them together crosswise
with Anne’s best pink hair ribbon, which she had not the heart to
deny him, put them on the middle of the mound, saying between sobs,
“She--loved--bones--but--she didn’t like flowers--except to sleep on,”
which was perfectly true, her favourite places for a siesta having been
alternately the verbena, nasturtium, or lettuce bed.
Tommy’s father and mother were resigned, though they did not say much
about it before the children. Complaints had begun to reach their
ears that Lily not only felt it her duty to prevent strange people
from coming near Tommy, but declined to let them pass by on the road
unchallenged; and though they cherished all animals, they never allowed
them to become a nuisance or bore those who cared less for them.
Baldy was also resigned and spoke his mind freely, much to Tommy’s
chagrin.
As for Dogtown, it was jubilant to the barking point, especially among
the lower classes, consisting of those dogs who, being in reduced
circumstances, had been used to come shrinking and timid between dusk
and dawn for castaway bones or swill-pail dainties.
Waddles was liberal minded upon such matters--as liberal as the law
allows. Dog law says that no dog shall dig up a bone that another has
buried; but all bones that lie abandoned and uncovered are public
property and fair eating.
Waddles, being affluent, never ate swill, and only buried special bones
to ripen, casting others about at random, often with scraps of flesh
ungnawed; for this he was regarded in Dogtown as the people’s friend.
Lily, in coming, stopped this patronage. She had known want herself,
in the days when she tramped with gypsies, so she ranged about,
industriously burying everything she found for possible future use,
and kept such a strict watch on all the outbuildings that the most
ravenous cur dared not steal a lap of sour milk from the pig’s trough
for fear of seeing those wide jaws gnashing in front of him; for Lily
had the one bad trait of her race: she laid hold without warning.
So after all it was only Tommy who grieved for Lily. To him she stood
for property rights, strength, and friendship, and for a time he was
inconsolable.
[Illustration]
“Let’s come home and see the twins have their supper; it won’t do any
good for you to stay here and cry. Your eyes are swelled up like a
frog’s, now,” said Anne, trying to lead Tommy away after Baldy and his
shovel had disappeared.
“Supposin’ it was Waddles was dead, would you stop cryin’--the very
same day--even if you were frogs?”
“Waddles! why that is entirely different; he is a _person_. There
is _no_ other dog like him,” and then Anne sat down suddenly on the
tumble-down stone fence in sheer amazement at the possibility of
mischance overtaking her little friend.
A friend he was, and she was entirely right--there was no other quite
like him among sturdy, self-reliant, gentlemen dogs. He had been so
long the companion of the House People that, without being of the
objectionable, pampered, perfumed, spoon-fed type of lap dog who
demands the care that a child alone should have, he really seemed to
be, as Anne said, a person.
Waddles did not know a single taught trick; he could not hold sugar on
his nose, like Miss Letty’s poodle, Hamlet; he could not sit up and
beg, though he had a language of his own, part gesture, part speech, by
which he could ask for anything that he could not get without aid.
In his frisky youth even he scorned the mere idea of jumping through a
hoop, or the poodle trick of “saying his prayers.”
Yet there were few walls that he could not manage to get over or
through, and he would put his paws upon his mistress’s knees and gaze
into her face in unmistakable supplication.
“It’s a great responsibility having a dog like Waddles,” Anne had said
one day, shortly after her brother was born, when she had given him
half of her name, and stopped being Tommy-Anne, and there had been much
talk about her new responsibility. “Do you know, mother, I believe
Waddles thinks that I’m God, and it will be dreadful if I’m unkind and
disappoint him.”
No, Waddles was untrained and untutored in the common sense of the
words, but he “knew,” which was better; his method of treeing cats or
coons in company with Miss Jule’s big Ben Uncas, and the fox terrier,
Quick, though somewhat reprehensible, was a marvel of military tactics,
and it was knowledge of this sort that made and kept him Mayor of
Dogtown; for he was the one dog that no other had ever attacked or
fought, so it was no wonder that Anne grew grave at the mere suggestion
of losing him, though never dreaming that there was really trouble
hovering about, and that, too, from a dog of the Happy Hall household
and herself.
For a time after Lily’s departure everything was peaceful. Jack and
Jill were fast growing able to play and indulge in the wrestling
matches that make puppies quick-witted and strengthen their muscles.
Happy often superintended these bouts herself, stirring up first one
pup and then the other, often aiding and protecting the under dog if
too roughly vanquished. Anne soon discovered that these affairs were
not merely aimless play upon Happy’s part, but a way she took for
teaching the twins how to protect themselves.
[Illustration]
The next step was to teach them to protect their food, and when one day
Happy dragged a ripe and well-cleaned beef bone from its hiding-place,
and deliberately threw it down between Jack and Jill, and they began a
struggle for its possession, Anne in amazement rushed into the house to
call the family, crying: “Do come out and see the queerest thing--Happy
is teaching the pups to play ‘snatch bone’ exactly the same way as
Waddles played it with Lumberlegs when he was a puppy. You’ll really
have to see it to believe what I say.” It was more than true, for not
only did they wrestle and snatch the bone from one another, seeking in
turn to hide it in the grass under a few leaves, but when the frolic
was fast turning to a pitched battle, and ludicrous baby growls mingled
with flashing teeth from between drawn-up lips, then Happy gave a
sharp “yap” that must have meant something very dreadful, for the pups
instantly let go and drew apart with a most abject droop of the tail,
while she seized the bone, and trotting off reburied it.
Though Waddles seldom forgot his dignity sufficiently to play with the
twins, he allowed them to take morsels from his dish, and was always
close at hand if their shrill cries told that they were in trouble, and
the slightest look from Happy brought him to her aid.
Lumberlegs, on the contrary, delighted to gambol with them, and his
clumsy bounds and imitations of their gestures usually ended in his
overthrow, when he would lie on his back with a most idiotic grin upon
his face, fanning the air with his paws, while the twins gnawed at his
great tail with mock fierceness.
Now the race law for puppies and grown dogs is quite different, even as
are those laws that govern childhood and manhood among House People.
Actions that are tolerated and even encouraged in puppyhood are read as
insults when done by a dog of two years, and bear a penalty.
In spite of Waddles’s instructions and warnings, Lumberlegs was either
heedless of the law, often deliberately breaking it, or else from his
size and strength felt himself superior to it; which it was Anne could
never tell. Perhaps it was because he was unevenly developed, for he
had all a man dog’s jealousy and craving for the exclusive attention
of his owners, while he kept his baby playfulness and total disregard
of food rights. So trouble befell one fine day, like rain from sudden
clouds that no one has noticed gathering.
After it had happened Anne was continually remembering little things
that might have given her warning.
Waddles had a favourite afternoon station on the end of the porch that
commanded the front and barn roads, the front door, and the garden also
if he turned his head. Suddenly Lumberlegs regularly appropriated this
watch-tower, and his length being so great that there was no view from
a back seat Waddles, after unavailing verbal remonstrance, was forced
to lie upon the grass.
[Illustration]
Waddles was the only dog that had been allowed in the dining room at
meal times, when he sat quietly under the table at Anne’s feet. Soon
Lumberlegs discovered a way of opening the door and he would hide
under the table, lying at Tommy’s feet. As he was quiet, and Tommy
declared that he made “a fine feet bench,” he was allowed to remain.
Consequently Waddles was squeezed against the table’s claw legs and
presently left his old place and lay disconsolately upon the door-mat.
When Lumberlegs came, a gift from Miss Jule, he was regarded as Tommy’s
property; but when the novelty wore off, and Jack and Jill became
counter attractions, he turned wholly to Anne to supply his needs both
of food and affection, and became devotedly attached to her as big dogs
usually are to only one person; while Anne, though faithful to Waddles,
returned his devotion, for he was in many ways a noble dog.
Anne had insisted almost from her babyhood that one of her ancestors
must have been an Indian, so fond she was of wild ways and things, and
this liking did not decrease as she grew of an age to crave friends of
her own race.
She still tramped about the near-by woods, but Miss Letty was often her
companion. Also Miss Letty was timorous and made a point of insisting
that Lumberlegs go with them. This he often did, and would either
follow close or sit quite still on guard for any length of time; while
Waddles and Happy would perhaps strike a trail and dash off in full
cry, thereby disturbing the very things that Anne had come to watch.
One day, after they had in this way scattered a quail brood that Anne
had hunted from the time that Bobwhite announced his arrival, until
she found the dear little chicks huddled in a leafy hollow among wild
blackberry canes on the orchard edge, she felt provoked, and did not
allow Waddles to go to walk with her for almost a week. “Mistress,”
said he, his eyes growing deep and luminous with reproach, “I’ve always
been with you until now; have you forgotten all those fine days before
Tommy came, and there was only you and I? Don’t you remember I was with
you when we met the miller’s bull, and he was so angry because, though
he tolled the bell at Cock Robin’s funeral, they didn’t ask him to the
feast, and how I followed you and Obi when you went for the wood-duck’s
nest, though I was very sick, and that day when Ko-ko-ko-ho showed us
the way to where the last rattlesnake was, and the night that we went
up on the hill and I barked you awake just when you thought you were at
the Forest Circus? What has happened, mistress? Are you tired of me, or
can that Lumberlegs show you better paths than I do? Though you gave
my tail and back legs half to Tommy when he was born, I’ve always used
them to follow you and tell you I was glad just the same as ever, but
now you love Lumberlegs best.”
“You dear, jealous old Waddlekins,” cried Anne, lifting his paws to
her knee as of old so that he stood up and she could look in his face,
“it’s nothing of the kind, only Miss Letty often comes with me, and
she is used to the city, and she doesn’t care for those long ‘go over
everything’ walks that we take, and she has read in the papers about
tramps, and thinks Lumberlegs makes a splendid policeman. Besides, you
know that you chased all those lovely little quails off our land just
when they were getting big enough to have their pictures taken, and
father had spent a lot of money for rubber tubing so he could work his
camera from behind the old green apple tree. Now they are as shy as
loons, and pop down in those wild roses when we are a whole field away
and there isn’t even a big bush to hide behind.
“But never mind; I’m sorry, anyway, so touch noses and be friends, and
to-morrow we will do the brook walk all by ourselves; for even if I do
love Lumberlegs, it’s quite different.”
Instead of the usual dainty lick Waddles gave a half-suppressed growl.
Anne dropped his paws, exclaiming in surprise: “To think of it, you
growled at me when I was apologizing, the very first time in your life,
too. I think you had better go over and rest in your kennel and think
it over.”
Then she led him to his little house, snapped the chain in his collar,
and walked away without once looking back, Lumberlegs leaving his
stolen seat on the porch to follow her.
The truth about the growl was this: Waddles, dislodged by Lumberlegs
from many of his nap nooks, had lately taken to lying in the grass
or under bushes, which as he was elderly and the season very wet had
given him rheumatism in his hind quarters. As Anne held up his paws the
strain soon gave his back a miserable wrench. This caused the growl,
and for thus being misunderstood to threaten his idol, Waddles was not
only left behind, but dethroned and chained up in his rival’s presence,
where he stood as if transfixed with a strange, drawn expression on his
face, which when House People wear we know they are struggling to keep
back tears.
If only Anne had then remembered what she had once said about
disappointing him!
[Illustration: “_He stood transfixed._”--p. 79.]