I
The Master was walking most unsteady, his legs tripping each other.
After the fifth or sixth round, my legs often go the same way.
But even when the Master's legs bend and twist a bit, you mustn't think
he can't reach you. Indeed, that is the time he kicks most frequent. So
I kept behind him in the shadow, or ran in the middle of the street. He
stopped at many public-houses with swinging doors, those doors that are
cut so high from the sidewalk that you can look in under them, and see
if the Master is inside. At night when I peep beneath them the man at
the counter will see me first and say, “Here's the Kid, Jerry, come to
take you home. Get a move on you,” and the Master will stumble out and
follow me. It's lucky for us I'm so white, for no matter how dark the
night, he can always see me ahead, just out of reach of his boot. At
night the Master certainly does see most amazing. Sometimes he sees two
or four of me, and walks in a circle, so that I have to take him by the
leg of his trousers and lead him into the right road. One night, when he
was very nasty-tempered and I was coaxing him along, two men passed us
and one of them says, “Look at that brute!” and the other asks “Which?”
and they both laugh. The Master, he cursed them good and proper.
This night, whenever we stopped at a public-house, the Master's pals
left it and went on with us to the next. They spoke quite civil to me,
and when the Master tried a flying kick, they gives him a shove. “Do you
want we should lose our money?” says the pals.
I had had nothing to eat for a day and a night, and just before we set
out the Master gives me a wash under the hydrant. Whenever I am locked
up until all the slop-pans in our alley are empty, and made to take
a bath, and the Master's pals speak civil, and feel my ribs, I know
something is going to happen. And that night, when every time they see a
policeman under a lamp-post, they dodged across the street, and when at
the last one of them picked me up and hid me under his jacket, I began
to tremble; for I knew what it meant. It meant that I was to fight again
for the Master.
I don't fight because I like it. I fight because if I didn't the other
dog would find my throat, and the Master would lose his stakes, and I
would be very sorry for him and ashamed. Dogs can pass me and I can pass
dogs, and I'd never pick a fight with none of them. When I see two dogs
standing on their hind-legs in the streets, clawing each other's ears,
and snapping for each other's windpipes, or howling and swearing and
rolling in the mud, I feel sorry they should act so, and pretend not to
notice. If he'd let me, I'd like to pass the time of day with every dog
I meet. But there's something about me that no nice dog can abide. When
I trot up to nice dogs, nodding and grinning, to make friends, they
always tell me to be off. “Go to the devil!” they bark at me; “Get
out!” and when I walk away they shout “mongrel,” and “gutter-dog,” and
sometimes, after my back is turned, they rush me. I could kill most of
them with three shakes, breaking the back-bone of the little ones, and
squeezing the throat of the big ones. But what's the good? They are nice
dogs; that's why I try to make up to them, and though it's not for them
to say it, I am a street-dog, and if I try to push into the company of
my betters, I suppose it's their right to teach me my place.
Of course, they don't know I'm the best fighting bull-terrier of my
weight in Montreal. That's why it wouldn't be right for me to take no
notice of what they shout. They don't know that if I once locked my jaws
on them I'd carry away whatever I touched. The night I fought Kelley's
White Rat, I wouldn't loosen up until the Master made a noose in my
leash and strangled me, and if the handlers hadn't thrown red pepper
down my nose, I never would have let go of that Ottawa dog. I don't
think the handlers treated me quite right that time, but maybe they
didn't know the Ottawa dog was dead. I did.
I learned my fighting from my mother when I was very young. We slept in
a lumber-yard on the river-front, and by day hunted for food along the
wharves. When we got it, the other tramp-dogs would try to take it off
us, and then it was wonderful to see mother fly at them, and drive them
away. All I know of fighting I learned from mother, watching her picking
the ash-heaps for me when I was too little to fight for myself. No one
ever was so good to me as mother. When it snowed and the ice was in the
St. Lawrence she used to hunt alone, and bring me back new bones, and
she'd sit and laugh to see me trying to swallow 'em whole. I was just a
puppy then, my teeth was falling out. When I was able to fight we kept
the whole river-range to ourselves, I had the genuine long, “punishing”
jaw, so mother said, and there wasn't a man or a dog that dared worry
us. Those were happy days, those were; and we lived well, share and
share alike, and when we wanted a bit of fun, we chased the fat old
wharf-rats. My! how they would squeal!
Then the trouble came. It was no trouble to me. I was too young to care
then. But mother took it so to heart that she grew ailing, and wouldn't
go abroad with me by day. It was the same old scandal that they're
always bringing up against me. I was so young then that I didn't know. I
couldn't see any difference between mother--and other mothers.
But one day a pack of curs we drove off snarled back some new names
at her, and mother dropped her head and ran, just as though they had
whipped us. After that she wouldn't go out with me except in the dark,
and one day she went away and never came back, and though I hunted for
her in every court and alley and back street of Montreal, I never found
her.
One night, a month after mother ran away, I asked Guardian, the old
blind mastiff, whose Master is the night-watchman on our slip, what it
all meant. And he told me.
“Every dog in Montreal knows,” he says, “except you, and every Master
knows. So I think it's time you knew.”
Then he tells me that my father, who had treated mother so bad, was
a great and noble gentleman from London. “Your father had twenty-two
registered ancestors, had your father,” old Guardian says, “and in him
was the best bull-terrier blood of England, the most ancientest, the
most royal; the winning 'blue-ribbon' blood, that breeds champions. He
had sleepy pink eyes, and thin pink lips, and he was as white all over
as his own white teeth, and under his white skin you could see his
muscles, hard and smooth, like the links of a steel chain. When your
father stood still, and tipped his nose in the air, it was just as
though he was saying, 'Oh, yes, you common dogs and men, you may well
stare. It must be a rare treat for you Colonials to see a real English
royalty.' He certainly was pleased with hisself, was your father. He
looked just as proud and haughty as one of them stone dogs in Victoria
Park--them as is cut out of white marble. And you're like him,” says
the old mastiff--“by that, of course, meaning you're white, same as him.
That's the only likeness. But, you see, the trouble is, Kid--well, you
see, Kid, the trouble is--your mother--”
“That will do,” I said, for I understood then without his telling me,
and I got up and walked away, holding my head and tail high in the air.
But I was, oh, so miserable, and I wanted to see mother that very
minute, and tell her that I didn't care.
Mother is what I am, a street-dog; there's no royal blood in mother's
veins, nor is she like that father of mine, nor--and that's the
worst--she's not even like me. For while I, when I'm washed for a fight,
am as white as clean snow, she--and this is our trouble, she--my mother,
is a black-and-tan.
When mother hid herself from me, I was twelve months old and able to
take care of myself, and, as after mother left me, the wharves were
never the same, I moved uptown and met the Master. Before he came, lots
of other men-folks had tried to make up to me, and to whistle me home.
But they either tried patting me or coaxing me with a piece of meat;
so I didn't take to 'em. But one day the Master pulled me out of a
street-fight by the hind-legs, and kicked me good.
“You want to fight, do you?” says he. “I'll give you all the FIGHTING
you want!” he says, and he kicks me again. So I knew he was my Master,
and I followed him home. Since that day I've pulled off many fights for
him, and they've brought dogs from all over the province to have a go at
me, but up to that night none, under thirty pounds, had ever downed me.
But that night, so soon as they carried me into the ring, I saw the dog
was over-weight, and that I was no match for him. It was asking too much
of a puppy. The Master should have known I couldn't do it. Not that I
mean to blame the Master, for when sober, which he sometimes was, though
not, as you might say, his habit, he was most kind to me, and let me out
to find food, if I could get it, and only kicked me when I didn't pick
him up at night and lead him home.
But kicks will stiffen the muscles, and starving a dog so as to get him
ugly-tempered for a fight may make him nasty, but it's weakening to his
insides, and it causes the legs to wabble.
The ring was in a hall, back of a public-house. There was a red-hot
whitewashed stove in one corner, and the ring in the other. I lay in the
Master's lap, wrapped in my blanket, and, spite of the stove, shivering
awful; but I always shiver before a fight; I can't help gettin' excited.
While the men-folks were a-flashing their money and taking their last
drink at the bar, a little Irish groom in gaiters came up to me and give
me the back of his hand to smell, and scratched me behind the ears.
“You poor little pup,” says he. “You haven't no show,” he says. “That
brute in the tap-room, he'll eat your heart out.”
“That's what you think,” says the Master, snarling. “I'll lay you a quid
the Kid chews him up.”
The groom, he shook his head, but kept looking at me so sorry-like,
that I begun to get a bit sad myself. He seemed like he couldn't bear to
leave off a-patting of me, and he says, speaking low just like he would
to a man-folk, “Well, good-luck to you, little pup,” which I thought so
civil of him, that I reached up and licked his hand. I don't do that to
many men. And the Master, he knew I didn't, and took on dreadful.
“What 'ave you got on the back of your hand?” says he, jumping up.
“Soap!” says the groom, quick as a rat. “That's more than you've got
on yours. Do you want to smell of it?” and he sticks his fist under the
Master's nose. But the pals pushed in between 'em.
“He tried to poison the Kid!” shouts the Master.
“Oh, one fight at a time,” says the referee. “Get into the ring, Jerry.
We're waiting.” So we went into the ring.
I never could just remember what did happen in that ring. He give me
no time to spring. He fell on me like a horse. I couldn't keep my feet
against him, and though, as I saw, he could get his hold when he liked,
he wanted to chew me over a bit first. I was wondering if they'd be able
to pry him off me, when, in the third round, he took his hold; and I
began to drown, just as I did when I fell into the river off the Red
C slip. He closed deeper and deeper, on my throat, and everything went
black and red and bursting; and then, when I were sure I were dead, the
handlers pulled him off, and the Master give me a kick that brought me
to. But I couldn't move none, or even wink, both eyes being shut with
lumps.
“He's a cur!” yells the Master, “a sneaking, cowardly cur. He lost the
fight for me,” says he, “because he's a---------cowardly cur.” And
he kicks me again in the lower ribs, so that I go sliding across the
sawdust. “There's gratitude fer yer,” yells the Master. “I've fed that
dog, and nussed that dog, and housed him like a prince; and now he puts
his tail between his legs, and sells me out, he does. He's a coward;
I've done with him, I am. I'd sell him for a pipeful of tobacco.” He
picked me up by the tail, and swung me for the men-folks to see.
“Does any gentleman here want to buy a dog,” he says, “to make into
sausage-meat?” he says. “That's all he's good for.”
Then I heard the little Irish groom say, “I'll give you ten bob for the
dog.”
And another voice says, “Ah, don't you do it; the dog's same as
dead--mebby he is dead.”
“Ten shillings!” says the Master, and his voice sobers a bit; “make it
two pounds, and he's yours.”
But the pals rushed in again.
“Don't you be a fool, Jerry,” they say. “You'll be sorry for this when
you're sober. The Kid's worth a fiver.”
One of my eyes was not so swelled up as the other, and as I hung by
my tail, I opened it, and saw one of the pals take the groom by the
shoulder.
“You ought to give 'im five pounds for that dog, mate,” he says; “that's
no ordinary dog. That dog's got good blood in him, that dog has. Why,
his father--that very dog's father--”
I thought he never would go on. He waited like he wanted to be sure the
groom was listening.
“That very dog's father,” says the pal, “is Regent Royal, son of
Champion Regent Monarch, champion bull-terrier of England for four
years.”
I was sore, and torn, and chewed most awful, but what the pal said
sounded so fine that I wanted to wag my tail, only couldn't, owing to my
hanging from it.
But the Master calls out, “Yes, his father was Regent Royal; who's
saying he wasn't? but the pup's a cowardly cur, that's what his pup
is, and why--I'll tell you why--because his mother was a black-and-tan
street-dog, that's why!”
I don't see how I get the strength, but some way I threw myself out of
the Master's grip and fell at his feet, and turned over and fastened all
my teeth in his ankle, just across the bone.
When I woke, after the pals had kicked me off him, I was in the
smoking-car of a railroad-train, lying in the lap of the little groom,
and he was rubbing my open wounds with a greasy, yellow stuff, exquisite
to the smell, and most agreeable to lick off.