THE SHOWMAN’S DOGS
It was six months ago that the twins came, and now they are fine
healthy young babies, being pushed round in their perambulator all over
the place by their nurse, who is so well-trained and so up-to-date that
she is over-trained or “fine” as Gringo says.
Gringo and I were watching them one day a few weeks ago, as we sat side
by side up in the orchard at the Bonstones’. This orchard is a little
one containing very old trees, and is never ploughed. It is a lovely
shady place to rest, for the grass is kept short and is soft as a
carpet. It has become quite a social meeting-place for the dogs of the
neighbourhood, and we often discuss things there.
“Fine babies, those,” I remarked.
“Yes,” assented Gringo, “I suppose you wouldn’t find a finer pair in
the whole state of New York.”
“Do you like them better than the little girl, Cyria?” I asked.
Old Gringo wrinkled his forehead. “I never think about that,” he said.
“They’re all ours, and I guess the mister and missis don’t think of it
either.”
“That’s good,” I replied. “I’d hate to see the little brown baby made
uncomfortable.”
Gringo chuckled. “Those were great times back in New York, but I’m glad
I’m in this army.”
“There’s no doubt about it, you are firmly wedded to country life now,”
I said.
“Wedded, I guess so, and I often snicker to think how I’d have fought
to a finish any dog in the Bowery that told me I’d get to praise the
country and run down the city.”
“And you thought you’d get bored here,” I said with a sly laugh.
“Bored,” and he grunted happily, “what chance have I? It’s up at
daylight with mister, and out to the stables and barn, laying out the
day’s work for the men, examining the stock to see they’re all first
class--by the way, mister’s going to make a fortune raising colts,
’cause the war cleaned out all the horses--then in the house for
breakfast--I say, Boy, things do taste good out here in this clear
air--then in town in the car, out again, and pottering around after
missis and little Cyria, out in the gardens and after the hens till
lunch time, then a drive in for mister, and a stop in the village with
him.”
“I say, Gringo,” I interrupted, “I believe of all the things your
master and mine have done out here, that automobile school is the best.”
“Right you are,” said the old dog. “These lads that my boss picks up
out of prisons, and in the streets, won’t settle down to anything that
isn’t pretty lively. They’ll break colts or hustle round a machine
shop, but they’ll not stick to indoor work.”
“That breaking colts is new business to me,” I said. “How can you take
a pale, weak, city lad and make him successful? I thought you had to
have strong men.”
“Oh, that’s the old brute way,” said Gringo. “You begin now when coltie
is young and tender. Hitch him up with a little bit of something
dangling after him. Break him in gradually to something bigger. Lots of
these city yaps haven’t ever had anything to like--anything decent, you
know.”
“I understand,” I replied. “They’ve had nothing to love.”
“There’s one rogue,” said Gringo, “who sleeps in the boxstall with his
pet colt, and ’pon my word, I’ve seen him with his arm round its neck.
He’s a guttersnipe, and my boss will soon rout him out and make him
sleep in a bed, but he ain’t too hasty with these low-life chaps.”
“What’s this new talk about jitney cars?” I asked.
“Our bosses have got a lot of second-hand cars, and are doctoring them
for some of our lads who can run them about New York like a taxi-man
does.”
“But a jitney is a five-cent fare thing, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but it pays. Catch my boss in anything that doesn’t speak up when
it’s spoken to.”
“That will be fine,” I said, “for then the boys will be
self-supporting.”
“I didn’t finish my day, Boy,” said the old dog, “after we tot up
things down at the village, we have our supper, and don’t the food
taste first-class, then a short evening on the veranda, and then bed. I
tell you it’s a full day, as full as a Bowery day.”
I laughed, and he laughed too; then I said, “I’m mighty glad, old man,
that the intimacy between our two families has kept up.”
“So am I,” said he, “but do you know what I overheard when we first
came out? Says my missie to your missie, ‘Claudia, we are only a mile
apart. If we see too much of each other, we shall fight. We ’most did
the other day--and our husbands shouldn’t be too much together. They’ll
fall out, sure as rats.’”
“Did she says ‘rats’?” I asked.
“Oh! that, or something like it,” said the old dog so impatiently that
I resolved not to interrupt him again.
“Well,” he went on, “says she, says my missie to yours, ‘I’d hate
to have a break,’ and your missie said so would she, then they said
they wouldn’t call for a week, and next morning your missie was over
to borrow a pattern for a pair of knitted reins for Georgie to play
horsie, and my missie was back in the afternoon to take her some sweet
pickles she had been making. So there you are--and I must not forget to
say that the two families were all over on your veranda in the evening.”
“Good joke,” I said laughing heartily, “and we dogs are just as
friendly as the human beings.”
“Thick as thieves,” said Gringo, “and I must say we’re a pretty good
gang.”
As Gringo was speaking, two of the dogs in the performing troupe that
Amarilla belonged to, came round the corner of the house. They are two
beautiful snow-white French poodles, and have exquisite manners. When
they first came out, they were thin and frightened. That was before we
arrived. By the time we came, they were fat and prosperous and happy
looking dogs. On the stage, they had worn their hair clipped in the
approved fashion for poodles, and their forelocks were tied up with
ribbon.
Mrs. Bonstone took the ribbons off, for she wanted them to be real
dogs, she said, and they are only clipped now when warm weather comes,
and then all over.
It does Gringo and me all the good in the world to see the quiet
delight these two handsome dogs take in their well-ordered life here.
They are full of interest in American life. They were born in Paris,
and at first they thought the whole world was bounded by the Seine
where they used to be taken to be washed. Then they were sold to this
dreadful man, Fifeson, who beat them sometimes, but not nearly as often
as he beat Amarilla, for poodles are naturally splendid trick dogs, and
learn things easily.
“Gringo,” I said, “do you think these dogs are any different from other
dogs who have never been treated cruelly?”
“’Course I do,” he growled. “Don’t you see they ain’t like you and me?”
“Yes, I see it,” I replied, “but I wanted to know whether you did.”
“Their spirit’s broken,” he said. “The Frenchmen are happy, but there’s
a look in their eye, as if they wouldn’t be surprised any minute, if
some one up and struck them.”
“Weary Winnie doesn’t show it as much as they do,” I said.
Gringo grinned. Weary Winnie was his pet among the showman’s dogs. She
was a fat, lazy, young miniature bull-dog with a wrinkled muzzle that
looked as if she were always smelling something disagreeable and one
white tooth that stuck out beyond the others. She came of grand stock,
but was rather stupid, and had played an old woman on the stage, being
dressed up in a shawl and bonnet. Amarilla says her beatings were
awful, for she couldn’t seem to learn the simplest thing. The showman
made her hold things in her mouth, and at last he had to give up the
pipe, for she always let it fall out. Finally he tied a basket to her
lips, and the string hurt her.
When we came out here, she was taken over to our house to be a playmate
for me, but she used to run away and howl about this place till at last
master asked Mr. Bonstone to keep her. When she isn’t sleeping, she is
paddling about after Gringo, and looking just about as graceful as he
does.
She sleeps in a box-stall in one of the stables, with the Frenchmen.
Mr. Bonstone likes to have plenty of dogs about his horses, for they
are such good guardians. No stranger can get near the horses when the
dogs are at their post, and some of them are always in or near the
stables.
Gringo, of course, always sleeps in his master’s dressing-room. He
saved Mr. Bonstone’s life once, out west, when a bad man who was his
enemy crawled in a window at night, and was just about to shoot at
that head on the pillow so dear to Gringo.
“How did you stop him?” I often ask Gringo, for he loves to tell the
story.
“Just took a playful leap at his throat,” the old dog always says.
“And what did your master do?”
“Heard the rumpus, got up, and took the man’s gun away.”
“And what did the man do?”
“Broke down, and wanted to shake hands with the boss.”
“And what did your master do?”
“Shook, and told him to go home, and get another gun.”
Gringo, of course, can leap like a cat, that being one of the
characteristics of a thoroughbred bull-dog. He, however, can jump
higher than most bull-dogs, for the man from whom Mr. Bonstone bought
him had given him special training. He was a famous boxer, and Gringo
says he used to put on gloves and have many a go with him. Gringo would
spring at the boxer’s chest--he was a six-footer--and try to bite a
button from his vest. The boxer would give him good blows with his
gloves, and drive him away, but Gringo always came back. It was rough
training, but it made the young dog hardy.
Besides the Frenchmen and Weary Winnie, the Bonstones have Yeggie, a
mongrel, another one of the showman’s lot. Oh! what an eloquent looking
little fellow he is. His eyes seem to be pleading with you to make up
some message, that he is unable to deliver.
Amarilla says he is another one that got plenty of whacks from the
showman. She says that look of tears in his eyes, means that he is
trying to tell you of his troubles, so that you will sympathise with
him.
All these show dogs have nightmare most horribly. That is one reason
why Gringo won’t allow Weary Winnie to sleep in the house with him.
He had her in one night, and he said that though he was fond of the
creature, he couldn’t have her yelling blue murder every hour in his
ear.
Yeggie is young and dashing, and hasn’t very good manners. He was a
tramp dog when the showman got him, and sometimes he annoys me by
saying that I, too, led a tramp’s life. I explain to him over and over
again, that a wandering dog isn’t necessarily a tramp dog, but he can’t
make the distinction. Poor fellow, he hadn’t early advantages, and is
rather inelegant in his ways. We older dogs are always correcting him,
but he forgets easily and is still very heedless. However, he has a
very happy time, and that is the main thing. He loves the men and the
horses, and always sleeps on the foot of Joe’s bed in his room over the
larger of the two stables.
Thomas sleeps in the other stable, and Czarina is always his companion.
She is a magnificent Russian wolfhound, and is Mrs. Bonstone’s special
pet, next to Sir Walter, who is the favourite-in-chief, though he is
not very much with his mistress now on account of his devotion to the
hens.
I should have mentioned sooner this aristocratic dog. From the start,
Sir Walter liked the idea of moving to the country, for it suggested
his former life in Scotland.
Gringo and I imagined he would be the show-dog of the place--always
in evidence on the avenue, in the drawing-room, on the verandas, or
hanging about the automobiles.
To our amazement, that dog’s one idea when he got to the country was to
have something to boss. He would have preferred sheep, but Mr. Bonstone
could not keep any, as we are too near the city. Sir Walter could do
nothing with the horses, for the men were with them all the time, and
told them what to do.
“He wants to run a show of his own,” Gringo used to say, “and though I
like the dog, he ain’t going to boss me!”
He couldn’t boss me, either, and not one of the showman’s dogs minded
a word he said. He did fuss round the Jersey cows a bit, but the lad
that drove them to and from the pasture wouldn’t have Sir Walter
interfering, so he took to following Mrs. Bonstone about when she took
care of her large flock of hens.
They were beautiful white Wyandottes, and were kind and sensible. It is
wonderful what intelligence hens have when one treats them well. Sir
Walter got interested in them, found he could order them about to his
heart’s content, and when seeding-time came, he had made himself so
useful that kind-hearted Mrs. Bonstone was delighted to be able to give
them their liberty, under his superintendence.
Those hens knew just as well as Christians that it was naughty to
scratch up the seeds in the vegetable and flower gardens, but they had
a pleasant little way of yielding to temptation till Sir Walter took
them in hand.
“Bow, wow! chickies,” he would say, running round and round them, and
carefully steering them away from danger points to the orchard or the
meadow, or the new land that was being broken up by a plough.
Those hens minded him beautifully, and he was as happy as the day was
long.
At first, the other dogs would roar with laughter to see him rush out
to the hen-houses in the morning, wait for his charges to be let out,
and wander about with them all day.
One day he caught Yeggie making faces at him, and gave him a great
walloping, and that taught all of us to be more respectful. If he liked
hens, he had a right to associate with them.
“A gentleman can perform any kind of menial labour without degrading
himself,” Sir Walter said to Yeggie, and emphasised it by a bite on the
ear.
As time went on, the hens became more and more of a passion with Sir
Walter, and by the time the twins came he was sleeping out in a kennel
by the hen-houses, and had a pet white chicken roosting on his back.
Its name is Betsy, and it is not to be killed, but kept for him, as he
is so fond of it.
Many of the Bonstones’ neighbours have hens stolen, but no one now ever
braves the army of dogs at Green Hill.
One man tried it--a stranger who did not know about the dogs. He had
tramped out from New York, and seeing the flock of Wyandottes on the
farm as he passed by on the road, he decided it would be a good place
to steal a few chickens. He lay hidden in some bushes till night, then
he crept cautiously to the barn. Sir Walter met him, and growlingly
escorted him to his kennel. The other dogs scented a stranger, and the
unhappy tramp found himself confronted by Weary Winnie, Yeggie, the
Frenchmen and Czarina. They did not bite him. Mr. Bonstone’s dogs, and
ours too, are trained never to put their teeth in a man unless he is
trying to kill them, or some human being. We can nose, and push, and
knock over, and grip, if necessary, but not bite.
The poor tramp was in a dilemma, and finally he crawled into Sir
Walter’s kennel, and covered himself with straw.
Cook was the first one up at the hen-houses in the morning. She wanted
fresh eggs for breakfast.
Seeing Sir Walter watching the kennel door with a peculiar air, she
went up and looked in, and screamed when she saw a man’s head in the
straw.
Thomas and Joe came running from the barn, and ordered the man to come
out.
“Sure and I can’t,” he said, “those gentlemanly dogs have peeled every
stitch of clothing off me.”
Sir Walter says his clothes were thin and old, and they literally
dropped off him, when the dogs pushed him about.
Thomas howled with delight, and telling the man to shake off the straw
in which he was buried, he sent Joe up to the house for a suit of old
clothes of Mr. Bonstone’s. That tramp had the greatest admiration for
the dogs, and sat about the place for days smoking and staring at them.
Mr. Bonstone at last ordered him to get out. He absolutely wouldn’t
work, and busy Mr. Bonstone was not the kind of man to have an idle
person about.