To feed the lion-eater, one cent or two white chiney marbles extry but
bring your own meat.
Pat him once on the head twinty pins, kids under five not allowed to.
For shaking hands with Spot the lion-eater, girls not allowed, gents
three white chinies, or one aggie marble.
Lead him two blocks down the street and back, one cent before starting,
no marbles or pins taken for leading him.
For sicking him on to cats three cents or one red cornelian marble if
you furnish the cat. Five cents to use Watson's cat. Watson's biggest
Tom-cat six cents must be paid before sicking. Small kids and girls not
allowed to sick him on cats.
Well, we didn't take in any cat-sicking money. And it was just as well.
You never can tell what a cat will do. But Freckles put it in because it
sounded sort of fierce. I didn't care for being caged and circused that
way myself. And it was right at that circus that considerable trouble
started.
Seeing me in a cage like that, all famoused-up, with more meat poked
through the slats than two dogs could eat, made Mutt Mulligan and some
of my old friends jealous.
Mutt, he nosed up by the cage and sniffed. I nosed a piece of meat out
of the cage to him. Mutt grabbed it and gobbled it down, but he didn't
thank me any. Mutt, he says:
“There's a new dog down town that says he blew in from Chicago. He says
he used to be a Blind Man's Dog on a street corner there. He's a
pretty wise dog, and he's a right ornery-looking dog, too. He's peeled
considerably where he has been bit in fights.”
“Well, Mutt,” says I, “as far as that goes I'm peeled considerable
myself where I've been bit in fights.”
“I know you are, Spot,” says Mutt. “You don't need to tell me that. I've
peeled you some myself from time to time.”
“Yes,” I says, “you did peel me some, Mutt. And I've peeled you some,
too. More'n that, I notice that right leg of yours is a little stiff yet
where I got to it about three weeks ago.”
“Well, then, Spot,” says Mutt, “maybe you want to come down here and see
what you can do to my other three legs. I never saw the day I wouldn't
give you a free bite at one leg and still be able to lick you on the
other three.”
“You wouldn't talk that way if I was out of this cage,” I says, getting
riled.
“What did you ever let yourself be put into that fool cage for?” Mutt
says. “You didn't have to. You got such a swell head on you the last
week or so that you gotto be licked. You can fool boys and humans all
you want to about that accidental old lion, but us dogs got your number,
all right. What that Blind Man's Dog from Chicago would do to you would
be a plenty!”
“Well, then,” I says, “I'll be out of this cage along about supper time.
Suppose you bring that Blind Man's Dog around here. And if he ain't
got a spiked collar on to him, I'll fight him. I won't fight a
spike-collared dog to please anybody.”
And I wouldn't, neither, without I had one on myself, If you can't get
a dog by the throat or the back of his neck, what's the use of fighting
him? You might just as well try to eat a blacksmith shop as fight one of
those spike-collared dogs.
“Hey, there!” Freckles yelled at Tom Mulligan, who is Mutt Mulligan's
boy. “You get your fool dog away from the lion-eaters cage!”
Tom, he histed Mutt away. But he says to Freckles, being jealous
himself, “Don't be scared, Freck, I won't let my dog hurt yours any.
Spot, he's safe. He's in a cage where Mutt can't get to him.”
Freckles got riled. He says, “1 ain't in any cage, Tom.”
Tom, he didn't want to fight very bad. But all the other boys and dogs
was looking on. And he'd sort of started it. He didn't figure that he
could shut up that easy. And there was some girls there, too.
“If I was to make a pass at you,” says Tom, “you'd wish you was in a
cage.”
Freckles, he didn't want to fight so bad, either. But he was running
this circus, and he didn't feel he could afford to pass by what Tom said
too easy. So he says:
“Maybe you think you're big enough to put me into a cage.”
“If I was to make a pass at you,” says Tom, “there wouldn't be enough
left of you to put in a cage.”
“Well, then,” says Freckles, “why don't you make a pass at me?”
“Maybe you figure I don't dast to,” says Tom.
“I didn't say you didn't dast to,” says Freckles; “any one that says
I said you didn't dast to is a link, link, liar, and so's his Aunt
Mariar.”
Tom, he says, “I ain't got any Aunt Mariar. And you're another and
dastn't back it.”
Then some of the other kids put chips on to their shoulders. And each
dared the other to knock his chip off. And the other kids pushed and
jostled them into each other till both chips fell off, and they went at
it then. Once they got started they got really mad and each did all he
knew how.
And right in the midst of it Mutt run in and bit Freckles on the calf
of his leg. Any dog will fight for his boy when his boy is getting the
worst of it. But when Mutt did that I give a bulge against the wooden
slats on the cage and two of them came off, and I was on top of Mutt.
The circus was in the barn, and the hens began to scream and the horses
began to stomp, and all the boys yelled, “Sick 'im!” and “Go to it!”
and danced around and hollered, and the little girls yelled, and all the
other dogs began to bark, and it was a right lively and enjoyable time.
But Mrs. Watson, Freckles's mother, and the hired girl ran out from the
house and broke the fight up.
Grown women are like that. They don't want to fight themselves, and
they don't seem to want any one else to have any fun. You gotto be a
hypocrite around a grown woman to get along with her at all. And then
she'll feed you and make a lot of fuss over you. But the minute you
start anything with real enjoyment in it she's surprised to see you
acting that way. Nobody was licked satisfactory in that fight, or licked
any one else satisfactory.
Well, that night after supper, along comes that Blind Man's Dog. Never
did I see a Blind Man's Dog that was as tight-skinned. I ain't a dog
that brags, myself, and I don't say I would have licked that heavy a dog
right easy, even if he had been a loose-skinned dog. What I do say is
that I had been used to fighting looseskinned dogs that you can get
some sort of a reasonable hold on to while you are working around for
position. And running into a tight-skinned dog that way, all of a sudden
and all unprepared for it, would make anybody nervous. How are you
going to get a purchase on a tight-skinned dog when you've been fighting
looseskinned dogs for so long that your teeth and jaws just naturally
set themselves for a loose-skinned dog without thinking of it?
Lots of dogs wouldn't have fought him at all when they realized how they
had been fooled about him, and how tight-skinned he was. But I was a
Public Character now, and I had to fight him. More than that, I ain't
ready to say yet that that dog actually licked me. Freckles he hit him
in the ribs with a lump of soft coal, and he got off of me and run away
before I got my second wind. There's no telling what I would have done
to that Blind Man's Dog, tight-skinned as he was, if he hadn't run away
before I got my second wind.
Well, there's some mighty peculiar dogs in this world, let alone boys
and humans. The word got around town, in spite of his running away like
that before I got my second wind, that that Blind Man's Dog, so called,
had actually licked me! Many pretended to believe it. Every time
Freckles and me went down the street someone would say:
“Well, the dog that licked the lion got licked himself, did he?”
And if it was a lady said it, Freckles would spit on the sidewalk
through the place where his front teeth are out and pass on politely as
if he hadn't heard, and say nothing. And if it was a man that said it
Freckles would thumb his nose at him. And if it was a girl that said
it he would rub a handful of sand into her hair. And if it was a boy
anywhere near his size, there would be a fight. If it was too big a boy,
Freckles would sling railroad iron at him.
For a week or so it looked like Freckles and I were fighting all the
time. Three or four times a day, and every day. Oft the way to school,
and all through recess-times, and after school, and every time we went
on to the street. I got so chewed and he got so busted up that we didn't
hardly enjoy life.
No matter how much you may like to fight, some of the time you would
like to pick the fights yourself and not have other people picking them
off of you. Kids begun to fight Freckles that wouldn't have dast to
stand up to him a month before. I was still a Public Character, but I
was getting to be the kind you josh about instead of the kind you are
proud to feed. I didn't care so awful much for myself, but I hated it
for Freckles. For when they got us pretty well hacked, all the boys
began to call him Harold again.
And after they had called him Harold for a week he must have begun to
think of himself as Harold. For one Saturday afternoon when there wasn't
any school, instead of going swimming with the other kids or playing
baseball, or anything, he went and played with girls.
He must have been pretty well down-hearted and felt himself pretty much
of an outcast, or he wouldn't have done that. I am an honest dog, and
the truth must be told, the disgrace along with everything else, and
the truth is that he played with girls of his own accord that day--not
because he was sent to their house on an errand, not because it was a
game got up with boys and girls together, not because it was cousins
and he couldn't dodgje them, but because he was an outcast. Any boy will
play with girls when all the boys and girls are playing together, and
some girls are nearly as good as boys; but no boy is going off alone to
look up a bunch of girls and play with them without being coaxed unless
he has had considerable of a down-fall.
Right next to the side of our yard was the Wilkinses. They had a bigger
house and a bigger yard than ours. Freckles was sitting on the top of
the fence looking into their orchard when the three Wilkins girls came
out to play. There was only two boys in the Wilkins family, and they was
twins; but they were only year-old babies and didn't amount to anything.
The two oldest Wilkins girls, the taffy-coloured-haired one and the
squint-eyed one, each had one of the twins, taking care of it. And the
other Wilkins girl, the pretty one, she had one of those big dolls made
as big as a baby.
They were rolling those babies and the doll around the grass in a
wheelbarrow, and the wheel came off, and that's how Freckles happened to
go over.
“Up in the attic,” says the taffy-coloured-haired one, when he had fixed
up the wheelbarrow, “there's a little old express wagon with one wheel
off that would be better'n this wheelbarrow. Maybe you could fix that
wheel on, too, Harold.”
Freckles, he fell for it. After he got the wagon fixed, they got to
playing charades and fool girl games like that. The hired girl was off
for the afternoon, and pretty soon Mrs. Wilkins hollered up the stairs
that she was going to be gone for an hour, and to take good care of the
twins, and then we were alone in the place.
Well, it wasn't much fun for me. They played and they played, and I
stuck to Freckles--which his name was called nothing but Harold all that
afternoon, and for the first time I said to myself “Harold” seemed to
fit. I stuck to him because a dog should stick to his boy, and a boy
should stick to his dog, no matter what the disgrace. But after while
I got pretty tired and lay down on a rug, and a new kind of flea struck
me. After I had chased him down and cracked him with my teeth I went to
sleep.
I must have slept pretty sound and pretty long. All of a sudden I waked
up with a start, and almost choking, for the place was smoky. I barked
and no one answered.
I ran out on to the landing, and the whole house was full of smoke. The
house was on fire, and it looked like I was alone in it. I went down the
back stairway, which didn't seem so full of smoke, but the door that let
out on to the first-floor landing was locked, and I had to go back up
again.
By the time I got back up, the front stairway was a great deal fuller
of smoke, and I could see glints of flame winking through it way down
below. But it was my only way out of that place. On the top step I
stumbled over a gray wool bunch of something or other, and I picked it
up in my mouth. Thinks I, “That is Freckles's gray sweater, that he is
so stuck on. I might as well take it down to him.”
It wasn't so hard for a lively dog to get out of a place like that, I
thought. But I got kind of confused and excited, too. And it struck me
all of a sudden, by the time I was down to the second floor, that that
sweater weighed an awful lot.
1 dropped it on the second floor, and ran into one of the front bedrooms
and looked out.
By jings! the whole town was in the front yard and in the street.
And in the midst of the crowd was Mrs. Wilkins, carrying on like mad.
“My baby!” she yelled. “Save my baby. Let me loose! I'm going after my
baby!”
I stood up on my hind legs, with my head just out of that bedroom
window, and the flame and smoke licking up all around me, and barked.
“My doggie! My doggie!” yells Freckles, who was in the crowd, “I must
save my doggie!” And he made a run for the house, but someone grabbed
him and slung him back.
And Mrs. Wilkins made a run, but they held her, too. The front of the
house was one sheet of flame. Old Pop Wilkins, Mrs. Wilkins's husband,
was jumping up and down in front of Mrs. Wilkins yelling, here was her
baby. He had a real baby in one arm and that big doll in the other, and
was so excited he thought he had both babies. Later I heard what had
happened. The kids had thought they were getting out with both twins but
one of them had saved the doll and left a twin behind. The squint-eyed
girl and the taffy-coloured-haired girl and the pretty girl was howling
as loud as their mother. And every now and then some man would make a
rush for the front door, but the fire would drive him back. And everyone
was yelling advice to everyone else, except one man who was calling on
the whole town to get him an axe. The volunteer fire engine was there,
but there wasn't any water to squirt through it, and it had been backed
up too near the house and had caught fire and was burning up.
Well, I thinks that baby will likely turn up in the crowd somewhere,
after all, and I'd better get out of there myself while the getting was
good. I ran out of the bedroom, and run into that bunched-up gray bundle
again.
I ain't saying that I knew it was the missing twin in a gray shawl when
I picked it up the second time. And I ain't saying that I didn't know
it. But the fact is that I did pick it up. I don't make any brag that I
would have risked my life to save Freckles's sweater. It may be I was so
rattled I just picked it up because I had had it in my mouth before and
didn't quite know what I was doing.
But the _record_ is something you can't go behind, and the record is
that I got out the back way and into the back yard with that bundle
swinging from my mouth, and walked round into the front yard and laid
that bundle down--_and it was the twin!_
1 don't make any claim that I _knew_ it was the twin till I got into the
front yard, mind you. But you can't prove I _didn't_ know it was.
And nobody tried to prove it. The gray bundle let out a squall.
“My baby!” yells Mrs. Wilkins. And she kissed me! I rubbed it off with
my paw. And then the taffy-coloured-haired one kissed me. And the first
thing I knew the pretty one kissed me. But when I saw the squint-eyed
one coming I got behind Freckles and barked.
“Three cheers for Spot!” yelled the whole town. And they give them.
And then I saw what the lay of the land was, so 1 wagged my tail and
barked.
It called for that hero stuff, and I throwed my head up and looked
noble--and pulled it.
An hour before Freckles and me had been outcasts. And now we was Public
Characters again. We walked down Main Street, and we owned it. And
we hadn't any more than got to Doc Watson's drug store than in rushed
Heinie Hassenyager with a lump of Hamburg steak, and with tears in his
eyes.
“It's got chicken livers mixed in it, too!” says Heinie. I ate it. But
while I ate it, I growled at him.