DON IN THE CITY
Poor Don did not know what to do. There he was, shut tightly up in a
dark freight car, that was rumbling over the rails as fast as it could
go.
“Well,” thought Don, in a way dogs have of thinking, “I am in a fix
now. I had much better have stopped at home. Running away isn’t as much
fun as I thought it was.”
He looked about the car, but he could see no way to get out. There were
some boxes and barrels in one corner, but as Don went up to sniff and
smell of them he could tell they had in them nothing good to eat.
My! What a rumbling the train made as it puffed along.
“I wonder where I am being taken to?” thought Don. “I guess I am in for
an adventure. Well, I’ll make the best of it.”
Once more Don went over to the door, and tried to push it open with his
nose. But it was not a swinging door like the one in the house at home.
Instead, it slid back and forth. What had happened was this:
When Don was asleep, after having eaten the bone the good lady gave
him, a train-man had come along, and closed the door of the freight
car. He did not see Don sleeping inside there to keep out of the way of
other dogs, or, if he had, the brakeman might have called to Don to get
out, before the door was locked. But, as it was, Don was locked in. And
now he was being taken away――where, he could not tell.
Don was beginning to feel hungry again, and, worse than this, he was
thirsty. He could stand being hungry, for he had had a bone, only a
little while before. But oh! how thirsty he was. And there was not a
drop of water in the car.
Poor Don put out his tongue, and licked his dry lips. There is not
anything quite so bad for an animal as to be thirsty, and if ever you
have a dog or cat, I hope you will see to it that they can always get
clean, fresh water to drink, especially in hot weather.
Poor Don’s tongue hung out of his mouth, and his breath came fast.
Up and down the freight car ran Don, looking for water in every corner,
but there was none. Then he thought to himself:
“I’ll bark and howl. That will let the men know I want a drink, and
they’ll bring me some water. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll bark and howl. I
ought to have thought of that before.”
So Don sat down in the middle of the car, on his hind legs, and,
lifting up his head, he howled. Then he barked, doing both as loudly as
he could.
But the train made such a rumbling noise, and the engine whistled so
loudly, that Don’s howls and barks could not be heard.
But he kept on howling and barking, until his poor throat and tongue
were tired, and he was thirstier than ever.
“I guess I’ll have to stop,” thought Don. “This isn’t doing any good,
and it only makes me feel worse than ever. Oh, if I could only get out!”
Then poor Don, tired out and weary, lay down and tried to sleep.
But it was hard work even to sleep in the rumbling car, though at last
Don dozed off for a little while. Then he suddenly awakened, and as he
sat up he knew what had made him stop sleeping. It was the sudden quiet
that had come after all the noise.
The train had come to a stop. It no longer rumbled over the rails, and
the car did not sway from side to side.
“Oh, maybe I can get out now!” thought Don, jumping up. Once more he
barked and howled, but he could not do it so loudly now, or he was so
thirsty his throat seemed all swelled shut.
Finally, after giving a pitiful howl, Don heard the voices of men
outside the freight car. And Don knew enough of men’s talk to hear one
of them ask:
“Don’t you hear a dog somewhere?”
“Seems to me I do,” answered another voice. “I wonder where it can be?”
“I’ll soon show them where it is,” thought Don. “I’ll howl again for
them.”
Once more he howled and barked.
“Why the dog is in this freight car!” exclaimed the first man.
“So he is!” cried the second. “We’ll let him out. We don’t want to be
carrying a dog with us.”
In a little while the door of the freight car slid open, and as soon as
Don saw the first streak of daylight come in, he gave a yelp of delight.
“Now I can get out and get a drink!” he thought.
So, without stopping to say anything to the men for letting him out,
except to give a short bark, which meant “Thank you!” Don jumped to the
ground and ran as fast as he could. He did not care which way he went,
as long as he could find some water.
“Look at that dog run!” cried one of the men.
“Yes, I guess he is badly scared,” said the other.
Don was not so much frightened as he was thirsty; he was a brave dog.
As he ran along, trying to smell his way to the nearest water, he
thought:
“Oh, if ever I get safely back to my kennel once more, I’ll never run
away again. That other dog, Rover, was right――it’s no fun to run away.”
Then, all of a sudden, Don smelled water. He looked in the direction
from which the smell came, and he saw a big stream of water splashing
down into the engine that had drawn the train of freight cars. For the
engine has to have water, just as a dog does, only the engine makes
steam of it. And it was the engine taking water at a big tank that Don
saw.
Some of the water splashed down from the engine tank and made a little
puddle beside the track. Don trotted up to this puddle and took a long
drink. And oh! how good it tasted.
“Humph! That dog was thirsty all right,” said the engineer as he leaned
out of his cab window and watched his engine getting a drink too. “I
wonder where that dog came from?”
“I came from a freight car――that’s where I came from,” said Don, but
of course he spoke only to himself, sort of thinking like, and the
engineer did not hear anything.
Don took another drink of the cool water, and he did not mind if it
was a bit muddy. At home, in his kennel, Bob the boy, would never think
of giving his pet dog anything but clean water to drink.
“But it’s different, when you run away,” thought Don. “Then you have to
take what you can get.”
He felt much better, now that he had quenched his thirst. But he was
beginning to feel hungry.
“The bone I left in the car is no good, for there is no more meat on
it,” thought Don. “I shall have to look for a new one.”
Then, for the first time since he had come out of the freight car, Don
looked about him, to see where he was. He saw many trains, and railroad
tracks, and, off in the distance a number of houses and church spires
as well as factory chimneys.
“I must be in some city,” thought Don. And he was right. The freight
train had stopped outside a large city, where Don was going to have
many adventures. Only, of course, he did not know that just now.
Poor Don was very tired, quite hungry and very dirty, for the floor of
the freight car had no clean straw on it as had the dog kennel at the
farm. In fact Don did not look like a nice dog at all. But he did not
know this, for he had no looking glass to tell him. I very much doubt
if dogs use mirrors,――don’t you? Anyhow, Don did not feel like himself.
He was beginning to be more and more sorry every minute that he had run
away.
“But, as long as I have, I must make the best of it,” thought Don. “And
the first thing to do is to get something to eat.”
He trotted over the railroad tracks, and soon found himself running
along the streets of a big city. He had never been in such a large one
before, though once he had gone to a small one, not far from the farm,
with Bob and the farmer. But this was a very big city, and Don had not
a friend in it. He sniffed and smelled, as he ran along, trying to find
something to eat. At last he smelled meat, and oh! how hungry it made
him. He ran toward the smell, but, just as he turned the corner near
it, he heard a voice cry:
“Oh, look at that dog! Let’s throw a stone at him!”