DON AND THE DOG CATCHER
“Look at him run!” cried one of the boys who had tied the tin can on
Don’s tail, when the dog was asleep. “Look!”
“He certainly can go!” shouted the other boy. “Let’s see if we can’t
catch him!”
But Don was running too fast for any small boy to get hold of him,
and those boys were not very large. Don was running as he had never
run before, because he was so frightened. Never before had he had a
can tied to his tail, and it bumped along after him, making such a
noise, and the rope pinched him so that, altogether, Don was very much
frightened.
But it was only “fun” for the boys. They laughed and shouted to see Don
try to get rid of the tin can.
For, after the first few minutes, Don did try to get rid of that
bouncing, rattlety-bang thing that seemed to follow him so closely. The
dog sat down, and, turning around, tried to pull the rope off his tail
by his teeth. But the boys had tied it on too tightly to allow Don to
get rid of it easily.
“Come on! Now we can catch him!” cried one of the boys, as he saw Don
sitting down near a pile of shingles.
The two boys went softly up toward the dog. I do not know what they
would have done with him if they had caught him, but they did not get
their hands on Don.
He stopped gnawing at the rope long enough to look up, and he saw the
boys. With a yelp, a growl and whine, all together, Don sprang up and
ran on again.
“There he goes!” cried one of the boys.
“Yes. Head him off! You go one way, and I’ll go the other,” shouted the
second boy. “Then we’ll get him, sure.”
“Oh, what a lot of trouble I’m having!” thought poor Don. “How I wish
I were back on the farm! And I wish Jack, that shaggy dog, was here to
help me. I wonder where he went to?”
But Jack was far away, and Don had to fight his battle alone. Finally,
as he was running around with the can on his tail, Don saw a little
hole in the pile of lumber.
“If I can only crawl in there,” he said, “I’ll hide from those boys.
They can’t get at me in there.”
Don made a dive for the hole. It was just large enough to let him crawl
in. He hoped the tin can might catch on something and be pulled off
his tail. But it did not. Inside his hiding place the can followed poor
Don.
“Never mind,” thought the tired and panting dog, “if the can had caught
on something, and if I pulled too hard, I might pull my tail off also,
and that would be too bad.” And of course it would. You know that, as
well as I do, without me telling you.
“But maybe when Jack comes back, and these boys go away, I’ll be able
to get rid of this old tin can,” thought Don. “Maybe Jack can help me
gnaw it off.”
So Don crept farther back into the hole, under the lumber and the boys
could not get at him. They tried to, but they could not. They even
poked sticks in the hole, and threw stones in, but none of them hit Don.
Finally, one of the men who owned the lumber yard came out of his
office, and saw the boys bothering Don. The man called to them:
“Hi there, you little fellows! Run away, and play somewhere else.”
Then the boys ran away, and left Don alone. The man did not know there
was a dog hiding under his lumber pile. But Don felt very kindly toward
the man who had driven away the boys.
“Now if he would only help me get rid of this can on my tail I’d be
all right,” thought Don. “I wonder where Jack is?”
For some time Don stayed hiding under the lumber pile. His heart was
not beating so fast now, though his tail still hurt him, where the can
was tied on. And he was hungry and thirsty, for he had eaten nothing
since the night before. Don was just thinking it would be safe to come
out of his hiding place, when he heard a dog barking. And he knew, at
once, that it was his shaggy friend Jack.
Though Jack’s voice would have sounded to you and me only like: “Bow
wow wow!” to Don it said:
“Where are you? What has happened? Where are you hiding?”
“Bow wow!” answered Don. “Here I am. Oh, where have you been? Such a
lot has happened since you went away, and left me sleeping. There is a
can tied to my tail.”
“Poor fellow!” said Jack to Don, as the latter crawled out. “You have
had a lot of trouble, haven’t you? Never mind, I’ll soon have that off
your tail.” And he did, gnawing the rope with his sharp teeth.
“Now I have a bone for you,” went on Jack. “I left it in the place
where we slept. It isn’t a very good one, but it’s the best one I could
find this morning.”
“Oh, that’s a fine bone,” said Don, when he was hungrily gnawing it. At
home he would hardly have looked twice at such a bone, for it had very
little meat on it. But since he had run away he was glad enough to get
almost anything.
“Where did you go?” asked Don of Jack, as the bone was finished, and
Don began to feel thirsty.
“Oh, seeing that you were soundly asleep, I went out to look for
breakfast,” answered Jack. “I did not think the boys would find you
asleep. We must look for a new hiding place, since they know where this
one is. Now we’ll see if it’s all right to go get a drink, down at the
river. It isn’t far.”
Jack looked out, but, almost at once, he drew in his head again.
“What’s the matter?” asked Don.
“There’s a man out there,” explained Jack. “I don’t want him to see us,
or he might chase us.”
Don looked, and when he saw the man he exclaimed:
“Why, he’s a good man. He drove away the boys who were throwing stones
at me.”
“Then he didn’t know you were there,” said Jack, “for he doesn’t like
dogs, and he won’t have them in this lumber yard. We must wait until he
goes away.”
So, though Don would have liked to go up to the man, and be patted on
the head, he thought perhaps Jack knew best.
“Things are so different in the city from the country,” said Don, with
a dog-sigh.
“Indeed they are,” barked Jack.
Pretty soon the man went out of the lumber yard, and then Jack and Don
could go down to the edge of the river, near the piles of boards, and
get a drink of cool water.
“Oh, that’s fine!” cried Don. “That’s the best water I’ve had since I
ran away.”
“Yes, it is good,” agreed Jack. “That’s why I have a place near it. We
can’t always get all we want to eat in the city, but water is not so
hard to find. Now let’s go and hunt up our dinner.”
“But we just had breakfast,” said Don.
“I know we did,” spoke Jack, as he washed his face with his paw, “but
we may have to hunt a long time for something more to eat, and then it
will be dinner time.”
Once more Don thought how very different this was from his farm kennel.
There, after he had had his breakfast, he could play around, or perhaps
drive in a runaway pig, or go after the sheep or cows. He did not have
to worry about his dinner, for he knew Bob, or some one, would bring
it to him. But now Don had to go out and look for a bone in an ash can.
Oh, it was very different!
This day Don and Jack were lucky. Together, as they ran about the city
streets, they found a large piece of meat, which some cook had thrown
out at the back door of a house.
“Oh, this will be fine!” cried Jack. “We’ll take this to the lumber
yard, and put it in a new hiding place. There will be enough for dinner
and supper too.”
It was not a very good piece of meat, being old and tough, but it was
just as good to those dogs as roast turkey would be to you.
Jack took the meat in his mouth, and started off with it.
“Keep a watch out for other dogs,” he said to Don. “They may try to
take it away from us. And, if they do, drive them off.”
“I will,” said Don. And he had to, several times. But Don was now a big
dog, and he was braver and bolder than ever before. So, when two or
three dogs ran up, Don growled and showed his sharp teeth, so that the
other dogs were glad enough to run away.
Jack picked out a new place under a pile of lumber, and there he and
Don ate their dinner. They were feeling much better now, for there was
enough meat left for their supper. And they could always get plenty of
clean drinking water in the river.
“Oh, running away isn’t so bad, after all,” said Don that night, after
the last of the meat had been eaten. “I am beginning to like it, now.”
“Wait,” advised Jack. “This is only the beginning. Not always will we
have such good luck as we had to-day.”
Jack was right. The next day they could find nothing to eat until late
in the afternoon. Then it was only a small bone which they divided
between them.
It rained, too, and the water ran down through the lumber pile and got
the dogs wet.
But Don could not find his way home, having traveled so far in the
freight car. He tried to get back to Bob, but he could not, and Jack
could not help him.
For several weeks Jack and Don lived together in the lumber pile,
eating what and when they could. Sometimes other dogs would fight them,
and try to take away their bones, but Jack and Don were both strong,
and usually they kept what they found.
Don could go off by himself now, to find food, and one day, as he was
off thus, searching in different ash cans, he had a sad adventure.
He had just found a nice bone, in some clean ashes, and was wiping it
off on the grass, when he saw two men running toward him. One of them
had a long net, on a pole, like the net Bob used for catching fish, and
Don wondered what this was for. He soon found out.
“There’s a stray dog!” cried one of the men. “Get him, and we’ll take
him away!” And the dog-catcher ran straight for Don.