He went; and Frank went, too; for obedience, even against his judgment,
is the penalty a dog has to pay who loves a boy--and will die for him if
need be.
In contrast with the bright glare of the cornfield it was dark in the
woods, like passing from out of doors into the cool, shaded living room
back home. Here and there shafts of sunlight pierced the dense foliage
and touched leaves and tree trunks with silver spots. Down the
heavy-wooded slope the boy went, but more cautiously now. Suddenly he
stopped breathless, Frank beside him with pricked ears. At the same time
the two men, both at work on the car down there by the pool, both burly
and flushed of face, glanced quickly around.
A moment they stared; then they began to talk, low, excitedly. The woman
came around from the other side of the car. She was young, slim, strong;
she was in a crimson shirtwaist and on her cheeks were spots of red.
She, too, glanced at boy and dog, then joined the talk of the men. "No!
No!" she cried. They brushed her aside; she ran quickly back to them;
they brushed her aside again. Finally one of them pushed her into the
car, pulled the shabby curtains down, and got in himself. The other man
came forward, a smirking smile on his heavy red face.
Close to the boy stood Frank, his challenging eyes fastened on that
smirking face. But Tommy, looking up with that eagerness to trust common
to all young things from children to puppies, answered the man's
questions in his clear boy's voice. Many times before, at Tom Belcher's
store, at the Hunt Club, at country fairs, strangers had stopped thus
to talk to him, had asked him who he was, where he lived, if his dog
would bite. Many times before such strangers had smiled down into his
upturned face.
"We got lots of things in the car," the man was saying, "apples,
peaches, circus things. We been to a circus. Did you see the lady?"
"I did!" said Tommy, breathless, his eyes big.
"Well, you come along with me. The lady wants to show you them circus
things."
Just a moment Tommy hesitated. He looked up wistfully into the smiling
face and into the narrowed eyes that somehow frightened him. Then he
glanced toward the car and smiled in ecstasy. That rolled-up tent
strapped on behind was striped red-and-white like tents at the fair:
merry-go-round tents, tents with shawled women who held your hand and
told you what was going to happen. The woods became suddenly alive with
romance, luring him to see. He hesitated no longer. He went with the
man, one hand on his hat brim as if the wind were blowing. Close behind,
panting, followed old Frank.
The car flecked with spots of light looked big here in the woods like a
strayed elephant. The other man, on the front seat, his hand on the
wheel, glanced over his shoulder as they approached. In his wide-brimmed
hat he looked like the man who stands in front of tents and shouts for
people to come in and see. Half concealed by the curtains and by
bundles, the woman, her face strangely white except for red spots, sat
on the back seat. Valises and suitcases with gaudy things sticking out
of them were strapped here and there to the car. Tommy stopped and
stared in wonderment at this travelling splendour. Close beside him
stood old Frank, fierce-eyed, wise, suffering.
"Get in, son," said the man at the wheel, his voice gruff and husky.
"We're goin' to take you to your ma. You ain't got no business down here
in the woods alone. Quick now--no fooling!"
But Tommy drew back.
"Is--is F'ank goin'?"
"Sure. Let the dog in, Bill."
The red-faced man slammed the door on boy and dog and clambered heavily
into the front seat. The lumbering car lurched and swayed along the
unused wood road. It was stifling hot in here with the curtains down,
but old Frank, wedged in between bundles and suitcases, was panting with
more than heat. And Tommy, into whose face he looked with flattened ears
and eyes solemn with devotion, was suddenly pale.
Just ahead, the big road came into sight, shining in the sun. The car
stopped. The woman against whose knees boy and dog were pressed in the
crowded space was breathing fast. The crimson, sleazy shirtwaist rose
and fell. Her face, in spite of the red spots, was pasty, as if she
might faint. The men looked up and down the road, nodded grimly at each
other, and the car started with a jerk. The scream of Tommy broke the
terrible silence.
"That ain't the way! That ain't----!"
The red-faced man whirled around, caught the boy by the back of the neck
and pressed the other hand over his mouth. And old Frank, rearing up in
the crowded confusion, buried his shining fangs deep in that hand and
wrist. The other man sprang out of the car, jerked the door open, and
caught him by both hind legs.
"Don't stick him, Bill!" he gasped. "They'll find his body. Let him go
home!"
Snarling, writhing, fighting, Frank was dragged out and hurled into the
road. A savage kick sent him tumbling backward; the man sprang once more
into the front seat. The car darted away, Frank after it, barking
hoarsely in his rage and horror, his mouth flecked with bloody foam, the
road flying dizzily underneath him.
All that blazing August day he followed the car--followed though at the
next patch of woods it stopped and a man jumped out with a shotgun. He
was a hunting dog; he knew what that meant. Like a big red fox caught
prowling about after daylight, he sprang into the bushes and disappeared
from sight. After that he did not show himself again. Where he could, he
stayed in the woods, running parallel to the road like a swift, silent
outrider. At open places he lagged shrewdly behind; by short cuts
through fields, by spurts of speed at the next patch of woods, he
caught up again. It was an old trick and a simple one; he had played it
often before; but never, as now, with such gnawing anxiety, such
bewilderment and rage in his heart.
Once, lumbering old rattletrap though it was, the car left him far
behind. Then as he raced frantically along the dusty road under the
fierce sun that beat down on his heavy red coat, his eyes were like a
mad dog's eyes. But from the top of a long hill over which it had
disappeared he glimpsed it again in the distance--glimpsed it just as it
turned clumsily out of the highway and pointed its nose toward the
distant mountains.
After this it was easy. A mongrel cur might have kept up, much less a
seasoned thoroughbred. Up and down hill ahead of him the car swayed and
wallowed laboriously in an unused, gully-washed road. There was constant
shade in which to stop and pant, there were frequent streams in which to
lie for a moment, half submerged, and cool his boiling blood. Noon
passed without any halt. The sultry afternoon wore slowly away. Still
the big setter, his silver-studded collar tinkling slightly like tiny
shining castanets, galloped after that disreputable car as if he
belonged to it and had been left carelessly behind.
It never entered his head to turn back. Life was a simple thing to him.
There were no pros and cons in his philosophy. Yet he watched every turn
of that car, always on the alert, always ready to spring aside into the
bushes if it stopped. That man had meant murder; to show himself meant
death. He was a chauvinist, but he was no fool. The boy needed him
alive, not dead.
But the first sight of the boy was almost too much for him. The car had
turned out of the road at last. It bumped a while through woods,
stopped, and he sank down behind a bush. The sun had just set. Yonder
through a gap in the trees rose the dome of a heavy-wooded mountain.
Above it a vast pink and white evening cloud boiled motionless into the
sky. Beyond this mountain rolled the solid blue undulations of whole
ranges. For miles they had not passed a house. The breathless heat of a
wilderness hung over this place.
The men, stiff, dusty, hot, got out. The heavy man's hand was bandaged.
Then the woman got out; then the boy. A great trembling desire seized
the dog to rush forward, to let the boy know he was here. Every muscle
quivered; he choked and swallowed; he looked off as if to avoid
temptation. But one of the men pulled a shotgun out of the car and the
dog bowed his head between his paws in a sort of shame. That was the
symbol of his helplessness. That was what stood between his fangs and
those men's throats.
He watched them strip the car of its baggage. They unstrapped the tent
and dragged it off to the depths of a thicket beyond. Valises,
telescopes, all the cheap pageantry of their trade, went the same way.
They were staking everything on the prize that had walked into their
hands that morning, coming like a little prince from that big white
house that sat amidst its trees on the hill surrounded by broad fields
rich with corn and tobacco and cotton.
At last the man who had driven the car picked up the gun. The woman, one
arm full of bundles, took the boy by the hand. He drew back, looking up
at her and holding to his hat. She spoke to him low and huskily, her
face white. Then, as he perforce went with her, Frank heard him crying
in the woods, heard the convulsive catches of his voice, saw the
twinkle, through the trees, of white socks above reluctant, sandalled
feet.
Eyes sullen and fierce, he rose and followed. Down the hill, where a
creek gurgled, the man with the gun turned. He was hard-jawed,
pale-eyed. The boy and woman stopped.
"Shut up!" he said.
The crying stopped; the convulsive sobs went on.
"Shut up!"
A few steps the dog rushed forward, hair risen all the way down his
back. Then he sank down on the ground. For the woman had dropped the
bundles and was on her knees before the boy, her arm about his heaving
shoulders. Frank saw the whiteness of her face as she looked up at the
man above her. Her voice rang through the woods, husky and shrill, but
suppressed.
"He can't help it, Joe!"
The crying had stopped now. But the sturdy little chest was still rising
and falling as the boy stood looking up with quivering face at the man.
The woman picked up her bundles, rose, and took his hand once more.
Still holding to his hat he went with her, in silence now, taking two
little trotting steps to one of hers.
They spent the night in the woods, out of hearing of any chance
passer-by along the road. Carefully hidden in the underbrush old Frank
watched them. Only once did he leave them. Then he went to the car,
found a big chunk of side-meat wrapped in a paper under the back seat,
made his meal off his enemies, and came guardedly back, licking his
chops. They were gone again before day. The rising sun found the car
toiling upward into the echoing depths of the mountains. Just around the
last bend in the road followed old Frank.
Sometimes he trotted, sometimes he broke into a gallop. Sometimes he
stopped to drink at streams that came slipping down green walls of rock,
crossed the road like snakes, and dived into the foliage below. His
tongue hung out; he was gaunt, dust-covered, weary-eyed. The few
mountaineers he passed looked at him with narrow suspicion, then back up
the winding road where that curtained car had disappeared. With just a
glance up into their faces, he galloped by.
But when another car, long, black, shining, like the one at home, swung
suddenly around the bed just ahead, he stopped short. The weariness left
his eyes, the stiffness went out of his muscles, his heart gave a great
bound. Four sportsmen, such as he and his master associated with, bobbed
comfortably up and down in the capacious seats of that approaching car.
Their fishing rods were strapped to the side. He saw the shine of the
sun on their ruddy faces, the twinkle in their eyes as they stopped.
"What's up, old man?" they asked.
Maybe he got a bit rattled. Anyway, he failed. He ran up the road in the
direction of that other car, wheeled, and ran back. He jumped up on the
step with his front paws, he looked up with pleading eyes from one face
to another.
"Those folks left him behind," they said.
They assured him that it was a shame to treat a good old scout that way,
but he could catch up if he kept plugging. They said if the road were
not too narrow they would turn round, give him a lift and his people a
piece of their minds. They threw him something to eat, they wished him
good luck, and left him standing in the road, looking after them with
disconsolate eyes.
After he had eaten the food and taken up his solitary pursuit, he heard
in the road far below the sound of their car. Even their voices floated
up to him between the narrow walls of the echoing gorge.
"I tell you," said one, "it was an S O S! We ought to have followed him.
Something queer about that car."
But they were gone for all that, like the friends who, whether we be man
or woman or dog, daily pass us by, willing to help if they only
understood.
It was dusk when he caught up. The car had reached the flattened top of
the lofty range it had been climbing all day. From behind a bush he
watched it turn out of the road. Like some mammoth beast astray it
bumped and swayed across a desolate field of broomstraw with borders
that plunged abruptly off into space. In the middle of the field grew a
black thicket of stunted pines, huddled densely together up here under
the sky. On the side of the thicket away from the road the car stopped,
and Frank crept into the pines and lay down. The men got out, then the
woman, then the boy.
He saw Tommy looking all about in bewilderment at this roof of the world
on which, a lonely little figure, he stood close to the woman. Again the
longing seized the dog to rush forward, to let the boy know he, too, was
here. But there were the men close by; and in the car was the gun. Again
he bowed his head between his paws; and his eyes in the faint glow from
the light that still lingered in the sky were deep with loneliness and
trouble.
Suddenly the man who had driven the car turned. He glanced at the woman
and the boy, then toward the road. He took his pipe out of his mouth.
"Here, you get back in that car, kid!" he said.
This time Tommy stood his ground sturdily, but his upturned face was
white in the dusk, and he held tight to the skirt of the woman.
"Did you hear me?"
"He's dead tired, Joe!" snapped the woman.
The man took a sudden threatening step forward. In the thicket Frank
rose quivering to his feet. But with a quick movement the woman had
pushed the boy behind her. "Don't you touch him, Joe!" she flashed. A
moment she stood facing him, slim, defiant in the dusk. Then she took
the boy's hand and they went back to the car.
Suddenly Frank rose on his front legs, ears thrown back, eyes glowing
wildly. It seemed to him that the boy had looked straight into the
bushes where he lay. Certainly for a moment he had pulled back on the
woman's hand. Then he went on with her and they got into the car. But
Frank still sat on his haunches, panting and choking and panting again.
At last he crept along the edge of the thicket and lay there close to
the car. He was still panting. That glimpse full into the boy's face had
almost undone him. He was hungry for food, and hungry for human
companionship. He wanted to go to the car, to rear up on the side to
scratch at the curtains. But yonder, a hundred feet away, back and forth
before a fire they had built, moved the men. And against the box they
had taken from the car leaned the gun.
Within the car he heard the voice of the woman, low, confidential,
assuring, and his ears flattened with gratitude and trust. The man
wouldn't hurt him, she was telling the boy. Sometimes he talked to
everybody that way. He was an old grouch, that's what he was. She
whispered something.
"To-morrow?" the boy asked eagerly.
"Hush! Sure. That's it--to-morrow!"
"Did F'ank go home, Nita?"
"Sure he went home."
"I saw a dog in the bushes!"
The woman laughed. "You're seeing things, old scout. What about some
supper?"
She got out of the car and went quickly to the fire the men had built.
Without a word to them she gathered up something to eat and came quickly
back. Even in the darkness Frank could see the light in her eyes.
The boy must have gone to sleep soon after that. The moon, big, weird,
solemn, rose slowly over yonder parallel range of mountains. The men at
the fire talked low and mumbling between long intervals. Presently the
heavy man rose, skirted the thicket, and stumbled off across the field
toward the road. The smell of him polluted the air no more. Then the
woman came quietly out of the car and joined the other man at the fire.
"Where's he gone?" she asked.
"To get the lay of the land."
She sat down opposite him, her knees drawn up, her chin in her hand.
"Joe?"
"Well?"
"The kid's got me, Joe!"
He said nothing and she talked on, her voice low. Still he said nothing.
Then she went over to him, sat down beside him, took his hand in hers.
"Let's take him home!" she pleaded, her voice rising. "Let's make a
clean breast of it. Let's begin all over again. Let's be straight.
They'll give us a chance--I know they will. They're like the kid--white.
I know they are. Let's turn round right now. I promised him we'd take
him home to-morrow. I couldn't help it! Joe, Joe, I'd rather be dead
than go on!"
She rose when he rose, clinging to him. He threw her off, she ran to
him, and he threw her off again, his face distorted in the moonlight.
"I'm tired of this sob stuff!" he cried. "We're in this thing and we're
goin' to see it through!"
"You'll wake him!" she gasped.
"Let him wake! The daddy'll come across or I'll wring the brat's neck!"
"Oh!" she screamed.
She stared at him with white face, full of horror and fear and loathing.
She turned and stumbled toward the car, the curtains closed upon her.
Far in the night Frank heard her sobbing to herself.
His eyes were green with hatred as he followed the car the next day. A
few crumbs of bread from the deserted camping place, a taste of potted
meat from a can he held fiercely between his paws while he licked the
inside, had made his meagre breakfast. There were times that day when,
if the men had looked behind, they must have seen him. There were times
when he would not have cared if they had. Close around the bends, within
sight sometimes where the road straightened, he trotted or loped wearily
along, tongue lolling out, collar loose on his neck. So another day wore
away and mid-afternoon came. Then the car stopped, and from force of
habit, as it were, he turned aside for the last time into the bushes.
Suddenly his panting ceased, he raised his head, and pricked his ears.
From the valley below had come the smell of human habitations mingled
with the faint tinkle of a cowbell and the sound of a hammer. Eyes
bright in an instant, he watched the man climb stiffly out of the car
ahead. The other and bulkier man clambered from between the curtains of
the rear where he had ridden all that day. They talked for a while low
and guardedly. They glanced suspiciously up and down the rough road they
had been following, then down a shaded road that led pleasantly to the
valley below.
"There ain't an inch of gas left," said the man who had driven the car.
"It's the last chance for fifty miles."
"Have you looked in the can?" asked the heavy man, his face worried.
"You saw me empty it last night, didn't you?" sneered the other.
He pulled a big can out of the car, then he parted the curtains.
"See here, kid, you want to keep damn quiet--hear?"
No sound came from within.
"Did you hear me?"
The voice sounded muffled in a sort of sob.
"Yes, sir!"
"All right. Remember! I'm comin' back."
He fastened the curtains together. He muttered directions to his uneasy
companion. "You drive up to them bushes and wait." He put in his hip
pocket something that flashed brilliantly, even pleasantly, in the sun,
he put on his coat, picked up the can, and started down the shaded road.
And old Frank, fierce eyes shrewd, hair risen all the way down his gaunt
back, rose guardedly, crept through the bushes, came out in the road
behind and followed.
Old Frank had been a companion of men all his days. He had hunted with
them, shared their food and fire, looked up with steady, open eyes into
their faces. He had never had a human enemy before. But now he stalked
this man as his ancestors had stalked big game--muscles tense, head low
between gaunt shoulder blades, eyes hard and bloodshot. When the man
turned he would rush forward and spring at his throat.
But the man hurried on, and looked neither to the right nor left, nor
behind him. Thus they came suddenly out of a wilderness into a village
that straggled up the sides of mountains. There were glimpses of white
cottages clinging to abrupt hillsides, or rambling steps leading to
green summer lawns, or swings in the shade, or white-clad, romping
children--children like Tommy Earle.
Yonder down the street glass knobs of telephone poles glistened in the
sun. At the end of the street rose the white columns of a long building
with a big, black, dust-covered car in front. Women in white, children
with nurses, sallow mountain folk, were abroad in the first coolness of
the afternoon. It was the busy season, when the heat of cities drives
people to the fresh air of the mountains and a hundred such villages
spring into life and laughter.
Through this holiday crowd went the red-faced, dusty man. Twenty paces
behind followed the gaunt Irish setter. People stopped in the street to
look back at him. Children pulled on their nurses' hands, thrilling to
make friends with such a big dog, then pulled back, distrustful of the
look in his eyes. Man, then dog, passed the drug store where behind
plate-glass windows cool-dressed men and women sat at slender tables.
Next to the drug store was a brick garage with a gasolene meter in
front. About the entrance loitered a group of men watching. One was
bigger than the rest and wore a wide-brimmed hat.
Through this group pushed the man with the ten-gallon can. Close behind
now followed the gaunt Irish setter. It happened quickly, like one of
those mountain tragedies that brood over such places, remnants of feuds
that hang on to the skirts of civilization. Two muffled pistol shots
broke the peace and security of the village and brought men running to
the garage. For the man with the ten-gallon can had turned at last, and
Frank had sprung straight at his throat.
From the confusion of crowding men came the hoarse shout,
"Turn me loose! Let me kill that dog! Can't you see? He's mad as hell!"
"I've got the dog all right!" cried the big man in the broad-brimmed
hat. "If he's mad I'll 'tend to him!"
Plunging, barking, begging to be turned loose, old Frank was dragged
backward across the cement floor. In the door of a glass-enclosed office
the big man, holding tight to his collar, turned.
"Here--you--Sam!" he panted. "Run to the hotel. Tell Mr. Earle--the
gentleman that just came with his wife--we got a man down here and a red
Irish setter. Quick! Catch him before he leaves!"
Then they were in the office, and the door was shut. The big man had
sunk breathless into a chair still holding to the dog's collar. He was
quiet now. But the blood that dripped slowly on the floor was no redder
than his eyes. The door opened and he plunged forward. But it was a
stranger--a young man with a star on his coat.
"Sam got 'em, Sheriff," he said, "they're comin' now. Must I bring the
man in here?"
"No. Keep him out there. This fellow's still seein' red."
"Hit?"
"Ear. That's all."
"Well, he left his mark on that devil, all right!"
The young man went out. Still the sheriff held the dog's collar. Still
through the glass windows the crowd stared in. But suddenly it parted
and then Frank saw them.
"Hold on!" panted the sheriff. "No use to tear the house down. They'll
be in here in a minute!"
The door opened, they were in the office, the sheriff had turned him
loose. He was jumping up against his tall master, long ears thrown back,
upraised eyes aglow, heart pounding against his lean ribs. But it was
the look in his young mistress's eyes that brought him down to the floor
before her in sudden recollection that went straight to his heart, that
set him all atremble with choking eagerness.
"Take us to him, Frank!" she gasped, her hands clenched tight against
her breast.