Cindy cooked supper for them. Afterward the dog stayed on the front
porch, where Earle smoked one silent pipe after another, then knocked
the ashes out on the banisters and went into the house. The dog heard
him telephoning; heard the names Marian and Tommy; listened till it was
over, then came down the steps and strolled round the house. A thin wisp
of new moon, before it set that night, looked mildly down on him curled
up in a bundle at the foot of a little wagon out by the garage.
Next afternoon before he left Earle chained him to his kennel.
"Guess I better," he apologized.
Aunt Cindy, who had watched the performance, shook her head.
"Dat dawg knows," she declared; "he shorely knows!"
"I should think," said Earle, rising, "the way the boy worries him, he
would be glad of a little peace."
"Well, he like grown folks, Mr. Steve, he love to be bothered by
chillun. Dis place daid widout dat boy. Lorsy, lorsy!"
Earle drove off in the car and the old woman went into the house.
Usually she sang as she waddled about her work--now she was silent. All
afternoon the dog lay, nose pointed toward the distant city. He could
see across the orchard where one day not long before Tommy had picked up
June apples off the ground and put them in a basket, down the hill to
the creek bottoms. He could see the creek itself flashing here and there
through clumps of trees, the creek where Tommy used to throw sticks for
him to fetch. He spent his captivity in dignified resentment.
But he quickly forgot his grievance when at dusk he heard the hum of the
returning car. He ran as far as he could to meet it, his tail slapping
the taut chain. When Earle drove into the yard and turned him loose he
ran to the car, he jumped up on the running board; he stared at the
empty back seat.
"Nothing doing, old man," said Earle gently as he turned away.
So the strange days passed. Every morning he followed Earle about the
plantation; every afternoon he was chained up; every evening he was
given his freedom till next day. Things did not mend. Earle grew more
silent, his conferences with Aunt Cindy briefer, the worry in his gray
eyes deeper. The dog saw it plainer at night than at any other time,
when out on the porch Earle lit his pipe; read it unmistakably in the
flaring up of the match against the man's face out here in the dark.
Then he laid his head on the man's knee and Earle pulled his ear, while
up in the blackness of the big oaks crickets rattled and sawed without
ceasing.
At last one afternoon from in front of his kennel he watched a heavy
thunder cloud gather over the hills and come rumbling toward him. The
sky grew black; the orchard trees, the creek bottoms, the distant hills
took on strange colours, as if autumn had miraculously come. Out of her
cabin hurried Aunt Cindy and toward the garage, her white apron like a
flag of truce flapping against the oncoming storm. He watched her put
the shovel into the little wagon and pull the wagon into the blacksmith
shop. The door creaked loudly as she closed it. Back to her cabin she
hurried, leaning against the wind. Tail tucked, the dog crawled deep
into his kennel and listened to the roar of the storm.
It had passed when Earle drove into the yard and turned him loose. So
had the ditch the boy had dug that rainy morning--washed full of sand
now, and a stick horse that had leaned idle against the lot fence was
blown down prostrate on the ground. Earle didn't want any supper, he
told Aunt Cindy as he went into the house. He did not come out on the
porch that night, and the dog sought his sleeping place beside the
garage. It was meaningless now that the wagon was gone. Restless,
lonely, strangely excited, he came back and guardedly manipulated the
screen door.
He glanced in the living room. Earle in an easy chair was staring at a
shaded lamp while he smoked his pipe. Unobserved, the dog went silently
down the hall. As he neared the bedroom door a quick obsession seized
him that the boy might be in there. Ears pricked, he stepped quickly in
and put his head on the little bed beside the big one. It was empty. He
walked round the room, whiffing this object and that; then he lay down
at the foot of the bed.
Here Earle found him. It would be all right, the man said, looking down
on him from his splendid height. Pretty lonely, wasn't it? He sat down
and unlaced one shoe: he held it in his hand a long time before he
dropped it and unlaced the other. Half undressed, he sat silent, looking
steadily into the dog's eyes. Sometimes when they were together this way
he talked as if to another man. The bed creaked when he climbed in. Out
of doors raindrops from the late storm dripped from the trees. Somewhere
over the hills a hound was baying dismally. Frank curled up and slept.
He was awakened by the violent ringing of the telephone bell out in the
hall. He was on his feet when Earle sprang out of bed and hurried
barefoot to it. Even after the man started talking, the echo of that
alarm bell still sounded in the vacant house, up the broad stairs, into
the empty bedrooms above. Earle came back and got into his clothes, his
hands as he laced his shoes trembling a bit. He hurried out of the house
and jumped into the car. Intent on the slippery road ahead, he did not
see the dog's eyes shining wildly in the glare of his lights as he
rounded the curve at the foot of the avenue.
Ears erect, Frank stood for a moment staring at the vanishing rear
light, then dashed frantically after it. He was in the pride of his
strength and endurance. He was the fastest of all bird dogs, the Irish
setter. Yet that mad car drew almost as swiftly away as if he were
standing still in the road staring idly after it. Every muscle
straining, he followed it, until the light melted into the distance.
Even then, nose to the ground, he rushed the trail of those familiar
wheels. At last, panting and frothing, he stopped. The night was silent.
Even the roar had died away--as if it had never been. He looked
bewilderedly around at the dusky fields, the foggy stars. But he
continued to gallop toward the city.
The fingers of the lighted clock above the hospital door pointed to
eleven as Earle ran up the steps. The night was warm, the front door
open, and he hurried down the dim-lighted corridor. A light shone out of
25, and he stepped quickly in.
It was an open room, with a screened portion projecting out on the
porch. In this portion was the bed. The young doctor standing at the
foot glanced at him with a contraction of the muscles about the corners
of the mouth. From the bed over which she leaned Marian raised to him
eyes that told the story. Opposite Marian the nurse was stroking the
little head and chest.
From between the two women came now and then a plaintive, inarticulate
murmuring, a tired echo, it seemed, of what must have been going on
long before he came. The young doctor stepped quietly to him. The fever
had started rising rapidly an hour before, he explained, and the boy had
grown delirious. It was the crisis--sooner than they expected.
In spite of the pounding of his heart, Steve's low-pitched question
sounded matter-of-fact enough.
"What would you say of him?"
The doctor looked the father narrowly and solemnly in the eyes. "He's a
very ill child, Mr. Earle."
Steve nodded quickly. "Is there anything I can do?"
The doctor shook his head.
Somewhere a bell rang; a nurse's skirts rustled as she passed the door.
Earle sat down, his hat on his knees, staring helplessly.
"F'ank?"
The thin little voice on the bed was shrill and complaining. The women's
heads met above it.
"Mother's here. Mother's here, darling."
"A playmate?" asked the doctor.
Earle shook his head. "No; a dog."
"F'ank?"
Earle got up, went out of the room, down the corridor, out on the porch.
He sank on a bench and buried his face in his hands.
"God!" he whispered, "I can't stand that!"
When he came back, for he could not stay away, Marian met him in the
middle of the room, her flushed face and dilated eyes raised to his.
"Steve--he's growing excited. He's wearing himself out. Go for Frank!"
Earle looked beyond her at the bed. The cheeks were crimson, the eyes
half closed; through the narrowed slits they burned upward like fire.
Earle turned to the doctor.
"What about it?"
"How long will it take, Mr. Earle?"
"Two hours."
"Yes--I should go--right away!"
Earle crossed the room to the nurse sitting beside the bed. "It won't
matter?" he asked. "It won't excite him?"
She shook her head.
He sank on his knees beside the bed, his big arm braced over the heaving
little chest, his eyes drinking in the light in those narrowed unseeing
ones.
The lips were incredibly hot.
"Old scout!" he choked in the little ear.
He did not look at the faces as he hurried out of the room, nor back at
the building when he jumped into his car. He roared through the city,
into the silent country. He glimpsed the stone mileposts flash past. He
glanced now and then at the clock in the front of the car. He had set an
almost impossible time. But he was halfway home at midnight. As he
rounded a sharp curve his lights flashed on something far ahead in the
road--a hog or perhaps a prowling dog. It sprang aside into the bushes.
He passed the spot with a roar.
Behind him Frank leaped back into the road, and stood for a moment
staring after the car. He had gotten a glimpse, a whiff--he had thought
he knew it. But that car was going the wrong way. He must have been
mistaken. Wearily he turned and galloped on toward the city.
He had come many miles. He had many miles yet to go. From sleeping
farmhouses dogs bayed him as he passed, running like a big fox, silent
and swift. The road turned and twisted among hills and small mountains.
Ahead in the sky was a glow unlike the glow of coming day. It grew
brighter with the passing miles. It drew him on. The distance would have
meant little to him, except for the tremendous speed at which he had
been travelling. Now his chest was flecked with foam. His tail, carried
usually so proudly, followed the curve of his haunches. His overstrained
muscles worked mechanically like pistons. His heart pounded his long,
lean red ribs.
Dizzy, almost famished, he came at last to the top of a hill and
stopped, ears erect. Below him stretched rows of twinkling lights that,
all together, made up the glow in the sky. That was the city with the
strange building into which they had carried Tommy Earle!
He could afford to rest, now that he was so near. To the side of the
road grew bushes to which coolness and moisture clung. Sides heaving, he
scraped his back against them, his heavy tail wagging with inward
satisfaction, the glow from those distant lights reflected dimly in his
eyes. Then he sank down on his stomach, panting out loud in the sultry
stillness.
A roar, a blinding glare were upon him before he sprang wildly to his
feet. The wind rushed past as the car flashed by. He glimpsed Earle's
tense face.
Again he dashed after the rear light--again it drew away from him. He
left the road again--just behind the car. Once more it was leaving him.
In his desperation he began to bark as he ran. Above the roar his
frantic, enraged yelps pierced the night. He heard the crunching of
brakes.
"Frank!" cried the man.
The door was flung open. He jumped in and up on the padded seat. The car
swished smoothly and swiftly over black, moist, oily streets, past
interminable lights. Every muscle of the dog began to quiver. He looked
with shining eyes into his master's face, choked, and swallowed.
Suddenly he rose on the seat, feet together. Down the street had come
the smell, unlike any that rises from woods or fields, the smell he
would never forget. It drew closer. The car turned in toward the curb.
Earle spoke quickly. But the dog had leaped over the door of the car
and landed in the middle of the sidewalk. He took the steps three at a
time. Down the dim, silent corridor floated the pungent smell. Earle was
at his side, had caught him by the mane, had opened the door, was
holding him back.
"Steady, old man!" he said. "Steady!"
They hurried together down the shining hall. They turned into a strange
room. Over there, lips parted, his mistress had sprung to her feet.
There were others in here--a man, a woman in white--but he hardly saw
them. For on white sheets, face upturned and crimson, eyes half closed,
lay little Tommy Earle.
The mother was on her knees now, leaning far over the boy. Her face was
flushed like his face. She was smiling down eagerly into the strange,
up-turning eyes. "Look!" she was pleading. "Look at Mother, darling. Be
quiet--listen! Here's Frank--come to see you!"
She caught the dog convulsively to her, so close he could feel the
pounding of her heart. "Help me, Steve!" she panted.
She picked the boy's hand up and placed it on the shaggy head. She
pressed the little fingers together. She slipped her arm under the
pillow and turned the burning face toward the dog. "Now!" she smiled.
"You see him, don't you, dear! Mother told you he would come, didn't
she? Mother told you---- Ah!" she gasped.
Long after the boy had gazed in recognition into the deep, longing eyes
of the dog, then with a wistful little smile up into the mother's face;
long after his eyes had closed in that profound sleep which marks the
breaking up of delirium and fever, Frank sat on his haunches beside the
bed, his patient head on the covers.
He licked the hand of the boy, then glanced up inquiringly into the face
of the mother who sat beside him. She shook her head and he licked it no
more.
Later she whispered to him that he could lie down now, and nodded at the
floor at her feet. He understood, but he did not move.
The muscles of his haunches were cruelly cramped when the nurse snapped
off the light. In the pale light growing luminous and pink and gradually
suffusing the room Tommy Earle opened his eyes. First they looked up
into the happy face of the mother, then at Steve Earle standing at the
foot of the bed, then straight and clear into the faithful eyes of his
friend.
The cramped muscles quivered and jerked, the long tail beat the floor.
He wanted to leap on the bed, to rush round the room. The mother caught
him by the mane. He must be still, she said.
The voice of Tommy Earle when he spoke was as gentle and clear as the
chirp of half-awakened birds out of the window.
"F'ank?" he said.
Steve Earle had to hold the dog now--had to drag him away from the bed.
They brought him a pan of water. They made him lie down. They came
softly in, nurses and internes, and looked at him. He lay beside the
bed, relaxed now, but panting slightly, his eyes still aglow. They said
it was a wonderful thing he had done. And one of them, she was young and
radiant, gazed long and steadily, as if fascinated, into his gentle,
brave eyes, upraised to hers.
"He knows what he's done!" she said.
VIII
THE TRIAL IN TOM BELCHER'S STORE
It was a plain case of affinity between Davy Allen and Old Man
Thornycroft's hound dog Buck. Davy, hurrying home along the country road
one cold winter afternoon, his mind intent on finishing his chores
before dark, looked back after passing Old Man Thornycroft's house to
find Buck trying to follow him--_trying_ to, because the old man, who
hated to see anybody or anything but himself have his way, had chained a
heavy block to him to keep him from doing what nature had intended him
to do--roam the woods and poke his long nose in every briar patch after
rabbits.
At the sight Davy stopped, and the dog came on, dragging behind him in
the road the block of wood fastened by a chain to his collar and trying
at the same time to wag his tail. He was tan-coloured, lean as a rail,
long-eared, a hound every inch; and Davy was a ragged country boy who
lived alone with his mother, and who had an old single-barrel shotgun at
home, and who had in his grave boy's eyes a look, clear and
unmistakable, of woods and fields.
To say it was love at first sight when that hound, dragging his prison
around with him, looked up into the boy's face, and when that ragged boy
who loved the woods and had a gun at home looked down into the hound's
eyes, would hardly be putting it strong enough. It was more than
love--it was perfect understanding, perfect comprehension. "I'm your
dog," said the hound's upraised, melancholy eyes. "I'll jump rabbits and
bring them around for you to shoot. I'll make the frosty hills echo with
music for you. I'll follow you everywhere you go. I'm your dog if you
want me--yours to the end of my days."
And Davy, looking down into those upraised, beseeching eyes, and at that
heavy block of wood, and at the raw place the collar had worn on the
neck, then at Old Man Thornycroft's bleak, unpainted house on the hill,
with the unhomelike yard and the tumble-down fences, felt a great pity,
the pity of the free for the imprisoned, and a great longing to own, not
a dog, but _this_ dog.
"Want to come along?" he grinned.
The hound sat down on his haunches, elevated his long nose, and poured
out to the cold winter sky the passion and longing of his soul. Davy
understood, shook his head, looked once more into the pleading eyes,
then at the bleak house from which this prisoner had dragged himself.
"That ol' devil!" he said. "He ain't fitten to own a dog. Oh, I wish he
was mine!"
A moment he hesitated there in the road, then he turned and hurried
away from temptation.
"He _ain't_ mine," he muttered. "Oh, dammit all!"
But temptation followed him as it has followed many a boy and man. A
little way down the road was a pasture through which by a footpath he
could cut off half a mile of the three miles that lay between him and
home. Poised on top of the high rail fence that bordered the road, he
looked back. The hound was still trying to follow, walking
straddle-legged, head down, all entangled with the taut chain that
dragged the heavy block. The boy watched the frantic efforts, pity and
longing on his face, then he jumped off the fence inside the pasture and
hurried on down the hill, face set straight ahead.
He had entered a pine thicket when he heard behind the frantic, choking
yelps of a dog in dire distress. Knowing what had happened, he ran back.
Within the pasture the hound, only his hind feet touching the ground,
was struggling and pawing at the fence. He had jumped, the block had
caught and was hanging him. Davy rushed to him. Breathing fast, he
unsnapped the chain. The block and chain fell on the other side of the
fence and the dog was free. Shrewdly the boy looked back up the road;
the woods hid the old man's house from view and no one was to be seen.
With a little grin of triumph he turned and broke into a run down the
pasture hill toward the pines, the wind blowing gloriously into his
face, the dog galloping beside him.
Still running, the two came out into the road that led home, and
suddenly Davy stopped short and his face flushed. Yonder around the bend
on his gray mare jogged Squire Kirby toward them, his pipe in his mouth,
his white beard stuck cozily inside the bosom of his big overcoat. There
was no use to run, no use to try to make the dog hide, no use to try to
hide himself--the old man had seen them both. Suppose he knew whose dog
this was! Heart pounding, Davy waited beside the road.
Mr. Kirby drew rein opposite them and looked down with eyes that
twinkled under his bushy white brows. He always stopped to ask the boy
how his mother was and how they were getting along. Davy had been to his
house many a time with eggs and chickens to sell, or with a load of
seasoned oak wood. Many a time he had warmed himself before Mr. Kirby's
fire in the big living room and bedroom combined, and eaten Mrs. Kirby's
fine white cake covered with frosting. Never before had he felt ill at
ease in the presence of the kindly old man.
"That's a genuine hound you got there, son, ain't it?"
"Yes, sir," said Davy.
"Good for rabbits an' 'possums an' coons, eh?"
"He shore is!"
"Well, next big fat 'possum you an' him ketch, you bring that 'possum
'round an' me an' you'll talk business. Maybe we'll strike a bargain.
Got any good sweet potatoes? Well, you bring four or five bushels along
to eat that 'possum with. Haulin' any wood these days? Bring me a load
or two of good, dry oak--pick it out, son, hear? How's your ma? All
right? That's good. Here----"
He reached deep down in a pocket of his enormous faded overcoat, brought
out two red apples, and leaned down out of his saddle which creaked
under the strain of his weight.
"Try one of 'em yourself an' take one of 'em home to your ma. Git up,
Mag!"
He jogged on down the road, and the boy, sobered, walked on. One thing
was certain, though, Mr. Kirby hadn't known whose dog this was. What
difference did it make, anyhow? He hadn't stolen anything. He couldn't
let a dog choke to death before his eyes. What did Old Man Thornycroft
care about a dog, anyhow, the hard-hearted old skinflint!
He remembered the trouble his mother had had when his father died and
Old Man Thornycroft pushed her for a note he had given. He had heard
people talk about it at the time, and he remembered how white his
mother's face had been. Old Man Thornycroft had refused to wait, and his
mother had had to sell five acres of the best land on the little farm
to pay the note. It was after the sale that Mr. Kirby, who lived five
miles away, had ridden over.
"Why didn't you let me know, Mrs. Allen?" he had demanded. "Or Steve
Earle? Either one of us would have loaned you the money--gladly,
gladly!" He had risen from the fire and pulled on the same overcoat he
wore now. It was faded then, and that was two years ago.
It was sunset when Davy reached home to find his mother out in the
clean-swept yard picking up chips in her apron. From the bedroom window
of the little one-storied unpainted house came a bright red glow, and
from the kitchen the smell of cooking meat. His mother straightened up
from her task with a smile when with his new-found partner he entered
the yard.
"Why, Davy," she asked, "where did you get him?"
"He--he just followed me, Ma."
"But whose dog is he?"
"He's mine, Ma--he just took up with me."
"Where, Davy?"
"Oh, way back down the road--in a pasture."
"He must belong to somebody."
"He's just a ol' hound dog, Ma, that's all he is. Lots of hounds don't
belong to nobody--everybody knows that, Ma. Look at him, Ma. Mighty nigh
starved to death. Lemme keep him. We can feed him on scraps. He can
sleep under the house. Me an' him will keep you in rabbits. You won't
have to kill no more chickens. Nobody don't want him but me!"
From her gaunt height she looked down into the boy's eager eyes, then at
the dog beside him. "All right, son," she said. "If he don't belong to
anybody."
That night Davy alternately whistled and talked to the dog beside him as
he husked the corn he had raised with his own hands, and chopped the
wood he had cut and hauled--for since his father's death he had kept
things going. He ate supper in a sort of haze; he hurried out with a tin
plate of scraps; he fed the grateful, hungry dog on the kitchen steps.
He begged some vaseline from his mother and rubbed it on the sore neck.
Then he got two or three empty gunnysacks out of the corncrib, crawled
under the house to a warm place beside the chimney, and spread them out
for a bed. He went into the house whistling; he didn't hear a word of
the chapter his mother read out of the Bible. Before he went to bed in
the shed-room he raised the window.
"You all right, old feller?" he called.
Underneath the house he heard the responsive tap-tap of a tail in the
dry dust. He climbed out of his clothes, leaving them in a pile in the
middle of the floor, tumbled into bed, and pulled the covers high over
him.
"Golly!" he said. "Oh, golly!"
Next day he hunted till sundown. The Christmas holidays were on and
there was no thought of school. He went only now and then, anyway, for
since his father's death there was too much for him to do at home. He
hunted in the opposite direction from Old Man Thornycroft's. It was
three miles away; barriers of woods and bottoms and hills lay between,
and the old man seldom stirred beyond the boundaries of his own farm;
but Davy wanted to be on the safe side.