other dog would find my throat, and the Master would lose his stakes,
and I would be very sorry for him, and ashamed. Dogs can pass me and I
can pass dogs, and I'd never pick a fight with none of them. When I see
two dogs standing on their hind legs in the streets, clawing each
other's ears, and snapping for each other's wind-pipes, or howling and
swearing and rolling in the mud, I feel sorry they should act so, and
pretend not to notice. If he'd let me, I'd like to pass the time of day
with every dog I meet. But there's something about me that no nice dog
can abide. When I trot up to nice dogs, nodding and grinning, to make
friends, they always tell me to be off. "Go to the devil!" they bark at
me. "Get out!" And when I walk away they shout "Mongrel!" and
"Gutter-dog!" and sometimes, after my back is turned, they rush me. I
could kill most of them with three shakes, breaking the backbone of the
little ones and squeezing the throat of the big ones. But what's the
good? They _are_ nice dogs; that's why I try to make up to them:
and, though it's not for them to say it, I _am_ a street-dog, and
if I try to push into the company of my betters, I suppose it's their
right to teach me my place.
Of course they don't know I'm the best fighting bull-terrier of my
weight in Montreal. That's why it wouldn't be fair for me to take notice
of what they shout. They don't know that if I once locked my jaws on
them I'd carry away whatever I touched. The night I fought Kelley's
White Rat, I wouldn't loosen up until the Master made a noose in my
leash and strangled me; and, as for that Ottawa dog, if the handlers
hadn't thrown red pepper down my nose I _never_ would have let go
of him. I don't think the handlers treated me quite right that time, but
maybe they didn't know the Ottawa dog was dead. I did.
I learned my fighting from my mother when I was very young. We slept in
a lumber-yard on the river-front, and by day hunted for food along the
wharves. When we got it, the other tramp-dogs would try to take it off
us, and then it was wonderful to see mother fly at them and drive them
away. All I know of fighting I learned from mother, watching her picking
the ash-heaps for me when I was too little to fight for myself. No one
ever was so good to me as mother. When it snowed and the ice was in the
St. Lawrence, she used to hunt alone, and bring me back new bones, and
she'd sit and laugh to see me trying to swallow 'em whole. I was just a
puppy then; my teeth was falling out. When I was able to fight we kept
the whole river-range to ourselves. I had the genuine long "punishing"
jaw, so mother said, and there wasn't a man or a dog that dared worry
us. Those were happy days, those were; and we lived well, share and
share alike, and when we wanted a bit of fun, we chased the fat old
wharf-rats! My, how they would squeal!
Then the trouble came. It was no trouble to me. I was too young to care
then. But mother took it so to heart that she grew ailing, and wouldn't
go abroad with me by day. It was the same old scandal that they're
always bringing up against me. I was so young then that I didn't know. I
couldn't see any difference between mother--and other mothers.
But one day a pack of curs we drove off snarled back some new names at
her, and mother dropped her head and ran, just as though they had
whipped us. After that she wouldn't go out with me except in the dark,
and one day she went away and never came back, and, though I hunted for
her in every court and alley and back street of Montreal, I never found
her.
One night, a month after mother ran away, I asked Guardian, the old
blind mastiff, whose Master is the night watchman on our slip, what it
all meant. And he told me.
"Every dog in Montreal knows," he says, "except you; and every Master
knows. So I think it's time you knew."
Then he tells me that my father, who had treated mother so bad, was a
great and noble gentleman from London. "Your father had twenty-two
registered ancestors, had your father," old Guardian says, "and in him
was the best bull-terrier blood of England, the most ancientest, the
most royal; the winning 'blue-ribbon' blood, that breeds champions. He
had sleepy pink eyes and thin pink lips, and he was as white all over as
his own white teeth, and under his white skin you could see his muscles,
hard and smooth, like the links of a steel chain. When your father stood
still, and tipped his nose in the air, it was just as though he was
saying, 'Oh, yes, you common dogs and men, you may well stare. It must
be a rare treat for you colonials to see real English royalty.' He
certainly was pleased with hisself, was your father. He looked just as
proud and haughty as one of them stone dogs in Victoria Park--them as is
cut out of white marble. And you're like him," says the old mastiff--"by
that, of course, meaning you're white, same as him. That's the only
likeness. But, you see, the trouble is, Kid--well, you see, Kid, the
trouble is--your mother----"
"That will do," I said, for then I understood without his telling me,
and I got up and walked away, holding my head and tail high in the air.
But I was, oh, so miserable, and I wanted to see mother that very
minute, and tell her that I didn't care.
Mother is what I am, a street-dog; there's no royal blood in mother's
veins, nor is she like that father of mine, nor--and that's the
worst--she's not even like me. For while I, when I'm washed for a fight,
am as white as clean snow, she--and this is our trouble--she, my mother,
is a black-and-tan.
When mother hid herself from me, I was twelve months old and able to
take care of myself, and as, after mother left me, the wharves were
never the same, I moved uptown and met the Master. Before he came, lots
of other men-folks had tried to make up to me, and to whistle me home.
But they either tried patting me or coaxing me with a piece of meat; so
I didn't take to 'em. But one day the Master pulled me out of a
street-fight by the hind legs, and kicked me good.
"You want to fight, do you?" says he. "I'll give you all the
_fighting_ you want!" he says, and he kicks me again. So I knew he
was my Master, and I followed him home. Since that day I've pulled off
many fights for him, and they've brought dogs from all over the province
to have a go at me; but up to that night none, under thirty pounds, had
ever downed me.
But that night, so soon as they carried me into the ring, I saw the dog
was overweight, and that I was no match for him. It was asking too much
of a puppy. The Master should have known I couldn't do it. Not that I
mean to blame the Master, for when sober, which he sometimes was--though
not, as you might say, his habit--he was most kind to me, and let me out
to find food, if I could get it, and only kicked me when I didn't pick
him up at night and lead him home.
But kicks will stiffen the muscles, and starving a dog so as to get him
ugly-tempered for a fight may make him nasty, but it's weakening to his
insides, and it causes the legs to wobble.
The ring was in a hall back of a public house. There was a red-hot
whitewashed stove in one corner, and the ring in the other. I lay in the
Master's lap, wrapped in my blanket, and, spite of the stove, shivering
awful; but I always shiver before a fight: I can't help gettin' excited.
While the men-folks were a-flashing their money and taking their last
drink at the bar, a little Irish groom in gaiters came up to me and give
me the back of his hand to smell, and scratched me behind the ears.
"You poor little pup," says he; "you haven't no show," he says. "That
brute in the tap-room he'll eat your heart out."
"That's what _you_ think," says the Master, snarling. "I'll lay you
a quid the Kid chews him up."
The groom he shook his head, but kept looking at me so sorry-like that I
begun to get a bit sad myself. He seemed like he couldn't bear to leave
off a-patting of me, and he says, speaking low just like he would to a
man-folk, "Well, good luck to you, little pup," which I thought so civil
of him that I reached up and licked his hand. I don't do that to many
men. And the Master he knew I didn't, and took on dreadful.
"What 'ave you got on the back of your hand?" says he, jumping up.
"Soap!" says the groom, quick as a rat. "That's more than you've got on
yours. Do you want to smell of it?" and he sticks his fist under the
Master's nose. But the pals pushed in between 'em.
"He tried to poison the Kid!" shouts the Master.
"Oh, one fight at a time," says the referee. "Get into the ring, Jerry.
We're waiting." So we went into the ring.
I never could just remember what did happen in that ring. He give me no
time to spring. He fell on me like a horse. I couldn't keep my feet
against him, and though, as I saw, he could get his hold when he liked,
he wanted to chew me over a bit first. I was wondering if they'd be able
to pry him off me, when, in the third round, he took his hold; and I
begun to drown, just as I did when I fell into the river off the Red C
slip. He closed deeper and deeper on my throat, and everything went
black and red and bursting; and then, when I were sure I were dead, the
handlers pulled him off, and the Master give me a kick that brought me
to. But I couldn't move none, or even wink, both eyes being shut with
lumps.
"He's a cur!" yells the Master, "a sneaking, cowardly cur! He lost the
fight for me," says he, "because he's a ---- ---- ---- cowardly cur."
And he kicks me again in the lower ribs, so that I go sliding across the
sawdust. "There's gratitude fer yer," yells the Master. "I've fed that
dog, and nussed that dog and housed him like a prince; and now he puts
his tail between his legs and sells me out, he does. He's a coward! I've
done with him, I am. I'd sell him for a pipeful of tobacco." He picked
me up by the tail, and swung me for the men-folks to see. "Does any
gentleman here want to buy a dog," he says, "to make into sausage-meat?"
he says. "That's all he's good for."
Then I heard the little Irish groom say, "I'll give you ten bob for the
dog."
And another voice says, "Ah, don't you do it; the dog's same as
dead--mebbe he is dead."
"Ten shillings!" says the Master, and his voice sobers a bit; "make it
two pounds and he's yours."
But the pals rushed in again.
"Don't you be a fool, Jerry," they say. "You'll be sorry for this when
you're sober. The Kid's worth a fiver."
One of my eyes was not so swelled up as the other, and as I hung by my
tail, I opened it, and saw one of the pals take the groom by the
shoulder.
"You ought to give 'im five pounds for that dog, mate," he says; "that's
no ordinary dog. That dog's got good blood in him, that dog has. Why,
his father--that very dog's father----"
I thought he never would go on. He waited like he wanted to be sure the
groom was listening.
[Illustration: "He's a coward, I've done with him."]
"That very dog's father," says the pal, "is Regent Royal, son of
Champion Regent Monarch, champion bull-terrier of England for four
years."
I was sore, and torn, and chewed most awful, but what the pal said
sounded so fine that I wanted to wag my tail, only couldn't, owing to my
hanging from it.
But the Master calls out: "Yes, his father was Regent Royal; who's
saying he wasn't? but the pup's a cowardly cur, that's what his pup is.
And why? I'll tell you why: because his mother was a black-and-tan
street-dog, that's why!"
I don't see how I got the strength, but, someway, I threw myself out of
the Master's grip and fell at his feet, and turned over and fastened all
my teeth in his ankle, just across the bone.
When I woke, after the pals had kicked me off him, I was in the
smoking-car of a railroad-train, lying in the lap of the little groom,
and he was rubbing my open wounds with a greasy yellow stuff, exquisite
to the smell and most agreeable to lick off.
PART II
"Well, what's your name--Nolan? Well, Nolan, these references are
satisfactory," said the young gentleman my new Master called "Mr.
Wyndham, sir." "I'll take you on as second man. You can begin to-day."
My new Master shuffled his feet and put his finger to his forehead.
"Thank you, sir," says he. Then he choked like he had swallowed a
fish-bone. "I have a little dawg, sir," says he.
"You can't keep him," says "Mr. Wyndham, sir," very short.
"'E's only a puppy, sir," says my new Master; "'e wouldn't go outside
the stables, sir."
"It's not that," says "Mr. Wyndham, sir." "I have a large kennel of very
fine dogs; they're the best of their breed in America. I don't allow
strange dogs on the premises."
The Master shakes his head, and motions me with his cap, and I crept out
from behind the door. "I'm sorry, sir," says the Master. "Then I can't
take the place. I can't get along without the dawg, sir."
"Mr. Wyndham, sir," looked at me that fierce that I guessed he was going
to whip me, so I turned over on my back and begged with my legs and
tail.
"Why, you beat him!" says "Mr. Wyndham, sir," very stern.
"No fear!" the Master says, getting very red. "The party I bought him
off taught him that. He never learnt that from me!" He picked me up in
his arms, and to show "Mr. Wyndham, sir," how well I loved the Master, I
bit his chin and hands.
"Mr. Wyndham, sir," turned over the letters the Master had given him.
"Well, these references certainly are very strong," he says. "I guess
I'll let the dog stay. Only see you keep him away from the kennels--or
you'll both go."
"Thank you, sir," says the Master, grinning like a cat when she's safe
behind the area railing.
"He's not a bad bull-terrier," says "Mr. Wyndham, sir," feeling my head.
"Not that I know much about the smooth-coated breeds. My dogs are St.
Bernards." He stopped patting me and held up my nose. "What's the matter
with his ears?" he says. "They're chewed to pieces. Is this a fighting
dog?" he asks, quick and rough-like.
I could have laughed. If he hadn't been holding my nose, I certainly
would have had a good grin at him. Me the best under thirty pounds in
the Province of Quebec, and him asking if I was a fighting dog! I ran to
the Master and hung down my head modest-like, waiting for him to tell my
list of battles; but the Master he coughs in his cap most painful.
"Fightin' dawg, sir!" he cries. "Lor' bless you, sir, the Kid don't know
the word. 'E's just a puppy, sir, same as you see; a pet dog, so to
speak. 'E's a regular old lady's lap-dog, the Kid is."
"Well, you keep him away from my St. Bernards," says "Mr. Wyndham, sir,"
"or they might make a mouthful of him."
"Yes, sir; that they might," says the Master. But when we gets outside
he slaps his knee and laughs inside hisself, and winks at me most
sociable.
The Master's new home was in the country, in a province they called Long
Island. There was a high stone wall about his home with big iron gates
to it, same as Godfrey's brewery; and there was a house with five red
roofs; and the stables, where I lived, was cleaner than the aerated
bakery-shop. And then there was the kennels; but they was like nothing
else in this world that ever I see. For the first days I couldn't sleep
of nights for fear some one would catch me lying in such a cleaned-up
place, and would chase me out of it; and when I did fall to sleep I'd
dream I was back in the old Master's attic, shivering under the rusty
stove, which never had no coals in it, with the Master flat on his back
on the cold floor, with his clothes on. And I'd wake up scared and
whimpering, and find myself on the new Master's cot with his hand on the
quilt beside me; and I'd see the glow of the big stove, and hear the
high-quality horses below-stairs stamping in their straw-lined boxes,
and I'd snoop the sweet smell of hay and harness-soap and go to sleep
again.
The stables was my jail, so the Master said, but I don't ask no better
home than that jail.
"Now, Kid," says he, sitting on the top of a bucket upside down, "you've
got to understand this. When I whistle it means you're not to go out of
this 'ere yard. These stables is your jail. If you leave 'em I'll have
to leave 'em too, and over the seas, in the County Mayo, an old mother
will 'ave to leave her bit of a cottage. For two pounds I must be
sending her every month, or she'll have naught to eat, nor no thatch
over 'er head. I can't lose my place, Kid, so see you don't lose it for
me. You must keep away from the kennels," says he; "they're not for the
likes of you. The kennels are for the quality. I wouldn't take a litter
of them woolly dogs for one wag of your tail, Kid, but for all that they
are your betters, same as the gentry up in the big house are my betters.
I know my place and keep away from the gentry, and you keep away from
the champions."
So I never goes out of the stables. All day I just lay in the sun on the
stone flags, licking my jaws, and watching the grooms wash down the
carriages, and the only care I had was to see they didn't get gay and
turn the hose on me. There wasn't even a single rat to plague me. Such
stables I never did see.
"Nolan," says the head groom, "some day that dog of yours will give you
the slip. You can't keep a street-dog tied up all his life. It's against
his natur'." The head groom is a nice old gentleman, but he doesn't know
everything. Just as though I'd been a street-dog because I liked it! As
if I'd rather poke for my vittles in ash-heaps than have 'em handed me
in a wash-basin, and would sooner bite and fight than be polite and
sociable. If I'd had mother there I couldn't have asked for nothing
more. But I'd think of her snooping in the gutters, or freezing of
nights under the bridges, or, what's worst of all, running through the
hot streets with her tongue down, so wild and crazy for a drink that the
people would shout "mad dog" at her and stone her. Water's so good that
I don't blame the men-folks for locking it up inside their houses; but
when the hot days come, I think they might remember that those are the
dog-days, and leave a little water outside in a trough, like they do for
the horses. Then we wouldn't go mad, and the policemen wouldn't shoot
us. I had so much of everything I wanted that it made me think a lot of
the days when I hadn't nothing, and if I could have given what I had to
mother, as she used to share with me, I'd have been the happiest dog in
the land. Not that I wasn't happy then, and most grateful to the Master,
too, and if I'd only minded him, the trouble wouldn't have come again.
But one day the coachman says that the little lady they called Miss
Dorothy had come back from school, and that same morning she runs over
to the stables to pat her ponies, and she sees me.
"Oh, what a nice little, white little dog!" said she. "Whose little dog
are you?" says she.
"That's my dog, miss," says the Master. "'Is name is Kid." And I ran up
to her most polite, and licks her fingers, for I never see so pretty and
kind a lady.
"You must come with me and call on my new puppies," says she, picking me
up in her arms and starting off with me.
"Oh, but please, miss," cries Nolan, "Mr. Wyndham give orders that the
Kid's not to go to the kennels."
"That'll be all right," says the little lady; "they're my kennels too.
And the puppies will like to play with him."
You wouldn't believe me if I was to tell you of the style of them
quality-dogs. If I hadn't seen it myself I wouldn't have believed it
neither. The Viceroy of Canada don't live no better. There was forty of
them, but each one had his own house and a yard--most exclusive--and a
cot and a drinking-basin all to hisself. They had servants standing
round waiting to feed 'em when they was hungry, and valets to wash 'em;
and they had their hair combed and brushed like the grooms must when
they go out on the box. Even the puppies had overcoats with their names
on 'em in blue letters, and the name of each of those they called
champions was painted up fine over his front door just like it was a
public house or a veterinary's. They were the biggest St. Bernards I
ever did see. I could have walked under them if they'd have let me. But
they were very proud and haughty dogs, and looked only once at me, and
then sniffed in the air. The little lady's own dog was an old gentleman
bull-dog. He'd come along with us, and when he notices how taken aback I
was with all I see, 'e turned quite kind and affable and showed me
about.
"Jimmy Jocks," Miss Dorothy called him, but, owing to his weight, he
walked most dignified and slow, waddling like a duck, as you might say,
and looked much too proud and handsome for such a silly name.
"That's the runway, and that's the trophy-house," says he to me, "and
that over there is the hospital, where you have to go if you get
distemper, and the vet gives you beastly medicine."
"And which of these is your 'ouse, sir?" asks I, wishing to be
respectful. But he looked that hurt and haughty. "I don't live in the
kennels," says he, most contemptuous. "I am a house-dog. I sleep in Miss
Dorothy's room. And at lunch I'm let in with the family, if the visitors
don't mind. They 'most always do, but they're too polite to say so.
Besides," says he, smiling most condescending, "visitors are always
afraid of me. It's because I'm so ugly," says he. "I suppose," says he,
screwing up his wrinkles and speaking very slow and impressive, "I
suppose I'm the ugliest bull-dog in America"; and as he seemed to be so
pleased to think hisself so, I said, "Yes, sir; you certainly are the
ugliest ever I see," at which he nodded his head most approving.
"But I couldn't hurt 'em, as you say," he goes on, though I hadn't said
nothing like that, being too polite. "I'm too old," he says; "I haven't
any teeth. The last time one of those grizzly bears," said he, glaring
at the big St. Bernards, "took a hold of me, he nearly was my death,"
says he. I thought his eyes would pop out of his head, he seemed so
wrought up about it. "He rolled me around in the dirt, he did," says
Jimmy Jocks, "an' I couldn't get up. It was low," says Jimmy Jocks,
making a face like he had a bad taste in his mouth. "Low, that's what I
call it--bad form, you understand, young man, not done in my
set--and--and low." He growled 'way down in his stomach, and puffed
hisself out, panting and blowing like he had been on a run.
"I'm not a street fighter," he says, scowling at a St. Bernard marked
"Champion." "And when my rheumatism is not troubling me," he says, "I
endeavor to be civil to all dogs, so long as they are gentlemen."
"Yes, sir," said I, for even to me he had been most affable.
At this we had come to a little house off by itself, and Jimmy Jocks
invites me in. "This is their trophy-room," he says, "where they keep
their prizes. Mine," he says, rather grand-like, "are on the sideboard."
Not knowing what a sideboard might be, I said, "Indeed, sir, that must
be very gratifying." But he only wrinkled up his chops as much as to
say, "It is my right."
The trophy-room was as wonderful as any public house I ever see. On the
walls was pictures of nothing but beautiful St. Bernard dogs, and rows
and rows of blue and red and yellow ribbons; and when I asked Jimmy
Jocks why they was so many more of blue than of the others, he laughs
and says, "Because these kennels always win." And there was many shining
cups on the shelves, which Jimmy Jocks told me were prizes won by the
champions.
"Now, sir, might I ask you, sir," says I, "wot is a champion?"
At that he panted and breathed so hard I thought he would bust hisself.
"My dear young friend!" says he, "wherever have you been educated? A
champion is a--a champion," he says. "He must win nine blue ribbons in
the 'open' class. You follow me--that is--against all comers. Then he
has the title before his name, and they put his photograph in the
sporting papers. You know, of course, that I am a champion," says he. "I
am Champion Woodstock Wizard III, and the two other Woodstock Wizards,
my father and uncle, were both champions."
"But I thought your name was Jimmy Jocks," I said.
He laughs right out at that.
"That's my kennel name, not my registered name," he says. "Why,
certainly you know that every dog has two names. Now, for instance,
what's your registered name and number?" says he.
"I've got only one name," I says. "Just Kid."
Woodstock Wizard puffs at that and wrinkles up his forehead and pops out
his eyes.
"Who are your people?" says he. "Where is your home?"
"At the stable, sir," I said. "My Master is the second groom."
At that Woodstock Wizard III looks at me for quite a bit without
winking, and stares all around the room over my head.
"Oh, well," says he at last, "you're a very civil young dog," says he,
"and I blame no one for what he can't help," which I thought most fair
and liberal. "And I have known many bull-terriers that were champions,"
says he, "though as a rule they mostly run with fire-engines and to
fighting. For me, I wouldn't care to run through the streets after a
hose-cart, nor to fight," says he; "but each to his taste."