ARNON FLINThad not volunteered to take the money-satchel to the bank. Indeed, he had tried hard to crawl out of the errand.
A tennis-hour, with a swim to follow, had beckoned right alluringly to him. There was no fun in missing all this and taking a hot trolley-ride into town just for the honour of acting as bearer, to the bank, of the church bazaar’s satchelful of change and small bills.
Arnon said so, with engaging frankness, at lunch that noon, when his mother told him of the task that had been deputed to him. Whereat his father looked up gloweringy; from his task of plate-clearing, and added his quota to the argument:
“As long as you eat my bread, you’ll obey my orders, and your mother’s, too. I don’t want to hear any grumbling. You’ll take that money to the bank, and you’ll get a receipt for it. And you’ll look sharp to get there before three, too. Let it go at that!”
For perhaps thirty seconds, Arnon wisely “let it go at that.” Then human endurance broke down before equally human indignation.
“You talk a lot about my eating your bread,” sniffed the boy. “But it isn’t my fault I eat it. If you’d let me take a job, instead of making me get ready to go to that measly old college, I’d have been eating my own bread by this time.”
“You’d be wasting another man’s time and money instead of mine,” retorted his father. “And you’d be back on my hands inside of a week. No, thanks. You’re going to college—if ever you have sense enough to pass your entrance exams. College may make a man of you. Nothing else will. In the meantime, you’ll do something for your keep, besides sulking. For instance, you’ll take the bazaar’s ninety-eight dollars to the bank, this afternoon. And you’ll do it without any more whining.”
As he stood, jammed with eight other people upon the interurban trolley-car’s back platform that afternoon, Arnon morosely went over in his mind this lunch-table dialogue. He fell to chewing on the unpalatable mess of grievances that had led up to the scene. And he was hot and sick with resentment.
Some conscienceless liar once said that schooldays are the happiest time in life. That same liar would make Ananias or Munchausen look like the original Truthful James. In many ways,the school-years of a growing boy are worse than a term in prison.
They are perhaps a delight to the model youth. But to the average lad they hold more torture than any grown man could endure. It is only the miraculous elastic power of youth that makes them bearable. It is the distorting and falsifying magic of retrospect that gives them their only charm.
A grown man, let us say, is in disgrace. If worst comes to worst, he can vanish; and he can start life, afresh, somewhere else, with a clean slate.
Let a boy fall into disgrace at school or at home. What road of escape is open to him? Not one. He is much more at the mercy of parent and teacher than any convict is at his warden’s mercy. There are strict laws governing the treatment of prisoners by their keepers. But, within normal bounds, no law holds back a teacher or a parent—or both—from making a boy’s life a continuous Hades.
Add to all this the fact that every one of youth’s countless misfortunes is a hopeless black tragedy in its victim’s eyes, and perhaps you will understand why boyhood is not a ceaseless delight. If any man of thirty-six were subjected to the tyranny, the terrors, the bitter dependence, theunescapable and heavy penalties for petty faults that encompass the average half-grown boy, he would go insane in a night. There is no appeal, no way out, for the boy who is in a scrape. For a man, in such trouble, there are fifty exits.
Small wonder that so many lads yearn for a chance to make their own way in the world, and that they shrink in loathing from the proposed college course which will keep them in penniless slavery during four more endless years!
They have not yet the wit to understand that the so-called Higher Education is often a pompously windy fetish; whose chief advantage consists in the fact that it enables its possessors to look down on its non-possessors.
This philosophy is faulty, of course. It is also non-essential to the story; except that it throws a light on Arnon Flint’s mental processes as he stood there, the hated money-satchel at his feet, trying to keep his balance on the crowded rear platform of the trolley-car.
People were forever boarding or leaving the car. A dozen times, Arnon was shoved from one spot to another as his fellow-standees milled and jostled about him. Always, with his toe, he managed to push the satchel to his new standing place. He could not stoop to pick it up. The platform was too crowded. He could not evenstoop down far enough to keep his eye on the bag. But he kept in constant touch with it by means of his boot-toe.
At the ball-ground gate, on the outskirts of the town, three-fourths of the passengers debarked. As the car started on, its rear platform was empty except for Arnon and the conductor and a sawdusty man in overalls.
Breathing was easier now. So was standing. A few blocks farther on, a woman got out, leaving a seat vacant on the rear bench. Arnon spied the seat and prepared to take it. As a preliminary, he bent to pick up the satchel from between his toes.
“Drop that, sonny!” exhorted the sawdusty man in overalls.
At the same moment Arnon was aware that his fingers had met around a canvas strap and not around the satchel’s leathern handle. He peered down, in dull amaze.
Between his feet was a carpenter’s kit. The money-bag was nowhere in sight.
The thing he had been guarding with his toes was this kit. Someone had long since taken away the satchel. It is an old trick, this “lifting” of a bag from the floor of a crowded vehicle. But to youth no misfortunes are old. All of them have the horrible charm of novelty.
The satchel was gone. And it had not been taken by mistake. For the sawdusty man’s kit was the sole bit of luggage on the platform.
The satchel was gone. And with it was gone the ninety-eight dollars collected, the night before, at the church bazaar—the charity money that had been entrusted to Arnon Flint to take to bank—the money which, just then, represented Arnon Flint’s honour.
Now, as any sane reader will know, the one simple and natural thing for the boy to do was to notify the police and thence to go home and tell his parents what had happened. His father was moderately well-to-do, and readily could have made up the deficit.
Yes, that would have been the one normal thing for Arnon to do:—to go home and confess. And—his first name being neither Rollo nor Percival—it is the very thing he did not do.
From across the eternal chasm which divides boyhood from middle age, the lad’s right course seems absurdly simple. But to no boy, and to no one who recalls the mental agony of boyhood disgraces, will it appear so. As wisely ask an unsuspected sinner to write out a list of his misdeeds and to mail them to his wife and to the police.
Arnon had a lively imagination. He had no trouble at all in picturing the scene of his home-comingwith such tidings as were his. He, who had begged to go to work,—whose father had fifty times told him he had not enough level-headedness or sense of responsibility to hold a job for one week,—he must go home and admit his father was right.
He—whose weekly spending money was just seventy-five cents—must confess he had lost ninety-eight dollars. The magnitude of the sum gripped him with panic force. A few minutes ago he had regarded the bag’s contents as merely a heavy mass of small change. Now he knew it for Wealth.
The knowledge that he had committed no sin did not buoy him up in the very least. A consciousness of innocence is an excellent anchor, no doubt. But what good is an anchor after the ship has sunk?
Blindly illogical fright seized the boy as he thought of reporting the loss of such a fortune—and of the present penalty and the interminable naggings to follow. The Unknown has a host of terrors lurking at its heels. But, once or twice in a lifetime, these are outweighed by the more tangible terrors of the Known. Which accounts for suicides.
Beyond, lay the Unknown. Behind, lay the Known. Arnon Flint, in a rush of consequence-fear, chose the Unknown.
In his pocket was the best part of three dollars, the sum still left from his month’s allowance received that morning. He stayed on the trolley-car until it reached the railroad station. Then he entered the station and bought a ticket for Silk City—one hundred and twenty miles to westward. Three and a half hours later, he stepped down upon the Union Station platform in Silk City.
His plan was made. There was always work for willing hands. Arnon knew there was. He knew it because he had read it—yawningly but repeatedly—inThe Boys’ Uplift Magazine, a dreary juvenile monthly for which his father had subscribed in Arnon’s name.
Arnon intended to get a fair-paying job, work hard, live frugally and save that lost ninety-eight dollars as quickly as possible. When he should have saved it, he would send it home to make up the church-bazaar deficit. At the same time, he could lay pipes for his own immune home-coming. The plan was perfectly feasible. In the meanwhile, Arnon had eighteen cents in his pocket.
Now, it would be most laudable at this point to say that Arnon’s search for work was at once rewarded by a good job and that his industry and talents won him swift promotion; until at last he was Silk City’s merchant king.The Boys’ Uplift Magazinewould probably be eager to print such a yarn. But the temptation must be fought down. This is merely the true account of one unlucky boy’s life in a strange city. So, back again to our story.
Eighteen cents is a wabbly foundation for a fortune. Arnon had enough sense to waste none of it in buying a night’s lodging. The weather was hot. He had had plenty of experience in camping. So, after buying a big bag of broken soda-crackers and a wedge of dryish cheese for eight cents, he began to scout for a camp-site. An hour’s wandering brought him to the very place for his needs.
Silk City was a “boom-burg.” Thus, its east end chanced still to be unfinished. Indeed, this section was all but untouched by the hand of man. Arnon left behind him the business blocks, the tangle of residence streets, the scattered tenements and hovels; and came at last to a dreary stretch of Common whither even the hopeful development-company promoter had not yet ventured.
A corner of the Common, nearest the junction of two unpaved cross-streets, had been used as a dumping ground. Here Arnon Flint found his “house.” This was an overturned piano box, one of whose sides was caved in. It was a heavy, cumbrous rickety thing. Yet, by use of all hiscare and strength, Arnon managed to roll and drag and shove it into a shallow sand-pit, a hundred yards from the street. Here he righted the box, planted its base as deeply as possible in the scooped-out sand at the pit’s bottom and went back to the dump in search of boards to reinforce its crack-strewn roof, and for jute and straw to serve as a bed.
By sunset he had rigged up a fairly watertight abode, six feet long by four wide and five in height, with a soft, if bumpy, carpeting of straw and jute. And, as he proved by further scouting, the shack was invisible from the street.
Then he tramped to a leaking hydrant, a quarter-mile distant, washed and scoured a small and a large can (both battered but leakless) he had found on the dump; and carried home his night’s supply of clean water. After which he sat down in the doorway of his piano-box shack and prepared his evening meal.
Dusk was creeping over the day. Back at home, just now, the family were sitting down to a repast of fricasseed chicken and dumplings and pie and all sorts of things.
Still, crackers and cheese and fresh water are not to be despised as an evening meal—particularly when they are spiced with adventure and reinforced by the hunger of a hustling day.
So it was not the frugality of his meal thatmade the fare so hard for Arnon to eat. At first he did not know just what caused the lump in his throat and what made even the tiniest morsel of food impossible to swallow. Being only a normal boy, he had never so much as heard of psychology. Nor was there any psychologist there to prate of “reaction” and “nerve exhaustion” and of any of the dozen kindred causes which made the lad feel as he did. One of these causes alone did Arnon understand. And this one—to which he would not confess—was bitter, lonely homesickness.
He had cut himself loose from everything and everybody. He was an exile and on the threshold of a new world. For all he knew, he might also be a fugitive from justice. For, when the money’s loss should be discovered, the bazaar people would probably think him a defaulter and set the police after him.
Three hours earlier Arnon had felt himself a true blend of martyr and explorer. Now he was all at once aware that he was just a lonesome and heavy-hearted boy who had no one to love him and whose only home was a smelly packing box. The lump in Arnon’s throat began to swell to unbelievable size. And the eyes wherewith he gazed up over the pit-edge at the dying day, grew foolishly misted.
This would never do!
Angrily he cleared his throat and winked very fast indeed. Then he forced himself to day-dreams of the splendid job he was going to win on the morrow and of the brevity of the time that must pass before he should save up ninety-eight dollars and be able to go home. But the effort was a pitiful failure. The lump nearly strangled him. And the mist would not behave itself and keep out of his silly eyes.
Just then came the diversion that saved him from the eternal shame of crying. The dusky skyline at the edge of the shallow pit was broken suddenly by a small dark silhouette. The boy winked away his rising tears once more, and stared. There at the top, looking inquisitively down, head on one side, stood a dog—not much of a dog, perhaps, for looks or for contour or for size, but still a dog; certainly not a wolf or a lion, as the lad’s worn-out nerves had at first made him think.
Presently a second dog came alongside the first. Together they blinked down at the lonely youngster. Arnon returned their gaze with keen interest. There was still light enough for him to gain a clear view of his two guests.
The first dog was a black-and-tan. At least, he was more black-and-tan than anything else. He held one forefoot gingerly in air, as though he were lame. And his left ear had evidentlybeen chewed off, as to tip. The second dog was a pale grey—formerly white—and had longish hair. He was of the general build and specifications of a Dandy Dinmont. He and the black-and-tan were about of a height. Both were collarless, wolf-thin and of a totally disreputable aspect.
Every city has scores of such strays—forlorn mongrels that eke out a rickety living on the dumps and in garbage cans until they fall prey to dogcatcher or police or vivisector, or until a gang of pursuing boys frighten them into a blind panic and thereby start a new mad-dog scare,—a scare which wins a credit-mark for the fearless bluecoat whose pistol is emptied into the harmless and terrified little fugitive.
Yes, to a dog-fancier’s eye, Arnon Flint’s visitors were merely a brace of fleasome mongrels. To Arnon, though, they meant all the difference between abject loneliness and loving companionship.
Timidly the boy chirped to the dogs. Up went their ears. He groped for a chipped soda-cracker, broke it in half and held out the two pieces to them. At his gesture, the dogs instinctively shrank back—a result of the piteous experience which had taught them that a movement of the human arm is far more likely to mean a flung stone than a proffered dainty.
But it had been a barren day on the dumps. And the sight and smell of food were mighty temptations. Also, the boy was talking to them in a wondrous friendly way. And—whether they can understand words or not—dogs can read the human voice as can few humans themselves.
In Arnon’s call the two strays recognised not only friendship, but appeal. They recognised the tones of a fellow-stray. Here was no little devil, coaxing them into range in order to tie a tin can or a firecracker to their stumpy tails. This lad was as much a waif as was either of them. And he craved chumship, even as did they.
Slowly, hesitatingly, mincingly, the puppies slid down the pit-bank into the hollow. Nervously, yet greedily, they nipped the offered fragments of the big soda-cracker. Ravenously they ate. Then, as their fears lessened, they fawned upon the human for more food. Arnon, as they chewed the cracker-bits, ran his fingers gently along their ears and backs, scratching their heads; all the while talking to them. At first they flinched a little from the unwonted caress. But soon they courted it.
The boy, of a sudden, found himself not only happy, but ravenously hungry. He and his two pets finished the crackers and cheese with a zest. Then all three curled up close together in the straw and went to sleep.
At sunrise Arnon awoke. Both the dogs were already astir. As he raised his head and sat looking bewilderedly about, they ran frisking up to him.
And thus began the life of the three chums—in the sand-pit’s piano-box shack. It was a wonderful life for all of them. For Arnon, the dogs’ presence was a veritable godsend.
The boy set forth early that first morning, to look for a job. Naturally, he did not find one. Not only do business houses cut down their working force in summer, instead of adding to it; but a boy with no references has, at best, a hard time in landing a steady position,—especially if he stammers and grows red when he is asked where he lives and the name of his father.
No, in spite ofThe Boys’ Uplift Magazine, no kindly merchant was so impressed by Arnon’s manliness and good manners as to offer to teach him the business from the bottom up, with a view of making him, later on, a partner.
Arnon, after a half-day’s futile job-hunt, began to see how matters stood. He was sore inclined to give up the fight and to tramp all the way back to his parents’ home. But at once he remembered he could not. He had responsibilities,—responsibilities he could not shirk. At the shack his two dog-chums were waiting for his return. He could not take them a hundred andtwenty miles, afoot. He had no means of feeding them on the way, even if no farm dogs should kill them or rural poundmasters seize them. No, they relied on him. And he had no right to fail them. He must stick.
That afternoon, by three hours of hanging around the Union Station, he cleared up twenty cents, carrying suit-cases and opening motorcar doors. He stopped at a tenement-district grocery, on his way back to the sand-pit, and continued his journey with a very respectable armful of provisions.
As he neared the Common, Arnon quickened not only his steps but his heartbeats. Suppose he were wrong in his estimate of his two new friends. Suppose they were only of the cadging, garbage-snooping type, and had deserted the shack the moment his back had been turned! The thought sickened him. It was for his dogs, not for himself, he had been working that day.
He reached the sand-pit edge and halted. At the same instant two furry little whirlwinds burst forth from the shack, whizzed up the steep sandy bank and, with barks of ecstasy, hurled themselves bodily upon the returning bread-winner.
What sweeter home-coming could a heartsick and tired exile ask? Arnon dropped his parcels, fell on his knees and gathered his loyal little comradesinto one expansive, squirming, yapping embrace. Through his delight at their welcome ran a thrill of joy in his own correct judgment of dog nature.
After which the entire party adjourned to the shack for supper. A glorious meal it was. During its progress, the black-and-tan revealed himself as a personage of rare education by sitting up on his hind-legs to beg for food-morsels and by rolling over, twice, in gratitude at receiving such gifts. The Dandy Dinmont had fewer accomplishments. But he showed himself a dog of great natural gifts by mastering, at the third attempt, the art of catching in his mouth a piece of cracker placed on the tip of his nose.
Arnon was quite certain that never before had two such remarkable animals come into any one boy’s life. They not only learned tricks with the bewildering quickness that a mongrel always possesses and a thoroughbred so seldom acquires, but they speedily learned to look on their new master as a god and to worship him as such. Arnon named the hairy dog “Dandy” and the black-and-tan “Buck”—chiefly because the names seemed to fit like gloves.
Morning after morning, Arnon tramped Silk City, looking in vain for a steady job. Every afternoon he spent at the Union Station, rustling the hand-baggage of passengers and openingautomobile doors for them; for which service he averaged from fifteen to forty cents a day. On the lean days he and his chums breakfasted and supped on crackers and cheese. On days of larger wealth they banqueted regally on bread and butter and tinned meats and ginger snaps.
For an hour, morning and night, the three romped and frolicked together and added to the marvelous list of tricks they had studied. All night, through summer heat or summer rain, they slept in the piano-box shack, cuddled into one loving triple heap. Oh, but it was a jolly life for them all!
As to the future—the winter, for instance—Arnon had no thought nor care. You see, he was only a youngster. So how could he be expected to have greater forethought than have the army of grown men who live up to every penny of their yearly income, with no constructive worry concerning joblessness or old age?
For a long, happy month, life was sweet; in the tumble-down pineboard shack. Arnon had occasional twinges of homesickness, and he had more than occasional twinges of conscience at his failure to begin saving the missing ninety-eight dollars. But, on the whole, he was having the time of his life. This was true adventure, this outcast summer routine of his. And it was a truercomradeship, too, than any he had known.
On the Fourth of July he celebrated by adorning each of his chums with a red-white-and-blue bow, culled from a length of bedraggled tricolour ribbon he had found in a gutter. On his own birthday, a week later, he spent thirty-five cents upon a truly regal spread, in honour of the event. After the sumptuous meal he treated an invisible audience to the full programme of his dogs’ tricks. It was a gala night at the shack.
Next afternoon Arnon came home a half-hour later than usual, having had to carry a suit-case to a new neighbourhood, and having made a wrong turn on his way back to the Common. As he neared the sand-pit, he whistled. Then he paused to watch for the usual scurrying race of his chums up the pit-bank to meet him. But no frantic joy-barks or multiple patter of feet followed upon his whistle.
At a jump, Arnon was down in the pit. The dogs were not there.
It was twilight before his search of the region was ended. This was its end: Stammeringly he asked a passing patrolman whether he had seen two little dogs—one black, one light grey—trotting anywhere along the beat. And the policeman made curt answer:
“Nope. I didn’t see ’em. But the dog-catchers was roundin’ up a bunch of mutts in thisward, ’s aft’noon. Better ask at the pound. It’s down at the foot of Water Street.”
“Down at the foot of Water Street” was two miles away. Arnon Flint made the trip in eighteen minutes—only to find the pound-pier was closed for the night.
At grey dawn next morning after ten hours of sleeplessness, Arnon was at the pier again, waiting for its landward gate to swing open for the day. After an endless delay, one of the poundmaster’s men arrived. Arnon followed him along the pier to the enormous grated pen and the adjoining office at the far end of the dock. In the cage were more dogs than Arnon had ever before seen together in all his life.
“Mongrel, puppy, whelp and hound, and curs of low degree.”
They were crowded into the big barred inclosure—a pitiful assemblage. Some dogs were howling, some were barking, some were fox-trotting feverishly back and forth, from corner to corner, pressing close against the bars. Others, mystically aware of their coming fate, lay, trembling convulsively from time to time; heads between forepaws, eyes abrim with dumb grief.
At the pier’s outer edge, just beyond the barred pen, an iron cage swung over the river. It hung from a derrick. Daily, this cage was filled with the dogs that had been longest at the pound. Thenit was dipped under water for five minutes, in full sight of the doomed survivors in the pen.
A dog-pound is not pleasant to look upon. It is little pleasanter to think upon. It is one of the needful evils of every large town—an evil that is needful to public health and to public safety, so say the city fathers. It is also needful because—though people talk much about birth-control among humans (where it cannot be enforced)—no one bothers about birth-control among dogs—where it can very easily be enforced.
Litters of dogs are allowed to grow up. The dogs are portioned among people who grow tired of them or who move away. The erstwhile pets are turned out to run the streets and to starve or to pick up a scavenger living. The grim dog-pound does the rest.
The luckless waifs are done to death by water or by gas or in the legalised hell of vivisection. May the all-pitying God of the Little People have mercy upon them! For, most assuredly, mankind will not.
Arnon stared into the thronged pen. At first, in the dim light, he could make out nothing. Then, through lips that would not steady themselves, he gave the old familiar whistle. Instantly there wasa scuttling and scampering from amid the ruck of dogs. Two series of wildly eager barks cut the looser volume of howls. And Dandy and Buck came racing up to the bars that separated them from their adored master.
A minute later, a very set-mouthed and white-faced Arnon Flint stalked into the poundmaster’s office. Forcing his voice raspingly through the emotion that sanded his throat, he demanded of the man in charge:
“How much does it cost to get a dog out of the pound? I’ve—I’ve got a couple of them in there.”
The fat man at the desk looked up, wholly without interest. Heart-broken children, coming to plead for the return of their law-snatched pets, were no novelty at all to him. Pound-keepers have no silly sentiment. If they had, they would not be pound-keepers, but normal humans.
“Dollar apiece,” he grunted. “That pays their license fee.”
He turned back to his newspaper and promptly forgot the existence of the shaky and ash-faced boy. Arnon ventured one more question.
“How long,” he quavered, “how long do you keep them here, before—before you——”
“Depends on how many there are,” snapped the man, this time without looking up. “In summer we dowse about twenty a day.”
That was all. Arnon stood gaping uncertainly,for a moment. Then he lurched out of the office and back to where his chums pawed at the bars, waiting for him to take them home.
Some time later, an attendant dumped a bucketful of food-scraps into the centre of the pen. Immediately the larger and fiercer dogs fell upon the food, crowding or scaring the smaller curs away from it. It was all wolfed down by the bullies of the pen before their weaker or more timid brethren had had a mouthful.
The boy recalled now that he had crammed most of last night’s untasted supper into his pockets, to serve him as breakfast during his search for his chums. Quickly he emptied his pockets; apportioning the contents between Buck and Dandy, and harshly ordering off such larger dogs as came snooping around for a share in the meal.
At last he went away. There was no time to waste, if he was to earn that two dollars for his dogs’ ransom.
Two dollars! Why, the largest sum he had ever earned in one day at Silk City was forty-five cents! And oftener he had not earned half that amount. Yet the money must be gotten somehow—and soon. Then there was another handicap: Out of his earnings he must buy food for Buck and Dandy during their imprisonment, if he did not want them to starve. Incidentally, hehimself must have food—though he wanted none—in order to keep strong enough to work.
All day he haunted the Union Station. At sunset he was back at the pound, with a bagful of meat-scraps for his chums. He sat beside the bars, talking to them and putting them through their tricks until the pier closed. Then he ran all the way to the theatre district, in the hope of earning a few cents more by opening the doors of motorcars and carriages.
At the end of three days of self-starving and of day-and-night work, he had collected ninety-four cents. This was all he had been able to save after buying food for his pets and a daily cracker or two for himself. And he had sought work in every waking hour, except such times as he set aside for visiting the pound.
At dawn on the fourth day he found a dollar bill in the street. An early-morning traveller gave him twenty-five cents more for carrying a heavy suit-case a mile to the station.
The moment the fee was paid, Arnon dashed off for the pound. He had not only the two-dollar ransom, but fourteen cents left over wherewith to buy the materials for a reunion feast at the shack. His dizzy weakness and hunger were clean forgot in the mad joy of victory.
Panting, unsteady on his legs, he rushed down the pier. Before going into the office he pausedat the pen to tell his glorious news to the two prisoners. But his shrill whistle brought no response. He bent down, shading his eyes; and stared into the pen. Neither Buck nor Dandy was there. The souse of the derrick-cage as it smote the water, and the simultaneous crazed screams of its twenty passengers, reached his ears. And he understood.
No longer did Arnon try to fight back the babyish tears. He fell face downward on the pier and gave way to hysterical weeping.
His chums! His dear, wonderful chums! The little loyal dogs that had loved him and had comforted him so prettily in his stark aloneness and that had been so perfectly trustful in his power to save them!
A man’s hand gripped Arnon’s heaving shoulder and sought to raise him to his feet. The touch turned his desolate grief into a rage that was all but murderous. This pound-keeper, by one word, could have saved Dandy and Buck. And instead, he had drowned them.
With a beast snarl, the half-delirious boy was on his feet.
“Youswine!” he screeched, as he whirled towards the man. “When I’m big enough, I’m coming back to smash every bone in your fat body! And I’m going to——”
His words caught in his throat with a click.This was not the fat pound-office man. It was Arnon Flint’s father. The boy gaped dazedly.
Yes, it was his father. But Arnon cared not one whit for that. His father could send him to jail for theft or could whale him with a horsewhip or do anything rotten he chose. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Buck and Dandy were dead.
He glowered up into the man’s face, ready for anything that might befall. Then his glower turned to a look of perplexity. His father did not glower back. Instead, Mr. Flint’s face was unspeakably tender.
“Oh, my little boy!” he was saying, brokenly. “Dad’s own crazy,gallantlittle boy! You’re worn to a shadow! We’ve looked everywhere for you. It wasn’t till yesterday our detectives struck the trail. And I came right on.”
“I didn’t steal the money,” said Arnon, dully, “the bazaar money. I lost it on the trolley-car. I tried to get a job to make it up to the church, but——”
“I know, I know,” broke in his father, in that same unbelievably tender and quivering voice, “Don’t think any more about it. I’ve paid it. Why, dear lad, no one ever supposed you stole it. We knew you couldn’t. Will you come back home with me, Son? Mother is pretty nearly as thin as you are, from worry over you.”
“I’ll come, if you like,” agreed Arnon, listlessly. “It doesn’t matter much, now, either way. I might as well be there as anywhere.”
“Good!” approved his father. “We can just make the ten o’clock train, if we hurry. I’ve got a taxi waiting at the other end of the pier.”
Side by side, father and son walked away from the pound. The boy’s eyes were downcast. His face was haggard. His heart was dead. From time to time, as they walked, the man stole a covert glance at him, and his own face contracted as in sharp pain.
“Here’s the taxi,” said Mr. Flint at last. “Open the door, will you? You’re nearer to it than I am.”
Mechanically, Arnon turned the handle. As he pulled the taxi door ajar, two furry catapults from within the vehicle launched themselves, rapturously and yelpingly, upon him.
“You see,” explained Mr. Flint, to his unhearing son, “I had quite a talk with the poundmaster before you got here, this morning. He’s been noticing you, it seems. And he told me a rather pathetic little story. When I heard it I decided to make an investment in livestock. I was putting these two puppies into the taxi when you hobbled past me on your way to the pound. I——”
“Buck!” Arnon was sobbing, in a frenzy of bliss. “Buck!Dandy!”
At sound of their names, the dogs wriggled free from Arnon’s embrace—just for the uproarious fun of hurling themselves once more upon him.
“Hurry up, Son!” suggested Mr. Flint, clearing his throat noisily. “Get aboard—you and the pups. We’ll miss that train!”
“Not on your sweet life, we won’t miss it!” exulted Arnon, scrambling into the taxi with his pets. “We’vegotto catch it. You see, I—I want my chums to—to meet Mother; just as soon as they can. They’re dead sure to like her.”
HAPPINESS, to Jeff Titus, had become a fine art. It had become so when he married Eve Wallace, a little wisp of a city girl who had come to the Kentucky mountain hinterland to cure a set of weak lungs—and who had not only wedded but well-nigh civilised the lanky young mountaineer.
Happiness had remained a fine art for Jeff, up there on his bare hillside farm, with Eve. It had remained so, for the most part, ever since his wedding. And now, in a single breath, happiness had taken a place among the lost arts.
The “single breath” had been supplied by a sour east wind which had smitten Eve as she stood in the shack dooryard waiting for her husband’s home-coming. She was thinly clad, and she was in a perspiration from working in her flower garden. Her lungs were still weak. The east wind did the rest. By night she had a heavy cold. The third morning, pneumonia flung out its flaming red No Surrender signal on each of her fever-scorched cheeks.
And life, to Jeff Titus, all at once became a horror.
A frightened anguish gripped him by the throat and shook him to the bewildered soul; as he crouched night after night beside the slab bed where tossed and muttered the delirious little wisp of a woman who was at once his mate and his saint.
Eve was so tiny, so fragile, so good! It wasn’t fair that this bullying unseen spirit of illness should torture and harry her and sap the life of her—while the man who right blithely would have been burned to a crisp to please her, sat helpless at the bedside, unable to do a thing to drive forth the damnable visitant! Jeff Titus dwelt upon the theme of his own impotence to save her; he swore venomously, and in the peculiarly hideous diction of Kentucky mountaineer blasphemy.
There were doctors, of course, in the county seat of Duneka, thirty-two miles away. But they might as well have been in Austria, for all the good they could do the sick girl. Jeff could not desert Eve to go in quest of such a physician. Nor could he send one of his mile-distant neighbours. He knew that. It would be of no use.
Those city doctors had no convenient means of getting over the thirty-odd miles of half-inaccessible trail, to his hinterland farm. Assuredly none of them was going to make the journey on foot or on mule-back, leaving his town practicefor days, at the behest of a hill-billy who perhaps could not or would not pay for the sacrifice.
Meantime, Eve was growing worse, steadily worse. Even the ignorant Jeff could see that. So, apparently, could the only sharer of his day-and-night vigils—a huge and lionlike dog which lay pressed close to the far side of the bed, and which all Titus’ commands could not keep out of the sick-room.
This dog, Robin Adair, was the joy of Eve’s heart—or he had been, when her heart still could hold joy and not merely fever and delirium. One of Eve’s ragged hill-billy admirers had given the dog to her; in the old days, when Robin was a roly-poly mass of tawny-brown fluff, no bigger than a Persian cat.
The dog had grown into a shaggy giant. A passing seed-catalogue man had told Eve he was a collie—a breed of which she had heard, in a vague fashion, as emanating from Scotland. And she had named him Robin Adair; after the hero of a Scotch song her mother had been wont to sing. He was Robin, for short. When she had married Jeff Titus, she had brought her beloved collie to live at the mountain shack.
From the moment his mistress fell ill, Robin had not once willingly stirred from her bedside. Drinking little, eating nothing, the great dog had lain there, his sorrowing brown eyesfixed on the small white figure in the big slab bed. But of late he was beginning to vary the vigil by low-voiced whines, from time to time. And once or twice his huge body quivered as if in physical pain.
It was on the dawn of the fourth day that Robin got to his feet with a leap, and, pointing his heavy muzzle skyward, set the still room to reverberating with a yell that was nothing short of unearthly.
Jeff, starting from his daze of misery, made as though to throttle the brute that had broken in on the invalid’s unresting rest. Then, remembering Eve’s affection for the collie, he contented himself with picking Robin up bodily and bearing him towards the door; with the intent of putting him out of the house.
The door, before Jeff could reach it, was flung open from outside. On the threshold stood a ramrodlike figure in rusty black. The caller was the Reverend Ephraim Stair—Methodist circuit-rider for the up-State counties, and a man whose brain and heart had long since made him the blindly obeyed autocrat of his scattered mountain flock.
“What’s wrong, Titus?” was his wondering greeting as his sharp old eyes flashed from the man with the big dog in his arms to the eternallywhispering little form on the bed. “I heard a scream, as I was riding past, and——”
“Oh, parson!” gasped Jeff in babbling relief, dumping Robin on the puncheon floor and gripping the circuit-rider by both hands. “For Gawd’s sake,dosuthin’ fer her! She acts like—like she ain’t goin’ to git well none!”
Loud through the mountains were the praises of Stair’s medical lore. Many were the tales of sick folk he had cured; when the old women had given them up and had begun gruesomely relishful preparations for the funeral. Jeff Titus clutched at his unexpected presence, as at a life-belt. Half in superstitious awe, he glanced at the dog whose providential screech had made the clergyman halt in his brisk ride from one county seat to the next.
Meantime, Stair had crossed to the bed, and, on his knees beside it, was examining the stricken Eve. Jeff came up behind him, standing awkwardly and with open mouth, in expectation of some miracle.
But no miracle was vouchsafed. Instead the clergyman asked one or two questions as to the illness’ course, felt the patient’s pulse and her torrid cheek, then ordered his host to go and fetch in his saddlebags.
“My medicine-kit is in them,” he explained.“And you can stable my horse, too. I’m going to stay.”
“She—she’s goin’ to git on all right, now you’re here, ain’t she?” pleaded Titus ingratiatingly, pausing at the door.
“Get my saddlebags!” was the non-committal retort. “Jump! Then you can heat some water. Wait! Before you go, open those windows. And leave the door open. Isn’t this poor child having enough trouble in breathing; without your sealing the room hermetically?”
“Sick folks hadn’t oughter be let have cold air tetch ’em, I’ve allers heard,” Jeff defended himself, nevertheless obeying. “It gives ’em——”
“It gives them life!” retorted Stair. “Now get those saddlebags!”
Next morning Eve was perceptibly worse: the breathing was more laboured; the fever blazed higher. This in spite of Stair and his ceaseless ministrations. Stark despair tore at the husband’s throat.
Following Stair, as the circuit-rider left the room for a moment to wash his hands at the pump, Titus demanded fiercely:
“She’s a-aimin’ to die, ain’t she? Spit out the truth, man! I got a right to hear it!”
“I can’t say,” answered Stair, taking no offence at the furious manner. “She is in the midst of the crisis now. It is the turning-point in suchcases. If she rallies from that—Meanwhile we can only hope—and work. It is in God’s hands. She——”
“In Gawd’s hands!” mocked Jeff, wildly. “InGawd’shands, hey? You’re Gawd-a’mighty fond of blattin’ ’bout Gawd, parson! But I take notice He ain’t a-doin’ nothin’ fer that pore sick gal of mine, in yonder. Why ain’t He? Where is He, anyhow, if He cain’t——”
“He ishere,” answered Stair very quietly. “Here, and in that delirious girl’s room, back there. He is wherever His children cry out to Him in sorrow and pain—just as, in your inmost heart, you are crying to Him now. If His children are too deaf or too scared or too noisy, in their grief, to know He has come at their call, then the fault is with their own stupidity; and not with the all-pitying Father, who is carrying them through the ordeal.”
He pushed past the mouthing Titus and went back to his post in the sick-room.
On the second morning Eve was in a heavy sleep. Her once-parched forehead was moist. Stair, with a jerk of his thumb, motioned Jeff out into the dooryard. On his withered face was the glow of a conqueror. Harshly, as if in doubt of his own self-control, the circuit-rider said:
“The crisis is past. She has turned the corner.I think she will live. The rest depends on nursing—on building her up. You may thank God, if you care to. Or if you still think He hasn’t been here——”
“If He ain’t,” choked Titus ecstatically, “He sent a damn’ fine substitoot:—meanin’ no disrespec’. I—I reckon, parson—I reckon you-all knows how small I feel; ’bout blabbin’ like I did. An’—an’—Oh, you’re deadsureshe’s a-goin’ to live? There—there ain’t—there ain’t nothing I c’n say! But—but——”
Incontinently Jeff Titus bolted around the side of the house and out of sight into the woods. When he returned, an hour later, he was carrying a half-armful of kindling. Circumstantially and at some length he explained to Stair that he had spent the entire hour in looking for it. Stair accepted the explanation in grave credulity and forebore to glance towards the high-piled heap of kindling in the woodshed.
At noon Eve awoke. She was very weak, very tired, very thin and big-eyed. But she wasalive.
And in Jeff’s heart there was something that made him yearn to howl aloud in rapture and roll on the grass, and to join the church all over again, and to thrash some mythical man for speaking mythical ill of Ephraim Stair; and to turn over his farm and his savings to foreign missions,and to get very drunk indeed, and to buy Eve a gold watch.
Being a Kentucky mountaineer, and a Titus to boot, he contented himself with grinning down upon his sick wife and grunting:
“Feel better? That’s nice. Be all right, pretty soon, now. Reckon I’d best be gittin’ in some more wood, b’fore it rains. So long!”
Robin Adair, like his master, knew Eve was on the way to health again. But being only a dog and not a mountaineer, Robin did not sneak out of the house to hide his emotion. He stood beside the bed, his dark eyes aglow, his furry bulk quivering all over with puppyish joy; and wagging his plumed tail, frantically, every time his mistress looked at him.
One evening a few days later the two men were smoking together in the dooryard before turning in. Eve had been made comfortable for the night and was asleep.
She had gained a little ground, but her convalescence was maddeningly slow and uncertain to Jeff. The horror of the past fortnight or so had left him nerve-shaken. In spite of all Stair’s assurances, he could not throw off his fear for her safety.
“She has been through a terrible illness,” patiently explained Stair for the hundredth time.“Her body and her mind are exhausted. She lies there, like that, because she is resting. She is resting, because nature is making her rest. She is steadily getting better. Bar accidents, she is practically out of danger. Her strength is beginning to seep back, too. It would come back faster, of course, if she could rally her tired mind to some great interest in life—something that wouldn’t tire or excite her too much. It would help Mother Nature along. An interest in life is a wonderful aid, in convalescence. A bit of unexpected good news, for instance——”
“Good news, hey?” mused Jeff, his bony hands supporting his leathern face as he cogitated. “Good news? H’m!”
“Yes,” returned Stair, “that, or something pleasant to look forward to. When she’s well enough, you might take her to Duneka, or somewhere, for a little outing. Tell her so. It may brighten her to——”
“Nope,” dissented Jeff. “It wouldn’t. I tried, to-day. Told her she must git well, right smart, now; so’s we c’d have a ja’ntin’, somewheres. She said she was so tired, she reckoned she’d jest stay quiet to home a spell. It didn’t brace her, a wee peckle. Funny, too! ’Cause jest before she was took sick, she an’ me was projectin’, a hull lot, on a trip we was plannin’ to make. She’d got her heart real sot on it—’count of suthin’ she’d read[Pgo the Duneka Chron’cle.The fall County Fair is on, to Duneka, this week, you know. An’ theChron’cletold how they’re lottin’ on holdin’ the State dawg-show there, the fourth day of the fair. That’s the day after to-morror. TheChron’clesaid there was to be reel silver cups offered fer best dawgs of a lot of breeds. Collies was one of the breeds it spoke about.”
“Well?” asked Stair, in no special interest, as Jeff paused.
“Wal,” went on the mountaineer sheepishly, “you-all know how much store Eve sets by Robin, here. She thinks he’s jest the finest dawg on this yer planet. She was a-sayin’ there couldn’t be no finer dawg in the collie bunch, at the show, than what Robin is. An’ she was honin’ fer us to take him down there an’ let him git a chance at that silver cup. Wal, whatever Eve hones fer, she’s a-goin’ to git—if it’s gittable an’ if I’m in reach to git it fer her. So I ’greed we’d take Robin to the show. She was all het up over the idee of a-gittin’ that ’ere cup. An’ she was a-sayin’ how grand it’d be to have the paper print Robin’s name as winnin’ it, so’s she c’d send a copy of the paper to her folks, down Looeyville way, an’ all that. Wal, that’s all there is to it,” he ended with a loud sigh.
“Why is that all there is to it?” demanded Stair with sudden inspiration. “Why can’t youtake the dog down to the show yourself, if he really has a chance for the cup? That cup, and the notice in the paper, would do more to stir Eve up and to renew her interest in life than any other good news I can think of. And it’ll be something to look forward to. Go ahead and do it!”
“Good! Oh,good!” exulted a feeble little voice in the room behind them.
Eve had waked, during their talk. And, in her tones, as she applauded the plan, rang the first interest she had shown since the beginning of her illness. Stair, listening, shut his thin lips on a belated objection that had come into his mind while the mountaineer was applauding his chance suggestion.
It had just occurred to the circuit-rider that if Robin should not be adjudged worthy of the cup, the disappointment was likely to do the invalid more harm than a week of nursing could counteract. But it was too late to voice that warning now. Eve had heard. Eve was pathetically eager over the scheme. And, kicking himself mentally for his own impulsiveness, the clergyman held his peace.
He knew nothing about dogs, from a show standpoint—and mightily he hoped Eve’s estimate of her pet might be correct. But he doubted—more and more, he doubted. Collies, fit to winsilver cups, do not often find their way into the mountaineer cabins in the Kentucky hinterland.
Timidly, Stair sought to wet-blanket the venture. But again he was too late. At last Eve had the desired “interest in life,” an interest that threatened to bring back her fever. The dog-show virus is potent, as any exhibitor can testify. It has a mystic lure. Jeff, once he grasped the idea, was swept off his feet by it.
The fall County Fair at Duneka had begun its fourth day. That day’s star feature was to be the “all breeds” dog-show, to be held in the Agricultural Building.
A gratifying number of dogs was benched in the main hall of the ramshackle structure; early on the morning of the show. Two stewards were busy receiving the fast-arriving entrants, assigning to them their places in the double aisles of wire-partitioned and straw-littered “benches,” and assessing late-comers the usual extra fees for “post-entries.”
To these grievously overworked functionaries, in the thick of their labours, appeared a lanky farmer of the true mountaineer type. He was clad in store-clothes that sat on his angular figure as might a horse-blanket on a washboard. By a rope, the hill-billy led a large and shaggy dog whose rough, tawny coat had been washed andbrushed until it shone like bronze and fluffed out like the hair of a Circassian beauty.
“Collie dawg,” announced Jeff, “owned by Miz Jeff Titus. Entered for the silver cup.”
Patiently the stewards explained to him that a dog must be entered for one or more of the show’s regular classes, and that the coveted silver cup was to go to the collie adjudged best in the whole show. They also informed Jeff that as his was a post-entry, it would cost him an extra fifty cents to exhibit his dog. He was told that in addition to this it would cost him a dollar for every class in which he might enter Robin.
As most of this was Greek to the puzzled exhibitor, one of the stewards asked if the dog had ever before been shown. On receiving a negative answer he took one look at the uninterested Robin and suggested he be entered for the “novice class,” alone.
As soon as he could be made to understand that a collie winning, in the novice class, would stand as good a chance for the cup as would any other, Titus paid over his money and led Robin to the stall in the collie section corresponding to the number the steward had tied to the dog’s collar.
After mooring Robin’s rope to the ring in his wire-partitioned bench, and getting him somewater, Jeff had leisure to take in his odd surroundings.
Dogs—dogs—dogs! Everywhere dogs—more dogs than Jeff had known existed—dogs of all breeds and sizes, from Peke to St. Bernard. The iron-girdered roof was re-echoing with their clangour. They were barking or yapping in fifty different keys, but all with the same earnestness.
Jeff saw that each breed had a bench-section to itself. In the hall’s centre, to which the bench aisles converged, were two wood-and-wire inclosures in each of which were a low central platform and a corner table and a chair. On the tables were neat piles of red and yellow and blue ribbons alongside a record-ledger. Handlers were everywhere busy making their pets ready for the judging.
Crowds of onlookers had already begun to filter through the aisles. Jeff heard someone say that the judging was about to begin, and that collies were to be among the first breeds shown.
His general curiosity sated, Titus fell to examining the dogs which were to be Robin’s competitors. And at once his mountaineer scowl merged into a grin. Here, forsooth, was nothing wherewith the splendid Robin need fear comparison.
Why, of all the nineteen collies on exhibition, there was not one within three inches of Robin’sheight, nor one which bore any real resemblance to him. These others were strongly slender chaps, with thin heads and tapering noses and tulip ears and slant eyes. Whereas, Robin’s mighty head was almost as broad and heavy as a Newfoundland’s; his ears were pricked like a wolf’s, and his honest brown eyes were large and round. No, most assuredly he was not in the very least like any other collie entered in the show—or in any exhibition of thoroughbreds since the birth of time.
Poor old Robin Adair was probably more collie than anything else; he may even have been a shade more than half-collie. But in his veins ran also the mixed blood of many another breed, Newfoundland predominating.
“Look over there!” Jeff heard a dapper collie-handler in a linen duster say in guarded tones to a woman who was sifting talcum powder into her gold-and-white collie pup’s fluffy coat. “Over at Bench 89! What is that Thing? A dog—or a hippopotamus?”
As the woman turned to observe the luckless Robin, Jeff Titus strolled across to the man who had called her attention to the dog. His eyes were glinting flares behind their lowered lids, and his lips twisted into something which looked like a smile and wasn’t. He said softly:
“Beggin’ you-all’s pardon, mister, what was you a-happenin’ to call my dawg?”
The man in the linen duster gave one glance at the leathern face peering down so intensely into his. Then, shakily, he made reply:
“I—I wasn’t speaking of your dog, sir. I was speaking of the dog in the next bench to his. I—I read the number wrong. Yours is—a—a grand—a grand—collie, sir.”
He gulped, and sped down the aisles on a new-remembered errand somewhere. Jeff turned back to Robin, his mind freed of its momentary angry doubt.
The collie classes were called a few minutes later. The first to be judged were, as usual, the male puppies. Jeff, watching the performance of the entrants, saw how the judging was done. First the dogs were made to march around the ring. Then, in ones or twos, they were placed on the platform while the little tweed-clad judge studied them and felt them all over. After that, the judge wrote certain numbers in the ring-steward’s book and handed to the owner of the winning dog a blue ribbon. A red ribbon went to the owner of the second best, a yellow ribbon to the third, and a white ribbon to the fourth.
Every one of the several collie classes, it seemed, must be judged in that same deliberate way; before the winners of all classes could competefor a rosette, whose acquisition meant also the winning of the silver cup. Jeff began to chafe at the needless delay which must ensue before Robin could receive his merited prize.
Then, directly after the judging of the puppies, came the novice class. Along with only two other entries, Jeff Titus led the majestically unconcerned Robin into the ring. As he passed, a titter swept the quadruple line of railbirds outside the inclosure. Jeff did not so much as look about him to locate the cause of the mirth. These fool city-folks were always laughing at nothing.
Nor did he note the glare, almost of horror, which the little tweed-clad judge bestowed upon Robin; as Eve’s adored pet paced into the ring. The judge eyed him with much the expression one might expect to see in the visage of a Supreme Court justice who has been asked to hand down an official opinion on a nursery rhyme.
“Walk your dogs, please!” rasped the judge.
The parade started. Robin strolled unconcernedly at his lanky master’s side. As he was not a thoroughbred, his nerves were not of the hair-trigger order. The racket and the crowd and the new surroundings did not excite or terrify or make him profoundly miserable; as they did some of the high-strung collies about him. Jeff observed this calm demeanour and was proud of his dog’s bearing.
The parade was halted. The judge motioned Robin’s two competitors to the platform, squinted at them for a moment, ran his hand over them, examined the spring of their ribs, then their teeth, and various other details,—stood back and studied them—then handed to the owner of one a blue ribbon and to the other a red. The third-prize yellow ribbon he tossed back onto the steward’s table.
The winners of the first and second prizes departed with their collies. The steward chalked up the next class on the blackboard. But Jeff Titus did not leave the ring. Eyes bulging, cheeks slowly turning from tan to brick-hue, he strode over to the judge.
“Look-a-here, you!” he rumbled in a blend of wrath and dazed incredulity. “What’s the meanin’ of this-yer? Are you aimin’ to doublecross me? My dawg’s wuth ten of them ornery critters. He’s a heap bigger’n an’ huskier, an’ he’s purtier to look at, too! What the blue blazes do you-all mean by treatin’ him thisaway, you hard-biled shrimp? He——”
With much dignity the little judge turned his back on the angry Titus and started across the ring. But before he had gone two steps Jeff was once more confronting him.
“Look-a-here!” snarled Titus, again, striving to keep himself in hand, “I ain’t goin’ to laydown under no frame-up! You judged crooked, with my dawg. I c’n prove it. Even if you didn’t have the sense to see he was the best of the hull bilin’, you was bound, anyhow, to give him the yaller ribbon fer third prize. An——”
“I was bound to do nothing of the sort!” rapped out the exasperated judge. “I am here to judge collies, not dinosaurs. I refuse to countenance the claim that your dog is a collie, by giving him a third-prize ribbon; even in a class of three. So, in this class, I have deliberately withheld the third prize. Your dog is not a collie. The Lord alone knows what he is, but he’s no collie. That’s all. Clear out!”
For a man with heart or imagination, there is no ordeal more irksome than to judge dogs. For, in almost every division, there is some such beast as Robin Adair;—a dog loved by his owners, who know nothing of shows or of show points. A judge, in fairness to the better exhibits, must pass over these poor animals; and thereby must cause heartache and shame to their pathetic owners. It is not a pleasant task. Nor is any phase of dog-judging pleasant. It is a thankless and nerve-racking job, at best; and it has a magic quality of turning one’s friends into enemies.
The little judge at the Duneka show was hardened by long practice. Also, he had all the bristling pluck of a rat-terrier. And he neededit in facing this lean giant in whose slit-eyes the murder-light was beginning to smoulder. Jeff half extended one windmill arm in the general direction of the judge’s throat. Then he checked himself.
It was going to be bad enough to slink home with no cup, but it would be ten-fold worse to go to the hoosgow for mayhem. He pictured sick Eve’s grief over such a disgrace, and his clenched hand dropped again to his side. Grappling with his temper, the mountaineer wheeled about and led the disqualified Robin out of the ring and back to the bench.
A sweet mess he had made of everything; he and that parson, up yonder!
They had wrought on Eve’s hopes and had made her so gloriously confident that her dear dog was going to sweep all before him and win the cup! She was lying at home, this minute, her big eyes shining with anticipation, her vivid mind picturing the triumph-scene at the show. How confidently she would be waiting for that cup!
Jeff had sought so enthusiastically to work out Stair’s theory of a “good news” cure! And how was the experiment to result? He must go home on the morrow and tell Eve not only that he had no cup to show her, but that the judgehad actually refused Robin a third-prize ribbon, on the ground that the dog was a mongrel! What effect was that news going to have on a sick woman whose swift recovery depended on her spirits?
Knowing Eve as he did, Jeff was ready to believe it would undo most of her hard-won convalescence. And at the very least, in her weak state, it was certain to make her cry. Jeff would rather have faced a machine-gun nest than make his gallant little sweetheart cry.
He began to swear, very softly but very, very zealously. And then his resourceful mountaineer brain unlimbered and went into action.
Presently, he arose from the bench, patted Robin absentmindedly on the head and slouched off towards the end of the hall, where, in a high glass case, were displayed the prize cups and the other trophies.
Long and minutely he scanned the glittering prizes, especially the cup engraved “Best Collie.” And he spelled out the printed legend over the case—which proclaimed that the cups were supplied by the long-famous jewellery firm of Pinkus Bernstein, of Republic Street, Duneka, Kentucky.
Ten minutes later, leaving Robin to shift for himself on his bench, Jeff was hiking towards the business streets of the mountain metropolis. Hepaused, for a space, at the bank, where he had a carefully scraped-together little account, and he drew forth a goodly share of that sum. Then he made his way to the jewellery-store. After a half-hour of dickering, he emerged from the shop, bearing a bumpy parcel.
Returning to the Agricultural Hall, he seated himself once more on the narrow bench beside the exultantly welcoming Robin, and proceeded to unwind the tissue wrappings of his package. Robin looked on in mild curiosity. His sense of smell had already told the dog that the parcel contained nothing of vital interest to him. Yet, because he had been lonely and a little worried by Jeff’s long absence, Robin evinced a polite concern in the undoing of the wrappings.
The last layer of paper was removed. To the dog’s view was exposed a huge and gleaming silver cup, a cup with much chasing on its polished surface and with three handles and an ebony base. It was at least double the size of the cup offered by the committee for “best collie.”
“See that?” questioned Titus, holding the trophy aloft for Robin’s inspection. “Forty-one dollars, that set me back. An’ it’d a’ been a heap more, only it was a left-over, an’ had that one little gouge under the aidge. Robin, if that cup don’t tickle her, suthin’ terrible, I’m a clay-eater! You-all won this yer vase, to-day, Robin; by bein’‘best collie.’ Jes’ keep a-rememberin’ that. I ain’t never put nothin’ over on her, b’fore. You-all knows that, Robbie. But—I reckon it’s wuth doin’, this yer time. She——”
He paused in his low-pitched confidence to the blinking, sympathising dog. Two men had halted just in front of him. One of them was carrying an apparatus which movie-camp memories told Jeff was a camera.
It chanced to be a moment when no less than two “Winners’ Classes” were on in the showrings. Accordingly the ring-sides were banked deep with onlookers, and this secluded section of the aisles was almost wholly stripped of spectators. That was why Jeff had ventured to bring forth the cup from its wrappings. The sight of the two keenly interested men set him to scowling in dire embarrassment.
The chairman of the dog-show committee was also one of the chief stockholders of the DunekaChronicle. Wherefore, the dictum had gone forth to theChroniclecity-room that the show was to be played up, big, in both morning and evening editions. And the paper’s best descriptive writer, one Graham, had been assigned to do some “human-interest stuff” about it, in addition to the sporting editor’s regulation account.
Graham was a good reporter, and he had agenius for human-interest yarns. But of dogs he knew little, and of dog-shows he knew even less. Yet, gleaning such information on the subject as he could, he had set forth for the show this morning; taking along the paper’s sole photographer.