Here Larsen found him that afternoon. A boy crawled underneath and dragged him forth. He who had started life favoured of the gods, who thatmorning had been full of high spirit and pride, who had circled his first field like a champion, was a shrinking, cringing creature, like a homeless cur.
The men laughed at the spectacle he made. To many people a gun-shy dog is, in his terror, a sight for mirth. Perhaps he is. Certainly he is as much so as a dog with a can tied to his tail. But some day neither sight will be funny to any human soul.
As for Larsen, he kept repeating in sanctimonious tones that he had never been more astonished in his life, though to tell the truth he had never thought much of this breed of pointers. He was very sorry, he said, very sorry. But any one, peering at him from the bushes as he rode home, a dog with tucked tail at his horse's heels, would have seen a shrewd smile on his face.
And thus it happened that Comet came home in disgrace—a coward expelled from college, not for some youthful prank, but because he was yellow. And he knew he was disgraced. He saw it in the face of the big man Devant, who looked at him in the yard where he had spent his happy puppyhood, then turned away. He knew it because of what he saw in the face of Jim Thompson.
In the house was a long plausible letter, explaining how it had happened. "I did everything I could. I never was as much surprised in my life. The dog is hopeless."
As for the other inhabitants of the big house, their minds were full of the events of the season—de-luxe hunting parties, more society events than hunts; lunches served in the woods by uniformed butlers; launch rides up the river; arriving and departing guests. Only one of them except Devant gave the gun-shy dog a thought. Marian Devant visited him in his disgrace. She stooped before him as she had done on that other and happier day, and caught his head between her hands. But his eyes did not meet hers, for in his dim way he knew he was not now what he had been.
"I don't believe he's yellow—inside!" she declared and looked at Thompson.
Thompson shook his head. "I tried him with a gun, Miss Marian. Just showed it to him. He ran into his kennel."
"I'll go get mine. I don't believe he will run again."
But at sight of her small gun it all came back. Again he seemed to hear the explosion that had shattered his nerves. The terror had entered his soul. In spite of her pleading he made for his kennel. Even the girl turned away. And as he lay panting in the shelter of his box he knew that never again would men look at him as they had looked, nor life be sweet to him as it had been.
Then came to Oak Hill an old man to see Thompson. He had been on many seas, had fought ina dozen wars, and had settled at last on a truck farm near by. Somewhere in a life full of adventure and odd jobs he had trained dogs and horses. His face was lined, his hair white, his eyes piercing, blue, and kind. Wade Swygert was his name.
"I'll take him if you're goin' to give him away," he said to Thompson.
Give him away—who had been championship hope!
Marian Devant hurried out. She looked into the visitor's face shrewdly, appraisingly.
"Can you cure him?" she demanded.
"I doubt it," was the sturdy answer.
"You will try?"
"I'll try."
"Then you can have him. And if there's any expense——"
"Come, Comet," said the old man.
That night, in a neat, humble house, Comet ate supper placed before him by a stout old woman, who had followed this old man to the ends of the world. That night he slept before their fire. Next day he followed the man all about the place. Several days and nights passed this way, then, while he lay before the fire, old Swygert came in with a gun. At sight of it Comet sprang to his feet. He tried to rush out of the room, but the doors were closed. Finally, he crawled under the bed.
Every night after that Swygert got out the gun, until he crawled under the bed no more. Finally,one day the man fastened the dog to a tree in the yard, then came out with a gun. A sparrow lit in a tree, and he shot it. Comet tried to break the rope. All his panic had returned, but the report had not shattered him as that other did, for the gun was loaded light.
After that, frequently the old man shot a bird in his sight, loading the gun more and more heavily, and each time, after the shot, coming to him, showing him the bird, and speaking to him kindly, gently. But for all that the terror remained in his heart.
One afternoon Marian Devant, a young man with her, rode over on horseback. Swygert met her at the gate.
"I don't know," he said, "whether I'm getting anywhere or not."
"I don't believe he's yellow. Not deep down. Do you?"
"No," said Swygert. "Just his ears, I think. They've been jolted beyond what's common. I don't know how. The spirit is willin', but the ears are weak. I might deefen him. Punch 'em with a knife——"
"That would be running away!" said the girl.
Swygert looked at her keenly, on his face the approbation of an old man who has seen much.
That night Mrs. Swygert told him she thought he had better give it up. It wasn't worth the time and worry. The dog was just yellow.
Swygert pondered a long time. "When I was a kid," he said at last, "there came up a terrible thunderstorm. It was in South America. I was water boy for a railroad gang, and the storm drove us in a shack. While lightnin' was hittin' all around, one of the grown men told me it always picked out boys with red hair. My hair was red, an' I was little and ignorant. For years I was skeered of lightnin'. I never have quite got over it. But no man ever said I was yellow."
Again he was silent for a while. Then he went on: "I don't seem to be makin' much headway, I admit that. I'm lettin' him run away as far as he can. Now I've got to shoot an' make him come toward the gun himself, right while I'm shootin' it."
Next day Comet was tied up and fasted, and the next, until he was gaunt and famished. Then, on the afternoon of the third day, Mrs. Swygert, at her husband's direction, placed before him, within reach of his chain, some raw beefsteak. As he started for it, Swygert shot. He drew back, panting, then, hunger getting the better of him, started again. Again Swygert shot.
After that for days Comet "ate to music," as Swygert expressed it. "Now," he said, "he's got to come toward the gun when he's not even tied up."
Not far from Swygert's house is a small pond, and on one side the banks are perpendicular. Towardthis pond the old man, with the gun under his arm and the dog following, went. Here in the silence of the woods, with just the two of them together, was to be a final test.
On the shelving bank Swygert picked up a stick and tossed it into the middle of the pond with the command to "fetch." Comet sprang eagerly in and retrieved it. Twice this was repeated. But the third time, as the dog approached the shore, Swygert picked up the gun and fired.
Quickly the dog dropped the stick, then turned and swam toward the other shore. Here, so precipitous were the banks, he could not get a foothold. He turned once more and struck out diagonally across the pond. Swygert met him and fired.
Over and over it happened. Each time, after he fired, the old man stooped down with extended hand and begged him to come on. His face was grim, and though the day was cool sweat stood out on his brow. "You'll face the music," he said, "or you'll drown. Better be dead than called yellow."
The dog was growing weary. His head was barely above water. His efforts to clamber up the opposite bank were feeble, frantic. Yet, each time as he drew near the shore Swygert fired.
He was not using light loads now. He was using the regular load of the bird hunter. Time had passed for temporizing. The sweat was standing out all over his face. The sternness in his eyes wasterrible to see, for it was the sternness of a man who is suffering.
A dog can swim a long time. The sun dropped over the trees. Still the firing went on, regularly, like a minute gun.
Just before the sun set an exhausted dog staggered toward an old man, almost as exhausted as he. The dog had been too near death and was too faint to care for the gun that was being fired over his head. On and on he came, toward the man, disregarding the noise of the gun. It would not hurt him, that he knew at last. He might have many enemies, but the gun, in the hands of this man, was not one of them. Suddenly old Swygert sank down and took the dripping dog in his arms.
"Old boy," he said, "old boy."
That night Comet lay before the fire, and looked straight into the eyes of a man, as he used to look in the old days.
Next season, Larsen, glancing over his sporting papers, was astonished to see that among promising Derbys the fall trials had called forth was a pointer named Comet. He would have thought it some other dog than the one who had disappointed him so by turning out gun-shy, in spite of all his efforts to prevent, had it not been for the fact that the entry was booked as Comet; owner, Miss Marian Devant; handler, Wade Swygert.
Next year he was still more astonished to see inthe same paper that Comet, handled by Swygert, had won first place in a Western trial, and was prominently spoken of as a National Championship possibility. As for him, he had no young entries to offer, but was staking everything on the National Championship, where he was to enter Larsen's Peerless II.
It was strange how things fell out—but things have a habit of turning out strangely in field trials, as well as elsewhere. When Larsen reached Breton Junction where the National Championship was to be run, there on the street, straining at the leash held by old Swygert, whom he used to know, was a seasoned young pointer, with a white body, a brown head, and a brown saddle spot—the same pointer he had seen two years before turn tail and run in that terror a dog never quite overcomes.
But the strangest thing of all happened that night at the drawing, when, according to the slips taken at random from a hat, it was declared that on the following Wednesday, Comet, the pointer, was to run with Peerless II.
It gave Larsen a strange thrill, this announcement.
He left the meeting and went straightway to his room. There for a long time he sat pondering. Next day at a hardware store he bought some black powder and some shells.
The race was to be run next day, and that night in his room he loaded half-a-dozen shells. It wouldhave been a study in faces to watch him as he bent over his work, on his lips a smile. Into the shells he packed all the powder they could stand, all the powder his trusted gun could stand, without bursting. It was a load big enough to kill a bear, to bring down a buffalo. It was a load that would echo and reëcho in the hills.
On the morning that Larsen walked out in front of the judges and the field, Peerless II at the leash, old Swygert with Comet at his side, he glanced around at the "field," or spectators. Among them was a handsome young woman and with her, to his amazement, George Devant. He could not help chuckling inside himself as he thought of what would happen that day, for once a gun-shy dog, always a gun-shy dog—that washisexperience.
As for Comet, he faced the strawfields eagerly, confidently, already a veteran. Long ago fear of the gun had left him, for the most part. There were times, when at a report above his head, he still trembled and the shocked nerves in his ear gave a twinge like that of a bad tooth. But always at the quiet voice of the old man, his god, he grew steady, and remained staunch.
Some disturbing memory did start within him to-day as he glanced at the man with the other dog. It seemed to him as if in another and an evil world he had seen that face. His heart began to pound fast and his tail drooped for a moment. Withinan hour it was all to come back to him—the terror, the panic, the agony of that far-away time.
He looked up at old Swygert, who was his god, and to whom his soul belonged, though he was booked as the property of Miss Marian Devant. Of the arrangements he could know nothing, being a dog. Old Swygert, having cured him, could not meet the expenses of taking him to field trials. The girl had come to the old man's assistance, an assistance which he had accepted only under condition that the dog should be entered as hers, with himself as handler.
"Are you ready, gentlemen?" the judges asked.
"Ready," said Larsen and old Swygert.
And Comet and Peerless II were speeding away across that field, and behind them came handlers and judges and spectators, all mounted.
It was a race people still talk about, and for a reason, for strange things happened that day. At first there was nothing unusual. It was like any other field trial. Comet found birds and Swygert, his handler, flushed them and shot. Comet remained steady. Then Peerless II found a covey and Larsen flushed them and shot. And so for an hour it went.
Then Comet disappeared, and old Swygert, riding hard and looking for him, went out of sight over a hill. But Comet had not gone far. As a matter of fact, he was near by, hidden in some highstraw, pointing a covey of birds. One of the spectators spied him, and called the judges' attention to him. Everybody, including Larsen, rode up to him, but still Swygert had not come back.
They called him, but the old man was a little deaf. Some of the men rode to the top of the hill but could not see him. In his zeal, he had got a considerable distance away. Meanwhile, here was his dog, pointed.
If any one had looked at Larsen's face he would have seen the exultation there, for now his chance had come—the very chance he had been looking for. It's a courtesy one handler sometimes extends another who is absent from the spot, to go in and flush his dog's birds.
"I'll handle this covey for Mr. Swygert," said Larsen to the judges, his voice smooth and plausible, on his face a smile.
And thus it happened that Comet faced his supreme ordeal without the steadying voice of his god. He only knew that ahead of him were birds, and that behind him a man was coming through the straw, and that behind the man a crowd of people on horseback were watching him. He had become used to that but when, out of the corner of his eye he saw the face of the advancing man, his soul began to tremble.
"Call your dog in, Mr. Larsen," directed the judge. "Make him backstand."
Only a moment was lost while Peerless, a young dog himself, came running in and at a command from Larsen stopped in his tracks behind Comet, and pointed. Larsen's dogs always obeyed, quickly, mechanically. Without ever gaining their confidence, Larsen had a way of turning them into finished field-trial dogs. They obeyed because they were afraid not to.
According to the rules the man handling the dog has to shoot as the birds rise. This is done in order to test the dog's steadiness when a gun is fired over him. No specification is made as to the size of the shotgun to be used. Usually, however, small-gauge guns are carried. The one in Larsen's hands was a twelve-gauge, and consequently large.
All morning he had been using it over his own dog. Nobody had paid any attention to it, because he shot smokeless powder. But now, as he advanced, he reached into the left-hand pocket of his hunting coat, where six shells rattled as he hurried along. Two of these he took out and rammed into the barrels.
As for Comet, still standing rigid, statuesque, he heard, as has been said, the brush of steps through the straw, glimpsed a face, and trembled. But only for a moment. Then he steadied, head high, tail straight out. The birds rose with a whirr—and then was repeated that horror of his youth. Above his ears, ears that would always be tender, broke agreat roar. Either because of his excitement, or because of a sudden wave of revenge, or of a determination to make sure of the dog's flight, Larsen had pulled both triggers at once. The combined report shattered through the dog's ear drums, it shivered through his nerves, he sank in agony into the straw.
Then the old impulse to flee was upon him, and he sprang to his feet, and looked about wildly. But from somewhere in that crowd behind him came to his tingling ears a voice—clear, ringing, deep, the voice of a woman—a woman he knew—pleading as his master used to plead, calling on him not to run but to stand.
"Steady," it said. "Steady, Comet!"
It called him to himself, it soothed him, it calmed him, and he turned and looked toward the crowd. With the roar of the shotgun the usual order observed in field trials was broken up. All rules seemed to have been suspended. Ordinarily, no one belonging to "the field" is allowed to speak to a dog. Yet the girl had spoken to him. Ordinarily, the spectators must remain in the rear of the judges. Yet one of the judges had himself wheeled his horse about and was galloping off, and Marian Devant had pushed through the crowd and was riding toward the bewildered dog.
He stood staunch where he was, though in his ears was still a throbbing pain, and though all about him was this growing confusion he could notunderstand. The man he feared was running across the field yonder, in the direction taken by the judge. He was blowing his whistle as he ran. Through the crowd, his face terrible to see, his own master was coming. Both the old man and the girl had dismounted now and were running toward him.
"I heard," old Swygert was saying to her. "I heard it! I might 'a' known! I might 'a' known!"
"He stood," she panted, "like a rock—oh, the brave, beautiful thing!"
"Where is that——" Swygert suddenly checked himself and looked around.
A man in the crowd (they had all gathered about now) laughed.
"He's gone after his dog," he said. "Peerless has run away!"
He prayeth best who loveth bestAll things, both great and small;For the dear God who loveth usHe made and loveth all.
He prayeth best who loveth bestAll things, both great and small;For the dear God who loveth usHe made and loveth all.
He prayeth best who loveth best
All things, both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us
He made and loveth all.
Something was wrong with little Tommy Earle. Consequently, something was wrong with the whole Earle plantation. Frank, the Earle dog—a stately Irish setter, rich in the wisdom and devotion of the nobly bred bird dog—Frank had sensed it yesterday afternoon. The boy had not come out of the house until long after dinner. Then he had strolled off forlornly and in silence toward the garage. His frowsy head had been bowed as if he were studying his own little shadow at his feet. His wide blue eyes—they were exactly on a level with the dog's anxiously inquiring ones—had had in them a suggestion of pain and helplessness, of dependence on things bigger than himself.
He had made no outcry; Tommy was something of a stoic. In fact, he had said nothing at all. Butthat look had gone straight to the dog's heart. Since hunting season was over he had been self-appointed guardian of this boy. The two had come to understand one another as boys and dogs understand. There was no need of words now. Frank understood; something hurt the boy inside.
The young mother had run out, her face anxious, and had taken Tommy in out of the sun. He had not seemed to mind going in, and that would have been enough of itself. Frank had followed them up on the porch; the screen door had slammed in his face. He had strolled off, tail depressed; he had lain down in the shade of the front-walk hedge, his ears pricked toward the big white house with the columned porch. It had remained ominously silent inside. The boy had not come out again. The long June afternoon had passed brooding and vacant, as if it were Sunday and all the people on the plantation had gone to church.
Now another morning was here. But instead of the boy running out to greet it a man in a car was driving up the heavy shaded avenue of oaks that led from the big road. Frank met him as he got out of his car, looked up anxiously into his spectacled face, whiffed the strange-smelling satchel he carried, escorted him gravely up the steps. Steve Earle, the boy's father, the dog's master, shook hands with the man and led him into the house. Again the screen door banged in the dog's face.
Nose pressed against it, he watched the two men go down the wide cool hall and turn into the bedroom. He heard the spectacled man talking in there, then Steve Earle, then Marian Earle, the boy's mother, but not the boy, prick his ears as he would. He sat down on his haunches, panting and whining softly to himself. He lay down, head between his paws, agate-brown eyes deep with worry. Still no sound of the boy. He got up and fumbled at the screen door with his paw, fumbled sternly, all concentration on his task.
It was not the first time he had turned the trick. He managed to catch the lower frame with his claw, and, before the door sprang shut, to insert his nose. The rest was easy and he went silently down the hall. He stopped in the bedroom doorway. The boy was the centre of attention: he was sitting on his mother's lap; the spectacled man, satchel at his feet, was leaning forward toward him; Steve Earle stood above them, looking down.
The dog's ears drooped. Usually where the boy was, there was also noise. But this room was very quiet. The shades had been partly pulled; in contrast with the brilliant out of doors it looked dim in here, like late afternoon. The mother was smoothing the boy's hair back from his forehead. There was something helpless in the head leaned against the mother's breast and in the dangling, listless feet.
Frank took a tentative step forward. In winter he was welcomed always to the fire, but in summer they said he brought in flies. Now no one seemed to notice him, though he was a big fellow and red. He took another step into the room, his eyes fastened longingly on the boy's flushed face. Suddenly his long tail began to beat an eager tattoo against the bureau. The boy's eyes had looked straight into his.
"F'ank?"
The mother glanced round. "I told Frank he mustn't come into the house, dear."
"Why can't he stay wif me, Mama?"
The voice was complaining, as if Tommy were about to cry, and Tommy seldom cried. Then he seemed to forget, and usually when he wanted anything he kept on till he got it. The dog watched closely while Steve Earle lifted him out of the mother's lap and placed him on the bed. Then he made his way to the foot of the bed and lay down firmly and with an air of quiet finality. He would stay here until this strangeness passed away.
But Earle, following the spectacled man out of the room, stopped in the doorway.
"Come on, Frank!"
He raised his eyes beseechingly to his master's face, then dropped his head between his paws, his bushy tail dragging underneath the bed.
"Come on, old man!"
He got slowly to his feet; he looked regretfullyat the sturdy little figure on the bed; he tried to catch the mother's eye—sometimes she interposed in his behalf. A little sullenly he followed the two men out of the house.
"That's my advice, Earle," the spectacled man said as he climbed into his car. "They can take better care of him there. The roads are good—you can drive slowly. I wouldn't put it off; I would go right away."
Earle went into the house and the dog strolled through the back yard, past the cabin of Aunt Cindy the cook to the shaded side of the garage. Here under the eaves was a ditch the boy had been digging to take off water. He had worked on it all one rainy morning shortly before, a cool, gusty morning, the last gasp of spring before the present first hot spell of summer. Aunt Cindy had discovered him wet to the skin and made a great fuss about it.
Now the shovel was stuck up where the boy had been forced to leave off and the little wagon, partly filled with dirt, stood near by, its idle tongue on the ground. Tail wagging, the dog whiffed the shovel, the ditch, the wagon. Then he lay down beside the wagon, and looked off over the hills and bottoms of the plantation quivering in the morning heat.
At the hum of the car out of the garage he sprang up and followed it to the side of the porch. Earle ran up the steps into the house. When he presentlyreturned Marian and Aunt Cindy were with him and he carried the boy in his arms. He laid him gently on the back seat of the car with his mother. They were going to Greenville, the father said. When they came back he could sit on the front seat like a man. Aunt Cindy handed in the valise; just a glimpse the dog got of the little upturned sandals on the back seat, and Earle had closed the door. The car drove slowly off down the avenue, the sunlight that pierced the foliage flashing at intervals on its top. The dog looked up into Aunt Cindy's ample black face. She shook her head and went back into the house.
He sat down on his haunches, panting, then swallowing, then panting again. He had never been allowed to follow the car. He watched it turn into the road; the woods hid it from sight. He got to his feet and looked round. A curtain upstairs was waving out in the slight breeze, but from all the windows came no sound. He trotted down the avenue and stopped, nose pointed in the direction in which the car had gone. He galloped to the shining road. Up the hill beyond the creek bottoms he made out the car, crawling slowly. He pricked his ears toward it; his eyes grew stern; where were they taking that boy? A moment he stood hesitating, then bounded off after the car.
Miles away he caught up and galloped softly behind, trying to take advantage of the slight shadeit offered. His tongue was hanging out, dust was caked in his eyes, the sun baked down on his heavy red coat, the road flew dizzily underneath. He could not stand this pace much longer on such a day—he could not stand it at all if Earle took a notion to drive as he usually drove. When the car slowed up at a hill he ran round it, looking up into his master's face. The car stopped and Earle leaned over the door, his eyes stern.
"Go back home, sir!"
The dog stood his ground, panting like an engine.
The command was repeated.
Dizzy with heat, he sat down, eyes half closed, fangs showing with the contraction of his panting, frothing chops, saliva dripping in the road.
Earle turned round, smiling grimly. "What had we best do, Marian?"
"Mama"—it was the boy's voice—"is it F'ank?"
"Yes, dear; you must lie still now."
"Let him go, Mama."
She spoke quickly: "Take him in, Steve."
It was midday when they reached the city. Sitting upright on the seat beside his master, the dog forgot everything else in the procession of crowding wagons and cars and people—strange sights to his country eyes. He lost all sense of direction when, honking, feeling his way, Earle turned down this street and that, the crowd, the noise, the life ever increasing. Eyes aglow, the dog looked behind atthe boy. Tommy was trying to sit up. Everything was all right now.
But excitement quickly gave place to apprehension. In front of a long building set up on a terrace, with white porches running across the front, Earle lifted the boy out of the car and Marian got out with the valise. Earle turned half around and under his broad panama hat looked at the dog with masterful eyes.
"You stay there!"
Head hanging over the door of the car, eyes a little resentful, the dog watched Earle bear the helpless boy up those steps shining in the sun, saw a woman in white meet them, take Earle's hat off his head and shade the boy's face, saw the three disappear through the wide door. People were passing, wagons clattering, cars honking; but he kept his eyes fastened on the door. A breath of air brought to his nose from the building a smell unlike any that rises from woods or fields. Nose quivering, he noted it carefully, catalogued in it that strange variety of things his nose told him. He would never forget that smell or its associations.
Earle came out at last—came out alone. They drove home together. Aunt 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 himtelephoning; 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 Tommyused 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, thedistant 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 wasempty. 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 atthe 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 lightsflashed 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 leapedover 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.
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—tryingto, 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, butthisdog.
"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.
"Heain'tmine," 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 downthe 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 littlefarm 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 canfeed 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.
There were moments, though, when he thought of the old man and wondered if he had missed the dog and whether he would make any search for him. There were sober moments, too, when he thought of his mother and Mr. Kirby and wished he had told them the truth. But then the long-drawn bay of the hound would come from the bottoms ahead, and he would hurry to the summons, his face flushed and eager. The music of the dog running, the sound of the shots, and his own triumphant yells started many an echo among the silent, frosted hills that day. He came home with enough meat to last a week—six rabbits. As he hurried into the yard he held them up for the inspection of his mother, who was feeding the chickens.
"He's the finest rabbit dog ever was, Ma! Oh, golly, he can follow a trail! I never see anything like it, Ma. I never did! I'll skin 'em an' clean 'emafter supper. You ought to have saw him, Ma! Golly!"
And while he chopped the wood, and milked the cow, and fed the mule, and skinned the rabbits, he saw other days ahead like this, and whistled and sang and talked to the hound, who followed close at his heels every step he took.
Then one afternoon, while he was patching the lot fence, with Buck sunning himself near the woodpile, came Old Man Thornycroft. Davy recognized his buggy as it turned the bend in the road. He quickly dropped his tools, called Buck to him, and got behind the house where he could see without being seen. The buggy stopped in the road, and the old man, his hard, pinched face working, his buggy whip in his hand, came down the walk and called Mrs. Allen out on the porch.
"I just come to tell you," he cried, "that your boy Davy run off with my dog las' Friday evenin'! There ain't no use to deny it. I know all about it. I seen him when he passed in front of the house. I found the block I had chained to the dog beside the road. I heered Squire Jim Kirby talkin' to some men in Tom Belcher's sto' this very mornin'; just happened to overhear him as I come in. 'A boy an' a dog,' he says, 'is the happiest combination in nater.' Then he went on to tell about your boy an' a tan dog. He had met 'em in the road. Met 'em when? Last Friday evenin'. Oh, there ain'tno use to deny it, Mrs. Allen! Your boy Davy—hestolemy dog!"
"Mr. Thornycroft"—Davy could not see his mother, but he could hear her voice tremble—"he didnotknow whose dog it was!"
"He didn't? He didn't?" yelled the old man. "An' him a boy that knows ever' dog for ten miles around! Right in front of my house, I tell you—that's where he picked him up—that's where he tolled him off! Didn't I tell you, woman, I seen him pass? Didn't I tell you I found the block down the road? Didn't know whose dog it was? Ridiculous, ridiculous! Call him, ask him, face him with it. Likely he'll lie—but you'll see his face. Call him, that's all I ask. Call him!"
"Davy!" called Mrs. Allen. "Davy!"
Just a moment the boy hesitated. Then he went around the house. The hound stuck very close to him, eyes full of terror, tail tucked as he looked at the old man.
"There he is—with my dog!" cried the old man. "You didn't know whose dog it was, did you, son? Eh? You didn't know, now, did you?"
"Yes!" cried the boy. "I knowed!"
"Hear that, Mrs. Allen? Did he know? What do you say now? He stole my dog, didn't he? That's what he done, didn't he? Answer me, woman! You come here!" he yelled, his face livid, and started, whip raised, toward boy and dog.
There were some smooth white stones the size of hen eggs arranged around a flower bed in the yard, and Davy stood near these stones—and now, quick as a flash, he stooped down and picked one up.
"You stop!" he panted, his face very white.
His mother cried out and came running toward him, but Thornycroft had stopped. No man in his right mind wants to advance on a country boy with a rock. Goliath tried it once.
"All right!" screamed the old man. "You steal first—then you try to assault an old man! I didn't come here to raise no row. I just come here to warn you, Mrs. Allen. I'll have the law on that boy—I'll have the law on him before another sun sets!"
He turned and hurried toward the buggy. Davy dropped the rock. Mrs. Allen stood looking at the old miser, who was clambering into his buggy, with a sort of horror. Then she ran toward the boy.
"Oh, Davy! run after him. Take the dog to him. He's terrible, Davy, terrible! Run after him—anything—anything!"
But the boy looked up at her with grim mouth and hard eyes.
"I ain't a-goin' to do it, Ma!" he said.
It was after supper that very night that the summons came. Bob Kelley, rural policeman, brought it.
"Me an' Squire Kirby went to Greenville thismornin'," he said, "to look up some things about court in the mornin'. This evenin' we run into Old Man Thornycroft on the street, lookin' for us. He was awful excited. He had been to Mr. Kirby's house, an' found out Mr. Kirby was in town, an' followed us. He wanted a warrant swore out right there. Mr. Kirby tried to argue with him, but it warn't no use. So at last Mr. Kirby turned to me. 'You go on back, Bob,' he said. 'This'll give me some more lookin' up to do. Tell my wife I'll just spend the night with Judge Fowler, an' git back in time for court in Belcher's sto' in the mornin'. An', Bob, you just stop by Mrs. Allen's—she's guardian of the boy—an' tell her I say to bring him to Belcher's sto' to-morrow mornin' at nine. You be there, too, Mr. Thornycroft—an', by the way, bring that block of wood you been talkin' about.'"
That was all the squire had said, declared the rural policeman. No, he hadn't sent any other message—just said he would read up on the case. The rural policeman went out and closed the door behind him. It had been informal, haphazard, like the life of the community in which they lived. But, for all that, the law had knocked at the door of the Widow Allen and left a white-faced mother and a bewildered boy behind.
They tried to resume their usual employments. Mrs. Allen sat down beside the table, picked up her sewing and put her glasses on, but her handstrembled when she tried to thread the needle. Davy sat on a split-bottom chair in the corner, his feet up on the rungs, and tried to be still; but his heart was pounding fast and there was a lump in his throat. Presently he got up and went out of doors, to get in some kindling on the back porch before it snowed, he told his mother. But he went because he couldn't sit there any longer, because he was about to explode with rage and grief and fear and bitterness.
He did not go toward the woodpile—what difference did dry kindling make now? At the side of the house he stooped down and softly called Buck. The hound came to him, wriggling along under the beams, and he leaned against the house and lovingly pulled the briar-torn ears. A long time he stayed there, feeling on his face already the fine mist of snow. To-morrow the ground would be white; it didn't snow often in that country; day after to-morrow everybody would hunt rabbits—everybody but him and Buck.
It was snowing hard when at last he went back into the warm room, so warm that he pulled off his coat. Once more he tried to sit still in the split-bottom chair. But there is no rage that consumes like the rage of a boy. In its presence he is so helpless! If he were a man, thought Davy, he would go to Old Man Thornycroft's house this night, call him out, and thrash him in the road. If he were aman, he would curse, he would do something. He looked wildly about the room, the hopelessness of it all coming over him in a wave. Then suddenly, because he wasn't a man, because he couldn't do what he wanted to do, he began to cry, not as a boy cries, but more as a man cries, in shame and bitterness, his shoulders shaken by great convulsive sobs, his head buried in his hands, his fingers running through his tangled mop of hair.
"Davy, Davy!" The sewing and the scissors slipped to the floor. His mother was down on her knees beside him, one arm about his shoulders, trying to look into his eyes. "You're my man, Davy! You're the only man, the only help I've got. You're my life, Davy. Poor boy! Poor child!"
He caught hold of her convulsively, and she pressed his head against her breast. Then he saw that she was crying, and he grew quiet, and wiped his eyes with his ragged sleeve.
"I'm all right now, Ma," he said; but he looked at her wildly.
She did not follow him into his little unceiled bedroom. She must have known that he had reached that age where no woman could help him. It must be a man now to whom he could pin his faith. And while he lay awake, tumbling and tossing, along with bitter thoughts of Old Man Thornycroft came other bitter thoughts of Mr. Kirby, whom, deep down in his boy's heart, he had worshipped—Mr. Kirby, who had sided with Old Man Thornycroft and sent a summons with—no message for him. "God!" he said. "God!" And pulled his hair, down there under the covers; and he hated the law that would take a dog from him and give it back to that old man—the law that Mr. Kirby represented.
It was still snowing when next morning he and his mother drove out of the yard and he turned the head of the reluctant old mule in the direction of Belcher's store. A bitter wind cut their faces, but it was not as bitter as the heart of the boy. Only twice on that five-mile ride did he speak. The first time was when he looked back to find Buck, whom they had left at home, thinking he would stay under the house on such a day, following very close behind the buggy.
"Might as well let him come on," said the boy.
The second time was when they came in sight of Belcher's store, dim yonder through the swirling snow. Then he looked up into his mother's face.
"Ma," he said grimly, "I ain't no thief!"
She smiled as bravely as she could with her stiffened face and with the tears so near the surface. She told him that she knew it, and that everybody knew it. But there was no answering smile on the boy's set face.
The squire's gray mare, standing huddled up in the midst of other horses and of buggies under the shed near the store, told that court had probablyalready convened. Hands numb, the boy hitched the old mule to the only rack left under the shed, then made Buck lie down under the buggy. Heart pounding, he went up on the store porch with his mother and pushed the door open.
There was a commotion when they entered. The men, standing about the pot-bellied stove, their overcoats steaming, made way for them. Old Man Thornycroft looked quickly and triumphantly around. In the rear of the store the squire rose from a table, in front of which was a cleared space.
"Pull up a chair nigh the stove for Mrs. Allen, Tom Belcher," he said. "I'm busy tryin' this chicken-stealin' nigger. When I get through, Mrs. Allen, if you're ready, I'll call your case."
Davy stood beside his mother while the trial of the Negro proceeded. Some of the fight had left him now, crowded down here among all these grown men, and especially in the presence of Mr. Kirby, for it is hard for a boy to be bitter long. But with growing anxiety he heard the sharp questions the magistrate asked the Negro; he saw the frown of justice; he heard the sentence—"sixty days on the gang." And the Negro had stolen only a chicken—and he had run off with another man's dog.
"The old man's rough this mornin'," Jim Taylor whispered to another man above him; and he saw the furtive grin on the face of Old Man Thornycroft, who leaned against the counter, waiting.