CHAPTER XVITHE JOURNEY HOME
He was home again and his college days were over“He was home again and his college days were over.”
“He was home again and his college days were over.”
“He was home again and his college days were over.”
IN the afternoon Van’s kennel was put back into its old place, and he lay there all day, sick, exhausted, and miserable.
Next morning he was turned loose once more in the chicken-yard, and Mr. Trimble stayed outside. There was no one to interfere; Van might havekilled the whole flock, for anything that he could see to hinder. He never glanced at them—not even at the smallest broiler. He was sick of even the very thought of chickens. He lay down by the gate in the sun, and licked the still smarting seams on his sides.
Roosters strutted proudly past him; old hens scratched placidly in the dirt all around him; the young ones came and went right under his very nose—it was all the same to him. One lesson was thoroughly learned; and although for eight long months afterward he spent an hour every morning in the yard with the chickens, never again was he known to touch one.
Always, always, in Van’s lonely heart was the thought of home and his beloved little mistress. But with a chain at the kennel, a high fence all around the place, and a spring lock on the gate, there was not much chance of escape.
So Van sat at the door of his kennel, or in the chicken-yard, watching the gate where Dr. Johns had disappeared, and he grieved and grieved. The days went by, the weeks and the months. Winter passed, the ice and snow melted, and the spring came blithely in. The grass grew, and thedays became warm and soft. The April rains fell, and the sun dried the puddles. The blossoms came out of their buds, and turned the peach trees pink and the pear trees white. Mrs. Trimble’s daffodils came up, gay and yellow, and Pete began to help his father in the garden-plot. There were little chickens in the yard, now, but although Van spent his hour there each day, he utterly ignored their existence.
One day was like another to him, as he sat listless in the sunshine, or lay in his kennel when it rained, looking off over the far hills out beyond the fence-palings. He was wishing, wishing, always wishing; wondering if he would ever be a prince again, and if Dr. Johns would ever come through the gate and take him home.
*****
“Good morning, Trimble.”
Mr. Trimble turned his head; he was just setting Van loose among the chickens. A strange man came toward him leading a dog that was to be a new boarder at the College. Together they turned toward the kennels, and were soonbusy over plans and directions for the treatment of the latest arrival.
Was it Chance that made Mr. Trimble forget to latch the gate of the chicken-yard? And was it Providence that made the stranger close the outer gate so gently that the spring did not fly back?
An eager brown head pushed the chicken-yard gate just far enough to let a little brown and white body through; a streak like lightning passed from this to the other gate; a click, and the spring did its duty; but Van wasoutside!
Mr. Trimble looked around, looked again, and through the palings he saw a flying shadow, heading westward down the road into the unknown. It was useless to call. What dog on earth would come back to the call of an alien master, when he had a Betsy to be hunted for the whole world over?
That homing instinct of the dog! Who can understand it? Not we humans, who have our finer senses dulled and blunted by civilization. Neither can we understand the ways of that marvelous little bird, the carrier-pigeon, who willtravel hundreds of miles, straight as the arrow flies, back to his home.
Van was free! Free, after eight long months of dull imprisonment! Free! And nothing on earth but death could stop him now. It was a long road, longer than he dreamed, but Betsy was somewhere at the end of it. He would find her and his dear home!
And Mr. Trimble? He was in a state, to be sure. He left the new dog and its master standing open-mouthed, while he ran as he had not run before in years, to the grocery-store near the station. He seized the telephone receiver, and this message went humming over the wires to the nearest town that lay between Westchester and the Hospital:
“Hello! Hello! I want 569 Wilmington. No, 5-6-9! Yes,—in a hurry!—Hello! That you, Stubbs? All right. Now listen! If you see a fox-terrier,—white, with a brown head and saddle,—going through your town, head him off and keep him for me. Name on his collar is Vanart VI. He slipped out and got away from me. Get that all right? All right. He’ll be along, if he doesn’t get lost, in about two hours orsooner, if he keeps on going like he’s going now. Thanks! Hope you get him. Call him ‘Van.’ Maybe he’ll come so you can catch him easy, if you act friendly. So long!”
So the news traveled ahead, but Van knew nothing about that. He kept on, with his nose pointed homeward, always homeward.
Out of Westchester he went under full head of steam. There were no neighbors with telephones to stop him along the way, and the road was clear. Past meadows and farmhouses, through still forests and thickets of green laurel, wading and leaping across boggy lowlands and scaling rocky highlands, ever he ran on.
A hedge-hog stared stolidly at him from the roadside; a chipmunk sputtered from a stone wall; Van never noticed them. A cat with four kittens basked temptingly on a hitching-block—Van might have been blind for all he saw of them.
By and by he tired a little, and slackened his pace, as if he realized that a long journey cannot be continued at top speed, but he did not stop. Now the long Main Street of Wilmingtonstretched out before him, and he entered the town at a steady trot.
Down past pleasant houses under stately rows of elms he went. A boy at a stable door called out, “Hey, there, Van!” A child stooped to pat him, and said, “Hello, Van!” He barked, as if to say, “My business leads me elsewhere,” and kept on.
A man stepped out of a corner grocery shop, and held out his hand.
“Here, Van! Here, Van! Good doggie! Come here!”
Van stopped still and looked hard at the man. Could he be an old friend? No, that was surely a stranger. Van edged away as the man reached for his collar, and bobbing his head with a side-long jerk, was off again down the road.
“Hey! Ketch that dawg!” shouted the grocery man, and the cry was taken up all along the street. Men, boys, and women all turned out to chase or head off the fugitive. Everybody was yelling: “Van! Van! here, you!” for the news of the runaway had been spread abroad in the village before his arrival. Never was dog soenthusiastically greeted by a whole village of entire strangers. Van smelled treachery.
A friendly gate stood open, and he dodged in to avoid a too eager boy. Down to the rear of the lot he raced. Alas! It ended it an open stable door. Here the breathless Stubbs pounced upon him, and he was captured.
“There, you little rascal, I’ve got you!” panted Stubbs. He was fat, and dog-catching is perspiring work. “You’ve given me a pretty chase, but you’ll be back at Trimble’s by night, I reckon.
“Now what did you run away for? Trimble’s a good fellow, and you hadn’t ought to give him trouble,—not to mention the shaking up you’ve give me. Come on, and we’ll get a chain on you, so we can keep you till Trimble gets here.”
Van kept very still. He was thinking what he should do next. He gave a little shudder when Stubbs said “chain.” He knew that word, and just what it meant.
Stubbs tucked him under his arm. This seemed like a very tractable dog indeed. Stubbs reached up to mop his bald head with his handkerchief.
Van felt the loosened tension, and with a sudden jerk backward, he wriggled out of the man’sarm, and out of his own collar. In a twinkling he was going like Time-on-a-holiday, westward. In a few minutes Main Street and his pretended friends were left far behind, and he was out in the open country.
All day he traveled—now fast, when the fear of capture spurred him; now slow, when his aching legs and muscles cried out to him. He was hungry and thirsty, but he dared not stop and beg a drink, for fear some one might catch him again. The sun was dropping behind the hills when he felt that he could not drag himself another foot. He was passing a tiny farmhouse hidden away in the hills. There was a delicious odor wafted to him, and he heard a suggestive, sizzling sound. He certainly could not resist that. Yet he dared not make a noise. He crouched by the gateway.
A little boy about Pete’s size, with the same blue eyes and tow hair, came up the road, driving a solitary cow. As he turned in at the gate, he almost stumbled over a poor, panting, tired little dog, who lay crumpled in a heap, with mouth agape, and dry tongue lolling from between his teeth. He wore no collar, and with the dust ofthe road soiling his white coat, no one would ever have suspected him to be a prince.
“Why, hello!” said the boy. “What you doin’ here? You look tired to death. Come here and speak to me.”
He held out his hand; but Van had been caught once that day, and lay still. He whined a little.
“You pore little tyke, I bet you’re hungry. Have you been runnin’ away? Now, see here, I ain’t goin’ to tell on ye, and ef you’ll stay right here I’ll bring ye half my supper.”
Van lay exhausted in the fence-corner, and presently the boy slipped out with a large slice of bread and butter, and a bit of bacon, and, best of all, a bowl of cold water.
Ah, but that water was good! Van lapped it thirstily, every drop. Then he fell upon the bacon and the bread and butter, as greedily as the veriest tramp that ever lived.
“My! Ye shore was hungry,” said the boy. “I’d git ye more ef I dasted to; anyways, ye won’t starve. Landy! I’d like to keep ye, but Pa wouldn’t let me. Anyways, ef ye’ll come with me, I’ll fix ye up a bed.”
Van followed the boy that looked like Peteinto a dilapidated barn. The boy doubled an old horse blanket in a corner of the hay-mow.
“Ye kin sleep there, and ye kin git out in the mornin’ through that busted board. There! Jinks! I wish’t you’d stay with me. I’d like to keep ye, awful. I wish’t Pa liked dawgs.”
Up in that hill-cabin home the little boy’s hungry heart yearned to the starved heart of the runaway Prince, and he stooped and kissed him. Then he drew away, as if ashamed, even in the dusk, of so silly an action, and went back to the house, trying to whistle.
Van slept without stirring, until the cold fingers of the dawn made him stretch his stiffened limbs, and realize that he was in a strange land, and that he must be getting on to his home on the Hill-Top. He stole out through the broken board, and was off in the gray of the morning, breakfastless but rested.
And it was westward ho! through the chilling mists, and westward ho! when the sun rose at his back to warm and cheer him. It was westward ho! when the sun shone high and hot above his head, and his mouth was dry and parched again,and his legs moved slowly and stiffly, as if he had aged ten years.
Now his road dropped suddenly over a hillside; down it wound and wound, till Van thought he would never reach the bottom that was hidden by the forest that bent over him on all sides. It was a wild, deep glen. But far below there was the sound of rushing, gurgling water!
He pricked up his drooping ears. A minute ago he had felt that he was like to die, but there was life calling to him again.
Above his head stretched a vast railway trestle, over which a train was crawling, with groans and screams of iron wheels on iron rails. That might be a wonderful thing to men, but nothing called to Van but the singing stream and his own Betsy.
He dropped down, down, to the lowest level of the gully, and stretched himself flat on the green moss, with his hot nose in the laughing water. Oh, it was good! He drank and drank till his thirsty body was satisfied, and his tongue grew cool, and like a real tongue, instead of like a slab of fire in his mouth. He drank till he wanted no more. Then he fell asleep on a heap of leaves, a long deep sleep.
All the afternoon he lay there. The sun set, the stars came out, and a little moon climbed high and looked down into the ravine; shining white on the heaving body of a lonely waif of a dog, collarless, homeless and piteous. The little moon traveled on and followed the sun over the hill, and out of sight. The stars grew pale and the dawn of another morning trembled in the forest aisles. Down along the stream lay a thick, icy fog, like a long roll of cotton batting.
Van, waking at last from that long sleep, looked out into the mist, dazed and lost and shivering. Slowly his senses came back to him. His stomach cried out to him that he had had nothing to eat since the night before last; his legs told him that they had carried him faithfully and far, but that they could not last forever; and then his homing instinct told him that he must cross that little roaring stream if he would follow the road that led across the world to his little mistress.
What mattered that old hatred of water now? In he plunged, and the rushing current carried his weak, struggling body far along before he could make the farther shore. But make it he did. He crawled up on a shelving curve, draggedhimself out, shook the water from his shivering sides, and started off on a run that warmed him and saved him from a chill.
The run changed to a weary plod before he reached the top of the ravine, but he kept on—westward, always westward! Wood, hill, valley, farm, forest again—he went by them with only one thought. On the road he picked up a crust of bread, dropped by some schoolboy, and devoured it greedily.
Through another town. Here he went warily, dodging everybody. He passed through safely, and journeyed on and on. If only his strength could last until he reached home!
There was another town ahead. He approached it cautiously. There was a something familiar about it. The streets had a smell that brought some memory to his numbing faculties.
Now, in the gathering twilight he found himself stumbling across a great bridge that spanned a wide, flowing river, and the lights of still another town fell down deep into its limpid depths like golden piles.
Ho, ho! Surely he had crossed that bridgebefore, in his wild wanderings of other days! Surely, surely! He went a little faster.
And now he knew—on the farther side lay his own home-town. It was a short half-hour’s run, when one was feeling fine, to the Hill-Top,—and HOME!
HOME! The thought spurred his lagging feet. Down through the dear old streets where he had often trotted so gaily went Van. He had no thought for them now. “Betsy! Betsy!” his heart breathed; and that alone kept him going.
An attendant from the Hospital noticed him and turned to watch him as he wavered out of sight.
“If that dog was fatter and pearter and cleaner and had a collar on, I’d say it was Van, even if I knew that he was in another part of the country.”
*****
Betsy sat on the steps of the honeysuckle porch in the soft May night, with the young moon silvering the glossy leaves around her. She was thinking of the changes that had come to her,—of the red house up in Wixon’s Hollow, now so far away. She wondered a little what had becomeof her father, but she did not trouble her soul very deeply; she remembered him only as one to dread and hide from. Then she thought of all that Aunt Kate had done to make her more like gentlefolk, of the lessons she had learned in the care of both soul and body.
Indeed, could she have compared her old self to the little white-clad figure with its soft halo of hair, its sweet fragrance of cleanliness, its childish grace and dignity, that had grown to be unconscious of itself, she would not have recognized the Betsy of two years ago. There was much yet to learn, but with so lovely a teacher as Aunt Kate, who could fail of doing her best?
Then she wondered how it fared with little Van. Would he come back from College like the knights of old from their quests, bearing a badge of honor? When would he come, and did he remember her and long for her as she longed for him? She sighed a bit of a sigh.
The sigh was echoed below her! She looked down, startled.
Something small and white dragged itself out of the dark, and stretched along the ground at her feet, flat, as if life had gone out of it.
Betsy stooped and touched it, once, then she gathered it in her arms.
Van opened his tired eyes, kissed Betsy’s thumb, said “Woof!” and settled back contentedly.
He was home again, and his college days were over!
*****
Out on the lawn a dark figure watched until the light flared up in Betsy’s room. Then the man shook his fist and muttered, as he slowly slouched away and disappeared in the night,
“Ef that cur hadn’t happened along, I’d ’a’ had her where she couldn’t holler. Courts, indeed! They’ve got me down here to try an’ prove that my own flesh and blood ain’t mine, an’ I can’t do what I choose with ’er. That Johns feller thinks he can rob me by proving that I ain’t fit. I’ll show him one thing I know about law.Possessionis nine points of the law, and I guess he’ll squirm when he finds that I’ve clinched the tenth point. I guess Bet’ll come down from her high horse a mite. I’ve waited about long enough. I’ll show ’em!”