  DON’T you remember when, your mother laughingly dissenting, your father said that you might have him, and with rapture in your heart and a broad smile on your face you went dancing through the town to get him? There was quite a family of them—the old mother dog and her four children. Of the puppies it was hard to tell which was the best; that is, hard for the disinterested observer. As for yourself, in the very incipiency of your hesitation something about one of the doggies appealed to you. Your eyes and hands wandered to the others, but invariably came back to him. With the mother anxiously yet proudly looking on, you picked him up in your glad young arms, and he cuddled and squirmed and licked your face; and in an instant the subtle bonds of chumship were sealed forever. You had chosen. “I guess I’ll take this one,” you said to the owner. And without again putting him down you carried him off, and home. How unhappy he appeared to be, during his first day in his new place! He whined and whimpered in his plaintive little tremolo, and although you thrust a pannikin of milk under his ridiculous nose, and playmates from far and near hastened over to inspect him and pay him tribute, he refused to be appeased. He simply squatted on his uncertain, wabbly haunches, and cried for “mama.” You fixed him an ideal nest in the barn; but it rather made your heart ache—with that vague ache of boyhood—to leave him there alone for the night, and you went back many times to induce him to feel better. Finally, you were withheld by your father’s: “Oh, I wouldn’t keep running out there so much, if I were you. Let him be, and pretty soon he’ll curl up and go to sleep.” Sure enough, his high utterances ceased, and nothing more emanated from him. Whereupon your respect for your father’s varied store of knowledge greatly increased. In the morning you hastened out before breakfast to assure yourself that your charge had survived the night; and you found that he had. He was all there, every ounce of him. What a wriggly, rolly, awkward lump of a pup he was, anyway! How enormous were his feet, how flapping his ears, how whip-like his tail, how unreliable his body, how erratic his legs! Yet he was pretty. He was positively beautiful. Your mother could not resist him. Can a woman resist anything that is young and helpless and soft and warm? With pictures in her mind of ruined flowers and chewed-up household furnishings, she gingerly stooped down to pet him; and at the touch of his silky coat she was captive. “Nice doggy!” she cooed. Upon which he ecstatically endeavored to swallow her finger, and smeared her slippers with his dripping mouth, and peace was established. Thereafter mother was his stoutest champion. The christening proved a matter requiring considerable discussion. When it comes right down to it, a name for a dog is a difficult proposition. It may be easy to name other persons’ dogs, but your own dog is different. Your father and mother, and even the hired girl, proposed names, all of which you rejected with scorn, until, suddenly, into existence popped a name which came like an old friend. You seized it, attached it to the pup, and it just fitted. No longer was he to be referred to as “it,” or “he,” or “the puppy.” He possessed a personality. The hired girl—and in those days there were more “hired girls” than “domestics”—was the last to yield to his sway. She did not like dogs or cats about the house; dogs caused extra-work, and cats got under foot. But upon about the third morning after his arrival you caught her surreptitiously throwing him a crust from among the table leavings that she was bearing to the alley; and you knew that he had won her. Aye, he had won her. You also found out that he much preferred a crust thus flung to him from the garbage to any carefully prepared mess of more wholesome food. Probably this subtle flattery pleased the girl, for although her grimness never vanished, once in a while you descried her smiling through it, in the course of a trip to the back fence while the puppy faithfully gamboled at her skirts in tumultuous expectation of another fall of manna. He grew visibly—like the seed planted by the Indian fakir. Enormous quantities of bread and milk he gobbled, always appearing in fear lest the supply should sink through the floor before he had eaten his fill. Between meals his body waned to ordinary size; but, mercy! what a transformation as he ate! At these times it swelled and swelled, until, the pan empty, the stomach full, its diameter far exceeded its length. However, there was a more permanent growth than this, as you discovered when you awoke to the fact that his collar was too tight for him. So you removed it, and in the interval between removing the old and getting the new properly engraved, his neck expanded fully an inch. The old collar would not meet around it when, as a test, you experimented. So good-by to the collar of puppyhood, and let a real dog’s collar dangle about his neck. The step marked the change from dresses to trousers. Not only bread and milk and other mushy non-stimulating stuff did he eat, but he ate, or tried to eat, everything else within his reach. Piece-meal, he ate most of the door-mat. He ate sticks of wood, both hard and soft, seemingly preferring a barrel-stave. He ate leaves, and stones, and lumps of dirt, and the heads off the double petunias and the geraniums. He ate a straw hat and a slipper. He attempted the broom and the clothes-line, the latter having upon it the week’s wash, thus adding to the completeness of the menu. In his fondness for using his uneasy teeth, new and sharp, he would have eaten you, did you not repeatedly wrest your anatomy from his tireless jaws. As it was, you bore over all your person, and particularly upon your hands and calves, the prints of his ravaging, omnivorous mouth. Your mother patiently darned your torn clothing, and submitted to having her own imperiled and her ankles nipped; while your father time and again gathered the scattered fragments of his evening paper, and from a patchwork strove to decipher the day’s news. And “Look at him, will you!” cried the hired girl, delighted, indicating him as he was industriously dragging her mop to cover. Well, like the storied peach, he “grew, and grew.” Speedily he was too large for you to hold in your arms, and although he insisted upon climbing into your lap, you could no more accommodate him there than you could a huge jellyfish. He kept slipping off, and was all legs. He fell ill. Ah, those days of his distemper were anxious days! He wouldn’t eat, and he wouldn’t play, and he wouldn’t do anything except lie and feebly wag his tail, and by his dumbness place upon you the terrible burden of imagining his condition inside. Here came to the rescue the old gardener,—Uncle Pete, black as the ace of spades,—who gave you the prescription of a nauseous yet simple remedy which you were compelled lovingly and apologetically to administer three times a day; and behold, the patient was cured. You didn’t blame him any for rising from his bed; and you wouldn’t have blamed him any for cherishing against you a strong antipathy, in memory of what you forced down his throat. But he loved you just as much as ever. Now he developed roaming propensities, which took the form of foraging expeditions. Once he brought back a five-pound roast of beef, his head high in the air, and buried it in the garden. Diligent inquiry exposed the fact that the beef had been intended by a neighbor for a dinner for a family of six, and for subsequent relays of hash, etc. Your mother, with profuse apologies, promptly sent over a substitute roast, the original being badly disfigured. Upon another occasion he conveyed into the midst of a group consisting of your mother and father, and the minister, guest of honor, sitting on the front porch, a headless chicken, still quivering. You were commanded to return the fowl, if you could; and after making a canvass of the neighborhood you found a man who, having decapitated a choice pullet, and having turned for an instant to secure a pan of hot water, was mystified, upon again approaching the block, to see, in all his level back yard, not a vestige, save the head, of the feathered victim. When you restored to him his property, he laughed, but not as if he enjoyed it. Along with his foraging bent, the dog acquired a passion for digging. One day he accidentally discovered that he could dig, and forthwith he reveled in his new power. Huge holes marked where he had investigated flower-beds or had insanely tried to tunnel under the house. He grew in spirit as well as in stature. He had his first fight, and was victorious, and for days and days went around with a chip on his shoulder, which several lickings by bigger dogs did not entirely remove. Out of that first fight and the ensuing responsibility of testing the mettle of every canine whom he encountered came dignity, poise, and courage. His puppy days were over. He had arrived at doghood. What sweet years followed! It was you and the dog, the dog and you, one and inseparable. When you whistled, he came. All the blows you gave him for his misdemeanors could not an iota influence him against you. Other comrades might desert you for rivals of the moment, but the dog never! To him you were supreme. You were at once his crony and his god. When you went upon an errand, the dog was with you. When you went fishing or swimming or rambling, the dog was with you. When you had chores to do, the dog was your comfort; and when you were alone after dark he was your protection. With him in the room or by your side you were not afraid. When you had been away for a short time, who so rejoiced at your return as the dog? Who so overwhelmed you with caresses? Not even your mother, great as was her love for you. Did you want to frolic? The dog was ready. Did you want to mope? He would mope, too. He was your twin self, and never failed. The sun and you were up together on that summer morning, and the dog joined you as soon as you threw open the barn door. Almost you had caught him in bed, but not quite, although he had not had time to shake himself, and thus make his toilet. Intuition told him that such an early awakening meant for him a day’s outing, and he leaped and barked and wagged his glee. You worked with a will, and when the hired girl summoned you to breakfast the kitchen wood-box had been filled, and all the other jobs laid out for you had been performed, and you were waiting. So was the dog, but not for breakfast. He was waiting for you. How he gobbled down the scraps constituting his meal; never pausing to chew, and frequently desisting in operations in order to run around the house and investigate lest, by hook or crook, you might be slipping off without his knowledge! Now your boy companion’s whistle sounded in front; and hastily swallowing your last mouthfuls, disregarding your mother’s implorations to “eat a little more,” with the paper packages containing your lunch of bread and butter and sugar and two hard-boiled eggs stuffed into your pockets, sling-shot in hand, out you scampered; and the dog was there before you. Along the street you, gaily hied, the three of you, until the over-arching, dew-drenched elms and maples ended, and the board walk ended, and you were in the country. Civilization was behind you; all the world of field and wood was ahead. Don’t you remember how balmy was the air that wafted from the pastures where the meadow larks piped and the bobolinks rioted and gurgled? Don’t you remember how the blackbirds trilled in the willows, and the flicker screamed in the cottonwoods? Don’t you remember how you tried fruitless shots with your catapult, and how the dog vainly raced for the gophers as he sped like mad far and wide? Of course you do. The morning through you trudge, buoyant and tireless and fancy-free; fighting Indians and bears and wildcats at will, yet still unscathed; roving up hill and down again, scaling cliffs and threading valleys, essaying perilous fords, and bursting the jungles of raspberry-bushes; and you guess at noon, and sprawl in the shade, beside the creek, to devour your provisions. During the morning, some of the time you have seen the dog, and some of the time you have not. Where you have covered miles he has covered leagues, and more than leagues; for a half-hour he will have disappeared entirely, then, suddenly, right athwart your path he hustles past, in his orbit, as though to let you know that he is hovering about. While you are eating, here he comes. He seats himself expectantly before you, with lolling tongue, and gulps half a slice of bread, and looks for more. A dog’s only selfishness is his appetite. He will freeze for you, drown for you, risk himself in a hundred ways for you, but in the matter of food he will seize what he can get and all he can get, and you must take care of yourself. The lunch is finished, and the dog, after sniffing for the crumbs, sinks down with his nose between his paws, to indulge in forty uneasy winks until you indicate what is to be the next event upon your program. Presently, however, with a little whine of restlessness, he is off. You are off, too. It is the noon siesta. The air is sluggish. The birds and the squirrels have relaxed, and the woods are subdued. The strident scrape of the locusts rises and falls, and the distant shouts of men in harvest-fields float in upon your ear. You are burning hot; but the water of the creek is cool—the only cool thing in your landscape. A swim, a swim! Your whole being demands that you go in swimming. The dog already has been in a number of times, as his wet coat has evidenced. Feverishly following the winding stream, envying the turtles as they plunge in, upon your approach, you arrive at a bend where the banks are high, and the current, swinging against them, halts and forms an eddy. Here the depths are still and dark and beckoning. To strip those smothering garments from your sunburnt body is the work of but an instant, and in you souse, not without some misgiving as to possible water-snakes and snapping turtles, but spurred by a keen rivalry as to which shall “wet over” the first. Oh, the glorious, vivifying thrill that permeates you as you part the waters! The dog again! From the bank he surveys the proceedings with mingled curiosity and apprehension, and finally, with a whine of excitement, dashes into the shallows and makes for your side. You are neck-deep, and he is swimming. His hair feels queer and clammy against your skin, and his distended claws raise a welt upon your bare shoulder as he affectionately tries to climb on top of you. You duck him, and grab at his tail; and convinced that you are in no immediate danger, he plows for the shore, where he contents himself with barking at you. Despite the dog’s remonstrances and entreaties, you sported in that blissful spot until the sun was well down the west; now you frolicked in the cool eddy, now you dabbled amid the ripples of the shoals just below, and now you dawdled on the warm, turfy banks. The dog stretched himself by your clothing and went to sleep. At length, with blue lips and chattering teeth, and a ring of mud encircling your mouth, marking where years later the badge of manhood would appear, you donned your clothes, and, weak but peaceful, to the rapture of the dog started homeward. He did not know that you were going home. When you had left home in the morning he did not know that you were coming here. He did not care then; and he does not care now. You are doing something, and he is a partner in it; and that is sufficient. Homeward, homeward, through woods and across meadows where the birds were gathering their evening store and voicing their praises and thanks because the sun had been so good. Homeward, homeward, not talking so much as when your faces were turned the other way, not frisking so much as formerly, and with the dog trotting soberly near your heels. You were dead tired, the three of you. When you were about a block from the house, the dog pricked up his ears and trotted ahead, to wait for you at the gate. While you ate your supper he slept on the back porch; and after his own supper he slinked straight into the barn, to bed. And soon, he in his nest up-stairs in the barn, you in your nest up-stairs in the house, alike you were slumbering; for neither could possibly sleep sounder than the other. Years sped by, and the dog remained an integral part of the household. Such a quaint, quizzical, knowing old chap, with an importance ridiculous yet not unwarranted, with an individuality all his own, thoroughly doggish, but well-nigh human. He was affectionate toward the rest of the family, but you he adored. He might occasionally bluffly growl at others, but never at you. You could make him do anything, anything. To him you were perfect, omnipotent, and with you at hand he was happy. You emerged from the grammar school into the high school. Then arrived that summer when you went to visit your aunt and uncle, and stayed three weeks. You remember the visit, don’t you? And when you disembarked at the station on your return, and your mother was there to meet you, even while kissing her you looked for the dog. “Where’s Don?” you asked. “Why, John,” reproved your mother, as so often she had jokingly done before, “do you think more of seeing your dog than of seeing me?” This silenced you. But when you had entered the yard, and next the house, ungreeted by the familiar rush and volley of barks, you were impelled to inquire again: “Where is Don, mother?” Mother put her arm around you, and laid her lips to your forehead; and even before she spoke you felt what was coming. “Johnny dear, you never will see Don any more,” she said; and she held you close while you sobbed out your first real grief upon her breast. When you could listen she told you all—how they had found him, lifeless, where he had crawled under the porch; how they had buried him, decently and tenderly, where you might see his grave and put up a headboard; how they had kept the news from you, so that your visit should not be spoiled; and how, all the way from the depot, her heart had ached for you. Thus the dog vanished from your daily life, and for weeks the house and yard seemed very strange without him. Then, gradually, the feeling that you were to come upon him unexpectedly around some corner wore off. You grew reconciled. But to this day you are constantly encountering him in dreamland. He hasn’t changed, and in his sight apparently you haven’t changed. You are once more boy and dog together. This leads you to hope and to trust—indeed, to believe—that, notwithstanding your mother’s gentle admonition, you will see him again, in fact as well as fancy, after all. IN THE ARENA “‘WE GOT EACH OTHER DOWN’” |
|
