Chapter III (5)

It had never struck us like that before. Instead of being famous like we had thought, here we were actually being laughed at again! Squint, he gritted his teeth, and I knew all the rankling that he had done inside of him was as nothing to the rankling that he was doing now. So that night we put up some more notices around town, which read as follows:

_n. B.--take notus! we didunt reely Expect money for Old Bill Patterson, we onely done that to show this town Is in Our Power. Take warning and pay Up the next will be a rich one or his child._

--_kidnappers._

That really made folks pretty serious, that notice. There was a piece in a Chicago paper about the things that had happened in our town. The piece told a lot of things that never had happened, but when the papers came down from Chicago and they all read it the whole town began to get worse and worse excited. And about that time we began to get scared ourselves. For there was talk of sending off to Chicago and getting a detective. People were frightened about their kids, too. It kept getting harder and harder for us to get out to the cave to guard Bill. Not that he needed much guarding, either; for he was having the time of his life out there, eating and sleeping and not working at anything else. It had been years since he had struck any kind of work that suited him as well as being kidnapped did; if we hadn't been so worried it would have been a pleasure to us to see how happy and contented we were making him; he acted like he had found the real job in life that he had always been looking for, and the only thing that bothered him at all was when he recollected about that ransom and got afraid the town would pay it and end his snap. But mostly he didn't bother about anything; for his recollection was only by fits and starts; yesterday was just as far off to him as a year ago. The second day he was there he did get a little grouchy because he had been without anything to drink for so long. But that night someone broke into the saloon and stole a lot of quart bottles of whiskey; about a bushel of them, it was said. We didn't suspect it was Bill, right at first, for he was foxy enough to keep it hid from us; and when we did know we didn't dare say anything! That whiskey was the one thing Bill had lacked to make him completely happy. But the theft worked in a way that increased our troubles. For it showed people that the mysterious gang was still hanging around waiting to strike a desperate stroke. And the very next night a store was broken into and some stuff stolen. It wasn't Bill, but I suppose some tramp that was hanging around; but it helped to stir things up worse and worse. So we decided that we had better turn Bill loose. We held a meeting out by the cave, and then Squint told him:

“Prisoner, you are at liberty!”

“What d'ye mean by that?” says Bill. “You ain't goin' back on me, are ye?”

“Yonder town has been punished enough,” says Squint. “Go free--we strike your shackles off!”

“But see here,” says Bill, “wasn't I kidnapped reg'lar? Ain't I been a model prisoner?”

“But we're through with you, Bill,” we told him. “Don't you understand?”

Bill allowed it was a mean trick we were playing on him; he said he had thought we were his friends, and that he'd done his best to give satisfaction in the place, and here we were, firing him, as you might say, without any warning, or giving him any chance to get another job like it, or even telling him where he had failed to make good, and then he snuffled like he was going to cry, and said: “That's a great way to treat an honest workin'-man, that is! An' they call this a free country, too!”

But Squint, while expressing sorrow that we should have raised any false hopes, was firm with him, too. “You take the rest of that whiskey and chase along, now, Bill,” he said, “you aren't kidnapped any more.”

But Bill flared up at that. “I ain't, ain't I?” he said. “Yer a liar! I was kidnapped fair and square; kidnapped I be, and kidnapped I stay! I'll show you blamed little cheats whether I'm kidnapped or not, I will!”

He took a chew of tobacco and sat down on a log, and studied us, looking us over real sullen and spiteful. “Now, then,” he says, finally, “if you young smart alecs think you can treat a free man that-a-way yer dern fools. I got the law on to my side, I have. Do you think I don't know that? Mebby you boys don't know ye could go to jail for kidnappin' an honest work-in'-man? Well, ye could, if it was found out on ye. It's a crime, that's what it is, and ye could go to jail for it. You treat Old Bill fair and square and keep friends with him, and he won't tell on you; but the minute I hear any more talk about bein' set at liberty I'll tell on ye, and to jail you goes. I'm mighty comfortable where I be, and I ain't goin' to be turned out.”

We all looked at each other, and then we looked away again, and our hearts sank. For each one read in his neighbour's eyes (as Squint said later) what his doom might well be.

“Kidnapped I be,” says Bill again, very rough and decided, “and kidnapped I stay. And what's more, I want chicken for supper to-night. I ain't had no chicken for quite a spell. You can wake me up when supper's ready.” And he went into the cave and lay down for a nap.

We were in his power, and he knew it!

We had to steal that chicken, and it went against the grain to do it. It was the first time in its career of crime the Dalton Gang had ever actually stolen anything. Except, of course, watermelons and such truck, which isn't really stealing. And except the ice cream from the Methodist lawn sociable, which was for revenge and as a punishment on the Sunday School, and so not really stealing, either.

Things got worse and worse. For Bill, he kept us on the jump. He got to wanting more and more different things to eat, and was more and more particular about the cooking. He wouldn't lift a hand for himself, not even to fill and light his own pipe. We waited on him hand and foot, all day long. And first he would take a fancy for a mess of squirrels, and then he would want pigeons; and we had to take turns fanning the flies off of him when he wanted to take a nap. Once he told a story, and we all laughed at it; and that gave him the idea he was a great story teller; and he would tell foolish yarns by the hour and get sulky if we didn't laugh. We got so we would do anything to keep him in a good humour. We had a lot of Indian stories and Old Sleuths out to the cave, and he made us take turns reading to him. That good-for-nothing loafer turned into a regular king, and we were his slaves.

Between sneaking out there to keep him happy and contented and rustling up grub for him, and thinking all the time we would be arrested the next minute, and wanting to confess and not daring to, we all got right nervous. Then there was a man came to town who didn't tell what his business was the first day he was there, and we were right sure he was a detective. He passed right by the cave one day, and we hugged the ground behind the bushes and didn't dare breathe. It turned out afterward he was only looking at some land he was figuring on buying. But that night I dreamed that that man arrested me; and I was being sent to jail when I waked up screaming out something about kidnapping. I heard my Pa say to my Ma, after they had got me quieted down:

“Poor little fellow! He thought he was kidnapped! No wonder he is afraid, the state this whole town is in. If those desperadoes are caught, they'll go to the pen for a good long term: nothing on earth can save 'em from a Bureau county jury.”

Then he went back into his room and went to sleep; but I didn't go to sleep. What he had said didn't make me feel sleepy. I slipped out of bed and prayed enough that night to make up for the times I had forgot it lately; and the next day the rest of the Dalton Gang admitted they had prayed some, too.

But the worst of all was when Bill made friends with the tramp. Squint and I went out to the cave one morning to get Bill's breakfast for him, and as we got near we heard two sets of snores. Bill's snore you could tell a long way off, he sort of gargled his snores and they ended up with kind of a choke and an explosion. But the other snore was more of a steady whistling sound. We ran across the fellow sudden, and it like to have frightened us out of a year's growth. He was lying just inside the cave with his hat pulled over his face, but he was snoring with one eye open. It peered out from under the brim of his hat; it was half-hidden, but it was open all right, and it was staring straight at us. It wasn't human; no one with good intentions would lie there like that and snore like he was asleep and watch folks at the same time on the sly. We couldn't even run; we stood there with that regular see-saw snore coming and going, and that awful eye burning into the centres of our souls, as Squint says later, and thought our end had come. But he waked up and opened the other eye, and then we saw the first one was glass and he hadn't meant any harm by it. He was right sorry he'd scared us, he said; but we'd have to get used to that eye, for _he_ allowed he was kidnapped, too. It was two days before he quit being our captive and left, and they are among the saddest days I ever spent.

He left because Bill's whiskey was gone; and the afternoon he left, Bill was helpless. When we saw Bill in that fix it gave us an idea how to get rid of him. That night he was still weak and easy to handle. So we slipped the handcuffs on him and took him back and locked him into the calaboose again. Then we put signs and notices around town that read this way:

_Ha Ha Ha_

_Did you ever get left! this town joshed me for years but I have got even--the joke is on to you--I wasn't kidnapped a tall--who is the suckers now?_

_Bill Patterson._

And that town was so mad that when they found Bill in the jail again there was talk of handling him pretty rough. But it all turned into josh. Bill, when he woke up in the calaboose, thought he had just had a dream at first, and denied he had ever been absent. Then when he saw they all took him for a deep joker he began to act like he was a joker. And before long he got to thinking he really had played that trick on the town. When they used to ask him how on earth he got into and out of the calaboose without the keys, he would wink very mysterious, and look important, and nod and chuckle to himself and say that was the best part of the joke and he intended to keep it to himself.

But one day when he was almost sober he saw Squint and me on the street and stared at us long and hard like he was trying to recollect something, and scratched his head and said: “You boys didn't always used to live in this town, did you?”

“Uh-huh,” says I.

“That's funny,” says Bill, “I could have swore you was boys I once knowed a long ways off from here that time I was on my travels.”

BLOOD WILL TELL (As told by the dog)

I am a middle-sized dog, with spots on me here and there, and several different colours of hair mixed in even where there aren't any spots, and my ears are frazzled a little on the ends where they have been chewed in fights.

At first glance you might not pick me for an aristocrat. But I am one. I was considerably surprised when I discovered it, as nothing in my inmost feelings up to that time, nor in the treatment which I had received from dogs, humans or boys, had led me to suspect it.

I can well remember the afternoon on which the discovery was made. A lot of us dogs were lying in the grass, up by the swimming hole, just lazying around, and the boys were doing the same. All the boys were naked and comfortable, and no humans were about, the only thing near being a cow or two and some horses, and although large they are scarcely more human than boys. Everybody had got tired of swimming, and it was too hot to drown out gophers or fight bumblebees, and the boys were smoking grapevine cigarettes and talking.

Us dogs was listening to the boys talk. A Stray Boy, which I mean one not claimed or looked out for or owned by any dog, says to Freckles Watson, who is my boy:

“What breed would you call that dog of yours, Freck?”

I pricked up my ears at that. I cannot say that I had ever set great store by breeds up to the time that I found out I was an aristocrat myself, believing, as Bill Patterson, a human and the town drunkard, used to say when intoxicated, that often an honest heart beats beneath the outcast's ragged coat.

“Spot ain't any _one_ particular breed,” says Freckles. “He's considerably mixed.”

“He's a mongrel,” says Squint Thompson, who is Jack Thompson's boy.

“He ain't,” says Freckles, so huffy that I saw a mongrel must be some sort of a disgrace. “You're a link, link liar, and so's your Aunt Mariar,” says Freckles.

I thought there might be a fight then, but it was too hot for any enjoyment in a fight, I guess, for Squint let it pass, only saying, “I ain't got any Aunt Mariar, and you're another.”

“A dog,” chips in the Stray Boy, “has either got to be a thoroughbred or a mongrel. He's either an aristocrat or else he's a common dog.”

“Spot ain't any common dog,” says Freckles, sticking up for me. “He can lick any dog in town within five pounds of his weight.”

“He's got some spaniel in him,” says the Stray Boy.

“His nose is pointed like a hound's nose,” says Squint Thompson.

“Well,” says Freckles, “neither one of them kind of dogs is a common dog.”

“Spot has got some bulldog blood in him, too,” says Tom Mulligan, an Irish boy owned by a dog by the name of Mutt Mulligan. “Did you ever notice how Spot will hang on so you can't pry him loose, when he gets into a fight?”

“That proves he is an aristocratic kind of dog,” says Freckles.

“There's some bird dog blood in Spot,” says the Stray Boy, sizing me up careful.

“He's got some collie in him, too,” says Squint Thompson. “His voice sounds just like a collie's when he barks.”

“But his tail is more like a coach dog's tail,” says Tom Mulligan.

“His hair ain't, though,” says the Stray Boy. “Some of his hair is like a setter's.”

“His teeth are like a mastiff's,” says Mutt Mulligan's boy Tom. And they went on like that; I never knew before there were so many different kinds of thoroughbred dog. Finally Freckles says:

“Yes, he's got all them different kinds of thoroughbred blood in him, and he's got other kinds you ain't mentioned and that you ain't slick enough to see. You may think you're running him down, but what you say just _proves_ he ain't a common dog.”

I was glad to hear that. It was beginning to look to me that they had a pretty good case for me being a mongrel.

“How does it prove it?” asked the Stray Boy.

“Well,” says Freckles, “you know who the King of Spain is, don't you?”

They said they'd heard of him from time to time.

“Well,” says Freckles, “if you were a relation of the King of Spain you'd be a member of the Spanish royal family. You fellows may not know that, but you would. You'd be a swell, a regular high-mucky-muck.”

They said they guessed they would.

“Now, then,” says Freckles, “if you were a relation to the King of Switzerland, too, you'd be just _twice_ as swell, wouldn't you, as if you were only related to one royal family? Plenty of people are related to just _one_ royal family.”

Tom Mulligan butts in and says that way back, in the early days, his folks was the Kings of Ireland; but no one pays any attention.

“Suppose, then, you're a cousin of the Queen of England into the bargain and your grand-dad was King of Scotland, and the Prince of Wales and the Emperor of France and the Sultan of Russia and the rest of those royalties were relations of yours, wouldn't all that royal blood make you _twenty times_ as much of a high-mucky-muck as if you had just _one_ measly little old king for a relation?”

The boys had to admit that it would.

“You wouldn't call a fellow with all that royal blood in him a _mongrel_, would you?” says Freckles. “You bet your sweet life you wouldn't! A fellow like that is darned near on the level with a congressman or a vicepresident. Whenever he travels around in the old country they turn out the brass band; and the firemen and the Knights of Pythias and the Modern Woodmen parade, and the mayor makes a speech, and there's a picnic and firecrackers, and he gets blamed near anything he wants. People kow-tow to him, just like they do to a swell left-handed pitcher or a champion prizefighter. If you went over to the old country and called a fellow like that a mongrel, and it got out oh you, you would be sent to jail for it.”

Tom Mulligan says yes, that is so; his grand-dad came to this country through getting into some kind of trouble about the King of England, and the King of England ain't anywhere near as swell as the fellow Freckles described, nor near so royal, neither.

“Well, then,” says Freckles, “it's the same way with my dog, Spot, here. _Any_ dog can be full of just _one_ kind of thoroughbred blood. That's nothing! But Spot here has got more different kinds of thoroughbred blood in him than any dog you ever saw. By your own say-so he has. He's got _all_ kinds of thoroughbred blood in him. If there's any kind he ain't got, you just name it, will you?”

“He ain't got any Great Dane in him,” yells the Stray Boy, hating to knuckle under.

“You're a liar, he has, too,” says Freckles.

The Stray Boy backed it, and there was a fight. All us dogs and boys gathered around in a ring to watch it, and I was more anxious than anybody else. For the way that fight went, it was easy to see, would decide what I was.

Well, Freckles licked that Stray Boy, and rubbed his nose in the mud, and that's how I come to be an aristocrat.

Being an aristocrat may sound easy. And it may look easy to outsiders. And it may really be easy for them that are used to it. But it wasn't easy for _me_. It came on me suddenly, the knowledge that I was one, and without warning. I didn't have any time to practise up being one. One minute I wasn't one, and the next minute I was; and while, of course, I felt important over it, there were spells when I would get kind of discouraged, too, and wish I could go back to being a common dog again. I kept expecting my tastes and habits to change. I watched and waited for them to. But they didn't. No change at all set in on me. But I had to pretend I was changed. Then I would get tired of pretending, and be down-hearted about the whole thing, and say to myself: “There has been a mistake. I am _not_ an aristocrat after all.”

I might have gone along like that for a long time, partly in joy over my noble birth, and partly in doubt, without ever being certain, if it had not been for a happening which showed, as Freckles said, that blood will tell.

It happened the day Wilson's World's Greatest One Ring Circus and Menagerie came to our town. Freckles and me, and all the other dogs and boys, and a good many humans, too, followed the street parade around through town and back to the circus lot. Many went in, and the ones that didn't have any money hung around outside a while and explained to each other they were going at night, because a circus is more fun at night anyhow. Freckles didn't have any money, but his dad was going to take him that night, so when the parade was over, him and me went back to his dad's drug store on Main Street, and I crawled under the soda-water counter to take a nap.

Freckles's dad, that everyone calls Doc Watson, is a pretty good fellow for a human, and he doesn't mind you hanging around the store if you don't drag bones in or scratch too many fleas off. So I'm there considerable in right hot weather. Under the soda water counter is the coolest place for a dog in the whole town. There's a zinc tub under there always full of water, where Doc washes the soda-water glasses, and there's always considerable water slopped on to the floor. It's damp and dark there always. Outdoors it may be so hot in the sun that your tongue hangs out of you so far you tangle your feet in it, but in under there you can lie comfortable and snooze, and when you wake up and want a drink there's the tub with the glasses in it. And flies don't bother you because they stay on top of the counter where soda water has been spilled.

Circus day was a hot one, and I must have drowsed off pretty quick after lying down. I don't know how long I slept, but when I waked up it was with a start, for something important was going on outside in Main Street. I could hear people screaming and swearing and running along the wooden sidewalk, and horses whinnying, and dogs barking, and old Si Emery, the city marshal, was yelling out that he was an officer of the law, and the steam whistle on the flour mill was blowing. And it all seemed to be right in front of our store. I was thinking I'd better go out and see about it, when the screen doors crashed like a runaway horse had come through them, and the next minute a big yellow dog was back of the counter, trying to scrouch down and scrooge under it like he was scared and was hiding. He backed me into the corner without seeing me or knowing I was there, and like to have squashed me.

No dog--and it never struck me that maybe this wasn't a dog--no dog can just calmly sit down on me like that when I'm waking up from a nap, and get away with it, no matter _how_ big he is, and in spite of the darkness under there I could see and feel that this was the biggest dog in the world. I had been dreaming I was in a fight, anyhow, when he crowded in there with his hindquarters on top of me, and I bit him on the hind leg.

When I bit him he let out a noise like a thrashing machine starting up. It wasn't a bark. Nothing but the end of the world coming could bark like that. It was a noise more like I heard one time when the boys dared Freckles to lie down between the cattle guards on the railroad track and let a train run over him about a foot above his head, and I laid down there with him and it nearly deefened both of us. When he let out that noise I says to myself, “Great guns! What kind of a dog have I bit?”

And as he made that noise he jumped, and over went the counter, marble top and all, with a smash, and jam into the show window he went, with his tail swinging, and me right after him, practically on top of him. It wasn't that I exactly intended to chase him, you understand, but I was rattled on account of that awful noise he had let out, and I wanted to get away from there, and I went the same way he did. So when he bulged through the window glass on to the street I bulged right after him, and as he hit the sidewalk I bit him again. The first time I bit him because I was sore, but the second time I bit him because I was so nervous I didn't know what I was doing, hardly. And at the second bite, without even looking behind him, he jumped clean over the hitch rack and a team of horses in front of the store and landed right in the middle of the road with his tail between his legs.

And then I realized for the first time he wasn't a dog at all. He was the circus lion.

Mind you, I'm not saying that I would have bit him at all if I'd a-known at the start he was a lion.

And I ain't saying I _wouldn't_ 'a' bit him, either.

But actions speak louder than words, and records are records, and you can't go back on them, and the fact is I _did_ bite him. I bit him twice.

And that second bite, when we came bulging through the window together, the whole town saw. It was getting up telephone poles, and looking out of second-story windows, and crawling under sidewalks and into cellars, and trying to hide behind the town pump; but no matter where it was trying to get to, it had one eye on that lion, and it saw me chasing him out of that store. I don't say I would have chased him if he hadn't been just ahead of me, anyhow, and I don't say I wouldn't have chased him, but the facts are I _did_ chase him.

The lion was just as scared as the town--and the town was so scared it didn't know the lion was scared at all--and when his trainer got hold of him in the road he was tickled to death to be led back to his cage, and he lay down in the far corner of it, away from the people, and trembled till he shook the wagon it was on.

But if there was any further doubts in any quarter about me being an aristocrat, the way I bit and chased that lion settled 'em forever. That night Freckles and Doc went to the circus, and I marched in along with them. And every kid in town, as they saw Freckles and me marching in, says:

“There goes the dog that licked the lion!”

And Freckles, every time any one congratulated him on being the boy that belonged to that kind of a dog, would say:

“Blood will tell! Spot's an aristocrat, he is.”

And him and me and Doc Watson, his dad, stopped in front of the lion's cage that night and took a good long look at him. He was a kind of an old moth-eaten lion, but he was a lion all right, and he looked mighty big in there. He looked so big that all my doubts come back on me, and I says to myself: “Honest, now, if I'd _a-known_ he was a lion, and that _big_ a lion, when I bit him, _would_ I have bit him or would I not?”

But just then Freckles reached down and patted me on the head and said: “You wasn't afraid of him, was you, old Spot! Yes, sir, blood will tell!”

BEING A PUBLIC CHARACTER (As told by the dog)

Ever since I bit a circus lion, believing him to be another dog like myself, only larger, I have been what Doc Watson calls a Public Character in our town.

Freckles, my boy, was a kind of a public character, too. He went around bragging about my noble blood and bravery, and all the other boys and dogs in town sort of looked up to him and thought how lucky he was to belong to a dog like me. And he deserved whatever glory he got of it, Freckles did. For, if I do say it myself, there's not a dog in town got a better boy than my boy Freckles, take him all in all. I'll back him against any dog's boy that is anywhere near his size, for fighting, swimming, climbing, foot-racing, or throwing stones farthest and straightest. Or I'll back him against any stray boy, either.

Well, some dogs may be born Public Characters, and like it. And some may be brought up to like it. I've seen dogs in those travelling Uncle Tom's Cabin shows that were so stuck on themselves they wouldn't hardly notice us town dogs. But with me, becoming a Public Character happened all in a flash, and it was sort of hard for me to get used to it. One day I was just a private kind of a dog, as you might say, eating my meals at the Watson's back door, and pretending to hunt rats when requested, and not scratching off too many fleas in Doc Watson's drug store, and standing out from underfoot when told, and other unremarkable things like that. And the next day I had bit that lion and was a Public Character, and fame came so sudden I scarcely knew how to act.

Even drummers from big places like St. Louis and Chicago would come into the drug store and look at my teeth and toe nails, as if they must be different from other dogs' teeth and toe nails. And people would come tooting up to the store in their little cars, and get out and look me over and say:

“Well, Doc, what'll you take for him?” and Doc would wink, and say:

“He's Harold's dog. You ask Harold.”

Which Harold is Freckles's other name. But any boy that calls him Harold outside of the schoolhouse has got a fight on his hands, if that boy is anywhere near Freckles's size. Harry goes, or Hal goes, but Harold is a fighting word with Freckles. Except, of course, with grown people. I heard him say one day to Tom Mulligan, his parents thought Harold was a name, or he guessed they wouldn't have given it to him; but it wasn't a name, it was a handicap.

Freckles would always say, “Spot ain't for sale.” And even Heinie Hassenyager, the butcher, got stuck on me after I got to be a Public Character. Heinie would come two blocks up Main Street with lumps of Hamburg steak, which is the kind someone has already chewed for you, and give them to me. Steak, mind you, not old gristly scraps. And before I became a Public Character Heinie even grudged me the bones I would drag out of the box under his counter when he wasn't looking.

My daily hope was that I could live up to it all. I had always tried, before I happened to bite that lion, to be a friendly kind of a dog toward boys and humans and dogs, all three. I'd always been expected to do a certain amount of tail-wagging and be friendly. But as soon as I got to be a Public Character, I saw right away I wasn't expected to be _too_ friendly any more. So, every now and then, I'd growl a little, for no reason at all. A dog that has bit a lion is naturally expected to have fierce thoughts inside of him; I could see that. And you have got to act the way humans expect you to act, if you want to slide along through the world without too much trouble.

So when Heinie would bring me the ready-chewed steak I'd growl at him a little bit. And then I'd bolt and gobble the steak like I didn't think so derned much of it, after all, and was doing Heinie a big personal favour to eat it. And now and then I'd pretend I wasn't going to eat a piece of it unless it was chewed finer for me, and growl at him about that.

That way of acting made a big hit with Heinie, too. I could see that he was honoured and flattered because I didn't go any further than just a growl. It gave him a chance to say he knew how to manage animals. And the more I growled, the more steak he brought. Everybody in town fed me. I pretty near ate myself to death for a while there, besides all the meat I buried back of Doc Watson's store to dig up later.

But my natural disposition is to be friendly. I would rather be loved than feared, which is what Bill Patterson, the village drunkard, used to say. When they put him into the calaboose every Saturday afternoon he used to look out between the bars on the back window and talk to the boys and dogs that had gathered round and say that he thanked them one and all for coming to an outcast's dungeon as a testimonial of affection, and he would rather be loved than feared. And my natural feelings are the same. I had to growl and keep dignified and go on being a Public Character, but often I would say to myself that it was losing me all my real friends, too.

The worst of it was that people, after a week or so, began to expect me to pull something else remarkable. Freckles, he got up a circus, and charged pins and marbles, and cents when he found any one that had any, to get into it, and I was the principal part of that circus. I was in a cage, and the sign over me read:

SPOT, THE DOG THAT LICKED A LION

TEN PINS ADMITTION

To feed the lion-eater, one cent or two white chiney marbles extry but bring your own meat.

Pat him once on the head twinty pins, kids under five not allowed to.

For shaking hands with Spot the lion-eater, girls not allowed, gents three white chinies, or one aggie marble.

Lead him two blocks down the street and back, one cent before starting, no marbles or pins taken for leading him.

For sicking him on to cats three cents or one red cornelian marble if you furnish the cat. Five cents to use Watson's cat. Watson's biggest Tom-cat six cents must be paid before sicking. Small kids and girls not allowed to sick him on cats.

Well, we didn't take in any cat-sicking money. And it was just as well. You never can tell what a cat will do. But Freckles put it in because it sounded sort of fierce. I didn't care for being caged and circused that way myself. And it was right at that circus that considerable trouble started.

Seeing me in a cage like that, all famoused-up, with more meat poked through the slats than two dogs could eat, made Mutt Mulligan and some of my old friends jealous.

Mutt, he nosed up by the cage and sniffed. I nosed a piece of meat out of the cage to him. Mutt grabbed it and gobbled it down, but he didn't thank me any. Mutt, he says:

“There's a new dog down town that says he blew in from Chicago. He says he used to be a Blind Man's Dog on a street corner there. He's a pretty wise dog, and he's a right ornery-looking dog, too. He's peeled considerably where he has been bit in fights.”

“Well, Mutt,” says I, “as far as that goes I'm peeled considerable myself where I've been bit in fights.”

“I know you are, Spot,” says Mutt. “You don't need to tell me that. I've peeled you some myself from time to time.”

“Yes,” I says, “you did peel me some, Mutt. And I've peeled you some, too. More'n that, I notice that right leg of yours is a little stiff yet where I got to it about three weeks ago.”

“Well, then, Spot,” says Mutt, “maybe you want to come down here and see what you can do to my other three legs. I never saw the day I wouldn't give you a free bite at one leg and still be able to lick you on the other three.”

“You wouldn't talk that way if I was out of this cage,” I says, getting riled.

“What did you ever let yourself be put into that fool cage for?” Mutt says. “You didn't have to. You got such a swell head on you the last week or so that you gotto be licked. You can fool boys and humans all you want to about that accidental old lion, but us dogs got your number, all right. What that Blind Man's Dog from Chicago would do to you would be a plenty!”

“Well, then,” I says, “I'll be out of this cage along about supper time. Suppose you bring that Blind Man's Dog around here. And if he ain't got a spiked collar on to him, I'll fight him. I won't fight a spike-collared dog to please anybody.”

And I wouldn't, neither, without I had one on myself, If you can't get a dog by the throat or the back of his neck, what's the use of fighting him? You might just as well try to eat a blacksmith shop as fight one of those spike-collared dogs.

“Hey, there!” Freckles yelled at Tom Mulligan, who is Mutt Mulligan's boy. “You get your fool dog away from the lion-eaters cage!”

Tom, he histed Mutt away. But he says to Freckles, being jealous himself, “Don't be scared, Freck, I won't let my dog hurt yours any. Spot, he's safe. He's in a cage where Mutt can't get to him.”

Freckles got riled. He says, “1 ain't in any cage, Tom.”

Tom, he didn't want to fight very bad. But all the other boys and dogs was looking on. And he'd sort of started it. He didn't figure that he could shut up that easy. And there was some girls there, too.

“If I was to make a pass at you,” says Tom, “you'd wish you was in a cage.”

Freckles, he didn't want to fight so bad, either. But he was running this circus, and he didn't feel he could afford to pass by what Tom said too easy. So he says:

“Maybe you think you're big enough to put me into a cage.”

“If I was to make a pass at you,” says Tom, “there wouldn't be enough left of you to put in a cage.”

“Well, then,” says Freckles, “why don't you make a pass at me?”

“Maybe you figure I don't dast to,” says Tom.

“I didn't say you didn't dast to,” says Freckles; “any one that says I said you didn't dast to is a link, link, liar, and so's his Aunt Mariar.”

Tom, he says, “I ain't got any Aunt Mariar. And you're another and dastn't back it.”

Then some of the other kids put chips on to their shoulders. And each dared the other to knock his chip off. And the other kids pushed and jostled them into each other till both chips fell off, and they went at it then. Once they got started they got really mad and each did all he knew how.

And right in the midst of it Mutt run in and bit Freckles on the calf of his leg. Any dog will fight for his boy when his boy is getting the worst of it. But when Mutt did that I give a bulge against the wooden slats on the cage and two of them came off, and I was on top of Mutt. The circus was in the barn, and the hens began to scream and the horses began to stomp, and all the boys yelled, “Sick 'im!” and “Go to it!” and danced around and hollered, and the little girls yelled, and all the other dogs began to bark, and it was a right lively and enjoyable time. But Mrs. Watson, Freckles's mother, and the hired girl ran out from the house and broke the fight up.

Grown women are like that. They don't want to fight themselves, and they don't seem to want any one else to have any fun. You gotto be a hypocrite around a grown woman to get along with her at all. And then she'll feed you and make a lot of fuss over you. But the minute you start anything with real enjoyment in it she's surprised to see you acting that way. Nobody was licked satisfactory in that fight, or licked any one else satisfactory.

Well, that night after supper, along comes that Blind Man's Dog. Never did I see a Blind Man's Dog that was as tight-skinned. I ain't a dog that brags, myself, and I don't say I would have licked that heavy a dog right easy, even if he had been a loose-skinned dog. What I do say is that I had been used to fighting looseskinned dogs that you can get some sort of a reasonable hold on to while you are working around for position. And running into a tight-skinned dog that way, all of a sudden and all unprepared for it, would make anybody nervous. How are you going to get a purchase on a tight-skinned dog when you've been fighting looseskinned dogs for so long that your teeth and jaws just naturally set themselves for a loose-skinned dog without thinking of it?

Lots of dogs wouldn't have fought him at all when they realized how they had been fooled about him, and how tight-skinned he was. But I was a Public Character now, and I had to fight him. More than that, I ain't ready to say yet that that dog actually licked me. Freckles he hit him in the ribs with a lump of soft coal, and he got off of me and run away before I got my second wind. There's no telling what I would have done to that Blind Man's Dog, tight-skinned as he was, if he hadn't run away before I got my second wind.

Well, there's some mighty peculiar dogs in this world, let alone boys and humans. The word got around town, in spite of his running away like that before I got my second wind, that that Blind Man's Dog, so called, had actually licked me! Many pretended to believe it. Every time Freckles and me went down the street someone would say:

“Well, the dog that licked the lion got licked himself, did he?”

And if it was a lady said it, Freckles would spit on the sidewalk through the place where his front teeth are out and pass on politely as if he hadn't heard, and say nothing. And if it was a man that said it Freckles would thumb his nose at him. And if it was a girl that said it he would rub a handful of sand into her hair. And if it was a boy anywhere near his size, there would be a fight. If it was too big a boy, Freckles would sling railroad iron at him.

For a week or so it looked like Freckles and I were fighting all the time. Three or four times a day, and every day. Oft the way to school, and all through recess-times, and after school, and every time we went on to the street. I got so chewed and he got so busted up that we didn't hardly enjoy life.

No matter how much you may like to fight, some of the time you would like to pick the fights yourself and not have other people picking them off of you. Kids begun to fight Freckles that wouldn't have dast to stand up to him a month before. I was still a Public Character, but I was getting to be the kind you josh about instead of the kind you are proud to feed. I didn't care so awful much for myself, but I hated it for Freckles. For when they got us pretty well hacked, all the boys began to call him Harold again.

And after they had called him Harold for a week he must have begun to think of himself as Harold. For one Saturday afternoon when there wasn't any school, instead of going swimming with the other kids or playing baseball, or anything, he went and played with girls.

He must have been pretty well down-hearted and felt himself pretty much of an outcast, or he wouldn't have done that. I am an honest dog, and the truth must be told, the disgrace along with everything else, and the truth is that he played with girls of his own accord that day--not because he was sent to their house on an errand, not because it was a game got up with boys and girls together, not because it was cousins and he couldn't dodgje them, but because he was an outcast. Any boy will play with girls when all the boys and girls are playing together, and some girls are nearly as good as boys; but no boy is going off alone to look up a bunch of girls and play with them without being coaxed unless he has had considerable of a down-fall.

Right next to the side of our yard was the Wilkinses. They had a bigger house and a bigger yard than ours. Freckles was sitting on the top of the fence looking into their orchard when the three Wilkins girls came out to play. There was only two boys in the Wilkins family, and they was twins; but they were only year-old babies and didn't amount to anything. The two oldest Wilkins girls, the taffy-coloured-haired one and the squint-eyed one, each had one of the twins, taking care of it. And the other Wilkins girl, the pretty one, she had one of those big dolls made as big as a baby.

They were rolling those babies and the doll around the grass in a wheelbarrow, and the wheel came off, and that's how Freckles happened to go over.

“Up in the attic,” says the taffy-coloured-haired one, when he had fixed up the wheelbarrow, “there's a little old express wagon with one wheel off that would be better'n this wheelbarrow. Maybe you could fix that wheel on, too, Harold.”

Freckles, he fell for it. After he got the wagon fixed, they got to playing charades and fool girl games like that. The hired girl was off for the afternoon, and pretty soon Mrs. Wilkins hollered up the stairs that she was going to be gone for an hour, and to take good care of the twins, and then we were alone in the place.

Well, it wasn't much fun for me. They played and they played, and I stuck to Freckles--which his name was called nothing but Harold all that afternoon, and for the first time I said to myself “Harold” seemed to fit. I stuck to him because a dog should stick to his boy, and a boy should stick to his dog, no matter what the disgrace. But after while I got pretty tired and lay down on a rug, and a new kind of flea struck me. After I had chased him down and cracked him with my teeth I went to sleep.

I must have slept pretty sound and pretty long. All of a sudden I waked up with a start, and almost choking, for the place was smoky. I barked and no one answered.

I ran out on to the landing, and the whole house was full of smoke. The house was on fire, and it looked like I was alone in it. I went down the back stairway, which didn't seem so full of smoke, but the door that let out on to the first-floor landing was locked, and I had to go back up again.

By the time I got back up, the front stairway was a great deal fuller of smoke, and I could see glints of flame winking through it way down below. But it was my only way out of that place. On the top step I stumbled over a gray wool bunch of something or other, and I picked it up in my mouth. Thinks I, “That is Freckles's gray sweater, that he is so stuck on. I might as well take it down to him.”

It wasn't so hard for a lively dog to get out of a place like that, I thought. But I got kind of confused and excited, too. And it struck me all of a sudden, by the time I was down to the second floor, that that sweater weighed an awful lot.

1 dropped it on the second floor, and ran into one of the front bedrooms and looked out.

By jings! the whole town was in the front yard and in the street.

And in the midst of the crowd was Mrs. Wilkins, carrying on like mad.

“My baby!” she yelled. “Save my baby. Let me loose! I'm going after my baby!”

I stood up on my hind legs, with my head just out of that bedroom window, and the flame and smoke licking up all around me, and barked.

“My doggie! My doggie!” yells Freckles, who was in the crowd, “I must save my doggie!” And he made a run for the house, but someone grabbed him and slung him back.

And Mrs. Wilkins made a run, but they held her, too. The front of the house was one sheet of flame. Old Pop Wilkins, Mrs. Wilkins's husband, was jumping up and down in front of Mrs. Wilkins yelling, here was her baby. He had a real baby in one arm and that big doll in the other, and was so excited he thought he had both babies. Later I heard what had happened. The kids had thought they were getting out with both twins but one of them had saved the doll and left a twin behind. The squint-eyed girl and the taffy-coloured-haired girl and the pretty girl was howling as loud as their mother. And every now and then some man would make a rush for the front door, but the fire would drive him back. And everyone was yelling advice to everyone else, except one man who was calling on the whole town to get him an axe. The volunteer fire engine was there, but there wasn't any water to squirt through it, and it had been backed up too near the house and had caught fire and was burning up.

Well, I thinks that baby will likely turn up in the crowd somewhere, after all, and I'd better get out of there myself while the getting was good. I ran out of the bedroom, and run into that bunched-up gray bundle again.

I ain't saying that I knew it was the missing twin in a gray shawl when I picked it up the second time. And I ain't saying that I didn't know it. But the fact is that I did pick it up. I don't make any brag that I would have risked my life to save Freckles's sweater. It may be I was so rattled I just picked it up because I had had it in my mouth before and didn't quite know what I was doing.

But the _record_ is something you can't go behind, and the record is that I got out the back way and into the back yard with that bundle swinging from my mouth, and walked round into the front yard and laid that bundle down--_and it was the twin!_