Читать книгу Rex - Fullerton Leonard Waldo - Страница 4

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"I wish you'd take the little feller home with you," said the village blacksmith, as he lifted the bay mare's left hind foot to pare the hoof.

"The little feller" was a small, inquisitive dog that promised to grow up from his present vest-pocket size into a fine, upstanding specimen of Belgian police-dog.

"I don't want him," said Farmer Alfred Mason, who had brought the mare to be shod. "I've got two dogs up at the house already. The question isn't so much what I'd do with him. What would they do with him?"

The blacksmith pulled the bellows and blew his forge-fire to a rosy heat that shone in his own face. "He's a fine little pup," he insisted. "I don't know who owns him or where he came from. He blew in here a coupla weeks ago and since then nobody's claimed him. He's always under my feet and I'm afraid one o' these here horses some day'll step on him an' squash the life out of him."

The small dog was certainly interested in everything that was going on. With no mother to guide him, this youngster, possibly six months old, was bound to learn for himself all he could about the great round world so full of a number of things.

"Now look at him," said the blacksmith, a note of real liking in his large, rough voice. The man of iron never ceased to drive the nails as he glanced sidewise at the pup. The little animal had an air of superintending and even criticizing the shoeing of the mare. He stood with his ears cocked up, his head on one side then on the other, his bright eyes agleam, now and then uttering a little quavering whine, a sound as small as the whistle of a peanut stand: and it didn't mean unhappiness; it was his way of trying to talk to the men and the mare.

The mare paid little heed: it was beneath her massive dignity.

But Farmer Mason was almost tempted to say: "I'll take him." Mr. Mason, bluff, bearded, hearty and middle-aged, was a great lover of animals. At the hilltop farmhouse a mile away where he lived with his wife and his fourteen-year-old boy Tom, he had a small zoo. It now included white rats and mice, two alligators, two terrapin, a bad-tempered parrot, a Maltese cat, a red squirrel and the two dogs mentioned, named Alphonse and Gaston because they were always pestering each other.

When Mr. Mason thought of taking the dog home, he had a mental picture of all that outfit already domesticated, and the bother one more dog would make. Of course Mother would say to the little stranger that there was plenty of room. But it would be imposing on Mother's good nature. No, no, it wouldn't be fair: Tom had brought home enough birds with crippled wings, enough homeless cats and dogs, enough ailing little creatures to be housed and fed already.

"Sorry," Mr. Mason said to the blacksmith. "I'd like ever so much to have him. But we're full up at home. You just ought to see what we've got there now. Tom brought back thirteen live crabs from the shore two nights ago and had them sleeping in his wash-basin."

"What became of them?" asked the blacksmith.

"We ate them," was the answer. "And Tom hasn't quite forgiven us. He had given them all names. He said he knew them apart."

"Well," sighed the good-hearted blacksmith, as he hung up his pincers and took off his apron, "I certainly would like to find a kind home for the little feller."

Mr. Mason rode the mare homeward up the long hill-road to the farmhouse, and as the freshly-shod hoofs clicked and clashed on the stones through the dust-clouds of a dry midsummer, he almost regretted that he had not brought the dog back with him.

"It would sort of make it up to Tom for losing those crabs," he reflected. "After all, one more dog when you've got two already isn't so many. But I guess it's all right as it is. Gid-dap, Jenny!"

Then he heard a soft whimper from the dust, and looked round.

It was the small dog, trotting after.

"Oho!" he exclaimed. "So you've taken matters in your own paws, have you, youngster? You just thought you'd tag along behind anyway, did you? Go home, sir, go home!" But the tone was not very threatening.

Perhaps because he had no home to go to, and the direction therefore meant nothing, the dog stood still, and looked at the man, irresistibly.

"Don't look at me like that, puppy," said Mr. Mason. "Honest Injun, we haven't any room for you. Unless maybe"—he weakened—"you were to go and sleep in the barn with the calves and the pigs. And just suppose our old Alderney bull got after you. He'd make mincemeat out o' you in no time! He'd just swallow you up in one mouthful! Go home, now, go home!"

But it didn't sound much like a threat—it was more like an invitation.

The little dog not merely stood his ground, but came closer, keeping his eyes fixed on the man's face, as if reading what the face meant and not greatly minding what the words said.

So Mr. Mason, being the man he was, had to give in and admit defeat.

"O well!" he exclaimed, "if you want to come along as much as that, I suppose it wouldn't do so much harm. There's a lot o' rats around the corn-crib lately, anyway, and Alphonse and Gaston are getting too fat and lazy to chase 'em off."

Then, more to the mare than to the dog, he added: "Come along!"

But the dog would have understood the permission, and taken it all for himself, if the man had said it to the clouds and the trees.

He seemed to grow inches taller in a second. No scraping on his stomach in the dust. No fawning, groveling and wheedling now. And no slinking along behind and stopping when the mare stopped.

"My, my, look at that dog run!" exclaimed Mr. Mason to the pointed ears of Jenny. For she was interested, too, as the dog sprang blithely ahead, and rummaged in the ditch to startle a frog this side of the fence or a meadow-lark on the other.

Then, as the dog came back to report to the disdainful Jenny what he had smelt and seen, Mr. Mason laughed aloud. "Why, the little rascal's actually grinning! He knows he's put one over on us!"

By the time they reached the house the dog had covered at least three times the distance the road made it. Could a dog wield a pencil, he could have drawn you a map showing every nest or hole for a strip a hundred feet wide on either side of the road. He could have told you where a woodchuck had lived last season. In this place somebody had crossed the field, crushing the thistles; here a man had slept—and why should he sleep out in a field, instead of under a roof like other men?

Perhaps Mr. Mason in his own thoughts had answered some of the dog's keen questions.

For the farmer had been saying to himself:

"Now a dog like this might be trained to be a mighty good watch-dog. He doesn't seem to miss much. Seems to have his eyes in the air and his nose on the ground at the same time. When you've got a farm a mile from everywhere, like this one of ours, and it's the open season for tramps, it isn't a bad idea to have a dog of this kind around. I don't know. Maybe he'd be too friendly. Some dogs are. It'd be ideal if we could train him so's he'd be amiable with Mamma and Tom and stand-offish with strangers till we told him they were all right. Maybe it'll work out that way. We'll see."

When they got to the house, there was more than a lukewarm welcome for the little new dog from Mother.

Mrs. Mason was the kind that loves to entertain people, and, to her, dogs and horses were people. She was fond, nearly to the point of foolishness, of almost every sort of animal. She was glad that a red fox in winter made his home in an old drain-pipe under the barn. There were bird houses on every other tree—little ones for the wrens, bigger ones for the robins or the cardinals—and there were bird-baths up and down the garden, which were used with a great flutter and spatter to the music of carols on a summer morning.

Man or boy,—dog or horse or bird,—you would have to answer the loving-kindness of Mrs. Mason's mild blue eyes. She mothered everybody, speaking or dumb, four-legged or two-legged.

So when her husband reined in Jenny at the horse-block and she saw the little new dog in Jenny's quivering shadow, she said, "Another dog, Alfred? How nice! He's a young police dog, isn't he? How did you get him?"

"I didn't get him," laughed her husband. "He got me." And thus the dog, still lacking a name, was adopted into the homestead, if not the household.

Tom, the only son, was unspeakably pleased with his new playmate. Tom never could get enough pets anyway, and was always begging his indulgent father and mother for more. At the age of fourteen, he was just a normal school-boy, freckled and shy, all arms and legs, always growing and always hungry, with no particular gifts or graces of which to boast. Dogs he liked better than most of his relatives, because dogs never asked him how he got on at school and which of his studies he liked best. They never gave him good advice, and they never told him things he mustn't do.

When summer came, and Tom was home from school, he was out and abroad over the landscape most of the daylight hours, usually with a string of animals trotting at his heels. When he went swimming in the pond, dogs' heads were about him like young seals. Alphonse and Gaston, fat and puffy, didn't care for swimming, but other dogs gladly reported for duty as boys might run to a fire, from near and far. On the other side of the pond was the railway, about two miles from the Mason farmhouse, and where the highway crossed the rails, outside the village of Waynesboro, was the hut of an Irishman, who had nothing to do but hobble out on the track when the trains came along and wave a red flag at motorists, who, he thought, had a poor right to be on the road anyway. Tom and this Irishman, whose name was Mike Farley, were great friends.

As the summer days went on, Tom and the latest addition grew to like each other better and better. At first, the dog went by the name of Tatters, but Tom wasn't satisfied with that. "He's too—well, noble!" he explained to his mother. "He's getting to look like a prince or something. I guess he's the best dog there is anywhere around here. When he gets to be a great big dog he'll be a wonder to take care of the farm at night and chase away thieves."

That was said just after Abner the hired man reported that thirty-four chickens had been stolen, and dozens of eggs, worth a dollar a dozen. Suspicious characters had been reported loafing about the nearest farm and Mike Farley's little sentry-box. Mike began to carry an old rusty pistol, which he showed with great pride to Tom, saying that his father had carried it in the Civil War and it had never been used since.

Tatters, as he grew in length and strength, and filled out amid-ribs, made friends right and left with dog and man for miles around, since he was a born explorer.

But Alphonse and Gaston were not pleased with him. Those ungainly King Charles spaniels scowled and growled at his most civil advances.

They forgot their standing quarrel with each other, and combined against the newcomer. In every way they knew they told him that they had no use for him, and that a farm of two hundred acres was too small to hold the three of them.

But the fact that he lived with the cattle at the barn, and they lived with the people in the house, saved him many a lashing of their pale pink tongues, many a curling of their snobbish lips over their gleaming teeth.

One day Mr. Mason went down to the barn to look at a new-born calf.

The mother had a pedigree as long as your arm. She was living at the time in a roomy box-stall that gave plenty of space for a calf to take lessons from its mother, spreading its legs and stumbling, falling down and getting up again, and standing astraddle and sprawly like Tom when he was learning to use stilts against the barn.

Mr. Mason let down the top bar of the gate to the stall and climbed over.

Mother cow looked at him with something like resentment in her eyes, and gave a low throaty moo of remonstrance.

"That's all right, Allegra," said her owner, soothingly. "No harm, old lady. Just want to see how your child is. Now be a nice old lady, and get out of the way." For the cow had given the calf some kind of signal only understood between the pair, and the calf had moved over into a further corner where it stood protected by the mother's heaving red bulk.

"Co' boss, co' boss, move over!" the farmer coaxed, in a voice that was mild enough to persuade any cow, at other times, in other places.

But Allegra was not herself to-day. Her calf was very young and she was very nervous. She didn't want anybody fooling round her child. Her trust in man had turned to suspicion deep and dark.

Mr. Mason reached round behind the mother, and took the calf by the short hair on its sand-brown neck. The calf squealed and wriggled, and beat on the floor of the stall with its slippery heels. All these were signals of distress to the mother.

Suddenly, without warning, the cow turned on the man. With a bellow of rage, Allegra lowered her head like a charging bull and in blind anger drove her great curving horns against his blue shirt-sleeves.

Thus taken unawares, Mr. Mason was borne to the floor and found himself unable to rise, for nearly a ton of beef was upon him.

He shouted for help. But the men were far afield with the hay. The farmhouse was two hundred yards off, and his voice would not carry past the closed doors, though he yelled and kicked with all his might.

But Tatters had fortunately set apart that morning for a rat-hunt in the barn. Just now he was resting up in the loft, in the dark, between the cider-mill and a discarded churn. He had killed six rats, and thought he would be lazy and let the next one come to be killed instead of going after him. As he lay with his head snuggled on his paws, he heard the uproar in the basement.

At first he wondered if it might be thieves who had come to steal the chickens. But no—it was the well-remembered voice of his master, uplifted in entreaty.

"Help, help! Mary! Tom! Help!"

The voice grew weaker, and such roaring sounds as a cow is not supposed to make almost drowned out the human cries.

The dog climbed down the ladder—a trick of which he was not a little proud—and raced to the basement.

A strange sight met his brown eyes—his master lying on the floor of Mother Allegra's stall, the cow belligerent and bellowing above him, thrusting and shoving with her horns and the calf trembling and crying in the far corner.

In his own language he flew at the cow, and if he had not been a dog of polite breeding—at least since he came to the farm—you would have said that he was swearing awfully.

Perhaps, therefore, it is just as well to translate his remarks, instead of leaving them in the original dog tongue.

He was saying: "Look here, you great big, silly, crazy cow! Don't you know that your master and mine is the kindest, gentlest master in the world, and wouldn't hurt your baby for anything? Just look what you've done! You've made an awful mess of it. Here he is, all bloody, and you've probably broken his watch and several ribs and——"

But the cow continued to bellow and roar in a mad red rage and wouldn't listen. Legs spread wide apart, eyes fairly aflame, her nostrils flaring and her tail swishing, she seemed to be saying:

"Just let anybody come and try to take my child from me, and I'll show him what's what! I don't care who it is. Get out of my way, you insignificant little worm of a dog, and let me get at him again! I'll fix him!" And with her horns she began again to hook the prostrate, bleeding body of her master.

Then Tatters had a flash of inspiration. A ton of angry cow was too much for two hundred pounds of man, but he would divert the mother's attention and give his master a chance to get to his feet and scramble out of the way. So he flew at the calf, and grabbed it by the nose, and held on. He wasn't really hurting the creature, but it yelled as if it were being murdered.

At once the mother cow deserted the man on the floor and gave her whole attention to the dog. Tatters had the first big fight of his life on his paws.

Whatever became of the human being, the furious cow was bound she would kill the dog ere he could escape from the stall. Plainly her child was begging her to do so. You could imagine the red-spotted nursling boo-hooing: "Mother! He tried to eat me alive! He did, mother, honestly he did. Look at me, mother! He bit me in the nose!"

And the mother was answering back: "Leave that to me! I'll show him, the wretch! He was going to help that wicked man take you away from me. He sha'n't get out of this place alive. Just you wait and see. Get over in your corner there and keep out of the way, and your mother'll tear him to pieces, in two shakes of your tail!"

So the cow lowered her head and rushed at the dog, and Tatters leapt nimbly aside so that she only came crashing against the opposite end of the stall and got several of the splinters of board in her nose. That made her angrier than ever. She lost her horned head completely. She went roaring and smashing about till her own child was afraid of her, and no matter where she poked and prodded, Tatters wasn't there. And what is more, the little dog was laughing at her. In his own fashion he taunted and plagued her, and if you could put down his talk on paper for him it might have been: "You silly old cow, you! You think you can kill me just because there's so much of you and so little of me! But in that little, there is a brain in the top of my head, and I use it to keep out of your way. If I wanted, I could jump at your throat and hang on for dear life and you couldn't shake me off. But what's the use? Don't you see what has happened? While your back was turned, Mr. Mason has come to, and though he looks awfully white and weak and shaky, he has scrambled over the gate and got out of the stall, and you can't do him any harm at all. Now my advice to you is to take good care of your calf and don't think every time anybody comes to see it there's going to be a murder in the family. Anyway, as soon as the calf grows bigger you won't care about it at all. It'll be just the same to you as any other cow's calf. Now I'm going, in a hurry. This is no place for me. I hear Mr. Mason whistling to me, and I always obey his orders. Good-bye, cow! Good-bye, calf!"

And with a rush and a quick spring the dog was at and over the gate of the stall, and the cow lunged after him to prod him with her horns, but she was seconds too late.

Of course after that, they couldn't do enough for Tatters up at the main house. But the first thing they did was to change his name. Tom said: "Didn't I tell you, Mother, there was something kind of—kind of kingly about that dog?" He was beginning to study Latin and had learned that Rex was the Latin word for king. "You just can't call a dog like that any such name as Tatters. Let's call him Rex, 'cause he's a king of beasts. Anyway, Mother, do you know what I saw this afternoon? There he was, running all over the place, and Alphonse and Gaston after him. They were playing follow-my-leader: they were doing everything he wanted them to do. You never saw anything like it. Why, he's taken all the growl and snarl out of 'em, and all the kink out of their tails. They seem to take orders from him just the way he does from Father. Anything he thinks up they have to do—or they think they have to. If he doesn't lose patience with 'em, they may turn into pretty decent dogs after all."

And that was the way Rex got his name. After that, he moved away from the cows and the horses, the pigs and the chickens, and had his own lined box beside the kitchen stove, where Alphonse and Gaston always slept. Or if he liked—and he often did like—he came upstairs and lay in a corner of Tom's room. Once when Tom sprained his ankle he spent a lot of time lying on Tom's bed and—Tom said—talking to him, while the rats down at the barn became uproarious. Thus the boy and the dog fairly grew up together, and there were tragic times when Tom had to go back to school and couldn't take the dog with him. But with every vacation came a joyful reunion.

"When I go to Heaven, Mother," said Tom solemnly, "I mean to take Rex with me, and if they won't let him in, then I really don't want to go."