Time, precious time, was pa.s.sing. People somewhere in the house were growing restless. The dog felt his self-control slipping in a mad desire to plunge at the chain. He started to rise, but the boy caught him angrily by the ear and jerked his head back into place. Chairs were pushed back in the living room. Down the back steps came a rapid, clumsy, heavy tread. Then the loud, coa.r.s.e voice of the cook.
"Tommee--Tommee! I wonder whar dat chile gone to!"
The front door opened with a burst of voices. Enemies of freedom were closing in from every side. Freedom and slavery hung in the crimson pressing thumb. The cook"s voice burst raucously--she was peering with rolling eyes underneath the house.
"Lawsy, Mr. Steve! Dat chile turnin" dat dawg loose!"
The fastening clicked. The boy gasped, the dog sprang up. No chain jerked him back. He leaped past the cook, who held her wide skirts out as if to catch him in a net. He heard Earle call. He heard Lancaster laugh. The field flew under him, the woods drew near. Long after he had reached them he galloped on and on.
In the afternoon he returned to the edge of the woods. He saw Earle come down the back steps, peer into the box, and shake his head at Marian, who stood on the back porch. Then Earle walked round to the old south chimney in the sun and knocked out his pipe, straightened up, and called. A fine figure of a man--his call carried command in every tone!
To resist the overwhelming impulse toward obedience, the dog sank to the ground, his tail shaking the leaves, his eyes bright with worship of yonder man--and with a glint of humour in them, too. Did they think he would twice walk into the same trap!
But as the shadows climbed the hill toward the house his gaunt stomach, no less than his heart, longed to cross that intervening field. The west windows flamed with the sunset, as if the whole interior were a ma.s.s of silent fire. Smoke rose from the kitchen chimney, and on the cold air came the whiff of frying bacon. The cook waddled down the back steps, a tin bucket flashing under her arm, and the chickens flocked round her like fringes to her skirt. But still the dog remained in the woods, with the hunger in his stomach and the longing in his heart.
Then, when the cook had gone back, chickens vanished, the glow grown dim in the windows, and life seemed to have ceased in the yard, a little figure darted across it, disappeared in the lot, reappeared in the back door of the barn, and with a backward glance made for the woods where he lay. He had run away, plainly, for he had on neither overcoat nor hat.
He was frightened, for he stopped a hundred feet away from the woods and his voice quavered.
"F"ank?"
He listened painfully, his mouth open, his chest heaving. When next he called there were tears in his voice. Finally, he looked all up and down the border of the woods. A third time he called, shriller, more tremulously. Then slowly he turned his back and started toward the house. Something must have blinded him, for he stumbled and fell. He got to his feet and looked at the hands he must have cut on the sharp stones of the field. Again he faced about and looked up and down the woods, and again he turned away.
Something tragic in this last turning about, something final, as if he had left hope behind him buried in the woods, swelled the tender heart of the watching dog. He could stand it no longer. Lightly he leaped the fringe of bushes, silently he galloped after the disconsolate little figure. Not until his warm breath on the nape of the white neck caused Tommy to turn, did he realize the depth of woe through which Tommy had pa.s.sed. The frightened gasp, the look of terrible reproach, the tear-soiled face, the tragic eyes, told the story. It was fully a minute before Tommy controlled his sobs and hugged him round the neck. Then, ashamed to have been seen in this hour of weakness, the boy began to pound the dog with his fists. Finally he cried out--and in the shrill exultation of his voice, Frank knew that his own troubles and Tommy"s troubles had all pa.s.sed away.
"They gone--they gone on the chain!" Then, with wistful wonderment, "Where you been, F"ank?"
There were lights in the living-room and kitchen windows when they started toward the house, the boy"s hand tightly clutching the mane of the dog.
"Mr. Lancaster," Tommy was explaining in a breathless voice that caught, "he says--he says you b"long to us! He says he come down an" hunt wif me an" you an" Popper! He says he give--give me a dun!"
In his ecstasy he grabbed the dog round the neck.
"Ol" F"ank! Ol" F"ank! I love ol" F"ank!"
Then in a voice he was training for future fox hunts Tommy Earle yelled, and the woods and the house and the barn between them tossed back and forth the thin echoes.
II
PARADISE REGAINED
Little Tommy Earle stood on tiptoe in the rear of the capacious hall of his father"s barn, and glanced excitedly along the nickel-plated barrel of his air rifle, which he had poked through a knot hole. Out there on the ground between the barn and the corn field he had sprinkled some crumbs of bread. When sparrows came to pick up those crumbs--well, thought Tommy, it would be hard on the sparrows.
Behind him in the straw that carpeted the barn lay old Frank, Irish setter, taking his ease. Except during hunting season, wherever you found the boy you found old Frank. Now and then, at some slight movement of the boy, he p.r.i.c.ked his ears in the direction of this miniature stalker of game. The rest of the time he either dozed off, or, suddenly aroused, snapped at a fly with that fierce look in his eyes with which dogs and fly-swatting women view these buzzing pests.
Cathedral-high above them towered the overflowing hay loft. Through the wide-open doors behind them the barn lot blazed in the afternoon sun.
The somnolence of a farmyard mid-afternoon brooded over the scene. Only the boy, peering through the knothole, was tense and vibrant.
For him this was a serious occasion. He had owned the air gun two weeks now, and he hadn"t killed a thing. True, he had hit an upstairs window pane, but he hadn"t intended to do that. He had merely shot at a raucous jaybird in a tree, and the upstairs window pane, the innocent bystander, as it were, had fallen inward with a sharp tinkle of broken gla.s.s. The mishap had brought down on him the warning from his father that if it, or any similar exploit, were repeated, the air gun would be confiscated.
"But I didn"t mean to, Papa!" he had cried.
"That doesn"t make any difference, old man," Steve Earle had said; "the window is broken all the same."
The boy had walked away from the interview, sobered. Sprung from the loins of generations of hunters, the love of a gun was in his blood, and this air rifle was his first love. Since the warning he had used the horizon as a backstop for all his shots. Old Frank, who had followed him around at first, p.r.i.c.king his ears at every shot, ready to bring in the game, had concluded that there would be no game to bring in, and had lost interest at last.
Then, just an hour ago, the boy had hit upon this scheme of baiting sparrows to their doom. And now with the patience of the born hunter, tireless like the patience of the cat watching at the mouse hole, he waited for sparrows to come. His face was flushed, his eyes were shining, the smooth muscles of his bare, st.u.r.dy legs were knotted as he stood a-tiptoe, peering.
Now, Steve Earle, the father, was not only a mighty hunter, a bigger edition merely of the boy--he was also a modern, successful planter. His corn and tobacco and cotton crops were the talk of the county; his horses were pedigreed; his mules sleek; his chickens the finest. Among these latter was a prize-winning Indian Game super-rooster named Pete.
He was big, boisterous, stubborn, and swollen with pride and vainglory.
It was Pete who now appeared through the aisles of the tall corn, within range of Tommy"s periscopic vision, chortling and boasting to the sober harem that followed him. Suddenly he raised his head; his beady eyes glittered; he hurried greedily toward the crumbs, squawking hoa.r.s.ely, clucking wildly, like a crude fellow who aspires to be a gallant and overdoes the part.
"Shoo!" cried Tommy through the porthole.
Pete raised his head high and cackled in amazed indignation that anybody should say such a thing to him. Then, dismissing this temporary annoyance of a small boy yelling at him through a knothole, he hurried into the very midst of the crumbs. He picked one up; he turned round to the hens; he dropped it to demonstrate what he had found. The hens cackled in admiration of the splendid performance.
At this Pete went crazy; his clucking increased prodigiously; he pawed crumbs into the ground, just to show how grandly careless he could be in the midst of such profusion. And here came all the hens to him, half flying like a covey of quail about to alight.
"Shoo!" yelled the boy a second time.
Again Pete cried out indignantly, as if he really didn"t know what to make of such impertinence. Crimson of face, Tommy left his lookout.
Frank following, he ran round the barn and burst into the midst of the feasters. A wild scattering ensued. Cackling and squawking, the valiant Pete led the retreat through the corn. Face still flushed, Tommy came back to his post and poked his gun through the knothole. And once more, after a very brief interval, here came Pete.
To a.n.a.lyze the motives that led to his return would require a knowledge of rooster psychology, if any such thing exists. Maybe Pete actually forgot what had just happened--his head was very small, his face very narrow, and he had a receding forehead. More likely, though, his enormous vanity lay at the bottom of it. He would show these wives of his, in whose admiration he basked all the day long, whether or not he was to be thwarted in his purpose of eating crumbs by a meddling boy with some kind of shiny instrument in his hand.
Yet once more, when Tommy burst upon him and into the midst of his admirers, he threw all semblance of dignity aside. He ran ingloriously away, jumping high into the air when clods of dirt like exploding bombs struck near him, and hitting the ground again on the run, with loud cackles of indignation and wild excitement.
"Sick him, F"ank!" screamed the boy. "Sick him!"
But old Frank sat down on his haunches panting, which is a dog"s way of shaking his head. To injure his master"s property, even at an order from his master"s offspring, was something which he, as a dog of honour, could never think of doing. He did look with a touch of regretful longing at the fleeing rooster; he p.r.i.c.ked his ears, his eyes grew fierce, he licked his chops. There had been a time, perhaps--but that was long ago, in the dim past of his irresponsible puppyhood.
"You ain"t no "count!" said the boy.
The long silken ears flattened; the brown eyes looked indulgently into the angry blue ones. He could stand such an accusation very well; his character was thoroughly established, his life an open book. Just now the boy was beside himself with anger, and a friend pa.s.ses over things said in anger. Only a small spirit without magnanimity is touchy on such points.
Tail waving gently, therefore, he followed the outraged boy back to the barn. The crumbs were all gone. The nimble bills of the hens, the greedy, overbearing beak of the rooster, had gobbled them all up.
Resentfully, Tommy picked up his shiny air rifle and went to the house after more.
In the s.p.a.cious kitchen, hung with pots and pans, old Aunt Cindy, big, fat, black, her head tied up in a red bandanna handkerchief, sat churning b.u.t.ter and singing a hymn:
"Dere was ninety an" nine dat safely lay In de shelter ob de fol", But one had wandered fur away, Fur from de streets ob gol"."
At sight of the boy"s flushed face, and in the presence of his eager request, hymn and churning ceased together.