Richard Harding Davis

“ It was his experience that a sixty-horse-power racing-machine is a jealous mistress. For retrospective, sentimental, or philanthropic thoughts she grants no leave of absence. But he had not escaped. Jimmie had halted him, tripped him by the heels and set him again to thinking. Within the half-hour that followed those who rolled past saw at the side of the road a car with her engine running, and leaning upon the wheel, as unconscious of his surroundings as though he sat at his own fireplace, a young man who frowned and stared at nothing. ”

“ A judge can’t be fooled by no pipe-clay. He can see right through you, and he reads your insides.
The judging-ring, which is where the judge holds out, was so like a fighting-pit that when I come in it, and find six other dogs there, I springs into position, so that when they lets us go I can defend myself. But the Master smooths down my hair and whispers, “Hold ’ard, Kid, hold ’ard. This ain’t a fight,” says he. “Look your prettiest,” he whispers. “Please, Kid, look your prettiest”; and he pulls my leash so tight that I can’t touch my pats to the sawdust, and my nose goes up in the air. ”

“ It was met by shrieks from two hundred throats, by screams, oaths, prayers, by the sharp jangling of bells, by the blind rush of many men scurrying like rats for a hole to hide in, by the ringing orders of one man. Above the tumult this one voice rose like the warning strokes of a fire-gong, and looking up to the pilot-house from whence the voice came, David saw the barkeeper still in his shirt-sleeves and with his derby hat pushed back behind his ears, with one hand clutching the telegraph to the engine-room, with the other holding the spoke of the wheel. ”

“ Behind me I hear Miss Dorothy cry: “They’ll kill that old dog. Wait, take my whip. Beat them off her! The Kid can take care of himself”; and I hear Nolan fall into the road, and the horse come to a stop. The old lady-dog was down, and the three was eating her vicious; but as I come up, scattering the pebbles, she hears, and thinking it’s one more of them, she lifts her head, and my heart breaks open like some one had sunk his teeth in it. For, under the ashes and the dirt and the blood, I can see who it is, and I know that my mother has come back to me. ”

“ All the dogs in the hall seemed coming at me for daring to intrude, with their jaws red and open, and their eyes blazing like the lights in the roof. “You’re a street dog! Get out, you street dog!” they yells. And as they drives me out, the pipe clay drops off me, and they laugh and shriek; and when I looks down I see that I have turned into a black-and-tan.
They was most awful dreams, and next morning, when Miss Dorothy comes and gives me water in a pan, I begs and begs her to take me home; but she can’t understand. “How well Kid is!” ”

“ Up the driveway a touring-car approached, and though it limped on a flat tire, it approached at reckless speed. The two men in the front seat were white with dust; their faces, masked by automobile glasses, were indistinguishable. As though preparing for an immediate exit, the car swung in a circle until its nose pointed down the driveway up which it had just come. Raising his silk mask the one beside the driver shouted at Judge Van Vorst. His throat was parched, his voice was hoarse and hot with anger. ”

“ Even “dry shopping” along the Rue de la Paix, when you pretend you can have anything you see in any window, leaves one just as rich, but unsatisfied. So the advice of the war correspondent to seek out German spies came to Jimmie like a day at the circus, like a week at the Danbury Fair. It not only was a call to arms, to protect his flag and home, but a chance to play in earnest the game in which he most delighted. No longer need he pretend. No longer need he waste his energies in watching, unobserved, a greedy rabbit rob a carrot field. ”

“ He threw open the breech and gazed impotently at the base of the shell. It was untouched. The ship was ringing with cries of anger, of hate, with rat-like squeaks of fear.
Above the heads of the filibusters a shell screamed and within a hundred feet splashed into a wave.
From his mat in the lee scupper David groaned miserably. He was far removed from any of the greater emotions.
“It’s no use!” he protested. “They can’t do! It’s not connected!”
“What’s not connected?” yelled Carr. He fell upon David. He half-lifted, half-dragged him to his feet. ”

“ If you are a true Scout, until you have performed your act of kindness your day is dark. You are as unhappy as is the grown-up who has begun his day without shaving or reading the New York Sun. But as soon as you have proved yourself you may, with a clear conscience, look the world in the face and untie the knot in your kerchief.
Jimmie Reeder untied the accusing knot in his scarf at just ten minutes past eight on a hot August morning after he had given one dime to his sister Sadie. ”

“ Then suddenly men comes hurrying down our street and begins to brush the beautiful bull-terriers; and the Master rubs me with a towel so excited that his hands trembles awful, and Miss Dorothy tweaks my ears between her gloves, so that the blood runs to ’em, and they turn pink and stand up straight and sharp. ”

“ The instant the door fell and the raid was declared Hefflefinger slipped over the cross rails on which he had been lying, hung for an instant by his hands, and then dropped into the centre of the fighting mob on the floor. He was out of it in an instant with the agility of a pickpocket, was across the room and at Hade’s throat like a dog. The murderer, for the moment, was the calmer man of the two.
“Here,” he panted, “hands off, now. There’s no need for all this violence. There’s no great harm in looking at a fight, is there? ”

“ When we’re once at sea, he can’t hurt us any.”
“What makes you think I want to hurt you?” demanded David. “Who do you think I am?”
In front of David’s nose he shook a fist as large as a catcher’s glove.
“We know who you are,” shouted the fiery-headed one. “You’re a blanketty-blank spy! You’re a government spy or a Spanish spy, and whichever you are you don’t get away to-night!” ”

“ Twice, unexpectedly, he had come upon him in a wood road and once on Round Hill where the stranger was pretending to watch the sunset. Jimmie knew people do not climb hills merely to look at sunsets, so he was not deceived. He guessed the man was a German spy seeking gun sites, and secretly vowed to “stalk” him. From that moment, had the stranger known it, he was as good as dead. For a boy scout with badges on his sleeve for “stalking” and “path-finding,” not to boast of others for “gardening” and “cooking,” can outwit any spy. ”

“ For a Spanish gun-boat had been crippled and forced to run herself aground by a tug-boat manned by Cuban patriots, and by a single gun served by one man, and that man an American. It was the first sea-fight of the war. Over night a Cuban navy had been born, and into the limelight a cub reporter had projected a new “hero,” a ready-made, warranted-not-to-run, popular idol. ”

“ As though to bring assistance, the little man started hastily toward the tug.
“I’ll find some one who’ll make you walk!” he called. “You wait, that’s all, you wait!”
David decided not to wait. It was possible the wharf was private property and he had been trespassing. In any case, at the flag station the rights of all men were equal, and if he were in for a fight he judged it best to choose his own battleground. He recrossed the tracks and sat down on his suit case in a dark corner of the shed. Himself hidden in the shadows he could see in the moonlight the approach of any other person. ”

“ And then in a body every one in the club would move against the bar and exclaim: “Here’s to Cuba libre!”
When the Olivette from Key West reached Tampa Bay every Cuban in the Tampa cigar factories was at the dock. There were thousands of them and all of the Junta, in high hats, to read David an address of welcome.
And, when they saw him at the top of the gang-plank with his head in a bandage and his arm in a sling, like a mob of maniacs they howled and surged toward him. But before they could reach their hero the courteous Junta forced them back, and cleared a pathway for a young girl. ”

“ All I know of fighting I learned from mother, watching her picking the ash-heaps for me when I was too little to fight for myself. No one ever was so good to me as mother. When it snowed and the ice was in the St. Lawrence, she used to hunt alone, and bring me back new bones, and she’d sit and laugh to see me trying to swallow ’em whole. I was just a puppy then; my teeth was falling out. When I was able to fight we kept the whole river-range to ourselves. I had the genuine long “punishing” jaw, so mother said, and there wasn’t a man or a dog that dared worry us. ”

“ I could not help thinking that if Woodstock Wizard III tried to follow a fire-engine he would die of apoplexy, and seeing he’d lost his teeth, it was lucky he had no taste for fighting; but, after his being so condescending, I didn’t say nothing.
“Anyway,” says he, “every smooth-coated dog is better than any hairy old camel like those St. Bernards, and if ever you’re hungry down at the stables, young man, come up to the house and I’ll give you a bone. I can’t eat them myself, but I bury them around the garden from force of habit and in case a friend should drop in. ”

“ Mother is so happy here that I tell her we ought to call it the Happy Hunting Grounds, because no one hunts you, and there is nothing to hunt; it just all comes to you. And so we live in peace, mother sleeping all day in the sun, or behind the stove in the head groom’s office, being fed twice a day regular by Nolan, and all the day by the other grooms most irregular. And as for me, I go hurrying around the country to the bench-shows, winning money and cups for Nolan, and taking the blue ribbons away from father. ”

“ And the judge he answers, “I mean the other is the better dog.” He takes my father’s head between his hands and looks down at him most sorrowful. “The king is dead,” says he. “Long live the king! Good-by, Regent,” he says.
The crowd around the railings clapped their hands, and some laughed scornful, and every one talks fast, and I start for the gate, so dizzy that I can’t see my way. But my father pushes in front of me, walking very daintily, and smiling sleepy, same as he had just been waked, with his head high and his eyes shut, looking at nobody. ”

“ If you do not believe in heredity, the fact that Jimmie’s great-great-grandfather was a scout for General Washington and hunted deer, and even bear, over exactly the same hills where Jimmie hunted weasels will count for nothing. It will not explain why to Jimmie, from Tarrytown to Port Chester, the hills, the roads, the woods, and the cowpaths, caves, streams, and springs hidden in the woods were as familiar as his own kitchen garden. ”

“ All Gallegher knew had been learnt on the streets; not a very good school in itself, but one that turns out very knowing scholars. And Gallegher had attended both morning and evening sessions. He could not tell you who the Pilgrim Fathers were, nor could he name the thirteen original States, but he knew all the officers of the twenty-second police district by name, and he could distinguish the clang of a fire-engine’s gong from that of a patrol-wagon or an ambulance fully two blocks distant. ”

“ All I know about Cuba is, I once smoked a Cuban cigar and it made me ill.”
“Did Lafayette talk like that?” demanded Emily. “Did he ask what have the American rebels ever done for me?”
“If I were in Lafayette’s class,” sighed David, “I wouldn’t be selling automatic punches.”
“There’s your trouble,” declared Emily. “You lack self-confidence. You’re too humble, you’ve got fighting blood and you ought to keep saying to yourself, ‘Blood will tell,’ and the first thing you know, it will tell! You might begin by going into politics in your ward. Or, you could join the militia. ”

“ I don’t fight because I like fighting. I fight because if I didn’t the other dog would find my throat, and the Master would lose his stakes, and I would be very sorry for him, and ashamed. Dogs can pass me and I can pass dogs, and I’d never pick a fight with none of them. ”

“ A champion is a–a champion,” he says. “He must win nine blue ribbons in the ‘open’ class. You follow me–that is–against all comers. Then he has the title before his name, and they put his photograph in the sporting papers. You know, of course, that I am a champion,” says he. “I am Champion Woodstock Wizard III, and the two other Woodstock Wizards, my father and uncle, were both champions.”
“But I thought your name was Jimmy Jocks,” I said.
He laughs right out at that.
“That’s my kennel name, not my registered name,” he says. “Why, certainly you know that every dog has two names. ”

“ You can’t fool the judges. They see inside you.
But he couldn’t make up his mind about them high-bred dogs. He scowls at ’em, and he glares at ’em, first with his head on the one side and then on the other. And he feels of ’em, and orders ’em to run about. And Nolan leans against the rails, with his head hung down, and pats me. And Miss Dorothy comes over beside him, but don’t say nothing, only wipes her eye with her finger. A man on the other side of the rail he says to the Master, “The judge don’t like your dog?” ”

“ Wyndham, sir,” and seeing me chained up and so miserable, she takes me in her arms.
“You poor little tyke!” says she. “It’s cruel to tie him up so; he’s eating his heart out, Nolan,” she says. “I don’t know nothing about bull-terriers,” says she, “but I think Kid’s got good points,” says she, “and you ought to show him. Jimmy Jocks has three legs on the Rensselaer Cup now, and I’m going to show him this time, so that he can get the fourth; and, if you wish, I’ll enter your dog too. How would you like that, Kid?” says she. “How would you like to see the most beautiful dogs in the world? ”