Lifted Masks Part 21

His head was a faithful replica of a chestnut burr. His hair did not lie down and take things easy. It stood up--and out!--gentle ladies couldn't possibly have let their hands sink into it--as we are told they do--for the hands just wouldn't sink. They'd have to float.

And alas, gentle ladies didn't particularly want their hands to sink into it. There was not that about Stubby's short person to cause the hands of gentle ladies to move instinctively to his head. Stubby bristled. That is, he appeared to bristle. Inwardly, Stubby yearned, though he would have swung into his very best brigand manner on the spot were you to suggest so offensive a thing. Just to look at Stubby you'd never in a thousand years guess what a funny feeling he had sometimes when he got to the top of the hill where his route began and could see a long way down the river and the town curled in on the other side. Sometimes when the morning sun was s.h.i.+ning through a mist--making things awful queer--some of the mist got into Stubby's squinty little eyes. After the mist behaved that way he always whistled so rakishly and threw his papers with such abandonment that people turned over in their beds and muttered things about having that little heathen of a paper boy shot.

All along the route are dogs. Indeed, routes are distinguished by their dogs. Mean routes are those that have terraces and mean dogs; good routes--where the houses are close together and the dogs run out and wag their tails. Though Stubby's greater difficulty came through the wagging tails; he carried in a collie neighbourhood, and all collies seemed consumed with mighty ambitions to have routes. If you spoke to them--and how could you _help_ speaking to a collie when he came bounding out to you that way?--you had an awful time chasing him back, and when he got lost--and it seemed collies spent most of their time getting lost--the woman would put her head out next morning and want to know if you had coaxed her dog away.

Some of the fellows had dogs that went with them on their routes.

One day one of them asked Stubby why he didn't have a dog and he replied in surly fas.h.i.+on that he didn't have one 'cause he didn't want one. If he wanted one, he guessed he'd have one.

And there was no one within ear-shot old enough or wise enough--or tender enough?--to know from the meanness of Stubby's tone, and by his evil scowl, that his heart was just breaking to own a dog.

One day a new dog appeared along the route. He was yellow and looked like a cheap edition of a bull-dog. He was that kind of dog most accurately described by saying it is hard to describe him, the kind you say is just dog--and everybody knows.

He tried to follow Stubby; not in the trusting, bounding manner of the collies--not happily, but hopingly. Stubby, true to the ethics of his profession, chased him back where he had come from. That there might be nothing whatever on his conscience, he even threw a stone after him. Stubby was an expert in throwing things at dogs. He could seem to just miss them and yet never hit them.

The next day it happened again; but just as he had a clod poised for throwing, a window went up and a woman called: "For pity _sake_, little boy, don't chase him back _here_."

"Why--why, ain't he yours?" called Stubby.

"Mercy, _no_. We can't chase him away."

"Who's is he?" demanded Stubby.

"Why, he's n.o.body's! He just hangs around. I wish you'd coax him away."

Well, that was a _new_ one! And then all in a heap it rushed over Stubby that this dog who was n.o.body's dog could, if he coaxed him away--and the woman _wanted_ him coaxed away--be his dog.

And because that idea had such a strange effect on him he sang out, in off-hand fas.h.i.+on: "Oh, all right, I'll take him away and drown him for you!

"Oh, little _boy_," called the woman, "why, don't _drown_ him!"

"Oh, all right, I'll shoot him then!" called obliging Stubby, whistling for the dog--while all morning long the woman grieved over having sent a helpless little dog away with that perfectly _brutal_ paper boy!

Stubby's mother was was.h.i.+ng. She looked up from her tubs on the back porch to say, "Wish you'd take that bucket--" then seeing what was slinking behind her son, straightway a.s.sumed the role of destiny with, "Git out o' here!"

Stubby snapped his fingers behind his back as much as to say, "Wait a minute."

"A woman gave him to me," he said to his mother.

"_Gave_ him to you?" she scoffed. "I sh' think she would!"

Then something happened that had not happened many times in Stubby's short lifetime. He acknowledged his feelings.

"I'd like to keep him. I'd like to have a dog."

His mother shook her hands and the flying suds seemed expressing her scorn. "Huh! _That_ ugly good-for-nothing thing?"

The dog had edged in between Stubby's feet and crouched there. "He could go with me on my route," said Stubby. "He'd kind of be company for me."

And when he had said that he knew all at once just how lonesome he had been sometimes on his route, how he had wanted something to "kind of be company" for him.

His face twitched as he stooped down to pat the dog. Mrs. Lynch looked at her son--youngest of her five. Not the hardness of her heart but the hardness of her life had made her unpractised in moments of tenderness. Something in the way Stubby was patting the dog suggested to her that Stubby was a "queer one." He _was_ kind of little to be carrying papers all by himself.

Stubby looked up. "He could eat what's thrown away."

That was an error in diplomacy. The woman's face hardened. "Mighty little'll be thrown away _this_ winter," she muttered.

But just then Mrs. Johnson appeared on the other side of the fence and began hanging up her clothes and with that Mrs. Lynch saw her way to justify herself in indulging her son. Mrs. Johnson and Mrs.

Lynch had "had words." "You just let him stay around, Stubby," she called, and you would have supposed from her tone it was Stubby who was on the other side of the fence, "maybe he'll keep the neighbour's chickens out! Them that ain't got chickens o' their own don't want to be bothered with the neighbours'!"

That was how it happened that he stayed; and no one but Stubby knew--and possibly Stubby didn't either--how it happened that he was named Hero. It would seem that Hero should be a n.o.ble St. Bernard, or a particularly mean-looking bulldog, not a stocky, shapeless, squint-eyed yellow dog with one ear bitten half off and one leg built on an entirely different plan from its fellow legs. Possibly Stubby's own spiritual experiences had suggested to him that you weren't necessarily the way you looked.

The chickens were pretty well kept out, though no one ever saw Hero doing any of it. Perhaps Hero had been too long a.s.sociated with chasing to desire any part in it--even with roles reversed. If Stubby could help it, no one really saw Stubby doing the chasing either; he became skilled in chasing when he did not appear to be chasing; then he would get Hero to barking and turn to his mother with, "Guess you don't see so many chickens round nowadays."

The fellows in the line jeered at Hero at first, but they soon tired of it when Stubby said he didn't want the cur but his mother made him stay around to keep the chickens out. He was a fine chicken dog, Stubby grudgingly admitted. He couldn't keep him from following, said Stubby, so he just let him come. Sometimes when they were waiting in line Stubby made ferocious threats at Hero. He was going to break his back and wring his head off and do other heartless things which for some reason he never started in right then and there to accomplish.

It was different when they were alone--and they were alone a good deal. Stubby's route wasn't nearly so long after he had Hero to go with him. When winter came and five o'clock was dark and cold for starting out it was pretty good to have Hero trotting at his heels.

And Hero always wanted to go; it was never so rainy nor so cold that that yellow dog seemed to think he would rather stay home by the fire. Then Hero was always waiting for him when he came home from school. Stubby would sing out, "h.e.l.lo, cur!" and the tone was such that Hero did not grasp that he was being insulted. Sometimes when there was n.o.body about, Stubby picked Hero up in his arms and squeezed him--Stubby had not had a large experience with squeezing.

At those times Hero would lick Stubby's face and whimper a little love whimper and such were the workings of Stubby's heart and mind that that made him of quite as much account as if he really had chased the chickens. Stubby, who had seen the way dogs can look at you out of their eyes, was not one to say of a dog, "What good is he?"

But it seemed there were such people. There were even people who thought you oughtn't to have a dog to love and to love you if you weren't one of those rich people who could pay two dollars and a half a year for the luxury.

Stubby first heard of those people one night in June. The father of the Lynch family was sitting in the back yard reading the paper when Hero and Stubby came running in from the alley. It was one of those moments when Hero, forgetting the bleakness of his youth, abandoned himself to the joy of living. He was tearing round and round Stubby, barking, when Stubby's father called out: "Here!--shut up there, you cur. You better lie low. You're going to be shot the first of August."

Stubby, and as regards the joy of living Hero had done as much for Stubby as Stubby for Hero, came to a halt. The fun and frolic just died right out of him and he stood there staring at his father, who had turned the page and was settling himself to a new horror. At last Stubby spoke. "Why's he going to be shot on the first of August?" he asked in a tight little voice.

His father looked up. "Why's he going to be shot? You got any two dollars and a half to pay for him?"

He laughed as though that were a joke. Well, it was something of a joke. Stubby got ten cents a week out of his paper money. The rest he "turned in."

Then he went back to his paper. There was another long pause before Stubby asked, in that tight queer little voice: "What'd I have to pay two dollars and a half for? n.o.body owns him."

His parent stirred scornfully. "Suppose you never heard of a dog tax, did you? S'pose they don't learn you nothing like that at school?"

Yes, Stubby did know that dogs had to have checks, but he hadn't thought anything about that in connection with Hero. He ventured another question. "You have to have 'em for all dogs, even if you just picked 'em up on the street and took care of 'em when n.o.body else would?"

"You bet you do," his parent a.s.sured him genially. "You pay your dog tax or the policeman comes on the first of August and shoots your dog."

With that he dismissed it for good, burying himself in his paper.

For a minute the boy stood there in silence. Then he walked slowly round the house and sat down where his father couldn't see him. Hero followed--it was a way Hero had. The dog sat down beside the boy and after a couple of minutes the boy's arm stole furtively around him and they sat there very still for a long time.

As n.o.body but Hero paid much attention to him, n.o.body save Hero noticed how quiet and queer Stubby was for the next three days. Hero must have noticed it, for he was quiet and queer too. He followed wherever Stubby would let him, and every time he got a chance he would nestle up to him and look into his face--that way even cur dogs have of doing when they fear something is wrong.

At the end of three days Stubby, his little freckled face set and grim, took his stand in front of his father and came right out with: "I want to keep one week's paper money to pay Hero's tax."

His father's chair had been tilted back against a tree. Now it came down with a thud. "Oh, you _do_, do you?"

"I can earn the other fifty cents at little jobs."

"You _can_, can you? Now ain't you smart!"