Sonny

Chapter I

N my 'day dogs were dogs—black or brindle or yellow, but just dogs. If anybody had told me when I was running around with that old mut of mine that some day I’d be paying nine hun¬ dred dollars for another, I’d have-”

The declaration of the big gray man who had laid down his paper to peer over the top of his glasses at the flushed, happy girl who had dashed into his study to show him her treasure was broken into by the girl herself. She held a wiry haired little ball of puppyhood in the palms of her hands, supporting his out of all proportion head and big feet that dangled helplessly.

“Oh, but, dad!” she cried. “This is such an un¬ usual dog! Think of his pedigree! Why, his sire and his dam have both won prizes and prizes for ever and ever so long! He’s a son of Champion MacAllister II. He’ll be Champion MacAllister III, do you know that! And at nine hundred dollars, he’s such a bargain!”

Paula Grayson lifted the small bundle to her soft cheek to caress it with a mothering little motion.

Watching over his glasses, her father grinne3. He knew, and he knew that the girl knew, that though his voice might sound disapproving, and that in his in¬ most being he might really believe that paying nine hundred good dollars for a puppy whose eyes were just beginning to open on a world of which he was not even yet curious was a matter of folly, that he was never truly disapproving of whatever the beautiful girl who stood in front of him ever did. Too often she had dashed into that same well-fitted library with its masculine furnishings—the real home of a man who knew how to do himself well and had the means with which to indulge himself—to tell him of some reckless extravagance or other. Ever since she could remember, when she had been left motherless in childhood, Paula Grayson had formed the habit of making her father adviser and confidante, secure in the knowledge that he would think as she did. And big gray Jonathan Grayson, master of a half hundred mines, awesome in the business world to whomsoever he came in contact with knew and liked it. His business world was one thing; his daughter another. And it would not be stretching the truth to aver that had he, the man so used to power and wealth, been given the choice of two worlds, he would unhesitatingly have chosen that one in which his daughter existed.

The girl, cuddling the puppy, grimaced at her father. The puppy, feeling her caress, let out a little whimper and his small red tongue lapped at the soft¬ ness he could sense. For the first time in his life, the mite felt a sensation other than the purely animal one of the warmth of his mother’s body, the satisfaction of the milk he had instinctively drawn from her nourishing breasts. This, though, was something different. Had he begun to think, he would have realized that it was the sense of smell that was now satisfying him, would have known that the perfume and the softness of the cheek of Paula Grayson, to touch which many less fortunate than himself would have given a wealth of worldly possessions, was something that deserved the touch of approval he gave in his own way with a lick from his pink tongue. The girl laughed and hugged him a bit tighter.

“There, now!” she triumphed. “You see, he’s already beginning to take to me! That’s why I wanted an Airedale. They’re one-m an dogs, you know!”

“Humph!” A rumble sounded in the throat of the big gray man as his shaggy brows drew together and whimsical little lines crinkled about his eyes. “Don’t look like much of a man dog at all to me. Now, once I remember I had a real he-dog, but he didn’t have such piano legs as that little critter, and he had a regular dog head, too—but my, how he could hunt rabbits!”

“Was he pedigreed?” The girl glanced up from her puppy that had snuggled closer at the sound of the rumble as though instinctively scenting someone or something inimical to him.

“He was part hound, part spaniel and some mut, I reckon,” the father grinned, “but I’ll say he had it all over this nine-hundred-dollar whimpering pup of yours for looks.”

The girl’s nose, already tilted a little in a way that admirers referred to as “adorable,” went up and Her nostrils quivered with amusement.

“Oh, dad!” she cried. “That just shows what you know about dogs! To compare this wonderful little Airedale with all his good blood with some old dog of yours that could catch rabbits!” Again she snuggled the small ball whose opening eyes peered out questioningly, first toward one, then the other. She petted his head as she bent over him to speak, and his stump of a tail tried to waggle in answer.

| “You know you’re a little aristocrat, don’t you, pet?” she crooned.

A small whine answered her, and a closer snuggling at the roar that burst from the big man as his paper fell to the floor and he lay back in his wide comfortable chair, giving vent to his mirth.

“‘Petr” he boomed. “‘Man-dog,’ eh? ‘Pet!’ Now, my dog had a name —‘Sonny’—there’s a hedog’s name for you-”

“Wugh!” feebly emitted the small animal in the arms of the girl who had dropped with him onto the arm of her father’s chair. Again the big mining man laughed. “See!” he commented. “He’s trying to tell you that that’s a name he likes!”

“ ‘Sonny!’ Indeed!” sniffed the girl as she placed a kiss on the exact thinning spot she always held in reserve for it. “Silly!” Making fun of us, is he, pet? Well, just for that that’s what your name is going to be—‘Pet’! I was thinking some of calling him Arnold, but-”

She slipped from the chair arm with her purchase and started for the door.

“So much discussing nothing,” she declared, “and here’s Pet without his milk! They told me at the kennels that he must have it every two hours!”

There was an indulgent smile on the face of the father as he picked up his fallen paper and the girl slipped through the door with a snatch of song on her lips. His gaze wandered to the big logs blazing in the wide fireplace, and up toward the full-length painting of the woman which hung there, and his eyes, already soft, grew more so. The girl’s mother! How he had loved her! How he had loved Paula first because she was that woman’s daughter—and now, how he cared for her for her own beautiful, elf-like self, the one big w r arm feature in his life. He smiled again as he thought of the nine hundred dollars. How glad he was that he could give Paula nine hundred or nine thousand or any other amount for anything she chose to have. That it had been spent on a silly little pup meant nothing; that that pup was giving her pleasure, meant much.

“Pet’s” eyes opened wide and he showed signs o£ an awakening interest as the girl ran lightly into her own room and deposited him carefully on a soft-hued silken pillow on her chaise longue. His nostrils quivered and he somehow knew that everything was right: he was again experiencing the pleasant odor of perfume that hung about the girl and now permeated the whole room, even clinging to the pillow on which he lay. It was a strange world, but on the whole rather a delightful one; he was con¬ sidering, without knowing that it was the first time in his three weeks of life that he was considering anything. There was something bright and soothing, too, all about him. Color! He didn’t know what it was, but it was pleasant to his senses. The whole room was a rose-hung ivoried bower, just the sort of room that even a pup might expect would belong to the dark-haired, flashing-eyed girl who stood in the middle of the floor while her maid took from her shoulders the sable coat that had felt so warm when the pup had cuddled against it. He knew, too, that he liked the sounds he heard—rippling, musical sounds that issued from the girl’s throat, though he could not know yet that it was talking he heard. He had heard few such human sounds in his life. Conversation for Pet had been made up of the barks with which his mother had welcomed the approach of her food, and the gruff, though kindly tones of her keeper as he had given it to her and stooped with an encouraging word to pat her head. And even then, there had been so little time to listen. Pet had always been so ready for his own nourish¬ ment at those times—just as he had been at all times.

“Hurry, Celeste,” the girl commanded. “It’s past time for his milk, and you know we mustn’t neglect him. He’s a valuable puppy—cost me just exactly nine hundred dollars—at a bargain—and I intend we shall win just heaps and heaps of prizes!”

The cushion was so soft; it smelled so sweet; the voice such soothing music. Before he knew it, the pup had curled himself comfortably, his bright little eyes had shut and he was sleeping with his black nose between the two front unwieldly paws with their piano-leg-like architecture. When he awoke, it was to feel milk trickling down his throat. Another new sensation, and one which he did not care for at first, for the girl was dribbling it into his mouth with a spoon, when any sensible pup knew that the way to get milk was to draw it from his mother’s breast.

But in time, the puppy became used to the milk giving, just as he did to the silky pillows, and his own soft one over by the fire with the cheerful crackling logs at which he would gaze for half hours at a time before he got used to using those legs of his which somehow seemed always to be in his way at first; got used to the rosy hangings and lights; the perfume and the smell that rose from the burning hickory. It was all part of life, and though at first it in a way irked him, though he knew not why, he got used to the pettings of the girl, and those of the maid who always stooped to give him a small pat whenever she passed him. He wondered why it was that there always seemed to be such a queer in¬ flection in Celeste’s voice as she bent over him to whisper: “Nine hundred dollars!” What could there be that was strange in his being connected in some way with nine hundred dollars? Sometimes, as he lay on his soft pillow before the fire, he won¬ dered if nine hundred dollars had anything to do with a tail or legs, or some other part of a puppy he had never heard discussed enough to recognize it. But Pet knew that he and nine hundred dollars were in¬ dissolubly connected. He had been told it too often.

Life was a smooth, comfortable thing for the Airedale before that day of his first tragedy. He knew, too, that that was his own fault, though he never got over blaming the couch for being so high. As he grew in strength, even on his warm milk diet he would race madly about the rosy room, even daring to half leap, half pull himself on to uphol¬ stered chairs and couches. He felt very proud of himself that day he leapt into the middle of the wide chaise longue. Then he felt himself slipping. The silken pillows were falling from beneath his feet. With his teeth and his gangling legs he gripped at them, but they would not hold. Over and over they went, Pet with them. He felt keenly the bump with which he landed in the middle of the polished floor where there was no cushion of any kind. Then he heard what he knew was his own voice yipping out in a tone he had never heard before, and he stopped a moment to wonder at the peculiar prickling in his throat that had brought that sound forth. But only for a minute, for there w T as a swish of silken skirts and Paula Grayson swooped down beside him to pick him up for cuddling.

Then she was calling wildly for Celeste, and there were more cuddlings and pettings and warm milk until he knew that it was not such a terrible thing after all to tumble from a couch, as he lay in his own basket on his own warm pillow and licked the spot the hard floor had made to smart.

Every day they went out in Paula Grayson’s smart little coupe. The world was bigger, then—bigger than Pet had ever imagined it might be. Sometimes, too, he saw other dogs; pups running along the streets, even playing in the nice, comfortable looking mud. Pet would look up at Paula with a whine and a wag of his stump of tail and wonder why she, always so kind, did not understand that he, too, would like to run along those streets and play with those other dogs. It was strange how she could misunder¬ stand this when she was always so thoughtful. Once, after she had stopped the car and a man had talked with her and admired Pet, he heard her talking about nine hundred dollars. For the first time Pet begun to dislike nine hundred dollars. It was coming into his head that nine hundred dollars was somehow keeping him riding in a car when he wanted to rush about and yip out his happiness at being in a world that was so full of joy and good things.

Pet came to know that it was the usual thing for men to stop Paula Grayson to talk to her when she was out driving. Men, it seemed, played an im¬ portant part in her life. They were always in the big Grayson drawing-room those times the pup was allowed to be brought down from Paula’s boudoir for exhibition and to be admired. It was coming into his head, too, that those drawing-room men were not much. They seemed so small when compared with the other two men Pet knew—the huge father of Paula who always glanced at him with such a tolerant, amused look, somehow as if he were sorry for him— though why he should be Pet couldn’t imagine. Paula’s father had no soft pillow of rose silk on which to sleep; he had no maid to feed him warm milk and to see that he was covered up and placed in a nice warm place to sleep those nights his mistress was away. And then, the other man—the butler who carried him so gingerly and so with a sort of air of awe and respect when he was sent to bring him down to the drawing¬ room. He, too, was big. Why didn’t Paula see that he was much more of a man than those small, well-dressed ones who cluttered up her drawing-room? Pet liked that butler. Several times he tried to tell him so, but the butler could not understand. Men, he de¬ cided, were rather stupid, after all. Not like dogs, who would have understood. But the butler did not heed his whimpers of overtures, nor even the licks of his tongue on the back of his hand. Pet decided patiently that it must be because of that handicap he carried somewhere about him of nine hundred dollars.

There were three of her men with his mistress that day they went down to the great place with its thousands of people and red-capped black men bustling about, and with its noise such as the dog had never imagined could exist. It deafened him, while it bewildered, so much that he did not at first listen to Paula as she laughed and chatted with her friends who carried big bunches of flowers and armfuls of books and magazines, and boxes the dog knew held chocolates, for several times Paula had given him one out of just such a box.

“Oh, don’t worry about me!’’ he heard the girl laugh. “I’m used to traveling alone. It’s Pet I’m worrying about. Oh, do you think he’ll be all right?’’ she added, anxiously. “I’ve tried and tried, but the railroad men just will not let me take him into my stateroom, and he’ll have to ride in the baggage car!” She cuddled the dog more closely in her arms, and he whimpered. “Seel” she cried. “He understands!

And he’s never been used to anything but his own basket and pillow, and California so far, far away!” Again the dog whimpered and glanced at the men hovering near. It was all so embarrassing. Why could not the girl realize that he was getting to be a big dog, and that he might feel a bit abashed at hav¬ ing it known that he must always be cuddled. But the men were taking it seriously. The one he had heard called Donald laughed as he reassured:

“Will he be all right?” he chuckled. “Would the President be all right?” Pet squirmed a little as Donald gently tweaked his ear. “They’ll not forget that you’re the prize possession of Miss Paula Gray¬ son, will they, old chap?” he asked the dog,“—or that you cost nine hundred dollars?”

There it was again. Must he go through life with this nine hundred dollar thing hanging over him— something that was so vague that he couldn’t get at it to alter it!

Then there was a rush for some big black gates that a strange looking man in queer blue clothes pushed open. They were all laughing and trying to talk at the same time. It was all so confusing that Pet could not collect his thoughts until he realized himself being taken down a long dark platform be¬ side what looked like much greater automobiles than he had ever seen before, all fastened together and with other people laughing and talking and hurrying to get into the great cars. They came to a stop be¬ side a car which had a wide gaping hole in its side and beside which there was another man in the strange blue clothes like the others he had seen as he came down the platform. He was smiling at Paula.

“Well, here you are, Miss Grayson,” he beamed. “Waiting for you. Now, you don’t need to worry about the pup—that him?” as he cast an inquiring glance at Pet held in the arms of his mistress. “I’m going to see to it myself that he’ll be all right.” But there was something of a twinkle in his eyes that Pet caught as he was transferred from Paula’s arms to those of the man in blue. Pet could not help but wonder if this big man in blue whose voice he liked at its first sound could have heard about that nine hundred dollars. He hoped not. He liked the touch of the big man’s hands as he patted his head. There was something in the touch he had not before known, not even when the butler had carried him. Pet wondered if it could be because it was a man’s hands, instead of the soft touch of woman’s that had been all he had known, outside of the strokings to which he was accustomed from all the smaller men who were to be found in Paula Grayson’s train.

“You'll be fine, won’t you, boy?” the man asked the dog.

“Wough!” said Pet.

“You see,” laughed the man, “he’s trying to tell you so himself.”

“Oh, I hope so!” grieved his mistress. Then, as she touched his head gently, the dog heard her murmur as she bent over him: “Now, be a good boy, and I’ll come to see you at every stop. You know,” and she looked up at the man in blue with that smile that Pet had come to know was so all conquering where men were concerned, “you know, conductor, when I come back from this California trip, I'm going to enter him in the Piping Rock show, and he’s so sure to win prizes and prizes that just nothing must happen to him-”

So the man’s name was Conductor. Pet was glad to know it. He disliked thinking of anyone merely indiscriminately.

What Paula was about to say further was drowned in an escape of steam.

“Oh, we must hurry!” she cried. “Good-by,

Pet-” And she was gone with a wave of her

snowy handkerchief that the dog knew perfumed the air through which it was waved.

Then it was that Pet knew the first real indignity of his life. He had thought that life could hold nothing more humiliating than when Paula had first clasped about his neck the obnoxious collar which irked him so. But there was worse to come. Gently, despite his wrigglings, the man carried him through the yawning hole in the side of the car. Once inside he was on his feet on a floor that had neither rugs nor carpet, nor even a pillow in sight. Just rough looking box-like things that he heard called trunks as others were dumped into the car with a bang by other men in queer clothes. From his pocket the man called Conductor took a long thick string-like looking thing that he fastened to Pet’s collar, and the other end to the side of the wall. Longingly Pet looked into the man’s eyes. Surely he must realize that this was too much! Too much for a dog like himself who had known no restraint anywhere. He must understand! But the whimper that rose in his throat apparently conveyed no meaning to the man, for with a final pat on the dog’s head and a “Be good, old boy, until I see you,’’ he turned to go. Outside he heard him calling to someone.

“Watch out for that dog now, Joe.” There was a tone of command in his voice that Pet knew he would have obeyed himself, had an order been given to him. This Conductor must be someone of almost as great importance as Paula herself. Long he looked at the restraining leash, trying to understand it. Of one thing he was sure, though. Whatever the reason, it could not be for long. She had said she would come back soon, and he knew she would.

Philosophically, he decided to make the best of it. He curled up on a space of floor beside one of the trunks, and after all the excitement and exhaustion of getting away would have gone to sleep had he not been rudely roused by the banging of the big doors in the side of the car, the shriek of a whistle from somewhere nearby that was terrifying enough for any dog who had never heard one, and then the con¬ sciousness that the car was moving under him. They were taking him away—away from Paula and she could not come back! He leaped to his feet and pulled his body the full length of his leash in a wild dash for freedom and with a howl of protest.

“Lay down, there, you!” growled a strange voice from somewhere out of his sight. A voice that Pet did not like, but which he decided to obey for this one time.

So, trembling at the strangeness of it all, wondering, indignant, too, Pet, the nine hundred dollar prize dog of a prize beauty—Pet, who knew only luxury and gentleness, started on his long, long ride across the continent.

V,

Chapter II

T EN MILE, out on the edge of the great white desert of sand and heat, toward which the passengers of the Limited, utterly oblivious of its existence, were being rushed at best express train speed, was used to being ignored by most of the world. There were those who sneeringly remarked that there would be no Ten Mile at all were it not that sometimes a great train was compelled to stop there for water or despatches and that somebody had flung up the shack of a station so passengers looking out and wondering at the stop would not feel they were lost or being held up by bandits.

Almost flush on the edge of the desert it stood, if its crazily leaning board shacks could be said to stand—the great desert merely skirted by those great trains with their pampered passengers lolling on com¬ fortable cushions and trying to stave off the heat with iced drinks passed about by a grinning white-coated porter. It is that way with the desert. Those only dare is dangers who have the daring not to skirt, who, to gain the green of the foothills with their hidden secrets of metals beyond would give life itself in the conquest; or, those who seek it as a haven when greater danger threatens from their fellow men.

There were trees to be seen in the distance from Ten Mile, trees that climbed the mountains along the horizon far from the sage brush, but there were none in Ten Mile. Its sandy road dignified by the name of street ran straight between the shacks huddled on either side and out to the edge of the desert stretching as far as eye could see. Besides the railroad station, there were, of course, those buildings which had once been saloons. More of them than anything else, but all serving different purposes in such days as these. Dance and refreshment halls, most of them were called by courtesy, but there was none too curious as to the sort of refreshment that was to be obtained. Wherein Ten Mile was not so vastly different from the rest of the country of which it was a small part. Ten Mile was not chosen as a place of abode save by those who had long since given up all hope of successful prospecting and, either too ashamed to go back from whence they had come, or hopeless, had drifted into a community of their own, secure in the knowledge that there would always be enough of its kind to eat from some grubstaker or other, and that work need not be done.

The station, of course, was a rendezvous on those rare times when it became known a train would stop. For the occasional message which held up one of the transcontinental trains was always one of the most important things in the one-legged station master and despatcher’s life, and he advertised it as far as he could in what time he had. But there were other assembly places. The “refreshment halls,” nightly filled by prospectors who rode in from the foothills —and the post-office. For longer than most of the rambling inhabitants of Ten Mile could remember, the post-office had been ruled over by Zachariah Tuttle, “Old Man Tuttle” he had come to be called, and it was there, according to the best ethics of the long-forgotten New England village from which he had once come, that Old Man Tuttle had gathered about him a sort of desert salon, a lounging place where everyone dropped in at some time of day or night bent on hearing the latest news, of forming or reforming the nation’s politics or merely purchasing a tin of black tobacco or a stick or two of licorice from the old man’s meager supplies that occupied a shelf opposite the few small boxes of the “Post-office.”

Sheriff Bill Norton recrossed his heavily cowhided legs for the fourth or fifth time, and spat toward the sand-filled box as he tiptilted his chair before he reiterated, with a wise nod of his head:

“Nussir, what I’m tellin’ you is that it would be nowise healthy for that there Eastern jasper to hit these parts without a guard of state police while Dave Deering’s in the state of mind he is. Nussir!”

Old Man Tuttle chuckled and his toothless grin emphasized his words.

“Wal, I’m not allowin’ Dave hain’t pro’bly the; best shot in these here parts,” he retorted. “What I’m sayin’ is effen he’s so almighty clever, why did he let that Eastener come right up and take away his mine like he was takin’ a piece of pep’mint candy from a child.”

“Hmmph!” Lem Crowder hunched his big bulk toward the door as he spoke. “I’m like the sheriff here. I, for one, ain’t hankerin’ to kid Dave none—nuther would you be effen you’d seed the glum way he jest turned out of the White Eagle, and said nuthin’ when some of the boys started to kid him, but what he was thinkin’ was a lot, I’ll tell the world.”

“Pshaw, I ain’t afeered of Dave Deering and his gun none,” was the little old postmaster’s boast. “Come I want to say suthin’, I ’low there hain’t no gunman near this here desert’s going to stop me none-”

A laugh sounded from the sheriff’s throat as he, too, rose, and with a yawn and a stretch of his big wide arms started for the door. “I reckon you’re goin’ to have the chance, Zach,” he announced, “for if I don’t mistake, that’s Dave down at that hitchin’ post now, tethering Pete. Bound here most like, to see if they’s more news. Sorry I can’t stay to see the fun, but I got to be gittin’ down to the jail—got a couple of drunks’ll be gittin’ lonely.”