Read Ebook: Crystallizing Public Opinion by Bernays Edward L

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Ebook has 736 lines and 30658 words, and 15 pages

"One in a million, that dog," was Earle's verdict.

A sense of power, of superabundant life, of fulfilment tingled in his nerves and bones during these hunts. What joy came with the knowledge that his nose was growing keener, his judgment more profound! What added joy that his master knew--his master, stern and unrelenting when he was careless, generous with praise when he did well.

He developed fine scorn for visiting huntsmen who missed frequent shots--old Squire Kirby and John Davis, neighbours; sportsmen from afar, drawn to Breton Junction by the field trials held every year. How his master towered above them! How well he knew the crack of his master's gun! How well he knew there was a bird to retrieve when it spoke. He welcomed competition with man and dog. His nose like his master's gun was peerless in the field.

But hunting did not fill his life--there were idle days when he sauntered about at will. There was his sunny spot near the big rock chimney on the southern side of the house. There was his box underneath the back porch, filled always with clean straw, into which he could crawl on bleak days and listen to the rain spouting from the gutters and to the wind mourning around the corners.

Every shrub in the yard, every ancient oak, the wide-halled barn, the cribs filled with corn, the woodshed boarded up on the west, the blacksmith shop where Earle repaired the tools, all took on the intimate kindliness of home. He grew to be a privileged character with the very animals on the place. He took his privileges as his due, even treating with amused condescension the fat black woman in the kitchen, who fussed and spluttered like her frying pans when he entered, but who never drove him out.

No living creature, however, not even a well-used bird dog, knows perfect peace. With the close of the hunting season, Tommy Earle, whom he had found in the woods, took him boisterously in hand. It was a season when a hard-worked bird dog stretches himself out to the lazy warmth of the sun, and pads with flesh his uncomfortably lean, hard muscles.

The persecution began a little timidly, for even Tommy could not be insensible to the latent power of those muscles and fangs. But when no punishment followed, it increased until there was no rest in the yard for the dog. He had never been accustomed to children. It galled him to be straddled as if he were a hobby horse; it reflected on his dignity to be yanked about by the ears and turned round by the tail. He realized that viciousness played no part in the annoyances, the demand was simply that he metamorphose himself into a boon companion. This he steadfastly refused to do.

Many times--his nose was on a level with Tommy's frowsy head--he looked sternly, even menacingly, into those irresponsibly bright blue eyes, but with no effect whatever. There were other times when the red Irish flared up, and he sprang back, strongly tempted to snap and snap hard. But always he reflected that master and mistress set a high valuation on the little biped. And Frank would have been a gentleman if he hadn't been a dog.

Self-control embitters a small spirit--it ennobles a large one. His forbearance was not without its reward. He found himself, partly through the virtue of necessity, growing indulgent. On that lonely plantation what outlet did the child have for his playmania? The dog remembered that in a former kennel life a puppy had incessantly chewed his ears. Perhaps he had been that way himself--all young animals are. And what was this creature, in spite of the fact that he ran upright instead of on all fours, and wore small overalls made for him by his mother, what was he but an active young animal?

Then instinct told him that on occasion Tommy would be loyal to the death. This was evidenced by the fact that Tommy once savagely fought a visiting boy who threw a stone into his box. Again, when enticed by the wanderlust of spring, he was gone three days, it was Tommy who, like the prodigal's father, spied him from afar and came running down the lane to welcome him eagerly home.

"No wonder he ran off," said Earle. "You worry him to death!"

Tommy looked up, past the belt, along the soft shirt, to the face bent down upon him like a disapproving providence. When he turned his eyes on the dog, there was wonderment in them as if perhaps the truth were dawning. Certainly for days he followed the dog around, plainly apprehensive that he would run off again. And Frank, far more ready to forget grievances than to remember them, began to watch him in his incessant play, even to take part on occasion.

Spring passed, summer came, and Earle was a busy man on the farm. The dog either followed him to the field, or sauntered about the yard with lolling tongue. He grew stouter, his coat glossier, his muscles more stanch. He grew sedate, too, like a gentleman of broad estates. More and more his face bore that stamp of magnanimity that comes only to noble breeds.

So things might have gone to the end, and Earle declared he dropped in from Mars, and Marian contended that he was sent to find her boy, and Tommy cared not where he came from so he was there. So things might have gone if Frank had not followed the buggy to Breton Junction.

For two weeks previous he had been growing restless. Long, cold nights, frosty mornings, gaudy colours here and there in the woods, a haze as of burning brush in the air--all these pointed to one conclusion: another hunting season was rolling majestically around. On the very night previous Earle had oiled the gun, Marian had patched the old hunting coat, Tommy had smeared the hunting boots with grease, and Frank had been let in to the fire to witness the performance.

He had never been allowed to follow the buggy to Breton. "It corrupts the morals of a dog to loaf around a railroad station," Earle had always said. But this morning he stole secretly after the buggy, and trotted under the rear axle unobserved by Earle and Tommy. A mile down the road he thought it safe to show himself. He ran eagerly around the buggy, as if he had suddenly conceived the idea of going with them, had just overtaken them, and had no doubt whatever of his welcome.

"Go back!" ordered Earle.

He stopped, ears thrown back, with that banal expression on his face of a dog pretending not to understand. The histrionic excellence of the performance was not lost on Tommy, who laughed out loud.

"Let him go, Popper."

"All right--you rascal!"

Frank ran ahead, barking up into the blazed face of the sorrel. Five miles farther from the crest of a hill they looked down on the village of Breton Junction, with the squat, sunlit roof of the station in the middle--box cars grouped about, semaphore above, and long lines of telegraph poles that came from out the south and disappeared into the north--one of those small centres in a vast nerve system that controls the activities of a continent.

At sight of station and box cars, at the sound of a freight engine hissing lazily, Frank came back to the buggy and looked up inquiringly into the faces of man and boy. When at a store awning Earle tied the horse, he followed close at their heels, confidence suddenly gone out of him. Association and instinct stirred vague recollections of a former life. Whence came that hissing engine? Where led those long flashing rails that disappeared into the blue of distant hills?

In a littered room, heated by a pot-bellied stove, with an instrument on a table that rattled monotonously like a mechanical species of cricket, a man handed Earle a crate of shotgun shells. Then twinkling, he looked down at the wide-eyed boy and the big red dog who stuck close to the boy.

"Steve, which do you think most of? Dog or boy?"

Earle laughed. "Hard to tell, Bill. On the whole, Tommy takes precedence."

"Ever find out where the dog came from?"

"No; and that's not all, Bill--I don't want to. All right, young man, let's get back home."

Frank sprang out of the door and ran for the buggy. His fears had vanished with the turning of his back on this reminder of things past. But when Earle and Tommy did not follow, he came dejectedly back. Tommy wanted to wait and see the train; he had never seen but one, he pleaded--that was a "fate" train. Far down the track a fateful whistle blew. Above them, the semaphore dropped with a clang.

"Come, F'ank!" shouted Tommy, dancing with excitement.

On the platform the boy took firm hold of providence as represented by Steve Earle's big forefinger with one hand and clutched the dog's mane with the other, lest the "suction" all children fear draw him under the grinding wheels. He felt the solid earth under his feet tremble as the great hissing engine rolled between him and the sun, the rod rising and falling on the terrible wheels, the engineer high above in a window. Then the long black baggage car--and in the door a man in a cap, who looked at them with open mouth as if he knew suddenly who they were. As the train stopped, the baggageman jumped to the ground and came running back to Earle, all out of breath.

"That your dog?" he demanded.

"Sure, he's my dog!"

"Where'd you get him?"

The wrinkles in the corner of Earle's eye came close together.

"Is that any of your affair?"

But the baggageman smiled ingratiatingly, like a man who wanted to be friends.

"Oh, come off!" interrupted Earle. "The Coast Line's a hundred miles east."

"Can't help it. That's the dog. Watch him. Commere--Commere, Dan. See? Knows me. Ever see the beat of that? I'm sorry, mister--but--if you don't mind--what's your name and address?"

Earle had turned, and was looking at the dog under the truck. Then without a word he gave his name. The baggageman wrote it hastily in a notebook. The bell began to ring. The baggageman started away running.

"That's what I call white, Mr. Earle!" he called as he swung aboard, waving his hand back at them like a man unaccountably happy and relieved.

Earle looked down. Tommy noticed that his mouth was grim.

"Come, son," he said.

Tommy looked at the dog with fear and with mute apology. In his heart was hatred of that baggageman, and vain, vain regret that he had ever come to Breton Junction to see the train. All the way home the dog trotted under the axle of the buggy. In the days that followed a far less sagacious dog than he would have sensed the anxiety that disturbed the homestead on the hill to which his destiny had led him.

There was nothing particularly extraordinary about a buggy turning in from the main road and coming up the long hill toward the house. Frank, basking in the morning sun, kept his eyes on it merely out of curiosity. But as it drew closer he rose slowly to his feet, his ears erect. Unreasoning antipathy to the couple in it raised his hair in a long tuft down his back. He withdrew toward the barn, his head over his shoulder, the sun glistening on his coat of silk.

"There he is!" cried Lancaster.

"Dan--Dan!" shrilled the woman.

The man jumped out of the buggy, lifted her to the ground, and both hurried toward him, smiling like old friends eager to be recognized. The woman extended her hand.

"Dan!" she coaxed.

He drew away toward the barn, his tail wagging sheepishly, mollified by their friendliness, wishing he could extend to them the welcome of the hill--but afraid of them and of what they represented. Steve Earle hurried out of the house, followed by Marian and Tommy, who held his mother's hand. They all shook hands--all but Tommy, who withdrew from the group with a frightened glance at the dog. Then Earle and Lancaster came toward him, Lancaster talking.

"We received notice from the railroad," he was saying, "and as Mrs. Lancaster and I were on our way to Florida, we thought we would stop over and make sure. The railroad has never met our claim." He laughed. "You know how a railroad is."

"Is that the dog?" demanded Earle.

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