The Revolt of the Oyster

by Don Marquis

WRITTEN IN BLOOD (As told by the dogs)

Never did I suppose that I would be a bloodhound in an “Uncle Tom's Cabin” show. But I have been one, and my constant wish is that it has not made me too proud and haughty. For proud and haughty dogs, sooner or later, all have their downfalls. The dog that was the rightful bloodhound in that show was the proudest and haughtiest dog I ever met, and he had his downfall.

Other proud and haughty dogs I have seen, in my time; and some of them I have licked, and some of them have licked me. For instance, there was the one that used to be a blind man's dog on a street corner in Chicago. He was a tough, loud-barking, red-eyed dog, full of suspiciousness and fleas; and his disposition was so bad that it was even said that if one of his fleas bit an ordinary dog, that ordinary dog would swell up where he was bit as if a hornet had stung him. He was proud of those fleas and proud of being that ornery; but he had his downfall.

Another proud and haughty dog I knew belonged to the dog and pony part of a circus that came to our town once. He sat in a little cart in the street parade, with a clown's hat and jacket on, and drove a Shetland pony. You couldn't get him into a fight; he would just grin and say he was worth too much money to risk himself in a fight, especially as the money he was worth did not belong to him anyhow, but to the circus that owned him. He said it wouldn't be honest to risk other people's money just because he wanted to fight; but I have never believed that he really wanted to fight. He grinned mostly all the time, a conceited kind of grin, and he would up-end himself and stand on his head for you to admire him, and then flop over and bark and look proud of his own tricks and proud of the money he was worth. But he had his downfall right in the midst of his greatest pride, for a brindle Tom-cat with one eye went after him right in the middle of that street parade, and he left that cart very quickly, and it nearly broke up the parade.

But the proudest and haughtiest of all was the bloodhound that owned that Uncle Tom show—leastways, he acted as if he owned it. It was a show that showed in a tent, like a regular circus, and it stayed in our town three days. It had a street parade, too; and this bloodhound was led along at the head of the street parade with a big heavy muzzle on, and he was loaded down with chains and shackles so he could hardly walk. Besides the fellow that led him, there were two more men that followed along behind him and held on to chains that were fastened to his collar. In front of him marched the Uncle Tom of that show; and every now and then the bloodhound would struggle to get at Uncle Tom and be pulled back. He was a very dangerous-looking dog, and you thought to yourself what a lot of damage he would probably do if he was ever to bite those chains to pieces and eat up those three men that held him and chew Uncle Tom and then run loose into the world. Every step he took he would toss his head and jangle those chains and growl.

After the parade was over, a lot of us dogs and boys went down to the lot where the show was to be held. We were hanging around the tent where the actors were eating, and that bloodhound dog was there without chains like any other dog, and us dogs got to talking with him.

“You country-town dogs,” he says to Mutt Mulligan, who is a friend of mine and some considerable dog himself, “don't want to come fussin' around too close to my cook tent or my show! Us troupers ain't got any too much use for you hick dogs, anyhow.”

“Oh, it's your show, is it?” says Mutt.

“Whose show did you think it was?” says that bloodhound dog, very haughty.

“1 thought from all those chains and things, maybe the show owned you, instead of you owning the show,” says Mutt.

“You saw who led that street parade, didn't you?” says the bloodhound dog. “Well, that ought to tell you who the chief actor of this show is. This here show is built up around me. If anything was to happen to me, there couldn't be any show.”

Mutt, he gave me a signal with his tail to edge in a little closer, and I sidled up to where I could grab a front leg unexpected to him, if he made a pass at Mutt. And then Mutt says, sneering so his teeth stuck out and his nose wrinkled:

“Something's goin' to happen to you, if you ain't more polite and peaceable in your talk.”

“What's goin' to happen to me?” says that bloodhound dog.

“Don't you let them bristles rise around your neck,” says Mutt, “or you'll find out what's goin' to happen to you.”

“Whose bristles are they?” says that bloodhound dog.

“It don't make any difference whose bristles they are,” says Mutt. “No dog can stick his bristles up into my face like that and get away with it. When I see bristles stand up, I take it personal.”

But just then Old Uncle Zeb White, who is coloured, come amoseyin' along, and that Tom-show dog barked out:

“Somebody hold me! Quick! Somebody muzzle me! Somebody better put my chains on to me again! Somebody better tell that coloured man to clear out of here! I've been trained to chase coloured men! What do they mean by letting that coloured man get near my show tent?”

Old Uncle Zeb, he is the quietest and most peaceable person anywhere, amongst dogs, boys, or humans, and the janitor of the Baptist church. He is the only coloured man in our town, and is naturally looked up to and respected with a good deal of admiration and curiosity on that account, and also because he is two hundred years old. He used to be the bodyservant of General George Washington, he says, until General Washington set him free. And then along comes Abraham Lincoln after a while and sets him free again, he says. And being set free by two prominent men like that, Uncle Zeb figures he is freer than anybody else, and I have heard him tell, time and again, how he can't speak kindly enough of them two white gentlemen.

“Don't anybody sick me on to that coloured man,” says this bloodhound dog. “If I was to be sicked on to that coloured man, this whole town couldn't pull me off again! I been trained to it, I tell you!”

Which it was easy enough to see he really didn't want to start anything; it was just his pride and haughtiness working in him. Just then Freckles Watson, who is my boy that I own, and Tom Mulligan, who is Mutt Mulligan's boy, both says: “Sick 'im!” Not that they understood what us dogs was talking about, but they saw me and Mutt sidling around that Tom-show dog, and it looked to them like a fight could be commenced. But the Tom-show dog, when he heard that “Sick 'im!” jumped and caught Uncle Zeb by a leg of his trousers. Then Uncle Zeb's own dog, which his name is Burning Deck after a piece Uncle Zeb heard recited one time, comes a-bulging and a-bouncing through the crowd and grabs that Tom-show dog by the neck.

They rolled over and over, and into the eating tent, and under the table. The actors jumped up, and the table got tipped over, and the whole meal and the tin dishes they was eating off of and all the actors and the benches and the dogs was wallowing and banging and kicking and barking and shouting on the ground in a mess, and all of us other dogs run in to help Burning Deck lick that bloodhound, and all the boys followed their dogs in to see a square deal, and then that tent come down on top of everything, and believe me it was some enjoyable time. And I found quite a sizeable piece of meat under there in the mix-up, and I thinks to myself I better eat that while I can get it, so I crawled out with it. Outside is sitting Uncle Zeb, watching that fallen-down tent heaving and twisting and squirming, and I heard him say to himself:

“White folks is allers gittin' up some kin' of entuh-tainment fo' us cullud people to look at! Us cullud people suah does git treated fine in dese heah Nothe'n towns!”

Pretty soon everybody comes crawling out from under that tent, and they straightens her up, and the boss of the show begins to talk like Uncle Zeb has done the whole thing, and Uncle Zeb just sits on the grass and smiles and scratches his head. And finally the boss of the show says to Uncle Zeb could he hire Burning Deck for the bloodhound's part? Because Burning Deck has just about chewed that proud and haughty dog to pieces, and they've got to have a bloodhound!

“No, suh,” says Uncle Zeb. “No, suh! I thank yo' kindly fo' yo' offer, suh, but Burnin' Deck, he ain't gwine inter no show whah he likely ter be sicked on ter no cullud pusson. Burnin' Deck, he allers been a good Republican, bringed up that-a-way, des de same as me, an' we ain't gwine ter take no paht in any gwines-on agin' de cullud nation.”

“But see here,” says the boss. “In this show the coloured people get all the best of it. In this show the coloured people go to Heaven!”

Uncle Zeb says he had heard a good deal about that Uncle Tom show in his life, first and last, and because he had heard so much, he went to see it one time. And he says if getting chased by bloodhounds and whipped by whips is giving them the best of it, he hopes he never obtains admission to any show where they get the worst of it. The boss, he says that show is the show that helped make the coloured people free, and Uncle Zeb ought to be proud of Burning Deck acting in it. But Uncle Zeb says he ain't to be fooled; it was General Washington set 'em free first, and Abraham Lincoln set 'em free the second time, and now President Wilson is licking them Germans and setting them free again. And as for him, he says, he will stick to his own white folks that he knows and janitors for and whose clothes fit him, and Burning Deck will do the same. And as far as them Tom-show coloured folks' going to heaven is concerned, he reckons he don't want to be chased there by no bloodhounds; and it ain't likely that a man that has janitored for a Baptist church as faithful as he has would go anywhere else, anyhow. So he takes Burning Deck and goes along home.

“I've got to have a dog,” says the boss, watching them get the tent fixed up, and rubbing his head.

“Would Spot do?” says Freckles, which is my boy, Spot being me.

Well, I never expected to be an actor, as I said before. But they struck a bargain, which Freckles was to get free admission to that show, and I was to be painted and dyed up some and be a bloodhound. Which the boss said the regular bloodhound which Burning Deck had eat so much of wasn't really a bloodhound, anyhow, but only a big mongrel with bloodhound notions in his head.

Well, maybe you've seen that show. Which all the bloodhound has to do is to run across the stage chasing that Uncle Tom, and Freckles was to run across with me, so there wasn't much chance to go wrong.

And nothing would have gone wrong if it hadn't been for Burning Deck. Uncle Zeb White must have got over his grouch against that show, for there he was sitting in the front row with a new red handkerchief around his throat and his plug hat on his knees, and Burning Deck was there with him. I never had anything but liking for Uncle Zeb, for he knows where to scratch dogs. But Burning Deck and me have never been close friends, on account of him being jealous when Uncle Zeb scratches you too long. He even is jealous when Uncle Zeb scratches a pig, which all the pigs in town that can get loose have a habit of coming to Uncle Zeb's cottage to be scratched, and they say around town that some of those pigs never find their way home again. Squeals have been heard coming from Uncle Zeb's kitchen, but the rest of the pigs never seem to learn.

But no self-respecting dog would be jealous if his boss scratched a pig. For after all, what is a pig? It is just a pig, and that is all you can say for it. A pig is not a person; a pig is something to eat. But Burning Deck is a peculiar dog, and he gets ideas into his head. And so, right in the midst of the show, when I chased that coloured man across the stage, Burning Deck all of a sudden jumped up on to the platform and grabbed me. I would have licked him then and there, but what was left of the show's bloodhound come crawling out on to the stage dragging two of his legs, and Burning Deck turned from me to him, and then all the actors run on to the stage to save what was left of the bloodhound, and Si Emery, the city marshal, threw open his coat so you could see his big star and climbed on to the stage and arrested everybody, and somebody dropped the curtain down right into the midst of it.

And the way it happened, on the outside of the curtain was left Freckles and me and the Little Eva of that show, which she is beautiful, with long yellow hair and pink cheeks and white clothes like an angel. And before Freckles could stop her, she took hold of him by the hand and says to the audience won't they please be kind to the poor travelling troupers and not let them be under arrest, and let the show go on? And she cried considerable, and all through her crying you could hear Si Emery behind the curtain arresting people; and after while some of the women in the audience got to crying, too, and the city fathers was all in the audience, and they went up on to the stage and told Si, for the sake of Little Eva, to release everyone he had arrested, and after that the show went on.

Well, after the show was out, quite a lot of the dogs and boys that was friends of mine and of Freckles was waiting for us. Being in a show like that made us heroes. But some of them were considerably jealous of us, too, and there would have been some fights, but Freckles says kind of dignified that he does not care to fight until his show is out of town, but after that he will take on any and all who dare—that is, he says, if he doesn't decide to go with that show, which the show is crazy to have him do. And me and him and Stevie Stevenson, which is his particular chum, goes off and sets down on the schoolhouse steps, and Stevie tells him what a good actor he was, running across the stage with me after that Uncle Tom. But Freckles, he is sad and solemn, and he only fetches a sigh.

“What's eatin' you, Freckles?” Stevie asks him. Freckles, he sighs a couple of times more, and then he says:

“Stevie, I'm in love.”

“Gosh, Freckles,” says Stevie. “Honest?”

“Honest Injun,” says Freckles.

“Do you know who with?” says Stevie.

“Uh-huh!” says Freckles. “If you didn't know who with, how would you know you was?”

But Stevie, he says you might be and not know who with, easy enough. Once, he says, he was like that. He says he was feeling kind of queer for a couple of weeks last spring, and they dosed him and dosed him, with sassafras and worm-medicine and roots and herbs, and none of it did any good. His mother says it is growing-pains, and his father says it is either laziness and not wanting to hoe in the garden or else it is a tapeworm. And he thinks himself maybe it is because he is learning to chew and smoke tobacco on the sly and keeps swallowing a good deal of it right along. But one day he hears his older sister and another big girl talking when they don't know he is around, and they are in love, both of them, and from what he can make out, their feelings is just like his. And it come to him all of a sudden he must be in love himself, and it was days and days before he found out who it was that he was in love with.

“Who was it?” asks Freckles.

“It turned out to be Mabel Smith,” says Stevie, “and I was scared plumb to death for a week or two that she would find out about it. I used to put toads down her back and stick burrs into her hair so she wouldn't never guess it.”

Stevie says he went through days and days of it, and for a while he was scared that it might last forever, and he don't ever want to be in love again. Suppose it should be found out on a fellow that he was in love?

“Stevie,” says Freckles, “this is different.”

Stevie asks him how he means.

“I want her to know,” says Freckles.

“Great Scott!” says Stevie. “No!”

“Uh-huh!”

“It don't show on you, Freckles,” says Stevie.

Freckles says of course it don't show. Only first love shows, he says. Once before he was in love, he says, and that showed on him. That was last spring, and he was only a kid then, and he was in love with Miss Jones, the school teacher, and didn't know how to hide it. But this time he can hide it, because this time he feels that it is different. He swallows down the signs of it, he says, the way you keep swallowing down the signs of it when you have something terrible like heart-disease or stomach-trouble, and nobody will ever know it about him, likely, till after he is dead.

And when he is dead, Freckles says, they will all wonder what he died of, and maybe he will leave a note, wrote in his own blood, to tell. And they will all come in Injun file and pass through the parlour, he says, where his casket will be set on to four chairs, and She will come filing by and look at him, and she will say not to bury him yet, for there is a note held tight in his hand.

And everybody will say: “A note? A note? Who can it be to?”

And She will say to pardon her for taking the liberty at a time like this, but She has saw her own name on to that note. And then, Freckles says, She will open it and read it out loud right there in the parlour to all of them, and they will all say how the departed must have liked her to draw up a note to her wrote in his own blood like that.

And then, Freckles says, She will say, yes, he must have liked her, and that she liked him an awful lot, too, but She never knew he liked her, and She wished now she had of known he liked her an awful lot, because to write a note in his own blood like that showed that he liked her an awful lot, and if he only was alive now she would show she liked him an awful lot and would kiss him to show it. And she would not be scared to kiss him in front of all those people standing around the sides of the parlour, dead or alive. And then she would kiss him, Freckles says. And maybe, Freckles says, he wouldn't be dead after all, but only just lying there like the boy that travelled around with the hypnotizer who was put in a store window and laid there all the time the hypnotizer was in town with everybody making bets whether they could see him breathing or not. And then, Freckles says, he would get up out of his casket, and his Sunday suit with long pants would be on, and he would take the note and say: “Yes, it is to you, and I wrote it with my own blood!”

Which, Freckles says, he has a loose tooth he could suck blood out of any time, not wanting to scrape his arm on account of blood poison breaking out. Though he says he had thought of using some of Spot's blood, but that would seem disrespectful, somehow. And the tooth-blood seemed disrespectful, too, for he did not know the girl right well. But it would have to be the tooth-blood, he guessed, for there was a fellow out by the county line got lockjaw from blood poison breaking out on him, and died of it. And when She handed him the note, Freckles says, he would tell the people in the parlour: “Little Eva and I forgive you all!”

“Little Eva!” says Stevie. “Gosh all fish hooks, Freckles, it ain't the girl in the show, is it?”

“Uh-huh!” says Freckles, kind of sad and proud. “Freckles,” says Stevie, after they had both set there and thought, saying nothing, for a while, “I got just one more question to ask you: Are you figuring you will get married? Is it as bad as that?”

“Uh-huh!” says Freckles.

Stevie, he thought for another while, and then he got up and put his hand on to Freckles's shoulder.

“Freckles, old scout,” he says, “good-bye. I'm awful sorry for you, but I can't chase around with you any more. I can't be seen running with you. I won't tell this on you, but if it was ever to come out I wouldn't want to be too thick with you. You know what the Dalton Gang would do to you, Freck, if they ever got on to this. I won't blab, but I can't take no risks about chumming with you.”

And he went away and left Freckles and me sitting there. But in a minute he came back and said:

“Freckles, you know that iron sling-shot crotch of mine? You always used to be stuck on that slingshot crotch, Freckles, and I never would trade it to you. Well, Freckles, you can have that darned old iron slingshot crotch free for nothing!”

“Stevie,” says Freckles, “I don't want it.”

“Gosh!” says Stevie, and he went off, shaking his head.

And I was considerable worried myself. I tagged him along home, and he wasn't natural. He went into the house, and I tagged him along in and up to his room, and he took no notice of me, though I'm not supposed to be there at all.

And what do you suppose that kid did?—he went and washed his ears. It was midnight, and there wasn't any one to make him do it, and there wasn't any one to see his ears but me, but he washed 'em careful, inside and out. And then he wet his hair and combed it. First he parted it on one side, and then he parted it x on the other, and then he blushed and parted it in the middle. I was sitting on the floor by the foot of the bed, and he was facing the looking-glass, but I saw the blush because it spread clear around to the back of his neck.

And then he went to the closet and put on his long pants that belonged to his Sunday suit. The looking-glass wasn't big enough so he could see his hair and his long pants all at the same time, but he tilted the glass and squirmed and twisted around and saw them bit by bit. At first I thought maybe he was going out again, even at that time of night, but he wasn't; all he was doing was admiring himself. Just then his father pounded on the wall and asked him if he wasn't in bed yet, and he said he was going. He put the light out right away. But he didn't go to bed. He just sat in the dark with his clean ears and his long pants on and his hair parted in the middle, and several times before I went to sleep myself I heard him sigh and say: “Little Eva! Little Eva's dying! Little Eva!”

He must have got so tired he forgot to undress, staying up that late and everything, for in the morning when his father pounded on the door he didn't answer. I was under the bed, and I stayed there. Pretty soon his father pounded again, and then he came into the room. And there Freckles was lying on the bed with his Sunday pants on and his hair parted in the middle and his ears clean.

“Harold!” says his father, and shook him, “what does this mean?”

Harold is Freckles's other name, but if any one of his size calls him Harold, there will be a fight. He sat up on the bed and says, still sleepy:

“What does what mean, Pa?”

“Your lying there asleep with your clothes on,” says his father..

“I was dressing, and I went to sleep again,” says Freckles.

“Uh-huh!” says his father. “It looks like it, don't it?”

“Yes, sir,” says Freckles.

I had crawled out to the foot of the bed where I could see them, and he was still sleepy, but he was trying hard to think up something.

“It looks a lot like it,” says his father. “If you had slept in that bed, the covers would have been turned down, wouldn't they?”

“Yes, sir,” says Freckles, looking at them.

“Well, what then?” says his father.

“Well, Pa,” says Freckles, “I guess I must have made that bed up again in my sleep, and I never knew it.”

“Humph!” says his father. “Do you do that often?”

“Yes, sir,” says Freckles, “a good deal lately.”

“Harold,” says his father, real interested, “aren't you feeling well these days?”

“No, Pa,” says Freckles, “I ain't felt so very well for quite a while.”

“Humph!” says his pa. “How does it come when you dressed yourself you put on your Sunday pants, and this is only Tuesday?”

Harold says he guesses he did that in his sleep, too, the same time he made the bed up.

His pa wants to know if that has ever happened to him before.

“Yes, sir,” says Freckles, “once I woke up in the moonlight right out on one of the top limbs of the big maple tree in the front yard, with my Sunday suit on.”

“Humph!” says his father. “And was your hair parted in the middle that time, too?”

Freckles, he blushes till you can hardly see his freckles, and feels of his hair. But he is so far in, now, that he can't get out. So he says:

“Yes, sir, every time I get taken that way, so I go around in my sleep, Pa, I find my hair has been parted in the middle, the next morning.”

“Uh-huh!” says his pa. “Let's see your ears.” And he pinched one of them while he was looking at it, and Freckles says, “Ouch!”

“I thought so,” says his pa, but didn't say what he thought right away. Then pretty soon he says: “Those ears have been washed since that neck has.”

“Yes, sir,” says Freckles.

“Did you do that in your sleep, too?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you always do that when you have those spells of yours?”

“Yes, sir, I always find my ears have been washed the next morning.”

“But never your neck?”

“Sometimes my neck has, and sometimes it hasn't,” said Freckles.

“Uh-huh!” says his father, and took notice of me. I wagged my tail, and hung my tongue out, and acted friendly and joyful and happy. If you want to stay on good terms with grown-up humans, you have to keep them jollied along. I wasn't supposed to be in the house at night, anyhow, but I hoped maybe it would be overlooked.

“Did you paint and dye that dog up that way?” asked Freckles's father. For of course the paint and dye they had put on me was still there.

“Yes, sir,” says Freckles. “Nearly always when I come to myself in the morning I find I have dyed Spot.”

“That's queer, too,” said his father. And then Harold says he dyes other dogs, too, and once when he woke up in the maple tree there were three strange dogs he had dyed at the foot of it.

“Harold,” says his father, “how often do these spells come on?”

Freckles, he says, some weeks they come often and some weeks hardly ever.

“Humph!” says his father. “And when they come on, do you notice it is harder for you to tell the truth than at any other times?”

Freckles says he doesn't know what he says in his sleep when those spells take him, nor even whether he talks in his sleep or not, but he guesses if he does talk in his sleep what he says would be talk about his dreams, but he can't remember what his dreams are, so he doesn't know whether what he says is true or not.

“Uh-huh!” says his father. “Harold, do you own a gun?”

“No, sir,” says Harold. Which is true, for he only owns a third interest in a gun. Tom Mulligan and Stevie Stevenson own the rest of it, and they are keeping it hid in the rafters of Tom Mulligan's barn till they can save money enough to get it fixed so it will shoot.

“You haven't killed anybody in these spells of yours, have you, Harold?” asks his father.

“No, sir,” says Freckles.

“How would you know if you had?” asks his father.

Freckles says there would be blood on him next morning, wouldn't there?

“Not,” says his father, “if you stood at a distance and killed them with a gun.”

Freckles knows he hasn't ever really had any of these spells he says he has had, but from his looks I should judge he was scared, too, by the way his father was acting.

“Pa,” he says, “has any one been found dead?”

“The body hasn't been found yet,” says his father, “but from what I heard you say, early this morning in your sleep, I should judge one will be found.”

I thinks to myself maybe Freckles does do things in his sleep after all, and from the looks of his face he thinks so, too. He is looking scared.

“Pa,” he says, “who did I kill? What did I say?”

“You said: 'Little Eva's dying! Little Eva's dying!'” said his father. “I heard you say it over and over again in your sleep.”

Freckles, he gets red in the face again, and stares at his feet, and his pa stands and grins at him for a minute or two. And then his pa says: “Get into your weekday clothes and wash your face and neck to match your ears, and come on down to breakfast. When you get ready to tell what's on your mind, all right; but don't try to tell lies to your dad.”

“Yes, sir,” says Freckles.

But he looked mighty gloomy. And when his father went out of the room he got his fountain pen and sucked some blood out of his loose tooth and tried to spit it into his fountain pen. From which I judged he was still of a notion to write that letter and was pretty low in his mind. But he couldn't spit it into the pen, right. And he cried a little, and then saw me watching him crying and slapped at me with a hairbrush; and then he petted me and I let him pet me, for a dog, if he is any sort of dog at all, will always stand by his boy in trouble as well as gladness, and overlook things. A boy hasn't got much sense, anyhow; and a boy without a dog to keep him steered right must have a pretty tough time in the world.

If he was low in his mind then, he was lower in his mind before the day was through. For after breakfast there was Stevie Stevenson and Tom Mulligan waiting for him outside, and in spite of his promise, Stevie has told everything to Tom. And Tom has a wart and offers some wart blood to write that letter in. But Freckles says another person's blood would not be fair and honourable. He has a wart of his own, if he wanted to use wart blood, but wart blood is not to be thought of. What would a lady think if she found out it was wart blood? It would be almost and insult, wart blood would; it would be as bad as blood from a corn or bunion.

“Well, then,” says Stevie, “the truth is that you don't want to write that letter, anyhow. Last night you talked big about writing that letter, but this morning you're hunting up excuses for not writing it.”

“I'll write it if I want to write it, and you can't stop me,” says Freckles. “And I won't write it if I don't want to write it, and nobody of your size can make me.”

“I can too stop you,” says Stevie, “if I want to.”

“You don't dast to want to stop me,” says Freckles.

“I do dast,” says Stevie.

“You don't,” says Freckles.

“I do,” says Stevie.

“You're a licked, licked liar—and so's your Aunt Mariar,” says Freckles.

“I ain't got any Aunt Mariar,” says Stevie.

“You don't dast to have an Aunt Mariar,” says Freckles.

“I do dast,” says Stevie.

Then Tom put a chip on each of their shoulders, and pushed them at each other, and the chips fell off, and they went down behind the barn and had it out, and Freckles licked him. Which proves Freckles couldn't be stopped from writing that note if he wanted to, and he was still so mad that he wrote it right then and there back of the barn on a leaf torn out of a notebook Tom Mulligan owned, with his fountain pen, using his own nose bleed that Stevie had just drawed out of him; and he read out loud what he wrote. It was:

Dear Miss Little Eva: The rose is red, the violet's blue. Sugar is sweet and so are you. Yours truly. Mr. H. Watson. This is wrote in my own blood.

“Well, now, then,” says Stevie, “where's the coffin?”

“What do you mean, the coffin?” says Freckles.

“Last night,” says Stevie, “you was makin' a lot of brags, but this morning it looks like you didn't have the sand to act up to them.”

“If you think you've got size enough to make me lay down into a coffin with that note,” says Freckles, “you got another think cornin' to you. There ain't a kid my size, nor anywhere near my size, in this whole town can make me lay down into a coffin with that note. And if you think so, you just try it on!”

Stevie, he doesn't want to fight any more. But Tom Mulligan says never mind the casket. Nobody really wants him to lay in a casket anyhow. He says he is willing to bet a million dollars Freckles doesn't dast to carry that note to the show grounds and give it to that Little Eva.

“I dast!” says Freckles.

“Dastn't!” says Tom.

“You don't dast to knock this chip off my shoulder,” says Freckles.

“I dast!” says Tom. And Stevie give him a push, and he did it. And they had it. Freckles got him down and jammed his head into the ground.

“Now, then,” he says, “do I dast to carry that note, or don't I dast to?”

“You dast to,” says Tom. “Leave me up.”

And that was the way it come about that Freckles had to carry the note, though not wanting to at all. But he did it. We all went with him over to the show grounds, Stevie Stevenson and Tom Mulligan and Mutt, Tom's dog, and me.

There was a lady sitting out in front of one of the tents on a chair. She had been washing her hair, and it was spread out to dry over her shoulders, and she was sewing on a pair of boy's pants. She had on a pair of those big horn-rimmed glasses, and we could see from her hair, which had gray in it, that she was quite an old lady, though small. I heard later that she was all of thirty-five or thirty-six years old.

The rest of us hung back a little ways, and Freckles went up to her and took off his hat.

She laid down her sewing and smiled at him.

“Well, my little man, what is it?” she said. “Were you looking for somebody?”

“Yes, ma'am,” says Freckles. He stuttered a little and he was standing on one foot.

“For whom?” she asked.

“For Little Eva,” says Freckles.

The lady stared at him, and then she smiled again.

“And what do you want with Little Eva, sonny?” she said.

Freckles, he stands on the other foot a while, and says nothing. And like as not he would have backed away, but Tom Mulligan yells: “You don't dast give it to her, Freck!”

Then Freckles hands her the letter and gulps and says: “A letter for Miss Little Eva.”

The lady takes it and reads it. And then she reads it again. And then she calls out: “Jim! Oh, Jim!”

A man comes out of the tent, and she hands it to him. He reads it, and his mouth drops open, and a pipe he is smoking falls on to the grass.

“Jim,” says the lady, “someone is making love to your wife!”

Jim, he reads the letter again, and then he laughs. He laughs so hard he bends double, and catches the back of the lady's chair. And she laughs of a sudden and puts her hand in front of her face and laughs again. And then Jim, he says to Freckles, who has been getting redder and redder:

“And who is Mr. H. Watson?”

“Don't you get it?” says the lady, taking off her glasses to wipe them, and pointing to Freckles. “This is the boy that owns the dog that played the bloodhound last night, and he is Mr. H. Watson!”

And when she took off her glasses like that, we all saw she was the Little Eva of that show!

“Mr. H. Watson,” says Jim to Freckles, “did you intend matrimony, or were you trying to flirt?”

“Quit your kidding him, Jim,” says Little Eva, still laughing. “Can't you see he's hacked nearly to death?”

“None of your business what I intended!” yells Freckles to Jim. And he picks up a clod of dirt and nearly hits Jim with it, and runs. And we all run. But when we had run half a block, we looked back, and nobody was following us. Jim and Little Eva had busted out laughing again, and was laughing so hard they was hanging on to each other to keep from falling down.

“Good-bye, Mr. H. Watson,” yells Jim. “Is it really your own blood?”

And then began a time of disgrace for Freckles and me such as I never hope to live through again. For the next thing those two boys that had been his friends was both dancing round him laughing and calling him Mr. H. Watson; and by the time we got down to the part of Main Street where the stores are, every boy and every dog in town was dancing around Freckles and hearing all about it and yelling, “H. Watson! Mr. H. Watson! Is it your own blood? Is it your own blood, Mr. H. Watson?”

Freckles and I did the best we could, fighting all that was our size and some bigger; but after a couple of hours it got so that most any one could lick us. Kids that was afraid to stand up to him the day before could lick him easy, by now, and dogs I had always despised even to argue with began to get my number. All you could hear, on every side, was: “Is it your own blood, Mr. Watson?”

And at noon we went home, but Freckles didn't go into the house for dinner at all. Instead, he went out to the barn and laid down in the hay, and I crawled in there with him. And he cried and cried and choked and choked. I felt sorry for him, and crawled up and licked his face. But he took me by the scruff of the neck and slung me out of the haymow. When I crawled back again, he kicked me in the ribs, but he had on tennis shoes and it didn't hurt much, and anyhow I forgave him. And I went and crawled back to where he was and nuzzled my head up under his armpit. And then he cried harder and hugged me and said I was the best dog in the world and the only friend he ever had.

And then I licked his face again and he let me and we both felt better, and pretty soon he went to sleep there and slept for an hour or so, with his head on my ribs, and I lay there quiet so as not to wake him. Even when a flea got me, I let that flea bite and didn't scratch for fear of waking him. But after a while that flea got tired of me, and crawled over on to Freckles, and he waked natural. And when he waked, he was hungry, but he didn't want to go into the house for fear the story had spread to the grown-ups and he would have to answer questions. So he found a couple of raw turnips, and ate them, and a couple of apples, only they were green, and he milked the cow a little into an old tin cup and drank that. And in a little while he begins to have pains, and he thinks he is getting heart's disease and is really going to die, but he says to himself out loud if he dies now he won't get any credit for it, and he would have enjoyed it more if he had died while he still thought Little Eva was young and beautiful and probably going to marry him in the end.

But after awhile it seems turning from heart's disease into some kind of stomach trouble; so he drinks some stuff out of a bottle that was left in the barn last spring when Bessie, the old roan mare, had the colic, and whether it is heart's disease or stomach trouble, that stuff cures him. And him and me drift along downtown again to see if maybe the kids have sort of begun to forget about it a little.

But they hadn't. It had even spread to some of the grown-ups. We went into Freckles's father's drug store, and Mr. Watson told Freckles to step around to the post office and ask for his mail. And the clerk in the post office when we come in, looks at Freckles very solemn and says:

“Ah, here is Mr. H. Watson, after a letter! Will you have a letter written in blood?”

So Freckles told his dad there wasn't any mail, and we sneaked along home again. That night at supper I was lying on the porch just outside the dining room and the doors were open, and I heard Freckles's dad say:

“Harold, would you like to go to the show to-night?”

“No, Pa,” says Freckles.

His mother says that is funny; it is the first time she ever heard him refuse to go to a show of any kind. And his father asks him if anything special has happened that makes him want to stay away from this particular show. I guess when his father says that, Freckles thinks his father is wise, too, so he says he has changed his mind and will go to the show after all. He didn't want to start any argument.

So him and me sneaks down to the show grounds again. It is getting dark, but too early for the show, and every kid we know is hanging around outside. And what Freckles has had to stand for in the way of kidding beforehand is nothing to what comes now. For they all gets around him in a ring and shouts: “Here is the bridegroom! Here is Mr. H. Watson come to get married to Little Eva! And the wedding invitations are wrote in his own blood! His own blood! His own blood!”

And the grown-ups beginning to go into the show all tell each other what the kids are getting at, and we hear them laughing to each other about it. Him and me was about the two downest-tail-and-head-hanging-est persons you ever saw. But we stayed. There wasn't no place else to go, except home, and we didn't want to go home and be asked again if there was any special reason for staying away from that particular show.

And right in the midst of all the yelling and jostling around, a kid about Freckles's size comes out of the show tent and walks over to the bunch and says:

“Now, then, what's all this yelling about Little Eva for?”

All the kids shut up, and this show kid says to Freckles:

“Was they yelling bridegroom at you?”

Freckles, he was down, but he wasn't going to let any out-of-town boy get away with anything, either. All our own gang had him licked and disgraced, and he knew it; but this was a stranger, and so he spunked up.

“S'pose they was yelling bridegroom at me,” he says. “Ain't they got a right to yell bridegroom at me if they want to? This is a free country.”

“You won't be yelled bridegroom at if I say you won't,” says the show kid.

“I'll be yelled bridegroom at for all of you,” says Freckles. “What's it to you?”

“You won't be yelled bridegroom at about my mother,” saws the show kid.

“Who's being yelled bridegroom at about your mother?” says Freckles. “I'm being yelled at about Little Eva.”

“Well, then,” says this kid, “Little Eva is my mother, and you got to stop being yelled at about her.”

“Well, then,” says Freckles, “you just stop me being yelled at if you think you're big enough.”

“I could lick two your size,” says the show kid. “But I won't fight here. I won't fight in front of this crowd. If I was to fight here, your crowd might jump into me, too, and I would maybe have to use brass knucks, and if I was to use brass knucks, I would likely kill someone and be arrested for it. I'll fight in private like a duel, as gentlemen ought to.”

“Well, then,” says Freckles, “if any one was to use brass knucks on me, I would have to use brass knucks on them, and I won't fight any one that uses brass knucks in private.”

“Well, then,” says the show kid, “my brass knucks is in my trunk in the tent, and you don't dast to follow me and fight with bare fists.”

“My brass knucks is at home,” says Freckles, which was the first I knew he ever had any, “and I do dast.” So each one searched the other for brass knucks, and they went off together, me following. The fight was to be under the bridge over the crick down by the school-house on the edge of the woods. But when they got down there, the strip of sand by the side of the crick was in shadow. So they went on top of the bridge, to fight in the moonlight. But the moonlight was so bright they were afraid they would be seen by some farmer coming into town and maybe told on and arrested. So they sat down on the edge of the bridge with their feet hanging over and talked about where they had better fight to be private, as gentlemen should. And they got to talking of other things. And pretty soon they began to kind of like each other, and Freckles says:

“What's your name?”

“Percy,” says the show kid. “But you better not call me that. I'd fight if I was called that out of the family. Call me Spike. What's your name?”

“Well, then,” says Freckles, “1 don't like mine either; mine is Harold. But call me Freckles.”

Spike says he wished he had more freckles himself. But he don't get much chance for freckles, he says; his mother takes such awful good care of all the complexions in their family.

“Well, then,” says Freckles, “I think your mother is an awful nice lady.”

Spike, all of a sudden, bursts out crying then and says how would Freckles like it if people wrote notes to his mother and was yelled at about her? And Freckles says how would he like it if he was the one was yelled at, and he never had any idea the lady was grown up and had a family, and he got to sniffling some himself.

“Spike,” he says, “you tell your mother I take it all back. You tell her I was in love with her till I seen her plain off the stage, and since I have seen her and her family plain, I don't care two cents for her. And I'll write her an apology for falling into love with her.”

Which he done it, then and there, in the moonlight, jabbing his fountain pen into his wart, and it read:

Dear Little Eva. Since I seen your husband and son I decided not to say anything about matrimony, and beg your pardon for it. This is wrote in my blood and sets you free to fall in love with who you please. You are older and look different from what I expected, and so let us forget bygones.

Yours truly,

H. Watson.

“Spike,” says Freckles, when they were walking back to town together, chewing licorice and pretending it was tobacco, “do you really have some brass knucks?”

“No,” says Spike. “Do you, Freckles?”

“No,” says Freckles.

And they went back to the tent together and asked the gang if they wanted any of their game, and nobody did, and the disgrace lifted.

And I felt so good about that and the end of the love-affair and everything, that right then and there I hunted up that Burning Deck dog and give him the licking of his life, which I had never been able to do before.