“Trevy,” whispered the old man, “how’d you like to hear all them folks clappin’ you an’ sayin’ what a grand dog you are? Hey? Think it over, Trevy. There needn’t anybody know, but you and me, Trevy. Royce has got to go to Omaha, with them sheep, next month. He’ll be gone for two days before this show-date an’ for a couple of days after it. Nobody’ll ever know, Trevy. I’ll tell the hands I’m goin’ to run up to Santa Clara to see about a bunch of merinos an’ that I’m totin’ you along to herd ’em. I—Oh, Trevy, we’re a pair of old fools, you an’ me! I never thought I’d be such a dodo-bird as to waste time an’ cash on a dog. I’m gettin’ in my dotage. Granther Hardin used to think he was a postage stamp, when he got old, Trevy. An’ he used to putter around, lookin’ for a env’lope big enough to stick himself to. They put him in a foolish house. I reckon I’m qualifyin’ for one, all right, all right. But—you’re sure a grand dog, Trevy!”
The modernized old Spanish city of La Cerra, at the westerly end of Dos Hermanos County, had come to life in a rackety way, as it did once a year when the annual three-day show of the Dos Hermanos Kennel Association brought to town thoroughbred dogs and humans of all shades of breeding.
It was to this show, two years earlier, that Fraser Colt had been taking his collie pup when the latter’s clash with a police dog in the baggage car had led to the temporary wrecking of one of his tulip ears; and when his resentment of Colt’s kick had led his owner to hurl him bodily out through the car’s open side door.
The memory of his own treatment at the hands—and boot toe—of the gross brute who had bought him on speculation and who had been taking him showward, rankled ever in the far-back recesses of Treve’s brain. Which is the way of a collie. The harsh memory had been glozed over by two years of friendly treatment. Treve himself was not aware it existed. But it was there, none the less.
Joel Fenno, daily, had been more and more ashamed of his queer impulse to take Treve to the show. But, daily, also, the show-virus had infected him, more and more. Any one who has shown dogs will understand. Ever he visualized a more and more gorgeous triumph for his secret chum.
The first twelve miles of the trip were made in the Dos Hermanos ranch’s wheezy little car—the same in which Joel had piloted his partner to Santa Carlotta, the day before; when Royce set forth on his Omaha journey. Treve sat proudly beside the ever-more nervous Fenno, on the car’s one shabby seat.
The dog was delighted at the jaunt, as is nearly every collie who is taken by his master on an outing. Instinctively, too, he felt Joel’s grouchily suppressed thrill of excitement, and responded to it with a quick gayety. Apparently this was some dazzlingly jolly adventure he and his friend were embarking on.
At Santa Carlotta they took the spur line train for an eighty-mile run. Sixty of these eighty miles were across dreary greenish gray desert, flower-splashed, yet as dismal as the Mojave itself;—rolling miles of sick alkaline sand, skunk-infected, habitat of rattlesnakes—a waste strewn with sagebrush and Joshua trees. A dead and fearsome stretch; steel-hard of outline, shrilly vivid of coloring.
Then came the steep upgrade, over an elephant-backed mountain’s swordcut pass; and a pitch down into the fertile valley whose nearest city was La Cerra.
Joel did not crate his dog; but sat on a trunk in the baggage car, with the collie curled up comfortably at his feet. The train-ride woke dim and not wholly pleasing memories in Treve. Something unpleasant had befallen him on such a ride. Once or twice he glanced up worriedly at the old man; only to be reassured by an awkward pat on the head or a grumbled word of friendliness.