Winning His Way

by Charles Carleton Coffin

Paul looked up the street, and saw a very large bull-dog coming upon the trot. Never was there such a scampering. People ran into the nearest houses, pellmell. One man jumped into his wagon, lashed his horse into a run, and went down the street, losing his hat in his flight, while Hans Middlekauf went up a tree.

"Run, Paul! Run! he'll bite you!" cried Mr. Leatherby from the window of his shoe-shop. People looked out from the windows and repeated the cry, a half-dozen at once; but Paul took no notice of them. Those who were nearest him heard the click of his gun-lock. The dog came nearer, growling, and snarling, his mouth wide open, showing his teeth, his eyes glaring, and white froth dripping from his lips. Paul stood alone in the street. There was a sudden silence. It was a scene for a painter,—a barefoot boy in patched clothes, with an old hat on his head, standing calmly before the brute whose bite was death in its most terrible form. One thought had taken possession of Paul's mind, that he ought to kill the dog.

Nearer, nearer, came the dog; he was not a rod off. Paul had read that no animal can withstand the steady gaze of the human eye. He looked the dog steadily in the face. He held his breath. Not a nerve trembled. The dog stopped, looked at Paul a moment, broke into a louder growl, opened his jaws wider, his eyes glaring more wildly, and stepped slowly forward. Now or never, Paul thought, was his time. The breach of the gun touched his shoulder; his eye ran along the barrel,—bang! the dog rolled over with a yelp and a howl, but was up again, growling and trying to get at Paul, who in an instant seized his gun by the barrel, and brought the breech down upon the dog's skull, giving him blow after blow.

"Kill him! kill him!" shouted the people from the windows.

"Give it to him! Mash his head!" cried Hans from the tree.

The dog soon became a mangled and bloody mass of flesh and bones. The people came out from their houses.

"That was well done for a boy," said Mr. Funk.

"Or for a man either," said Mr. Chrome, who came up and patted Paul on his back.

"I should have thrown my lapstone at him, if I could have got my window open," said Mr. Leatherby. Mr. Noggin, the cooper, who had taken refuge in Leatherby's shop, afterwards said that Leatherby was frightened half to death, and kept saying, "Just as like as not he will make a spring and dart right through the window!"