“There’s a mad dog in the yard there. Better bump it off before it stampedes these here bulls.”
The superintendent reached into a wagon box for his revolver, then carefully went forward. The dog sighted him, barked joyously, then once more began those excitement-crazed circles, a gaunt, weakened thing which swirled again and again, at last to drop from sheer exhaustion. The revolver was raised. The superintendent stepped forward—closer—closer—then halted!
Nosey! he called in surprised tones, and strength came once more to the weakened dog. She turned; then crawling, she made her way to him, to lick his hands, cry and whine her happiness, then with wavering steps to turn again toward the menagerie house door. The superintendent whirled.
“Bring on those bulls,” he shouted. “There isn’t anything wrong with this dog, except that it’s half-starved.”
The door of the animal house was unlocked. In shot the dog, to make the rounds of the place, to investigate everything with quick sniffings, even to refuse food in her excitement, and at last to flop exhausted upon a pile of hay at the end of the picket line. When visiting neighbors, welcoming the circus home again, came that afternoon to winter quarters, they told the true story of Nosey, the story of a shadowy canine which had appeared three months before at winter quarters, which had refused every approach of friendship lest she again be taken from the place she loved; which had haunted the place day and night, gaining her food as best she could, evading every living thing until she had become known to the whole neighborhood as “The Phantom Dog.” The policemen had made a mistake in his description; Nosey had merely gone back to her circus, content to starve if need be, in waiting for its return.
There was no question about her place with the show now. She was the circus favorite, with the big bull herd as her especial charge. There even came the time when jealousy arose between her and Mutt, the regular elephant dog, a duel which was fought out; then Mutt decided to take up another position in the menagerie, leaving Nosey in supreme command.
She ran that elephant herd as a general would command an army. She went with them to the cars at night, she saw that they were loaded; then crawled in with them—the herd mascot. She guarded them during the day; the first sally of a town dog toward them meant a slashing attack which invariably sent the intruder hurrying away, happy to be anywhere except around elephants. When circus visitors approached too close for their own safety, it was Nosey, who, with a snarl, sent them back to a common-sense position. A stampede happened; an elephant was lost. It was Nosey who trailed her, rushed back to the circus lot, found the superintendent, then led him to where the stray had been located. There came the time when Nosey even went into the ring with her big charges. Then came a change.
The superintendent and his wife decided to leave the circus and live upon a ranch, far in the Elkhorn Range in Northwestern Colorado. Nosey, with two other circus dogs, was taken along. It was winter; the temperature went to thirty and forty below; Nosey apparently was content to remain in the warm ranch house and wait for spring, when undoubtedly there would be the circus again.
When the warm days came, when the snow of the high range began to crust, making travel easy, Nosey would wander forth, look down into the warmer country below, then turn to her master and mistress in pitiful whining; as if to ask when they would troupe again, when the band would play once more. But there was only the work of the ranch, never the sound of music, nor the blatter of the midway. One day Nosey was missing.
For two days they saw nothing of her. Then one morning, the former superintendent, traveling the miles to the mail box on the main road, saw a wary coyote pack, and with it something yellow and furry, unlike the rest. He called to her, and Nosey came forward, wagging her tail, apparently content to accompany him once more. For two days she remained at home, then once more disappeared. This time for the summer.