He rewarded her for his first meal by turning on his back with his legs in the air and grunting contentedly. He was of a grizzled gray color, soft, fat, clumsy, short of limb and thick of tail, and displayed, in spite of his few weeks, a remarkably fine set of claws on his fore feet. These he alternately thrust out and drew in, as she petted him, and curled up his long, black-and-white nose. The little girl thought him the nicest pet she had ever had, and soon fell a willing slave to his wheedling grunts.
He was christened "Badgy," and spent the first month of his new life in a warmly padded soap-box in the farm-house kitchen. But by the end of that time he had outgrown the box, and, the weather being warmer, was given the empty potato-bin in the cellar. When he was big enough to run about, he spent his days out of doors. Early in the morning he was called from the bin by the little girl, who opened the cellar doors and watched him come awkwardly up the steps, ambitiously advancing two at a time and generally falling back one. After his breakfast of meat and bread and milk he enjoyed a frolic, which consisted of a long run in a circle about the little girl, while he grunted for joy and lack of breath. When he was completely worn out with play, he rolled over on his back and had a sleep in the sun.
Badgy learned to love the little girl; and it was found, after he had lived in the potato-bin for a while, that she was the only person he would follow or meet amicably; all others were saluted with a snarl and a lifting of the grizzled hair. So the household came to look upon him in the light of a worthy supplanter of the Indian dogs as a protector for her. He accompanied her everywhere over the prairie, keeping close to her bare feet and grunting good-naturedly at every swaying step. If they met a stranger, he sprang before her, his hair on end, his teeth showing, his claws working back and forth angrily. When a Sioux came near, he went into a perfect fit of rage; and not an Indian ever dared lay hands upon him.
It was this hatred for redskins that one night saved the herd from a stampede. Badgy had been playing about the sitting-room with the little girl, and trying his sharp claws on the new rag carpet, when he suddenly began to rush madly here and there, snapping his teeth furiously. A big brother grasped the musket that stood behind the door, thinking that he had gone mad. But the little girl knew the signs, and, shielding him, begged them to go out and look for the Indians she felt certain were near. Sure enough, beyond the tall cottonwoods that formed the wind-break to the north of the house were the figures of a dozen mounted men, silhouetted against the sky. They were moving cautiously in the direction of the wire cattle-pen; but as a big brother challenged them with a halloo and followed it with a musket shot, they wheeled and dashed away. The last glimpse of their ponies showed them apparently riderless; which proved to the little girl's big brothers that the marauders were from the reservation to the west.
The summer was at its full and the wheat-fields of the Vermillion River Valley were all but ready for the harvester before Badgy began to feel a yearning for his own kind and the freedom of the open prairie. Then he often deserted his little mistress when they were walking about in the afternoon, or sneaked away after his morning nap in the sun. The first time he disappeared she mourned disconsolately for him all day. But late in the afternoon, as she sat looking across the grain, waiting for him hopelessly, she forgot her loss in watching a most curious thing happening in the wheat. Away out in the broad, quiet field there was a small, agitated spot, as if a tiny whirlwind were tossing the heads about. The commotion was coming nearer and nearer every moment. Now it was a quarter of a mile away—now it was only a few rods—now it was almost on the edge. The little girl scrambled to her feet, half inclined to run, when out of the tall stalks rolled Badgy, growling at every step and wagging his tired head from side to side!
Often, after that, he did not come home until late at night, when she would hear him snarling and scratching at the cellar doors, and creep out to let him in. Her big brothers at last warned her that there would come a day when Badgy would go, never to return. So she fitted a collar to his neck and led him when she went out, and kept him tied the rest of the time. This restriction wore upon him and he grew noticeably thin.
One morning, after having been carefully locked in the cellar the night before, he did not respond to the little girl's call from the doors. She went down to the bin, half fearing to find him dead. He was not there. She ran about the cellar looking for him. He was nowhere to be found. She returned to the bin to search there again. As she looked in, she caught sight of a great heap of dirt in one corner. She jumped over the side and ran to it, divining at once what it meant. Sure enough, beyond the heap was a hole, freshly dug, that led upward—and out!
The little girl sat back on the heap of dirt and pathetically viewed the hole. It was not that he would not come back—she knew that he would. But he had made her break her promise that there was to be no burrowing. She resolved to say nothing about the hole, however; and, after closing it completely with a stone, started off on the prairie in search of him, his chain in her hand.
When she came back late, she found him in the bin and gave him a good scolding. He answered it with angry grunts, and to punish him she locked him up supperless. But it was probably no hardship, for he was an adept in foraging for frogs and water-snakes.