“He runs round on the farm. He goes with Jimmy an’ me.”
“John, will you sell me Partial?” I asked this suddenly, realizing that my voice might sound odd.
“What’d ye want him fer?” he replied. “He’d be a nuisance.”
“I think not. See how faithful he has been, see how grateful he is; and how wise. He reasoned where you were as well as I reasoned who you were. He knows now that we are talking about him, and knows that I am his friend—see him look at me; see him come over and stand by me. John, do you think—do you believe a dog, this dog, would learn to like me, ever? Would he understand me?”
“Well,” said John judicially, standing sword in hand, “I dunno. Someways, maybe dogs and boys understands quicker. But you understand us. Maybe he’d understand you.”
“Well reasoned, Jean Lafitte,” said I, “perhaps your logic is better than you know, at least, I hope so. And now I offer you yonder magazine pistol as your own in fee, if you will sign over to me all your right, title and interest, in Partial, here. Evidently he belongs with us. He seems to care for us. And I experience some odd sort of feeling, which I can not quite describe. Perhaps it is only that I feel like a boy, and one that is going to own a dog. Is it a bargain?”
“Sure! You c’n have him for nuthin’,” said Lafitte. “He ain’t worth nothin’. Besides, I can’t charge a brother of the flag anything; anyhow, not you.” I inferred that Jean Lafitte, also, was going to grow up into one of those men like myself, cursed with a reticence and shyness in some matters, and so winning a reputation of oddness or coldness, against all the real and passionate protest of his own soul.
“No, brother,” I said to him: “I’ll not offer you trade, but gift. Let it be that if I can win the dog, and if he will take me as his master and friend, he shall be mine. And you take the pistol, and have a care of it.”
“That’s all right!” said Lafitte shyly, yet delightedly, as I could see.
“Here, Partial!” I called to the dog; and being young and friendly, and attached to neither in particular, and only in general worshiping the creature Boy, he came to me! I fed him, stroked him, looked into his eyes. And in a few moments he put his feet on my shoulders, and licked at my ear, and began to talk to me in low eager whines, and rubbed his muzzle against my cheek, and said all that a dog could say in oath of feudal service, pledging loyalty of life and limb. At which I felt very odd indeed; and began to see the world had many things in it of which I had never known; but which, now, I was resolved to know.