At a cutlery shop I then bought a stout chain, escorted the brute to his home, and saw him tethered. The thing was rather getting on me. The following morning he waited for me at the Floud door and was beside himself with rapture when I appeared. He had slipped his collar. And once more I saw him moored. Each time I had apologized to Mrs. Judson for seeming to attract her pet from home, for I could not bring myself to say that the beast was highly repugnant to me, and least of all could I intimate that his public devotion to me would be seized upon by the coarser village wits to her disadvantage.
“I never saw him so fascinated with any one before,” explained the lady as she once more adjusted his leash. But that afternoon, as I waited in the trap for Mr. Jackson before the post-office, the beast seemed to appear from out the earth to leap into the trap beside me. After a rather undignified struggle I ejected him, whereupon he followed the trap madly to the country club and made a farce of my golf game by retrieving the ball after every drive. This time, I learned, the child had released him.
It is enough to add that for those remaining days until the present the unspeakable creature’s mad infatuation for me had made my life well-nigh a torment, to say nothing of its being a matter of low public jesting. Hardly did I dare show myself in the business centres, for as surely as I did the animal found me and crawled to fawn upon me, affecting his release each day in some novel manner. Each morning I looked abroad from my window on arising, more than likely detecting his outstretched form on the walk below, patiently awaiting my appearance, and each night I was liable to dreams of his coming upon me, a monstrous creature, sad-faced but eager, tireless, resolute, determined to have me for his own.
Musing desperately over this impossible state of affairs, I was now surprised to receive a letter from the wretched Cousin Egbert, sent by the hand of the Tuttle person. It was written in pencil on ruled sheets apparently torn from a cheap notebook, quite as if proper pens and decent stationery were not to be had, and ran as follows:
DEAR FRIEND BILL:
Well, Bill, I know God hates a quitter, but I guess I got
a streak of yellow in me wider than the Comstock lode. I was
kicking at my stirrups even before I seen that bunch of whiskers,
and when I took a flash of them and seen he was intending I
should go out before folks without any regular pants on, I says
I can be pushed just so far. Well, Bill, I beat it like a bat
out of hell, as I guess you know by this time, and I would like
to seen them catch me as I had a good bronc. If you know whose
bronc it was tell him I will make it all O.K. The bronc will be
all right when he rests up some. Well, Bill, I am here on the
ranche, where everything is nice, and I would never come back
unless certain parties agree to do what is right. I would not
speak pieces that way for the President of the U.S. if he ask
me to on his bended knees. Well, Bill, I wish you would come
out here yourself, where everything is nice. You can’t tell what
that bunch of crazies would be wanting you to do next thing with
false whiskers and no right pants. I would tell them “I can be
pushed just so far, and now I will go out to the ranche with
Sour-dough for some time, where things are nice.” Well, Bill,
if you will come out Jeff Tuttle will bring you Wednesday when
he comes with more grub, and you will find everything nice. I
have told Jeff to bring you, so no more at present, with kind
regards and hoping to see you here soon.
Your true friend,
E.G. FLOUD.
P.S. Mrs. Effie said she would broaden me out. Maybe she did,
because I felt pretty flat. Ha! ha!
Truth to tell, this wild suggestion at once appealed to me. I had an impulse to withdraw for a season from the social whirl, to seek repose among the glens and gorges of this cattle plantation, and there try to adjust myself more intelligently to my strange new environment. In the meantime, I hoped, something might happen to the dog of Mrs. Judson; or he might, perhaps, in my absence outlive his curious mania for me.
Mrs. Effie, whom I now consulted, after reading the letter of Cousin Egbert, proved to be in favour of my going to him to make one last appeal to his higher nature.
“If only he’d stick out there in the brush where he belongs, I’d let him stay,” she explained. “But he won’t stick; he gets tired after awhile and drops in perhaps on the very night when we’re entertaining some of the best people at dinner—and of course we’re obliged to have him, though he’s dropped whatever manners I’ve taught him and picked up his old rough talk, and he eats until you wonder how he can. It’s awful! Sometimes I’ve wondered if it couldn’t be adenoids—there’s a lot of talk about those just now—some very select people have them, and perhaps they’re what kept him back and made him so hopelessly low in his tastes, but I just know he’d never go to a doctor about them. For heaven’s sake, use what influence you have to get him back here and to take his rightful place in society.”
I had a profound conviction that he would never take his rightful place in society, be it the fault of adenoids or whatever; that low passion of his for being pally with all sorts made it seem that his sense of values must have been at fault from birth, and yet I could not bring myself to abandon him utterly, for, as I have intimated, something in the fellow’s nature appealed to me. I accordingly murmured my sympathy discreetly and set about preparations for my journey.
Feeling instinctively that Cousin Egbert would not now be dressing for dinner, I omitted evening clothes from my box, including only a morning-suit and one of form-fitting tweeds which I fancied would do me well enough. But no sooner was my box packed than the Tuttle person informed me that I could take no box whatever. It appeared that all luggage would be strapped to the backs of animals and thus transported. Even so, when I had reduced myself to one park riding-suit and a small bundle of necessary adjuncts, I was told that the golf-sticks must be left behind. It appeared there would be no golf.