Bulldog
by Max Brand
“Shut up your yapping,” Peter Zinn greeted his wife. “Shut up and take care of this pup. He’s my kind of dog.”
When Zinn came home from prison, no one was at the station to meet him except the constable, Tom Frejus, who laid a hand on his shoulder and said: “Now, Zinn, let this here be a lesson to you. Give me a chance to treat you white. I ain’t going to hound you. Just remember that because you’re stronger than other folks you ain’t got any reason to beat them up.”
Zinn looked down upon him from a height. Every day of the year during which he had swung his sledge hammer to break rocks for the State roads, he had told himself that one good purpose was served: his muscles grew harder, the fat dropped from his waist and shoulders, the iron square of his chin thrust out as in his youth, and when he came back to town he would use that strength to wreak upon the constable his old hate. For manifestly Tom Frejus was his archenemy. When he first came to Sioux Crossing and fought the three men in Joe Riley’s saloon—oh, famous and happy night!—Constable Frejus gave him a warning. When he fought the Gandil brothers and beat them both senseless, Frejus arrested him. When his old horse, Fidgety, balked in the back lot and Zinn tore a rail from the fence in lieu of a club, Tom Frejus arrested him for cruelty to dumb beasts. This was a crowning torment, for, as Zinn told the judge, he’d bought that old skate with good money and he had a right to do what he wanted with it. But the judge, as always, agreed with Tom Frejus. These incidents were only items in a long list which culminated when Zinn drank deep of bootleg whisky and then beat up the constable himself. The constable, at the trial, pleaded for clemency on account, he said, of Zinn’s wife and three children; but Zinn knew, of course, that Frejus wanted him back only that the old persecution might begin. On this day, therefore the ex-convict, in pure excess of rage, smiled down on the constable.
“Keep out of my way, Frejus,” he said, “and you’ll keep a whole skin. But some day I’ll get you alone, and then I’ll bust you in two—like this!”
He made an eloquent gesture; then he strode off up the street. As the sawmill had just closed, a crowd of returning workers swarmed on the sidewalks, and Zinn took off his cap so that they could see his cropped head. In his heart of hearts he hoped that some one would jibe, but the crowd split away before him and passed with cautiously averted eyes. Most of them were big, rough fellows and their fear was pleasant balm for his savage heart. He went on with his hands a little tensed to feel the strength of his arms.
The dusk was closing early on this autumn day with a chill whirl of snowflakes borne on a wind that had been iced in crossing the heads of the white mountains, but Zinn did not feel the cold. He looked up to the black ranks of the pine forest which climbed the sides of Sandoval Mountain, scattering toward the top and pausing where the sheeted masses of snow began. Life was like that—a struggle, an eternal fight, but never a victory on the mountaintop which all the world could see and admire. When the judge sentenced him he said: “If you lived in the days of armor, you might have been a hero, Zinn; but in these times you are a waster and an enemy of society.” He had grasped dimly at the meaning of this. Through his life he had always aimed at something which would set him apart from and above his fellows; now, at the age of forty, he felt in his hands an undiminished authority of might, but still those hands had not given him the victory. If he beat and routed four men in a huge conflict, society, instead of applauding, raised the club of the law and struck him down. It had always done so, but, though the majority voted against him, his tigerish spirit groped after and clung to this truth: to be strong is to be glorious!