The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys

by Richard Harding Davis

In this autobiography I have tried to describe Kid as he really is, and this year, when he again strives for blue ribbons, I trust, should the gentle reader see him at any of the bench-shows, he will give him a friendly pat and make his acquaintance. He will find his advances met with a polite and gentle courtesy.

The Author.

PART I

The Master was walking most unsteady, his legs tripping each other. After the fifth or sixth round, my legs often go the same way.

But even when the Master’s legs bend and twist a bit, you mustn’t think he can’t reach you. Indeed, that is the time he kicks most frequent. So I kept behind him in the shadow, or ran in the middle of the street. He stopped at many public houses with swinging doors, those doors that are cut so high from the sidewalk that you can look in under them, and see if the Master is inside. At night, when I peep beneath them, the man at the counter will see me first and say, “Here’s the Kid, Jerry, come to take you home. Get a move on you”; and the Master will stumble out and follow me. It’s lucky for us I’m so white, for, no matter how dark the night, he can always see me ahead, just out of reach of his boot. At night the Master certainly does see most amazing. Sometimes he sees two or four of me, and walks in a circle, so that I have to take him by the leg of his trousers and lead him into the right road. One night, when he was very nasty-tempered and I was coaxing him along, two men passed us, and one of them says, “Look at that brute!” and the other asks, “Which?” and they both laugh. The Master he cursed them good and proper.

But this night, whenever we stopped at a public house, the Master’s pals left it and went on with us to the next. They spoke quite civil to me, and when the Master tried a flying kick, they gives him a shove. “Do you want us to lose our money?” says the pals.

I had had nothing to eat for a day and a night, and just before we set out the Master gives me a wash under the hydrant. Whenever I am locked up until all the slop-pans in our alley are empty, and made to take a bath, and the Master’s pals speak civil and feel my ribs, I know something is going to happen. And that night, when every time they see a policeman under a lamp-post, they dodged across the street, and when at the last one of them picked me up and hid me under his jacket, I began to tremble; for I knew what it meant. It meant that I was to fight again for the Master.

I don’t fight because I like fighting. I fight because if I didn’t the other dog would find my throat, and the Master would lose his stakes, and I would be very sorry for him, and ashamed. Dogs can pass me and I can pass dogs, and I’d never pick a fight with none of them. When I see two dogs standing on their hind legs in the streets, clawing each other’s ears, and snapping for each other’s wind-pipes, or howling and swearing and rolling in the mud, I feel sorry they should act so, and pretend not to notice. If he’d let me, I’d like to pass the time of day with every dog I meet. But there’s something about me that no nice dog can abide. When I trot up to nice dogs, nodding and grinning, to make friends, they always tell me to be off. “Go to the devil!” they bark at me. “Get out!” And when I walk away they shout “Mongrel!” and “Gutter-dog!” and sometimes, after my back is turned, they rush me. I could kill most of them with three shakes, breaking the backbone of the little ones and squeezing the throat of the big ones. But what’s the good? They are nice dogs; that’s why I try to make up to them: and, though it’s not for them to say it, I am a street-dog, and if I try to push into the company of my betters, I suppose it’s their right to teach me my place.

Of course they don’t know I’m the best fighting bull-terrier of my weight in Montreal. That’s why it wouldn’t be fair for me to take notice of what they shout. They don’t know that if I once locked my jaws on them I’d carry away whatever I touched. The night I fought Kelley’s White Rat, I wouldn’t loosen up until the Master made a noose in my leash and strangled me; and, as for that Ottawa dog, if the handlers hadn’t thrown red pepper down my nose I never would have let go of him. I don’t think the handlers treated me quite right that time, but maybe they didn’t know the Ottawa dog was dead. I did.

I learned my fighting from my mother when I was very young. We slept in a lumber-yard on the river-front, and by day hunted for food along the wharves. When we got it, the other tramp-dogs would try to take it off us, and then it was wonderful to see mother fly at them and drive them away. All I know of fighting I learned from mother, watching her picking the ash-heaps for me when I was too little to fight for myself. No one ever was so good to me as mother. When it snowed and the ice was in the St. Lawrence, she used to hunt alone, and bring me back new bones, and she’d sit and laugh to see me trying to swallow ’em whole. I was just a puppy then; my teeth was falling out. When I was able to fight we kept the whole river-range to ourselves. I had the genuine long “punishing” jaw, so mother said, and there wasn’t a man or a dog that dared worry us. Those were happy days, those were; and we lived well, share and share alike, and when we wanted a bit of fun, we chased the fat old wharf-rats! My, how they would squeal!