It came about one day when we was out driving. We was in the cart they calls the dog-cart because it’s the one Miss Dorothy keeps to take Jimmy and me for an airing. Nolan was up behind, and me, in my new overcoat, was sitting beside Miss Dorothy. I was admiring the view, and thinking how good it was to have a horse pull you about so that you needn’t get yourself splashed and have to be washed, when I hears a dog calling loud for help, and I pricks up my ears and looks over the horse’s head. And I sees something that makes me tremble down to my toes. In the road before us three big dogs was chasing a little old lady-dog. She had a string to her tail, where some boys had tied a can, and she was dirty with mud and ashes, and torn most awful. She was too far done up to get away, and too old to help herself, but she was making a fight for her life, snapping her old gums savage, and dying game. All this I see in a wink, and then the three dogs pinned her down, and I can’t stand it no longer, and clears the wheel and lands in the road on my head. It was my stylish overcoat done that, and I cursed it proper, but I gets my pats again quick, and makes a rush for the fighting. Behind me I hear Miss Dorothy cry: “They’ll kill that old dog. Wait, take my whip. Beat them off her! The Kid can take care of himself”; and I hear Nolan fall into the road, and the horse come to a stop. The old lady-dog was down, and the three was eating her vicious; but as I come up, scattering the pebbles, she hears, and thinking it’s one more of them, she lifts her head, and my heart breaks open like some one had sunk his teeth in it. For, under the ashes and the dirt and the blood, I can see who it is, and I know that my mother has come back to me.
I gives a yell that throws them three dogs off their legs.
“Mother!” I cries. “I’m the Kid,” I cries. “I’m coming to you. Mother, I’m coming!”
And I shoots over her at the throat of the big dog, and the other two they sinks their teeth into that stylish overcoat and tears it off me, and that sets me free, and I lets them have it. I never had so fine a fight as that! What with mother being there to see, and not having been let to mix up in no fights since I become a prize-winner, it just naturally did me good, and it wasn’t three shakes before I had ’em yelping. Quick as a wink, mother she jumps in to help me, and I just laughed to see her. It was so like old times. And Nolan he made me laugh, too. He was like a hen on a bank, shaking the butt of his whip, but not daring to cut in for fear of hitting me.
“Stop it, Kid,” he says, “stop it. Do you want to be all torn up?” says he. “Think of the Boston Show,” says he. “Think of Chicago. Think of Danbury. Don’t you never want to be a champion?” How was I to think of all them places when I had three dogs to cut up at the same time? But in a minute two of ’em begs for mercy, and mother and me lets ’em run away. The big one he ain’t able to run away. Then mother and me we dances and jumps, and barks and laughs, and bites each other and rolls each other in the road. There never was two dogs so happy as we. And Nolan he whistles and calls and begs me to come to him; but I just laugh and play larks with mother.
“Now, you come with me,” says I, “to my new home, and never try to run away again.” And I shows her our house with the five red roofs, set on the top of the hill. But mother trembles awful, and says: “They’d never let me in such a place. Does the Viceroy live there, Kid?” says she. And I laugh at her. “No; I do,” I says. “And if they won’t let you live there, too, you and me will go back to the streets together, for we must never be parted no more.” So we trots up the hill side by side, with Nolan trying to catch me, and Miss Dorothy laughing at him from the cart.
“The Kid’s made friends with the poor old dog,” says she. “Maybe he knew her long ago when he ran the streets himself. Put her in here beside me, and see if he doesn’t follow.”
So when I hears that I tells mother to go with Nolan and sit in the cart; but she says no–that she’d soil the pretty lady’s frock; but I tells her to do as I say, and so Nolan lifts her, trembling still, into the cart, and I runs alongside, barking joyful.
When we drives into the stables I takes mother to my kennel, and tells her to go inside it and make herself at home. “Oh, but he won’t let me!” says she.
“Who won’t let you?” says I, keeping my eye on Nolan, and growling a bit nasty, just to show I was meaning to have my way.