Stubby looked up. “He could eat what's thrown away.”
That was an error in diplomacy. The woman's face hardened. “Mighty little'll be thrown away this winter,” she muttered.
But just then Mrs. Johnson appeared on the other side of the fence and began hanging up her clothes and with that Mrs. Lynch saw her way to justify herself in indulging her son. Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Lynch had “had words.” “You just let him stay around, Stubby,” she called, and you would have supposed from her tone it was Stubby who was on the other side of the fence, “maybe he'll keep the neighbour's chickens out! Them that ain't got chickens o' their own don't want to be bothered with the neighbours'!”
That was how it happened that he stayed; and no one but Stubby knew—and possibly Stubby didn't either—how it happened that he was named Hero. It would seem that Hero should be a noble St. Bernard, or a particularly mean-looking bulldog, not a stocky, shapeless, squint-eyed yellow dog with one ear bitten half off and one leg built on an entirely different plan from its fellow legs. Possibly Stubby's own spiritual experiences had suggested to him that you weren't necessarily the way you looked.
The chickens were pretty well kept out, though no one ever saw Hero doing any of it. Perhaps Hero had been too long associated with chasing to desire any part in it—even with roles reversed. If Stubby could help it, no one really saw Stubby doing the chasing either; he became skilled in chasing when he did not appear to be chasing; then he would get Hero to barking and turn to his mother with, “Guess you don't see so many chickens round nowadays.”
The fellows in the line jeered at Hero at first, but they soon tired of it when Stubby said he didn't want the cur but his mother made him stay around to keep the chickens out. He was a fine chicken dog, Stubby grudgingly admitted. He couldn't keep him from following, said Stubby, so he just let him come. Sometimes when they were waiting in line Stubby made ferocious threats at Hero. He was going to break his back and wring his head off and do other heartless things which for some reason he never started in right then and there to accomplish.
It was different when they were alone—and they were alone a good deal. Stubby's route wasn't nearly so long after he had Hero to go with him. When winter came and five o'clock was dark and cold for starting out it was pretty good to have Hero trotting at his heels. And Hero always wanted to go; it was never so rainy nor so cold that that yellow dog seemed to think he would rather stay home by the fire. Then Hero was always waiting for him when he came home from school. Stubby would sing out, “Hello, cur!” and the tone was such that Hero did not grasp that he was being insulted. Sometimes when there was nobody about, Stubby picked Hero up in his arms and squeezed him—Stubby had not had a large experience with squeezing. At those times Hero would lick Stubby's face and whimper a little love whimper and such were the workings of Stubby's heart and mind that that made him of quite as much account as if he really had chased the chickens. Stubby, who had seen the way dogs can look at you out of their eyes, was not one to say of a dog, “What good is he?”
But it seemed there were such people. There were even people who thought you oughtn't to have a dog to love and to love you if you weren't one of those rich people who could pay two dollars and a half a year for the luxury.
Stubby first heard of those people one night in June. The father of the Lynch family was sitting in the back yard reading the paper when Hero and Stubby came running in from the alley. It was one of those moments when Hero, forgetting the bleakness of his youth, abandoned himself to the joy of living. He was tearing round and round Stubby, barking, when Stubby's father called out: “Here!—shut up there, you cur. You better lie low. You're going to be shot the first of August.”
Stubby, and as regards the joy of living Hero had done as much for Stubby as Stubby for Hero, came to a halt. The fun and frolic just died right out of him and he stood there staring at his father, who had turned the page and was settling himself to a new horror. At last Stubby spoke. “Why's he going to be shot on the first of August?” he asked in a tight little voice.