Stubby's mother didn't hear her son crying that night. That was because Stubby was successful in holding the pillow over his head.
The next morning he looked in one of the papers he was carrying to see what it said about anarchists. Sure enough, some place way off somewhere, the anarchists had shot somebody that was trying to enforce the laws of the land. The laws of the land—that didn't care.
That afternoon as Stubby tramped around looking for jobs he saw a good many boys playing with dogs. None of them seemed to be worrying about whether their dogs had checks. To Stubby's hot little brain and sore little heart came the thought that they didn't love their dogs any more than he loved Hero, either. But the government didn't care whether he loved Hero or not! Pooh!—what was that to the government? All it cared about was getting the money. He stood for a long time watching a boy giving his dog a bath. The dog was trying to get away and the boy and another boy were having lots of fun about it. All of a sudden Stubby turned and ran away—ran down an alley, ran through a number of alleys, just kept on running, blinded by the tears.
And that night, in the middle of the night, that something in his head going round and round, getting hotter and hotter, he decided that the only thing for him to do was to shoot the policeman who came to take Hero away on the morning of August first—that would be day after to-morrow.
All night long policemen with revolvers stood around his bed. When his mother called him at half-past four he was shaking so he could scarcely get into his clothes.
On his way home from his route Stubby had to pass a police-station. He went on the other side of the street and stood there looking across. One of the policemen was playing with a dog!
Suddenly he wanted to rush over and throw himself down at that policeman's feet—sob out the story—ask him to please, please wait till he could get that other seventy cents.
But just then the policeman got up and went in the station, and Stubby was afraid to go in the police-station.
That policeman complicated things for Stubby. Before that it had been quite simple. The policeman would come to enforce the law of the land; but he did not believe in the law of the land, so he would just kill the policeman. But it seemed a policeman wasn't just a person who enforced the laws of the land. He was also a person who played with a dog.
After a whole day of walking around thinking about it—his eyes burning, his heart pounding—he decided that the thing to do was to warn the policeman by writing a letter. He did not know whether real anarchists warned them or not, but Stubby couldn't get reconciled to the idea of killing a person without telling him you were going to do it. It seemed that even a policeman should be told—especially a policeman who played with a dog.