Still, I had not got Dix back, and I meant to find him if possible! It was several days before I could get on the trace of him, and when I undertook to get the dog I found an unexpected difficulty in the way. I was sent from one office to another until my patience was almost exhausted, and finally when I thought I had, at last, run him down, I was informed that the dog was dead. The gapped-tooth official, with a pewter badge on his breast as his only insignia of official rank, on my pressing the matter, gave me a circumstantial account of the manner in which the dog came to his death. He had attempted, he said, to get through the gate, and it had slammed to on him accidentally, and, being very heavy, had broken his neck.
I had given Dix up for lost and was in a very low state of mind, in which Jeams sympathized with me deeply, though possibly for a different reason. He declared that we had "lost a dog as could win a ten-dollar bill any day he could get a man to put it up."
"Cap'n, you jes' ought to 'a' seen the way he chawed up that bar-keep Gallagin's dog! I was jes' gittin' ready to rake in de pile when dem perlice jumped in an' hammered me. We done los' dat dog, Cap'n—you an' I got to go to work," he added with a rueful look.
It did look so, indeed. A few days later, a letter from him announced that he had gotten a place and would call on me "before long." As he gave no address, I assumed that his "place" was in some bar-room, and I was much disturbed about him. One day, not long after, Dix dashed into my office and nearly ate me up in his joy. I really did not know until he came back how dear he was to me. It was as if he had risen from the dead. I took him up in my arms and hugged him as if I had been a boy. He wore a fine new collar with a monogram on it which I could not decipher. Next day, as I turned into the alley at the back of the building on which opened Mick Raffity's saloon, with a view to running up to my office by the back way, I found Dix in the clutches of a man who was holding on to him, notwithstanding his effort to escape. He was a short, stout fellow with a surly face. At my appearance Dix repeated the man[oe]uvres by which he had escaped from Jeams the day I left him behind me back East, and was soon at my side.
I strode up to the man.
"What are you doing with my dog?" I demanded angrily.
"He's Mr. McSheen's dog."
"He's nothing of the kind. He's my dog and I brought him here with me."
"I guess I know whose dog he is," he said, insolently. "He got him from Dick Gallagin."
Gallagin! That was the name of the man who had put up a dog to fight Dix. A light began to break on me.