Frank of Freedom Hill Part 1

Frank of Freedom Hill.

by Samuel A. Derieux.

I

THE DESTINY OF DAN VI

The baggageman slid open the side door of the car. With a rattle of his chain Dan sprang to his feet. A big red Irish setter was Dan, of his breed sixth, and most superb, his colour wavy-bronze, his head erect and n.o.ble, his eyes eloquent with that upward-looking appeal of hunting dog to hunting man.

Cold, pine-laden air deluged the heated car and chilled his quivering nose and swelled his heaving chest. Beyond the baggageman he saw through the open door, as on a moving-picture screen, sunlit fields and sunlit woods whirling past. He began to bark at them eagerly, his eyes hungry, his tail beating against the taut chain an excited tattoo. The baggageman turned with a grin.

"Birds?" he said.

At the word the dog reared straight up like a maddened horse.

Full-throated angry barks, interspersed with sharp, querulous yaps, filled his roaring, swaying prison. How long since he had got so much as a whiff of untainted air, or a glimpse of wild fields and woods! Out there oceans of such air filled all the s.p.a.ce between the gliding earth and the sky. Out there miles on miles of freedom were rus.h.i.+ng forever out of his life. He began to rage, to froth at the mouth. The baggageman closed the door.

"Hard, old scout!" The baggageman shook his head.

Resignedly the dog sank on his belly, his long body throbbing, his nose between his paws. A deep sigh puffed a little cloud of dust from the slatted floor.

Three years before he had opened his amazed puppy eyes on this man (and woman) ruled planet. An agreeable place of abode he had found it as long as he was owned by a man. The Jersey kennels of George Devant had bred him; Devant had himself overlooked his first season's training, had hunted him a few times. At Devant's untimely death, Mrs. Devant had sold the place, the kennels, the mounts. But when, followed by a group of purchasing sportsmen, the widow came to the kennel where he waited at the end of his chain, she had clasped her hands together and cried out:

"I won't sell this one!"

Lancaster, bachelor friend of the late Devant, spoke up:

"Why, I had _my_ eyes on him."

"You won't get him," she laughed. "He'll live with me--won't you, beauty?"

"He's not a lap dog," Lancaster had reminded her.

"Don't you suppose _I_ understand him?" she demanded.

Understand him? What did the woman know of a bird dog's soul? The most intolerable of burdens is kindness where no understanding is. To Mrs.

Devant it never occurred, even remotely, that her Riverside Drive apartment was a prison. She never dreamed why it was that on their afternoon walks the dog, straining at his leash, kept his hungry eyes fastened always on the cliffs across the Hudson. When they returned, as she pulled off her wraps, she would look down at him.

"I know," she would say; "you are trying to tell me you love me!"

Courteously he would wag his tail. Futilely, out of upraised, gently brave eyes he would plead for freedom--from a woman who did not know, and could not understand.

Then Lancaster, a frequent caller at the apartment of Mrs. Devant, had borrowed him. That morning Lancaster himself had put him aboard this train. "The trip," Lancaster had said, "will be easier if we don't crate him." All day he had known he was being hurled away. Was another grimy wilderness of brick his destination? Had the baggageman closed the door forever on all he loved in the world?

The train slowed up, stopped. The baggageman opened the door and dropped to the ground. They were in the country and the sun had set.

Through the door the dog looked across a dusky field to a black horizon of forest. Above this forest flamed a scarlet glow. Something far in its depths called him, and he plunged against the chain.

He was jerked back, choking, the glow out yonder reflected in his desperate eyes. He backed against the wall, took a running start, and plunged again. The breaking of his collar hurled him against a trunk on the other side of the car, dazed and confused.

A sharp approaching whistle, an ever-loudening roar in that brooding silence out there aroused him to a sense of his surroundings. A telegraph pole that had stood black athwart the glow began to move backward. The silhouette of the baggageman rose in the doorway. The dog gathered himself together and leaped. He landed on s.h.i.+ning rails, in front of a blinding headlight; the pilot just missed him as he sprang out of the way. A northbound pa.s.senger train roared past. From the other train two sharp whistles, the screeching of brakes, and a shout. For a moment he stood on the slight embankment, his ears thrown defiantly back. Then he turned, and with great lung-filling leaps bounded toward the glow in the west.

It was dark in the woods when he stopped and lapped loud and long of icy running water. An alarmed owl went flopping heavily away under the low-growing branches. Underneath this embodied spirit of night galloped the dog, filling the woods with barks, leaping high into the air, his teeth snapping and clicking like castanets. In the edge of a straw field looked down upon by stars he rushed a covey on the roost. One struck against a tree and came chirping down. Dan leaped upon him. His hunger satisfied, he tramped a pile of leaves into a bed, and slept.

At sunrise he chased an early rabbit into an impenetrable, frost-incrusted brier patch. He rushed another covey, that flew away like the wind. He sat down on his haunches and with ears erect watched the distant, whirling specks scatter into the woods. He was helpless in the daylight without man and gun. He remembered a white-tiled butcher shop on upper Broadway, and licked his chops at the recollection.

At midday, a hungry tramp, he approached a farmhouse. A big shepherd dog met him. When the fierce mix-up was over, and the shepherd had retreated, Dan carried in his shoulder a long, deep cut. Impelled by the gnawing in his stomach, he limped toward a log cabin. A troop of black children ran screaming at sight of him, and a black man burst out of the cabin door with a gun. As he turned and bounded away, a shot stung his rump, and others hummed around him. He made for the woods, a pack of yelping curs on his trail.

From this time he avoided the habitations and highways of man, keeping to the woods and streams, turning reluctantly aside at the smell of a human being. Now and then he picked up a stray chicken; twice he fought inquisitive hounds; always his nose pointed like a compa.s.s toward the place where the sun set. He no longer resembled the dog that had graced the canine parade on Riverside Drive. He was gaunt, torn, caked with mud. His proud tail followed the curve of his haunches; he carried his head low to the ground; in his eyes gleamed hunger and outlawry. Freedom had exacted its price.

Near the close of the third day there was borne on the slight wind the smell of a man. Toward it he cautiously slunk, in his heart a desperate, gnawing loneliness. A masterless dog is like a G.o.dless man: there is no motivation sufficient for his struggles and achievements. If the dog had been full of meat, if a mate had trotted beside him, still he would have hungered for the countenance and voice of a master.

Suddenly he sank to the ground and looked keenly ahead. A young human three feet high, bare and frowsy of head, stood alone in the woods. His body was shaken by dry sobs, as if the tear supply had long since been exhausted. Now and then he looked fearfully around at the darkening shadows. Plainly, he was lost; plainly, he needed protection. Therefore the big dog advanced with ingratiating tail.

The man-child shrieked, turned, and ran, his terrified red face turned over his shoulder. He tripped, fell headlong, scrambled to his feet, picked up a stick, and faced about like a little cave man. The dog still advanced wagging his tail, throwing his ears far back, crawling contritely on his belly, begging in every way he could beg to be allowed to serve this offspring of a man.

The pantomime won. The boy dropped his stick. The dog went to him and gazed longingly into the tear-reddened eyes. Humbly he licked the chubby hands, then the tear-soaked face. The boy smiled with a dawn of trust, put his hand testingly on the s.h.a.ggy head, then round his neck. The dog sank to his haunches, his tail stirring the leaves. The boy gave a convulsive hug. Dan VI knew that his wanderings were over.

Far the child must have wandered from home, and suffered much, for, terror removed, he curled up in the leaves and fell asleep, the dog's warm body curled up beside. Suddenly Dan sprang up. From the sunset came the ringing of a bell. Perhaps this bell called this lost boy. Dan sat on his haunches, elevated his nose like an aircraft gun, and began to bay.

For an hour he answered the bell. Then there came through the woods the crash of running footsteps, and a young man burst into view, his clean-shaven face drawn and anxious. He stooped, picked the boy up, felt his arms and legs, laughed out loud. He lifted the boy to a broad shoulder and started for the bell.

"Come along," he said to the dog.

The bell was still ringing when they came in sight of a big house set on a high hill, with oak trees in the yard and barns behind. The man shouted; the bell ceased; a slender young woman came running toward them, followed by a fat old black woman who waddled as she ran. The young woman s.n.a.t.c.hed the boy from the man's shoulder, and Dan knew from the crooning noises she made that she was his mother. Not until they were within a s.p.a.cious fire-ruddied room did she notice the dog. She set the boy wonderingly down.

"Where did he come from?" she gasped.

The man laughed. "From Mars, I guess. He guided me to Tommy."

"Oh--you beauty! You wonder!" She stooped suddenly and caught the big head between her hands. Her eyes were bright and soft. "You n.o.ble, n.o.ble dog!"

Dan drew back. Why all this feminine fuss? Self-consciously he dropped his tail, imploringly he looked up at the man. The man understood. He poked the dog with his foot, and Dan started back with a mock snarl.

Embarra.s.sment vanished, equilibrium was established, they were placed at once on that footing of good-fellows.h.i.+p so necessary in the highest relations of man and man and man and dog.

"Sob stuff," laughed the man, "rattles him."

"Do you think we can keep him, Steve?" the woman pleaded.

"Of course."

"But suppose his owners come after him!"

"I tell you, Marian, he dropped from Mars. I know every bird dog fifty miles around. There's no such breed in _this_ country. One minute."

He crossed the floor to a closet. When he turned he held in his hand a gun.

At the sight the dog leaped up into the man's laughing face. He ran round and round the room, his eyes brilliant, his nose quivering. The man put the gun away.