A YELLOW DOG
I never knew why in the Western States of America a yellow dog should beproverbially considered the acme of canine degradation and incompetency,nor why the possession of one should seriously affect the socialstanding of its possessor. But the fact being established, I think weaccepted it at Rattlers Ridge without question. The matter of ownershipwas more difficult to settle; and although the dog I have in my mind atthe present writing attached himself impartially and equally to everyonein camp, no one ventured to exclusively claim him; while, after theperpetration of any canine atrocity, everybody repudiated him withindecent haste.
"Well, I can swear he hasn't been near our shanty for weeks," or theretort, "He was last seen comin' out of YOUR cabin," expressedthe eagerness with which Rattlers Ridge washed its hands of anyresponsibility. Yet he was by no means a common dog, nor even anunhandsome dog; and it was a singular fact that his severest criticsvied with each other in narrating instances of his sagacity, insight,and agility which they themselves had witnessed.
He had been seen crossing the "flume" that spanned Grizzly Canyon at aheight of nine hundred feet, on a plank six inches wide. He had tumbleddown the "shoot" to the South Fork, a thousand feet below, and was foundsitting on the riverbank "without a scratch, 'cept that he was lazilygivin' himself with his off hind paw." He had been forgotten in asnowdrift on a Sierran shelf, and had come home in the early spring withthe conceited complacency of an Alpine traveler and a plumpness allegedto have been the result of an exclusive diet of buried mail bags andtheir contents. He was generally believed to read the advance electionposters, and disappear a day or two before the candidates and the brassband--which he hated--came to the Ridge. He was suspected of havingoverlooked Colonel Johnson's hand at poker, and of having conveyed tothe Colonel's adversary, by a succession of barks, the danger of bettingagainst four kings.
While these statements were supplied by wholly unsupported witnesses, itwas a very human weakness of Rattlers Ridge that the responsibility ofcorroboration was passed to the dog himself, and HE was looked upon as aconsummate liar.
"Snoopin' round yere, and CALLIN' yourself a poker sharp, are ye! Scoot,you yaller pizin!" was a common adjuration whenever the unfortunateanimal intruded upon a card party. "Ef thar was a spark, an ATOM oftruth in THAT DOG, I'd believe my own eyes that I saw him sittin' up andtrying to magnetize a jay bird off a tree. But wot are ye goin' to dowith a yaller equivocator like that?"
I have said that he was yellow--or, to use the ordinary expression,"yaller." Indeed, I am inclined to believe that much of the ignominyattached to the epithet lay in this favorite pronunciation. Men whohabitually spoke of a "YELLOW bird," a "YELLOW-hammer," a "YELLOW leaf,"always alluded to him as a "YALLER dog."
He certainly WAS yellow. After a bath--usually compulsory--he presenteda decided gamboge streak down his back, from the top of his forehead tothe stump of his tail, fading in his sides and flank to a delicate strawcolor. His breast, legs, and feet--when not reddened by "slumgullion,"in which he was fond of wading--were white. A few attempts at ornamentaldecoration from the India-ink pot of the storekeeper failed, partlythrough the yellow dog's excessive agility, which would never give thepaint time to dry on him, and partly through his success in transferringhis markings to the trousers and blankets of the camp.
The size and shape of his tail--which had been cut off before hisintroduction to Rattlers Ridge--were favorite sources of speculation tothe miners, as determining both his breed and his moral responsibilityin coming into camp in that defective condition. There was a generalopinion that he couldn't have looked worse with a tail, and its removalwas therefore a gratuitous effrontery.
His best feature was his eyes, which were a lustrous Vandyke brown, andsparkling with intelligence; but here again he suffered from evolutionthrough environment, and their original trustful openness was marred bythe experience of watching for flying stones, sods, and passing kicksfrom the rear, so that the pupils were continually reverting to theouter angle of the eyelid.
Nevertheless, none of these characteristics decided the vexed questionof his BREED. His speed and scent pointed to a "hound," and it isrelated that on one occasion he was laid on the trail of a wildcat withsuch success that he followed it apparently out of the State, returningat the end of two weeks footsore, but blandly contented.
Attaching himself to a prospecting party, he was sent under the samebelief, "into the brush" to drive off a bear, who was supposed to behaunting the campfire. He returned in a few minutes WITH the bear,DRIVING IT INTO the unarmed circle and scattering the whole party. Afterthis the theory of his being a hunting dog was abandoned. Yet it wassaid--on the usual uncorroborated evidence--that he had "put up" aquail; and his qualities as a retriever were for a long time accepted,until, during a shooting expedition for wild ducks, it was discoveredthat the one he had brought back had never been shot, and the party wereobliged to compound damages with an adjacent settler.
His fondness for paddling in the ditches and "slumgullion" at one timesuggested a water spaniel. He could swim, and would occasionally bringout of the river sticks and pieces of bark that had been thrown in; butas HE always had to be thrown in with them, and was a good-sized dog,his aquatic reputation faded also. He remained simply "a yaller dog."What more could be said? His actual name was "Bones"--given to him, nodoubt, through the provincial custom of confounding the occupation ofthe individual with his quality, for which it was pointed out precedentcould be found in some old English family names.
But if Bones generally exhibited no preference for any particularindividual in camp, he always made an exception in favor of drunkards.Even an ordinary roistering bacchanalian party brought him out fromunder a tree or a shed in the keenest satisfaction. He would accompanythem through the long straggling street of the settlement, barking hisdelight at every step or misstep of the revelers, and exhibiting none ofthat mistrust of eye which marked his attendance upon the sane and therespectable. He accepted even their uncouth play without a snarl or ayelp, hypocritically pretending even to like it; and I conscientiouslybelieve would have allowed a tin can to be attached to his tail if thehand that tied it on were only unsteady, and the voice that bade him"lie still" were husky with liquor. He would "see" the party cheerfullyinto a saloon, wait outside the door--his tongue fairly lolling from hismouth in enjoyment--until they reappeared, permit them even to tumbleover him with pleasure, and then gambol away before them, heedless ofawkwardly projected stones and epithets. He would afterward accompanythem separately home, or lie with them at crossroads until they wereassisted to their cabins. Then he would trot rakishly to his own hauntby the saloon stove, with the slightly conscious air of having been abad dog, yet of having had a good time.
We never could satisfy ourselves whether his enjoyment arose from somemerely selfish conviction that he was more SECURE with the physicallyand mentally incompetent, from some active sympathy with activewickedness, or from a grim sense of his own mental superiority at suchmoments. But the general belief leant toward his kindred sympathy as a"yaller dog" with all that was disreputable. And this was supported byanother very singular canine manifestation--the "sincere flattery" ofsimulation or imitation.
"Uncle Billy" Riley for a short time enjoyed the position of beingthe camp drunkard, and at once became an object of Bones' greatestsolicitude. He not only accompanied him everywhere, curled at his feetor head according to Uncle Billy's attitude at the moment, but, it wasnoticed, began presently to undergo a singular alteration in his ownhabits and appearance. From being an active, tireless scout and forager,a bold and unovertakable marauder, he became lazy and apathetic;allowed gophers to burrow under him without endeavoring to undermine thesettlement in his frantic endeavors to dig them out, permitted squirrelsto flash their tails at him a hundred yards away, forgot his usualcaches, and left his favorite bones unburied and bleaching in the sun.His eyes grew dull, his coat lusterless, in proportion as his companionbecame blear-eyed and ragged; in running, his usual arro
wlike directnessbegan to deviate, and it was not unusual to meet the pair together,zigzagging up the hill. Indeed, Uncle Billy's condition could bepredetermined by Bones' appearance at times when his temporary masterwas invisible. "The old man must have an awful jag on today," wascasually remarked when an extra fluffiness and imbecility was noticeablein the passing Bones. At first it was believed that he drank also, butwhen careful investigation proved this hypothesis untenable, he wasfreely called a "derned time-servin', yaller hypocrite." Not a fewadvanced the opinion that if Bones did not actually lead Uncle Billyastray, he at least "slavered him over and coddled him until the old mangot conceited in his wickedness." This undoubtedly led to a compulsorydivorce between them, and Uncle Billy was happily dispatched to aneighboring town and a doctor.
Bones seemed to miss him greatly, ran away for two days, and wassupposed to have visited him, to have been shocked at his convalescence,and to have been "cut" by Uncle Billy in his reformed character; andhe returned to his old active life again, and buried his past with hisforgotten bones. It was said that he was afterward detected in tryingto lead an intoxicated tramp into camp after the methods employed bya blind man's dog, but was discovered in time by the--ofcourse--uncorroborated narrator.
I should be tempted to leave him thus in his original and picturesquesin, but the same veracity which compelled me to transcribe hisfaults and iniquities obliges me to describe his ultimate and somewhatmonotonous reformation, which came from no fault of his own.
It was a joyous day at Rattlers Ridge that was equally the advent ofhis change of heart and the first stagecoach that had been induced todiverge from the highroad and stop regularly at our settlement. Flagswere flying from the post office and Polka saloon, and Bones was flyingbefore the brass band that he detested, when the sweetest girl in thecounty--Pinkey Preston--daughter of the county judge and hopelesslybeloved by all Rattlers Ridge, stepped from the coach which she hadglorified by occupying as an invited guest.
"What makes him run away?" she asked quickly, opening her lovely eyes ina possibly innocent wonder that anything could be found to run away fromher.
"He don't like the brass band," we explained eagerly.
"How funny," murmured the girl; "is it as out of tune as all that?"
This irresistible witticism alone would have been enough to satisfyus--we did nothing but repeat it to each other all the next day--but wewere positively transported when we saw her suddenly gather her daintyskirts in one hand and trip off through the red dust toward Bones, who,with his eyes over his yellow shoulder, had halted in the road,and half-turned in mingled disgust and rage at the spectacle of thedescending trombone. We held our breath as she approached him. WouldBones evade her as he did us at such moments, or would he save ourreputation, and consent, for the moment, to accept her as a new kind ofinebriate? She came nearer; he saw her; he began to slowly quiver withexcitement--his stump of a tail vibrating with such rapidity thatthe loss of the missing portion was scarcely noticeable. Suddenly shestopped before him, took his yellow head between her little hands,lifted it, and looked down in his handsome brown eyes with her twolovely blue ones. What passed between them in that magnetic glance noone ever knew. She returned with him; said to him casually: "We're notafraid of brass bands, are we?" to which he apparently acquiesced, atleast stifling his disgust of them while he was near her--which wasnearly all the time.
During the speechmaking her gloved hand and his yellow head were alwaysnear together, and at the crowning ceremony--her public checking of YubaBill's "waybill" on behalf of the township, with a gold pencil presentedto her by the Stage Company--Bones' joy, far from knowing no bounds,seemed to know nothing but them, and he witnessed it apparently in theair. No one dared to interfere. For the first time a local pride inBones sprang up in our hearts--and we lied to each other in his praisesopenly and shamelessly.
Then the time came for parting. We were standing by the door of thecoach, hats in hand, as Miss Pinkey was about to step into it; Boneswas waiting by her side, confidently looking into the interior, andapparently selecting his own seat on the lap of Judge Preston in thecorner, when Miss Pinkey held up the sweetest of admonitory fingers.Then, taking his head between her two hands, she again looked intohis brimming eyes, and said, simply, "GOOD dog," with the gentlest ofemphasis on the adjective, and popped into the coach.
The six bay horses started as one, the gorgeous green and gold vehiclebounded forward, the red dust rose behind, and the yellow dog dancedin and out of it to the very outskirts of the settlement. And then hesoberly returned.
A day or two later he was missed--but the fact was afterward known thathe was at Spring Valley, the county town where Miss Preston lived, andhe was forgiven. A week afterward he was missed again, but this time fora longer period, and then a pathetic letter arrived from Sacramento forthe storekeeper's wife.
"Would you mind," wrote Miss Pinkey Preston, "asking some of your boysto come over here to Sacramento and bring back Bones? I don't mindhaving the dear dog walk out with me at Spring Valley, where everyoneknows me; but here he DOES make one so noticeable, on account of HISCOLOR. I've got scarcely a frock that he agrees with. He don't go withmy pink muslin, and that lovely buff tint he makes three shades lighter.You know yellow is SO trying."
A consultation was quickly held by the whole settlement, and adeputation sent to Sacramento to relieve the unfortunate girl. Wewere all quite indignant with Bones--but, oddly enough, I think it wasgreatly tempered with our new pride in him. While he was with us alone,his peculiarities had been scarcely appreciated, but the recurrentphrase "that yellow dog that they keep at the Rattlers" gave us amysterious importance along the countryside, as if we had secured a"mascot" in some zoological curiosity.
This was further indicated by a singular occurrence. A new church hadbeen built at the crossroads, and an eminent divine had come from SanFrancisco to preach the opening sermon. After a careful examination ofthe camp's wardrobe, and some felicitous exchange of apparel, a few ofus were deputed to represent "Rattlers" at the Sunday service. In ourwhite ducks, straw hats, and flannel blouses, we were sufficientlypicturesque and distinctive as "honest miners" to be shown off in one ofthe front pews.
Seated near the prettiest girls, who offered us their hymn books--in thecleanly odor of fresh pine shavings, and ironed muslin, and blown overby the spices of our own woods through the open windows, a deep senseof the abiding peace of Christian communion settled upon us. At thissupreme moment someone murmured in an awe-stricken whisper:
"WILL you look at Bones?"
We looked. Bones had entered the church and gone up in the gallerythrough a pardonable ignorance and modesty; but, perceiving his mistake,was now calmly walking along the gallery rail before the astoundedworshipers. Reaching the end, he paused for a moment, and carelesslylooked down. It was about fifteen feet to the floor below--the simplestjump in the world for the mountain-bred Bones. Daintily, gingerly,lazily, and yet with a conceited airiness of manner, as if, humanlyspeaking, he had one leg in his pocket and were doing it on three, hecleared the distance, dropping just in front of the chancel, without asound, turned himself around three times, and then lay comfortably down.
Three deacons were instantly in the aisle, coming up before the eminentdivine, who, we fancied, wore a restrained smile. We heard the hurriedwhispers: "Belongs to them." "Quite a local institution here, you know.""Don't like to offend sensibilities;" and the minister's prompt "By nomeans," as he went on with his service.
A short month ago we would have repudiated Bones; today we sat therein slightly supercilious attitudes, as if to indicate that any affrontoffered to Bones would be an insult to ourselves, and followed by ourinstantaneous withdrawal in a body.
All went well, however, until the minister, lifting the large Biblefrom the communion table and holding it in both hands before him, walkedtoward a reading stand by the altar rails. Bones uttered a distinctgrowl. The minister stopped.
We, and we alone, comprehended in a flash the whole si
tuation. The Biblewas nearly the size and shape of one of those soft clods of sod which wewere in the playful habit of launching at Bones when he lay half-asleepin the sun, in order to see him cleverly evade it.
We held our breath. What was to be done? But the opportunity belongedto our leader, Jeff Briggs--a confoundedly good-looking fellow, with thegolden mustache of a northern viking and the curls of an Apollo. Securein his beauty and bland in his self-conceit, he rose from the pew, andstepped before the chancel rails.
"I would wait a moment, if I were you, sir," he said, respectfully, "andyou will see that he will go out quietly."
"What is wrong?" whispered the minister in some concern.
"He thinks you are going to heave that book at him, sir, without givinghim a fair show, as we do."
The minister looked perplexed, but remained motionless, with the book inhis hands. Bones arose, walked halfway down the aisle, and vanished likea yellow flash!
With this justification of his reputation, Bones disappeared for a week.At the end of that time we received a polite note from Judge Preston,saying that the dog had become quite domiciled in their house, andbegged that the camp, without yielding up their valuable PROPERTY inhim, would allow him to remain at Spring Valley for an indefinite time;that both the judge and his daughter--with whom Bones was already an oldfriend--would be glad if the members of the camp would visit their oldfavorite whenever they desired, to assure themselves that he was wellcared for.
I am afraid that the bait thus ingenuously thrown out had a good deal todo with our ultimate yielding. However, the reports of those who visitedBones were wonderful and marvelous. He was residing there in state,lying on rugs in the drawing-room, coiled up under the judicial desk inthe judge's study, sleeping regularly on the mat outside Miss Pinkey'sbedroom door, or lazily snapping at flies on the judge's lawn.
"He's as yaller as ever," said one of our informants, "but it don'tsomehow seem to be the same back that we used to break clods over in theold time, just to see him scoot out of the dust."
And now I must record a fact which I am aware all lovers of dogs willindignantly deny, and which will be furiously bayed at by every faithfulhound since the days of Ulysses. Bones not only FORGOT, but absolutelyCUT US! Those who called upon the judge in "store clothes" he wouldperhaps casually notice, but he would sniff at them as if detecting andresenting them under their superficial exterior. The rest he simply paidno attention to. The more familiar term of "Bonesy"--formerly appliedto him, as in our rare moments of endearment--produced no response.This pained, I think, some of the more youthful of us; but, through somestrange human weakness, it also increased the camp's respect for him.Nevertheless, we spoke of him familiarly to strangers at the very momenthe ignored us. I am afraid that we also took some pains to pointout that he was getting fat and unwieldy, and losing his elasticity,implying covertly that his choice was a mistake and his life a failure.
A year after, he died, in the odor of sanctity and respectability, beingfound one morning coiled up and stiff on the mat outside Miss Pinkey'sdoor. When the news was conveyed to us, we asked permission, the campbeing in a prosperous condition, to erect a stone over his grave. Butwhen it came to the inscription we could only think of the two wordsmurmured to him by Miss Pinkey, which we always believe effected hisconversion:
"GOOD Dog!"