Part 14

It was very gentle with its mistress, purred sonorously whenever she petted it, and went stumbling all over the house at her heels. Nor was it hostile to the young lady who completed our family, not half so afraid of Beauty as Beauty was of this wild cousin. But with me it would have nothing to do. As I was then city editor of the morning newspaper, and was very little at home, it evidently looked upon me as an interloper, and at a glance of me would snarl and show fight as sincerely as a grown lynx. And it was an enemy not altogether to be laughed at, as there are still scars to testify.

Once it climbed up and hid among the springs of my bed, and the heavy buck gloves I put on for the task of dislodging it did not save me from ugly tastes of those keen teeth and claws. Perhaps it is quite as well that Tiger did not survive his infancy, but died of congestion at four or five months old. Had he grown up, without a change of heart, he might have become troublesome.

With this much of a household on our hands, we might very reasonably have been content; and so probably should have been but for one of those “chances of a lifetime” which are always befalling the enthusiast. A fellow down in the Mexican quarter of the city had a pet deer, and, learning of my hobby, pestered me to buy—“dirt cheap, Sir!”

“No, I don’t want any deer. Couldn’t take care of him.”

“Oh, but he is such a beauty, Sir, and tame as a sheep, and $10 is nothing. Just come and look at him!”

Well, it could do no harm to go and look at a pretty animal; so I went—with a virtuous resolve not to acquire another single pet.

The result was what might have been expected. He _was_ a beauty. There is almost nothing handsomer than a perfect Black-tail, and this was an excellent specimen—full grown, though young, with one fork on his dagger-sharp antlers, and gentle as a kitten. The first look of those liquid eyes made my resolution tremble; and when the lovely creature came and nestled his face into my vest with perfect confidence, I was lost.

I could not even wait to send an express-man for him. “Here is your $10,” said I; “and now give me a rope to lead him home.”

The rope was put around that graceful neck, and I started off in high glee. He followed me like a lamb through the back streets, paying little attention to people or wagons—for he had passed most of his life in the city—and much less abashed than his new master by the sensation we created. Once safely at home, I gave him a strong leather collar and a long steel chain, the other end of which hooked into a staple in the side of the shed.

Bonito, as we named him, seemed very content in his new home. At night he had a comfortable bed in the shed, and by day his place outside. There was plenty of alfalfa and young wheat, which we had cut for him from the rabbits’ patch, and bread and sugar from the house; and every morning my habit was to loose his chain and let him wander about the yard with me.

He had a great curiosity about the rabbits and the owl, a fair understanding with Giallo, the dog, a supreme contempt for the little wildcat—which had been transferred to a big cage in the yard and roared at us whenever we approached. As for the three human members of the family, he was hail-fellow-well-met with us all. He kept putting himself forward to be petted, delighted to be scratched behind the ears, and would rather eat from our hands than from his trough.

For five or six months Bonito was the pride of the family. He had grown very fat, and was sleek and handsome as one could wish. But with the advance of summer he turned misanthrope. He began to paw a considerable hollow by his post, and now and again stamped his hoof on the ground with that peculiarly audible rap which with wild deer is an alarm-signal sufficient to stampede a quietly grazing herd. Then he began to show some contempt for being petted, and several times pushed us away in a manner nothing short of rude.

At last I came home one night to find my wife much worked up. She had gone out that afternoon to feed Bonito and was giving him an apple, when suddenly he lowered his head and sprang at her. Luckily the sharp horns passed either side the slender waist, pinning her against the shed, but not hurting her; and with much presence of mind, instead of fainting or screaming or struggling, she scratched beneath his ears soothingly, and he at last let her escape unharmed.

“H’m! Well, don’t you go near him again,” said I. “I’ll attend to him myself, if that’s his temper;” and I forthwith procured a new chain.

Several times in the next few weeks he made lunges at me, but again would seem gentle and would enjoy a petting. Against my wife, however, he appeared to have taken a sudden grudge, and would tug on his chain at sight of her.

One Saturday she went to visit friends at the beach, and I was to follow on the half-past eight train next morning. It was four o’clock in the morning when I saw the paper to press and came home, and at seven o’clock got up to care for the pets before leaving.

When I went out to the yard, the deer was not there. The staple was torn out, and the drag of the chain enabled me to find where Bonito had jumped the fence and made off. I trailed him several blocks, and at last found him impudently grazing on a handsome lawn on Hill Street.

He did not attempt to elude me, and when I took the end of the chain he followed as meekly as you please, only stopping now and then to nibble a bit of grass by the sidewalk.

Unluckily just then I pulled out my watch. Seven-fifty! Time to hurry up—and when Don Bonito stooped to graze, I leaned back on the chain and brought him along. Five or six times this happened, and I fancied he was not quite so meek. Hungry he could not be—it was just his stupid notion to take a bite by the wayside; and my train would not wait for that. So each time that he halted, a steady but resistless pull brought him sliding forward, brace his feet as he would.

The last time I pulled there was a surprise. For an instant he held back with all his strength, and then, suddenly hunching his body like a panther, he gave a great bound at me. Losing balance at this sudden yielding of the weight, I sprawled on the sidewalk, and Bonito pounced upon me like a cat, cutting my leg with his sharp hoofs, and aiming his sharper horns at my ribs. It was as well that he had to do with no novice at catch-as-can wrestling, for without those years of keen practice I never should have come out from the next fifteen minutes—if, indeed, from the first onslaught. As it was, I clutched a horn at the first pass, within six inches of my side; and then, capturing the other, readily got my feet.

This head-lock counter-balanced his 20 pounds’ superiority in weight, but the very fact of being overpowered made him beside himself. He began to fight with inconceivable fury, twisting till he seemed like to break his neck in the effort to free his horns or get at me with his feet.

It began to appear that he had me in something like a “box.” It was equally out of the question to let him go or try to lead him farther. Every motion or snort of the infuriated animal showed that his one thought now was not escape, but revenge.

Still, confident in my muscles—like steel yet from a thirty-five-hundred-mile walk across the continent—I had no apprehensions. The only thing necessary was to take him home in such fashion that he could not hurt me; and once there, the chain would take care of him.

So I got my left arm locked in a chancery hold around his neck, my right hand still firmly holding his right horn, which worked uncomfortably close to my stomach, and thus, lifting him so that his fore feet were off the ground, I started homeward.

But there had been a reckoning without the host. The first two blocks went fairly, though in an unceasing violent struggle—rather to the scandal of the two or three passers we met, so early for Sunday morning in that quiet part of the town. But when I came with my prisoner to Fifth Street, it was with the consciousness that I was pretty well worn out, and that he, in spite of the strangle-lock, seemed to be growing fresher.

Each moment he fought with new rage and vigor, sometimes driving me against the fence, sometimes over the curb; lunging fiercely with those sinewy hind-legs, and striking wildly with the pointed fore-hoofs, whose dangerous effectiveness every hunter knows.

The way we wrestled and fought over the next six or seven hundred feet might have been amusing to bystanders, but became terrible to me. It was not for the bruises and gashes I got, nor for the breathless thumps against fences and trees, nor for the being violently thrown several times. I kept his head in chancery, and these small hurts were not much more than one expects to get in a good bout of catch-as-can with a human adversary.

As long as I could keep that deadlock on his neck I was perfectly safe from any serious injury, but the grim certainty confronted me that I could not keep it much longer. My arm began to give at his fiercest lunges, my breath and heart were alike stampeding, and I felt creeping over me the dizzy faintness of utter exhaustion. Never had wrestler given me such tussle before—though I have worked two hours “on the carpet” at a bout.

Down we went again at the last corner, and again a glancing hoof cut me as I fought back to my feet. I dropped the horn and clasped the left wrist with my right hand, drawing the arm tighter under the brute’s throat, at once to hold him surer and cut off his wind. But the broad leather collar seemed to save him. A burly fellow passed. “Help me with this deer!” I panted; but he looked at the savage struggles of Bonito and hurried on.

At the very gate the beast bore me down once more; but once more I struggled up and dragged him in. We swayed and fought along, tearing up the gravel-walks and flower-beds, and at last came to the shed. I could barely stand, and Bonito dragged me hither and yon. My eyes were hazy, and the cramped arms began to slip. Would Virginia never come? I yelled again, and just then she came running out.

“Fasten—his chains—around the post!” I had just breath to gasp; and, like the brave girl she was, she did it—in what seemed to me forever, while the deer and I fought the last bout.

“Run!” I cried, when the chain was at last secured; and when she was in the back door, I dragged Bonito to the end of his chain, loosed my hold and fell backward. I am positive that I could not have held him twenty seconds longer to save my life.

He slacked back on the tether and hurled himself forward till the steel links cracked again, and his eyes fairly started with the pressure on his throat. But the chain held, and his frantic efforts, which continued as long as I was in sight, were in vain. Had a link parted then, he would have had an easy victim. A few minutes’ breathing-spell made me over, and by a bit of good fortune I caught the next train, and reached Long Beach not far behind time—though with various large rents and blood stains on my clothing.

The next day a butcher was summoned to rid us of so dangerous a pet. He dealt Bonito a fearful blow on the forehead with a hatchet. The deer dropped as if shot, and lay motionless; and the butcher stepped forward with his knife. But like a flash the brute was on his feet again—and on his assailant, whose coat was pierced front and back by the sharp antlers. It was a remarkable chance that they had not entered his abdomen.

The butcher’s fat, rosy face turned a sickly gray. He kept his distance after that, and with a long-handled ax made thrice sure of the game before he would venture again within the radius of that chain.

Bonito dressed one hundred and fifty-six pounds—so you see he was no feather-weight for a wrestler. He was fat, and they said very good venison. At home we could not think of eating the meat of a former pet; but after his exploits, our sentiment did not go so far as to make us sorry that someone else could.

And since then I have never had an ambition to get another “tame deer.”

The Rebel Double Runner.

The Rebel Double Runner.

When I was a lad in a lonely New Hampshire village, in the memorable year of 1863, a great many fathers and uncles and older brothers were off at some fearful and dimly-comprehended distance, dressed in blue, and, as we reckoned it, fighting battles daily.

How brave they had looked one morning, as they left town, marching with fife and drum along the crazy sidewalk, and off down the “Depot Hill!”

After that, the games at school and after school took a decidedly warlike tinge. Wooden swords and muskets largely usurped the place of top and ball; and proud was the small boy whose grand-dad would lend him a real sword of 1812, or an ancient militia shako.

When the stern New Hampshire winter came on, with its sleighing and coasting and skating, military evolutions were somewhat curtailed—but not altogether. There were snow forts and snow battles; white-blocked Sumters that defied the assault of the enemy.

Patriotic feeling ran riot; and when one young school-fellow, named Tip, espoused the Southern cause for fun, and began to press our ramparts sore, gaining recruits every day by his sheer audacity, there came to be snow-balls slightly thawed and then left out over night to turn to ice—and, as a result, some dangerous casualties on the battle-field.

The very opposite of Tip in many ways was Mat Marks. Tip was restless, sometimes reckless, always full of mischief, but one of the squarest and least self-conscious of boys. His sudden “turning Rebel,” when he could hardly draft rebels enough to make the holding of our forts against them half-way interesting, was from no lack of as good patriotism as ours.

But Tip liked excitement, and was less vain than most of us; and without a second thought of any prejudice that he might excite because of this boyish enterprise, he abandoned the fort and took command of the enemy—“just to make it interesting.”

And, though he was always overwhelmingly outnumbered, interesting enough he made it for “Us Unions” before he finished.

Mat, on the other hand, while in a way as active and enterprising as Tip, was much bound to the traditions—not from any principle or understanding of them, but because he liked to be on the popular side, and at the head of it, too; for he had a remarkably good opinion of himself.

Thanks to his diplomacy, he counted more followers than any other lad in town, and was fully satisfied of the justice of his preëminence. He liked to deem himself “a born leader of men,” such as he read of; and I have often wondered, since, that we so long and so unquestioningly obeyed his smooth dictatorship. He was always “organizing”—the snow-ball battles were the outcome of his genius—and we carried out his orders with remarkable fidelity.

With the twentieth of December came a three-foot fall of snow, and in a few days it was hard packed on every highway, like a squeaky, white pavement. No more skating now—the sled was to be king for the next two months. For a few days everybody coasted, hit or miss; and the long slide swarmed like an ant-hill going crazy. But then the administrative mind of Mat began to work. Everyone sliding down hill on his own hook and straggling back at will—this was altogether too puerile and unorganized!

So Mat called a council of war.

“Say, boys,” he said, “I’ll tell you what let’s do! Instead of going higgledy-piggledy at it, like a lot of girls, let’s organize the coasting in good shape. We’ll have our rules and signals and right of way, just like a railroad, and a switch at the tannery corner so the small boys can go on to the toll-bridge, carrying supplies for the army, and the express-trains can turn off to the depot and take troops to the front.

“Then, too, I think father’ll let me have old Nell, and we can make her haul back all the sleds in a string, and let fellows have turns riding her down to meet us again. So that’ll get rid of the meanest part of it—the pulling our sleds up hill. Besides, we’re all the time having trouble with teams now; but if they all knew we were coming down in a steady string, they’d keep out of the way, and do their sledding only when the coast was clear. What do you fellows think?”

“Good enough!” “That’s the way!” “All right!” cried the crowd, in various voices, but with one mind. But when the exclamations were over, Tip tilted his sharp face a bit and said:

“Well, what are you going to do while Nell is getting down hill? Sit in the snow-drift there at the depot and rub your ears? Strikes me it’s better to turn around and climb back, and keep warm, ’stead of waiting there half an hour to freeze. And s’posing some team that didn’t know about our all comin’ down together was to get in the way? Then we’d be apt to get tangled up with each other and go to smash.”

“Huh!” retorted Mat, sharply; “I guess you’re scared. But you don’t have to join us. If the rest say to go in, I guess we can get along without you. What do you say, fellows? Shall we do it?”

“’Course we will!” was the chorus; and Mat looked triumphantly at his rival—for there was no denying that Mat reckoned as a rival, and therefore a foe, anyone who didn’t agree with him, as Tip generally did not. Tip returned the glance coolly and answered:

“Why, you fellows do as you like, of course—I ain’t bossing you. But you can count me out from any such goose-tag as that.”

“We wouldn’t have you anyhow!” cried Mat, nettled at this comparing them to a flock of geese waddling one after the other. “We don’t care to have any traitors in our crowd.”

“Yah, you old Rebel!” piped little Bill Burpee, taking his clew as usual; and several others echoed what was then the most dreadful word in our vocabulary.

“I ain’t a Rebel, and you know it!” Tip answered, warmly. “I guess my father’s fighting as hard as any of yours—and he ain’t staying home to tend grocery stores, like Mat’s!” with which parting shot he walked off scornfully and quite alone.

I can hardly understand now why we were so unjust to Tip. He had more in him than any other boy among us, was less selfish, more trustworthy and a better friend than ten Mats, and had done each of us no end of boy-kindnesses, instead of using us as cat’s-paws for his own ambition.

But just because he had “played Rebel” for a few days solely to put a little life into the war, the boys were “down on” him. His followers in that campaign we made no note of and harbored no grudge against.

Perhaps there was wounded vanity in the recollection how nearly his superior generalship had routed our superior forces. So unreasoning are early prejudices that I presume a few of us never did quite get the last grain of grudge out of our heads—unless, perhaps, fifteen years later, when Mat was clerking in his father’s store, and word came of the death of Capt. Tip in Arizona. He was slain by the Apaches after an heroic fight which saved an immigrant party till the arrival of troops enough to scatter the red fiends.

Well, Mat’s plan progressed famously. A small army of us, with brooms and shovels, worked over that mile and a half of road till the coast was in such good shape as no one ever dreamed of before.

The weather stayed obstinately cold; so, under Mat’s direction, we brought water by the bucketful and wet down the safer parts of the slide. There was some friction about this, for the older people objected to so much glare ice; but Mat compromised by not wetting the street crossings, and only a narrow track at the side of the road, so that sleighs had plenty of room without encroaching on our slide.

At the tannery corner we made a crescent of hard-packed snow, with sloping concavity, which rendered it rather easier to turn that dangerous angle. It was like the raised rail on the outside of the railway curve, or the “saucer-edge” of an automobile race-track.

And then came the marshalling of the clans. Our embryo Napoleon, of course, was commander-in-chief, and his pride, the double-runner “Avalanche,” led the line. There were in those days but half a dozen other double-runners in town. These were owned by young men. Mat’s was the only one in “our crowd.” It was a very fancy affair for then and there.

Right-hand-man Hunt was privileged to manage the rear, and the coveted remaining seats were occupied by guests of passing invitation.

It was no small social power to control a double-runner, and Mat made the most of it, giving rides to all his friends with great princeliness. But I remember that we never saw on Mat’s “traverse” any of the urchins from the lower end of the village—they had no “influence.”

Behind the “Avalanche” came sleds of all sorts and sizes. As for Tip, no one had seen him for several days. He lived up on the other hill—a hill even steeper than Dolloff’s, but coming in with such an ugly turn at the engine-house that no one coasted there since big Ned Green broke his neck on a wood-pile around the bend.

The great Saturday came for the formal inauguration of the Cannonball Railroad. Sixty-odd boys were gathered at the top of Dolloff’s Hill. Some girls were there, too, with their high, flat-runnered sleds, upon which we looked with supreme scorn. Kitty White and Annie Waters and May Thurston were comfortably tucked up on the cushioned seat behind Mat on his double-runner; and Hunt was holding back on the tail-board till the signal.

“All ready—go!” yelled Mat. Hunt sprang to his seat, and the sled slipped away, gaining momentum swiftly. Charlie White flung himself on his long cutter and was at its heels; and one after another, in continuous line, the whole array of boys on their sleds went sweeping down the hill.

Just as the last of us were whizzing by the engine-house, there was a shrill yell, and a dark flash from the other arm of the “Y” of the roads shot alongside in a swirl of snow-flower, and was past almost before anyone could crack a wink.

All we were sure of was that Tip and a party had gone by us, but how, or on what, no one knew. Anyhow, it was just like him. No one but Tip could have turned that lopsided corner in that way, and grazed safely within two feet of us. And one after another of the brown line ahead, we could see this astounding meteor picking up and passing them all.

Mat was right on the town bridge, steering his grandest to cut a fine curve through the square, when he caught that odd singing of tempered runners. Before he could turn his head, Tip streaked by without a glance, doubled the corner with a beautiful swing, and was out of sight on the next pitch when the “Avalanche” turned into the square.

Tip on a double-runner! and one with wings, too, to judge by its speed! And Lou Berry and Kate Morris and Amy Belle and that pauper Okey boy with him, and that big Brown behind—it was altogether too much! When we got to the bottom of Depot Hill, Tip and his party were starting back, dragging the new craft. It was a very heavy double-runner, with a long, springy plank of ash, set rather low. There was no paint on runners or deck, but everything about the sandpapered wood had a clipper look, and the runners were shod with steel rods of an odd spring.

“Where’d ye get it, Tip?” “Ain’t it a whaler?” “Lemme go down once with you, Tip!” cried such of the boys as could catch up—which was not so difficult, as old Nell was dragging our sleds. Tip trudged on, answering composedly:

“Oh, Mr. Brown and I got it fixed up. ’Course you can go, one at a time—we’ve got room for just one more.”

But just then Mat—whose heavy sled went farther than our light ones—overtook us. No doubt he felt pretty sore over being so egregiously beaten at his own game; and his look was anything but amiable as he observed, loudly and in his most scornful tone: “Huh! We feel pretty smart with a Rebel double-runner, don’t we?”