The 12 Dogs of Christmas (5 page)

Emma tramped though the snow alongside the river for a quite a long way. She passed the time in three separate triumphant adventures, all taking place in her head, but they seemed pretty real nonetheless. Just when she thought she might be lost—which would have been a real and maybe not-so-fun adventure— she saw the old bridge, and there, close to it, was a rundown barn in the yard behind a tumbled-down fence with a crude, handwritten sign on it that read: KEEP OUT. There was a sign on the barn that said: WARNING DOGS BITE—HARD.

Well,
Emma thought,
after coming all this way, I can't
stop now.
Emma opened the gate and entered the yard, which, when the growling started, she thought might just have been a mistake. But there was no turning back now, as a large German Shepherd growling through bared teeth stood in her way. The Shepherd was followed by a snow white Husky that came out of a doghouse and gave her an accusing look. Barks, howls, growls, and yaps filled the air as she found herself surrounded by big dogs with, she assumed, big appetites. Then from out of the shadow of the barn came a large presence, all bundled up with a furry head and a gray beard.

“The signs aren't big enough for you?” boomed the voice of Old Jake, the man who had rescued her the other day. “Just because I saved your hide don't mean I won't let the dogs eat you!”

Emma was scared, but not scared enough to back down. “I'm looking for a job.”

“Those bully boys send you way out here?” Old Jake asked as he started throwing food scraps from a bucket to the dogs, which happily tussled over them. “Yes, sir.”

“Ahhhgg. They need a good thrashing, those hoodlums.”

“I can work every day after school.”

“I'm not used to having kids working here. I hate kids—mostly. So do the dogs—usually.” Old Jake did not really smile at Emma, but his eyes looked as if he had. Then he threw some more scraps out. “They love the scraps; it makes 'em think they're people.”

Old Jake had no job for Emma, but he offered to take her home on his dog sled. She gratefully accepted the ride, but asked if he could take her to the Stevens farm so she could pick up the puppy instead. She knew that Mrs. Stevens would be happy to take her home from there.

9
Puppy Trouble

Late that night Emma wrote her dad a letter. She had no idea where to mail it, but it made her feel good to “talk” to him about her adventures in Doverville, about Mrs. Stevens and Mike, about the puppy, about the awful dogcatcher Doyle, about Old Jake, who was really nice despite his rough exterior, about the Christmas program, which she was not looking forward to, and about his coming by Christmas, which she was. She did not mention Dolores being less than welcoming, nor how mean Mrs. Walsh could be, because adventure heroes don't complain.

While she was occupied with the letter, the puppy snuck out of her room and padded his way down the stairs and into Dolores's salon. It is often said that cats are curious, but no more so than puppies, and the salon had so many things in it to be curious about. There were boxes of powder and bottles of liquid, there were hair rollers and face cream, there were tabletops to jump on full of interesting things to knock off, and, best of all, there were ladies' wigs that perched like fine creatures to attack—just like cats, which they sort of resembled.

Emma became aware of a growing clatter downstairs and the puppy's absence upstairs at just about the same time. “Oh my goodness!” she gasped, bounding from her room and down the stairs as quietly as possible, hoping not to wake Dolores. She found the puppy in the salon and the salon in a mess. Emma had no time to figure out what to do, for suddenly she was startled by a figure in the doorway: Dolores in a nightgown, robe, hair curlers, and face cream. But even more startling was the bloodcurdling scream that erupted from that ghostly white face.

“He was just looking for something to eat,” Emma quickly explained, but Dolores was unresponsive. Emma was not even sure she had noticed the puppy. “I'm sorry,” Emma tried again. “I'll clean it up.”

Dolores opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came. She took a breath, stuttered something incomprehensible, and took another gasp of air before she could manage to say, “Do not . . . touch . . . anything. Y-you go straight to your room and take that—What is that?! Is that a dog?!” Emma ran from the salon and started upstairs. “Well, take—take it with you!” Dolores shouted after her. “And tomorrow I'm going to find you another place to live!”

Emma felt horrible. It was wrong what the puppy did, and the puppy had been her responsibility. She wished it had never happened, but she knew this wish could not be granted. And the puppy was still hungry. Emma waited until she was pretty sure Dolores had gone to bed, then she quietly carried the puppy downstairs. In the kitchen she found the puppy some food, then she went into the salon. It was still a mess—obviously Dolores could not face cleaning it up so late. Emma remembered her offer and knew what she had to do. It was her mess, and every good adventure hero cleans up her own messes.

The next morning Dolores came downstairs hoping the horror of the night before had just been a bad dream. And when she looked into the salon, she thought it just might have been. The salon was now immaculately clean and orderly, and she believed it even sparkled. But it hadn't been a dream.
Poor kid
, she thought.
She must have worked all night
. She went upstairs to thank Emma, but Emma was deeply asleep, the puppy in her arms.
Well,
Dolores considered,
if
Douglas O'Connor has raised this child alone, he hasn't done
such a bad job.
The thought confused her, for the Douglas she remembered had been— A knock on the door downstairs interrupted her memory.
Who could
that be?
It was still too early for a customer. She ran downstairs and opened the door to be greeted by one of the most horrible sights she had ever seen in her entire life: Norman Doyle with a silly grin on his face holding a sprig of mistletoe over his shaggy head.

Emma never knew how valiantly Dolores had worked to entice Norman into her salon for a free haircut and a shave while keeping him and his mistletoe at arm's length, especially when his mangy cat, old Scratch, started smelling the puppy, making Norman very suspicious. If Emma had witnessed the scene, she might have realized that Dolores was having a change of heart, and she might not have asked Mrs. Stevens if she and the puppy could stay with her from now on, as her “Aunt” Dolores wasn't feeling too well. But all Emma knew was that loud voices had woken her up, and Dolores had yelled something about how a nice haircut and shave would take Norman's mind off “CATCHING ALL THOSE DOGS!” So Emma had dressed quickly and slipped the puppy out of the house while Norman sat in the salon with a hot towel covering his face.

“Of course you can stay with us, Emma,” Mrs. Stevens said. “I'll call Dolores about it later.”

10
Shack Attack

Mayor Nobel Doyle had never really liked Cathy Stevens. It probably went back to when they were children and Cathy had called him “Stinky” and his brother “Dirty Doyle,” even though they were the grandchildren of one of the founders of Doverville. But that was a long time ago, and now there were far more recent reasons for him not to like her. Cathy had been a thorn in his side about the whole dog question, taking in all the dogs he was trying to get rid of, and getting major national publicity for it in
LIKE
magazine in an article that did not even mention him by name but simply called him “the dog-hating mayor of Doverville.” It had always been his dream to get his name in a national magazine.

But there was nothing the mayor could do about Cathy, for she lived outside of the city limits.

“Well, why don't you just move those darn city limits past her farm then,” his brother suggested in all his brilliance.

“Brilliant!” the mayor declared. And he told the Town Council to make it so.

It was with great pleasure that Mayor Doyle drove himself out to just beyond the Stevens farm to plant the new city limits sign. He then went to visit Cathy Stevens, who had been watching him from the barn.

“To what do we owe the ‘honor,' Your Honor?” Mrs. Stevens asked when the mayor got out of his fancy car.

“Mrs. Stevens, I can appreciate that living out of town all these years has deprived you of any real sense of community, which is a real shame. But our town is growing, you might say, and I came out here to officially welcome you to Doverville.” The mayor smiled pleasantly. But Mrs. Stevens knew it was only a sneer in disguise. “That means, of course, the dogs will have to go.”

“It takes more than moving a sign to change a town,
Stinky.
The dogs are not going anywhere, and neither am I!”

Upon hearing his old nickname, the mayor's smile dropped its disguise. “The dogs
will
go, Mrs. Stevens. For their sake I hope you're not as foolish as you sound.”

As the mayor's car drove away, Cathy Stevens marched across the snow-covered field to the edge of the road, pulled the city limits sign out of the ground, and tossed it away.

Max wondered why they seemed upset—the kids and the
nice lady. The nice lady had been outside of the barn talking
to someone who had a voice that Max did not like at
all. Maybe that's why they were upset. But now the lady
was in the barn.

“Any luck?” the lady said to the kids.

“No,” the girl said. “Max still won't come out of the
doghouse.”

“Mom,” the boy questioned, “can Mayor Doyle really take
the dogs?”

“I don't know, Mike. I know he's going to try, but how, I
don't know. He's only got a one-man police force and his
brother to help him. Still, we better be on our guard.”

“It's like a war then,” the boy said, worried.

“Well, honey, ‘war' may be too strong a word.”

But “war” wasn't too strong a word for Nobel and Norman Doyle. War is exactly how they thought of their campaign to drive out the dogs. Mrs. Stevens started feeling the effects of that campaign almost immediately when she went into town to get food for the dogs. First, there was Ralph at the general store, who told her that he just wasn't stocking dog kibbles anymore. Then there was John, the butcher who had always given her the trims from the meat, but now he refused. And others in the town were suddenly just as uncooperative. It was then that Mrs. Stevens knew this was serious. New orphan dogs were coming in every week, new mouths to feed, and Mrs. Stevens now didn't know where she was going to get the food.

She lay in bed that night worrying about it and did not fall asleep until the wee hours. Unfortunately it was in the wee hours that bug-face Melvin took a pair of wire cutters and cut a hole in her dog-yard fence.

The next morning, before leaving for school, Mike said good-bye to Yeti, and Emma said good-bye to the puppy, both expecting not to see their dogs again until after school. But it was not to be. The new hole in the fence, which no one had noticed, allowed Yeti and the puppy to happily run after Mrs. Stevens's truck, eventually making it into town and to the school.

Class started that morning with spelling, which Mrs. Walsh, who had reluctantly taken over Mrs. Clancy's class, was testing the students on. She called first on Miranda, the smartest kid in the school, and asked her to spell
discipline
, Mrs. Walsh's favorite word.

Miranda, who was happy to have been called upon, stood up quickly and said, “Discipline, D-I-S-C-I-P-L-IN-E.” After defining the word she sat down pertly, for she knew she had spelled the word correctly.

“Good, very good,” Mrs. Walsh said as she looked for her next “volunteer.” It did not take her long to decide, turning to Emma and asking her to spell
prevarication
. Emma stood up and was about to do so when Yeti casually walked into the classroom, just as if she belonged there, followed by the puppy, leaping and bouncing about, eventually leaping into Emma's arms. This canine invasion shocked Mrs. Walsh, but delighted the kids. Mrs. Walsh got over her shock quickly, though, and, disgusted, grabbed Yeti by the collar and escorted her out of the classroom. “Out-out-out!”

Mike and Emma ran to the window and soon saw Mrs. Walsh dragging Yeti across the snow-covered schoolyard in her high-heeled shoes, then shooing her away. They couldn't help but laugh at the sight. Then they heard an awful noise. It was the warped putt-putt and occasional rude backfire of the Fearsome Machine, which could be seen coming around the corner. Bug-face Melvin was driving, and Norman Doyle was standing up in his seat vigilantly looking for criminal dogs, like Captain Ahab searching for Moby Dick. Mike and Emma knew they quickly had to go out and find Yeti and take her and the puppy, which was still in Emma's arms, and hide them. They grabbed their hats and coats and were just running out of the classroom when Mrs. Walsh returned. Mike dashed around her, but she blocked Emma's way, giving her a look that would have melted her like wax, had Emma not been an adventure hero.

“Prevarication, P-R-E-V—uh, it's a deviation from the truth,” Emma said as she attempted to move past the principal, but Mrs. Walsh grabbed her by the arm. “Did you bring that dog to school?” she demanded to know.

“What dog?” Emma said with innocent eyes while holding the puppy close. Mrs. Walsh was so taken aback by this prevarication, she let go of Emma, who then ran from the classroom.

Mike and Emma had exactly the same idea, and they took the dogs to the large storage shack at the rear of the school, hiding themselves deep in the darkness. But it was too obvious a choice, for bug-face Melvin and Norman soon rode up on the Fearsome Machine, stopping right in front of the shack's door.

Emma turned to Mike. “You hide; I'll distract Norman.” Just as Norman, with old dog-sniffing Scratch in his arms, came into the shack, Emma bolted out of the shadows and headed deeper into the shack, into a back room where she found a stack of long corrugated metal culverts of various sizes, including one that was just right for a girl and her dog to hide in.