The House of All Sorts (18 page)

“Loo! Loo!”

She came, her forgiving as wholehearted as her loving. I buried my face in her shaggy warmth, feeling unworthy, utterly unworthy.

“Work is breaking me, Loo!”

The dog licked my hands and face.

BUT THE APARTMENT-HOUSE
must be run; it was my living. The kennel?…I had supplied the Bobtail market. For the present the kennel was but expense. Dusting the snow off myself I went up to the studio taking Punk and Loo with me. On the table lay an open letter. A kindly woman on a farm wanted a dog—“Mother
Bobtail already bred,” she wrote. Giving myself no time to think I quoted Loo. Loo's chin rested on my knee as I wrote. I dared not look below my pen. Soon Loo would have another family.

“The joy of Loo in her puppies will ease her strangeness,” I told myself, but—“Loo, Loo, I love you.”

REMORSEFUL, BITTER—I
loathed the money when it came, hated the approving nods, the words “wise,” “sensible,” which people stuffed into my ears when they knew of my decision. I loathed myself, cursed the grind that broke me and took my dogs from me. Punk searched every corner for Loo. Most he searched my face.

LOO HAD BEEN
gone two days when a dowdy little woman came and held out a handful of small change.

“A guardian and companion for my daughter—delicate, city-bred, marrying a rancher on a lonely island. She dreads the loneliness while her husband is out clearing his land. I thought a sheep-dog…”

The price was not that of half a pup. She saw how young my puppies were and began to snivel. “It will be so long before they are protective!”

I took her small money in exchange for Punk, took it to buy value for him in her eyes. Those meagre savings meant as much to her as a big price meant to a rich person. A dog given free is not a dog valued, so I accepted her pittance.

Loo gone, Punk gone—emptying the kennel was numbness. I let every dog go—all except Adam. I would keep just one. Their going gave me more leisure, but it did not heal me. I took young Adam and went to the Okanagan to try high air. I struck a “flu” epidemic and lay six weeks very ill in Kelowna.

They were good to Adam. He was allowed to lie beside my bed. At last we took the lake boat going to Penticton to catch the
Vancouver train. The train came roaring into the station and the platform shook. Adam, unused to trains, bolted. In a jiffy he was but a speck heading for the benches above Penticton.

The station master took Adam's chain and ticket.

“Hi, Bill!” he called to a taxi-driver. “Scoot like hell! Overtake that dog. Put him aboard at the water tank two miles down the line. You can make it easy!”

At the tank no Adam was put aboard. I was forced to go on alone. I wired, wrote, advertised. All answers were the same. Adam was seen here and there, but allowed no one to come near him. A shaggy form growing gaunter ever gaunter slunk through the empty streets of Penticton at night, haunting wharf and station. Everyone knew his story, people put out food. Everyone was afraid to try catching him. At great distances a lost terrified dog with tossing coat was seen tearing across country. It was hopeless for me to go up. No one could tell me in what direction to search. Then for months no one saw him. I hoped that he was dead. Two winters and one summer passed—I got a letter from a woman. She said, “We moved into a house some miles out of Penticton. It had been empty for a long while. We were startled to see a large shaggy animal dart from under the house. ‘Adam!' I cried, ‘Adam!' for I knew about the dog. He halted and looked back one second, then on, on, a mad terrified rush to get away from humans. There was a great hole under our house hollowed to fit his body,” said the woman.

At night she put out food. She heard the dog snuff at the door crack. She did not alarm him by opening the door or by calling out. Adam was known the country over as “the wild dog.”

One day the woman worked in her garden; something touched her. Adam was there, holding his great paw up. She wrote me,

“Come and get him.” But before I could start, a wire came saying,

“Adam shipped.”

I went into the Victoria freight shed. The tired dog was stretched in sleep.

“Adam!”

He quivered but he did not open his eyes.

“Adam!”

His nose stretched to my shoe, to my skirt—sniffing.

“Adam!”

One bound! Forepaws planted one on each of my shoulders, his tongue reaching for my face.

Everyone said, “Adam will be wild, impossible after nineteen months of freedom.”

He had forgotten nothing, had acquired no evil habit. Only one torment possessed Adam—fear of ever letting me out of his sight again—Adam, the last of my Bobtails.