O Henry
Sixes and Sevens
VI ULYSSES AND THE DOGMAN
Файл с книжной полки Несененко Алексея
Do you know the time of the dogmen?
When the forefinger of twilight begins to smudge the clear-drawn lines of
the Big City there is inaugurated an hour devoted to one of the most
melancholy sights of urban life.
Out from the towering flat crags and apartment peaks of the cliff dwellers
of New York steals an army of beings that were once men, Even yet they go
upright upon two limbs and retain human form and speech; but you will
observe that they are behind animals in progress. Each of these beings
follows a dog, to which he is fastened by an artificial ligament.
These men are all victims to Circe. Not willingly do they become flunkeys
to Fido, bell boys to bull terriers, and toddlers after Towzer. Modern
Circe, instead of turning them into animals, has kindly left the
difference of a six-foot leash between them. Every one of those dogmen
has been either cajoled, bribed, or commanded by his own particular Circe
to take the dear household pet out for an airing.
By their faces and manner you can tell that the dogmen are bound in a
hopeless enchantment. Never will there come even a dog-catcher Ulysses to
remove the spell.
The faces of some are stonily set. They are past the commiseration, the
curiosity, or the jeers of their fellow-beings. Years of matrimony, of
continuous compulsory canine constitutionals, have made them callous.
They unwind their beasts from lamp posts, or the ensnared legs of profane
pedestrians, with the stolidity of mandarins manipulating the strings of
their kites.
Others, more recently reduced to the ranks of Rover's retinue, take their
medicine sulkily and fiercely. They play the dog on the end of their line
with the pleasure felt by the girl out fishing when she catches a
sea-robin on her hook. They glare at you threateningly if you look at
them, as if it would be their delight to let slip the dogs of war. These
are half-mutinous dogmen, not quite Circe-ized, and you will do well not
to kick their charges, should they sniff around your ankles.
Others of the tribe do not seem to feel so keenly. They are mostly
unfresh youths, with gold caps and drooping cigarettes, who do not
harmonize with their dogs. The animals they attend wear satin bows in
their collars; and the young men steer them so assiduously that you are
tempted to the theory that some personal advantage, contingent upon
satisfactory service, waits upon the execution of their duties.
The dogs thus personally conducted are of many varieties; but they are one
in fatness, in pampered, diseased vileness of temper, in insolent,
snarling capriciousness of behaviour. They tug at the leash fractiously,
they make leisurely nasal inventory of every door step, railing, and
post. They sit down to rest when they choose; they wheeze like the winner
of a Third Avenue beefsteak-eating contest; they blunder clumsily into
open cellars and coal holes; they lead the dogmen a merry dance.
These unfortunate dry nurses of dogdom, the cur cuddlers, mongrel
managers, Spitz stalkers, poodle pullers, Skye scrapers, dachshund
dandlers, terrier trailers and Pomeranian pushers of the cliff-dwelling
Circes follow their charges meekly. The doggies neither fear nor respect
them. Masters of the house these men whom they hold in leash may be, but
they are not masters of them. From cosey corner to fire escape, from
divan to dumbwaiter, doggy's snarl easily drives this two-legged being who
is commissioned to walk at the other end of his string during his outing.
One twilight the dogmen came forth as usual at their Circes' pleading,
guerdon, or crack of the whip. One among them was a strong man,
apparently of too solid virtues for this airy vocation. His expression
was melancholic, his manner depressed. He was leashed to a vile white
dog, loathsomely fat, fiendishly ill-natured, gloatingly intractable
toward his despised conductor.
At a corner nearest to his apartment house the dogman turned down a side
street, hoping for fewer witnesses to his ignominy. The surfeited beast
waddled before him, panting with spleen and the labour of motion.
Suddenly the dog stopped. A tall, brown, long-coated, wide-brimmed man
stood like a Colossus blocking the sidewalk and declaring:
"Well, I'm a son of a gun!"
"Jim Berry!" breathed the dogman, with exclamation points in his voice.
"Sam Telfair," cried Wide-Brim again, "you ding-basted old willy-walloo,
give us your hoof!"
Their hands clasped in the brief, tight greeting of the West that is death
to the hand-shake microbe.
"You old fat rascal!" continued Wide-Brim, with a wrinkled brown smile;
"it's been five years since I seen you. I been in this town a week, but
you can't find nobody in such a place. Well, you dinged old married man,
how are they coming?"
Something mushy and heavily soft like raised dough leaned against Jim's
leg and chewed his trousers with a yeasty growl.
"Get to work," said Jim, "and explain this yard-wide hydrophobia yearling
you've throwed your lasso over. Are you the pound-master of this burg?
Do you call that a dog or what?"
"I need a drink," said the dogman, dejected at the reminder of his old dog
of the sea. "Come on."
Hard by was a cafe. 'Tis ever so in the big city.
They sat at a table, and the bloated monster yelped and scrambled at the
end of his leash to get at the cafe cat.
"Whiskey," said Jim to the waiter.
"Make it two," said the dogman.
"You're fatter," said Jim, "and you look subjugated. I don't know about
the East agreeing with you. All the boys asked me to hunt you up when I
started, Sandy King, he went to the Klondike. Watson Burrel, he married
the oldest Peters girl. I made some money buying beeves, and I bought a
lot of wild land up on the Little Powder. Going to fence next fall. Bill
Rawlins, he's gone to farming. You remember Bill, of course -- he was
courting Marcella -- excuse me, Sam -- I mean the lady you married, while
she was teaching school at Prairie View. But you was the lucky man. How
is Missis Telfair?"
"S-h-h-h!" said the dogman, signalling the waiter; "give it a name."
"Whiskey," said Jim.
"Make it two," said the dogman.
"She's well," he continued, after his chaser. "She refused to live
anywhere but in New York, where she came from. We live in a flat. Every
evening at six I take that dog out for a walk. It's Marcella's pet.
There never were two animals on earth, Jim, that hated one another like me
and that dog does. His name's Lovekins. Marcella dresses for dinner
while we're out. We eat tabble dote. Ever try one of them, Jim?"
"No, I never," said Jim. "I seen the signs, but I thought they said
'table de hole.' I thought it was French for pool tables. How does it
taste?"
"If you're going to be in the city for awhile we will --"
"No, sir-ee. I'm starting for home this evening on the 7.25. Like to
stay longer, but I can't."
"I'll walk down to the ferry with you," said the dogman.
The dog had bound a leg each of Jim and the chair together, and had sunk
into a comatose slumber. Jim stumbled, and the leash was slightly
wrenched. The shrieks of the awakened beast rang for a block around.
"If that's your dog," said Jim, when they were on the street again,
"what's to hinder you from running that habeas corpus you've got around
his neck over a limb and walking off and forgetting him?"
"I'd never dare to," said the dogman, awed at the bold proposition. "He
sleeps in the bed, I sleep on a lounge. He runs howling to Marcella if I
look at him. Some night, Jim, I'm going to get even with that dog. I've
made up my mind to do it. I'm going to creep over with a knife and cut a
hole in his mosquito bar so they can get in to him. See if I don't do it!"
"You ain't yourself, Sam Telfair. You ain't what you was once. I don't
know about these cities and flats over here. With my own eyes I seen you
stand off both the Tillotson boys in Prairie View with the brass faucet
out of a molasses barrel. And I seen you rope and tie the wildest steer
on Little Powder in 39 1-2."
"I did, didn't I?" said the other, with a temporary gleam in his eye.
"But that was before I was dogmatized."
"Does Misses Telfair --" began Jim.
"Hush!" said the dogman. "Here's another cafe."
They lined up at the bar. The dog fell asleep at their feet.
"Whiskey," said Jim.
"Make it two," said the dogman.
"I thought about you," said Jim, "when I bought that wild land. I wished
you was out there to help me with the stock."
"Last Tuesday," said the dogman, "he bit me on the ankle because I asked
for cream in my coffee. He always gets the cream."
"You'd like Prairie View now," said Jim. "The boys from the round-ups for
fifty miles around ride in there. One corner of my pasture is in sixteen
miles of the town. There's a straight forty miles of wire on one side of
it."
"You pass through the kitchen to get to the bedroom," said the dogman,
"and you pass through the parlour to get to the bath room, and you back
out through the dining-room to get into the bedroom so you can turn around
and leave by the kitchen. And he snores and barks in his sleep, and I
have to smoke in the park on account of his asthma."
"Don't Missis Telfair--" began Jim.
"Oh, shut up!" said the dogman. "What is it this time?"
"Whiskey," said Jim.
"Make it two," said the dogman.
"Well, I'll be racking along down toward the ferry," said the other.
"Come on, there, you mangy, turtle-backed, snake-headed, bench-legged
ton-and-a-half of soap-grease!" shouted the dogman, with a new note in his
voice and a new hand on the leash. The dog scrambled after them, with an
angry whine at such unusual language from his guardian.
At the foot of Twenty-third Street the dogman led the way through swinging
doors.
"Last chance," said he. "Speak up."
"Whiskey," said Jim.
"Make it two," said the dogman.
"I don't know," said the ranchman, "where I'll find the man I want to take
charge of the Little Powder outfit. I want somebody I know something
about. Finest stretch of prairie and timber you ever squinted your eye
over, Sam. Now if you was --"
"Speaking of hydrophobia," said the dogman, "the other night he chewed a
piece out of my leg because I knocked a fly off of Marcella's arm. 'It
ought to be cauterized,' says Marcella, and I was thinking so myself. I
telephones for the doctor, and when he comes Marcella says to me: 'Help me
hold the poor dear while the doctor fixes his mouth. Oh, I hope he got no
virus on any of his toofies when he bit you.' Now what do you think of
that?"
"Does Missis Telfair--" began Jim.
"Oh, drop it," said the dogman. "Come again!"
"Whiskey," said Jim.
"Make it two," said the dogman.
They walked on to the ferry. The ranchman stepped to the ticket window.
Suddenly the swift landing of three or four heavy kicks was heard, the
air. was rent by piercing canine shrieks, and a pained, outraged,
lubberly, bow-legged pudding of a dog ran frenziedly up the street alone.
"Ticket to Denver," said Jim.
"Make it two," shouted the ex-dogman, reaching for his inside pocket.