CHAPTER XXXV
When the train arrived at Glen Ellen, in the Valley of the Moon,
it was Harley Kennan himself, at the side-door of the baggage-car,
who caught hold of Michael and swung him to the ground. For the
first time Michael had performed a railroad journey uncrated.
Merely with collar and chain had he travelled up from Oakland. In
the waiting automobile he found Villa Kennan, and, chain removed,
sat beside her and between her and Harley
As the machine purred along the two miles of road that wound up
the side of Sonoma Mountain, Michael scarcely looked at the
forest-trees and vistas of wandering glades. He had been in the
United States three years, during which time he had been kept a
close prisoner. Cage and crate and chain had been his portion,
and narrow rooms, baggage cars, and station platforms. The
nearest he had come to the country was when chained to benches in
the various parks while Jacob Henderson studied Swedenborg. So
that trees and hills and fields had ceased to mean anything. They
were something inaccessible, as inaccessible as the blue of the
sky or the drifting cloud-fleeces. Thus did he regard the trees
and hills and fields, if the negative act of not regarding a thing
at all can be considered a state of mind.
"Don't seem to be enthusiastic over the ranch, eh, Michael?"
Harley remarked.
He looked up at sound of his old name, and made acknowledgment by
flattening his ears a quivering trifle and by touching his nose
against Harley's shoulder.
"Nor does he seem demonstrative," was Villa's judgment. "At
least, nothing like Jerry,"
"Wait till they meet," Harley smiled in anticipation. "Jerry will
furnish enough excitement for both of them."
"If they remember each other after all this time," said Villa. "I
wonder if they will."
"They did at Tulagi," he reminded her. "And they were full grown
and hadn't seen each other since they were puppies. Remember how
they barked and scampered all about the beach. Michael was the
hurly-burly one. At least he made twice as much noise."
"But he seems dreadfully grown-up and subdued now."
"Three years ought to have subdued him," Harley insisted.
But Villa shook her head.
As the machine drew up at the house and Kennan first stepped out,
a dog's whimperingly joyous bark of welcome struck Michael as not
altogether unfamiliar. The joyous bark turned to a suspicious and
jealous snarl as Jerry scented the other dog's presence from
Harley's caressing hand. The next moment he had traced the
original source of the scent into the limousine and sprung in
after it. With snarl and forward leap Michael met the snarling
rush less than half-way, and was rolled over on the bottom of the
car.
The Irish terrier, under all circumstances amenable to the control
of the master as are few breeds of dogs, was instantly manifest in
Jerry and Michael an Harley Kennan's voice rang out. They
separated, and, despite the rumbling of low growling in their
throats, refrained from attacking each other as they plunged out
to the ground. The little set-to had occurred in so few seconds,
or fractions of seconds, that they had not begun to betray
recognition of each other until they were out of the machine.
They were still comically stiff-legged and bristly as they aloofly
sniffed noses.
"They know each other!" Villa cried. "Let's wait and see what
they will do."
As for Michael, he accepted, without surprise, the indubitable
fact that Jerry had come back out of the Nothingness. Things of
this sort had begun to happen rapidly, but it was not the things
themselves, but the connotations of them, that almost stunned him.
If the man and woman, whom he had last seen at Tulagi, and,
likewise, Jerry, had come back from the Nothingness, then could
come, and might come at any moment, the beloved Steward.
Instead of responding to Jerry, Michael sniffed and glanced about
in quest of Steward. Jerry's first expression of greeting and
friendliness took the form of a desire to run. He barked
invitation to his brother, scampered away half a dozen jumps,
scampered back, and dabbed playfully at Michael with one fore-paw
in added emphasis of invitation ere he scampered away again.
For so many years had Michael not run with another dog, that at
first Jerry's invitation had little meaning to him. Nevertheless,
such running was an habitual expression of happiness and
friendliness in dogdom, and especially strong had been his
inheritance of it from Terrence and Biddy, the noted love-runners
of the Solomons.
The next time Jerry dabbed at him with a paw, barked, and scurried
away in an enticing semicircle, Michael started involuntarily
though slowly after him. But Michael did not bark; and, after
half a dozen leaps, he came to a full stop and looked to Villa and
Harley for permission.
"All right, Michael," Harley called heartily, deliberately turning
his shoulder in the non-interest of consent as he extended his
hand to help Villa from the machine.
Michael sprang away again, and was numbly aware of an ancient joy
as he shouldered Jerry who shouldered against him as they ran side
by side. But most of the joy was Jerry's, as was the wildest of
the skurrying and the racing and the shouldering, of the body-
wriggling, and ear-pricking, and yelping cries. Also, Jerry
barked; and Michael did not bark.
"He used to bark," said Villa.
"Much more than Jerry," Harley supplemented.
"Then they have taken the bark out of him," she concluded. "He
must have gone through terrible experiences to have lost his
bark."
The green California spring merged into tawny summer, as Jerry,
ever running afield, made Michael acquainted with the farthest and
highest reaches of the Kennan ranch in the Valley of the Moon.
The pageant of the wild flowers vanished until all that lingered
on the burnt hillsides were orange poppies faded to palest gold,
and Mariposa lilies, wind-blown on slender stems amidst the
desiccated grasses, that smouldered like ornate spotted moths
fluttering in rest for a space between flight and flight.
And Michael, a follower always where the exuberant Jerry led,
sought throughout the passing year for what he could not find.
"Looking for something, looking for something," Harley would say
to Villa. "It is not alive. It is not here. Now just what is it
he is always looking for?"
Steward it was, and Michael never found him. The Nothingness held
him and would not yield him up, although, could Michael have
journeyed a ten-days' steamer-journey into the South Pacific to
the Marquesas, Steward he would have found, and, along with him,
Kwaque and the Ancient Mariner, all three living like lotus-eaters
on the beach-paradise of Taiohae. Also, in and about their grass-
thatched bungalow under the lofty avocado trees, Michael would
have found other pet--cats, and kittens, and pigs, donkeys and
ponies, a pair of love-birds, and a mischievous monkey or two; but
never a dog and never a cockatoo. For Dag Daughtry, with violence
of language, had laid a taboo upon dogs. After Killeny Boy, he
averred, there should be no other dog. And Kwaque, without
averring anything at all, resolutely refrained from possessing
himself of the white cockatoos brought ashore by the sailors off
the trading schooners.
But Michael was long in giving over his search for Steward, and,
running the mountain trails or scrambling and sliding down into
the deep canyons, was ever expectant and ready for Steward to step
forth before him, or to pick up the unmistakable scent that would
lead him to him.
"Looking for something, looking for something," Harley Kennan
would chant curiously, as he rode beside Villa and observed
Michael's unending search. "Now Jerry's after rabbits, and fox-
trails; but you'll notice they don't interest Michael much.
They're not what he's after. He behaves like one who has lost a
great treasure and doesn't know where he lost it nor where to look
for it."
Much Michael learned from Jerry of the varied life of the forest
and fields. To run with Jerry seemed the one pleasure he took,
for he never played. Play had passed out of him. He was not
precisely morose or gloomy from his years on the trained-animal
stage and in Harris Collins's college of pain, but he was sobered,
subdued. The spring and the spontaneity had gone out of him.
Just as the leopard had claw-marked his shoulder so that damp and
frosty weather made the pain of the old wound come back, so was
his mind marked by what he had gone through. He liked Jerry, was
glad to be with him and to run with him; but it was Jerry who was
ever in the lead, who ever raised the hue and cry of hunting
pursuit, who barked indignation and eager yearning at a tree'd
squirrel in refuge forty feet above the ground. Michael looked on
and listened, but took no part in such antics of enthusiasm.
In the same way he looked on when Jerry fought fearful comic
battles with Norman Chief, the great Percheron stallion. It was
only play, for Jerry and Norman Chief were tried friends; and,
though the huge horse, ears laid back, mouth open to bite, pursued
Jerry in mad gyrations all about the paddock, it was with no
thought of inflicting hurt, but merely to act up to his part in
the sham battle. Yet no invitation of Jerry's could induce
Michael to join in the fun. He contented himself with sitting
down outside the rails and looking on.
"Why play?" might Michael have asked, who had had all play taken
out of him.
But when it came to serious work, he was there even ahead of
Jerry. On account of foot-and-mouth disease and of hog-cholera,
strange dogs were taboo on the Kennan ranch. It did not take
Michael long to learn this, and stray dogs got short shrift from
him. With never a warning bark nor growl, in deadly silence, he
rushed them, slashed and bit them, rolled them over and over in
the dust, and drove them from the place. It was like nigger-
chasing, a service to perform for the gods whom he loved and who
willed such chasing.
No wild passion of love, such as he had had for Steward, did he
bear Villa and Harley, but he did develop for them a great, sober
love. He did not go out of his way to express it with overtures
of wrigglings and squirmings and whimpering yelpings. Jerry could
be depended upon for that. But he was always seriously glad to be
with Villa and Harley and to receive recognition from them next
after Jerry. Some of his deepest moments of content, before the
fireplace, were to sit beside Villa or Harley and lean his head
against a knee and have a hand, on occasion, drop down on his head
or gently twist his crinkled ear.
Jerry was even guilty of playing with children who happened at
times to be under the Kennan aegis. Michael endured children for
as long as they left him alone. If they waxed familiar, he would
warn them with a bristling of his neck-hair and a throaty rumbling
and get up and stalk away.
"I can't understand it," Villa would say. "He was the fullest of
play, and spirits, and all foolishness. He was much sillier and
much more excitable than Jerry and certainly noisier. He must
have some terrible story to tell, if only he could, of all that
happened between Tulagi and the time we found him on the Orpheum
stage."
"And that may be the least little hint of it," Harley would reply,
pointing to Michael's shoulder where the leopard had scarred it on
the day Jack, the Airedale, and Sara, the little green monkey, had
died.
"He used to bark, I know he used to bark," Villa would continue.
"Why doesn't he bark now?"
And Harley would point to the scarred shoulder and say, "That may
account for it, and most possibly a hundred other things like it
of which we cannot see the marks."
But the time was to come when they were to hear him bark again--
not once, but twice. And both times were to be but an earnest of
another and graver time when, without barking at all, he would
express in action the measure of his love and worship of them who
had taken him from the crate and the footlights and given him the
freedom of the Valley of the Moon.
And in the meantime, running endlessly with Jerry over the ranch,
he learned all the ways of it and all the life of it from the
chickenyards and the duck-ponds to the highest pitch of Sonoma
Mountain. He learned where the wild deer, in their season, were
to be found; when they raided the prune-orchard, the vineyards,
and the apple-trees; when they sought the deepest canyons and most
secret coverts; and when they stamped out in open glades and on
bare hillsides and crashed and clattered their antlers together in
combat. Under Jerry's leadership, always running second and after
on the narrow trails as a subdued dog should, he learned the ways
and habits of the foxes, the coons, the weasels, and the ring-tail
cats that seemed compounded of cat and coon and weasel. He came
to know the ground-nesting birds and the difference between the
customs of the valley quail, the mountain quail, and the
pheasants. The traits and lairs of the domestic cats gone wild he
also learned, as did he learn the wild loves of mountain farm-dogs
with the free-roving coyotes.
He knew of the presence of the mountain lion, adrift down from
Mendocino County, ere the first shorthorn calf was slain, and came
home from the encounter, torn and bleeding, to attest what he had
discovered and to be the cause of Harley Kennan riding trail next
day with a rifle across his pommel. Likewise Michael came to know
what Harley Kennan never did know and always denied as existing on
his ranch--the one rocky outcrop, in the dense heart of the
mountain forest, where a score of rattlesnakes denned through the
winters and warmed themselves in the sun.
