Michael, Brother of Jerry

J >> Jack London >> Michael, Brother of Jerry


"Chasing me for my life," the man snarled, as he advanced. "I know your
kind. You've all got it in for me, and I ain't got a chance except to
give you yours. I'll take a whole lot of it out on you."

Kennan was thoroughly aware of the gravity of his peril. Helpless
himself, a man-killing lunatic was about to kill him and to kill him most
horribly. Michael, a prisoner in the bush, hanging head-downward in the
manzanita from his loins squeezed in the fork, and struggling vainly,
could not come to his defence.

The man's first kick, aimed at Harley's face, he blocked with his
forearm; and, before the man could make a second kick, Jerry erupted on
the scene. Nor did he need encouragement or direction from his
love-master. He flashed at the man, sinking his teeth harmlessly into
the slack of the man's trousers at the waist-band above the hip, but by
his weight dragging him half down to the ground.

And upon Jerry the man turned with an increase of madness. In truth all
the world was against him. The very landscape rained dogs upon him. But
from above, from the slopes of Sonoma Mountain, the cries and calls of
the trailing poses caught his ear, and deflected his intention. They
were the pursuing death, and it was from them he must escape. With
another kick at Jerry, hurling him clear, he leaped astride the
reporter's horse which had continued to stand, without movement or
excitement, in utter apathy, where he had dismounted from it.

The horse went into a reluctant and stiff-legged gallop, while Jerry
followed, snarling and growling wrath at so high a pitch that almost he
squalled.

"It's all right, Michael," Harley soothed. "Take it easy. Don't hurt
yourself. The trouble's over. Anybody'll happen along any time now and
get us out of this fix."

But the smaller branch of the two composing the fork broke, and Michael
fell to the ground, landing in momentary confusion on his head and
shoulders. The next moment he was on his feet and tearing down the road
in the direction of Jerry's noisy pursuit. Jerry's noise broke in a
sharp cry of pain that added wings to Michael's feet. Michael passed him
rolling helplessly on the road. What had happened was that the livery
horse, in its stiff-jointed, broken-kneed gallop, had stumbled, nearly
fallen, and, in its sprawling recovery, had accidentally stepped on
Jerry, bruising and breaking his foreleg.

And the man, looking back and seeing Michael close upon him, decided that
it was still another dog attacking him. But he had no fear of dogs. It
was men, with their rifles and shotguns, that might bring him to ultimate
grief. Nevertheless, the pain of his bleeding legs, lacerated by Jerry
and Michael, maintained his rage against dogs.

"More dogs," was his bitter thought, as he leaned out and brought his
whip down across Michael's face.

To his surprise, the dog did not wince under the blow. Nor for that
matter did he yelp or cry out from the pain. Nor did he bark or growl or
snarl. He closed in as though he had not received the blow, and as
though the whip was not brandished above him. As Michael leaped for his
right leg he swung the whip down, striking him squarely on the muzzle
midway between nose and eyes. Deflected by the blow, Michael dropped
back to earth and ran on with his longest leaps to catch up and make his
next spring.

But the man had noticed another thing. At such close range, bringing his
whip down, he could not help noting that Michael had kept his eyes open
under the blow. Neither had he winced nor blinked as the whip slashed
down on him. The thing was uncanny. It was something new in the way of
dogs. Michael sprang again, the man timed him again with the whip, and
he saw the uncanny thing repeated. By neither wince nor blink had the
dog acknowledged the blow.

And then an entirely new kind of fear came upon the man. Was this the
end for him, after all he had gone through? Was this deadly silent,
rough-coated terrier the thing destined to destroy him where men had
failed? He did not even know that the dog was real. Might it not be
some terrible avenger, out of the mystery beyond life, placed to beset
him and finish him finally on this road that he was convinced was surely
the death-road? The dog was not real. It could not be real. The dog
did not live that could take a full-arm whip-slash without wince or
flinch.

Twice again, as the dog sprang, he deflected it with accurately delivered
blows. And the dog came on with the same surety and silence. The man
surrendered to his terror, clapping heels to his horse's old ribs,
beating it over the head and under the belly with the whip until it
galloped as it had not galloped in years. Even on that apathetic steed
the terror descended. It was not terror of the dog, which it knew to be
only a dog, but terror of the rider. In the past its knees had been
broken and its joints stiffened for ever, by drunken-mad riders who had
hired him from the stables. And here was another such drunken-mad
rider--for the horse sensed the man's terror--who ached his ribs with the
weight of his heels and beat him cruelly over face and nose and ears.

The best speed of the horse was not very great, not great enough to out-
distance Michael, although it was fast enough to give the latter only
infrequent opportunities to spring for the man's leg. But each spring
was met by the unvarying whip-blow that by its very weight deflected him
in the air. Though his teeth each time clipped together perilously close
to the man's leg, each time he fell back to earth he had to gather
himself together and run at his own top speed in order to overtake the
terror-stricken man on the crazy-galloping horse.

Enrico Piccolomini saw the chase and was himself in at the finish; and
the affair, his one great adventure in the world, gave him wealth as well
as material for conversation to the end of his days. Enrico Piccolomini
was a wood-chopper on the Kennan Ranch. On a rounded knoll, overlooking
the road, he had first heard the galloping hoofs of the horse and the
crack of the whip-blows on its body. Next, he had seen the running
battle of the man, the horse, and the dog. When directly beneath him,
not twenty feet distant, he saw the dog leap, in its queer silent way,
straight up and in to the down-smash of the whip, and sink its teeth in
the rider's leg. He saw the dog, with its weight, as it fell back to
earth, drag the man half out of the saddle. He saw the man, in an effort
to recover his balance, put his own weight on the bridle-reins. And he
saw the horse, half-rearing, half-tottering and stumbling, overthrow the
last shred of the man's balance so that he followed the dog to the
ground.

"And then they are like two dogs, like two beasts," Piccolomini was wont
to tell in after-years over a glass of wine in his little hotel in Glen
Ellen. "The dog lets go the man's leg and jumps for the man's throat.
And the man, rolling over, is at the dog's throat. Both his hands--so--he
fastens about the throat of this dog. And the dog makes no sound. He
never makes sound, before or after. After the two hands of the man stop
his breath he can not make sound. But he is not that kind of a dog. He
will not make sound anyway. And the horse stands and looks on, and the
horse coughs. It is very strange all that I see.

"And the man is mad. Only a madman will do what I see him do. I see the
man show his teeth like any dog, and bite the dog on the paw, on the
nose, on the body. And when he bites the dog on the nose, the dog bites
him on the check. And the man and the dog fight like hell, and the dog
gets his hind legs up like a cat. And like a cat he tears the man's
shirt away from his chest, and tears the skin of the chest with his claws
till it is all red with bleeding. And the man yow-yowls, and makes
noises like a wild mountain lion. And always he chokes the dog. It is a
hell of a fight.

"And the dog is Mister Kennan's dog, a fine man, and I have worked for
him two years. So I will not stand there and see Mister Kennan's dog all
killed to pieces by the man who fights like a mountain lion. I run down
the hill, but I am excited and forget my axe. I run down the hill, maybe
from this door to that door, twenty feet or maybe thirty feet. And it is
nearly all finished for the dog. His tongue is a long ways out, and his
eyes like covered with cobwebs; but still he scratches the man's chest
with his hind-feet and the man yow-yowls like a hen of the mountains.

"What can I do? I have forgotten the axe. The man will kill the dog. I
look for a big rock. There are no rocks. I look for a club. I cannot
find a club. And the man is killing the dog. I tell you what I do. I
am no fool. I kick the man. My shoes are very heavy--not like shoes I
wear now. They are the shoes of the wood-chopper, very thick on the sole
with hard leather, with many iron nails. I kick the man on the side of
the face, on the neck, right under the ear. I kick once. It is a good
kick. It is enough. I know the place--right under the ear.

"And the man lets go of the dog. He shuts his eyes, and opens his mouth,
and lies very still. And the dog begins once more to breathe. And with
the breath comes the life, and right away he wants to kill the man. But
I say 'No,' though I am very much afraid of the dog. And the man begins
to become alive. He opens his eyes and he looks at me like a mountain
lion. And his mouth makes a noise like a mountain lion. And I am afraid
of him like I am afraid of the dog. What am I to do? I have forgotten
the axe. I tell you what I do. I kick the man once again under the ear.
Then I take my belt, and my bandana handkerchief, and I tie him. I tie
his hands. I tie his legs, too. And all the time I am saying 'No,' to
the dog, and that he must leave the man alone. And the dog looks. He
knows I am his friend and am tying the man. And he does not bite me,
though I am very much afraid. The dog is a terrible dog. Do I not know?
Have I not seen him take a strong man out of the saddle?--a man that is
like a mountain lion?

"And then the men come. They all have guns-rifles, shotguns, revolvers,
pistols. And I think, first, that justice is very quick in the United
States. Only just now have I kicked a man in the head, and,
one-two-three, just like that, men come with guns to take me to jail for
kicking a man in the head. At first I do not understand. The many men
are angry with me. They call me names, and say bad things; but they do
not arrest me. Ah! I begin to understand! I hear them talk about three
thousand dollars. I have robbed them of three thousand dollars. It is
not true. I say so. I say never have I robbed a man of one cent. Then
they laugh. And I feel better and I understand better. The three
thousand dollars is the reward of the Government for this man I have tied
up with my belt and my bandana. And the three thousand dollars is mine
because I kicked the man in the head and tied his hands and his feet.

"So I do not work for Mister Kennan any more. I am a rich man. Three
thousand dollars, all mine, from the Government, and Mister Kennan sees
that it is paid to me by the Government and not robbed from me by the men
with the guns. Just because I kicked the man in the head who was like a
mountain lion! It is fortune. It is America. And I am glad that I have
left Italy and come to chop wood on Mister Kennan's ranch. And I start
this hotel in Glen Ellen with the three thousand dollars. I know there
is large money in the hotel business. When I was a little boy, did not
my father have a hotel in Napoli? I have now two daughters in high
school. Also I own an automobile."

* * * * *

"Mercy me, the whole ranch is a hospital!" cried Villa Kennan, two days
later, as she came out on the broad sleeping-porch and regarded Harley
and Jerry stretched out, the one with his leg in splints, the other with
his leg in a plaster cast. "Look at Michael," she continued. "You're
not the only ones with broken bones. I've only just discovered that if
his nose isn't broken, it ought to be, from the blow he must have
received on it. I've had hot compresses on it for the last hour. Look
at it!"

Michael, who had followed in at her invitation, betrayed a ridiculously
swollen nose as he sniffed noses with Jerry, wagged his bobtail to Harley
in greeting, and was greeted in turn with a blissful hand laid on his
head.

"Must have got it in the fight," Harley said. "The fellow struck him
with the whip many times, so Piccolomini says, and, naturally, it would
be right across the nose when he jumped for him."

"And Piccolomini says he never cried out when he was struck, but went on
running and jumping," Villa took up enthusiastically. "Think of it! A
dog no bigger than Michael dragging out of the saddle a man-killing
outlaw whom scores of officers could not catch!"

"So far as we are concerned, he did better than that," Harley commented
quietly. "If it hadn't been for Michael, and for Jerry, too--if it
hadn't been for the pair of them, I do verily believe that that lunatic
would have kicked my head off as he promised."

"The blessed pair of them!" Villa cried, with shining eyes, as her hand
flashed out to her husband's in a quick press of heart-thankfulness. "The
last word has not been said upon the wonder of dogs," she added, as, with
a quick winking of her eyelashes to overcome the impending moistness, she
controlled her emotion.

"The last word of the wonder of dogs will never be said," Harley spoke,
returning the pressure of her hand and releasing it in order to help her.

"And just for that were going to say something right now," she smiled.
"Jerry, and Michael, and I. We've been practising it in secret for a
surprise for you. You just lie there and listen. It's the Doxology.
Don't Laugh. No pun intended."

She bent forward from the stool on which she sat, and drew Michael to her
so that he sat between her knees, her two hands holding his head and
jowls, his nose half-buried in her hair.

"Now Jerry!" she called sharply, as a singing teacher might call, so that
Jerry turned his head in attention, looked at her, smiled understanding
with his eyes, and waited.

It was Villa who started and pitched the Doxology, but quickly the two
dogs joined with their own soft, mellow howling, if howling it may be
called when it was so soft and mellow and true. And all that had
vanished into the Nothingness was in the minds of the two dogs as they
sang, and they sang back through the Nothingness to the land of
Otherwhere, and ran once again with the Lost Pack, and yet were not
entirely unaware of the present and of the indubitable two-legged god who
was called Villa and who sang with them and loved them.

"No reason we shouldn't make a quartette of it," remarked Harley Kennan,
as with his own voice he joined in.