Not altogether unwillingly1, in the darkness of night, despite that he disliked the man, did Michael go with Harry2 Del Mar3. Like a burglar the man came, with infinite caution of silence, to the outhouse in Doctor Emory’s back yard where Michael was a prisoner. Del Mar knew the theatre too well to venture any hackneyed melodramatic effect such as an electric torch. He felt his way in the darkness to the door of the outhouse, unlatched it, and entered softly, feeling with his hands for the wire-haired coat.
And Michael, a man-dog and a lion-dog in all the stuff of him, bristled4 at the instant of intrusion, but made no outcry. Instead, he smelled out the intruder and recognised him. Disliking the man, nevertheless he permitted the tying of the rope around his neck and silently followed him out to the sidewalk, down to the corner, and into the waiting taxi.
His reasoning—unless reason be denied him—was simple. This man he had met, more than once, in the company of Steward6. Amity7 had existed between him and Steward, for they had sat at table, and drunk together. Steward was lost. Michael knew not where to find him, and was himself a prisoner in the back yard of a strange place. What had once happened, could again happen. It had happened that Steward, Del Mar, and Michael had sat at table together on divers8 occasions. It was probable that such a combination would happen again, was going to happen now, and, once more, in the bright-lighted cabaret, he would sit on a chair, Del Mar on one side, and on the other side beloved Steward with a glass of beer before him—all of which might be called “leaping to a conclusion”; for conclusion there was, and upon the conclusion Michael acted.
Now Michael could not reason to this conclusion nor think to this conclusion, in words. “Amity,” as an instance, was no word in his consciousness. Whether or not he thought to the conclusion in swift-related images and pictures and swift-welded composites of images and pictures, is a problem that still waits human solution. The point is: he did think. If this be denied him, then must he have acted wholly by instinct—which would seem more marvellous on the face of it than if, in dim ways, he had performed a vague thought-process.
However, into the taxi and away through the maze9 of San Francisco’s streets, Michael lay alertly on the floor near Del Mar’s feet, making no overtures10 of friendliness11, by the same token making no demonstration12 of the repulsion of the man’s personality engendered13 in him. For Harry Del Mar, who was base, and who had been further abased14 by his money-making desire for the possession of Michael, had had his baseness sensed by Michael from the beginning. That first meeting in the Barbary Coast cabaret, Michael had bristled at him, and stiffened15 belligerently16, when he laid his hand on Michael’s head. Nor had Michael thought about the man at all, much less attempted any analysis of him. Something had been wrong with that hand—the perfunctory way in which it had touched him under a show of heartiness17 that could well deceive the onlooker18. The feel of it had not been right. There had been no warmth in it, no heart, no communication of genuine good approach from the brain and the soul of the man of which it was the telegraphic tentacle19 and transmitter. In short, the message or feel had not been a good message or feel, and Michael had bristled and stiffened without thinking, but by mere20 knowing, which is what men call “intuition.”
Electric lights, a shed-covered wharf21, mountains of luggage and freight, the noisy toil22 of ’longshoremen and sailors, the staccato snorts of donkey engines and the whining23 sheaves as running lines ran through the blocks, a crowd of white-coated stewards24 carrying hand-baggage, the quartermaster at the gangway foot, the gangway sloping steeply up to the Umatilla’s promenade25 deck, more quartermasters and gold-laced ship’s officers at the head of the gangway, and more crowd and confusion blocking the narrow deck—thus Michael knew, beyond all peradventure, that he had come back to the sea and its ships, where he had first met Steward, where he had been always with Steward, save for the recent nightmare period in the great city. Nor was there absent from the flashing visions of his consciousness the images and memories of Kwaque and Cocky. Whining eagerly, he strained at the leash26, risking his tender toes among the many inconsiderate, restless, leather-shod feet of the humans, as he quested and scented27 for Cocky and Kwaque, and, most of all, for Steward.
Michael accepted his disappointment in not immediately meeting them, for from the dawn of consciousness, the limitations and restrictions29 of dogs in relation to humans had been hammered into him in the form of concepts of patience. The patience of waiting, when he wanted to go home and when Steward continued to sit at table and talk and drink beer, was his, as was the patience of the rope around the neck, the fence too high to scale, the narrowed-walled room with the closed door which he could never unlatch but which humans unlatched so easily. So that he permitted himself to be led away by the ship’s butcher, who on the Umatilla had the charge of all dog passengers. Immured30 in a tiny between-decks cubby which was filled mostly with boxes and bales, tied as well by the rope around his neck, he waited from moment to moment for the door to open and admit, realised in the flesh, the resplendent vision of Steward which blazed through the totality of his consciousness.
Instead, although Michael did not guess it then, and, only later, divined it as a vague manifestation31 of power on the part of Del Mar, the well-tipped ship’s butcher opened the door, untied32 him, and turned him over to the well-tipped stateroom steward who led him to Del Mar’s stateroom. Up to the last, Michael was convinced that he was being led to Steward. Instead, in the stateroom, he found only Del Mar. “No Steward,” might be described as Michael’s thought; but by patience, as his mood and key, might be described his acceptance of further delay in meeting up with his god, his best beloved, his Steward who was his own human god amidst the multitude of human gods he was encountering.
Michael wagged his tail, flattened33 his ears, even his crinkled ear, a trifle, and smiled, all in a casual way of recognition, smelled out the room to make doubly sure that there was no scent28 of Steward, and lay down on the floor. When Del Mar spoke34 to him, he looked up and gazed at him.
“Now, my boy, times have changed,” Del Mar addressed him in cold, brittle35 tones. “I’m going to make an actor out of you, and teach you what’s what. First of all, come here . . . COME HERE!”
Michael obeyed, without haste, without lagging, and patently without eagerness.
“You’ll get over that, my lad, and put pep into your motions when I talk to you,” Del Mar assured him; and the very manner of his utterance36 was a threat that Michael could not fail to recognise. “Now we’ll just see if I can pull off the trick. You listen to me, and sing like you did for that leper guy.”
Drawing a harmonica from his vest pocket, he put it to his lips and began to play “Marching through Georgia.”
“Sit down!” he commanded.
Again Michael obeyed, although all that was Michael was in protest. He quivered as the shrill-sweet strains from the silver reeds ran through him. All his throat and chest was in the impulse to sing; but he mastered it, for he did not care to sing for this man. All he wanted of him was Steward.
“Oh, you’re stubborn, eh?” Del Mar sneered37 at him. “The matter with you is you’re thoroughbred. Well, my boy, it just happens I know your kind and I reckon I can make you get busy and work for me just as much as you did for that other guy. Now get busy.”
He shifted the tune38 on into “Georgia Camp Meeting.” But Michael was obdurate39. Not until the melting strains of “Old Kentucky Home” poured through him did he lose his self-control and lift his mellow-throated howl that was the call for the lost pack of the ancient millenniums. Under the prodding40 hypnosis of this music he could not but yearn41 and burn for the vague, forgotten life of the pack when the world was young and the pack was the pack ere it was lost for ever through the endless centuries of domestication42.
“Ah, ha,” Del Mar chuckled43 coldly, unaware44 of the profound history and vast past he evoked45 by his silver reeds.
A loud knock on the partition wall warned him that some sleepy passenger was objecting.
“That will do!” he said sharply, taking the harmonica from his lips. And Michael ceased, and hated him. “I guess I’ve got your number all right. And y............