ULYSSES AND THE DOGMAN
by O. Henry
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 behavior. 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 cosy 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 labor 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 handshake 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 Missis 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 parlor to get to the bathroom, 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.
~~~~~~~ THE END ~~~~~~~
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