Beautiful Joe | Page 8

food I brought her to eat. One day she
licked me gently, wagged her tail, and died.
As I sat by her, feeling lonely and miserable. Jenkins came into the stable. I could not
bear to look at him. He had killed my mother. There she lay, a little, gaunt, scarred
creature, starved and worried to death by him. Her mouth was half open, her eyes were
staring. She would never again look kindly at me, or curl up to me at night to keep me
warm. Oh, how I hated her murderer! But I sat quietly, even when he went up and turned
her over with his foot to see if she was really dead. I think he was a little sorry, for he

turned scornfully toward me and said, "She was worth two of you; why didn't you go
instead?"
Still I kept quiet till he walked up to me and kicked at me. My heart was nearly broken,
and I could stand no more. I flew at him and gave him a savage bite on the ankle.
"Oho," he said, "so you are going to be a fighter, are you? I'll fix you for that." His face
was red and furious. He seized me by the back of the neck and carried me out to the yard
where a log lay on the ground. "Bill," he called to one of his children, "bring me the
hatchet."
He laid my head on the log and pressed one hand on my struggling body. I was now a
year old and a full-sized dog. There was a quick, dreadful pain, and he had cut off my ear,
not in the way they cut puppies' ears, but close to my head, so close that he cut off some
of the skin beyond it. Then he cut off the other ear, and, turning me swiftly round, cut off
my tail close to my body
Then he let me go and stood looking at me as I rolled on the ground and yelped in agony.
He was in such a passion that he did not think that people passing by on the road might
hear me.
CHAPTER III
MY KIND DELIVERER AND MISS LAURA
THERE was a young man going by on a bicycle. He heard my screams, and springing off
his bicycle, came hurrying up the path, and stood among us before Jenkins caught sight
of him.
In the midst of my pain, I heard him say fiercely, "What have you been doing to that
dog?"
"I've been cuttin' his ears for fightin', my young gentleman," said Jenkins. "There is no
law to prevent that, is there?"
"And there is no law to prevent my giving you a beating," said the young man angrily. In
a trice he had seized Jenkins by the throat and was pounding him with all his might. Mrs.
Jenkins came and stood at the house door crying, but making no effort to help her
husband.
"Bring me a towel," the young man cried to her, after he had stretched Jenkins, bruised
and frightened, on the ground. She snatched off her apron and ran down with it, and the
young man wrapped me in it, and taking me carefully in his arms, walked down the path
to the gate. There were some little boys standing there, watching him, their mouths wide
open with astonishment. "Sonny," he said to the largest of them, "if you will come behind
and carry this dog, I will give you a quarter."
The boy took me, and we set out. I was all smothered up in a cloth, and moaning with

pain, but still I looked out occasionally to see which way we were going. We took the
road to the town and stopped in front of a house on Washington Street. The young man
leaned his bicycle up against the house, took a quarter from his pocket and put it in the
boy's hand, and lifting me gently in his arms, went up a lane leading to the back of the
house.
There was a small stable there. He went into it, put me down on the floor and uncovered
my body. Some boys were playing about the stable, and I heard them say, in horrified
tones, "Oh, Cousin Harry, what is the matter with that dog?"
"Hush," he said. "Don't make a fuss. You, Jack, go down to the kitchen and ask Mary for
a basin of warm water and a sponge, and don't let your mother or Laura hear you."
A few minutes later, the young man had bathed my bleeding ears and tail, and had rubbed
something on them that was cool and pleasant, and had bandaged them firmly with strips
of cotton. I felt much better and was able to