Free The Dog Who Wouldn't Be by Farley Mowat Page B

was out.
    He whined interrogatively and my father patted his head. “Good boy,” he said, and then walked to the screen door with Mutt crowding against his heels.
    By this time the group of human watchers was as perplexed as Mutt. The six men stood in theoffice doorway and watched curiously as my father stepped out on the porch, raised the unloaded gun, leveled it down the alley toward the main street, pressed the triggers, and said in a quiet voice, “Bang – bang – go get ’em boy!”
    To this day Father maintains a steadfast silence as to what his intentions really were. He will not say that he expected the result that followed, and he will not say that he did not expect it.
    Mutt leaped from the stoop and fled down that alleyway at his best speed. They saw him turn the corner into the main street, almost causing two elderly women to collide with one another. The watchers saw the people on the far side of the street stop, turn to stare, and then stand as if petrified. But Mutt himself they could no longer see.
    He was gone only about two minutes, but to the group upon the library steps it must have seemed much longer. The man from New York had just cleared his throat preparatory to a new and even more amusing sally, when he saw something that made the words catch in his gullet.
    They all saw it – and they did not believe.
    Mutt was coming back up the alley. He was trotting. His head and tail were high – and in his mouth was a magnificent ruffed grouse. He cameup the porch stairs nonchalantly, laid the bird down at my father’s feet, and with a satisfied sigh crawled back under the desk.
    There was silence except for Mutt’s panting. Then one of the local men stepped forward as if in a dream, and picked up the bird.
    â€œAlready stuffed, by God!” he said, and his voice was hardly more than a whisper.
    It was then that the clerk from Ashbridge’s Hardware arrived. The clerk was disheveled and mad. He came bounding up the library steps, accosted Father angrily, and cried:
    â€œThat damn dog of yours – you ought to keep him locked up. Come bustin’ into the shop a moment ago and snatched the stuffed grouse right out of the window. Mr. Ashbridge’s fit to be tied. Was the best bird in his whole collection….”
    I do not know if the man from New York ever paid his debt. I do know that the story of that day’s happening passed into the nation’s history, for the Canadian press picked it up from the
Star-Phoenix
, and Mutt’s fame was carried from coast to coast across the land.
    That surely was no more than his due.

7
BATTLE TACTICS
    fter several years in Saskatoon, my family moved into a new neighborhood. River Road was on the banks of the Saskatchewan River, but on the lower and more plebeian side. The community on River Road was considerably relaxed in character and there was a good deal of tolerance for individual idiosyncrasies.
    Only three doors down the street from us lived a retired schoolteacher who had spent years in Alaska and who had brought with him into retirement a team of Alaskan Huskies. These were magnificent dogs that commanded respect not only from the local canine population but from the human one as well. Three of them once caught a burglar on their master’s premises, and they reduced him tobutcher’s meat with a dispatch that we youngsters much admired.
    Across the alley from us lived a barber who maintained a sort of Transient’s Rest for stray mongrels. There was an unkind rumor to the effect that he encouraged these strays only in order to practice his trade upon them. The rumor gained stature from the indisputable fact that some of his oddly assorted collection of dogs sported unusual haircuts. I came to know the barber intimately during the years that followed, and he confided his secret to me. Once, many years earlier, he had seen a French poodle shaven and shorn, and he had been convinced that he