Michael, Brother of Jerry

by Jack London

  CHAPTER XXXV

  When the train arrived at Glen Ellen, in the Valley of the Moon, it wasHarley Kennan himself, at the side-door of the baggage-car, who caughthold of Michael and swung him to the ground. For the first time Michaelhad performed a railroad journey uncrated. Merely with collar and chainhad he travelled up from Oakland. In the waiting automobile he foundVilla Kennan, and, chain removed, sat beside her and between her andHarley

  As the machine purred along the two miles of road that wound up the sideof Sonoma Mountain, Michael scarcely looked at the forest-trees andvistas of wandering glades. He had been in the United States threeyears, during which time he had been kept a close prisoner. Cage andcrate and chain had been his portion, and narrow rooms, baggage cars, andstation platforms. The nearest he had come to the country was whenchained to benches in the various parks while Jacob Henderson studiedSwedenborg. So that trees and hills and fields had ceased to meananything. They were something inaccessible, as inaccessible as the blueof the sky or the drifting cloud-fleeces. Thus did he regard the treesand hills and fields, if the negative act of not regarding a thing at allcan be considered a state of mind.

  "Don't seem to be enthusiastic over the ranch, eh, Michael?" Harleyremarked.

  He looked up at sound of his old name, and made acknowledgment byflattening his ears a quivering trifle and by touching his nose againstHarley's shoulder.

  "Nor does he seem demonstrative," was Villa's judgment. "At least,nothing like Jerry,"

  "Wait till they meet," Harley smiled in anticipation. "Jerry willfurnish enough excitement for both of them."

  "If they remember each other after all this time," said Villa. "I wonderif they will."

  "They did at Tulagi," he reminded her. "And they were full grown andhadn't seen each other since they were puppies. Remember how they barkedand scampered all about the beach. Michael was the hurly-burly one. Atleast he made twice as much noise."

  "But he seems dreadfully grown-up and subdued now."

  "Three years ought to have subdued him," Harley insisted.

  But Villa shook her head.

  As the machine drew up at the house and Kennan first stepped out, a dog'swhimperingly joyous bark of welcome struck Michael as not altogetherunfamiliar. The joyous bark turned to a suspicious and jealous snarl asJerry scented the other dog's presence from Harley's caressing hand. Thenext moment he had traced the original source of the scent into thelimousine and sprung in after it. With snarl and forward leap Michaelmet the snarling rush less than half-way, and was rolled over on thebottom of the car.

  The Irish terrier, under all circumstances amenable to the control of themaster as are few breeds of dogs, was instantly manifest in Jerry andMichael an Harley Kennan's voice rang out. They separated, and, despitethe rumbling of low growling in their throats, refrained from attackingeach other as they plunged out to the ground. The little set-to hadoccurred in so few seconds, or fractions of seconds, that they had notbegun to betray recognition of each other until they were out of themachine. They were still comically stiff-legged and bristly as theyaloofly sniffed noses.

  "They know each other!" Villa cried. "Let's wait and see what they willdo."

  As for Michael, he accepted, without surprise, the indubitable fact thatJerry had come back out of the Nothingness. Things of this sort hadbegun to happen rapidly, but it was not the things themselves, but theconnotations of them, that almost stunned him. If the man and woman,whom he had last seen at Tulagi, and, likewise, Jerry, had come back fromthe Nothingness, then could come, and might come at any moment, thebeloved Steward.

  Instead of responding to Jerry, Michael sniffed and glanced about inquest of Steward. Jerry's first expression of greeting and friendlinesstook the form of a desire to run. He barked invitation to his brother,scampered away half a dozen jumps, scampered back, and dabbed playfullyat Michael with one forepaw in added emphasis of invitation ere hescampered away again.

  For so many years had Michael not run with another dog, that at firstJerry's invitation had little meaning to him. Nevertheless, such runningwas an habitual expression of happiness and friendliness in dogdom, andespecially strong had been his inheritance of it from Terrence and Biddy,the noted love-runners of the Solomons.

  The next time Jerry dabbed at him with a paw, barked, and scurried awayin an enticing semi-circle, Michael started involuntarily though slowlyafter him. But Michael did not bark; and, after half a dozen leaps, hecame to a full stop and looked to Villa and Harley for permission.

  "All right, Michael," Harley called heartily, deliberately turning hisshoulder in the non-interest of consent as he extended his hand to helpVilla from the machine.

  Michael sprang away again, and was numbly aware of an ancient joy as heshouldered Jerry who shouldered against him as they ran side by side. Butmost of the joy was Jerry's, as was the wildest of the skurrying and theracing and the shouldering, of the body-wriggling, and ear-pricking, andyelping cries. Also, Jerry barked; and Michael did not bark.

  "He used to bark," said Villa.

  "Much more than Jerry," Harley supplemented.

  "Then they have taken the bark out of him," she concluded. "He must havegone through terrible experiences to have lost his bark."

  * * * * *

  The green California spring merged into tawny summer, as Jerry, everrunning afield, made Michael acquainted with the farthest and highestreaches of the Kennan ranch in the Valley of the Moon. The pageant ofthe wild flowers vanished until all that lingered on the burnt hillsideswere orange poppies faded to palest gold, and Mariposa lilies, wind-blownon slender stems amidst the desiccated grasses, that smouldered likeornate spotted moths fluttering in rest for a space between flight andflight.

  And Michael, a follower always where the exuberant Jerry led, soughtthroughout the passing year for what he could not find.

  "Looking for something, looking for something," Harley would say toVilla. "It is not alive. It is not here. Now just what is it he isalways looking for?"

  Steward it was, and Michael never found him. The Nothingness held himand would not yield him up, although, could Michael have journeyed a ten-days' steamer-journey into the South Pacific to the Marquesas, Steward hewould have found, and, along with him, Kwaque and the Ancient Mariner,all three living like lotus-eaters on the beach-paradise of Taiohae.Also, in and about their grass-thatched bungalow under the lofty avocadotrees, Michael would have found other pet--cats, and kittens, and pigs,donkeys and ponies, a pair of love-birds, and a mischievous monkey ortwo; but never a dog and never a cockatoo. For Dag Daughtry, withviolence of language, had laid a taboo upon dogs. After Killeny Boy, heaverred, there should be no other dog. And Kwaque, without averringanything at all, resolutely refrained from possessing himself of thewhite cockatoos brought ashore by the sailors off the trading schooners.

  But Michael was long in giving over his search for Steward, and, runningthe mountain trails or scrambling and sliding down into the deep canyons,was ever expectant and ready for Steward to step forth before him, or topick up the unmistakable scent that would lead him to him.

  "Looking for something, looking for something," Harley Kennan would chantcuriously, as he rode beside Villa and observed Michael's unendingsearch. "Now Jerry's after rabbits, and fox-trails; but you'll noticethey don't interest Michael much. They're not what he's after. Hebehaves like one who has lost a great treasure and doesn't know where helost it nor where to look for it."

  Much Michael learned from Jerry of the varied life of the forest andfields. To run with Jerry seemed the one pleasure he took, for he neverplayed. Play had passed out of him. He was not precisely morose orgloomy from his years on the trained-animal stage and in Harris Collins'scollege of pain, but he was sobered, subdued. The spring and thespontaneity had gone out of him. Just as the leopard had claw-marked hisshoulder so that damp and frosty weather made the pain of the old woundcome back, so was his mind marked by what he had gone through. He likedJerry, was glad
to be with him and to run with him; but it was Jerry whowas ever in the lead, who ever raised the hue and cry of hunting pursuit,who barked indignation and eager yearning at a tree'd squirrel in refugeforty feet above the ground. Michael looked on and listened, but took nopart in such antics of enthusiasm.

  In the same way he looked on when Jerry fought fearful comic battles withNorman Chief, the great Percheron stallion. It was only play, for Jerryand Norman Chief were tried friends; and, though the huge horse, earslaid back, mouth open to bite, pursued Jerry in mad gyrations all aboutthe paddock, it was with no thought of inflicting hurt, but merely to actup to his part in the sham battle. Yet no invitation of Jerry's couldinduce Michael to join in the fun. He contented himself with sittingdown outside the rails and looking on.

  "Why play?" might Michael have asked, who had had all play taken out ofhim.

  But when it came to serious work, he was there even ahead of Jerry. Onaccount of foot-and-mouth disease and of hog-cholera, strange dogs weretaboo on the Kennan ranch. It did not take Michael long to learn this,and stray dogs got short shrift from him. With never a warning bark norgrowl, in deadly silence, he rushed them, slashed and bit them, rolledthem over and over in the dust, and drove them from the place. It waslike nigger-chasing, a service to perform for the gods whom he loved andwho willed such chasing.

  No wild passion of love, such as he had had for Steward, did he bearVilla and Harley, but he did develop for them a great, sober love. Hedid not go out of his way to express it with overtures of wrigglings andsquirmings and whimpering yelpings. Jerry could be depended upon forthat. But he was always seriously glad to be with Villa and Harley andto receive recognition from them next after Jerry. Some of his deepestmoments of content, before the fireplace, were to sit beside Villa orHarley and lean his head against a knee and have a hand, on occasion,drop down on his head or gently twist his crinkled ear.

  Jerry was even guilty of playing with children who happened at times tobe under the Kennan aegis. Michael endured children for as long as theyleft him alone. If they waxed familiar, he would warn them with abristling of his neck-hair and a throaty rumbling and get up and stalkaway.

  "I can't understand it," Villa would say. "He was the fullest of play,and spirits, and all foolishness. He was much sillier and much moreexcitable than Jerry and certainly noisier. He must have some terriblestory to tell, if only he could, of all that happened between Tulagi andthe time we found him on the Orpheum stage."

  "And that may be the least little hint of it," Harley would reply,pointing to Michael's shoulder where the leopard had scarred it on theday Jack, the Airedale, and Sara, the little green monkey, had died.

  "He used to bark, I know he used to bark," Villa would continue. "Whydoesn't he bark now?"

  And Harley would point to the scarred shoulder and say, "That may accountfor it, and most possibly a hundred other things like it of which wecannot see the marks."

  But the time was to come when they were to hear him bark again--not once,but twice. And both times were to be but an earnest of another andgraver time when, without barking at all, he would express in action themeasure of his love and worship of them who had taken him from the crateand the footlights and given him the freedom of the Valley of the Moon.

  And in the meantime, running endlessly with Jerry over the ranch, helearned all the ways of it and all the life of it from the chickenyardsand the duck-ponds to the highest pitch of Sonoma Mountain. He learnedwhere the wild deer, in their season, were to be found; when they raidedthe prune-orchard, the vineyards, and the apple-trees; when they soughtthe deepest canyons and most secret coverts; and when they stamped out inopen glades and on bare hillsides and crashed and clattered their antlerstogether in combat. Under Jerry's leadership, always running second andafter on the narrow trails as a subdued dog should, he learned the waysand habits of the foxes, the coons, the weasels, and the ring-tail catsthat seemed compounded of cat and coon and weasel. He came to know theground-nesting birds and the difference between the customs of the valleyquail, the mountain quail, and the pheasants. The traits and lairs ofthe domestic cats gone wild he also learned, as did he learn the wildloves of mountain farm-dogs with the free-roving coyotes.

  He knew of the presence of the mountain lion, adrift down from MendocinoCounty, ere the first shorthorn calf was slain, and came home from theencounter, torn and bleeding, to attest what he had discovered and to bethe cause of Harley Kennan riding trail next day with a rifle across hispommel. Likewise Michael came to know what Harley Kennan never did knowand always denied as existing on his ranch--the one rocky outcrop, in thedense heart of the mountain forest, where a score of rattlesnakes dennedthrough the winters and warmed themselves in the sun.