The Dog Who Wouldn't Be Read Online Free Page B

recess, his head half hidden by his tail, but with one eye exposed and glaring balefully out of the murk. He did not seem to be seriously damaged and I ordered him to emerge.
    He did not move.
    In the end I had to crawl into the burrow, grasp him firmly by the tail, and drag him out by bruteforce. And then I was so startled by his appearance that I released my grip and he scuttled back to cover.
    Mutt was no longer a black and white dog, or even a black and yellow one. He was a vivid black and blue. Those sections of his coat that had once been white were now of an unearthly ultramarine shade. The effect was ghastly, particularly about the head, for even his nose and muzzle were bright blue.
    Mutt’s transformation had taken place the day I left for Manitou. He was indignant and annoyed that he had been left behind, and for the rest of that day he sulked. When no one gave him the sympathy he felt was due him, he left the house, and he did not return home until evening. His return was notable.
    Somewhere out on the broad prairie to the east of town he found the means with which to revenge himself upon humanity. He found a dead horse in that most satisfactory state of decomposition which best lends itself to being rolled upon. Mutt rolled with diligence.
    He arrived home at a little after nine o’clock, and no doubt he trusted to the dusk to conceal him until he could reach his grotto. He was caught unawares when father leaped upon him from ambush. He made a frantic effort to escape and succeededbriefly, only to be trapped in the back yard. Squalling bitterly, he was at last dragged into the basement. The doors were closed and locked and the laundry tubs were filled.
    Father has never been willing to describe in any detail the events that followed, but Mother – although she did not actually descend into the basement herself – was able to give me a reasonably circumstantial account. It must have been an epic struggle. It lasted almost three hours and the sounds and smells of battle reached Mother, via the hot-air registers, without appreciable diminution. She told me that both my father and Mutt had become hoarse and silent by the end of the second hour, but that the sounds of water sluicing violently back and forth over the basement floor testified clearly that the struggle was not yet at an end.
    It was nearly midnight before Father appeared alone at the head of the cellar stairs. He was stripped to the buff, and close to exhaustion. After a stiff drink and a bath of his own, he went to bed without so much as hinting to Mother of the dreadful things that had happened on the dank battleground downstairs.
    Mutt spent the balance of the night outside, under the front porch. He was evidently toofatigued even to give vent to his vexation by an immediate return to the dead horse – although he probably had this in mind for the morrow.
    But when dawn came, not even the lure of the horse was sufficient to make him forgo his usual morning routine.
    It had long been his unvarying habit to spend the hours between dawn and breakfast time going his rounds through the back alleys in the neighborhood. He had a regular route, and he seldom deviated from it. There were certain garbage cans that he never missed, and there were, of course, a number of important telephone poles that had to be attended to. His path used to take him down the alleyway between Ninth and Tenth Avenues, thence to the head of the New Bridge, and finally to the rear premises of the restaurants and grocery stores in the neighborhood of the Five Corners. Returning home, he would proceed along the main thoroughfare, inspecting fireplugs en route. By the time he started home, there would usually be a good number of people on the streets, bound across the river to their places of work. Mutt had no intimation of disaster on this particular morning until he joined the throng of south-bound workers.
    Mother had no warning either until, at a quarterto eight,