Bailey's Story by W. Bruce Cameron Read Free Book Online Page B

I crawled under the fence to bark and invite her to play, but she only puffed air out through her nostrils and went back to biting off mouthfuls of grass. Her loss! I dove back under the fence and took off after Ethan, who was happily shouting my name.
    I followed him down to a pond. I guessed that was what the farm had instead of a creek. There was a family of ducks to bark at, and they splashed into the water, paddling away as I ran up. Unfair! The minute I stopped barking, they came back toward the bank, the mother in the lead and half a dozen little fluff balls behind her in a line. So of course I had to bark again. Back they all went into the water. Ducks looked to me to be about as useless as Smokey the cat.
    â€œYou crazy dog, Bailey!” Happiness was pouring out of Ethan’s voice. “Come on!”
    We went running back to the big white house.
    Dad left after a few days, but Mom stayed with us on the farm that whole summer. Ethan slept on the porch, and I slept right there with him, and no one even pretended that the arrangement should be different.
    Grandpa liked to sit in a chair and scratch my ears. Grandma always seemed to be cooking in the kitchen, and she needed me to sample what she made. I was glad to do my part. The love from both of them made me squirm with joy.
    Outside, there was no yard, only a big open field with a fence. The horse, whose name was Flare, stayed inside the fence all day, eating grass. It was a strange thing, though; I never saw her throw up once. She did leave big brown piles all over the field, which smelled interesting but tasted dry and bland. I only ate a couple of them.
    Sometimes Flare went into a big, shabby old building called the barn, and the first time I followed her in there I discovered that the farm had a cat. What a disappointment! She crouched back in the shadows and jumped up high or ran away whenever I came near. Well, that made her a better cat than Smokey, at least.
    Beyond the barn were woods that were fun to explore, and it was always worth checking out the pond to see if the ducks needed to be barked at. The boy liked the pond, too. He would put me in an old rowboat and push it out into the water. Then he would pull out a pole with a string attached, stick a worm on the string, and drop the worm over the side. Sometimes he’d pull out a small, wriggling fish for me to bark at. Then he’d let it go.
    â€œIt’s too little, Bailey,” he’d say. “But one of these days I’m going to catch a big one.”
    One afternoon, after we’d been at the farm a few weeks, Ethan was at a table and Mom was stretched out on a couch with a book, and Grandma had gone upstairs to lie on her bed, which meant that the kitchen didn’t smell as good as usual. I decided to explore a little more of the woods.
    I hadn’t gotten very far when I caught sight of the black cat from the barn, waddling slowly away from me. Of course, I took off after her. It was funny … when I’d seen the cat in the barn, I didn’t remember a white stripe down her back. Now she definitely had one.
    She didn’t run away from me as quickly as she had before, either. As I got closer, I realized that this was no cat after all. It was a new kind of animal! Excited, I barked and bowed down low on my front legs to invite her to play.
    She turned and gave me a solemn look, her fluffy tail high up in the air. I let my own tail wave back and forth. Great! Although everything about the farm was wonderful, the one thing that was lacking was another dog to wrestle with or chase around. I did miss Marshmallow from time to time.
    I jumped forward to give my new playmate a nudge with my nose.
    The next thing I knew, a plume of horrible stink puffed into my face, sticking to my eyes and lips, choking my nose. I sprang back. What had just happened? Half blind, helpless, I retreated, stumbling over sticks and roots, making my way back to the