Beautiful Joe by Marshall Saunders Read Free Book Online

Ned around the garden, again and again.
    Ned often
looked behind with a pleased face, and I felt so proud to think I was doing
well, but suddenly I got dreadfully confused when he turned around and said, “Hie
out!”
    The
Morrises all used the same words in training their dogs, and I had heard Miss
Laura say this, but I had forgotten what it meant. “Good Joe,” said Ned,
turning around and patting me, “you have forgotten. I wonder where Jim is? He
would help us.”
    He put his
fingers in his mouth and blew a shrill whistle, and soon Jim came trotting up
the lane from the street. He looked at us with his large, intelligent eyes, and
wagged his tail slowly, as if to say, “Well, what do you want of me?”
    “Come and
give me a hand at this training business, old Sobersides,” said Ned, with a
laugh. “It’s too slow to do it alone. Now, young gentlemen, attention! To heel!”
He began to march around the garden again, and Jim and I followed closely at
his heels, while little Billy, seeing that he could not get us to play with
him, came lagging behind.
    Soon Ned turned
around and said, “Hie out!” Old Jim sprang ahead, and ran off in front as if he
was after something. Now I remembered what “hie out” meant. We were to have a
lovely race wherever we liked. Little Billy loved this. We ran and scampered
hither and thither, and Ned watched us, laughing at our antics.
    After tea,
he called us out in the garden again, and said he had something else to teach
us. He turned up a tub on the wooden platform at the back door, and sat on it,
and then called Jim to him.
    He took a
small leather strap from his pocket. It had a nice, strong smell. We all licked
it, and each dog wished to have it. “No, Joe and Billy,” said Ned, holding us
both by our collars; “you wait a minute. Here, Jim.”
    Jim
watched him very earnestly, and Ned threw the strap halfway across the garden,
and said, “Fetch it.”
    Jim never
moved till he heard the words, “Fetch it.” Then he ran swiftly, brought the
strap, and dropped it in Ned’s hand. Ned sent him after it two or three times,
then he said to Jim, “Lie down,” and turned to me. “Here, Joe; it is your turn.”
    He threw
the strap under the raspberry bushes, then looked at me and said, “Fetch it.” I
knew quite well what he meant, and ran joyfully after it. I soon found it by
the strong smell, but the queerest thing happened when I got it in my mouth. I
began to gnaw it and play with it, and when Ned called out, “fetch it,” I
dropped it and ran toward him. I was not obstinate, but I was stupid.
    Ned
pointed to the place where it was, and spread out his empty hands. That helped
me, and I ran quickly and got it. He made me get it for him several times.
Sometimes I could not find it, and sometimes I dropped it; but he never
stirred. He sat still till I brought it to him.
    After a
while he tried Billy, but it soon got dark, and we could not see, so he took
Billy and went into the house.
    I stayed
out with Jim for a while, and he asked me if I knew why Ned had thrown a strap
for us, instead of a bone or something hard.
    Of course
I did not know, so Jim told me it was on his account. He was a bird dog, and
was never allowed to carry anything hard in his mouth, because it would make
him hard-mouthed, and he would be apt to bite the birds when he was bringing
them back to any person who was shooting with him. He said that he had been so
carefully trained that he could even carry three eggs at a time in his mouth.
    I said to
him, “Jim, how is it that you never go out shooting? I have always heard that
you were a dog for that, and yet you never leave home.”
    He hung his
head a little, and said he did not wish to go, and then, for he was an honest
dog, he gave me the true reason.

Chapter VIII
A Ruined Dog
    “I was a
sporting dog,” he said, bitterly, “for the first three years of my life. I
belonged to a man who keeps a livery stable here in Fairport, and he used to
hire