Jack, the Fire Dog

The boy hesitated a moment. Then his lips began to tremble with emotion, and after making several attempts to answer, he put his hands before his sightless eyes and burst into violent weeping.

The tender-hearted men were overcome at the sight of the child’s grief. He tried to stifle the sobs that shook his slender frame, but his grief was too great for him to master. The brave men who never hesitated to enter a burning building to rescue those who were in danger, who never thought of their own lives when those of others were menaced, broke down to see a little blind boy crying for his mother.

“Is your mother dead too?” asked the captain in a low voice, a great contrast to his usual hearty tones.

“No, I don’t think she is. I don’t know,” sobbed the boy.

“Don’t you know where she is?” asked the captain, gently.

“No, sir,” replied the boy, trying hard to speak distinctly. “She fell down, and she couldn’t speak to me nor move, and then they carried her off in a wagon.”

“Don’t you know where they took her?”

“No, sir, they didn’t say anything about it.”

“Wasn’t there any one to look after you?”

“No, sir. There wasn’t any one who knew me.”

“What did you do then? Where did you go?”

“I didn’t know where to go. Some children came along and found me crying, and they were real good to me. They said they knew a place where I could stay until my mother came back. So they took me home with them, and put me in a little room there was at the top of the house.”

“How did you manage to keep warm in this cold weather?”

“The children found some things to put over me. They got some hay from a stable and made me a bed. It wasn’t very cold after I got used to it.”

“They probably took his mother to a hospital,” said the captain, “unless she was—” He didn’t like to finish his sentence, for he had not the heart to tell the poor boy that his mother might be dead.

“Come, little chap,” he continued, “dry your eyes and put a good face on the matter. We will try to hunt up your mother, and we’ll look out for you.”

“This is no place for a child,” said the captain later to the men. “You can keep him here a day or two, and then you must turn him over to the charities. Perhaps they’ll find his mother; at any rate, it is their business to attend to such cases.”

The men thought this doctrine rather hard, and grumbled at it somewhat among themselves. When, however, the next day, the captain brought in a large bundle, saying briefly, as he laid it down, “Here is something for the kid,” they changed their minds. The bundle contained a warm overcoat, cap, and mittens.

The blind boy began at once to show the effects of the kind treatment he now received. A better color came into his pale face and he grew stronger every day. With this improvement of his body, his mind, too, underwent a change. His face became cheerful and happy, and he was soon playing about the engine-house with Jack.

“He begins to seem something like a child,” remarked Reordan one evening, as Jack and the blind boy were playing together at “hide and seek,” and the boy’s laugh rang out joyously whenever Jack found out his hiding-place. “If he could only see, he’d be all right.”

It was astonishing how much the blind boy could do without the aid of eyes, and in how many ways he succeeded in making himself useful. He was never so happy as when he found he could do something for his kind friends, and they often called upon him for little services that they could have done much more quickly themselves, in order that he might have the satisfaction of thinking he was of some use to them.

William was too long a name for such a small boy, in the opinion of the firemen, so they used Billy instead. Several days passed, and yet Billy was not turned over to the charities. An engine-house seems a strange place for a child’s home, but Billy soon thought it the pleasantest place in the world. Whenever the alarm sounded, Billy was as excited even as Jack over it, and after the engine had clattered out of the house, and the last sound of wheels and horses’ hoofs and Jack’s barking had died away in the distance, Billy waited contentedly alone; and every one, including Jack, was glad to see Billy’s face light up with pleasure on their return. It was a touch of home life that was very pleasant to these sturdy men who were denied the privilege of a home.

“You ought not to keep the boy cooped up in this hot room all the time,” remarked the captain one day. “Put on his things and send him out on the sidewalk in the sun. No harm can come to him if he keeps in front of the engine-house.”

So Billy had on his new coat and cap and mittens, and was led down to the sidewalk, where the sun was shining brightly.

“Watch him, Jack!” was Reordan’s order, as the Fire-Dog followed them.

So Billy and Jack walked up and down in front of the engine-house, Billy with his hand resting on Jack’s neck, and the intelligent dog marching him back and forth with the regularity of a sentinel on guard. The fresh air brought the color into Billy’s cheeks, and he looked very happy and bright. When they had kept up this exercise for about half an hour, two persons appeared, at whose approach Jack showed decided symptoms of pleasure. He wagged his tail very fast, and whined with joy.

The new-comers were a middle-aged gentleman and a little boy somewhat younger than Billy,—a bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked boy, with a very independent air, and he carried a little basket in his hand. The gentleman was the little boy’s grandfather. I wish I could describe him as he really was, but the nearest I can come to it is to say that he was just the kind every boy and girl would choose if they had a whole world full of grandpapas to choose from. Such a pleasant smile when he looked at you! And such a pleasant voice when he spoke to you! Why, you felt happier all the rest of the day after meeting him if he only shook hands with you and said, “How do you do?” His laugh was even pleasanter still, and he laughed very often; and when he was not laughing his eyes were, they had such a happy, cheerful expression.

Billy could not see the pleasant face, but he could hear the pleasant voice, and those who have not the use of their eyes have something within them that tells them how people look. So Billy formed a picture in his mind of the little boy’s grandpapa, and Billy smiled too when the little boy’s grandpapa spoke, as everybody else did.

“Jack, Jack, I’ve brought something nice for you, old fellow,” said the little boy, whose name was Sam, and who had been eying Billy very intently.

“What little boy is this?” asked Sam’s grandpapa. “Seems to me this is a new face.”

“Yes, sir,” replied the blind boy. “I am Billy.”

“Oh. You are Billy! Well, where did you come from?”

“It’s a boy we found one night at the North End, Mr. Ledwell, and he is blind,” said Reordan, who stood in the door of the engine-house and now approached, touching his hat respectfully. “He didn’t have any one to look after him, and some children took him in tow and hid him in a kind of closet at the top of the tenement-house they lived in. When the house got on fire, they cleared out so sudden that nobody thought of the blind kid. If it hadn’t been for Jack here, he’d ’a’ been smothered in a short time, the smoke was so thick. It isn’t the first life Jack has saved.”

“Good old boy,” said Mr. Ledwell, patting the faithful dog’s head; while Jack wagged his tail gently and looked modestly down, for it always embarrassed him to be praised for what he considered his duty.

Meanwhile Sam was unpacking his basket, and Jack tried to be polite and not to stare greedily at the tempting contents. He could not resist the temptation, however, of looking out of the corner of one eye. What he saw fairly made his mouth water. There were slices of cold meat, none of your thin delicate ones, but nice thick slices, just the kind every dog likes, and, most delicious of all, there was a large bone with tender morsels of meat on it, to say nothing of several mouthfuls of gristle. Jack couldn’t help lapping his chops, as he thought of the good time he would have gnawing that bone and cracking it to get at the rich tasting marrow inside.

Sam handed Jack a slice of the meat, and he gave it just one roll with his tongue and then swallowed it whole. Meat tastes better to dogs eaten in that way,—they think it takes the taste out of it to chew it too much. Another and still another slice followed, while Sam looked contentedly on, enjoying the operation as much as the dog did.

“I think you’d better save the rest for his dinner, Reordan,” remarked Sam, with his decided air. “He can have this bone, too, then, and I have brought some of the cake he likes so much. You had better keep that for his dessert;” and Sam took out a package of cake neatly wrapped in paper.

The crumbs that remained in the basket were emptied upon the snow in front of the engine-house, and the crumbs from a roll added to them. Several sparrows seated on the roof of the building peered anxiously over, intending to seize the first opportunity that presented itself to eat them.

“Don’t let the sparrows eat all of them, Reordan,” said Sam, who had very strict ideas of justice; “they must save some for the pigeons. How’s the little lame pigeon?”

“He seemed to be all right the last time I saw him,” replied Reordan.

“Does Dick the Scrapper fight him away as much as ever?” asked Sam.

“Well, yes, he does hustle him around considerable when they are feeding and he gets in the way; but that’s always the way with animals, you know. The strongest ones get the first chance, and the others have to take back seats.”

“I think it’s a very mean way,” said Sam. “I should think you’d stand there with a stick and keep the Scrapper off while the lame one eats.”

“Oh, we’ll look after the little lame fellow, never fear. He’s as fat as a partridge. He gets tamer every day, too. Yesterday he lit right on my hand and stayed there quite a spell.”

“I wish he’d come around now,” said Sam.

“He will turn up very likely before you go. They come around pretty often. The sparrows get ahead of them, though, they are so cute.”

Meanwhile Sam’s grandpapa was talking to the captain about the little blind boy who had been so suddenly thrown upon their hands. Sam knew what they were talking about, and he felt sure that his grandpapa would find some way to make the blind boy happy, for Grandpapa could do anything, he thought. Sam felt very sorry that the little boy could not see, and he looked at him a long time. At last he said,—

“Hallo, Billy!”

“Hallo!” answered Billy in his soft voice; and the acquaintance was begun.

“Here come the pigeons,” said Reordan, as a flock of birds came sweeping around the corner of the street, and alighted in front of the children. They at once began gobbling up the crumbs scattered for them, while the sparrows flew down, and darting in among them, seized upon the largest ones right from under the pigeons’ very eyes, flying up to the roof to eat them in safety.