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Page 10
At a run, he made for home, glad the unpleasant job was over. At
the door his wife met him.
"Well," she demanded, "did you drown her in the canal, the way
you said?"
"No," he confessed sheepishly, "I didn't exactly drown her. You
see, she nestled down into my arms so cozy and trusting-like,
that I--well, I fixed it so she'll never show up around here
again. Trust me to do a job thoroughly, if I do it at all. I--"
A dramatic gesture from Mrs. Hazen's stubby forefinger
interrupted him. He followed the finger's angry point. Close at
his side stood Lass, wagging her tail and staring expectantly up
at him.
With her keen power of scent, it had been no exploit at all to
track the man over a mile of unfamiliar ground. Already she had
forgiven the kick or had put it down to accident on his part. And
at the end of her eager chase, she was eager for a word of
greeting.
"I'll be--" gurgled Hazen, blinking stupidly.
"I guess you will be," conceded his wife. "If that's the
'thorough' way you do your jobs at the factory--"
"Say," he mumbled in a sort of wondering appeal, "is there any
HUMAN that would like to trust a feller so much as to risk
another ribcracking kick, just for the sake of being where he is?
I almost wish--"
But the wish was unspoken. Hazen was a true American husband. He
feared his wife more than he loved fairness. And his wife's glare
was full upon him. With a grunt he picked Lass up by the neck,
tucked her under his arm and made off through the dark.
He did not take the road toward the canal, however. Instead he
made for the railroad tracks. He remembered how, as a lad, he had
once gotten rid of a mangy cat, and he resolved to repeat the
exploit. It was far more merciful to the puppy--or at least, to
Hazen's conscience,--than to pitch Lass into the slimy canal with
a stone tied to her neck.
A line of freight cars--"empties"--was on a siding, a short
distance above the station. Hazen walked along the track, trying
the door of each car he passed. The fourth he came to was
unlocked. He slid back the newly greased side door, thrust Lass
into the chilly and black interior and quickly slid shut the door
behind her. Then with the silly feeling of having committed a
crime, he stumbled away through the darkness at top speed.
A freight car has a myriad uses, beyond the carrying of
legitimate freight. From time immemorial, it has been a favorite
repository for all manner of illicit flotsam and jetsam human or
otherwise.
Its popularity with tramps and similar derelicts has long been a
theme for comic paper and vaudeville jest. Though, heaven knows,
the inside of a moving box-car has few jocose features, except in
the imagination of humorous artist or vaudevillian!
But a far more frequent use for such cars has escaped the notice
of the public at large. As any old railroader can testify,
trainhands are forever finding in box-cars every genus and
species of stray.
These finds range all the way from cats and dogs and discarded
white rabbits and canaries, to goats. Dozens of babies have been
discovered, wailing and deserted, in box-car recesses; perhaps a
hundred miles from the siding where, furtively, the tiny human
bundle was thrust inside some conveniently unlatched side door.
A freight train offers glittering chances for the disposal of the
Unwanted. More than once a slain man or woman has been sent along
the line, in this grisly but effective fashion, far beyond the
reach of recognition.
Hazen had done nothing original or new in depositing the luckless
collie pup in one of these wheeled receptacles. He was but
following an old-established custom, familiar to many in his
line of life. There was no novelty to it,--except to Lass.
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