“And counting-dogs are a drug on the market.  Well, anyway, let’s try.”

And Michael, who knew unerringly how to count, refused to perform.

“If he was a regular dog, he could walk anyway,” was Collins’ next idea.  “We’ll try him.”

And Michael went through the humiliating ordeal of being jerked erect on his hind legs by Johnny while Collins with the stick cracked him under the jaw and across the knees.  In his wrath, Michael tried to bite the master-god, and was jerked away by the chain.  When he strove to retaliate on Johnny, that imperturbable youth, with extended arm, merely lifted him into the air on his chain and strangled him.

“That’s off,” quoth Collins wearily.  “If he can’t stand on his hind legs he can’t barrel-jump—­you’ve heard about Ruth, Johnny.  She was a winner.  Jump in and out of nail-kegs, on her hind legs, without ever touching with her front ones.  She used to do eight kegs, in one and out into the next.  Remember when she was boarded here and rehearsed.  She was a gold-mine, but Carson didn’t know how to treat her, and she croaked off with penumonia at Cripple Creek.”

“Wonder if he can spin plates on his nose,” Johnny volunteered.

“Can’t stand up on hind legs,” Collins negatived.  “Besides, nothing like the limit in a turn like that.  This dog’s got a specially.  He ain’t ordinary.  He does some unusual thing unusually well, and it’s up to us to locate it.  That comes of Harry dying so inconsiderately and leaving this puzzle-box on my hands.  I see I just got to devote myself to him.  Take him away, Johnny.  Number Eighteen for him.  Later on we can put him in the single compartments.”

CHAPTER XXVI

Number Eighteen was a big compartment or cage in the dog row, large enough with due comfort for a dozen Irish terriers like Michael.  For Harris Collins was scientific.  Dogs on vacation, boarding at the Cedarwild Animal School, were given every opportunity to recuperate from the hardships and wear and tear of from six months to a year and more on the road.  It was for this reason that the school was so popular a boarding-place for performing animals when the owners were on vacation or out of “time.”  Harris Collins kept his animals clean and comfortable and guarded from germ diseases.  In short, he renovated them against their next trips out on vaudeville time or circus engagement.

To the left of Michael, in Number Seventeen, were five grotesquely clipped French poodles.  Michael could not see them, save when he was being taken out or brought back, but he could smell them and hear them, and, in his loneliness, he even started a feud of snarling bickeringness with Pedro, the biggest of them who acted as clown in their turn.  They were aristocrats among performing animals, and Michael’s feud with Pedro was not so much real as play-acted.  Had he and Pedro been brought together they would have made friends in no time.  But through the slow monotonous drag of the hours they developed a fictitious excitement and interest in mouthing their quarrel which each knew in his heart of hearts was no quarrel at all.