Bruce mumbled something and turned his face against his outstretched arm.
“Come, honey, I’ll help you.”
Mrs. Walker put her arm around him and dragged him to his feet. Steering him to the sofa, she helped him onto it. Bruce was so heavily asleep the moment his head touched the pillow that he was not even aware of his mother removing his shoes. She drew a blanket over him and quietly turned out the light.
The next day he awoke to the pale light of early morning. For a moment he lay there wondering what had happened. It had been weeks since he had wakened to anything but total darkness. Sliding his hand under the pillow, he groped for the clock. It wasn’t there. Lifting his head, he saw it on the table next to the couch. He had fallen asleep the night before without setting the alarm, and now it was morning.
“Poor Red!” Bruce snapped into a sitting position, shocked wide awake. “He’s probably over there, tearing the walls down!”
Grabbing for the shoes that his mother had placed beside the sofa, he hurriedly began to put them on. It was still early. It had to be. The light was dim. He could barely make out the blur of his jacket thrown across the back of the chair by the door. People in Elmwood were not generally early risers. Streets were free of cars until close to seven.
I can still give him a quick run, Bruce thought as he pulled on his jacket. The Gordons aren’t going to be sitting on their lawn to watch the sunrise. We’ll just take a fast trek down the street and back again. It won’t be much for Red, but it will be better than nothing.
Heavy fog engulfed him as he left the house. He could hardly see ten feet before him, but by the time he reached the empty lot between the houses, he could hear the short, sharp sounds of impatient barking.
When he reached the hotel, Red Rover was so happy to see him that he nearly knocked him over.
“Simmer down, boy. Calm down.” Bruce gave the leaping animal a quick pat. “This is going to be a short one this morning.”
When he opened the door at the end of the hall the dog shot past him with the speed of a bullet. Up he went to the back window and down the ramp. By the time Bruce had followed him outside, he was nowhere to be seen.
“Red! Hey, Red, where are you?” Bruce called softly, keeping his voice low. “Red Rover, come on back here!”
Rounding the corner of the house, he crossed the front yard to the sidewalk. He looked up and down the street in both directions. Somewhere ahead of him a streak of red flashed across a yard and disappeared into the mists. Bruce began to run. He reached the yard and stopped.
“Red! Red Rover!” He called more loudly this time.
The fog was heavy, shutting off his view of the end of the street. A garbage truck rattled by. Across the street from him, the door of a house opened, and a woman stuck out her head.
“Here, kitty, kitty, kitty! Come get your breakfast!” Her voice was thin and shrill.
It’s later than I thought! Bruce realized. It’s the fog that made everything seem darker. A feeling of panic came over him. I’ve got to get hold of Red! I’ve got to get him home fast!
It was impossible to know with any certainty where the dog had gone. Bruce hurried along the sidewalk, glancing frantically into yards on either side. Every few paces he stopped to call Red’s name.
“You looking for somebody?” a voice called to him. A newspaper delivery boy pulled his bicycle to a stop next to the curb.
“Yes. No. I mean, it’s not a person.” Bruce didn’t know how to answer. “I’m looking for a —”
The boy was not listening. His attention was directed toward a side street.
“Look at that, will you!” he exclaimed. “It looks like one of those ghost hounds on television!”
Following his gaze, Bruce saw the outline of a dog against a bank of fog.
“It’s not a ghost,” he said. “It’s —”
“Like a sci-fi movie.” The boy leaned forward. “Here he comes!”
Red Rover galloped toward them.
“That’s no spirit dog!” the boy cried. “He sure looked like one for a minute, but that’s a real animal! Hey, isn’t that the setter that’s been missing from that house down the street? The one they’ve posted a reward for?”
“I don’t think so,” Bruce said quickly as Red shot past them. He was headed for home now. He’d had his run and knew that breakfast awaited him back at the hotel.
“I bet it is,” the boy said. “I sure wish I’d thought about that in time to grab him.”
“It’s not the same dog,” Bruce insisted. “I’m sure it’s not. That dog used to live next door to me — the one that’s lost, I mean. I’ve seen him close up. This dog here didn’t look at all like him.”
“Well, I think he did,” the boy said. “I deliver papers to that house, so I’ve seen the setter. There can’t be many big dogs like that running loose around the neighborhood.”
He turned to Bruce, his eyes narrowing with sudden suspicion. “I bet I know what you’ve got in mind. You’re trying to discourage me so you can claim that reward yourself. Well, it’s not going to work, kid!” He grinned triumphantly. “I’m going down to that house right now and telling them I’ve seen their ghost dog and the reward is mine!”
CHAPTER TEN
The day the puppies ate a whole can of dog food and whined for more, Bruce pronounced them old enough to leave their mother.
“You’d better line up some homes for them fast, before they start eating the wallpaper,” he told Andi.
Although she had known all along that such a time was inevitable, Andi was heartbroken.
“It’s too soon,” she mourned to Debbie as they walked to school together. “I never should have taught them to eat out of a dish. If they couldn’t do that, Bruce wouldn’t make us get rid of them.”
“I wish I could take one,” Debbie said wistfully. She was spending much of her spare time at the hotel and had become very fond of the puppies.
“That little Hairy is such a darling. I’d much rather have him than Mom’s stupid cat.”
“It’s not fair,” Andi said. “If we have to send somebody away, why couldn’t it be Red Rover? He eats ten times as much as those tiny puppies. But, no, Red is special, because Bruce and Tim are boys and they like big dogs better than little ones.”
Despite her feelings, she kept her promise and posted a notice about the puppies on the school bulletin board. She printed it in the tiniest letters possible in the hope that no one would notice it crammed in among all the other announcements. She soon realized, however, that this had been a bad mistake. The fact that the writing was so small that it could not be read easily made everyone who saw it curious about what it said.
A small group gathered around the board, and other passersby pushed their way in to see what was so interesting. Before long, the hallway in front of the bulletin board was jammed with students struggling to make out the message:
FREE PUPPIES, BROWN AND WHITE
CAN BE DELIVERED TO YOUR HOME
SEE ANDI WALKER, ROOM 207
“Free puppies!” One girl let out a little squeal. “What fun! I wonder if my mother would let me have one.”
“It’s my brother’s birthday next Monday,” another girl said. “He’ll be seven years old. I bet he’d love to have a puppy.”
“My dog was hit by a car a couple of months ago,” a boy said sadly. “When that happened I felt like I’d never want another pet. But now — I don’t know — when you’re used to having a dog around, it gets kind of lonesome without one.”
When the bell rang for recess, Andi found four people waiting for her in the hall outside the classroom. The girl with the little brother and the boy whose dog had been run over were definite about wanting puppies. Andi agreed to deliver them the next day. The other girl wanted to know how big they were, and, when Andi told her, she said that she liked small dogs and was almost sure she would take one but would have to check first to get her parents’ permission.
The fourth perso
n was from Andi’s class, although she didn’t know her very well. She was a thin, quiet, brown-haired girl named Tiffany Tinkle. Andi had always thought of Tiffany as a little beige mouse.
Now the mouse spoke.
“I saw your ad on the board,” Tiffany said in a wispy voice.
“I guess everybody did,” Andi said. As usual, when speaking to someone she did not know well, she heard her voice sounding cold and snippy, even though she did not mean for it to be that way. “I’m sorry, but you’re too late to get one. They’ve already been promised.”
“All of them?” Tiffany exclaimed. “Every single one of them? That’s incredible! Our dog, Ginger, had five puppies a couple of months ago, and we haven’t been able to find homes for any of them. Ginger’s a purebred Airedale, but her husband was a bulldog. That’s kind of a funny combination.”
“All puppies are cute, no matter who their parents are,” Andi said. “You’re lucky if you can’t find homes for them. I wish I could keep Friday’s puppies and watch them grow up.”
“Oh, there’s no chance of our keeping them,” Tiffany said. “My father says one dog in the family is plenty. If we don’t find homes for the pups soon, he’s going to drown them.”
“He’s going to do what?” Andi was so horrified that she forgot to be stiff and awkward. She could not believe her ears. “Your father must be a horrid, unfeeling monster!”
“He’s very strict,” Tiffany agreed, looking more like a mouse than ever. “He was hoping Ginger would have Airedale puppies so we could sell them for a lot of money. When she fell in love with the bulldog next door, Daddy got furious. He says he doesn’t want a lot of half-breed mutts around the place.”
“He sounds like exactly the sort of man Jerry Gordon will be when he grows up,” Andi said. “My dad’s strict too, but he’d die before he’d hurt a helpless little puppy. You aren’t going to let him do that, are you, Tiffany? Can’t you do something?”
“I don’t know what,” Tiffany said forlornly. “When Daddy makes up his mind, that’s that. Do you know anyone who would take a puppy?”
“I’ve used up all the people I know,” Andi said. “What about putting an ad on the bulletin board the way I did? I bet you get homes for all the pups right away.”
“Do you really think so?” Tiffany brightened. “That would be wonderful. What should I say?”
“Don’t say they’re part bulldog,” Andi advised her. “Let people figure that out for themselves. If you have to say anything, you can say they’re a large part Airedale.”
Tiffany looked doubtful. “They’re not, though. They’re just half Airedale.”
“Don’t be so picky,” Andi said impatiently. “That’s a large enough part.”
Grabbing Tiffany’s hand, she dragged her down the hall to the bulletin board.
This time there was no group standing in front of it. There was just one person, Mr. Strode, the school principal. He had taken down Andi’s notice and was holding it close to his eyes, squinting as he struggled to read it without his glasses.
He glanced up as the girls approached him.
“Hello, girls,” he said. “Do either of you happen to know who this Andi Walker is?”
If Tiffany had not been with her, Andi might have been tempted to say no. As it was, that wasn’t an option.
“I am, sir,” she said in a small voice.
“Then you’re the one who put this on the board this morning?” Mr. Strode was frowning. His brows drew together across the top of his nose in a straight gray line. “This board is only for notices pertaining to school activities — club meetings, sports events, and things like that.”
“I’m sorry,” Andi said. “I didn’t know. I mean, I didn’t really think —”
“No notices of any kind should be posted on this board without my permission,” the principal said.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Andi said again.
She glanced at Tiffany, who was twisting her hands together nervously. It was obvious that she was not going to say anything.
“Please, sir,” Andi said quickly, before she could lose her nerve, “could we have permission to post another notice? I don’t need this first one up any longer because all our puppies have been spoken for, but my friend here has five of them and if we don’t find homes for them right away, her father is going to drown them.”
“That’s a sad situation.” Mr. Strode’s expression softened. For a moment Andi thought he was going to say yes.
Then slowly he shook his head.
“Even in this case,” he said regretfully, “I can’t let you use the school bulletin board for a personal notice. If I let you do that, in fairness I’d have to let everybody else do the same. Everyone has something he or she would like to advertise. Pretty soon we’d need ten boards to hold all the ads for dogs and cats and gerbils and goldfish.”
His statement was reasonable. There was no way to argue with it. Even if there had been, fifth graders couldn’t get anywhere arguing with a school principal. Still, to Andi, nothing was reasonable if it meant the lives of five puppies.
She worried about them all afternoon. As she turned the pages of her history book, she saw, instead of pictures of United States presidents, five sad little Airedale-bulldog faces.
When she glanced across at Tiffany, bent over her own book, she felt like snatching something up and throwing it at her. How could she just sit there like that and do absolutely nothing?
If they were my puppies, I’d think of some way to save them, Andi told herself bitterly. If I couldn’t find homes for them, I’d hide them and raise them secretly. I’d train them to do tricks, and when they were grown I’d sell them to a circus.
The more she thought about it, the better the idea seemed to her. Surely the funnier-looking a dog was, the better a circus would like it. The whole idea of a circus was to make people laugh. Training dogs was not too difficult, either. She had trained Bebe to shake hands and roll over and bark when she wanted a treat. It couldn’t be much harder to teach more exotic things, such as walking a tightrope and dancing and jumping through hoops.
By the time the final bell rang, Andi was bursting with excitement.
“Tiffany!” she cried, rushing to catch up with her. “Wait a minute! I have an idea.”
Tiffany turned hopefully, but once Andi had explained the plan to her, she did not seem enthusiastic.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never trained a dog. Besides, I don’t know where I’d hide them.”
“Don’t worry about little things like that.” Andi brushed the problems aside. “I have a place where we can keep them, and I’ll help with the training. We’ll get a book about teaching animals circus tricks. All you have to do is keep it a secret until they’re ready to give a performance.”
Debbie, when Andi described her plan to her, did not share her enthusiasm, either.
“Tiffany’s an awful baby,” she said doubtfully. “It’s hard to imagine her keeping a secret if somebody tried to make her tell it.”
“I know,” Andi said. “I don’t like that part of it, either. Still, we have to save those puppies. I haven’t even seen them, and I love them already just the way I do Tom and Dick and Hairy.”
“I guess you’re right,” Debbie agreed with a sigh. “We’ll just have to take the chance.”
When they reached Tiffany’s house that afternoon and saw the puppies, they had no doubts that what they were doing was right. The pups were big ones, much larger than Friday’s, with shaggy Airedale hair and square bulldog faces, but their stubby tails never stopped wagging. They tumbled and rolled and bounced, falling over their feet to be the first to greet their guests.
“What clowns!” Andi picked up the nearest puppy and hugged it while the rest swarmed about her, yipping their jealousy. “We’ll give them the big, green bedroom upstairs next to MacTavish.”
“When your father comes home from work tonight, you can tell him you gave the puppies to some classmates,” Debb
ie said firmly to Tiffany. “But don’t you dare say who those classmates are or what they’re going to do with them.”
Getting the puppies to the hotel was a nightmare. There were so many, and they were so wiggly and squirmy. There was an alley behind Tiffany’s house that ran the length of the block, but beyond that there was only the sidewalk. Andi and Debbie each carried two puppies, and Tiffany one. Everybody they passed turned to stare at them.
“Where are you going?” one lady asked. “To a dog show?”
A mother with a baby came by, and the baby squealed, “Tigger! Tigger!” and nearly fell out of his stroller.
“Those aren’t tigers, honey,” his mother explained to him. “They’re doggies. And such a lot of them!”
But the baby kept shrieking, “Tigger! Tigger!” all the way down the street until his mother took him around a corner.
Two little boys passed on bicycles, waving and shouting. The puppies yipped back at them and squirmed with delight. They would have loved to have been able to get down and chase the bikes.
“We’re almost there,” Debbie panted, as they came to the final block. “Just a little farther and — oh, no!”
“What is it?” Andi asked, and turned her head to see what Debbie was looking at.
Now it was her turn to say “Oh, no!”
Coming toward them along the sidewalk was Jerry Gordon.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
He was by himself. That was the first thing that Andi noticed. He did not look nearly as imposing when he was alone as he did when he was surrounded by his gang of followers.
Come to think of it, I haven’t seen any kids going in or out of his house for quite a while now, she thought suddenly. She did not have time to take the thought further because Jerry had reached them.
“Well, what do we have here?” He stopped in front of them, blocking their way. Surprisingly he seemed almost glad to see them. “What are you doing with those dogs, Andi? Your aunt’s allergic to them. She told my father about that when he got me Red Rover.”