Man, creature of God, who taught you friendship? A dog. Who taught you hatred? A man. — ARSÈNE HOUSSAYE

 

JIMMIE Kelley's little girl Ellen come in with his dinner about twelve o'clock. As soon as Jimmie takes the eats from her hands and kisses her, she runs over to me and begins to say nice things, so I kissed her on her nose.

       "Leave 'im alone!" Jimmie yells to the kid. "He's in bad."

       She pulled back from me, and I beat it to Mamie's stall, and got comfortable between Mamie's hind legs. I knew she wouldn't budge as long as I was there, so I moved up after a little while to her front legs. She reached down and nosed me and told me things would be all right after a bit. There's lots of fine human beings, but there ain't any born yet that is as good a friend to a fire dog as a fire horse is.

       I tucked down close to Mamie's left hoof and listened.

       "What's the matter with Smoke?" I heard Ellen ask her daddy.

       "Violating the rules and regulations again," he said. "I had to beat him this morning, and I'll beat him every time he does it."

       Ellen looked like she was going to cry, but her old man didn't notice it, as he was swallowing a can of hot soup. It smelled good.

       "I brought him two bones, Pop," says Ellen, after watching her old man get around the eats.

       "That's all right," says Jimmie. "Leave them with me."

       Ellen began to whimper, and so I whimpered, and Mamie got uneasy and kicked the side of the stall an awful wallop.

       It looked like we was all in bad. The only thing we had to be thankful for was the weather. The engine-house doors were wide open, and a nice cool breeze swept through the stalls.

       Bing!

       The chain in front of Mamie dropped.

       The gong was sounding our call on a third alarm, and the men came shooting down the brass pole like lightning, one on top of the other.

       Jimmie grabbed Ellen and tossed her in a corner as he dropped his eats.

       Mamie was under the harness, in the center, in one half-second, her collar snapped tight, and she ready to make the big lunge that would start us all off. Prince, just as white as she was, and Togo, looking like a snow horse, flanked her and began slapping the floor with their iron shoes to get the right feel of it for the start.

       Number Sixty-four is the heaviest steamer in the department, and there ain't anything in New York can touch our team, Prince on, the left, Mamie in the middle, and Togo on the right.

       The second alarm, had sounded twenty minutes before, and when the third came to call us out we knew that there was some fire to fight, and that it had the goats of the companies already on the job. The fire was down in the oil-and-paint section below the old Brooklyn Bridge. If it was a paint-house that meant sore eyes for everybody, firemen, horses, cops, and dogs. Paint-smoke cuts like a knife, and the more water you pour on bursting barrels and cans the more hell comes from them.

       Jimmie's kid was safe in the corner, and stood there without fidgeting. There ain't any fireman's little girl afraid of the noise and the rush when we make the start. Jimmie was up in the driver's seat with the reins in his hands, and leaning over Mamie's big white back.

       I ran out and cleared the way for the steamer. I whooped it up as loud as I could, and started the Fulton street peddlers running for cover. I nipped one of the slow ones on the heel, and he hollered. All the truck-drivers heard me and pulled in to the curbs; and that part of my job was done, and done right. All my people were in the fire department, and my Grandmother Blaze had a reputation when she passed in, believe me. Her picture hangs on the wall in the commissioner's office at headquarters.

       We had a down grade on Fulton Street to William, and our team was good and fresh. We made some fast time and turned north on William. I was keeping close to Mamie's nose all along the first stretch, but I knew what a mean street William was. The cross streets are so narrow and close together that any minute a truck might roll out in front of us. So I spread myself and took a half-block lead on Number Sixty-four.

       At Beekman street I got the sting of the paint-smoke, and saw that the blaze was down near Pearl. I turned east, whooping it up for fair, and sending all the people and vehicles out of the middle of the road. Jimmie brought the steamer around the sharp corner with a rush and without touching the stand-pipe or the curb. There ain't a man in the uniform can touch Jimmie for handling a team and steamer as big as ours. He keeps a whip in the socket, but only because the regulations say keep one. If the regulations told him to drive with one eye shut he would shut one eye. That's Jimmie. He's got red hair, and he sticks to the regulations.

       I saw him twist his mouth down in the corner, and I knew he was jollying Mamie about being slow. The old girl spread out a little. Prince was slow, and she turned her pink nose around, as she pulled away, and snapped him on the jaw. The old man come to life and began to work harder. Togo never thinks of anything but getting to a fire, and Mamie had no kick on his work.

       Number Sixty-four was coming down the Beekman street grade to Pearl faster than any steamer ever went over a street in this big town of New York, and so I lit out to increase my distance, knowing there would be danger. The big engine belched and screamed as she come along, and the bell of the hose-wagon behind her kept banging away. But it all didn't count for much. The elevated trains over Pearl street and the big grind of the bridge trains above them would drown any kind of noise. The breeze was blowing from the river, and the smoke got thicker as we ran along.

       I could see Jimmie's eyes watching me over Mamie's white ears as they went up and down, for he depended on me to keep the way clear for him. I wheeled every two bounds to make sure that things were right in both directions. Suddenly Jimmie stood up and began sawing on the reins. I turned a half somersault to rubber for the trouble, and, holy Cerberus, if there wasn't a kid no bigger than myself toddling out in the street!

       The baby was about five feet from the curb and just getting under way to cross the street. About four more steps and it would have been right in line for death. Everybody on the sidewalks was watching the big engine come down the grade, and the little one was so small that nobody noticed it. There was only one thing to do. I jumped for that kid and hit it right in the breast with all my weight. It let out a yell and fell back to the curb. Number Sixty-four had plenty of room, and I saw Jimmie settle back slowly in his seat and lean over Mamie's back again with a grin on his face.

I jumped for that kid and hit it ... with all my weight

 

       We pulled up in one of the short streets down in the swamp section, and of all the smells I ever got this one was the limit. A big wholesale paint-house was one sheet of flame, and the fire had spread to a hide-and-leather warehouse next door. When you mix the smell of burning oil and paint with burning hide and hair, and have to rush right into it and stay in it until the chief orders a retreat, just put it down as coming from old Smoke that, whether you're a man, a horse, or a dog, you know that you're earning your keep.

       Jimmie was off his seat in one jump and loosening the bits of the horses. He stopped long enough to give me a slap on the shoulder for getting that kid out of his way, and I felt mighty good. What's a beating between old friends, anyhow?

       But there wasn't any time for talking or tail-wagging. The sparks were falling through the smoke and smell, and Jimmie covered the team up to the eyes. Croker was right there on the job, and he was the maddest chief that ever tackled a fire. There was only one thing that ever got him to cussing out real loud, and that was when a fire got beyond four walls in the downtown section.

       There wasn't any use wasting time on the paint-fire. There was nothing left there but burning oil, white-hot iron, and red-hot walls. The fire in the hide-and-hair layout was on the sixth floor, right under the roof. It had eaten in through the eaves, and had a good hold on the roof timbers and the stuff piled up close to them.

       The men were dropping like flies from the smoke. It cut holes in their lungs and made their eyes hang down on their black faces. There was ambulances from Gouverneur, St. Vincent, and the Hudson Street hospitals. The doctors would cart off our crowd and cool 'em off and find places for them where they could breathe right.

       Nellie, — and she's a daisy, — the mascot of Number Seventy engine, come wagging over to me and told me that Croker was working all hands on account of the crews being crippled by smoke. Her driver, Mike Tiernan, and Jimmie Kelley, she said, would all be up in the hide-and-hair building in about three seconds. The cops would look out for the horses.

       I was telling Nellie that she was some mascot when I heard Croker yell through his megaphone and saw the battalion chiefs beginning to get their men together.

       I asked her if she was going to follow Mike, and she said she was going to follow him if she got the chance, but that the men had been kicking her around for a half hour, and she knew she was going to get a beating when they got back to the house. She asked me what I was going to do.

       "Well," I told her, "I'm just going to go as far as the regulations let me. I got a beating this morning myself. In my company they let the mascot go as far as the floor beneath the fighting-line. I been in this business all my life, and my Grandmother Blaze has her picture hanging in the commissioner's office. Jimmie gives me an awful beating every time I break the rules, but there is no telling what will happen in a fire like this one. I'll keep after Jimmie and stay on the floor below him if nothing happens, but if anything happens the regulations won't stand a chance."

       Just then Jimmie turned his helmet and beat it into the hide-and-hair layout.

II

SAY, if you can imagine every man in Sixty-four company doing something terrible wrong and all being sent to hell at once, that would put an end to hell. Our crew would put out the whole big fire and then wet down the cinders. They're smoke-eaters. They just live on it. I've seen Sixty-four get away with gases in a big drug-house blaze right in this block that would kill Mamie to sniff, and Mamie has lungs and then some more lungs.

       I waited until the hose-lines were stretched in the hide-and-hair building, and then sneaked in and followed them. I knew that there would be nozzles at the other end, and that my Jimmie would be right there with a big piece of brass in his hands. He ain't afraid of anything except a trial before the commissioner for violating rules and regulations. He is a fireman, and he's had medals pinned on him by the mayor. I seen them in his flat on Rose Street.

       I got up to the fifth floor and remembered the beating I got in the morning. So I stopped there. Jimmie and the crew was up on the sixth, and there was some smoke. It cut at your throat like the sharp teeth of a young bull terrier. I had to stay there and eat it, and I had lots of time to think over things, for the bunch up-stairs would never retreat until they got the word from the foreman, and the foreman never slips it to them until a battalion chief or Croker himself shouts it.

       I was thinking over things when along comes a white patch to the head of the stairs. Never mind how black it is, you can tell a fire chief. He wears a white helmet and white rubbers, coat and all. It was Croker. He was feeling the hose with his feet and going up to the fighting-line. I beat it over to one side, and he passed me without knowing that I was there. I felt a little easier about Jimmie. When Croker was chief and was around at a fire, there wasn't a man, horse, or dog didn't feel better for seeing him. He used to swear something awful, and chew cigars and spit around enough to put out a one-alarm; but he was one firefighter.

       He went up to the top, and the smell of hide and hair got worse. I was strangling, and so hunted around for a hose-coupling that leaked. I got one and found the puddle, and stuck my nose in it and kept it there. That's one of the first things a department mascot gets next to. You can take any Dalmatian that's born in the business and lock him in a gas chamber with a bucket of water, and he'll come out alive as long as the water has any air in it.

       I could hear the men up-stairs scrambling around, and the ax crew began to make some noise. But there wasn't anything about that to worry me, and I fell to thinking over things again. The regulations always keep me guessing. Now this one about a dog staying on the floor below the firemen might mean all right for mutts, but it don't do any good with a dog that was born in an engine house. The idea of that rule is that when the time comes for a retreat a fireman might stumble over the mascot and not be able to get up and make the getaway. Nobody ever stumbled over me, or over my mother, or my father, and my Grandmother Blaze — but I told you about her picture up at headquarters. Before Blaze croaked from old age she told me a lot of things. She said that if the smoke was so thick she couldn't see, and if it was a hide or paint fire, and she couldn't get the scent of her driver, she could feel just where he was. She told me that if I got to love the people around me I could sense things and know just where they were and what was happening to them, even if they were miles away. She was right.

       I was thinking about the old lady when something told me that things weren't right up above. I knew that the crew was losing out in the fight, and I was certain of it when three men came staggering down with axes and began to smash at the windows. They knocked them out in a jiffy, and the smoke come rushing by like a cloud, but some air come in, and I took my nose out of the puddle. There was a little light too.

       I saw Mike Tiernan, Nellie's boss, stick his head out of a window, and signal. Then he leaned far over and put a hand to his ear. I knew what that meant. He was getting the order to beat it. I felt the floor under me getting warm. The fire had mushroomed down from the eaves, had chewed up the laths back of the plastering, and was eating away at the beams under the fifth floor.

       Tiernan turned and rushed up-stairs, yelling the order to retreat I began to feel uneasy. I seen Croker, many a time, jump just a second before a roof dropped, after getting all the men away, but I seen Jimmie Kelley stick on a fire job so long that I began to hate him.

       The men come jumping down, all coughing and choking. Croker was staggering like he had begun a hard souse. Jimmie was the last to come down, and as he come I heard a crash. The base pins of the stairs, under the floor, had burned out. There was a sprinkle of warm water, and I knew that the fire had reached the hose the men had just dropped.

       The top of a ladder poked over the window-sill, and the men, some of them on all fours, like dogs, went for it and crawled over to the outside.

       I wagged over to Jimmie, and brushed against his leg to remind him that I had stuck to regulations. The smoke was thicker with the fall of the stairs, and it was getting hotter.

       The patch of light, where the window was, went out, the smoke was so thick. Jimmie dropped to his knees and began to feel his way with his hands. The fire in the beams under our floor began to work through, and every now and then I would get singed. Jimmie was coughing awful hard, and I heard him say, "Mother in heaven! Mother in heaven!" Something was wrong with him, for his mother ain't in heaven. She's in the flat around on Rose street, right opposite Johnny Murphy's "Little Six" saloon, where Duane Street ends.

       The regulations required me to go down to the fourth floor when the fighting-line retreated to the fifth, but regulations is meant for nice, quiet times. My pal was up against it on the fifth floor, and I guess I know my place. I'll take my beating. Nellie is going to get hers tonight, and there is some consolation in that.

I felt Jimmie's hand touch my bank. He was trying to follow me

 

       I felt Jimmie's hand touch my back. He was trying to follow me. A big red gout came out of the floor, and I see the window again. The top of the ladder begun to move back. They must have thought that Jimmie was safe below. I left my pal and bounced to the window, and, believe me, I whooped it up louder than I ever did while on the run to a fire.

       The bunch on the street heard me, and Skinny Deevers, our foreman, recognized my voice. I saw him begin to dance around, and then the top of the ladder fell back in place.

       Skinny came up like a squirrel, and five men took their places on the rungs below him. When Skinny reached the sill he tried to grab me, but I ducked and began barking to him. He swiped at me again, but I pulled back and barked some more. Then another sheet of flame come out of the floor, and I ran to Jimmie. The foreman bounced in the window when he saw my boss, and pulled him to the ladder in three yanks.

       The floor began to sag. Something was giving away. I got my nose to the air as Skinny passed Jimmie down, and it was good air I guess.

       I heard the chief shouting up for Skinny to hustle, but Skinny knew his business, and he wasn't going to run any chance of dropping my boss five floors to the sidewalk. He was that sure and easy in every grip that it's up to me never to forget that man.

       The floor sagged again, and I crawled to the window sill.

       Skinny was following my boss as the men passed him along, and he was down to the third floor. All I could do was to wag my tail on the hot window-sill, hoping he would hear it and know I was thanking him.

       Suddenly Skinny turned and began to climb up the ladder again. I heard Croker shout to him to come back, and, according to regulations, it was up to him to retreat, even if his own brother was in the building.

He come up to the top rung and pulled me off the window-sill, and down we went together

 

       But he didn't mind the regulations. He come up to the top rung and pulled me off the window-sill, and down we went together, me holding to his shoulder like little Ellen used to hang on to my pal's shoulder when she was a baby and her mother used to bring her around to the engine-house of an afternoon.

(THE END)

from the syndicated edition Washington Herald, (1914-mar-01), p14