Judd
Mortimer Lewis May
18,1939 717
JUBlLEE'S PARDNER
Today was Thursday, and all the world was wet
with dew this morning and lielocks were blooming and all other kinds of flowers
getting ready to. I was skinning out for home to milk my cows last night and a
man passed me on the other side of the street leading a dog, and the man looked
like a bum and I
the dog looked like Alfred's dog Pat, and he saw me and tried to come
acrosst the street to me but the
man jerked on the rope, so when they had got a long ways past me I turned
around and followed them and they went out past the stink factory and past
where the hanted house used to be and turned in a lot where there was a rackety
house and an old shed, and I seen the man take the dog in the shed and I was
walking past whistling when the man came out by himself, and he said,
"Have you lost something?" and I said, "No sir, I am looking for
my two cows," and he said, "Do you think I have got them'?" and
I said , "No sir, I think I know where they are “and then he said if I
knowed where they were I had better go get them, and I said, "Yes sir,”
and chaseted myself. When I had let Jubilee down by his rope and put on my
short britches and went down and was milking and the bunch came Alfred wasn’t with
them, and when Youniss and Feeble and Maggie had came and we had got to school
I asted Alfred how Pat was getting along and his eyes filled with tears and he
said Pat was lost but his father was going to put a piece in the paper and he
said whoever had him would bring him back for the reward, and I told him that
if he would get his father after school I would show him where Pat was at, and
when we got in school he asted the teacher if he might be excused, and he was
gone quite a while, and a little while after he came and took his seat his
father came and said something to the teacher and she said Alfred and I might
be excused for the day, so Alfred and me and his father and Jubilee skun out,
and on the way his father got me to tell him all about the man and he said I was
a smart boy, and when we got to the man's house we went in the yard and
was going to the shed when the man came out and asted where we was going and
Alfred’s father said we was going in the shed, and the man said it was his
shed, and Alfred’s father said he had his dog in it, and the man stood with his
back against the shed door, and Alfred’s father pulled him away and twisted his
arm behind him and held him and said for us to get Pat, and we did, and when
Alfred’s father let the man go he said, “the next time I won’t swipe him, I'll
shoot him," and Alfred's father said, "And after we've gone to the
dog's funeral we'll go to your'n,” and we walked out with him scowling at us.
Alfred's father wanted to give me the dollar reward but I wouldn't take it.
Sometimes I think I ain't so very bright. We played at Angela's after school
let out till it was my milking time. When I am a man I will never earn a living
stealing people's dogs.