“Humph! That dog was thirsty all right,” said the engineer as he leaned out of his cab window and watched his engine getting a drink too. “I wonder where that dog came from?”
“I came from a freight car――that’s where I came from,” said Don, but of course he spoke only to himself, sort of thinking like, and the engineer did not hear anything.
Don took another drink of the cool water, and he did not mind if it was a bit muddy. At home, in his kennel, Bob the boy, would never think of giving his pet dog anything but clean water to drink.
“But it’s different, when you run away,” thought Don. “Then you have to take what you can get.”
He felt much better, now that he had quenched his thirst. But he was beginning to feel hungry.
“The bone I left in the car is no good, for there is no more meat on it,” thought Don. “I shall have to look for a new one.”
Then, for the first time since he had come out of the freight car, Don looked about him, to see where he was. He saw many trains, and railroad tracks, and, off in the distance a number of houses and church spires as well as factory chimneys.
“I must be in some city,” thought Don. And he was right. The freight train had stopped outside a large city, where Don was going to have many adventures. Only, of course, he did not know that just now.
Poor Don was very tired, quite hungry and very dirty, for the floor of the freight car had no clean straw on it as had the dog kennel at the farm. In fact Don did not look like a nice dog at all. But he did not know this, for he had no looking glass to tell him. I very much doubt if dogs use mirrors,――don’t you? Anyhow, Don did not feel like himself. He was beginning to be more and more sorry every minute that he had run away.
“But, as long as I have, I must make the best of it,” thought Don. “And the first thing to do is to get something to eat.”
He trotted over the railroad tracks, and soon found himself running along the streets of a big city. He had never been in such a large one before, though once he had gone to a small one, not far from the farm, with Bob and the farmer. But this was a very big city, and Don had not a friend in it. He sniffed and smelled, as he ran along, trying to find something to eat. At last he smelled meat, and oh! how hungry it made him. He ran toward the smell, but, just as he turned the corner near it, he heard a voice cry: