Mayor Nobel Doyle had never really liked Cathy Stevens. It probably went back to when they were children and Cathy had called him “Stinky” and his brother “Dirty Doyle,” even though they were the grandchildren of one of the founders of Doverville. But that was a long time ago, and now there were far more recent reasons for him not to like her. Cathy had been a thorn in his side about the whole dog question, taking in all the dogs he was trying to get rid of, and getting major national publicity for it in LIKE magazine in an article that did not even mention him by name but simply called him “the dog-hating mayor of Doverville.” It had always been his dream to get his name in a national magazine.
But there was nothing the mayor could do about Cathy, for she lived outside of the city limits.
“Well, why don’t you just move those darn city limits past her farm then,” his brother suggested in all his brilliance.
“Brilliant!” the mayor declared. And he told the Town Council to make it so.
It was with great pleasure that Mayor Doyle drove himself out to just beyond the Stevens farm to plant the new city limits sign. He then went to visit Cathy Stevens, who had been watching him from the barn.
“To what do we owe the ‘honor,’ Your Honor?” Mrs. Stevens asked when the mayor got out of his fancy car.
“Mrs. Stevens, I can appreciate that living out of town all these years has deprived you of any real sense of community, which is a real shame. But our town is growing, you might say, and I came out here to officially welcome you to Doverville.” The mayor smiled pleasantly. But Mrs. Stevens knew it was only a sneer in disguise. “That means, of course, the dogs will have to go.”
“It takes more than moving a sign to change a town, Stinky. The dogs are not going anywhere, and neither am I!”
Upon hearing his old nickname, the mayor’s smile dropped its disguise. “The dogs will go, Mrs. Stevens. For their sake I hope you’re not as foolish as you sound.”
As the mayor’s car drove away, Cathy Stevens marched across the snow-covered field to the edge of the road, pulled the city limits sign out of the ground, and tossed it away.
Max wondered why they seemed upset—the kids and the nice lady. The nice lady had been outside of the barn talking to someone who had a voice that Max did not like at all. Maybe that’s why they were upset. But now the lady was in the barn.
“Any luck?” the lady said to the kids.
“No,” the girl said. “Max still won’t come out of the doghouse.”
“Mom,” the boy questioned, “can Mayor Doyle really take the dogs?”
“I don’t know, Mike. I know he’s going to try, but how, I don’t know. He’s only got a one-man police force and his brother to help him. Still, we better be on our guard.”
“It’s like a war then,” the boy said, worried.
“Well, honey, ‘war’ may be too strong a word.”
But “war” wasn’t too strong a word for Nobel and Norman Doyle. War is exactly how they thought of their campaign to drive out the dogs. Mrs. Stevens started feeling the effects of that campaign almost immediately when she went into town to get food for the dogs. First, there was Ralph at the general store, who told her that he just wasn’t stocking dog kibbles anymore. Then there was John, the butcher who had always given her the trims from the meat, but now he refused. And others in the town were suddenly just as uncooperative. It was then that Mrs. Stevens knew this was serious. New orphan dogs were coming in every week, new mouths to feed, and Mrs. Stevens now didn’t know where she was going to get the food.
She lay in bed that night worrying about it and did not fall asleep until the wee hours. Unfortunately it was in the wee hours that bug-face Melvin took a pair of wire cutters and cut a hole in her dog-yard fence.
The next morning, before leaving for school, Mike said good-bye to Yeti, and Emma said good-bye to the puppy, both expecting not to see their dogs again until after school. But it was not to be. The new hole in the fence, which no one had noticed, allowed Yeti and the puppy to happily run after Mrs. Stevens’s truck, eventually making it into town and to the school.
Class started that morning with spelling, which Mrs. Walsh, who had reluctantly taken over Mrs. Clancy’s class, was testing the students on. She called first on Miranda, the smartest kid in the school, and asked her to spell discipline, Mrs. Walsh’s favorite word.
Miranda, who was happy to have been called upon, stood up quickly and said, “Discipline, D-I-S-C-I-P-L-IN-E.” After defining the word she sat down pertly, for she knew she had spelled the word correctly.
“Good, very good,” Mrs. Walsh said as she looked for her next “volunteer.” It did not take her long to decide, turning to Emma and asking her to spell prevarication. Emma stood up and was about to do so when Yeti casually walked into the classroom, just as if she belonged there, followed by the puppy, leaping and bouncing about, eventually leaping into Emma’s arms. This canine invasion shocked Mrs. Walsh, but delighted the kids. Mrs. Walsh got over her shock quickly, though, and, disgusted, grabbed Yeti by the collar and escorted her out of the classroom. “Out-out-out!”
Mike and Emma ran to the window and soon saw Mrs. Walsh dragging Yeti across the snow-covered schoolyard in her high-heeled shoes, then shooing her away. They couldn’t help but laugh at the sight. Then they heard an awful noise. It was the warped putt-putt and occasional rude backfire of the Fearsome Machine, which could be seen coming around the corner. Bug-face Melvin was driving, and Norman Doyle was standing up in his seat vigilantly looking for criminal dogs, like Captain Ahab searching for Moby Dick. Mike and Emma knew they quickly had to go out and find Yeti and take her and the puppy, which was still in Emma’s arms, and hide them. They grabbed their hats and coats and were just running out of the classroom when Mrs. Walsh returned. Mike dashed around her, but she blocked Emma’s way, giving her a look that would have melted her like wax, had Emma not been an adventure hero.
“Prevarication, P-R-E-V—uh, it’s a deviation from the truth,” Emma said as she attempted to move past the principal, but Mrs. Walsh grabbed her by the arm. “Did you bring that dog to school?” she demanded to know.
“What dog?” Emma said with innocent eyes while holding the puppy close. Mrs. Walsh was so taken aback by this prevarication, she let go of Emma, who then ran from the classroom.
Mike and Emma had exactly the same idea, and they took the dogs to the large storage shack at the rear of the school, hiding themselves deep in the darkness. But it was too obvious a choice, for bug-face Melvin and Norman soon rode up on the Fearsome Machine, stopping right in front of the shack’s door.
Emma turned to Mike. “You hide; I’ll distract Norman.” Just as Norman, with old dog-sniffing Scratch in his arms, came into the shack, Emma bolted out of the shadows and headed deeper into the shack, into a back room where she found a stack of long corrugated metal culverts of various sizes, including one that was just right for a girl and her dog to hide in.
Emma put the puppy into the big tube and was just climbing in after him, when she heard the door of the room slam, then Norman thumping around, and then old Scratch letting out a threatening yowl. “You caused me a lot of trouble, but you’re not getting out of this one,” Norman said. Emma held the puppy tight and her breath still, hoping Norman would not think to look in the culverts. Unfortunately she could not stop scent, and soon old Scratch found them out. Norman’s shaggy head appeared at the end of the culvert, grinning in triumph. “Look what I have, puppy,” he said, holding out his cat as a tempting treat. Emma tried to keep the puppy from running, but a cat is a cat, and puppies chase cats, and that’s all there is to it. The puppy broke Emma’s grip and soon found himself in Norman’s welcoming, though not very loving, arms.
By the time Emma got herself out of the culvert and out of the shack, the Fearsome Machine was driving away, with Yeti locked into the dog cage and the puppy bouncing around in a dog net hanging off the back.
“Emma,” came a plea from behind her. She turned around and saw Mike hanging by his coat high on a hook on the wall inside the shack. “Get me down,” he said as he struggled like a worm. Had they not just lost their dogs to bug-face Melvin and Dogcatcher Doyle, it might have been a very funny sight.