Michael sprang away again, and was numbly aware of an ancient joy as he shouldered Jerry who shouldered against him as they ran side by side.  But most of the joy was Jerry’s, as was the wildest of the skurrying and the racing and the shouldering, of the body-wriggling, and ear-pricking, and yelping cries.  Also, Jerry barked; and Michael did not bark.

“He used to bark,” said Villa.

“Much more than Jerry,” Harley supplemented.

“Then they have taken the bark out of him,” she concluded.  “He must have gone through terrible experiences to have lost his bark.”

* * * * *

The green California spring merged into tawny summer, as Jerry, ever running afield, made Michael acquainted with the farthest and highest reaches of the Kennan ranch in the Valley of the Moon.  The pageant of the wild flowers vanished until all that lingered on the burnt hillsides were orange poppies faded to palest gold, and Mariposa lilies, wind-blown on slender stems amidst the desiccated grasses, that smouldered like ornate spotted moths fluttering in rest for a space between flight and flight.

And Michael, a follower always where the exuberant Jerry led, sought throughout the passing year for what he could not find.

“Looking for something, looking for something,” Harley would say to Villa.  “It is not alive.  It is not here.  Now just what is it he is always looking for?”

Steward it was, and Michael never found him.  The Nothingness held him and would not yield him up, although, could Michael have journeyed a ten-days’ steamer-journey into the South Pacific to the Marquesas, Steward he would have found, and, along with him, Kwaque and the Ancient Mariner, all three living like lotus-eaters on the beach-paradise of Taiohae.  Also, in and about their grass-thatched bungalow under the lofty avocado trees, Michael would have found other pet—­cats, and kittens, and pigs, donkeys and ponies, a pair of love-birds, and a mischievous monkey or two; but never a dog and never a cockatoo.  For Dag Daughtry, with violence of language, had laid a taboo upon dogs.  After Killeny Boy, he averred, there should be no other dog.  And Kwaque, without averring anything at all, resolutely refrained from possessing himself of the white cockatoos brought ashore by the sailors off the trading schooners.

But Michael was long in giving over his search for Steward, and, running the mountain trails or scrambling and sliding down into the deep canyons, was ever expectant and ready for Steward to step forth before him, or to pick up the unmistakable scent that would lead him to him.

“Looking for something, looking for something,” Harley Kennan would chant curiously, as he rode beside Villa and observed Michael’s unending search.  “Now Jerry’s after rabbits, and fox-trails; but you’ll notice they don’t interest Michael much.  They’re not what he’s after.  He behaves like one who has lost a great treasure and doesn’t know where he lost it nor where to look for it.”