Polytechnic High School - Caerulea Yearbook (Long Beach, CA)

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10 CAERULEA '20 A hundred yards away, the driver of the maiI-stage shut off the roaring motor and, with a final coast, pulled up in front of the Lost Hills Post Ofiice. With an exchange oi, How vuh comin'? and. Fine 'n' cIancin two mail sacks were thrown out onto the boards. The driver climbed out and caught up eager, dancing Little Yellow Dog, and, smooth ing the slightly curly yellow coat, talked to him in kind tones. The little dog squirmed and writhed in pleasure and joy and reached out a pointed little snout and red tongue to lick the gray dust from the bronzed features of the man. Proudly he sat beside the driver as they delivered a freezer of what was once iee-cream to the shop at the end of the dusty main street. The man then proceeded to 01' Cap's Bar to drink a cool- ing drink; and then would Little Yellow Dog play and leap and ioyously bark little sharp, high-pitched swift barks while the envi- ous mangy pack of curs looked on. Many happy, sun-filled days were passed in this way. Many times the stage rolled ineand rolIeeI away, in a cloud of dust, iust as the sun dropped behind the iar-off gold and purple hills. Then would Little Yellow Dog slink out unto the silent desert, his home, and wait for the old moon to rise out of the High Sierras ancI flood the plains with a soft, clear light. His weird, Ioneiy cry then quavered upon the still, clear, desert air. II The inevitable came. One day the mail-stage failed to arrive. nor did it come on the next. A week passed slowly, and still no maiI-stage rolled in from outside. Nothing of railroad strikes anti tie-ups did Yellow Dog know. Each day he watched the ribbon of road that stretched away to the east, and grew lean. chased and hunted by the merciless pack. Connection with the world was stopped. The men of the town and nearby oiI-camps waited and swore. The stage and driver ran on 1 more profitable run to the great cities.

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Nineteen Twenty on the eastern horizon, a low and glisten- ing dust cloud. He arose and directed his pointed little ears and nose toward it. It was the mail-stage, still a score of miles BWaY. but coming with a smooth roar of its twin six cylinders and a bright reflec- tion from its shining sides. The Post-master of Lost Hills was a fat and lazy desert rat . Wrapped in ice creams and a dirty silk shirt, with a frayed slouch Panama hat over his ruddy, dripping face, he came out of the Post- olfice shack, perspiring and sweating at the heat, and watched the approaching dust-cloud. On time all til, he muttered. Why can't that fool driver on the mountain run get in on time? He mapped his dripping forehead and face with a bandana. The stage neared. Its roar could now be heard. Little Yellow Dog loped out to meet itea low, slinking lope, for his mother had been a swift-fox, that wary, seldom-seen phantom of the western plains. He glanced back over his shoulder at the sleeping dogs of the townsite. His mouth was opened wide because of the heat and also because he was smiling. The few hours that the stage was in Were, for him, joyful, generous, and kindly hours, spent with the Mm . Cool water l3 rarityL a iuicy steak-bone, or a piece of bread were the wonderful things he received. but best of all, protection from the dirty gaunt pack of beggar dogs, who despised him because of his wild blood so plainly shown in his very appearance.

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LITERARY l I With drooping head and tail, Little Yellow Dog took to the out- skirts of the camp, haunting the oii-camps. foraging for bits of food. BY day he slept in some deserted den or in the shade of the sage- brush. By night he prowleci around the camps and hunted the few small animals that exist on that baked valley floor. One soft night, answering the call of his wild blood. he turned his sharp nose toward the bare. lifeless Western hills. Far oii from the black, gaunt forest of tall oil-derricks was a lonely, deserted Wildcaf' well. Little Yellow Dog's course passed it. As he neared the silent, skeleton-iike derrick, he noticed a small, glowing fire, around which three men sprawled at rest. Four horses, ready saddled. were quietiy standing by the foot of the derrick. Perhaps the men might leave scraps about, he that: so he laid his pointed nose between his fore-paws and watched and waited in the shadows. 0:: the same night, across the Coast Range at the coast station. the driver was filling his gas tanks. loading in the mail bags and making ready for his first trip over a dangerous and lonely moun- tain and desert road. When the valley railroads were again running, the driver had been assigned a new run, the long, tiresome, night-mn , from the Coast to Bakersfield with the registered mail, which passed thru Lost Hills. III Keen hearing, inherited from ancestors of the desert, enabled Little Yellow Dog to hear the faint roar of a iar-off motor long before one of the men by the oiI-derriek heard it and stepped out into the highway close by. Little Yellow Dog crept out to the road. For long, listless days he had watched and waited for a roaring black car to come in over the desert. Now one came. The glare of its headlights increased as it neared. When about a hundred yards down the road from. the sentinel