I started looking for her. I went to the barn, the corncrib, and looked under the porch. I called her name. It was no use.
I rounded up my sisters and asked if they had seen Little Ann. The youngest one said she had seen her go down into the garden. I went there, calling her name. She wouldn't answer my call.
I was about to give up, and then I saw her. She had wiggled her way far back under the thorny limbs of a blackberry bush in the corner of the garden. I talked to her and tried to coax her out. She wouldn't budge. I got down on my knees and crawled back to her. As I did, she raised her head and looked at me.
Her eyes told the story. They weren't the soft gray eyes I had looked into so many times. They were dull and cloudy. There was no fire, no life. I couldn't understand.
I carried her back to the house. I offered her food and water. She wouldn't touch it. I noticed how lifeless she was. I thought perhaps she had a wound I had overlooked. I felt and probed with my fingers. I could find nothing.
My father came and looked at her. He shook his head and said, 'Billy, it's no use. The life has gone out of her. She has no will to live.'
He turned and walked away.
I couldn't believe it. I couldn't.
With eggs and rich cream, I made a liquid. I pried her mouth open and poured it down. She responded to nothing I did. I carried her to the porch, and laid her in the same place I had laid the body of Old Dan. I covered her with gunny sacks.
All through the night I would get up and check on her. Next morning I took warm fresh milk and again I opened her mouth and fed her. It was a miserable day for me. At noon it was the same. My dog had just given up. There was no will to live.
That evening when I came in from the fields, she was gone. I hurried to my mother. Mama told me she had seen her go up the hollow from the house, so weak she could hardly stand. Mama had watched her until she had disappeared in the timber.
I hurried up the hollow, calling her name. I called and called. I went up to the head of it, still calling her name and praying she would come to me. I climbed out onto the flats; looking, searching, and calling. It was no use. My dog was gone.
I had a thought, a ray of hope. I just knew I'd find her at the grave of Old Dan. I hurried there.
I found her lying on her stomach, her hind legs stretched out straight, and her front feet folded back under her chest. She had laid her head on his grave. I saw the trail where she had dragged herself through the leaves. The way she lay there, I thought she was alive. I called her name. She made no movement. With the last ounce of strength in her body, she had dragged herself to the grave of Old Dan.
Kneeling down by her side, I reached out and touched her. There was no response, no whimpering cry or friendly wag of her tail. My little dog was dead.
I laid her head in my lap and with tear-filled eyes gazed up into the heavens. In a choking voice, I asked, 'Why did they have to die? Why must I hurt so? What have I done wrong?'
I heard a noise behind me. It was my mother. She sat down and put her arm around me.
'You've done no wrong, Billy,' she said. 'I know this seems terrible and I know how it hurts, but at one time or another, everyone suffers. Even the Good Lord suffered while He was here on earth.'
'I know, Mama,' I said, 'but I can't understand. It was bad enough when Old Dan died. Now Little Ann is gone. Both of them gone, just like that.'
'Billy, you haven't lost your dogs altogether,'
Mama said. 'You'll always have their memory. Besides, you can have some more dogs.'
I rebelled at this. 'I don't want any more dogs,' I said. 'I won't ever want another dog. They wouldn't be like Old Dan and Little Ann.'
'We all feel that way, Billy,' she said. 'I do especially. They've fulfilled a prayer that I thought would never be answered.'
'I don't believe in prayers any more,' I said. 'I prayed for my dogs, and now look, both of them are dead.'
