ANY FRIEND of OWNEY'S

He had done it again. He knew it. There would be trouble. Maybe it wouldn't have happened if he hadn't raced Unger up the steps of the Washington Monument or played tag with Dopper around the reflecting pool at the Lincoln Memorial or been so bouncy in the Library of Congress before they had come to the Smithsonian Institution.

He rubbed his eyes sleepily.

Miss Jasper, his teacher had warned him. "Calm down, Gilbert Wharton. Just calm down. Walk, don't run."

Mr. Johnson, the school principal, had warned him too. "What are you trying to do, Gib? Try out for the Boy Scout Olympic team?" They couldn't understand. Not even fathers and mothers remember that tingling, screechy feeling that makes your muscles yell and yell to move, and your whole body light and bubbly when you're eleven years old going on twelve and patrol leader of the Wolves in Troop Two in Lindenwold, New Jersey.

Nobody, except maybe Whizzer and Joe and Teddy could know that hugging, secret feeling that made you want to sing goo-gag-goo-ga real loud while your mind ran in and out of all the new sights and sounds of strange marvels until everything ran down and out like the sand in his mother's hourglass egg timer on the kitchen table.

Well, he had run down. Just for a little minute, he thought.

And there he was.

Nobody had told him what to do if he woke up in a corner of the Smithsonian Institution after closing hours to find his teacher and the principal and the whole sixth grade class from Lindenwold, New Jersey, gone away. One measly little nap, and the watch, Swiss, waterproof, Scout model, that his Uncle Grigsby had given him for Christmas said twelve o'clock midnight. One skinny little nap behind the exhibit board with the Indian faces on it, and there he was.

He felt trembly. The Smithsonian was a mighty scary place, and a lonesome one too. There were lights glowing in corridors and corners, faint and sleepy lights in a doze glow. He had the feeling that there were people around, if he knew where to look for them. If he could find that door where he'd come in with the class, there might be guards or watchmen around. He could find it. Scouts were resourceful. Then again, maybe there would be trouble. He didn't belong in any old Smithsonian Institution at twelve o'clock at night.

If lost, don't panic. Stay where you are. That's in the Handbook. Maybe the best thing to do was to crawl right behind that exhibit board again until the Smithsonian opened in the morning. Miss jasper and Mr. Johnson might be waiting if they hadn't gone on the boat ride with the class to see George Washington's house at Mount Vernon. Maybe the police and the government, since he was in Washington, would be waiting too.

He felt like crying. He was too big to cry. He kicked the leg of a table instead until the glass exhibit box on top of it rattled.

"I bet if I got caught in here right now, they'd say I was trying to steal a steam engine or maybe an old-timey airplane." He said it out loud and his voice ran down a corridor and bounced an echo back at him.

It was a mighty odd echo.

"Steam engines are best," it said. "I like trains myself."

Gib Wharton took a deep breath. He held it until it ran bubbling through his tight lips with a faint whoosh. "Did somebody say something?" he asked in a small voice.

"Me. I said I liked trains. You were going to steal one, weren't you?"

"I was not," said Gib, upset at such an unfair question.

"Where are you?"

"Don't look out and up. Look down. I'm not a horse, you know."

Gib looked. There was a dog sitting on the floor before him. It was a small dog with a sandy coat which bristled and tufted around his body in a reckless array of short hairs, medium-sized hairs and long hairs, some of them straight, but most of them curled. It was an old man of a dog with a wise face disguised as a mop . Two bright, glistening eyes peeked from that tangle. It was, furthermore, a dog in uniform, if its harness from which hung many small tags, could be called a uniform. Around its neck was a broad ribbon also decorated with many medals.

Gib stared. He was too curious to be frightened. There was something familiar about that dog.

"Don't I know you?" he asked.

"Certainly," answered the animal. "You stared at me long enough this afternoon before you took your silly nap. I'm Owney. Remember? Owney, the famous postal dog who was mailed around the world. Owney, mascot of the United States Post Office Department, and friend of kings, that's me."

Gib remembered. "But you're, you're you're..."

"I know," snapped the dog testily. "I'm dead, stuffed in a glass case, a free lunch for moths, canceled like a used stamp, as a result of a dog fight in Toledo, Ohio, in 1897." He paused delicately. "I lost."

It was not polite. And he was just a touch nervous. But Gib giggled. "Then how is it you can trot around here alive? And, if you don't mind my saying so, talking?"

"I frequently feel the need of exercise," said Owney, slipping his tongue from the corner of his mouth with a wet, nasty cluck.

"And you're old enough to know that the dead business is only a manner of speaking. How dead do you think Abraham Lincoln is? Or Snowshoe Thompson who carried the mail over the Sierra Mountains in the winter? As for talking, I'm mostly a Scotch-Irish terrier. It's a blend of breed given to conversation. Anyhow this is the Smithsonian, and most things, even the machines, have such big stories that they talk every chance they get, especially between midnight and four in the morning while most of the watchmen take a government nap before they start their rounds again. Listen. Do you hear that?"

Gib tilted his head. From somewhere above him, far, far above, he could sense an engine droning softly but powerfully. It spoke of high winds and vast waters, talked with a special music of streaky clouds and a pale moon.

"You're too young to remember," explained Owney, "but back in 1927 a man named Lindbergh was the first to fly across the Atlantic Ocean alone. That's his plane, the Spirit of St. Louis, you hear talking. So you shouldn't be surprised at me. Don't bother listening to that plane. It took thirty-three hours to make the trip. No wonder Mr. Lindbergh needed a lot of sandwiches."

"I could use one myself," said Gib.

"Being stuffed, I couldn't eat a thing," chuckled Owney. "Oh, the Scotch and the Irish are fond of jokes. Would you like a drink? There's a water cooler nearby. You are spending the night, I think."

"Did you say the watchmen come around at four in the morning?" asked Gib.

"Don't worry. You'll be all right."

"I don't want to get into any more trouble than I'm in. Don't you think I ought to look for one of them?"

"Why?" snapped Owney.

"So he could call Miss Jasper and Mr. Johnson at the motel, and they could come get me," said Gib, and his throat felt lumpy. He suddenly realized that he didn't know the name of the motel, but it was by a bridge and on a riverbank. Owney hunched and scratched. "Wouldn't you think that after sixty-seven years a flea would give up?" He cocked an ear. "Let's put it this way," he said. "It's very unusual to find a boy in the Smithsonian Institution at midnight, right? Well, it's my observation that any unusual situation is likely to be considered more unusual than it really is, right? So let 'em find you on their own, as part of their daily chores. That makes the unusual more usual. What's more they'll feel sorry for you and do something sensible about it. I was trapped in a mail sack once. . . ."

Gib thought about the dog's words.

"Besides," continued Owney, "you may not get to hear the full story of my life. The short version takes about four hours. That's because I'm Scotch-Irish, you know."

He shook himself, jingling his medals. "Dusty, that's me. Glass case and all. You'd think they'd do better for a hero which is also me. But I guess they're cutting sums of money set aside for the Post Office and replacing men with machines and machines can't dust very well."

"Whatever are you talking about?" asked Gib, suddenly feeling more cheerful.

"Old dog talk," said Owney. "Dogs and people get old, you know. Let's see now. I reported for duty at the Post Office in Albany, New York, in 1888. I never told any- body but I was five at the time. Five man-years, that is. You know, of course, that every year a dog lives is supposed to be equal to seven man-years. Well, I tangled with that pit bull in Toledo in 1897. That was fourteen dog-years and ninety-eight man-years. I've been in the Smithsonian for sixty-seven years. Your mother could keep that glass case cleaner.... So right now I'm 165 years old. How old are you?"

Gib did feel better, although he couldn't exactly tell why. "I'm eleven going on twelve. In case I didn't say, my name is Gilbert Wharton and I live in Lindenwold, New Jersey."

"Probably a Rural Free Delivery Route," said Owney.

"I thank you for talking to me," said Gib shyly.

"I'll tell you something," said Owney. "First there were dogs. Then there were boys. Then there wasn't much difference between them. Only little things like four feet and fur."

Gib grinned.

"Come along," growled Owney.

Gib was fidgety, but he followed the dog through the dim exhibition alleys. As he did so he decided for about the millionth time that dogs had their own special arithmetic. Owney, like every dog he'd ever seen, was moving in a straight line with his nose dead ahead. Yet his forepaws were trotting sort of northeast while his hind-paws were dapping along on a diagonal from the southwest.

"Here we are," said Owney.

Where they were was in front of an exhibition displaying a lavish model of a railway mail car donated to the Smithsonian Institution by the Chicago and Milwaukee Railroad. It was named Grover Cleveland and it was maroon in color with gilt-gold trimmings.

"You know about railway mail cars, of course?" said Owney. "Everybody, especially boys, knows about mail cars.

"I don't," said Gib honestly. "I'm more of a space and rocket man myself."

"Still too expensive for mail deliveries," snapped Owney. "The point is I got my start at being famous by studying and using railway mail cars. Them and mail sacks. I was very big with mail sacks."

Gib interrupted him. "Come here, Owney," he said firmly.

The little dog trotted to him and sat looking up with alert eyes.

Gib bent down and scratched behind Owney's ears. He rubbed the back of his hand under his chin. "Good Owney," he said. "You're a fine, fine dog, a buddy, buddy boy."

The dog whined, just a little whisper of a whine, and his rump waggled. "Been a long time," he growled softly. "That was very nice. But about railway mail cars. . ."

"Tell", said Gib. He sat cross-legged on the floor beside Owney, and despite the air-conditioned air in the Smithsonian, he thought he could smell dust.

"This one," said the dog, nodding to the Grover Cleveland model, "and all of them, even today, were really traveling post offices. Clerks could pick up mail and sort it for delivery for different stops while the train was going from point to point along the way. The finest Postmaster General the Department ever had, a man named Montgomery Blair who worked for President Lincoln, put such cars into service as a result of an experiment made on the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad back in 1862 ... I studied all about railway cars.... Say, does this interest you?"

Gib folded Owney's cars into a crinkle. "I don't feel so lost and lonesome anymore," he said.

"Lost and lonesome, my meat bone," snapped Owney, a great, big gangle of boy like you ... just listen...."