"Inspection-detection," repeated Gib.

"Inspection-detection," agreed Owney. "It does have a musical ring to it, doesn't it?" The little dog paused reflectively.

"Gilbert, you are going to study a lot of history someday, even more than you are now, but when it comes to the United States there is only one thing to remember. That's this. Nobody that ever lived here was satisfied with just being. The important thing was becoming-that, and to eat regularly. The business of becoming in my time was pretty rough. In fact, there was hardly enough time between riots, protest parades, gang fights and strikes to make the country great.

"And there was plenty of trouble on the railroads between the men who owned them and the men who worked for them.

"Anyhow, I was going to ride the New York Central from Chicago back East. Everything was tidy when I saw these two men come down the tracks in the freight yard. They added a mail sack to those being loaded into the baggage car. That wasn't right. Normally all the sacks would have been in one load. So I went over and smelled that sack. Garlic. It was heavy with garlic! And I heard a noise.

Gib saw it.

It was hot in Chicago. The cinder lanes between tracks in the railroad yards smelled like broiled coal dust. The engineer and his fireman had their heads stuck out of the same side of the locomotive waiting for the conductor to give them the signal to start. A brakeman, a trainman and some workers from the Post office were about to close the sliding door of the mail and baggage car.

"I'll be glad to get out of this sun," said one of them, wiping his forehead with a red bandana big enough for a small girl's dress.
BR> The little dog came to the door. It yapped and danced and barked shrilly. It howled.

"What ails Owney?" asked one of the men.

"Heat, I guess," answered another, "but he'll be all right. I made sure he had food and water for the trip back, and one of the train crew will look in on him from time to time."

Owney continued to yap. Then he jumped from the open door to the ground, a drop of nearly four feet. He ran to one of the men, grabbed his trouser leg and pulled it toward the car.

"I know him," said one of the postal workers. "Something's wrong in that car. Let's go."

The dog scrambled ahead, cinders flying under his digging feet. He made a tremendous leap up and into the open door, the men right behind him. Owney went to a sack, seized it in his teeth and growled. He tugged at it.

"Let's see, boy. Let's see," said a baggageman. "Looks all right. Hey!" he yelled. "It's ticking. Out, out, let's get it out and quickly."

The man clutched the bag by its drawstring, ran to the door dragging it and dropped through to the ground. With a great effort he swung the sack across two adjoining tracks into an empty siding space. He fell to the ground from his mighty heave.

The sack vanished in a hollow boom!

Gib's ears rang. He could see a deep hole in the cinders and a cloud of black dust choked his nose with a sharp, stinging smell.

The men in the car climbed slowly to the track side. The man on the ground picked himself up tenderly. The dog in the doorway of the mail-baggage car lolled his tongue out, and panted his chops into a big grin.

"A bomb," said the baggageman softly. "A bomb, a bomb, a bomb-and I might have been in that car when it wrecked the train."

Gib saw it all right. He watched the men pick Owney up and hug him. He saw them carry the wriggling dog across the freight yards and into a building.

"Whooee, whooee," Gib said. "How did you know it was a bomb?"

Owney stared into the gloom of the nighttime Smithsonian.

"I didn't," he answered. "I was inspecting-detecting. Mail sacks are quiet things, saggy and peaceful. None of them tick. And garlic, in my time, was a distinctly foreign odor. No foreigners worked for the United States Post Office Department. Irish, yes, and Germans. They were only strange. Not foreign. I knew something was wrong with that sack."

"You were a hero," said Gib.

"All postal inspectors are heroes," nodded Owney. "But you are correct. I was a hero. The Civil Service upped my rating, with the same pay, of course. And the postmaster of the Albany Post Office had a harness made so that I could carry all the tags from the places I visited.

"I had so many around my neck that I was beginning to walk like a bloodhound sniffing out a trail all the time. It did give me a detective-like air, but it was uncomfortable. Couldn't lift my head, you know. The new harness was much better."

Gib looked at his watch. It said one o'clock. Had only a single hour passed since he had awakened? He scratched Owney's ears.

"What's the matter?" asked the dog. "Don't you want to hear any more of my story?"

"Sure," said Gib. "Owney are there many more famous animals around here?"

"None like me," answered the terrier cockily. "But there's General Phil Sheridan's horse, Rienzi, the one rode to rally the Union troops against Jubal Early's Confederate army at Cedar Creek in 1864. And there are some birds, combat pigeons from World War I. There is also a complete ughgh of a dog, named Stubby, who was the mascot of the Yankee Division in the same war.

"The Smithsonian's full of animals if you count the Natural History Museum. Just between us I think some of those Indians over there are really truly stuffed Indians too."

Gib laughed out loud.

"No, they're not," he said, giggling. "They're dummies like those you see in store windows."

Owney cocked his head and his dark eyes twinkled.

"Don't be so sure," he said. "I saw a Mojave chief over there not long ago. Let me ask you something, did you ever see warts on a dummy? And there's an Apache warrior over there with a hickey on his chin. But, as I was saying, after that bomb business in Chicago, Washington sent around a notice that I was allowed anywhere the mail was handled. Ships, trains, offices everything."

"Did you ever find any more bombs?"

Well, I thought I did. It was in Philadelphia at the Railway Express office, and though I couldn't smell anything suspicious, I did hear that funny ticking sound again. I managed to attract attention. I certainly did. The men threw that suspicious box right out into the street, right off the loading platform. It smashed wide open but nothing exploded."

Owney put his forepaws over his eyes and shook his head.

"What was in the box?" asked Gib.

"Clocks," whined the little dog, "clocks. They were going into a department store owned by John Wanamaker who just happened to be Postmaster General under President Benjamin Harrison at the time. Mr. Wanamaker was a very fussy man."

"Did you get into trouble?"

"Not that day exactly. After all, I'd gone to Philadelphia to help dedicate a new Post Office branch. There are a great many dog lovers in Philadelphia. A good many of them bought things in Mr. Wanamaker's store. As a merchant prince he was aware of that. Many of the same dog lovers had voted for President Harrison. Mr. Wanamaker was aware of that too. Votes are important. But you know that, I'm sure."

"Yes," said Gib simply. "My father and mother say that a boy who doesn't understand that will never be a good citizen. And our Scout Troop took literature from door to door last year asking people to register and vote."

"So you can see why Mr. Wanamaker didn't think it was a good idea to discipline me at the time.

"However, Mr. Wanamaker had a new First Assistant Postmaster General named S. A. Whitfield from Ohio. He had me mailed to Tacoma, Washington. Out of things, as it were."

"Didn't you want to go?"

"No I didn't," snarled Owney. "I had a project I wanted to look into, one that might have saved trouble for the Department later.

"I guess you never heard of Jesse James, the great train robber who went around shooting and killing and tampering with the United States mails. Jesse had a brother named Frank who went around shooting and killing and tampering with the postal system too. Jesse was shot dead. Frank was set free by a court. He was living on a farm near New Excelsior, Missouri. He was raising dogs. I wanted to get down there and look those dogs over carefully."

"But why?" asked Gib, kneading a kink of his leg with his fingers.

"Don't you see?" yapped Owney. "If I, a dog, could be a postal inspector, they, those dogs, could be train robbing crooks. They were raised and taught by one. I wanted to spot 'em first to bite 'em later in case they showed up anywhere around a mail car.

"But no, off I went to Tacoma. However as it turned out, the move gave me my greatest idea."

"What was that?"

"Why to be mailed around the world."

"Yes, I thought, Mr. S. A. Whitfield was doubtless a kind man to mail me to Tacoma. It was better that I leave the east. Mr. Wanamaker might have asked me to pay for the clocks. I also had the feeling that the Postmaster General did not like the idea of a dog succeeding in the postal service. He was a Harrison Republican, you know. I was a Cleveland Democrat. You know what that meant, don't you?"

"No," said Gib.

"It meant that the mail could go through without me," whined Owney. "Yes, it was better that I join the west bound sacks. Chicago on the Central and onward by Union Pacific."

There was a low rumbling hum somewhere in the Smithsonian. It was a great, musical bass note, and it sounded like a giant crooning to himself from the deepest cave in the world. Gib could feel it vibrate in his stomach.

"Whatever is that?" he whispered.

"Old Glory," said Owney, standing at attention. "That's the great flag that flew its fifteen stars over Fort McHenry at Baltimore during the war with England in 1814. That's the flag that inspired Francis Scott Key to write our national anthem."

"The Star Spangled Banner," whispered Gib. He rose and stood erect, his right hand over his heart. He couldn't give the Scout salute because he wasn't in uniform, just school slacks and sports shirt and loafers on his feet.

"Oh say, can you see." boomed the battle-torn voice of the Flag, and there was a shred of mist over Gib's eyes as he stood in the dark corridor.

Then there was silence. But Gib saw. He saw Owney westbound with the United States mail.