Mongrel Hero

OLD YELLER (158 pp.)--Fred Gipson --Harper ($2.75).

All books about faithful dogs have one thing in common: almost complete immunity from literary criticism. Who would be rash enough to examine the soft underbelly of Bob, Son of Battle or cock an ear to the corny notes in The Voice of Bugle Ann? The same armor of sentimentality will surely protect Old Yeller. Texas Author Fred Gipson, onetime newsman and veteran of the pulps, has written double insurance into his third novel. Not only is Old Yeller a mongrel of rare courage and devotion; his 14-year-old master, Travis, totes about as much man on his boyish frame as any adolescent in recent fiction.

Now Old Yeller wasn't much to look at: big, ungainly and downright ugly, with his mangy yellow coat and sneak-thief ways. But in Texas of the 1860s, with father away on a cattle drive to Kansas and mother and small brother to look after, Travis figured that any cur around the farm was better than none. Old Yeller had just drifted in from nowhere, helped himself to a nice side of meat and decided that he had found a home. As it turned out, Old Yeller did great things for the isolated little family. He ran down rabbits and treed squirrels for the table. He helped keep coons out of the corn patch, and when a raging she-bear made for little brother, Old Yeller pitched into her with yelp and fang and held her at bay until the boy was rescued. He saved Travis from a herd of killer hogs, proved again and again that when the chips are down a dog's character can't be gauged by his conformation.

Knowing craftsmen in the dog-story game have practically made a convention of the tragic ending, and Author Gipson is not the man to trifle with convention. So Old Yeller has to go. But with his sure knowledge of Texas frontier life, a brace of engaging heroes and a loose-jointed, simple style to match, Author Gipson can probably depend on a substantial crowd of dog lovers eager to follow Old Yeller all the way to his bier.

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