The headline on the newspapers stacked in front of the drugstore read "RUSS DOG REACHES MOON ALIVE." A man in a leather jacket stopped to scan it.  
Across the street, frost lay crisp on the courthouse lawn, and the white and tan spotted hound put up his forepaws on the kitchen stool as if to warm them. The four women were too busy hauling down the flag to notice.
Martha Stonery in the persian lamb coat paid out the halyard. Monica Flint in the reddish muskrat and Paula Hart in the brown fox caught the flag and folded it, careful not to let it touch the wet cement. A postman and the man in the leather jacket stopped on the sidewalk to watch.
Martha, plump face grim under pinchnose spectacles, fastened one halyard snap to a metal ring taped and wired to the dog's right hind leg.
"Hoist away, girls."
Monica, Paula and Abigail Silax in nutria hauled in unison while Martha held the flag. The hound scrabbled with his forepaws and barked frantically. As he went struggle-twisting upward he began to howl in a bell-like voice. The women grunted with effort. People were coming across the lawn and pale faces moved behind the courthouse windows.
"Two block," Martha said. "Vast hauling and belay."
She pulled the kitchen stool nearer the flagpole and climbed on it to face the small crowd across the shelf of her bosom. Cars were stopping, people streaming in from all sides. Martha patted her piled gray hair and made her thin lips into a parrot beak.
"Fellow Americans!" she cried above the howling. "Our leaders are cowards and it is time for the people to act before the Russians come and murder us all in our beds! We, the United Dames of the Dog, hereby protest the Russian crime of putting a trusting, loving dog on the moon to starve and freeze and smother and die of loneliness! This dog above our heads cries out to the world against the Russian breach of faith between dog and man. He will stay there until the Russians bring their dog home safely or make amends for their crime!"
"Like hell!" said the man in the leather jacket, moving in.
"Martha!" Abigail shrieked. "He's taking it down!"
Monica pulled at his wrists. Paula slapped and scratched at his face. "You brute! You coward!" they shrilled.
Martha jumped off the stool and kicked him. He backed away, bent and holding himself.
"Look, ladies," he gasped, "for God's sake—"
"Here now, here now, this is county property," said a fat man in shirtsleeves with pink sleeve garters, pushing through the crowd. "What's all this? Take that dog down, somebody!"
"Never!" Martha snapped. She put her back against the halyard cleat, unfolded the flag and draped it around herself. A loose strand of gray hair fell across her face.
"If you're so big and brave, go bring down the Russian dog," she told the fat man coldly.
"Now listen, lady," the fat man said. The Clarion press photographer was sprinting across the lawn.
George Stonery was tall, thin, stooped and anxious in a gray business suit.
"I came as soon as I could," he told Sheriff Breen across the scarred, paper-littered wooden desk. "I was away checking one of our warehouses."
"You can make bail for her in two minutes, right across the hall," the sheriff said, scratching his jowl. "She wouldn't make it for herself, said we had to lock her in our sputnik."
"Where is she now?"
"In the sputnik."
The desk phone rang and the sheriff growled into it, "Hell you say. State forty-three just past Roy Farm? Right. I s'pose you already heard what we had on the lawn here this morning?"
The phone gave forth an excited gobbling. The sheriff's red eyebrows rose in disbelief and his heavy jaw dropped in dismay. He put down the phone.
"That was city," he told Stonery. "Complaint about a dog hanging by one leg from a tree just outside city limits. But it's going on all over town too—dogs hanging on trees, out of windows, off clotheslines—every squad car is out. Your old lady sure started something!"
"What did she do?" Stonery asked in anguish.
The sheriff told him. "Kicked a big fat deputy where it hurts, too. Maybe we ought to hold her after all. She says she's president of the United Dogs of something."
"United Dames of the Dog," the thin man corrected. "They hold meetings and things. She started it when the Russians put up their second sputnik."
"Well, I hope none of them dames lives out in the county," the sheriff said, rising. "You fix up bail, Mr. Stonery. I got to send out a deputy."
Walking past the flagpole with her husband, Martha Stonery wore an exalted look.
"All over America dogs will cry out in protest against the Russian crime," she said. "I have kindled a flame, George, that will sweep away the Kremlin. I, a weak woman...."
She insisted on driving herself home in her new station wagon.
Sirening police cars passed Stonery three times as he drove home in the evening. Outside the tan stucco ranch-style house on Euclid Avenue, cars blocked the driveway and a crowd milled on the lawn. Stonery parked under the oak tree at the curb and got out.
Martha stood in the living room by the picture window and harangued the crowd through a screened side panel. Centered in the window her spaniel Fiffalo writhed, hanging by a hind leg from the massive gilt floor lamp and yipping piteously. Martha had on her suit of gray Harris tweed and her diamond brooch.
"... moral pressure the Russians simply cannot resist," Stonery heard her shouting as he joined the crowd. "The men talk, but the United Dames of the Dog are not afraid to act. Putting a dear little dog on the moon to die of heart-break!"
Several young men near the window scribbled on white pads.
"How many members do you have, Mrs. Stonery?" one asked.
"The U.D.D. is bigger than you think, young man. Bigger than the Russians think, for all their spies and traitors!"
Stonery sidled in and tried the front door.
"She locked it," one of the reporters told him. "The cops went back for a warrant. Say! You're Stonery!"
"Yes," the thin man said, flushing. A press camera flashed and he put up his hands too late to shield his face.
"Give us a statement, Mr. Stonery, before the cops come back," the reporters clamored.
Stonery backed off, waving his hands. "Please, please," he said.
"She cracked?" a reporter asked. "When did you first notice?"
"Please," Stonery said. "Yes, she's upset. Her oldest son went into the state penitentiary in California last week. She's very upset about it."
"He kill somebody?" the same reporter asked.
"No, oh no ... just armed robbery ... please don't print that, boys."
"Here come the cops back!" someone shouted.
Two policemen crossed the lawn, one waving a paper. "Here is our warrant of forcible entry, Mrs. Stonery," he called out. He began reading it aloud.
"The U.D.D. will not shrink from any extremes of police brutality," Martha cried sharply. Fiffalo struggled and yelped louder.
The second policeman smashed the lock with a ten-pound sledge. The reporters swept Stonery into the house with them. One policeman untied Fiffalo and held him in his arms. He strained his head back and away from the spaniel's whimpering kisses. Martha glared selflessly while flash bulbs popped.
Stonery pulled gently at the other policeman's sleeve.
"May I come along, officer?" he asked. "I'm her husband. I'll have to arrange bail."
"Not taking her," the policeman said. "No room left in the pokey. Since two o'clock we been arresting the dogs."
The bellboy put down the silver bucket of ice cubes, pocketed the quarter and went out. The skinny secretary put a bottle of whisky beside it and turned to that fat adjutant sprawled shoeless on the bed.
"Looks like Governor Bob'll be a while yet, Sam," the secretary said. "Shall we drink without him?"
"Hell yes, I need one, Dave," the adjutant said in his frog voice, wiggling his toes. "Bob must be having himself a time with that Stonery dame." He chuckled and slapped his belly.
The secretary tore wrappers off two tumblers an............