From puppyhood, Laddie had always come, at a sweeping gallop, on sound of this whistle. Its notes could travel, through still air, for a half mile or more. Their faintest echoes always brought the dog in eager response. But tonight, a dozen wait-punctuated blasts brought no other response than to set the distant village dogs to barking.
The Mistress went back into the house, genuinely worried. Acting on a sudden idea, she called up the Place"s superintendent, at the gatelodge.
"You were down here when the truck came to the house this afternoon, weren"t you?" she asked.
"Yes, ma"am," said the man. "I was waiting for it. Mike and I helped Simmons to unload."
"Did you see which way Lad went, when he jumped out of the truck?"
pursued the Mistress. "Or have any of you seen him since then?"
"Why, no, ma"am," came the puzzled answer. "I haven"t seen him at all.
I supposed he was in the car with you, and that maybe he"d been in the house ever since. He wasn"t on the truck: That"s one sure thing. I saw it stop; and I stayed till they finished emptying it. Lad wasn"t there."
There was a moment"s pause. Then, the Mistress spoke again. Her voice slightly m.u.f.fled, she said:
"Please find out if there is plenty of gas in my car;--enough to take it--say, forty miles. Thank you."
"What on earth--?" began the Master, as his wife left the telephone and picked up an ulster.
"Laddie didn"t come home on the truck," she made tremulous reply. "And he wasn"t with us. He hasn"t come home all."
"He"ll find his way, easily enough," returned the Master, albeit with no great a.s.surance. "Lad"s found his way farther than that. He--"
"If he was going to find his way," interrupted the Mistress, "he"d have found it before now. I know Laddie. So do you. He is up there. And he can"t get back. He--"
"Nonsense!" laughed the Master. "Why, of course, he--"
"He is up there," insisted the Mistress, "and he can"t get back. I know him well enough to be, sure he"d have overtaken us, when we stopped all those times to fix the tires;--if he had been left behind. And I know something else: When we started on, after that first puncture, we were about half a mile below the knoll. And as we went around the bend, there was a gap in the trees. I was looking back. For a second, I could see the lean-to, outlined ever so clearly against the sky. And alongside of it was standing some animal. It was far away; and we pa.s.sed out of sight so suddenly, that I couldn"t see what it was; except that it was large and dark. And it seemed to be struggling to move from where it stood. I was going to speak to you about it,--I supposed it was that black bear of Laddie"s,--when we had the next puncture. And that made me forget all about it;--till now. Of course, it never occurred to me it could be Lad. Because Barret had said he was in the truck. But--but oh, it WAS Laddie! He--he was fastened, or caught, in some way. I know he was. Why, I could see him struggle to--"
"Come on!" broke in the Master, hustling into his mackinaw. "Unless you"ll stay here, while I--"
"No," she protested. "I"m going. And I"m going because I"m thinking of the same thing that"s troubling you. I"m thinking of those forest fires and of what you said about the wind changing and--"
"Come on!" repeated the Master; starting for the garage.
Which shows how maudlinly foolish two otherwise sane people can be; when they are lucky enough to own such a dog as Sunnybank Lad.
Naturally, the right course, at so cold and late an hour of the autumn night, and after a long day of packing and motoring and unpacking, was to go to bed; and to trust to luck that the wise old collie would find his way back again. Instead, the two set off on a twenty-mile wildgoose chase, with worried faces and fast-beating hearts. It did not occur to either of them to stay at home; or to send someone else on the long, frosty drive in search of the missing dog.
Lad had watched the preparations for departure with increasing worry.
Also, the abnormally sensitive old fellow was wretchedly unhappy.
Except at dog-shows, he had never before been tied up. And at such shows, the Mistress and the Master were always on hand to pet and rea.s.sure him. Yet, here, he had suffered himself to be tied by a smelly rope to the rotting post of a lean-to, by a comparative stranger. And, in the open ground below the hillock, his deities moved back and forth without so much as an upward glance at him.
Then, to his dismay, truck and car had made off down the mountainside; and he had been left alone in his imprisonment. Except for a single unheard bark of protest, Lad made no effort to call back the departing humans. Never before had they forsaken him. And he had full trust that they would come back in a few minutes and set him free.
When the car halted, a half-mile below, Lad felt certain his faith was about to be justified. Then, as it moved on again, he sprang to the end of his short rope, and tried to break free and follow.
Then came the dying away of the chugging motor"s echoes; and silence rolled up and engulfed the wilderness hilltop.
Lad was alone. They had gone off and left him. They had with never a word of goodby or a friendly command to watch camp until their return.
This was not the dog"s first sojourn in camp. And his memory was flawless. Always, he recalled, the arrival and the loading of the truck and the striking of tents had meant that the stay was over and that at the party was going home.
Home! The charm and novelty of the wilderness all at once faded. Lad was desperately lonely and desperately unhappy. And his feelings were cruelly hurt; at the strange treatment accorded him.
Yet, it did not occur to him to seek freedom and to follow his G.o.ds to the home he loved. He had been tied here, presumably by their order; certainly with their knowledge. And it behooved him to wait until they should come to release him. He knew they would come back, soon or late.
They were his G.o.ds, his chums, his playmates. They would no more desert him than he would have deserted them. It was all right, somehow. Only, the waiting was tedious!
With a tired little sigh, the collie curled up in a miserable heap on the stony ground, the shortness of his tether making even this effort at repose anything but comfortable. And he waited.
A dog, that is happy and well, settles himself for a prolonged wait, by stretching out on his side;--oftenest the left side; and by dropping off into slumber. Seldom, unless he be cold or ill, does a big dog curl up into a ball, to rest. Nor is he thoroughly comfortable in such a posture.
Lad was not comfortable. He was not resting. He was wretched. Nor did he try to snooze. Curled in a compact heap, his sorrowful eyes abrim with sorrow, he lay scanning the b.u.mpy mountainside and straining his ears, for sign of the car"s return. His breathing was not as splendidly easy as usual. For, increasingly, that earlier twinge of acrid smoke-reek was tickling his throat. The haze, that had hovered over the farther hilltops and valleys, was thickening; and it was creeping nearer. The breath of morning breeze was stiffening into a steady wind; a wind that blew strong from the west and carried on it the smell of forest fire.
Lad did not enjoy the ever-stronger smoke scent. But he gave only half-heed to it. His main attention was centered on that winding wagon-track whence the car and the truck had vanished into the lowlands. And, through the solemnly spent hours he lay forlornly watching it.
But, after sunset, the smoke became too pervasive to be ignored longer.
It was not only stinging his throat and lungs, but it was making his eyes smart. And it had cut off the view of all save the nearer mountain-peaks.
Lad got to his feet; whining softly, under his breath. Ancestral instinct was fairly shouting to his brain that here was terrible peril.
He strained at his thick rope; and looked imploringly down the wagon-road.
The wind had swelled into something like a gale. And, now, to Lad"s keen ears came the far-off snap and crack of a million dry twigs as the flame kissed them in its fast-crawling advance. This sharper sound rose and fell, as a theme to the endless and slowly-augmenting roar which had been perceptible for hours.
Again, Laddie strained at his heavy rope. Again, his smoke-stung eyes explored the winding trail down the mountain. No longer was the trail so distinguishable as before. Not only by reason of darkness, but because from that direction came the bulk of the eddying gusts of wind-driven smoke.
The fire"s mounting course was paralleling the trail; checked from crossing it only by a streambed and an outcrop of granite which zigzagged upward from the valley. The darkness served also to tinge the lowering sky to south and to westward with a steadily brightening lurid glare. The Master had been right in his glum prophecy that a strong and sudden shift of wind would carry the conflagration through the tinder-dry undergrowth and dead trees of that side of the mountain, far faster than any body of fire-fighters could hope to check it.
The flame-reflection began to light the open s.p.a.ces below the knoll, with increasing vividness. The chill of early evening was counteracted waves of sullen heat, which the wind sent swirling before it.
Lad panted; from warmth as much as from nervousness. He had gone all day without water. And a collie, more perhaps than any other dog, needs plenty of fresh, cool water to drink; at any and all times. The hot wind and the smoke were parching his throat. His thirst was intolerable.
Behind him, not very many yards away, was the ice-cold mountain lakelet in which so often he had bathed and drunk. The thought of it made him hate the stout rope.
But he made no serious effort to free himself. He had been tied there,--supposedly by the Master"s command. And, as a well-trained dog, it was his place to stay where he was, until the Master should free him. So, apart from an instinctive tug or two at his moorings, he submitted to his fate.
But, in mid-evening, something occurred, to change his viewpoint, in this matter of nonresistance.
The line of fire, climbing the mountain toward him, had encountered a marshy stretch; where, in normal weather, water stood inches deep.
Despite the drought, there was still enough moisture to stay the advance of the red line until the dampness could be turned to dust and tindery vegetation. And, in the meanwhile, after the custom of its kind, the fire had sought to spread to either side. Stopped at the granite-outcrop to the right, it had rolled faster through the herbage to the left.
Thus, by the time the mora.s.s was dry enough for the flame to pa.s.s it, there was a great sickle of crawling red fire to the left; which encircled a whole flank of the mountain and which was moving straight upward.
Lad knew nothing of this; nor why the advance of the fire"s direct line had been so long checked. Nor did he know, presumably, that this sickle of flame was girdling the mountain-flank; like a murderous net; hemming in all live things within the flaming arc and forcing them on in panic, ahead of its advance. Perhaps he did not even note the mad scurryings in undergrowth and bramble, in front of the oncoming blaze. But one thing, very speedily, became apparent to him:--
From out a screen of hazel and witch-elm (almost directly in front of the place where the truck, that morning, had been loaded) crashed a right hideous object. By sight and by scent Lad knew the creature for his olden foe, the giant black bear.
Growling, squealing, a dozen stinging fiery sparks sizzling through his bushy coat, the bear tore his way from the hedge of thicket and out into the open. The fire had roused him from his snug lair and had driven him ahead of it with a myriad hornets of flame, in a crazed search for safety.
At sight of the formidable monster, Lad realized for the first time the full extent of his own helplessness. Tethered to a rope which gave him scarce twenty-five inches of leeway, he was in no fit condition to fend off the giant"s a.s.sault.