Before she could get to her feet or even stop rolling, a touring car came round the bend, ten yards away--a car that was traveling at a speed of something like forty-five miles an hour, and whose four occupants were singing at the top of their lungs.
Link Ferris had scarce time to tense his muscles for a futile spring--Dorcas"s scream of helpless terror was still unborn--when the car was upon the prostrate child.
And in the same fraction of a second a furry catapult launched itself across the wide road at a speed that made it look like tawny blur.
Chum"s mad leap carried him to the baby just as the car"s fender hung above her. A slashing grip of his teeth in the shoulder of her white dress and a lightning heave of his mighty neck and shoulders--and the little form was hurtling through the air and into the weed-filled wayside ditch.
In practically the same instant Chum"s body whizzed into the air again.
But this time by no impetus of its own. The high-powered car"s fender had struck it fair, and had tossed it into the ditch as though the dog had been a heap of rags.
There--huddled and lifeless--sprawled the beautiful collie. The car put on an extra spurt of speed and disappeared round the next turn.
Olive was on her feet before Dorcas"s flying steps could reach her.
Unhurt but vastly indignant, the baby opened her mouth to make way for a series of howls. Then, her eye falling on the inert dog, she ran over to Chum and began to cry out to him to come to life again.
"No use of that, kid!" interposed Link, kneeling beside the collie he loved and smoothing the soiled and rumpled fur. "It"s easier to drop out of life than what it is to come back to it again. Well," he went on harshly, turning to the weeping Dorcas, "the question has answered itself, you see. No need now to tell me to get rid of him. He"s saved me the bother. Like he was always saving me bother. That being Chum"s way."
Something in his throat impeded his fierce speech. And he bent over the dog again, his rough hands smoothing the pitifully still body with loving tenderness. Dorcas, weeping hysterically, fell on her knees beside Chum and put her arms about the huddled shape. She seemed to be trying to say something, her lips close to one of the furry little ears.
"No use!" broke in Ferris, his voice as grating as a file"s. "He can"t hear you now. No good to tell him you hate dogs; or that you"re glad you"ve saw the last of him. Even if he was alive, he wouldn"t understand that. He"d never been spoke to that way."
"Don"t! Oh, don"t!" sobbed the girl. "Oh, I"m so--"
"If you"re crying for Chum," went on the grating voice, "there"s no need to. He was only just a dog. He didn"t know any better but to get his life smashed out"n him, so somebody else could go on living. All he asked was to be with me and work for me and love me. After you said he couldn"t keep on doing that, there ain"t any good in your crying for him. It must be nice--if you"ll only stop crying long enough to think of it--to know he"s out of your way. And I"M out of it too!" he went on in a gust of fury. "S"pose you two just toddle on, now, and leave me to take him home. I got the right to that, anyhow."
He stooped to pick up the dog; and he winked with much rapidity to hold back an annoying mist which came between him and Chum. His mouth corners, too, were twitching in a way that shamed him. He had a babyish yearning to bury his face in his dead friend"s fur, and cry.
"DON"T!" Dorcas was wailing. "Oh, you can"t punish me any worse than I"m--"
Her sob-broken voice scaled high and swelled out into a cry of stark astonishment. Slowly Chum was lifting his splendid head and blinking stupidly about him!
The fender had smitten the collie just below the shoulder, in a ma.s.s of fur-armored muscles. In falling into the wayside ditch his skull had come into sharp contact with a rock. Knocked senseless by the concussion, he had lain as dead, for the best part of five minutes.
After which he had come slowly to his senses--bewildered, bruised and sore, but otherwise no worse for the accident.
He came to himself to find a weeping woman clutching him stranglingly round the neck, while she tried to kiss his dust-smeared head.
Chum did not care at all for this treatment, especially from a comparative stranger. But he saw his adored master looking so idiotically happy--over that or something else--that the dog forbore to protest.
"If you really wanted him put out of the way so bad--" began Link, when he could trust himself to speak.
He got no further. Dorcas Chatham turned on him in genuine savageness.
The big eyes were no longer grave and patronizing. The air of aloofness had fallen from the girl like a discarded garment.
"Link!" she blazed. "Link Ferris! If you ever dare speak about getting rid of--of MY dog,--I"ll--I"ll never speak to you again, as long as--as long as we"re married!"
THE END