Further Adventures of Lad Part 24

He wasted no time in futile struggles. All his race's uncanny powers of resource came rus.h.i.+ng to his aid. Without an instant's pause, he wheeled about; and drove his keen teeth into the rope that bound him to the post.

Lad did not chew aimlessly at the thick tether; nor throw away one ounce of useless energy. Seizing the hempen strands, he ground his teeth deeply and with scientific skill, into their fraying recesses.

Thus does a dog, addicted to cutting his leash, attack the bonds which hold him.

It was Lad's first experience of the kind. But instinct served him well. The fact that the rope had been left out of doors, in all weathers, for several years, served him far better. Not only did it sever the more easily; but it soon lost the cohesion needed for resisting any strong pull.

The bear, lurching half-blindly, had reeled out into the open, below the knoll. There, panting and grunting, he turned to blink at the oncoming fire and to get his direction. For perhaps a half-minute he stood thus; or made little futile rushes from side to side. And this breathing s.p.a.ce was taken up by Lad in the gnawing of the rope.

Then, while the collie was still toiling over the hempen mouthfuls, the bear seemed to recover his own wonted cleverness; and to realize his whereabouts. Straight up the hillock he charged, toward the lean-to; his splay feet dislodging innumerable surface stones from the rocky steep; and sending them behind him in a series of tiny avalanches.

Lad, one eye ever on his foe, saw the onrush. Fiercely he redoubled his efforts to bite through the rope, before the bear should be upon him.

But the task was not one to be achieved in a handful of seconds.

Moving with a swiftness amazing for an animal of his clumsy bulk, the bear swarmed up the hillock. He gained the summit; not three yards from where Laddie struggled. And the collie knew the rope was not more than half gnawed through. There was no further time for biting at it. The enemy was upon him.

Fear did not enter the big dog's soul. Yet he grieved that the death-battle should find him so pitifully ill-prepared. And, abandoning the work of self-release, he flung himself ragingly at the advancing bear.

Then, two things happened. Two things, on neither of which the dog could have counted. The bear was within a hand's breadth of him; and was still charging, headlong. But he looked neither to right nor to left. Seemingly ignorant of Lad's presence, the huge brute tore past him, almost grazing the collie in his insane rush; and sped straight on toward the lake beyond.

That was one of the two unforeseen happenings. The other was the snapping of the rotted rope, under the wrench of Lad's furious leap.

Free, and with the severed rope's loop still dangling uselessly from around his s.h.a.ggy throat, the dog stood staring in blank amaze after his former adversary. He saw the bear reach the margin of the icy lake and plunge nose deep into its sheltering waters. Here, as Bruin's instinct or experience had foretold, no forest fire could harm him. He need but wallow there until the Red Terror should have swept past and until the scorched ground should be once more cool enough to walk on.

Lad turned again toward the slope. He was free, now, to follow the wagon track to the main road and so homeward, guided perhaps by memory, perhaps by scent; most probably guided by the mystic sixth sense which has more than once enabled collies to find their way, over hundreds of miles of strange territory, back to their homes.

But, in the past few minutes, the fire's serpent-like course had taken a new twist. It had flung volleys of sparks across the upper reach of granite rock-wall, and had ignited dry wood and brier on the right hand side of the track. This, far up the mountain, almost at the very foot of the rock-hillock.

The way to home was barred by a three-foot-high crackling fence of red-gold flame; a flame which nosed hungrily against the barren rocks of the knoll-foot; as if seeking in ravenous famine the fuel their bare surfaces denied it.

And now, the side of the hillock showed other signs of forest life. Up the steep slope thundered a six-antlered buck, snorting shrilly in panic and flying toward the cool refuge of the little lake.

Far more slowly, but with every tired muscle astrain, a fat porcupine was mounting the hill; its claws digging frantically for foothold among the slippery stones. It seemed to flow, rather than to run. And as it hurried on, it chuckled and scolded, like some idiot child.

A bevy of squirrels scampered past it. A long snake, roused from its stony winter lair, writhed eerily up the slope, heedless of its fellow travelers' existence. A racc.o.o.n was breasting the steep, from another angle. And behind it came clawing a round-paunched opossum; grinning from the pain of sparks that were stinging it to a hated activity.

The wilderness was giving up its secrets, with a vengeance. And the Red Terror, as ever, was enforcing a truce among the forest-folk; a truce bred of stark fear. One and all--of those that had been aroused in time to get clear of the oncoming fiery sickle--the fugitives were making for the cool safety of the lake.

Lad scarce saw or noted any of his companions. The road to home was barred. And, again, ancestral instinct and his own alert wit came to his aid. Turning about, and with no hint of fear in his gait or in the steady dark eyes, he trotted toward the lake.

Already the bear had reached its soothing refuge; and was standing hip deep in the black waters; now and then ducking his head and tossing showers of cold spray over his scorched shoulder-fur.

Lad trotted to the brink. There, stooping--not fifty feet away from Bruin--he lapped thirstily until he had at last drunk his fill. Then, looking back once in the direction of the fire-line, he lay down, very daintily indeed, in shallow water; and prepared to enjoy his liberty.

Scourged by none of the hideous fear which had goaded his fellow fugitives, he watched with grave interest the arrival of one after another of the refugees; as they came scurrying wildly down to the water.

Lad was comfortable. Here, the smoke-reek stung less acutely. Here, too, were grateful darkness, after the torrid glare of the fire, and cold water and security. Here were also many diverting creatures to watch. It would have been pleasant to go home at once. But, since that was out of the question, there were far worse things than to lie interestedly at ease until the Master should come for him.

The fire raged and flickered along the base of the bare rocky knoll; and, finding no path of advance, turned back on itself, fire-fas.h.i.+on; seeking new outlet. The thin line of bushes and other undergrowth at the hillock's foot were quickly consumed; leaving only a broad bed of ember and spark. And the conflagration swept on to the left, over the only course open to it. To the right, the multiple ridges of rock and the dearth of vegetation were sufficient "No Thoroughfare" enforcement.

This same odd rock-formation had kept the wagon track clear, up to the twist where it bore to leftward at the base of the knoll. And the Mistress and the Master were able to guide their rattlingly protesting car in safety up the trail from the main road far below. The set of the wind prevented them from being blinded or confused by smoke. Apart from a smarting of the eyes and a recurrent series of heat waves, they made the climb with no great discomfort;--until the final turn brought them to an abrupt halt at the spot where the wide swath of red coals and flaming ashes marked the burning of the hillock foot bushes.

The Master jumped to earth and stood confronting the lurid stretch of ash and ember with, here and there, a bush stump still crackling merrily. It was not a safe barrier to cross; this twenty-foot-wide fiery stretch. Nor, for many rods in either direction, was there any way around it.

"There's one comfort," the Master was saying, as he began to explore for an opening in the red scarf of coals, "the fire hasn't gotten up to the camp-site. He--"

"But the smoke has," said the Mistress, who had been peering vainly through the hazecurtain toward the summit. "And so has the heat. If only--"

She broke off, with a catch in her sweet voice. And, scarce realizing what she did, she put the silver whistle to her lips and blew a piercingly loud blast.

"What's that for?" asked the Master, crankily, worry over his beloved dog making his nerves raw. "If Lad's alive, he's fastened there. You say you saw him struggling to get loose, this morning. He can't come, when he hears that whistle. There's no sense in--How in blue blazes he ever got fastened there,--if he really was,--is more than I can--"

"Hus.h.!.+" begged the Mistress, breaking in on his grumbled monologue.

"Listen!"

Out of the darkness, beyond the knoll-top, came the sound of a bark,--the clear trumpeting welcome-bark which Lad reserved for the Mistress and the Master, alone; on their return from any absence.

Through the night it echoed, gaily, defiantly; again and again; ringing out above the obscene hiss and crackle and roar of the forest-fire. And at every repet.i.tion, it was nearer and nearer the dumfounded listeners at the knoll foot.

"It's--it's Laddie!" cried the Mistress, in wondering rapture. "Oh, it's LADDIE!"

The Master, hearing the glad racket, did a thoroughly asinine thing.

Drawing in his breath and holding his coat in front of him, he prepared to make a dash through the wide smear of embers, to the hilltop; where, presumably, Lad was still tied. But, before he could take the first step, the Mistress stayed him.

"Look!" she cried, pointing to the hither side of the knoll; lividly bright in the ember-glow.

Down the steep was galloping at breakneck speed a great, tawny shape.

Barking rapturously,--even as he had barked when first the whistle's blast had roused him from his lazy repose in the lakeside shallows,--Lad came whizzing toward the two humans who watched so incredulously his wild approach.

The Master, belatedly, saw that the collie could not avoid cras.h.i.+ng into the spread of embers; and he opened his mouth to order Lad back.

But there was not time.

For once, the wise dog took no heed of even the simplest caution. His lost and adored deities had called him and were awaiting him. That was all Lad knew or cared. They had come back for him. His horrible vigil and loneliness and his deadly peril were ended.

Too insanely happy to note where he was treading, he sprang into the very center of the belt of smoldering coals. His tiny white forefeet--drenched with icy water--did not remain among them long enough to feel pain. In two more bounds he had cleared the barrier and was dancing in crazy excitement around the Mistress and the Master; patting at them with his scorched feet; licking their eagerly caressing hands; "talking" in a dozen different keys of rapture, his whimpers and growls and gurgles running the entire gamut of long-pent-up emotions.

His coat and his feet had, for hours, been immersed in the cold water of the lake. And, he had fled through the embers at express-train speed. Scarce a blister marked the hazardous pa.s.sage. But Lad would not have cared for all the blisters and burns on earth. His dear G.o.ds had come back to him,--even as he had known they would!

Once more,--and for the thousandth time--they had justified his divine Faith in them. Nothing else mattered.

CHAPTER IX. Old Dog; New Tricks

A mildewed maxim runs: "You can't teach an old dog new tricks."

Some proverbs live because they are too true to die. Others endure because they have a smug sound and because n.o.body has bothered to bury them. The one about old dogs and new tricks belongs in both categories.

In a sense it is true. In another it is not.

To teach the average elderly dog to sit up and beg, or to roll over twice, or to do other of the asinine things with which humans stultify the natural good sense of their canine chums, is as hard as to teach a sixty-year-old grave-digger to become a musical composer.