"It's well we're lighting out for civilization," said the Master, as he superintended the loading of the truck. "The woods are as dry as tinder. And if the wind should change and grow a bit fresher, the blaze over near Wildcat Mountain might come in this direction. If ever it does, it'll travel faster than any gang of fire-fighters can block it. This region is dead ripe for such a thing. Not a drop of rain in a month . . . . No, no, Laddie!" he broke off in his maunderings, as the collie sought to leap aboard the truck in the wake of a roll of bedding. "No, no. You're going with us, in the car."Now, long usage and an uncanny intelligence had given Lad a more than tolerable understanding of the English language's simpler phrases. The term, "You're going with us in the car," was as comprehensible to him as to any child. He had heard it spoken, with few variations, a thousand times, in the past nine years. At once, on hearing the Master's command, he jumped down from the truck; trotted off to the car, a hundred yards distant; and sprang into his wonted place in the luggage-cluttered tonneau.
He chanced to jump aboard, from one side; just as the guide's hobbledehoy son was hoisting a heavy and cumbersome duffle bag into the tonneau, from the other. Lad's eighty pounds of nervous energy smote the bag, amidships; as the boy was balancing it high in air, preparatory to setting it down between two other sacks.
As a result, boy and bag rolled backward in a tangled embrace, across several yards of stony ground.
Lad had not meant to cause any such catastrophe. Yet he stood looking down in keen enjoyment at the lively spectacle. But as the boy came to a halt, against a sharp-pointed rock, and sat up, sniveling with pain, the great dog's aspect changed. Seeming to realize he was somehow to blame, he jumped lightly down from the car and went over to offer to the sufferer such comfort as patting forepaw and friendly licking tongue could afford.
"Here!" called the guide, who had seen but a crosssection of the collision. "Here, you! Stop a-playin' with the dorg, and hustle them bags onto--""I wa'n't playin' with him," half-blubbered the boy, glowering dourly at the sympathetic Lad; and scrambling up from his bruise-punctured roll on the ground. "He came a-buntin' me; and I--""That'll do, Sonny!" rasped Barret, who was strong on discipline and who fancied he had witnessed the climax of a merry game between boy and dog, "I seen what I seen. And I don't aim to take no back-talk from a wall-eyed, long-legged, chuckle-headed brat;that's hired to help his poor old dad and who spends his time cuttin' monkeyshines with a dorg. You take that collie over to the truck, and ask his boss to look after him and to see he don't pester us while we're aworkin'. On the way back, stop at the lean-to and catch me that bag of cookin' things I left there.
The's just room for 'em, under the seat. Chase!"Woefully, the boy limped off; his hand clinched in the fur of Lad's ruff. The dog, ordinarily, would have resented such familiarity. But, still seeking to comfort the victim's manifest unhappiness, he suffered himself to be led along. Which was Lad's way. The sight of sorrow or of pain always made him ridiculously gentle and sympathetic.
The boy's bruises hurt cruelly. The distance to the truck was a full hundred yards. The distance to the lean-to (a permanent shed, back of the camp-site) was about the same, and in almost the opposite direction. The prospect of the double journey was not alluring. The youth hit on a scheme to shorten it. First glancing back to see that his father was not looking, he climbed the bare stony hillock, toward the lean-to; Lad pacing courteously along beside him.
Arrived at the shed, he took from a nail a rope-length; tied it around Lad's neck; fastened the dog to one of the uprights;shouldered the cooking-utensil bag; and started back toward the car.
He had saved himself, thus, a longer walk; and had obeyed his father's orders to take Lad away. He was certain the Master, or one of the others, missing the dog, would see him standing forlornly there, just outside the lean-to's corner; or that another errand would bring some of the party to the shed to release him. At best, the boy was sore of heart and of body, at his own rough treatment. And he had scant interest anything else.
Twenty minutes later, the truck chugged bumpily off, upon its trip down the hazardous mountain track. The guide's boy rode in triumph on the seat beside the truckman;--a position of honor and of excitement.
"Where's Lad?" asked the Mistress, a minute afterward, as she and the Master and the guide made ready to get into the car and follow.
"Aboard the truck," responded Barret, in entire good faith. "Him and my boy got a-skylarkin' here. So I sent Bud over to the truck with him.""That's queer!" mused the Mistress. "Why, Laddie never condescends to play,--or 'skylark,' as you call it,--with anyone except my husband or myself! He--""Never mind!" put in the Master. "We'll catch up with the truck before it's gone a mile. And we can take Laddie aboard here, then. But I wonder he consented to go ahead, without us. That isn't like Lad. Holiday-spirits, I suppose. This trip has made a puppy of him. A stately old gentleman like Laddie would never think of rounding up bears and skunks, if he was at home." As he talked, the car got under way; moving at rackety and racking "first speed" over hummock and bump; as it joggled into the faint wheeltrack. By reason of this noise and of the Master's stupid homily, none of the trio heard an amazed little bark, from the knoll-top, a hundred yards behind them.
Nor did the car catch up with the truck. At the end of the first half mile, the horrible roadbed began to take toll of the elderly tires. There were two punctures, in rapid succession. Then came a blowout. And, at the bottom of the mountain a third puncture varied the monotony of the ride. Thus, the truck reached the Place well ahead of the faster vehicle.
