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--""Hush!" 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 repetition, 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 crashing 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 passage. But Lad would not have cared for all the blisters and burns on earth. His dear gods 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.
