Further Adventures of Lad Part 22

At all events, the tip of one of the sweeping claws grazed his ear, opening the big vein, and hurting like the very mischief.

On the instant, Lad changed from a mischievous investigator to a deeply offended and angry dog. No longer in doubt as to Bruin's intent, he slithered out of reach of the grasping arms, with all the amazing speed of a wolf-descended collie of the best sort. And, in practically the same fraction of a second, he had flashed back to the attack.

Diving in under the other's surprisingly agile arms, he slashed the bear's stomach with one of his razorlike eyeteeth; then spun to one side and was out of reach. Down came the bear, on all fours; raging from the slash. Lurching forward, he flung his huge bulk at the dog.

Lad flashed out of reach, but with less leeway than he would have expected. For Bruin, for all his awkwardness, could move with bewildering speed.

And, as the bear turned, Lad was at him again, nipping the hairy flank, till his teeth met in its fat; and then diving as before under the lunging body of the foe.

It was at this point the Master hove in sight. He was just in time to see the flank-bite and to see Lad dance out of reach of the furious counter. It was an interesting spectacle, there in the gray dawn and in the primeval forest's depths;--this battle between a gallant dog and a ragingly angry bear. If the dog had been other than his own loved chum, the Master might have stood there and watched its outcome. But he was enough of a woodsman to know there could, in all probability, be but one end to such a fight.

Lad weighed eighty pounds,--an unusually heavy weight for a collie that carries no loose fat,--and he was the most compactly powerful dog of his size the Master had ever seen. Also, when he chose to exert it, Lad had the swiftness of a wildcat and the battling prowess of a tiger.

Yet all this would scarce carry him to victory, or even to a draw, against a black bear several times heavier than himself and with the ability to rend with his claws as well as with his teeth. Once let Lad's foot slip, in charge or in elusive retreat,--once let him misjudge time or distance--and he must be crushed to a pulp or ripped to ribbons.

Wherefore, the Master brought his rifle to his shoulder. His finger curled about the trigger. But it was no easy thing, by that dim light, to aim with any accuracy. Nor was there the slightest a.s.surance that Lad,--dancing in and out and everywhere and nowhere at once,--might not come in line with the bullet. Thus,--from a tolerable knowledge of bears and of their comparative mildness in the plump season of the year,--he shouted at the top of his lungs; and, at the same time, fired into the air.

The bluff sufficed. Even as Lad jumped back from close quarters and whirled about, at sound of the voice and the shot,--the bear dropped to all fours, with ridiculous haste; and shambled off at very creditable speed into the tangle of undergrowth.

Not so far gone in the battle-l.u.s.t had Bruin been that he cared to risk conflict with an armed man. Twice, before, in his somewhat long life, had he heard at close quarters the snap of a rifle, in the forest stillness, and the whine of a bullet. Once, such a bullet had found its mark by scoring a gouge on his scalp; a gouge which gnats and mayflies and "no-see-'ems" and less cleanly pests had made a torment for him, for weeks thereafter.

Bruin had a good memory. Just now, he had nothing to defend. He was not at bay. Nor had the fight-fury possessed him to the exclusion of sanity. Thus, he fled. And, eagerly, Lad gave chase.

But, at the very edge of the bush-rampart, the Master's call brought the collie back, to heel, exceeding glum and reluctant. Reproachfully, Lad gazed up at the man who had spoiled his morning of enthralling sport. Halfheartedly, Lad listened to the Master's rebuke, as he followed back to camp. His day had begun so delightfully! And, as usual, a human had interrupted the fun, at the most exciting time; and for no apparent reason. Humans were like that.

Barring one other incident, Lad's two weeks at camp were uneventful,--until the very last day. That "one incident" can be pa.s.sed over, with modest brevity. It concerned a black-and-white cat which Lad saw, one evening, sneaking past the campfire's farthest shadows. He gave chase. The chase ended in less than ten seconds. And, Lad had to be bathed and scoured and rubbed and anointed, for the best part of twenty-four hours, before he was allowed to come again within fifty feet of the dining tent.

On a raw morning, the car and the truck made their appearance at the foot of the rocky mountaintop hillock. The tents had been struck, at daylight; and every cooking utensil and dish had been scoured and put into the crate as soon as it was used. Camp was policed and cleaned.

The fire was beaten to death; a half-score pails of water were dowsed over its remains; and damp earth was flung upon it.

In short, the camping spot was not only left as it had been found and as one would want it to be found again, but every trace of fire was destroyed.

And all this, be it known, is more than a mere rule for campers. It should be their sacred creed. If one is not thoroughgoing sportsman enough to make his camp-site scrupulously clean, at least there is one detail he should never allow himself to neglect;--a detail whose omission should be punished by a term in prison: Namely, the utter extinction of the campfire.

Every year, millions of dollars' worth of splendid trees and of homes are wiped out, by forest fires. No forest fire, since the birth of time, ever started of its own accord. Each and every one has been due to human carelessness.

A campfire ill-extinguished;--a smolder of tobacco not stamped out;--the flaming cinders of a railroad train,--a match dropped among dry leaves before spark and blaze have both been destroyed,--these be the first and only causes of the average forest fire. All are avoidable. None is avoided. And the loss to property and to life and to natural resources is unbelievably great.

Any fool can start a forest fire. Indeed, a fool generally does. But a hundred men cannot check it. Forest wardens post warnings. Forest patrols, afoot or in airships, keep sharp watch. But the selfish carelessness of man undoes their best precautions.

Sometimes in spring or in lush summer, but far oftenest in the dry autumn, the Red Terror stalks over mountain and valley; leaving black ruin in its wake. Scarce an autumn pa.s.ses that the dirty smoke reek does not creep over miles of sweet woodland, blotting out the sunshine for a time and blotting out rich vegetation for much longer.

This particular autumn was no exception. On the day before camp was broken, the Mistress had spied, from the eyrie heights of the knoll, a grim line of haze far to southward; and a lesser smoke-smear to the west. And the night sky, on two horizons, had been faintly lurid.

The campers had noted these phenomena, with sorrow. For, each wraithlike smoke-swirl meant the death of tree and shrub. Lad noted the smudges as distinctly as did they. Indeed, to his canine nostrils, the chill autumn air brought the faint reek of wood-smoke; an odor much too elusive, at that distance, for humans to smell. And, once or twice, he would glance in worried concern at these humans; as if wondering why they took so coolly a manifestation that a thousand-year-old hereditary instinct made the dog shrink from.

But the humans showed no outward sign of terror or of rage. And, as ever, taking his tone from his G.o.ds, Lad decided there was nothing to fear. So, he tried to give no further heed to the reek.

The driver of the truck and his a.s.sistant were full of tales of the fire's ravages in other sections. And their recital was heard with active interest by the folk who for fourteen days had been out of touch with the world.

"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 c.u.mbersome 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 b.u.mpily 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 b.u.mp; 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.

The Mistress's first question was for Lad. Terror seized upon the guide's boy, as he remembered where he had left the dog. He glanced obliquely at the truckman, who had unloaded and who was cranking.

"Now--" said the scared youth, glibly, avoiding his father's unsuspecting eye. "Now--now, Lad he was settin' 'twixt Simmons and me.

And he hops down and runs off around the house, towards--towards the lake--soon as we stopped here. Most likely he was thirsty-like, or something."

The Mistress was busy with details of the car's unpacking. So she accepted the explanation. It seemed probable that the long and dusty ride should have made Lad thirsty; and that after his drink at the lake, he had made the rounds of the Place; as ever was his wont after his few brief absences from home.

Not until dinnertime did she give another thought to her loved pet's absence. The guide and his boy had long since departed, on the truck, for their ten-mile distant home. Nor, even yet, did it occur to the Mistress to question the truth of the youngster's story. She merely wondered why, for the first time in his life, Lad should absent himself at dinnertime from his time-honored place on the dining-room floor, at the Master's left. And, amusedly, she recalled what her husband had said of the stately dog's new propensity for mischief. Perhaps Lad was exploring the friendly home-woods in search of a bear!

But when ten o'clock came and Lad did not seek the shelter of his "cave" under the music-room piano, for the night, there was real worry.

The Mistress went out on the veranda and sounded long and shrilly upon the silver whistle which hung from her belt.