Part 24 (1/2)

He wasted no tiles All his race's uncanny powers of resource ca 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 throay one ounce of useless energy Seizing the heround 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 oncoet his direction For perhaps a half-minute he stood thus; or made little futile rushes fro space 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 oonted cleverness; and to realize his whereabouts Straight up the hillock he charged, toward the lean-to; his splay feet dislodging innu 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 a for an aniained the suled And the collie knew the rope was not h There was no further ti at it The ene's soul Yet he grieved that the death-battle should find hi the work of self-release, he flung his happened Two things, on neither of which the dog could have counted The bear ithin a hand's breadth of hi But he looked neither to right nor to left Seee brute tore past hi 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 fro in blank amaze after his forin 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 butthere until the Red Terror should have swept past and until the scorched ground should be once ain toward the slope He was free, now, to follow the wagon track to the uided perhaps by uided by the mystic sixth sense which has more than once enabled collies to find their way, over hundreds of e territory, back to their homes

But, in the past few minutes, the fire's serpent-like course had taken a neist 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 hoold flaainst 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 tiredthe hill; its claws digging frantically for foothold a 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 sca snake, roused from its stony winter lair, writhed eerily up the slope, heedless of its fellow travelers' existence A raccoon was breasting the steep, fro a round-paunched opossu 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 a the forest-folk; a truce bred of stark fear One and all--of those that had been aroused in tiitives werefor the cool safety of the lake

Lad scarce saw or noted any of his coain, ancestral instinct and his own alert wit ca 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 shalloater; 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 ca wildly down to the water