Part 35 (1/2)

Sam did not reply.

”I'm gettin' tired of waitin', anyhow.”

Still Sam did not reply.

And his silence must have had its effect; for when they reached home the burly man made the dog come into the shack. The wind had ceased, the night turned chilly, and they let him lie down before the fire of pine knots. The woman brought him a pot of hominy; the men felt his ribs as gently as they could. He shrank from the touch more than from the pain.

Kindness had come too late, even for a dog.

He lay before the hearth, indifferent to all that happened in this shabby room, for the sight of this fire had made him see another and kindlier fire, in another and kindlier world. These people did not notice his growing restlessness, his furtive glances, his panting breaths, the burning light in his eyes. For steps had come up on the porch; somebody had knocked at the door; the night of their fortune was here!

The burly man hurried to answer, shaking the floor. The open door showed a Negro who handed in a paper. Somebody had sent it from town, he explained, and was gone. The woman s.n.a.t.c.hed the paper. Heads close together, the three stood about a smoking kerosene lamp. The woman was reading in a whiny, excited drawl: ”'One thousand dollars reward for----'”

”I told you so!” burst from the burly man.

”Shut up! Listen!” cried the other.

”'Irish setter,'” she read. ”'Answers to name Frank. Notify R. A.

Lancaster'--Oh, here's a lot of streets and numbers--'New York City.'”

”I told you!” the burly man was shouting. ”I told you I knew a dog when I saw one! Look at him, Sam! Look at that head! Look at that dome above the ears! Look at that hair--like silk! The mould that dog was made in is broke!”

”One thousand dollars!” gasped the woman. ”One thousand dollars!”

When the two men came out with him to his prison the excitement was still rising. The woman had already gone into another room, and the men had got out a bottle. Their voices as they bolted his door and propped a pole against it sounded loud and thick. They stamped up the steps, and he could hear them laughing and shouting in the shack. Surely they could not hear him gnawing--gnawing frantically at his board behind the boxes.

They could not hear him jerking at the end of the board, freed at last from the sleeper below. They could not hear the board give way, throwing him on his haunches. Surely they could not hear the little bark that escaped him when the floor opened.

But out in the yard, free at last, he sank suddenly down flat, head between his paws, very still. The back door of the shack had opened and the light shone out across the littered yard, up the walls of his prison, into his very eyes. The burly man had stepped out on the porch.

It was one of those hollow nights when sounds carry far, when a spoken word is a shout.

”I don't hear nothin', Sam.”

The other man staggered out.

”Maybe it was a rat,” he said.

He could almost hear them breathing.

”Guess I imagined,” said Sam.

”Sure,” said the other.

Their figures darkened the doorway. The burly man clapped the other on the back.

”What I tell you, Sam! One thousand----”

The door closed. The merriment would go on till morning. And old Frank, muscles limbering as he ran, soreness pa.s.sing out of his side, was galloping through the night, toward the railroad--and home.

Morning found him loping easily along the railroad, nose pointed north like a compa.s.s. Now and then he left the track to let a train pa.s.s, looking at it, if it went north, with wistful eyes, then keeping in sight of it as far as he could. He pa.s.sed a few small stations with big water tanks, he crossed long, low trestles over boundless marshes, he came at dusk to a village.