Part 36 (1/2)

Suddenly from out the yard two stocky cream-coloured dogs rushed at him.

They came with incredible swiftness through the snow, considering their short bench legs. Frank waited, head up, ears p.r.i.c.ked. One was a female; it was she who came first. He would not fight a female; he even wagged his tail haughtily. But in a twinkling she was under him and had caught his hind leg in a crus.h.i.+ng, grinding grip. He lunged back, snarling, and the other dog sprang straight at his throat.

He was down in the snow, he was on his feet again, he was ripping the short back of the dog at his throat into shreds, his fangs flas.h.i.+ng in the dusk. He was dragging them by sheer strength off toward the railroad; but he could not tear that grip from his hind leg, nor that other grip from his throat.

He did not cry out--he was no yelping cur. But it was growing dark, the air was full of snow, the grip was tightening on his throat, the other grip had pulled him down at last to his haunches. Then two men came running toward them, the one white, the other black. The white man grabbed the dog at his throat, the black man the dog under him. The white man was pounding the dog's nose with his fist, was cramming snow down his b.l.o.o.d.y mouth.

”They'll kill him, Will!” he panted. ”Go get some water to throw in their faces.”

The black man disappeared running--came back running, a bucket in each hand.

And now it was over, and off there the white man held both his dogs by their collars. They were panting, their wrinkled eyes half closed, their mouths dripping b.l.o.o.d.y foam. For many yards around the snow was churned into little hillocks. And there lay old Frank, panting hard, head up, eyes s.h.i.+ning.

”Pick him up, Will!” said the white man. ”His leg's broke.”

”Cap'n,” said the negro, ”I'm afraid of him.”

The white man swore, shaking his dogs angrily. That was some man's bird dog, a fine one, too.

”I believe that's Steve Earle's setter, from Freedom Hill across the river!” he cried above the wind. ”By George, I believe that's just who it is! We'll go and get the sled!”

But when they hurried back with the sled the wounded dog was gone. They followed his bloodstained tracks across the field, up the embankment, and to the railroad. They looked at them between the rails, fast filling with snow. The white man put his hands to his ears.

”He'll freeze to-night,” he said.

In the teeth of the wind, like a three-legged automaton, Frank was fighting his way doggedly through the night. The wind almost blew him off the embankments; the swirling waves of snow choked him. Maybe he would have lain down, maybe it would have happened as the man said, if it had not been for the spirit within him and for what he saw.

For just before him the superstructure of an iron trestle rose pencilled in snow against the night. Far below a black river wound serpentine into the mists. A mile to the left, he knew, was Squire Kirby's. In those dim bottoms on either side of the trestle he and his master and the squire had hunted a hundred times. The birds had scattered on those wooded hills now vibrant with the blast. Out on the trestle he picked his slow, hesitating way.

Suddenly he cried out sharply. A mighty gust of wind striking him in mid-air and almost hurling him into the blackness below had caused him to put down as a brace his wounded hind leg. Gasping, trembling, he lay down for a minute on the whitened ties, one leg hanging through. Then he rose and doggedly picked his way on.