Then, to his dismay, truck and car had made off down the mountainside; and he had been left alone in his imprisonment.
Except for a single unheard bark of protest, Lad made no effort to call back the departing humans. Never before had they forsaken him. And he had full trust that they would come back in a few minutes and set him free.
When the car halted, a half-mile below, Lad felt certain his faith was about to be justified. Then, as it moved on again, he sprang to the end of his short rope, and tried to break free and follow.
Then came the dying away of the chugging motor's echoes; and silence rolled up and engulfed the wilderness hilltop.
Lad was alone. They had gone off and left him. They had with never a word of goodby or a friendly command to watch camp until their return. This was not the dog's first sojourn in camp. And his memory was flawless. Always, he recalled, the arrival and the loading of the truck and the striking of tents had meant that the stay was over and that at the party was going home.
Home! The charm and novelty of the wilderness all at once faded.
Lad was desperately lonely and desperately unhappy. And his feelings were cruelly hurt; at the strange treatment accorded him.
Yet, it did not occur to him to seek ******* and to follow his gods to the home he loved. He had been tied here, presumably by their order; certainly with their knowledge. And it behooved him to wait until they should come to release him. He knew they would come back, soon or late. They were his gods, his chums, his playmates. They would no more desert him than he would have deserted them. It was all right, somehow. Only, the waiting was tedious!
With a tired little sigh, the collie curled up in a miserable heap on the stony ground, the shortness of his tether ****** even this effort at repose anything but comfortable. And he waited.
A dog, that is happy and well, settles himself for a prolonged wait, by stretching out on his side;--oftenest the left side; and by dropping off into slumber. Seldom, unless he be cold or ill, does a big dog curl up into a ball, to rest. Nor is he thoroughly comfortable in such a posture.
Lad was not comfortable. He was not resting. He was wretched. Nor did he try to snooze. Curled in a compact heap, his sorrowful eyes abrim with sorrow, he lay scanning the bumpy mountainside and straining his ears, for sign of the car's return. His breathing was not as splendidly easy as usual. For, increasingly, that earlier twinge of acrid smoke-reek was tickling his throat.
The haze, that had hovered over the farther hilltops and valleys, was thickening; and it was creeping nearer. The breath of morning breeze was stiffening into a steady wind; a wind that blew strong from the west and carried on it the smell of forest fire.
Lad did not enjoy the ever-stronger smoke scent. But he gave only half-heed to it. His main attention was centered on that winding wagon-track whence the car and the truck had vanished into the lowlands. And, through the solemnly spent hours he lay forlornly watching it.
But, after sunset, the smoke became too pervasive to be ignored longer. It was not only stinging his throat and lungs, but it was ****** his eyes smart. And it had cut off the view of all save the nearer mountain-peaks.
Lad got to his feet; whining softly, under his breath. Ancestral instinct was fairly shouting to his brain that here was terrible peril. He strained at his thick rope; and looked imploringly down the wagon-road.
The wind had swelled into something like a gale. And, now, to Lad's keen ears came the far-off snap and crack of a million dry twigs as the flame kissed them in its fast-crawling advance. This sharper sound rose and fell, as a theme to the endless and slowly-augmenting roar which had been perceptible for hours.
Again, Laddie strained at his heavy rope. Again, his smoke-stung eyes explored the winding trail down the mountain. No longer was the trail so distinguishable as before. Not only by reason of darkness, but because from that direction came the bulk of the eddying gusts of wind-driven smoke.
The fire's mounting course was paralleling the trail; checked from crossing it only by a streambed and an outcrop of granite which zigzagged upward from the valley. The darkness served also to tinge the lowering sky to south and to westward with a steadily brightening lurid glare. The Master had been right in his glum prophecy that a strong and sudden shift of wind would carry the conflagration through the tinder-dry undergrowth and dead trees of that side of the mountain, far faster than any body of fire-fighters could hope to check it.
The flame-reflection began to light the open spaces below the knoll, with increasing vividness. The chill of early evening was counteracted waves of sullen heat, which the wind sent swirling before it.
Lad panted; from warmth as much as from nervousness. He had gone all day without water. And a collie, more perhaps than any other dog, needs plenty of fresh, cool water to drink; at any and all times. The hot wind and the smoke were parching his throat. His thirst was intolerable.
Behind him, not very many yards away, was the ice-cold mountain lakelet in which so often he had bathed and drunk. The thought of it made him hate the stout rope.
But he made no serious effort to free himself. He had been tied there,--supposedly by the Master's command. And, as a well-trained dog, it was his place to stay where he was, until the Master should free him. So, apart from an instinctive tug or two at his moorings, he submitted to his fate.
But, in mid-evening, something occurred, to change his viewpoint, in this matter of nonresistance.
