Ruff was trotting along; a yard or so behind her. The fall of the log had made him spring instinctively sideways. Now he went over to where Pitchdark lay moaning and writhing. Tenderly he sniffed at her; then he walked around the log and her pinioned body. In another second he was at work clawing and shoving at the weight that imprisoned her.
The log was too light for its purpose. Also the boy who made and set the trap was a novice. The end of the log had come to rest on a knot of wood near the tree base. Ruff’s weight and applied strength set it a-rolling. Off from the vixen it bumped; while she cried out again in agony.
Ruff turned to greet her as she should leap joyously to her feet. But she did not leap. The impact of the falling log had injured her spine. The best she could do was to crawl painfully along, stomach to the ground; whining with pain at every step. Her hindlegs sagged useless. Her forepaws made all the progress.
Yet she was a gallant sufferer. Keenly aware that she was in no condition to face or flee any possible dangers of the open, she made pluckily for the eyrie on the distant peak. The great collie slackened his pace to hers. At a windfall, too high for her to clamber over, he caught her gently by the nape of the neck with his mighty jaws and scrambled over the impediment, carrying her with him.
Thus, at snail-pace, they made their way homeward; the collie close beside his crippled chum; quivering from head to foot in distress as now and then the pain forced from her a sharp outcry.
Dawn deepened into daylight. Up came the winter sun, shouldering its sulky way through dun horizon mists. The day was on. And Ruff and Pitchdark were not yet within a mile of their hiding place.
The last mile promised to be the worst mile; rising as it did, almost precipice-like, to the summit; and strewn with boulder and rift. To the light-footed pair, such a clamber had ever been childishly easy. Now it threatened to be one long torment to the vixen.
No longer, since the accident, did they seek as usual to confuse or obliterate their homeward trail. There was no question now of wasting a step or of delaying the needful moment of safety.
Then, as they came to a ten-foot cliff[cliff], at the base of the peak’s last stiff climb, they halted and looked miserably upward. Along the face of this rock wall a narrow rudimentary trail ran, from bottom to top; a widened rock-fissure. The fox and the collie were wont to take it almost at a bound.
But now there was no question of bounding. Nor was the collie able to navigate the tricky climb with Pitchdark suspended from his jaws. It was not a matter of weight but of leverage and of balance. He had sense enough to know that.