“What—what the—?” sputtered Mack, stupid with horror.
“Trevy’s a ‘fool,’ all right!” scoffed Joel. “Jes’ like I heard you call him, awhile back. He tries to be more like you all the time. Likewise he s’cceeds. Now run an’ phone for the sheriff. Me an’ Trevy has had a busy night. It’s up to you to do the rest of the chores.”
CHAPTER XI: THE PARTING OF THE WAYS
Treve lay on the porch at the Dos Hermanos ranch house; his classic head between his little white forepaws; his mighty gold-and-white body like a couchant lion’s. A casual passerby would have said the dog was asleep. A dog-student would have known better. Seldom do collies sleep in that picturesque pose. Usually they slumber asprawl on one side.
Neither were the collie’s deepset sorrowful eyes shut. They were looking wearily across the heat-pulsating miles of ranch land. Nor were they alert, as when the big dog was on guard. There was perplexed worry in their soft gaze.
Things were happening at the ranch; things Treve did not understand. Yet his collie sixth sense told him there were change and confusion in the air as well as in the words and voices of his two masters. These two masters were often at odds. The dog long since had ceased to let himself be stirred by their incessant and harmless quarrels.
But they were not at odds, nowadays. Indeed, there was a new civility—almost a sad friendliness—in their manner toward each other.
We humans often grope for the solution to some baffling mystery which eludes our sharpest intelligence, and whose key, could we but master it, lies within easy reach of us. So with Treve. The key to this disturbing new ranch development lay within six inches of his nose, in the form of a newspaper which had fallen from the porch rocker to the dusty floor.