From time to time Treve would bend down to lick the tortured face or to whine softly in sympathy. He knew the man was helpless and in pain. But there was nothing he could do except to interpose his own hot shaggy body between Fenno’s head and the terrific sun-rays. And even this may have been done by accident.
Thirst gripped Joel; tenfold more agonizingly than did the pain of his wrenched back. His mouth was parched and burning. His tongue had begun to swell. Burying his face—now sweatless and dryly torrid—in his hands, he lay and prayed for death.
When he looked up again, Treve was gone. An awful sense of loneliness seized the tormented sufferer. Blithely would he have given his share of the ranch, in return for the dog’s comforting presence at his side. More blithely would he have given ten years of life for one drop of water, to ease the fever and maniac thirst that possessed him.
To few is it given to receive the granting of the only two wishes they make. But, presently, it was granted to Joel Fenno. He heard a patter of running feet. Toward him, from the direction of the waterhole, Treve came bounding. The collie’s massively shaggy coat was adrip with water.
Up to the parched victim he trotted, and lay down beside Fenno’s head. Greedily Joel dug both fevered hands in the dog’s mattress of soaked fur, squeezing into his own mouth the drops of grimy water wherewith the coat was saturated.
Now, Treve had done no miraculous thing; although to Fenno it seemed a major miracle of brain and devotion. Indeed, the dog had done something absolutely normal and characteristic. Seeing Joel lie still, with his face buried in his hands, he had concluded the man was asleep; and thus was in no immediate need of the collie’s services. Thus, the young dog had scope to think of his own needs.
For more than five hours, through the scorching heat, Treve had been running; without so much as a single drink of water to cool his throat. Collies, more than almost any other dogs, require plenty of drinking water. Now that he was at leisure to consider his own wants, Treve realized he was acutely thirsty.
His uncanny sense of smell told him there was water, somewhere ahead. Off he went to investigate. Finding the waterhole, he drank his fill; then, collie-like, he wallowed deep in the muddy liquid. Cooled and with his thirst assuaged, he recalled his duty; and galloped back to the injured man; lying down in front of him to await orders. That his soaked coat chanced to contain enough water to soothe the torment of Joel’s fever-thirst, was mere coincidence.
Twice more, during that terrible afternoon of heat, the dog stole away to the waterhole to drink and to wallow. Both times he came back to the sufferer who waited so frantically to wring out into his own burning mouth the life-saving drops.