But the law of averages was kind to this particular puppy. Perhaps out of pity for his wrecked show-career; perhaps because the pup was born for great deeds.
For several seconds the rumble of the train over the ballast had given place to a hollower sound. Also, the thirty-mile speed had slowed down perceptibly. All this by reason of the fact that the engine and front cars had begun to cross the cantilever railroad bridge which spans the Dos Hermanos River in the very heart of the Dos Hermanos Valley.
The pup catapulted out into windy space, in the arc of a wide circle. But he did not smash sickeningly against the hard ground beside the track. There was no ground alongside the track. There was nothing alongside the track but night air.
Through this air, head over heels, spun the flying tawny-gold body. Down and down he fell, past the level of the bridge span; missing an outthrust concrete-and-stone buttress by a fraction of an inch.
With a loud splash that knocked the breath out of him, he struck the sluggish water of the Dos Hermanos River. The rush of his fall was broken, in part, by this breath-expelling impact. But enough momentum remained to carry him several feet below the surface.
The train chugged drearily on. The stillness of midnight crept down again over the lonely valley. The ripples had not died on the disturbed water when a classically wedge-shaped head reappeared above the surface; and four sturdy feet began to strike out in confused but energetic fashion toward the nearer bank. Still in sharp pain and fighting for his lost breath, the puppy swam on; letting the easy current carry him downstream in a slant, rather than to waste extra strength in fighting it.
Lionel Arthur Montagu Brean was far too accustomed to the roar of passing trains to let such sounds awaken him from slumber. As the engine and cars rolled hollowly over the bridge, a hundred yards upstream, they did not so much as penetrate his sleep-mists in the form of a dream. But presently a far less noticeable sound stirred him to wakefulness. This because the lesser sound was also less familiar to the wanderer’s subconscious self.
Through his sleep he heard a despairful panting and an accompanying churn of the quiet stream on whose bank he had pitched camp for the night. Brean sat up, stupidly, rubbing his eyes. In front of him, not twenty feet from shore, something was plowing a difficult way through the yellow water, toward the spot where he sat.
Brean got to his feet, wondering. The advancing shape took on size and form. The swimmer was emerging from the water. Through the dim starlight, the man was able to make out that the oncomer was a very wet and bedraggled collie.