“If we stay here, we’ll be cornered!” cried the man. “They’re not far off now—they’ll be on us in a few minutes!” The baying call sounded again, much louder, it seemed. “Hurry!”
He plunged into the woods, looking back to see if the boys were following. Jake was having difficulties; he had almost to push the bewildered Sherlock every inch of the way. The vision of a pack of fiendish hounds leaping at his throat, pulling him down, almost paralyzed the poor lad; he stumbled along at Jake’s side, shivering, sneezing, almost falling headlong. Again rose in the still air the hunting-cry of the beasts on their track.
Jake noticed that the man was leading them downhill, fighting his way through the scratching underbrush. Where could they be going? In which direction lay an instant’s safety from that yapping Nemesis at their backs? The two boys leaped down a steep declivity, saw Burk standing in a little ravine below.
“Water!” he shouted. “We’ve got to wade in this brook a ways—that will shake them off for a bit!” He started down the course of the swift stream, splashing rainbow drops up to his knees, rattling stones with his hurrying feet.
Jake herded his charge into the water, and took the plunge himself, driving Sherlock ahead of him down the rough descent. For some two hundred yards they stumbled forward in panic, ankle-deep in the chill rivulet. The stream was rapidly becoming wider, fanning outward to form a little pool. Beyond, they saw Burk, wading waist-high across to a little spot of grassland sheltered among tall poplar trees.
“Come on!” he called.
Somehow—Jake never could explain it to himself afterward—he forced the stricken Sherlock through the pool and helped him to climb the muddy bank, where the dazed boy lay where he fell, his thick glasses knocked over one ear, his eyes streaming, caught in the clutch of a sneezing fit.
“I—I can’t go on!” Sherlock gasped. “I dow I probised to help—but—but——”
Burk bent over him. “We’ve got to get away, old man! You can’t stay here—they’ll find you in a minute.” He helped the boy to his feet, and with Jake on the other side, they continued their mad progress, almost dragging the limp body of young Jones between them.
As they ran, Burk jerked out a few directions. “I think I know where we are now. It’s dangerous ground—but the dogs have driven us out of the mountains. We’ve got to find more water—that’s the only thing that will shake them off our trail. And I think this little brook empties into Lake Wallis——”