“Oh, not until your business is all settled; he said he’d stay and see it all through. He said that he’d have a surprise for me when he got back; but I guess he won’t. I imagine that he thought I’d feel surprised to learn that you’d received your papers, but I’d be surprised if you didn’t, after the way you’ve kept the faith, so to speak. Oh, now, sit down! You’re not going yet, are you? And after such a walk as it is from your house here, too!”
“I came down by the trail, Mrs. Horton.” And then I told her about Guard, thus accounting for the gun, which I had caught her glancing at, once or twice, rather curiously.
“Young dogs are foolish,” was her comment, when she had heard the story. “If he was older, I should tell you not to be a mite worried, but as he’s a young one, it’s different. I’ve known a young dog to get on a hot trail, and follow it until he was completely lost. My father lost a fine deerhound that way once. The dog got on the trail of a buck, and last we ever heard of him he was twenty miles away, and still going. I do hope you won’t have such bad luck with your dog.”
I bade good-by to Mrs. Horton, and started homeward, again taking the trail through the ravine. I was not much cheered by her words in regard to Guard, and heavily depressed by the knowledge that Mr. Horton had, after all, beaten Mr. Wilson and Jessie in his start for town—though what difference it could make, either way, until the Land Office was open in the morning no one could have told. Being troubled, I walked slowly, this time, with my eyes on the ground. Half-way through the ravine I came to a point where a break in the walls let in the sunlight. Through this low, ragged depression the light was streaming in in a long, brilliant shaft as I approached the spot. The warm, bright column of golden light had so strange an effect, lighting up the gray rocks and the moist, reeking pathway, that I paused to admire it. “If it were only a rainbow, now,” I thought, “I should look under the end of it, there, for a bag of gold.” My eyes absently followed the column of light to the point where it seemed suddenly to end in the darkness of the ravine, and I uttered a startled cry. Under the warm, bright light I saw the distinct impression of a dog’s foot. It was as clearly defined in the oozy reek as it would have been had some one purposely taken a cast of it, but after the first start, I reflected that it did not necessarily follow that the print was made by Guard. Still, examination showed that it might well be his. Searching farther, I found more tracks—above the break in the wall, but none in the ravine below it. The footprints had been a good deal marred by my own as I came down the ravine, and, what I thought most singular, supposing the tracks to have been made by Guard, there were also the hoof-marks of a horse—not a range-horse, for this one wore shoes, and, developing Indian lore as I studied the trail, I presently made the important discovery that, while the dog’s tracks occasionally overlaid those of the horse, the horse’s tracks never covered the dog’s. Clearly, then, if those footprints belonged to Guard, as I had a quite unaccountable conviction that they did, he was quietly following some horseman. For an indignant instant I suspected some reckless cowboy of having lassoed and stolen him, but a little further study of the footprints spoiled that theory. Guard would have resisted such a seizure, and the footprints would have been blurred and dragging. The clean impressions left by this canine were not those of an unwilling captive. I followed the tracks along the trail to the upper end of the ravine for some time, but learning nothing further in that way, returned again to the break in the wall. Looking attentively at that, I at length discovered a long, fresh mark on the slippery rock. Such a mark as might have been made by the iron-shod hoof of a horse, scrambling up the wall in haste, and slipping dangerously on the insecure foothold. With the recognition of this, I was scrambling up the bank myself. Scarcely had my head reached the level of the bank when a loud, eager whinny broke the silence. Startled, I slipped into a thicket of scrub-oaks, and, from their friendly shelter, made a cautious reconnoissance. Not far away, and standing in clear view, a bay horse was tethered to the over-hanging limb of a pine tree. It did not need a second glance for me to recognize Don, Mr. Horton’s favorite saddle-horse. That the poor creature had had a long and tedious wait, his eager whinnying, and the pawing of his impatient hoof, as he looked over in my direction, plainly told.
I watched him for awhile, breathlessly, and in silence, but he was far too anxious to keep silent himself. His distress was so apparent that I felt sorry for him, and finally decided that I might, at least, venture to approach and speak to him. Leaving my place of concealment I started toward him, but stopped abruptly with my heart in my mouth, before I had taken a dozen steps, as a new sound broke the silence. A new sound, but familiar, and doubly welcome in that wild place. It was the sharp, excited yelping that Guard was wont to make when he had treed game and needed help.
CHAPTER XXV
GUARD’S PRISONER
At the sound of Guard’s voice, regardless of caution, and waiting only to raise the hammer of the rifle that I held ready in my hand, I ran forward. Guard evidently had his eyes on me, although I could not see him; his yelps ceased for an instant to break forth with redoubled energy as I came within sight of him. He was standing over a heap of rubbish, into which he was glaring with vindictive watchfulness, but with one alert ear bent in my direction and the tip of his bushy tail quivered in joyful recognition as I advanced toward him. Before reaching him, however, I had found my bearings, as the hunters say, and knew the locality. Still, the place had an unfamiliar air. It was a minute or two before I saw the cause of this; then I missed the one thing that particularly designated the spot, setting it apart to that extent from many similar places. I had not seen the lonely, secluded little park more than two or three times in all the years that we had lived so near it, but whenever I had seen it, hitherto, a hunter’s shack, long abandoned, had stood on the farther edge of the opening. It had always seemed on the verge of falling, and, as I neared Guard, I saw that this was the thing that had happened: the cabin had collapsed, and, more than that, Guard had run something to earth under it.