“Now,” said Bob Budd, “we have only to wait here until Hero starts the game for us.”
“Will it come up in front of us to be shot?” was the natural inquiry of Tom Wagstaff.
“I shouldn’t have said that ‘we’ are to wait here, but one of us,” Bob hastened to explain. “You’ve noticed that we have been following a path all the way to this point. Well, it keeps on over the mountain and down the other side.”
“Who made the path?”
“It is a hundred years old, if not older, and was made by wild animals that came down the mountain to drink from the stream that makes the mill-pond near our camp. The path branches off into three forks a quarter of a mile up the mountain, each of the three having been used by deer, bears, and other wild beasts that used to be so plentiful in these parts.”
“Where are the other paths?”
“This is the middle one; about two hundred yards to the left is the second, and not quite so far to the right is the third; now, if Hero starts any game he is sure to take one of these paths in his flight.”
“But suppose the animal is on the other side of Hero,” said Jim, “that is to say, suppose the dog is between us and him?”
“Then he will run the other way, but there’s where Hero will show his training. He knows as much about hunting as we do.”
If Bob had said that the canine knew a great deal more he would have told the truth.