He turned his back on them and started over the rise, wagging his tail and giving vent to sharp, scolding barks.
“A fine lot of trouble you’ve put me to,” he appeared to be saying. “Hustle yourselves now and get home. Don’t you know your folks are worried to death about you? Such boys! Such boys! It wears a respectable hound out trying to take care of you.”
And the boys understood and agreed with him. So they followed meekly enough, limping first on one foot and then on the other and calling to him every few minutes not to go so fast.
They went on for hours and hours, as it seemed, but at last they stood beneath the tulip trees by the spring on Azalea’s plateau.
“Well,” said Hi, “this here is whar we part. We-all don’t seem to be bringin’ the Disbrows back to get their just punishment.”
“I reckon we’d better not say much about punishment,” grinned the leg-weary Jim. “So long, Hi. Hope it don’t hurt much.”
“Same to you,” called Hi. He and Bike were already on their way down the mountain, and Jim, tired almost to collapse, made his way up the road to where Ma McBirney paced back and forth, pouring out her soul in prayer.
But Pa McBirney seemed to have some feelings which did not come under the head of gratitude for his son’s return. He knew what such a night of torture meant to the dear woman beside him, who already had suffered too many shocks. He looked Jim over with a sternly parental eye.
“If you got what’s coming to you, son,” he said, “you’d be well lathered.”
“I know it, sir,” said Jim with conviction.