"Here! stop that!" He jumped in between the infuriated man and the infuriated dog.
"Stand back!" roared the Colonel.
"It was your fault; you trod—"
"Stand back, damn you! or you'll get hurt."
The stick would have fallen on the Boy; he dodged it, calling excitedly, "Come here, Nig! Here!"
"He's my dog, and I'll lamm him if I like. You—" The Colonel couldn't see just where the Boy and the culprit were. Stumbling a few paces away from the glare of the fire, he called out, "I'll kill that brute if he snaps at me again!"
"Oh yes," the Boy's voice rang passionately out of the gloom, "I know you want him killed."
The Colonel sat down heavily on the rolled-up bag. Presently the bubbling of boiling snow-water roused him. He got up, divided the biscuit, and poured the hot water over the fragments. Then he sat down again, and waited for them to "swell like thunder." He couldn't see where, a little way up the hillside, the Boy sat on a fallen tree with Nig's head under his arm. The Boy felt pretty low in his mind. He sat crouched together, with his head sunk almost to his knees. It was a lonely kind of a world after all. Doing your level best didn't seem to get you any forrader. What was the use? He started. Something warm, caressing, touched his cold face just under one eye. Nig's tongue.
"Good old Nig! You feel lonesome, too?" He gathered the rough beast up closer to him.
Just then the Colonel called, "Nig!"