“It must be,” thought Tom; “he is leading me straight to the sandy cave. What for?”
An undefined sensation of uneasiness began to increase upon him. He was getting hot with exercise, but his blood was quite cool. Imagination had not stirred him; he had had no breakfast; and if a fight was before him, he felt most decidedly that he would rather not. In this spirit then he kept on telling himself that he might as well turn back now, but all the same he kept trotting on after the dog, putting off the return till he had gone a little farther and a little farther, and always keeping on, till all at once it seemed to be a little lighter on ahead, and he strained his eyes in the full expectation of seeing Pete Warboys waiting for him.
“And if he is,” he half thought, half muttered, “as sure as I live I’ll get David to help me, and we’ll trap and half kill this treacherous brute.”
Another hundred yards, and he was looking wonderingly about him, for the place was strange. He had never been there before.
Then he grasped the meaning of the strangeness. The storm had evidently come down here with terrific force, making a path through the pine-forest, some of whose trees were laid like wheat after a heavy wind; while just in front one huge tree had been blown right over, and in falling had crushed down a dozen or more in the path of its fall, letting in light, and strewing the soft earth with broken limbs, and trunks lying like jack-straws on the ground.
“That’s why he has brought me,” said Tom, half aloud. “Halloo, where is he? Here! here! old boy, here!”
He was answered by a furious barking, and the dog sprang up into sight on the trunk of the big tree close up to its roots, barking furiously at him, and then turning and leaping down out of sight; while Tom felt as if all of a sudden his blood had begun to turn cold, and his legs beneath him had grown weak.
For a horrible thought had suddenly flashed across his mind, like a meteor over the field of the great telescope. He knew now the dumb language of the dog, and why it had fetched him; and as if to endorse his thought, there came from about a dozen yards away so wild and blood-curdling a yell, that for the moment he could not believe it to be the dog, but that it came from some one in mortal peril.