“I wonder who it belongs to,” murmured Frank, taking a very careful look at the dog again. “I don’t remember seeing one like him around here lately.”
None of the party remembered a dog of its kind.
“Did it come from the road?” asked Frank, turning to Helen.
The girls replied in chorus that it did.
“It has every resemblance of a mad dog,” said Frank, “but I thought dogs went mad in the middle of the summer. This is nutting time, autumn, and no time for a dog to go mad.”
“Frank,” spoke up Lanky slowly, deliberately, “do you know something—this is a good dog—it belongs to some one who values it—and I believe we ought to have a veterinarian come out here and see it.”
The idea struck Frank at once as being an important one, whereupon, after a moment’s thought, he said:
“I believe you’re right, Lanky. We’ll get Doc Whittaker to look at it and hear what he has to say. And we’ll have his support in case our guess is right. We have killed this dog—that is, I have—and I’ll have to pay for it, and pay well, too, unless I’m able to prove that it was mad.”
“But it was rushing at me to bite me!” cried Minnie. “You could tell the man who owns it just that. That’s certainly good enough reason!”
“He—ah, Bill! He—ah, Bill!” came a voice followed by several shrill whistles. Some one from the road was calling a dog.