“Good-morning, Swickey.”
“Good-morning,” she murmured, stooping to pat Smoke.
“I’m going out—‘where duty calls,’ you know. Came to say good-bye.” He extended his hand and she took it nervously. “Good-bye, Swickey. I’ll be up again some day. By the way, I want to make you a present. Keep Smoke. He’s yours anyway, by preference, but I want to give him to you.”
“Thanks, Wallie. I understand. Pop’s gone over to Timberland, but I’ll say good-bye for you. He didn’t expect that you’d be going so soon.”
“Neither did I,” he replied. “Davy’s going to jog down the road a piece with me—as far as the work-train. Special car for mine—little red one with green flags—to Tramworth. Good-bye.”
She watched him as he joined David and turned with him down the tracks toward the south. Smoke stood in the doorway watching the retreating figures. Then he came into the room, sniffed sonorously at Beelzebub as he passed him, and threw himself down beneath the table with a grunt.
“Smoke,” said Swickey, as she returned to the dishes, “you’re getting fat and lazy. I wonder if you know whom you really belong to now. But you always belonged to me, didn’t you?”
As though he understood, the dog got up and came to her, looking up with an expression that said plainly, “Do you doubt it?”
CHAPTER XXIX—SMOKE’S LAST STAND
As each morning brought a crisper edge to the air and a crisper outline to the margin of the forest against sunrise and sunset, the Lost Farm folk grew restless, and this restlessness was manifested in different ways. Avery, returning from Timberland in the afternoons, busied himself in cleaning and oiling his already well-cared-for traps and rifle. He also prepared malodorous bait from fish, which he cut in strips, bottled, and hung in the sun. Swickey took long walks with Smoke, never asking her father nor David to accompany her. The railroad camps had moved north, following the progress of the road toward the Canadian boundary. David, naturally prone to a healthy serenity, and although satisfied with the progress of the work, grew unnaturally gruff and short-spoken. Night after night he walked and smoked alone, till even Avery’s equanimity was disturbed by his partner’s irritable silence.