The door of the main camp opened and closed. With the slant of the rain beating against her came Swickey, a quaint figure in her father’s cap and gay-colored mackinaw. She had a bowl of table scraps for Smoke, who ceased whining and stood watching her approach. David took the basin from her hands and gravely offered her a seat on the box; but she declined with a quick smile and dropped on her knees beside Smoke, caressing his short, pointed ears and muscular fore-shoulders. The dog sniffed at his food disdainfully. What did meat and bones amount to compared with prospective liberty? With many words and much crooning she cajoled him into a pretense of eating, but his little red eyes sought her face constantly as he crunched a bone or nosed out the more appetizing morsels from the pan.
“Dave,” she said, addressing him with the innocent familiarity of the backwoods, “you’re goin’ to take Smoke to his real home again, ain’t you?”
“Yes, I’ll have to, I think. But this is as much his real home as Boston was.”
“Are you comin’ back again?”
“I think so, Swickey. Why?”
“Are you goin’ to bring Smoke back when you come?”
“I’m afraid not. You see he belongs to Mr. Bascomb the surveyor. He was coming up here to get Smoke and—and talk with me about certain things, but he was called home by wire. Had to leave immediately.”
“What’s it mean—‘called home by wire’?”
“By telegraph. You remember the telegraph wires in the station at Tramworth?”
“Yip. Hundreds of ’em.”