Billy and Paul volunteered for the work mentioned. With the cold, stiff body of poor Scottie covered over with muslin in the tonneau, they started the stray automobile again toward the lonely South Fork and Ferndale. Where the dog’s burial place should be had been a problem. Willie Creek suggested a wooded knoll where some evergreens grew, not far beyond the branching of the road. This place the two boys reached in due time. It seemed to be quite what they sought.
Overhead the always green branches would sing a gentle requiem in the breeze the whole year through. The thick, emerald foliage would protect the little grave below, both from the violence of winter’s storms and the heat of the summer sun.
The solemn task was not a pleasant one. They wrapped the clean, new muslin around the body that in life had been so lithe, so strong, so active and so handsome, and gently placed it in the soft, cool ground. After the beautiful custom of the Grand Army of the Republic they put bits of evergreen in the grave, in token of unceasing remembrance of their dead comrade. Slowly they filled in the earth.
“We’ll come back some day—some day when we’ve at last got out of this awful ocean of bad luck we seem to be in, and we’ll put up a little stone to mark the grave,” said Billy. “If ever a dog deserved it, Scottie does. I only wish we knew to whom he rightly belonged before Mr. Knight ever saw him. They’d like to hear, I think, that he was a hero, whether they cast him off or not, or even if he was a runaway.”
Going on toward Ferndale, the little town two or three miles beyond where the Big Six was ditched, Billy and Paul again deeply felt the lonely influence of the unfrequented road. Even in the bright sunshine the old mill-pond, the mill, the big, empty icehouse, the weeping willows near them—all seemed to tell of that dreadful tragedy of many years ago. The boys both noticed as they passed how the road’s bank sloped down, and their active imaginations plainly pictured the frightened horses, the overturned carriage and the flood of the great, dark pond closing over the young man and his mother, whose sad story Willie Creek had told them.
Farther on, at the spot where all their own troubles had had their beginning, the two lads stopped. Filled with vain regrets they looked again all about the place where the Six went down. But if they expected to make any new discovery, they were disappointed. The road was dry now. The broken fence rails still lay at the foot of the embankment. The trampled grass and weeds still told of what had happened, but no one had been near; no human creature, it was to be believed, had visited the scene since the boys last saw it.
Returning to their car, the friends soon reached the house where they had stopped to make inquiry that first day of their trouble—the house where lived the lonely, old man, all his thoughts in the days of long ago. They now knew the story of the faded dwelling, the crumbling condition of every structure. Curiously they glanced about, thinking they might see the lonely, old gentleman and give him a friendly salute—just a hand thrown up for an instant—as they passed.
Ah, there he was! Seated in the kitchen doorway, he saw the machine even before Paul and Billy saw him. Their wave of a hand seemed to please him, and he waved a beckoning signal in return. Billy jumped down and walked up to see if something was wanted.
“No, no!” the old man replied, far more pleasantly than at that former time. He meant only to acknowledge their greeting, he said. Then he asked if the owner of the runaway car had been found.
This led Billy to tell all about the misfortune that had followed the picking up of the strange automobile. The farmer ruefully shook his head. There were many days together that no vehicle went along this road, in these latter years, he said. He could hardly understand how so strange a thing should happen almost at his door. And he had been disturbed in other ways. Only last night, as he sat in the kitchen door, he had seen a crouching figure in the moonlight slip from one tree to another. It was after midnight. Visitors he little expected to have at any time, much less at such an hour. So he called out, “Hello, there!” The figure hastened away and he saw it no more.