VI.
A RUN THROUGH THE WOODS.
“As I was saying,” Rambler went on, “the scent was as plain as the nose on your face, and, although I passed it over, one of the other dogs had a hint of it and whimpered over it. This dog afterwards made a very good track dog. He had what they call a cold nose, and he was hard headed enough to hang on. But at that time he was young and foolish, and new to the business. He had no mind of his own. So I went back to the trail, picked up the scent and went along with it slowly, as if it were a tedious job to unravel it.
“What I wanted to do was to follow it until it crossed some other trail, and then pick up the new one and carry Old Grizzly away from the Son of Ben Ali. But it was impossible. No one had passed, and so we ran on after the Son of Ben Ali.
I WAS CLOSE TO THE RABBIT
“The next best thing to finding some other track, I thought, was to get out of sight of Old Grizzly. I let myself out a little, the other dogs did the same, and in a few moments we had left Old Grizzly behind. Right then I did something I have never done before, and that was to try to catch a rabbit, when I was hunting a different kind of game. While we were going along, full tilt, a big fat rabbit jumped up right under my nose. I dashed after it as hard as I could go, and the other dogs came tumbling after. I was so close to the rabbit that it turned before going into the swamp. I made it turn again, and it ran into the mouth of one of my companions. The others ran up, and they had quite a fight over the rabbit, tearing it to pieces in short order. I was hungry myself, and nothing would have pleased me better than to rush in and take the rabbit away from my companions. But I didn’t have time.
“While the others were snapping and snarling I slipped into the swamp, ran across it and made a circle of a mile or more, and tried to pick up the scent again where I thought it ought to be. But it was not there. I knew then that the Son of Ben Ali had wandered about, not knowing or caring where he went so long as he kept out of the way of Old Grizzly. I made another circle, and this time I picked up the scent again. I had said to myself when I was hunting for it that I would remain silent when I found it, but I came upon it so suddenly and unexpectedly, and it was so warm and fresh, that I cried out at the top of my voice. It was foolish, but such is habit. My companions heard it, and they came to me without delay. I knew they were coming, and the best I could do was to discover quickly which way the scent led, and then take the back track, trusting to the dullness of my companions to mislead them. By the time they came up I was tripping along toward the cold end of the trail as noisily as if the Son of Ben Ali were in plain view. The others, not to be outdone, joined in the cry, and we went bolting along the back track. In this way we came up with Old Grizzly, who seemed to be much astonished to see us running headlong in the way he had just come.
“The scent grew fainter and fainter, and everything would have gone well but for one of my companions, the one that discovered the scent at the beginning of the hunt. When the scent grew colder, he began to circle around for himself, and about a half a mile away he picked it up with such a howl and a flourish that I ran up to him. It was so warm that I looked up, expecting to see the Son of Ben Ali trotting along a quarter of a mile away. But it was not so. He was not in sight.
“I joined in and took the lead, saying to myself that when we got into the woods I’d show my spotted companion a new wrinkle in trailing. When we came to the bushes I dropped back a little, seized my companion by the neck and dragged him around and shook him up in a way that surprised him and the others.
“‘What’s that for?’ he cried. ‘You’re too spotted,’ I replied. This quieted them down, but it was too late to carry out my new plans. The scent had been growing warmer and warmer, and I took it up again as a matter of duty, and the others followed in a more sober manner. We went through the woods at a pretty good pace, and I expected to see the Son of Ben Ali limping along ahead of us, ready to drop, for we had now come several miles in doubling and twisting and turning.