He could almost hear them breathing.
"Guess I imagined," said Sam.
"Sure," said the other.
Their figures darkened the doorway. The burly man clapped the other on the back.
"What I tell you, Sam! One thousand——"
The door closed. The merriment would go on till morning. And old Frank, muscles limbering as he ran, soreness passing out of his side, was galloping through the night, toward the railroad—and home.
Morning found him loping easily along the railroad, nose pointed north like a compass. Now and then he left the track to let a train pass, looking at it, if it went north, with wistful eyes, then keeping in sight of it as far as he could. He passed a few small stations with big water tanks, he crossed long, low trestles over boundless marshes, he came at dusk to a village.
Hungry, lonely, he approached an unpainted cottage on its outskirts. Two dogs rushed at him; he faced them and they turned back. He trotted on, hair risen in an angry tuft down his back. He slept curled up in an abandoned shed, but not for long. The morning stars lingering low over the flat horizon kept pace with him, then a sea of mottled pink clouds, then the huge red face of the rising sun.
At midday he pounced on an animal like a muskrat that tried to cross the track—a tough thing to kill, a tougher to eat. At dusk he drew near a farmhouse, where a man was chopping wood. The man picked up a stick, ordered him away, then went on chopping.
He made no more overtures after this, but many a farmer thought a fox had been among his chickens. Habits of civilization had given way perforce to habits of outlawry. Only as he galloped north day after day his eyes still shone with the eager light of the bird dog's craving for human companionship and love.