A DUMB FRIEND
At three o'clock that afternoon Bart Stirling sat down to rest at the
side of a dusty country road, pretty well tired out, and about ready to
return to Pleasantville.
When old Professor Cunningham gave him the names Buck and Hank Tolliver,
Bart was positive that the same covered the identity of the two men who
had been at the Sharp Corner with Lem Wacker.
Bart had started at once for Millville. His first intention was to get a
conveyance at the livery stable, his first impulse to solicit the
co-operation of the town police.
While discussing these points mentally, however, a farmer driving west
came down the road. He had a good team, said he was passing through
Millville, seemed glad to give Bart a lift, and so it was that the young
express agent found himself on the solitary lookout there, two hours
before noon.
He experienced no difficulty whatever in finding out all about the
Tollivers inside of twenty minutes after his arrival.
They were the last members of a shiftless, indolent family who had lived
on the edge of Millville for twenty years.
When the father and mother died the family broke up. The two boys, Buck
and Hank, kept bachelor's hall at the ricketty old ruin of a house on
the river until ejected by its owner for non-payment of rent, and then
went to the bad generally.
They patched up an abandoned shack over on the bottoms, the postmaster
at Millville told Bart, and lived by fishing, hunting and their
depredations on orchards and chicken coops.
In one of their nightly forays about a year previous they were captured
and fined heavily. They could not pay the fine and were sent to jail for
six months.
About the first of June they were released, came back to Millville,
found their old shack burned down, and since then, the postmaster
understood, had camped out in the woods, giving the town a wide
berth--in fact, only occasionally appearing, to buy a little flour,
sugar or coffee, or, mostly, tobacco.
Nobody had seen them for over a week--nobody knew anything of a
newly-painted red wagon.
It seemed probable, Bart theorized, that if they had made for hiding in
any of their familiar woodland haunts, they had reached the same by
driving through Millville before daylight, and when nobody was astir.
Bart finally found a woodcutter who knew where the Tollivers had had
their camping place the week previous. He described the spot and Bart
was soon there--a secluded gully about two miles from town.
The place showed evidences of having been used as a camp, but not
recently, and Bart went on a general blind hunt.
He traversed the woods for miles, both sides of a dried up rivercourse,
and inquired at farmhouses and of occasional pedestrians he met.
It was all of no avail. At three o'clock in the afternoon, tired,
bramble-torn and a little discouraged, he sat down by the roadside to
rest and think. He began to censure himself for taking the independent
course he had pursued.
"I should have telegraphed the company the circumstances of the
burglary, and put the matter in the hands of the Pleasantville police,"
he reflected. "If the trunk had belonged to anybody except Mrs. Colonel
Harrington, I would have done so at once. Somebody coming!" he
interrupted his soliloquy, as he caught a vague movement through the
shrubbery where the road curved.
"No--it's only a dog."
The animal came into view going a straight, fast course, its head
drooping, a broken rope trailing from its neck.
Bart suddenly sprang to his feet, for, studying the animal more closely,
something familiar presented itself and he ran out into the middle of
the road.
"Come here--good fellow!" he hailed coaxingly, as the animal approached.
But with a slight growl, and eyeing him suspiciously, it made a detour
in the road, passing him.
"Lem Wacker's dog--I am sure of that!" explained Bart, naturally
excited. "Come, old fellow--here! here! what is his name? I've got
it--Christmas. Come here, Christmas!"
The dog halted suddenly, faced about, and stared at Bart.
Then, when he repeated the name, it sank to its haunches panting, and,
head on one side, regarded him inquiringly.
The animal was a big half-breed mastiff and shepherd dog that Lem Wacker
had introduced to his railroad friends with great unction, one Christmas
day.
He had claimed it to be a gift from a friend just returned from Europe,
who had brought over the famous litter of pups of which it was one.
Wacker had estimated its value at five hundred dollars. Next day he cut
the price in half. New Year's day, being hard up, he confidentially
offered to sell it for five dollars.
After that it went begging for fifty cents and trade, and no takers. Lem
kicked the poor animal around as "an ornery, no-good brute," and had to
keep it tied up on his own premises all of the time to evade paying for
a license tag.
Meeting the dog now, gave a new animation to Bart's thoughts.
The sequence of its appearance, here, ten miles away from home, was easy
to pursue. It had broken away from its new owners--Buck and Hank
Tolliver--and they were somewhere further up the road.
Christmas was making for home. It was hardly possible that the animal
knew Bart, for, although he had seen it several times, he had never
spoken to it before. The call of its name, however, had checked the
animal, and now as Bart drew a cracker from his pocket and extended it,
the dog began to advance slowly and cautiously towards him.
Bart saw the importance of making a friend of the animal. He stood
perfectly still, talking in a gentle, persuasive tone.
Christmas came up to him timorously, sniffed all about his feet, and
suddenly wagged its tail and put its feet up on him in a friendly
manifestation of delight.
Its keen sense of scent had apparently recognized that Bart had been a
visitor to the Wacker home that day. It now took the cracker from Bart's
hand, then another, and as Bart sat down again stretched itself placidly
and contentedly at his side.
"This looks all right," ruminated Bart speculatively. "If I can only get
Christmas to go back the way he came, I feel I have found the right
trail."
Bart finally arose, and the dog, too. The animal turned its face east,
wagged its tail expectantly, and eagerly studied Bart's face and
movements.
As he took a step up the road the animal's tail went down, nerveless,
and its eyes regarded him beseechingly.
"Come on, old fellow!" hailed Bart encouragingly, patting the dog. It
followed him reluctantly. Then he made a rollic of it, jumping the
ditch, racing the animal, stopping abruptly, leaping over it, apparently
making Christmas forget everything except that it had a friendly
companion.
At length Bart induced the dog to go ahead. It led the way with evident
reluctance. It would stop and eye Bart with a decidedly serious eye. He
urged it forward, and finally it got down to a slow trot, sniffing the
road and looking altogether out of harmony with its forced course.
Christmas was about twenty yards ahead of Bart at the end of a two
miles' jaunt, when he shied to the extreme edge of the road and drew to
his haunches.
Here wagon tracks led into the timber. The road had been used lately,
Bart soon discerned.
"Come on, Christmas!" he hailed, branching off into the new obscure
roadway.
The dog circled him, but could not be induced to leave the main road.
Bart made a grab for the trailing rope. The animal eluded him, gave him
one reproachful look, turned its nose east, and shot off, headed for
home like an arrow.
"I've lost my ally," murmured Bart, "but I think I have got my clew.
Christmas does not like this road, which looks as if he left his captors
somewhere down its length. I'll try to locate them."
Bart followed the tortuous windings of the narrow road, through brush,
over hillocks, down into depressions, and finally into the timber.
He came to a clearing, forcing his way past a border of prickly bushes,
the tops of which seemed freshly broken, as though a wagon had recently
passed over them.
As he got past them, Bart came to a decisive halt, and stared hard and
with a thrill of satisfaction.
Twenty feet away, under a spreading tree, a horse was tethered, and
right near it was a red wagon--holding a trunk.