And after a long while he ventured to waddle nearer, slinking through
brush and frosted weed, creeping behind boulders, edging always closer
and closer to that silent house where nothing moved except the
wind-blown door.
And now, at last, he set a furtive foot upon the threshold, stood
listening, tip-toed in, peered here and there, sidled to the
dining-room, peered in.
* * * * *
When, at length, Emanuel Sard discovered that Clinch's Dump was
tenantless, he made straight for the pantry. Here was cheese, crackers,
an apple pie, half a dozen bottles of home-brewed beer.
He loaded his arms with all they could carry, stole through the
dance-hall out to the veranda, which overlooked the lake.
Here, hidden in the doorway, he could watch the road from Ghost Lake and
survey the hillside down which an intruder must come from the forest.
And here Sard slaked his raging thirst and satiated the gnawing appetite
of the obese, than which there is no crueller torment to an inert liver
and distended paunch.
Munching, guzzling, watching, Sard squatted just within the veranda
doorway, anxiously considering his chances.
He knew where he was. At the foot of the lake, and eastward, he had been
robbed by a highwayman on the forest road branching from the main
highway. Southwest lay Ghost Lake and the Inn.
Somewhere between these two points he must try to cross the State
Road.... After that, comparative safety. For the miles that still
would lie between him and distant civilisation seemed as nothing to
the horror of that hell of trees.
He looked up now at the shaggy fringing woods, shuddered, opened another
bottle of beer.
In all that panorama of forest, swale, and water the only thing that had
alarmed him at all by moving was something in the water. When first he
noticed it he almost swooned, for he took it to be a swimming dog.
In his agitation he had risen to his feet; and then the swimming
creature almost frightened Sard out of his senses, for it tilted
suddenly and went down with a report like the crack of a pistol.
However, when Sard regained control of his wits he realised that a
swimming dog doesn't dive and doesn't whack the water with its tail.
He dimly remembered hearing that beavers behaved that way.
Watching the water he saw the thing out there in the lake again,
swimming in erratic circles, its big, dog-like head well out of the
water.
It certainly was no dog. A beaver, maybe. Whatever it was, Sard didn't
care any longer.
Idly he watched it. Sometimes, when it swam very near, he made a sudden
motion with his fat arm; and crack!--with a pistol-shot report down it
dived. But always it reappeared.
What had a creature like that to do with him? Sard watched it with
failing interest, thinking of other things--of Quintana and the chances
that the dogs had caught him,--of Sanchez, the Ghoul, hoping that dire
misfortune might overtake him, too;--of the dead man sprawling under the
cedar-tree, all sopping crimson---- Faugh!
Shivering, Sard filled his mouth with apple-pie and cheese and pulled
the cork from another bottle of home-brewed beer.