ts
through fields, by spurts of speed at the next patch of woods, he
caught up again. It was an old trick and a simple one; he had played it
often before; but never, as now, with such gnawing anxiety, such
bewilderment and rage in his heart.

Once, lumbering old rattletrap though it was, the car left him far
behind. Then as he raced frantically along the dusty road under the
fierce sun that beat down on his heavy red coat, his eyes were like a
mad dog's eyes. But from the top of a long hill over which it had
disappeared he glimpsed it again in the distance--glimpsed it just as it
turned clumsily out of the highway and pointed its nose toward the
distant mountains.

After this it was easy. A mongrel cur might have kept up, much less a
seasoned thoroughbred. Up and down hill ahead of him the car swayed and
wallowed laboriously in an unused, gully-washed road. There was constant
shade in which to stop and pant, there were frequent streams in which to
lie for a moment, half submerged, and cool his boiling blood. Noon
passed without any halt. The sultry afternoon wore slowly away. Still
the big setter, his silver-studded collar tinkling slightly like tiny
shining castanets, galloped after that disreputable car as if he
belonged to it and had been left carelessly behind.

It never entered his head to turn back. Life was a simple thing to him.
There were no pros and cons in his philosophy. Yet he watched every turn
of that car, always on the alert, always ready to spring aside into the
bushes if it stopped. That man had meant murder; to show himself meant
death. He was a chauvinist, but he was no fool. The boy needed him
alive, not dead.

But the first sight of the boy was almost too much for him. The car had
turned out of the road at last. It bumped a while through woods,
stopped, and he sank down behind a bush. The sun had just set. Yonder
through a gap in the trees rose the dome of a heavy-wooded mountain.
Above it a vast pink and white evening cloud boiled motionless into the
sky. Beyond this mountain rolled the solid blue undulations of whole
ranges. For miles they had not passed a house. The breathless heat of a
wilderness hung over this place.

The men, stiff, dusty, hot, got out. The heavy man's hand was bandaged.
Then the woman got out; then the boy. A great trembling desire seized
the dog to rush forward, to let the boy know he was here. Every muscle
quivered; he choked and swallowed; he looked off as if to avo