Frank of Freedom Hill Part 10

In contrast with the bright glare of the cornfield it was dark in the woods, like pa.s.sing from out of doors into the cool, shaded living room back home. Here and there shafts of sunlight pierced the dense foliage and touched leaves and tree trunks with silver spots. Down the heavy-wooded slope the boy went, but more cautiously now. Suddenly he stopped breathless, Frank beside him with p.r.i.c.ked ears. At the same time the two men, both at work on the car down there by the pool, both burly and flushed of face, glanced quickly around.

A moment they stared; then they began to talk, low, excitedly. The woman came around from the other side of the car. She was young, slim, strong; she was in a crimson s.h.i.+rtwaist and on her cheeks were spots of red.

She, too, glanced at boy and dog, then joined the talk of the men. "No!

No!" she cried. They brushed her aside; she ran quickly back to them; they brushed her aside again. Finally one of them pushed her into the car, pulled the shabby curtains down, and got in himself. The other man came forward, a smirking smile on his heavy red face.

Close to the boy stood Frank, his challenging eyes fastened on that smirking face. But Tommy, looking up with that eagerness to trust common to all young things from children to puppies, answered the man's questions in his clear boy's voice. Many times before, at Tom Belcher's store, at the Hunt Club, at country fairs, strangers had stopped thus to talk to him, had asked him who he was, where he lived, if his dog would bite. Many times before such strangers had smiled down into his upturned face.

"We got lots of things in the car," the man was saying, "apples, peaches, circus things. We been to a circus. Did you see the lady?"

"I did!" said Tommy, breathless, his eyes big.

"Well, you come along with me. The lady wants to show you them circus things."

Just a moment Tommy hesitated. He looked up wistfully into the smiling face and into the narrowed eyes that somehow frightened him. Then he glanced toward the car and smiled in ecstasy. That rolled-up tent strapped on behind was striped red-and-white like tents at the fair: merry-go-round tents, tents with shawled women who held your hand and told you what was going to happen. The woods became suddenly alive with romance, luring him to see. He hesitated no longer. He went with the man, one hand on his hat brim as if the wind were blowing. Close behind, panting, followed old Frank.

The car flecked with spots of light looked big here in the woods like a strayed elephant. The other man, on the front seat, his hand on the wheel, glanced over his shoulder as they approached. In his wide-brimmed hat he looked like the man who stands in front of tents and shouts for people to come in and see. Half concealed by the curtains and by bundles, the woman, her face strangely white except for red spots, sat on the back seat. Valises and suitcases with gaudy things sticking out of them were strapped here and there to the car. Tommy stopped and stared in wonderment at this travelling splendour. Close beside him stood old Frank, fierce-eyed, wise, suffering.

"Get in, son," said the man at the wheel, his voice gruff and husky.

"We're goin' to take you to your ma. You ain't got no business down here in the woods alone. Quick now--no fooling!"

But Tommy drew back.

"Is--is F'ank goin'?"

"Sure. Let the dog in, Bill."

The red-faced man slammed the door on boy and dog and clambered heavily into the front seat. The lumbering car lurched and swayed along the unused wood road. It was stifling hot in here with the curtains down, but old Frank, wedged in between bundles and suitcases, was panting with more than heat. And Tommy, into whose face he looked with flattened ears and eyes solemn with devotion, was suddenly pale.

Just ahead, the big road came into sight, s.h.i.+ning in the sun. The car stopped. The woman against whose knees boy and dog were pressed in the crowded s.p.a.ce was breathing fast. The crimson, sleazy s.h.i.+rtwaist rose and fell. Her face, in spite of the red spots, was pasty, as if she might faint. The men looked up and down the road, nodded grimly at each other, and the car started with a jerk. The scream of Tommy broke the terrible silence.

"That ain't the way! That ain't----!"

The red-faced man whirled around, caught the boy by the back of the neck and pressed the other hand over his mouth. And old Frank, rearing up in the crowded confusion, buried his s.h.i.+ning fangs deep in that hand and wrist. The other man sprang out of the car, jerked the door open, and caught him by both hind legs.

"Don't stick him, Bill!" he gasped. "They'll find his body. Let him go home!"

Snarling, writhing, fighting, Frank was dragged out and hurled into the road. A savage kick sent him tumbling backward; the man sprang once more into the front seat. The car darted away, Frank after it, barking hoa.r.s.ely in his rage and horror, his mouth flecked with b.l.o.o.d.y foam, the road flying dizzily underneath him.

All that blazing August day he followed the car--followed though at the next patch of woods it stopped and a man jumped out with a shotgun. He was a hunting dog; he knew what that meant. Like a big red fox caught prowling about after daylight, he sprang into the bushes and disappeared from sight. After that he did not show himself again. Where he could, he stayed in the woods, running parallel to the road like a swift, silent outrider. At open places he lagged shrewdly behind; by short cuts 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 pa.s.sed without any halt. The sultry afternoon wore slowly away. Still the big setter, his silver-studded collar tinkling slightly like tiny s.h.i.+ning 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 b.u.mped 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 pa.s.sed 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 avoid temptation. But one of the men pulled a shotgun out of the car and the dog bowed his head between his paws in a sort of shame. That was the symbol of his helplessness. That was what stood between his fangs and those men's throats.

He watched them strip the car of its baggage. They unstrapped the tent and dragged it off to the depths of a thicket beyond. Valises, telescopes, all the cheap pageantry of their trade, went the same way.

They were staking everything on the prize that had walked into their hands that morning, coming like a little prince from that big white house that sat amidst its trees on the hill surrounded by broad fields rich with corn and tobacco and cotton.

At last the man who had driven the car picked up the gun. The woman, one arm full of bundles, took the boy by the hand. He drew back, looking up at her and holding to his hat. She spoke to him low and huskily, her face white. Then, as he perforce went with her, Frank heard him crying in the woods, heard the convulsive catches of his voice, saw the twinkle, through the trees, of white socks above reluctant, sandalled feet.

Eyes sullen and fierce, he rose and followed. Down the hill, where a creek gurgled, the man with the gun turned. He was hard-jawed, pale-eyed. The boy and woman stopped.

"Shut up!" he said.

The crying stopped; the convulsive sobs went on.

"Shut up!"

A few steps the dog rushed forward, hair risen all the way down his back. Then he sank down on the ground. For the woman had dropped the bundles and was on her knees before the boy, her arm about his heaving shoulders. Frank saw the whiteness of her face as she looked up at the man above her. Her voice rang through the woods, husky and shrill, but suppressed.

"He can't help it, Joe!"

The crying had stopped now. But the st.u.r.dy little chest was still rising and falling as the boy stood looking up with quivering face at the man.

The woman picked up her bundles, rose, and took his hand once more.

Still holding to his hat he went with her, in silence now, taking two little trotting steps to one of hers.

They spent the night in the woods, out of hearing of any chance pa.s.ser-by along the road. Carefully hidden in the underbrush old Frank watched them. Only once did he leave them. Then he went to the car, found a big chunk of side-meat wrapped in a paper under the back seat, made his meal off his enemies, and came guardedly back, licking his chops. They were gone again before day. The rising sun found the car toiling upward into the echoing depths of the mountains. Just around the last bend in the road followed old Frank.

Sometimes he trotted, sometimes he broke into a gallop. Sometimes he stopped to drink at streams that came slipping down green walls of rock, crossed the road like snakes, and dived into the foliage below. His tongue hung out; he was gaunt, dust-covered, weary-eyed. The few mountaineers he pa.s.sed looked at him with narrow suspicion, then back up the winding road where that curtained car had disappeared. With just a glance up into their faces, he galloped by.

But when another car, long, black, s.h.i.+ning, like the one at home, swung suddenly around the bed just ahead, he stopped short. The weariness left his eyes, the stiffness went out of his muscles, his heart gave a great bound. Four sportsmen, such as he and his master a.s.sociated with, bobbed comfortably up and down in the capacious seats of that approaching car.

Their fis.h.i.+ng rods were strapped to the side. He saw the s.h.i.+ne of the sun on their ruddy faces, the twinkle in their eyes as they stopped.

"What's up, old man?" they asked.

Maybe he got a bit rattled. Anyway, he failed. He ran up the road in the direction of that other car, wheeled, and ran back. He jumped up on the step with his front paws, he looked up with pleading eyes from one face to another.

"Those folks left him behind," they said.

They a.s.sured him that it was a shame to treat a good old scout that way, but he could catch up if he kept plugging. They said if the road were not too narrow they would turn round, give him a lift and his people a piece of their minds. They threw him something to eat, they wished him good luck, and left him standing in the road, looking after them with disconsolate eyes.

After he had eaten the food and taken up his solitary pursuit, he heard in the road far below the sound of their car. Even their voices floated up to him between the narrow walls of the echoing gorge.

"I tell you," said one, "it was an S O S! We ought to have followed him.

Something queer about that car."

But they were gone for all that, like the friends who, whether we be man or woman or dog, daily pa.s.s us by, willing to help if they only understood.

It was dusk when he caught up. The car had reached the flattened top of the lofty range it had been climbing all day. From behind a bush he watched it turn out of the road. Like some mammoth beast astray it b.u.mped and swayed across a desolate field of broomstraw with borders that plunged abruptly off into s.p.a.ce. In the middle of the field grew a black thicket of stunted pines, huddled densely together up here under the sky. On the side of the thicket away from the road the car stopped, and Frank crept into the pines and lay down. The men got out, then the woman, then the boy.