mammoth beast astray it
bumped and swayed across a desolate field of broomstraw with borders
that plunged abruptly off into space. 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.

He saw Tommy looking all about in bewilderment at this roof of the world
on which, a lonely little figure, he stood close to the woman. Again the
longing seized the dog to rush forward, to let the boy know he, too, was
here. But there were the men close by; and in the car was the gun. Again
he bowed his head between his paws; and his eyes in the faint glow from
the light that still lingered in the sky were deep with loneliness and
trouble.

Suddenly the man who had driven the car turned. He glanced at the woman
and the boy, then toward the road. He took his pipe out of his mouth.

"Here, you get back in that car, kid!" he said.

This time Tommy stood his ground sturdily, but his upturned face was
white in the dusk, and he held tight to the skirt of the woman.

"Did you hear me?"

"He's dead tired, Joe!" snapped the woman.

The man took a sudden threatening step forward. In the thicket Frank
rose quivering to his feet. But with a quick movement the woman had
pushed the boy behind her. "Don't you touch him, Joe!" she flashed. A
moment she stood facing him, slim, defiant in the dusk. Then she took
the boy's hand and they went back to the car.

Suddenly Frank rose on his front legs, ears thrown back, eyes glowing
wildly. It seemed to him that the boy had looked straight into the
bushes where he lay. Certainly for a moment he had pulled back on the
woman's hand. Then he went on with her and they got into the car. But
Frank still sat on his haunches, panting and choking and panting again.

At last he crept along the edge of the thicket and lay there close to
the car. He was still panting. That glimpse full into the boy's face had
almost undone him. He was hungry for food, and hungry for human
companionship. He wanted to go to the car, to rear up on the side to
scratch at the curtains. But yonder, a hundred feet away, back and forth
before a fire they had built, moved the men. And against the box they
had taken from the car leaned the gun.

Within the car he heard the voice of the woman, low, confidential,
assuring, and