nd him. He had thought of the
men about the fireplace of the lodge. They would not desert him. Then as
time passed he forgot them. Only a small part of his life had they ever
filled. His master and mistress and the boy, his home far away in
another world--more and more these filled his thoughts and his desires.
Thus sometimes after a hunt, as he lay on the few shucks he had
scratched together into a meagre bed, there came to him from the shack
the smell of cooking meat; and he saw a big warm kitchen with a cat
dozing by the stove, and a fat old negro mammy bending over steaming
kettles and sputtering skillets. Then hungry saliva dripped from his
mouth to the floor and he choked and swallowed.
Again, on chilly nights, when he glimpsed through the chinks a glow in
the windows of the shack, there came into his mind a roaring fire of oak
logs and a big living room, with a man and a woman and a little boy
around the fire, and a gun standing in the corner with a hunting coat
draped over it. Then he raised his big head and looked about his prison
with eyes that glowed in the dark. It was at these times that he leaped
over the boxes and began to gnaw fiercely at his board.
But maybe even old Frank's stout spirit would have broken, for hope
deferred makes the heart of a dog, as well as the heart of man, sick;
maybe he would have ceased to gnaw at his board behind the boxes; maybe
he would have yielded to the men at last, submissive in spirit as well
as in act, if he had not seen the train and the woman and the little
boy.
They had taken an unusually long hunt, out of their accustomed course.
He had managed to get some distance ahead, pretending not to hear the
shouts above the wind; the bird shot they had sent after him had only
stung his rump, bringing from him a little involuntary yelp, but not
causing him to turn. The wildness of the day had infected him. A high
wind blowing out of a sunny, cloudless sky ran in waves over the tawny
level fields of broomstraw, and from a body of pines to his right rose
a great shouting roar.
Suddenly out of the south a whistle came screaming melodiously on the
wind. He galloped at an angle to intercept it. Out of the body of pines
a long train shot and rushed past, the sun flashing on its sides, its
roar deadened by the roar in the pines. Just behind it, among leaves and
trash stirred into life and careering madly, along he leaped on the
track.
A glimpse he caught of the brass-rai
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