Among these white and grey and black heaps he picked his
way, sniffing hastily here and there. In the very centre of the place he
sat down suddenly on his haunches, pointed his nose aloft, and wailed
with tremendous dreariness.
"Now," murmured the doctor to Dan, "that strikes me as a singular
manifestation of intelligence in an animal--he has found the site of the
very barn where he was hurt--upon my word! Even fire doesn't affect his
memory!"
Here he observed that the face of Whistling Dan had grown grim. He ran
to Bart and crouched beside him, muttering; and Byrne heard.
"That's about where you was lyin'," said Dan, "and you smell your own
blood on the ground. Keep tryin', Bart. They's something else to find
around here."
The wolf-dog looked his master full in the face with pricking ears,
whined and then started off sniffling busily at the heaps of ashes.
"The shooting of the dog is quite a mystery," said Byrne, by way of
conversation. "Do you suppose that one of the men from the bunk-house
could have shot him?"
But Dan seemed no longer aware of the doctor's presence. He slipped here
and there with the wolf-dog among the ash-heaps, pausing when Bart
paused, talking to the brute continually. Sometimes he pointed out to
Bart things which the doctor did not perceive and Bart whined with a
terrible, slavering, blood-eagerness.
The wolf-dog suddenly left the ash-heaps and now darted in swiftly
entangled lines here and there among the barns.
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