"Let him wake! The daddy'll come across or I'll wring the brat's neck!"
She stared at him with white face, full of horror and fear and loathing. She turned and stumbled toward the car, the curtains closed upon her. Far in the night Frank heard her sobbing to herself.
His eyes were green with hatred as he followed the car the next day. A few crumbs of bread from the deserted camping place, a taste of potted meat from a can he held fiercely between his paws while he licked the inside, had made his meagre breakfast. There were times that day when, if the men had looked behind, they must have seen him. There were times when he would not have cared if they had. Close around the bends, within sight sometimes where the road straightened, he trotted or loped wearily along, tongue lolling out, collar loose on his neck. So another day wore away and mid-afternoon came. Then the car stopped, and from force of habit, as it were, he turned aside for the last time into the bushes.
Suddenly his panting ceased, he raised his head, and pricked his ears. From the valley below had come the smell of human habitations mingled with the faint tinkle of a cowbell and the sound of a hammer. Eyes bright in an instant, he watched the man climb stiffly out of the car ahead. The other and bulkier man clambered from between the curtains of the rear where he had ridden all that day. They talked for a while low and guardedly. They glanced suspiciously up and down the rough road they had been following, then down a shaded road that led pleasantly to the valley below.
"There ain't an inch of gas left," said the man who had driven the car. "It's the last chance for fifty miles."
"Have you looked in the can?" asked the heavy man, his face worried.
"You saw me empty it last night, didn't you?" sneered the other.
He pulled a big can out of the car, then he parted the curtains.
"See here, kid, you want to keep damn quiet--hear?"
The voice sounded muffled in a sort of sob.
He fastened the curtains together. He muttered directions to his uneasy companion. "You drive up to them bushes and wait." He put in his hip pocket something that flashed brilliantly, even pleasantly, in the sun, he put on his coat, picked up the can, and started down the shaded road. And old Frank, fierce eyes shrewd, hair risen all the way down his gaunt back, rose guardedly, crept through the bushes, came out in the road behind and followed.