He got the scrapings from all the dishes, and the last batch of pancakes, which nobody else had room for, and then went bounding off again, barking and wheeling amid the grass and flowers.
“Well, here come some cattle. Let’s see how good a dog he is,” Norman grinned, pointing up the pasture.
Sure enough, a herd of cattle, turned out to range wild during the summer, was breaking out of the woods.
“They’ll be around all night, and walk all over camp, and get into the spring, if we don’t chase ’em off,” Norman went on. “Sic your sheep dog on ’em, Bennie.”
Bennie whistled to Jeff, and then pointed to the cattle.
“Sic ’em, Jeff! Drive ’em away!” he said.
Jeff gave a yelp, jumped madly around in a circle—and then ran barking loudly directly toward a bird sitting in a low tree, singing its evening song!
“Yes, that’s a great dog,” remarked Uncle Billy.
“He certainly knows how to herd up cattle,” Norman added.
“Maybe he’s a bird dog, Bennie,” said Spider.
“I know what he is,” Dumplin’ grinned. “He’s a Chickadee hound!”
“Aw, you make me sick,” Bennie retorted. “Just ’cause he’s a pup, and hasn’t been trained yet. Come here, Jeff. Bite ’em!”
Jeff came back, as proudly as if he had herded the cattle instead of scaring one small bird, and once more he had to be put out of the tent, after everybody had got nicely to sleep.
The next morning the thermometer, which the doctor carried in a case with his aneroid barometer, registered only 38° at five o’clock. Everybody was glad to pile out and hustle around striking camp, to get warmed up for breakfast.
“Now, gentlemen, we’ve got our work cut out for us,” said Norman, when they were ready to start. “Everything has been a picnic so far, but now we are going to run into the snow. I don’t know whether we can make Hunt’s Cove or not. It will depend on how good sports you are.”
“If the last two days have been a picnic, I don’t know whether I want to see your idea of working,” said Bennie.
“Afraid, your grandmother. But I sure am sorry for poor old Dobbin,” Bennie retorted.
Old Jefferson, which looked so near, wasn’t so near as it looked, of course. Mountains never are. They descended gradually from Minto Pasture, through a “ghost forest” for two or three miles. A ghost forest is a forest which has been burned, without consuming the standing trunks. There the trees stood, thousands of them, but ghostly gray and dead—not a live branch, not a needle. Beyond this forest, they came out on a great plateau three miles wide, which was bare of everything except low bushes, wild flowers, a few snow-drifts and lava heaps, and a tiny brown tarn of water. The fire had done its work thoroughly here.