The night of sleep was so short that it was difficult for Helen to believe that hours had passed. Bo appeared livelier this morning, with less complaint of aches.
"Nell, you've got color!" exclaimed Bo. "And your eyes are bright. Isn't the morning perfectly lovely? . . . Couldn't you get drunk on that air? I smell flowers. And oh! I'm hungry!""Bo, our host will soon have need of his hunting abilities if your appetite holds," said Helen, as she tried to keep her hair out of her eyes while she laced her boots.
"Look! there's a big dog -- a hound."
Helen looked as Bo directed, and saw a hound of unusually large proportions, black and tan in color, with long, drooping ears. Curiously he trotted nearer to the door of their hut and then stopped to gaze at them. His head was noble, his eyes shone dark and sad. He seemed neither friendly nor unfriendly.
"Hello, doggie! Come right in -- we won't hurt you," called Bo, but without enthusiasm.
This made Helen laugh. "Bo, you're simply delicious," she said. "You're afraid of that dog.""Sure. Wonder if he's Dale's. Of course he must be."Presently the hound trotted away out of sight. When the girls presented themselves at the camp-fire they espied their curious canine visitor lying down. His ears were so long that half of them lay on the ground.
"I sent Pedro over to wake you girls up," said Dale, after greeting them. "Did he scare you?""Pedro. So that's his name. No, he didn't exactly scare me.
He did Nell, though. She's an awful tenderfoot," replied Bo.
"He's a splendid-looking dog," said Helen, ignoring her sister's sally. "I love dogs. Will he make friends?""He's shy an' wild. You see, when I leave camp he won't hang around. He an' Tom are jealous of each other. I had a pack of hounds an' lost all but Pedro on account of Tom. I think you can make friends with Pedro. Try it."Whereupon Helen made overtures to Pedro, and not wholly in vain. The dog was matured, of almost stern aloofness, and manifestly not used to people. His deep, wine-dark eyes seemed to search Helen's soul. They were honest and wise, with a strange sadness.
"He looks intelligent," observed Helen, as she smoothed the long, dark ears.
"That hound is nigh human," responded Dale. "Come, an' while you eat I'll tell you about Pedro."Dale had gotten the hound as a pup from a Mexican sheep-herder who claimed he was part California bloodhound.
He grew up, becoming attached to Dale. In his younger days he did not get along well with Dale's other pets and Dale gave him to a rancher down in the valley. Pedro was back in Dale's camp next day. From that day Dale began to care more for the hound, but he did not want to keep him, for various reasons, chief of which was the fact that Pedro was too fine a dog to be left alone half the time to shift for himself.
That fall Dale had need to go to the farthest village, Snowdrop, where he left Pedro with a friend. Then Dale rode to Show Down and Pine, and the camp of the Beemans' and with them he trailed some wild horses for a hundred miles, over into New Mexico. The snow was flying when Dale got back to his camp in the mountains. And there was Pedro, gaunt and worn, overjoyed to welcome him home. Roy Beeman visited Dale that October and told that Dale's friend in Snowdrop had not been able to keep Pedro. He broke a chain and scaled a ten-foot fence to escape. He trailed Dale to Show Down, where one of Dale's friends, recognizing the hound, caught him, and meant to keep him until Dale's return. But Pedro refused to eat. It happened that a freighter was going out to the Beeman camp, and Dale's friend boxed Pedro up and put him on the wagon. Pedro broke out of the box, returned to Show Down, took up Dale's trail to Pine, and then on to the Beeman camp. That was as far as Roy could trace the movements of the hound. But he believed, and so did Dale, that Pedro had trailed them out on the wild-horse hunt. The following spring Dale learned more from the herder of a sheepman at whose camp he and the Beemans; had rested on the way into New Mexico. It appeared that after Dale had left this camp Pedro had arrived, and another Mexican herder had stolen the hound. But Pedro got away.
"An' he was here when I arrived," concluded Dale, smiling.
"I never wanted to get rid of him after that. He's turned out to be the finest dog I ever knew. He knows what I say.
He can almost talk. An' I swear he can cry. He does whenever I start off without him.""How perfectly wonderful!" exclaimed Bo. "Aren't animals great? . . . But I love horses best."It seemed to Helen that Pedro understood they were talking about him, for he looked ashamed, and swallowed hard, and dropped his gaze. She knew something of the truth about the love of dogs for their owners. This story of Dale's, however, was stranger than any she had ever heard.
Tom, the cougar, put in an appearance then, and there was scarcely love in the tawny eyes he bent upon Pedro. But the hound did not deign to notice him. Tom sidled up to Bo, who sat on the farther side of the tarpaulin table-cloth, and manifestly wanted part of her breakfast.
"Gee! I love the look of him," she said. "But when he's close he makes my flesh creep.""Beasts are as queer as people," observed Dale. "They take likes an' dislikes. I believe Tom has taken a shine to you an' Pedro begins to be interested in your sister. I can tell.""Where's Bud?" inquired Bo.
"He's asleep or around somewhere. Now, soon as I get the work done, what would you girls like to do?""Ride!" declared Bo, eagerly.
"Aren't you sore an' stiff?"
"I am that. But I don't care. Besides, when I used to go out to my uncle's farm near Saint Joe I always found riding to be a cure for aches.""Sure is, if you can stand it. An' what will your sister like to do?" returned Dale, turning to Helen.
"Oh, I'll rest, and watch you folks -- and dream," replied Helen.
