The Bottineau courant. (Bottineau, Bottineau County, N.D.) 1895-1929, 1922-02-16
Copyrights 81 onarles scribner's sons

| branch If / hadn't caught It from his
hand. For what he saw, and what ]
had seen, was the u~nmistakable print,
In the soft earth just inside of. the
planking, Of one Of Jeanie's browns
leather ridingIboots.
In another half-second we were both
in the tunnel and Daddy was heaving
| the dog aside from the hole he was
paving out In the earth fall. Snatch
ing up a broken-handled shovel that
the former tunnel drivers had thrown
away, the old man flung himself mad
ly upon the dir pile, and since there
was room for only one to work at a
time, l stood at his elbow and held the
torch. I*don't know what he expected
to find hidden under the slide, but I
do know what 1 was afraid he was
going TO find. :
After all, 1t was only a flash in the
pan, so far las any dreadful discovery
was concerned. Inside of five minutes.
Daddy, working like a man demented,
had dug the entire cave-in away, and
there wss nothing to show for the
frantic shoveling-less than nothing.
Again. I 1on't know how Daddy felt.
but TN Sure / was able to breathe
better, the Improvement dating from
the moment when it became apparent
that the earth heap had grown too
small under the shovel stabs to pos
sibly conceal a human body.
The celfie had followed us and
Daddy Hiram scowled down at him.
IF that dog could only be like old
Gran'paw Balaam's donkey for a min
ute or So" he unused. He saw her
go in there and saw her come out {;
likewise and the same he must We
seen what she did after she come out.
Looks as If he wanted to talk and tell
us, don't he?"
Barney was certainly giving a good
imitation of that or some other anx-
iety. He was frisking about and bark
ing, leaping up now and then to snap
at an Imaginary fly in The air.. Daddy
caught him by his lower jaw and held
him immovable. go find her, Bar
ney!' he commanded; "good dog-go
find her!"
The instant he was released the COL
lie acted as If he understood perfectly
what was wanted Of him. Springing
aside. he began to circle again, nose
TO the ground, and within half a min
ute he was off, this time heading into
n dim trail fhof IoE y-n Jio rnrolI,
down the mountain, not in the direc-
ton Of Atropia, but rather o" the 9TH
err leg of a triangle, one side of which
might be the desert edge, one the trail
we had followed from the Atropia
road, and the third the route we were
row taking to the eastward.
1t must have been within an hour
or so of midnight when we left the
mountain forests behind and got into
the region of barren foothills. Here
he collie seemed much surer Of his
ground, and we had our work cut out
for us in the effort to keep up with
him. In the starlight I made out the
line of telegraph poles as we ran, and
pretty soon our dog leader swung off
to the right and we found ourselves
trotting on a line parallel to the rail-
road track and only a little way from
1t.
Pretty soon the dog disappeared =;
and then we heard him barking at a
little distance to the left Of the paral-
lei tracks. When we went to see what
he had found, the mystery suddenly
took another tack and veered off into
a new channel. In a small grassy hol-
low between two Of the hills we came
upon the dog and the calico pony. The
bride reins had slipped over the bron-
co.'s head, and Barney had them be-
tween his teeth and was backing and
Juggling and apparently trying to pull
the pony along.
swell, III be ding-jiggered!" said
Daddy; but | couldn't unload quite