Page:Edison Marshall--Shepherds of the wild.djvu/88

80 He approached within twenty feet of him, harking, then started back toward the river. Still Hugh did not follow. The dog rushed forward again and again turned. He didn't seem to be able to understand. Always before the men that he knew hurried to his aid at a time like this. Hugh felt a sudden rush of blood to his face.

"Good Lord, Pete," he exclaimed. "I've got to see what's the matter with that dog."

He caught up his rifle, then followed the dog to the water's edge. The river itself was a thing to stir the fancies. The dawn had not yet broken and in the dim, eerie grayness the stream had lost all quality of reality, all semblance to the sheet of sparkling water flowing between green banks that Hugh had beheld the previous night. He felt a sense of deepening awe. Rather, it seemed like some river of a Beyond, a sinister and terrible cataract in a twilight land of souls, a Lethe flowing darkly at the edge of a Hereafter. To a poet it might have seemed the River of Life itself, deep, fretful, full of peril and tragedy, and flowing from the beginning of the world to its end.

When the waters struck the great bowlders of the river bed the foam gleamed a curious, pale white in the twilight,—otherwise the waters would have seemed like a dark void. The dog raced up and down the bank in excitement, then half-entered the water. Hugh saw his difficulty at once. He could not make headway in that