Page:The red book of animal stories.djvu/238

 hands—this would have taken too long, and besides, the earth was often very hard; but he grasped the plant firmly with his teeth, set his feet tight, and threw back his head with a jerk. If this failed to extract the root, he would then fix his teeth in the stem closer to the ground, and turn head over heels. This was too much for the root, which always came out directly.

Having once got possession of his prize, the nest thing was to eat it. He would look carefully round to see where his master was, and would gobble it up more or less fast, according to the distance Le Vaillant was from him, never moving his eyes from the explorer's feet all the while. If, however, his master came on him unexpectedly, he would hastily try to hide the root and pretend that he knew nothing about it; but a light box on the ear soon obliged him to share the morsel with his friend.

In the course of a long day's hunting, Kees, much as he enjoyed the expedition, often got very tired, and used to ride one of the dogs, who, being very good-natured, would carry him for whole hours at a time. As a rule, none of the dogs hated him; indeed he kept them all in order, and if any of them attempted to interfere with him when he was eating, he would adopt the method of his master, and send the intruder away with a box on the ear.

But the biggest and strongest dog of the pack was less good-natured than the rest, and whether from pride or laziness, very much objected to act the part of a beast of burden. So when Kees took it in his head to jump on him, he merely stood still and let all the others get well in front of him. Kees could not endure to remain behind anybody, and thumped the dog and pulled his ears to make him go on. But neither thumps nor pulls produced any effect; the dog would not stir. At last, seeing there was no help for it, Kees got down, and both he and the dog raced as fast as they could to join the