第17章 CHAPTER V THE GOING OF JOSHUA(2)

But this compromise was not satisfactory, because the moment the young man started to cross the threshold the dog started to follow.

When Brown halted, he followed suit--and howled. Then the substitute assistant surrendered unconditionally.

"All right," he said. "Come in, then, if you want to. Come in! but for goodness sake keep still when you are in."

He strode into the kitchen, leaving the door open. Job slunk after him, and crouched with his muzzle across the sill, evidently not yet certain that his victory was complete. He did not howl, however, and his late adversary was thankful for the omission.

Brown bethought himself of the water in the wash boiler and, removing the cover, tested it with his finger. It was steadily heating, but not yet at the boiling point. He pushed the boiler aside, lifted a lid of the range and inspected the fire. From behind him came a yelp, another, a thump, and then a series of thumps and yelps. He turned and saw Job in the center of the floor apparently having a fit.

The moment his back was turned, the pup had sneaked into the kitchen. It was not a large kitchen, and Job was distinctly a large dog. Also, he was suspicious of further assaults with the fire shovel and had endeavored to find a hiding place under the table.

In crawling beneath this article of furniture he had knocked off a sheet of the fly paper. This had fallen "butter side down" upon his back, and stuck fast. He reached aft to pull it loose with his teeth and had encountered a second sheet laid on a chair. This had stuck to his neck. Job was an apprehensive animal by nature and as the result of experience, and his nerves were easily unstrung. He forgot the shovel, forgot the human whom he had been fearfully trying to propitiate, forgot everything except the dreadful objects which clung to him and pulled his hair. He rolled from beneath the table, a shrieking, kicking, snapping cyclone. And that kitchen was no place for a cyclone.

He rolled and whirled for an instant, then scrambled to his feet and began running in widening circles. Brown tried to seize him as he passed, but he might as well have seized a railroad train. Another chair, also loaded with fly paper, upset, and Job added a third sheet to his collection. This one plastered itself across his nose and eyes. He ceased running forward and began to leap high in the air and backwards. The net containing the big lobster fell to the floor. Then John Brown fled to the open air, leaned against the side of the building and screamed with laughter.

Inside the kitchen the uproar was terrific. Howls, shrill yelps, thumps and crashes. Then came a crash louder than any preceding it, a splash of water across the sill, and from the doorway leaped, or flew, an object steaming and dripping, fluttering with fly paper, and with a giant lobster clamped firmly to its tail. The lobster was knocked off against the door post, but the rest of the exhibit kept on around the corner of the house, shrieking as it flew. Brown collapsed in the sand and laughed until his sides ached and he was too weak to laugh longer.

At last he got up and staggered after it. He was still laughing when he reached the back yard, but there he stopped laughing and uttered an exclamation of impatience and some alarm.

Of Job there was no sign, though from somewhere amid the dunes sounded yelps, screams and the breaking of twigs as the persecuted one fled blindly through the bayberry and beachplum bushes. But Brown was not anxious about the dog. What caused him to shout and then break into a run was the sight of Joshua, the old horse, galloping at top speed along the road to the south. Even his sedate and ancient calm had not been proof against the apparition which burst from the kitchen. In his fright he had broken his halter rope and managed--a miracle, considering his age--to leap the pasture fence and run.

That horse was the apple of Seth Atkins's eye. The lightkeeper believed him to be a wonder of strength and endurance, and never left the lights without cautioning his helper to keep an eye on Joshua, "'cause if anything happened to him I'd have to hunt a mighty long spell to find another that could tech him." Brown accepted this trust with composure, feeling morally certain that the only thing likely to happen to Joshua was death from overeating or old age. And now something had happened--Joshua was running away.

There was but one course to take; Brown must leave the government's property in its own care and capture that horse. He had laughed until running seemed an impossibility, but run he must, and did, after a fashion. But Joshua was running, too, and he was frightened. He galloped like a colt, and the assistant lightkeeper gained upon him very slowly.

The road was crooked and hilly, and the sand in its ruts was deep.

Brown would not have gained at all, but for the fact that the horse, from long habit, kept to the roadway and never tried short cuts.

His pursuer did, and, therefore, just as Joshua entered the grove on the bluff above Pounddug Slough, Brown caught up with him and made a grab at the end of the trailing halter. He missed it, and the horse took a fresh start.

The road through the grove was overgrown with young trees and bushes, and amid these the animal had a distinct advantage. Not until the outer edge of the grove was reached did the panting assistant get another opportunity at the rope. This time he seized it and held on.

"Whoa!" he shouted. "Whoa!"

But Joshua did not "whoa" at once. He kept on along the edge of the high, sandy slope. Brown, from the tail of his eye, caught a glimpse of the winding channel of the Slough beneath him, of a small schooner heeled over on the mud flat at its margin, and of the figure of a man at work beside it.

"Whoa!" he ordered once more. "Whoa, Josh! stand still!"