The line of fire, climbing the mountain toward him, had encountered a marshy stretch; where, in normal weather, water stood inches deep. Despite the drought, there was still enough moisture to stay the advance of the red line until the dampness could be turned to dust and tindery vegetation. And, in the meanwhile, after the custom of its kind, the fire had sought to spread to either side. Stopped at the granite-outcrop to the right, it had rolled faster through the herbage to the left.
Thus, by the time the morass was dry enough for the flame to pass it, there was a great sickle of crawling red fire to the left;which encircled a whole flank of the mountain and which was moving straight upward.
Lad knew nothing of this; nor why the advance of the fire's direct line had been so long checked. Nor did he know, presumably, that this sickle of flame was girdling the mountain-flank; like a murderous net; hemming in all live things within the flaming arc and forcing them on in panic, ahead of its advance. Perhaps he did not even note the mad scurryings in undergrowth and bramble, in front of the oncoming blaze. But one thing, very speedily, became apparent to him:--From out a screen of hazel and witch-elm (almost directly in front of the place where the truck, that morning, had been loaded) crashed a right hideous object. By sight and by scent Lad knew the creature for his olden foe, the giant black bear.
Growling, squealing, a dozen stinging fiery sparks sizzling through his bushy coat, the bear tore his way from the hedge of thicket and out into the open. The fire had roused him from his snug lair and had driven him ahead of it with a myriad hornets of flame, in a crazed search for safety.
At sight of the formidable monster, Lad realized for the first time the full extent of his own helplessness. Tethered to a rope which gave him scarce twenty-five inches of leeway, he was in no fit condition to fend off the giant's assault.
He wasted no time in futile struggles. All his race's uncanny powers of resource came rushing to his aid. Without an instant's pause, he wheeled about; and drove his keen teeth into the rope that bound him to the post.
Lad did not chew aimlessly at the thick tether; nor throw away one ounce of useless energy. Seizing the hempen strands, he ground his teeth deeply and with scientific skill, into their fraying recesses. Thus does a dog, addicted to cutting his leash, attack the bonds which hold him.
It was Lad's first experience of the kind. But instinct served him well. The fact that the rope had been left out of doors, in all weathers, for several years, served him far better. Not only did it sever the more easily; but it soon lost the cohesion needed for resisting any strong pull.
The bear, lurching half-blindly, had reeled out into the open, below the knoll. There, panting and grunting, he turned to blink at the oncoming fire and to get his direction. For perhaps a half-minute he stood thus; or made little futile rushes from side to side. And this breathing space was taken up by Lad in the gnawing of the rope.
Then, while the collie was still toiling over the hempen mouthfuls, the bear seemed to recover his own wonted cleverness;and to realize his whereabouts. Straight up the hillock he charged, toward the lean-to; his splay feet dislodging innumerable surface stones from the rocky steep; and sending them behind him in a series of tiny avalanches.
Lad, one eye ever on his foe, saw the onrush. Fiercely he redoubled his efforts to bite through the rope, before the bear should be upon him. But the task was not one to be achieved in a handful of seconds.
Moving with a swiftness amazing for an animal of his clumsy bulk, the bear swarmed up the hillock. He gained the summit; not three yards from where Laddie struggled. And the collie knew the rope was not more than half gnawed through. There was no further time for biting at it. The enemy was upon him.
Fear did not enter the big dog's soul. Yet he grieved that the death-battle should find him so pitifully ill-prepared. And, abandoning the work of self-release, he flung himself ragingly at the advancing bear.
Then, two things happened. Two things, on neither of which the dog could have counted. The bear was within a hand's breadth of him; and was still charging, headlong. But he looked neither to right nor to left. Seemingly ignorant of Lad's presence, the huge brute tore past him, almost grazing the collie in his insane rush; and sped straight on toward the lake beyond.
That was one of the two unforeseen happenings. The other was the snapping of the rotted rope, under the wrench of Lad's furious leap.
Free, and with the severed rope's loop still dangling uselessly from around his shaggy throat, the dog stood staring in blank amaze after his former adversary. He saw the bear reach the margin of the icy lake and plunge nose deep into its sheltering waters. Here, as Bruin's instinct or experience had foretold, no forest fire could harm him. He need but wallow there until the Red Terror should have swept past and until the scorched ground should be once more cool enough to walk on.
Lad turned again toward the slope. He was free, now, to follow the wagon track to the main road and so homeward, guided perhaps by memory, perhaps by scent; most probably guided by the mystic sixth sense which has more than once enabled collies to find their way, over hundreds of miles of strange territory, back to their homes.
But, in the past few minutes, the fire's serpent-like course had taken a new twist. It had flung volleys of sparks across the upper reach of granite rock-wall, and had ignited dry wood and brier on the right hand side of the track. This, far up the mountain, almost at the very foot of the rock-hillock.
The way to home was barred by a three-foot-high crackling fence of red-gold flame; a flame which nosed hungrily against the barren rocks of the knoll-foot; as if seeking in ravenous famine the fuel their bare surfaces denied it.
