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In another brace of seconds the lights once, more picked up the dark animal with its white bundle. Eitel shrank back in his seat. But Roodie put on another notch of gas. And, coming closer, both recognized the strange bundle-carrier as a dark-hued collie dog. The identification did little to ease their feeling of incredulous mystification. But it banished their superstitious dread.
Eitel, warned by his brother's bawled command, made a rush for the other side of the machine and clambered up. He was a trifle less fortunate than had been Roodie, in making this ascent. For Lad's flashing jaws grazed his ankle and carried away in that snap a sample of Eitel's best town-going trousers.
Then, the driver murmured in a faraway voice: "Did you did you was you fool enough to think you seen anything? Was you, Eitel?" "I-I sure seen SUTHIN', Roodie," quavered Eitel. "Suthin' with with the kid in its mouth. It " "That's good enough for me!" announced the heroic Roodie, stamping again on the self-starter. "If we both seen it, then it was THERE. And I'm goin' after it."
By the time he and Roodie struck the earth, Lad tore free from the unloving embrace and whizzed about to face the second of his foes. Eitel had taken advantage of the moment's respite to seize with his uninjured hand his slashed wrist.
With resounding howls of pain, Eitel thrashed up and down the road; endeavoring to shake off this rear attack. The noise awakened the baby; who added his wails to the din. Roodie got dizzily to his feet; his left forearm useless and anguished from the tearing of its muscles: "Shut up!" he bellowed. "You want to bring the whole county down on us? We "
In a trice, Roodie had struck Lad over the head; while Eitel grabbed at the bundle to drag it away from the dog. Now, the weight of years was beginning to tell on Laddie. But that weight had not robbed him of the ability to call, at will, upon much of his oldtime strength and bewildering swiftness. Nor had it in any way dampened his hero-spirit or dulled his uncannily wise brain.
A deft turn of the head eluded Eitel's snatching hand. With the lightness of a feather, Lad deposited the bundle in the soft dust of the road. In practically, the same gesture, the dog's curving eye-tooth slashed Eitel's outstretched wrist to the bone. Then, staggering under a second head-blow from Roodie, the collie wheeled with lightning-swift fury upon this more hostile of his two assailants.
Both of them were used to dogs. And though neither could guess how this particular dog happened to be stealing the twice-stolen baby, yet neither had the remotest fear of tackling the beast and rescuing its human plunder. Roodie brought the abused runabout to another jerky stop within a few inches of the unconcerned collie. And he and Eitel swarmed earthward from opposite sides of the machine.
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