Essential Novelists - Max Brand. Max Brand

and the same thing seemed to be in the dog today.

      Before she could make up her mind as to what it might be, Black Bart swung aside up a steep slope, and whisked her into the gloom of a cave. Into the very heart of the darkness he glided and stopped.

      “Daddy Dan!” she called.

      A faint echo, after a moment, came back to her from the depths of the cave, making her voice strangely deep. Otherwise, there was no answer.

      “Bart!” she whispered, suddenly frightened by the last murmur of that echo, “Daddy Dan's not here. Go back!”

      She tugged at his ear to turn him, but again that jerk of the head freed his ear. He caught her by the cloak, crouched close to the floor, and she found herself all at once sitting on the gravelly floor of the cave with Bart facing her.

      “Bad Bart!” she said, scrambling to her feet.

      “Naughty dog!”

      She was still afraid to raise her voice in that awful silence, and in the dark. When she glanced around her, she made out vague forms through the dimness that might be the uneven walls of the cave, or might be strange and awful forms of night.