RASTUS EARNS HIS SLEEP 269 
skirted the rocks. He moved in to the fire 
cautiously, however, for fire was something new 
to his experience, found a big bacon rind, and 
scurried away with it into the deeper thicket. He 
was on his way toward a trickle from a mountain 
spring, to wash this food, when he heard Wolf 
and his master coming back up the trail. The 
full moon was now rising over the eastern world 
rim and flooding the open spaces with its pale 
radiance. Wolf’s master had returned for a for- 
gotten basket of knives and forks, but glad, too, 
of the excuse to see the moonrise from this com- 
manding promontory. Wolf, however, was blind 
to «esthetic effects. His nose began to wiggle, 
his nostrils to quaver, as he reached the fire ring, 
and with a joyous little moan he was off on 
Rastus’s hot trail. 
When Rastus heard him coming he was in a 
serub oak thicket—not a tree big enough to give 
him any security from Wolf! He didn’t have 
time, he knew, to get to the tiny brook, which 
otherwise he could have used to hide his track. 
Running water tells no tales. Accordingly he 
almost doubled on his tracks and actually passed 
