The Airedale, whining, terrified, flung himself against him. “Find, Rusty! Find!” he said. “Find Scout! Find, Rusty, find!” The dog went swiftly over the edge and down, and Dean could hear his sharp staccato barks; it was much as if he were trailing a rabbit. The Ranger leaned over and turned his feeble spot light into the blackness, but it made a little mocking circle--a tiny tunnel into the dark which led nowhere. He started down; he could hear the dog and follow him, and the dog would find the boy. “Scout!” he called. “Oh, Scout! I’m coming, old son! I’m coming!” Then his feet shot from under him and he fell. He clutched frantically at the chaparral and at the ground as he slid over it, and he had a clear instant of horrified realization that it was hot ... _hot_. Then some one seemed to rise up out of the night and fell him with a blow upon his head, and he stopped realizing altogether. The thing that disturbed him and brought him back to consciousness, that made him struggle back from pleasant peacefulness to pain and bewilderment was a prolonged and bitter howling.... He thought at first that it was the mountain lion which had lost its mate; then he recognized the voice as that of Rusty, the Airedale, and everything that had happened came back to him. He found that he was lying with his head against a tree; no one would ever know why he hadn’t broken his neck. He got his arms around the tree and dragged himself to his feet, and collapsed again, giddy and faint, but the howling kept up, unbearably, and this time he pulled himself to his hands and knees and started at a snail’s progress in the direction of the sound. They were not very far away from him, the Airedale and the Scout, though it took him some time to reach them. The dog was circling about, varying his lament now and then with a yelp of pain for the ground was almost covered with smudging embers, but the boy was wholly still. The young man laid shaking hands upon him and found to his horror that the Scout’s uniform was on fire in several places, and he pulled off his coat and wrapped it about the inert body and beat out the little blazes with his bare hands, and still Elmer Bunty made no sound. It was necessary, first of all, Dean told himself, forcing himself to think collectedly in spite of the wild throbbing of his head, of the sense of nightmare unreality about it, to get him away from this particular spot where there was so much smoldering fire. Back there by the tree, where he had struck, there had been no fire; therefore, he would take him over there--he was sure he could locate it. Besides, the moon was coming up; the radium face of his wrist watch said that it was time for the moon to come up; he counted childishly upon its coming. Now he got his hands under the boy’s armpits and began to drag him, cautiously, for fear of slipping, along the ground, and at the first movement the Scout came out of his swoon and screamed as he had screamed when he fell.