Free Hotel For Dogs by Lois Duncan Page A

I’ll wake right up as soon as I get going on that math.”
    But the math problems, when he opened his book to them, seemed to be written in a foreign language. There was no sense to any of them, even the simple ones. Numbers danced before Bruce’s eyes like black dots, shifting and whirling about against the white page. By the time twenty minutes hadpassed, he was fast asleep with his face buried in the book.
    There was good reason for Bruce’s weariness. Not only was he doing more outdoor physical work than he ever had done in his life, but he was getting up at five o’clock every morning. It was at this time of day that Red Rover had his exercise.
    Exercising the small dogs was no problem. They could romp in the yard behind the hotel where the bushes were a protective screen cutting them off from the street. Every afternoon Andi took them outdoors for playtime, and they went out again after dinner.
    Red Rover presented a different problem. He could not be satisfied with chasing a ball around a tiny restricted area. Red was a big dog, a dog bred for running. As his wounds began to heal and his health and good spirits returned, so too did his energy. He roamed restlessly around the hotel, scratching at the doors and propping his big paws on the sills to gaze wistfully out windows. Sometimes he barked.
    “That’s not good,” Tim said worriedly. “Even with the house set back like it is, sounds carry. Somebody might be walking past and hear him.”
    “I can run him at night.” It was Bruce who had come up with the idea. “That way there wouldn’t be any chance of Jerry and his parents seeing him. I sleep on the couch in the den. Everybody else in the family sleeps upstairs. I could sneak out when they’re all asleep and nobody would know the difference.”
    “I wish I could help you,” Tim said. “I feel like a cop-out not doing my part, but my bedroom is next to the girls’. There’s always one of them hopping up and down for water or something. They’d catch me first thing and go tattling off to our parents.”
    “That’s okay,” Bruce said. “I don’t mind doing it myself. I’ll set my alarm for two hours earlier than I usually get up and have Red out and back again before it gets light.”
    The first time he had tried this, the alarm clock had gone off like a fire alarm. The shrill sound had been so shattering in the stillness of the sleeping house that both his parents and Aunt Alice had awakened in terror.
    “What was that? Did you hear that? Was it the doorbell?”
    “Telephone?”
    “Could someone have set off a car alarm?”
    “I’m sure it was an air-raid siren!” screamed Aunt Alice. “Do you suppose some foreign country has decided to attack us in the night?”
    Lying huddled in his bed with the now-silent clock clutched protectively to his chest, Bruce heard their frantic voices as they rushed through the upstairs hall, pulling on robes, snatching up the phone receiver, and finally running down the stairs to see if someone was at the front door.
    After that he kept the alarm clock under his pillow. This muffled the sound, and soon he grew so used to having it there that he began to waken at the first tiny click before the bell even had a chance to ring.
    Getting out of bed was the hard part. Once he was into his clothes and out of the house, there was something exhilarating about being up and about before the rest of the world. The sky, still dotted with stars, and the cold, fresh smell of the air filled him with a special kind of excitement.
    Raising the ramp against the window ledge, he would hear Red Rover stirring around inside, already awake and eager for his outing.
    “Red?”
    He never had to speak more than once. The big dog would be upon him, tail thumping excitedly, body quivering with anticipation.
    Once they were outside, the world opened before them, theirs alone. It was night when they started off along the deserted streets, but soon the dark shapes of trees began to