The black-and-yellow made for the niche, a clean dozen lengths ahead of his nearest follower. Blind to all but the lust of slaughter, he dived between the braced legs of the movelessly-waiting collie, and struck for the cowering vixen.
Ruff drove downward at him as the hound dived. The collie’s terrible jaws clamped shut behind the base of the leader’s skull. The aim, made accurate by a thousand snaps at fleeing rabbits and rising birds, was flawless. The jaws had been strengthened past normal by the daily grinding of bony food.
Ruff tossed high his head. The black-and-yellow was flung in air and fell back amid his onrushing fellows; his neck broken, his spinal cord severed.
But that was Ruff’s last opportunity for individual fighting. The four following hounds were upon him; in one solid battling mass. Noting their leader’s fate they did not make the error of trying to jostle past to the vixen. Instead, they sought to clear the way by flinging themselves ravenously on her solitary guard.
The rest was horror.
There was no scope for scientific fighting or for craft. The four fastened upon the collie, in murderous unison. They might more wisely have fastened upon a hornet-nest.
Down, under their avalanche of weight went Ruff; battling as he fell. But a collie down is not a collie beaten. As he fell, he slashed to the bone the nearest gaunt shoulder. By the time he had struck ground on his back, he lunged upward for one flying spotted hindleg that chanced to flounder nearest to his jaws. The fighting tricks of his long-ago wolf ancestors came to him in his hour of stress. Catching the leg midway between hock and body he gave a sidewise wrench to it that wellnigh heaved off the pack that piled upon him. The possessor of the spotted hindleg screeched aloud and gave back, tumbling out of the ruck with a fractured and useless limb.
Up from the tangle of fighting hounds arose Ruff, his golden coat a-smear with blood. High he reared above the surrounding heads. Slashing, tearing, dodging, wheeling, he fought clear of his mangled foes.
For an instant, as they gathered their force for a new charge at this tigerlike adversary, the great collie stood clear of them all. A single bound would have carried him to the cliff trail. Thence, to its top would have been a climb of less than half a second. At the summit he could have fought back an army of dogs or he could have made his escape to the fastnesses beyond. Never was there a foxhound that could keep pace with a racing collie.
The coast was clear, if only for an instant. There was time—just time—for the leap. Ruff made the leap.