“I’ll git ye, yet! An’ when I do, I’ll tie you to a post in my yard an’ muzzle you. Then I’ll take a club to you, till there ain’t a whole bone left in yer carcass. If Ferris buys you free, there won’t be more’n sassage-meat fer him to tote home.”
Olive gasped. The grin left Link’s face. Dorcas looked up appealingly at her husband. Shunk flung his noose a third time. Chum, well understanding now what was expected of him, bounded far backward.
“Get off of my land!” called Ferris, in a queerly gentle and almost humble voice.
“When I take this cur off’n it with me!” snarled the catcher, too hot on the quest to be wholly sane.
He coiled his rope once more. At a gesture from Link, the dog lay down.
“In the presence of a competent witness I’ve ordered you off my land,” repeated Ferris, in that same meek voice. “You’ve refused. The law allows me to use force in such a case. It—”
Deceived by the humility of the tone and lured by the dog’s new passivity, Shunk made one final cast of the noose. This time its folds settled round the collie’s massive throat ruff. In the same fraction of a second, Ferris yelled:
“Take him, Chum! Take him!”
The dog heard and most gleefully he obeyed. As the triumphant Shunk drew tight the noose about his victim’s neck and sought to bring the landing net into play, Chum launched himself, like a furry catapult, full at the man’s throat.
And now there was no hint of fun or of mischief in the collie’s deep-set dark eyes. They flamed into swirling fury. He had received the word to attack. And he obeyed with a fiery zest. So may Joffre’s grim legions have felt, in 1914, when, at the Marne, they were told they need no longer keep up the hated retreat, but might turn upon their German foes and pay the bill for the past months’ humiliations.