This because Treve suddenly abandoned his stiff-legged suspicious advance and made one lightning bound at her.
The dog did not growl, nor did he show his teeth. But he sprang with the incredible speed of a charging wolf. Clearing the patch of tumbleweed by fully twenty inches, he sent his body crashing with all its force against the white-clad girl.
He did not bite. His lowered head and much of his furry body smote her amidships. Back she shot, under that swift impact, banging hard against the side of the car and using up what little breath she still had in a loud screech.
Royce Mack rounded the side of the car just in time to see the dog hurl himself at the all-precious Reine.
With a yell of fury at such vile sacrilege to his angel, he sprang at Treve and kicked him.
The kick struck the dog in the short ribs with an agonizing force that doubled Treve and sent him rolling over and over in the dust. Furiously, Mack followed him up, his boot drawn back for a second and heavier kick. The girl did not cease from screaming as she gathered herself up, bruised and hysterical with fright.
As his foot swung back for the kick, Royce chanced to see Joel Fenno from the corner of his eye. The old man was also in violent action. At sight of his partner’s activities, Mack checked himself with one foot still in air.
Fenno, regardless of his own rheumatic limbs, was doing a vehement dance in the center of the low tumbleweed patch. Beneath his stamping feet writhed and twisted a fat four-foot rattlesnake.
The nasty odor of crushed cucumbers—certain sign of the pit viper—was strong enough in the air now, for even these blundering humans to get the scent which Treve had caught twenty feet away.