“But the collie tore free, by leaving a handful of mattress-hair and skin in the wolf’s jaws. And before the wolf could spit it out and get his jaws into action again, the collie had flashed in and gotten to the jugular. He hung on, like grim death; grinding those slender jaws of his deeper and deeper; while the wolf kept thrashing about and hammering him against rocks and against the ground; to make him let go. But the collie hung on. That’s the collie of it. That’s the thoroughbred of it, too. He knew he had the one hold he could hope to win by. And he held it. At last his teeth ground their way down to the jugular and through it. That’s all there was to that fight.”
“Treve!” babbled Joel. “Trevy!”
His unconscious exclamation went unheard in the hum of excitement.
“The collie lay down for a minute, panting,” finished Wilton. “Then he got up and sniffed at the dead wolf. Then, before I had the sense to try to stop him, he limped off, in this direction. It seemed to me I remembered him, when I was at Dos Hermanos, last time. I got to wondering if he’d be shot, by mistake, when news came of killed sheep and when he was all bloody. So I hustled on here, after him. A dog, like that, is too plucky to let die.”
“Mister Bob Garry, Esquire,” drawled Fenno sourly, as Royce bent in keen solicitude over his battered collie chum. “You was sayin’ suthin’, awhile back, ’bout having a mort of work to do, at your own ranch, this mornin’. Well, friend, the mornin’s joggin’ on. Here’s your pop-gun. Here’s your pretty ca’tridges. Scat!”
“You’ll come to the house for some breakfast, won’t you, Captain?” asked Royce, as the disgruntled Garry and his foreman rode off. “Chang can rustle you some grub, in no time. Come on, Treve. I want to wash out those bites of yours; and fix up your paw.”
He set off toward the house, at Wilton’s side. But Joel Fenno, behind their backs, buried his fingers lovingly in the collie’s bloody and muddy ruff.
“Trevy,” he whispered, the other hand groping in his shirt pocket, “here’s some grand lumps of pork I saved out for you, from my breakfast. An’—an’, Trevy, that Garry blowhard would ’a’ had to shoot me as full of holes as these last year’s pants of mine; before I’d ’a’ let him git you. Yep—an’ Wilton, too. Of all the dogs that ever happened, Trevy—you’re that dog.... Hey!” he called grumpily after the departing Royce. “Here’s your cur. Take him along to the house with you. He’s jes’ in my way, down here!”