“O-o-o!” squealed the excited Flossie. “But they didn’t?”
“I’m here to tell the tale,” returned her cousin, laughing outright. “Bozie broke away from me, and the wolves leaped after him—full chase. I knelt right down——”
“And prayed!” gasped Flossie. “I should think you would!”
“I did pray—yes, ma’am! I prayed that the bullet would go true. But I knelt down to steady my aim,” said Helen, chuckling again. “And I broke the back of one of them wolves with my first shot. That was wonderful luck—with a twenty-two rifle. The bullet’s only a tiny thing.
“But I bowled Mr. Wolf over, and then I ran after the other one and the blatting Bozie. Bozie dodged the wolf somehow and came circling back at me, his tail flirting in the air, coming in stiff-legged jumps as a calf does, and searching his soul for sounds to tell how scart he was!
“I’d pushed another cartridge into my gun. But when Bozie came he bowled me over—flat on my back. Then the wolf made a leap, and I saw his light-gray underbody right over my head as he flashed after poor Bozie.
“I jest let go with the gun! Crackey! I didn’t have time to shoulder it, and it kicked and hit me in the nose and made my nose bleed awful. I was ‘all in,’ too, and I thought the wolf was going to eat Bozie, and then mebbe me, and I set up to bawl so’t Big Hen heard me farther than he could have heard my little rifle.
“Big Hen was always expectin’ me to get inter some kind of trouble, and he come tearin’ along lookin’ for me. And there I was, rolling in the grass an’ bawling, the second wolf kicking his life out with the blood pumping from his chest, not three yards away from me, and Bozie streakin’ it acrost the hill, his tail so stiff with fright you could ha’ hung yer hat on it!”
“Isn’t that perfectly grand!” cried Miss Van Ramsden, seizing Helen by the shoulders when she had finished and kissing her on both cheeks. “And you only ten years old?”
“But, you see,” said Helen, more quietly, “we are brought up that way in Montana. We would die a thousand deaths if we were taught to be afraid of anything on four legs.”