“Well,” Scott retorted, “I should at least know it by this time. Why don’t he hunt something his own size instead of chasing those pesky little bunches of feathers? If he were any good he would scare up some real game instead of wasting his energy on those things.” The dog had picked out Bill for his temporary adviser, as far as a fox terrier permits himself to be advised by anyone, and Scott was attempting to use him for a club to get a “rise” out of Bill.
Just then the dog made two or three stiff-legged bounces in the brush as though in an apparent endeavor to see something on the ground beyond.
“By George,” Bill exclaimed, “if he tackles that porcupine he’ll have something more than his size. Come here, you crazy Jehu, and let that pincushion alone.”
“Don’t worry,” Scott assured him, “no animal will touch one of those things.”
But a fox terrier is governed by no laws, natural or otherwise. The porcupine had chattered his teeth defiantly and the dog, heedless of the warning shouts, flung himself upon the first game he had found that could not fly. The porcupine uttered a plaintive whimper, turned his back on the dog with astonishing agility and struck him full in the face with one blow of his powerful tail. The dog did not wait for more. With one astonished yelp he jumped into the brush regardless of direction or obstacles and continued his course due east at a terrific pace as far as they could see him.
“Running a pretty good compass course,” Bill remarked. “He ought to be showing up over there in the west pretty soon; it won’t take him long to go around the earth at that rate.”
“Poor little chap,” Scott muttered. “I wonder if any of those quills got him in the eye? There must have been a dozen of them in his face.”
“A dozen,” Bill exclaimed. “Ask him. I’ll bet he thinks there are a thousand.”
“If he comes back to camp we can pull them out for him,” Scott said.
“Yes, but if he runs like that for an hour it will take him a week of ordinary travel to get back.”