He was scarcely out of sight when Sal Scrugs said, “Watch me pass that dog! If he tries to stop me, I shall send him a mile down the road and then if he comes at me again I shall hook him up in the air twenty-five feet.”
“Now look here, Sal Scrugs, you are courting trouble for yourself! Shep won’t hurt you if you behave, but just let any cow try to hook him and he will bite in earnest. What is more, he will bring you back to the herd if it takes him all day. Any animal he starts out to get, he gets if it takes all day to do it,” said the old cow that used to live at Mr. Watson’s, and therefore knew Shep and his ways well.
“Pooh! I’ll see a dog try to stop me! I always out-run them for, as you know, I have extra long legs which help me to jump fences and out-run dogs. And as I always keep in practice, I don’t get out of breath like most cows do. Then too my bag is small so it never bothers me by swinging from side to side when I run.”
“Just the same you will find Shep is an unusual dog, and he would consider it a disgrace to allow a cow to get away from him after he had been told to watch it.”
CHAPTER III
SAL SCRUGS DEFIES SHEP
“ANYHOW I am going to try it,” determined Sal. “I can but fail, and it will give the rest of you stay-at-homes something to bet on—whether I win or the dog.”
“Well, if you come home with bleeding ankles and half your tail pulled out, don’t say no one warned you not to go.”
“Look! Shep is half asleep, stretched there in the middle of the broken fence, thinking to himself that none of the cows will even try to pass him! I’ll just go pretty near the opening, eating as I go along, until I see him close his eyes. Then I’ll take a running jump over the fallen rails and off down the road I’ll go. I’ll take the road from home as there is a nice thick woods down that way where I can hide until he stops hunting for me,” said Sal.
“I tell you you aren’t counting on Shep being different from other dogs who have chased you. But you will find there are dogs—and dogs. Shep belongs to the kind that never give up.”