Mit remarked that he referred, of course, to the hunting of coyotes, which prompted a passionate declaration from the wagon boss that the range ought to be cleared of these pests. They killed too many calves in bad years: poison ’em, he urged. Nobody opposed objection and they went on with the game. Then from the mouth of the cañon came to the ears of the players the vibrant cry of the lobo. Right upon it broke Shiela’s roar of defiance, and the beast was at the door in a bound, whimpering frenziedly, her terrible teeth bared. Beside her, his head three inches short of Shiela’s breast, Friday stiffened in sympathetic rage, his stubby tail wagging. He raised a shrill treble bark.
“Down, Shee-la! Down, girl.” Running from the table, O’Donnell led her back to the fire.
“Friday, you come here,” the blacksmith cried. “Lay down under the table, and don’t you go for to move!”
Not to cattle-browsed stretches of prairie land had Shiela been reared, nor to vast sweep of hills and mesquite-flecked valleys, and of torn, brick-red sandstone and tortuous, dry river-beds. She was a stranger in a strange land, and her new kingdom struck to the roots of her nature. Far as she could wander in a frivolous all-day rabbit hunt with Friday was no sign of human habitation; and beyond that, away to the pale-blue line that must surely be the rim of all things,--full sixty miles,--no handiwork of man was visible. Here was an unspoiled empire, and her master was the autocrat. For the first time in her life the wolfhound drew the breath of unrestrained liberty, chafed hotly to the tang of the air, cast about and trailed wild creatures whose taint stirred her to mad longings for the chase and a fight.
How can one tell of Shiela’s beauty? A great animal and a wonderful--light fawn in color, with a shaggy coat. Her eyes were in general gentle and melting. But it must be confessed that her proportions did not fit Shiela to be a comfort about the home, for she weighed a hundred and eighteen pounds and could not go under the tallest table without stooping. As she always forgot to stoop, her progress was fraught with excitement.
On the day following her arrival, the cook scrambled out of bed long before sunup to ascertain what manner of idiot could be knocking on the door in this deserted region. Man alive, why couldn’t they walk in? Shiela leaped on him to be fondled--the wolfhound had been wagging her tail against the door as she lay across the threshold.
“Ef I was you,” Mit suggested civilly, “I’d lay out on the range where you’d have room to move round. Git a nice big butte all to yourself.”
Her heart and her courage were big as her body. Following O’Donnell on a day when he fared to Stinking Water, quite by accident she roused up a loafer in the cañon. Shiela flew in pursuit, deaf to O’Donnell’s frantic commands to come back. And when the wolf turned fiercely at bay to pit her might against this daring hunter, a hundred and eighteen pounds of dauntless pluck launched itself at her neck like a bolt from a storm-cloud.
“She’s a dead one now,” O’Donnell groaned, circling for a shot. “She’s a goner, sure.”
Had the wolfhound been more wary, she would have fared better. She could not have slain her foe; the dog does not breathe that can go to the death-grapple with a loafer wolf in the flush of his strength; and Shiela knew neither the amazing quickness of the wild, nor how to guard against those slashing counter-attacks. The lobo could dodge and rip simultaneously, using her jaws from any direction. Even when bowled over by the hound’s unreckoning rush, she tore Shiela’s throat with a backward thrust of her muzzle and was free in a twinkling. Badly cut in several places, dazed by the speed of the combat, the wolfhound was soon forced to let her go.