By this time the young wheelmen had dismounted; they had to, for the savage beasts had possession of the road. There was room enough on one side to run by them, and Joe and his friends would have made the attempt if they had had any reason to suppose that the dogs would remain close to the sheep while they were doing it; but that would be taking too much risk. If the dogs jumped at them while they were going by, no matter whether they succeeded in laying hold of one of their number or not, they would be pretty certain to throw somebody from his saddle, and then there would be trouble. The unfortunate sheep's throat looked as though it had been cut with a knife, and that proved that their long teeth were sharp. Joe and Arthur were not in favor of beginning a fight with the dogs, hoping that if they were left alone they would drag the sheep across the road and into the woods on the other side; but before they could say or do anything to prevent it, Roy Sheldon made one of his sure, left-hand shots; a heavy stone took one of the canine vagabonds plumb in the mouth and tumbled him over backward.
"Whoop-pee! That was a bully shot, Jakey," yelled Roy, recalling some of the incidents of the first battle he and his chums had with Matt Coyle and his family. "Throw another, Jakey. Great Scott! They're coming for us."
That was plain enough to boys who could see as well as Joe and Arthur could. The stone certainly had an effect upon them, for they no longer stood on the defensive. They charged at once, the stricken brute leading the way, and his companion keeping close at his heels. I tell you the sight they presented was enough to frighten anybody, unless his nerves were made of steel, as mine were, but we did not run. I couldn't without help, and Joe and his chums wouldn't. In less time than it takes to tell it one of the charging brutes was knocked flat by a second stone from Roy's unerring hand, and the other fell with a bullet in his brain, shot fairly in the eye by Arthur Hastings's pocket rifle. But the death of his companion and the crack of the cartridge did not take the fight out of the surviving dog. Almost stunned as he was, he sprang up again in an instant, only to be floored by Joe Wayring. A second later Arthur's little rifle spoke again, and this time the dog did not get up. He was as dead as the sheep he had helped pull out of the bushes.
The Death of Matt Coyle's Dogs.
"This is rather ahead of my time," said Joe, who was the first to speak. "I never dreamed that domestic dogs could be so savage. Why, a couple of wild-cats or panthers couldn't have made a worse fight, nor frightened me more," he added, lifting his cap and wiping the big drops of perspiration from his forehead. "I hope this is the last of it, but I'm afraid it isn't."
Before Joe's friends had time to ask him what he meant, or to recover from the nervousness into which they had been thrown by the sudden onset of the sheep-killers, they heard a great crashing in the bushes, which were so thick on both sides of the road that one could not see any object in them at the distance of ten feet, and a heavy voice called out:
"So you've come again, have you? Three on you this time 'stead of one. All right. I'll be there directly. I'm coming jest as fast as the bresh'll let me."
"There comes the owner of these dogs," said Joe. "Now we are in for it sure."
"Who cares?" replied Roy. "If he thinks we are going to stand still and let his ferocious dogs eat us up, he don't know us; that's all."