"Which is to say," remarked Mas, smiling, "that you haven't settled it in your mind yet, Steve, that what we saw disappearing was some barred dog belonging to a farmer, and not a striped hyena."
"Well, you never can tell," Steve stubbornly contended, with a wise shake of his head; "we know there must have been some beasts got away that they never did find again. Just what they were nobody seems able to agree. I've heard all sorts of guesses made; and a hyena might be one of the same, as well as anything."
"They come from India, don't they?" asked Bandy-legs, smoothly.
"Found in both Asia and Africa," Max explained. "I'm not sure of any being met with in Europe, though there are plenty of wolves. They feed on carrion mostly, and are cowardly by nature; but all the same, they're nasty looking brutes, and always snarling the worst you ever heard. It makes your flesh creep just to hear them growl, worse than the ugly tempered wildcat Toby owns."
"Well, me to carry my Marlin wherever I go up here," announced Steve; "and if it happens that I run foul of a striped beast, that I don't like the looks of, you'll see me knocking the spots out of him first, and then finding afterwards what his breed is. If he turns out to be a plain dog, then he's paid the penalty for looking like one of these hyenas, that's all."
"D-d-don't you hear 'em?" asked Toby just then.
Steve and Bandy-legs made as though ready to reach out for their guns, placed conveniently near; but hesitated when they saw that Toby was grinning, and showed no signs of being worried.
"F-f-frogs, and heaps of the same over there in that p-p-pond you was telling us about, Max. Yum! Yum! reckon now I'm in f-f-for some g-g-good feasts."
All of them could now catch a distant croaking that announced the fact as stated by the observant Toby; and they knew that with that pond so close by they would be apt to take all the bullfrogs they wanted during their stay.
"But we didn't fetch that little target gun along," remarked Bandy-legs, regretfully.