I had barely spoken these words and placed my fingers on her hand to lead her forward when the small door which opened into the shed was thrown back noisily, and two great shaggy dogs, the evident mates of the dead brute at our feet, leaped fiercely in. She shrank toward me with a sob of terror; but even as I drew a revolver from my belt, a man and a woman appeared almost simultaneously in that same opening.
“Down, Douglas! down, Roderick! Ha! 'There lies Red Murdoch, stark and stiff!'—down, you brutes; you'll be dead yourselves sometime.”
The man strode forward as he spoke, clubbing the frenzied brutes with the stock of the long rifle he carried.
“'Yelled on the view the opening pack,'” he quoted, as he distributed his blows impartially to right and left; “'rock, glen, and cavern paid them back.' Them thar be Scott's words, stranger, an' I reckon as how ol' Sir Walter knew whut he wus writin' 'bout. Stop thet blame youlin', you Roderick, er I'll take t' other end o' this gun ter ye.”
He redoubled his efforts for peace, finally driving the rebellious beasts back into one corner, where they sat upon their haunches and eyed us wistfully.
“'Two dogs of black Saint Hubert's breed, unmatched for courage, breath, and speed,'” he exclaimed, wiping the perspiration from his face with the back of one hand and staring at us, “specially the breath.”
He was a fierce-looking little fellow, scarcely more than a half-grown boy in size, with round, red face full of strange wrinkles, and head as oddly peak-shaped as I ever looked upon. It went up exactly like the apex of a pear, while the upper portion was utterly bald. He formed a most remarkable contrast to the tall, raw-boned, angular female who loomed up like a small mountain just behind him.
“I reckon as how you uns hed quite a bit of a scrap afore ye laid thet thar dorg out, stranger,” he said, a half-angry tone lurking in his deep voice. “'The fleetest hound in all the North,' an' I'm durned if I jist likes ther way you uns makes yerselves et hum in this yere cabin.”
“Shet up, Jed Bungay,” cut in his better-half, sharply, and as she spoke she caught the little man unceremoniously by one arm, and thrusting him roughly to one side strode heavily forward until she paused in the centre of the room, facing us with her arms akimbo.
“Now I'd jist like ter know,” she said savagely, “who you uns be, a breakin' into a house, and a killin' a dorg, an' a eatin' up everything we uns got without so much as a sayin' 'by yer leave' er nuthin'. I reckon as how you uns don't take this yere cabin fer no tavern?”