"Wag, ye black devil!" she creaked in response to the canine howl.
She recovered her staff, took her clay pipe from her almost toothless jaws, shaded her eyes with one hand, and looked toward the side of the Blackfern again. That which she had seen before had become an indistinct blur.
"I wonder what!" she muttered.
The eyes of Old Buck Wolfe were keener. He threw a last clod at a marauding hen, snatched up his always ready rifle, and hurried toward the mountain.
As he passed his mother's cabin, she hailed him shrilly, "Wait thar, and I'll go 'long wi' ye!"
He didn't even turn his head.
"You'd ort to be skun alive!" and she limped after him, Wag following at her heels.
Colonel Mason looked for water with which to revive Tot and, it being unfamiliar territory to him, failed to find any. Wondering whether he could mount unassisted with the young woman in his arms, he went back to his horse. Then he saw, standing less than two rods away, as motionless as the trees about him, the bearded, hard-eyed, giant mountaineer, Old Buck Wolfe.
"You're a terrible man, Buck," the colonel observed bitingly.