Page:Harry Castlemon - The Steel Horse.djvu/329

 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.

"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