Page:The Way of the Wild (1930).pdf/263

 Mayfield knew that no dog of his pack would pass the great saurian that held the narrow way. He waited eagerly, anxiously, wondering whether young Frank, the impetuous leader of the pack and the swiftest trailer, would see the danger in time or tush headlong to destruction.

Frank was well in the lead. His resonant voice, the clearest and mellowest in that woodland choir which made, to Sandy Jim's ears, the sweetest music ever heard by man, boomed out behind the last of the myrtles. Another quarter minute would decide his fate. Just clear of the bushes, a log lay across the dike. As the big black and white speckled hound hurdled it, his eyes lit upon the monstrous incredible thing in the path ahead of him—an appalling dragonlike bulk, reared upward on short, thick forelegs, the long armored body almost hidden from the hound's view by cavernous, tusk-studded, hugely yawning jaws.

A piercing half-human yell burst from the dog. He had seen the danger too late to check his next leap. Seemingly he was doomed. Yet terror gave him strength. Twisting his body in the air, the hound landed sideways and rolled and slid to the very brink of death. The giant gator, his gross body lurching horribly, launched himself forward; but long ago his weight had grown too great for his legs to uphold him and his rush fell short. A scant