Emp, at the alien touch, ceased his excavations and whirled about to investigate. He was just in time to witness the start of the second and even more vicious kick. With admirable strategy, Emp leaped to one side as the gaitered calf swung past him and, in practically the same motion, sunk his white little teeth in the Zouave’s other gaiter. The whole series of maneuvers had occupied scarcely a second, hardly enough time for the two riders to bring their mounts to a halt. The Zouave, with a yell, whipped out the bayonet from his belt and made a right-murderous lunge at the puppy which clung to his leg. The fierce thrust that should have impaled the little dog did not find its intended lodgment. Instead, the bayonet hopped free of the Zouave’s grasp as though endowed with life, and tumbled into the ditch at the far side of the road. The man nursing his numbed right hand, glowered upward; to find towering above him a giant horseman, bared sword flashing in ready and righteous menace. “It says on this blade,” drawled Dad, in an almost confidential tone, to the wrath-dumb Zouave--“it says ‘_Draw me not without cause_.’ But I guess the man who made up that motto wouldn’t have thought the less of me for drawing sword to save a poor, fluffy puppy-dog from getting spitted like a turkey. There’s worse uses for a white man’s sword than to save the life of one of God’s little wards.” “The brute bit me!” growled the Zouave. “Only when a _grosser_ brute kicked him,” corrected Dad. “I’m no pet-animal coddler, my friend, and sometimes a dog needs punishment--almost as much as a human does. But always from his own master, and never by a kick. Just bear that in mind, and you won’t force a superior officer to work a swordsmanship disarming trick on you again.” The man, shifting his ground so that the sun no longer dazzled him, saw for the first time that his quiet-voiced conqueror wore the insignia of a major. He swallowed back a hot mouthful of oaths, sulkily raised his hand in salute, then slouched across the road in search of his flown bayonet. “You see, Jimmie,” began Dad, turning, “there’s no harm done, and--” He broke off with an exclamation of amaze. Jimmie was nowhere in sight. Neither up nor down the road, far as eye could travel. The boy and his horse seemed to have been caught up to the skies or to have sunk into the solid earth! CHAPTER XXVII A STERN CHASE For a brief instant Dad sat blinking, incredulous. Then he saw and understood. Crossing the field to right of the road and at an acute angle to it, a full quarter of a mile ahead, thundered a runaway horse. And on the horse’s back, clutching frantically to the saddle, his new-learned principles of riding quite forgotten, swayed and clung Battle Jimmie. At flash of steel against steel the boy’s half-trained cavalry horse had shied violently. The flying bayonet’s point in passing had pricked his shoulder top, narrowly missing Jimmie.