It was after dark one evening, when Jack and Hugh were sitting before the ranch door, and Shep was lying at Hugh's feet, that they heard a coyote howl right close to the house. The dog sprang to his feet and rushed around the corner of the house to where the sound had come from, and they could hear the patter of his feet as he raced down toward the blacksmith's shop. Suddenly from the shop there came a tumult of growling, yelling and worrying, a noise as if a lot of dogs were fighting. "By George!" said Hugh, "I believe that fool dog has ran into a nest of coyotes." Hugh ran around the corner of the house, and toward the sounds, which still continued, and Jack, grasping his crutch, half ran, half hopped, after him. In a moment he heard Hugh shouting, the noise of the fighting ceased, and as Jack reached the corner of the blacksmith's shop, he met Hugh coming back with Shep running before him. "Well, now, what do you suppose I found when I got down there?" said Hugh. "Just inside the garden fence was this dog and six or eight coyotes on top of him, just everlastingly making the fur fly. It's mighty lucky for him that he's got so much of this long yellow hair; if he hadn't had, he'd have been eaten up before I got there. I expect he's some cut up as it is." They took Shep into the kitchen, and by the light of the lamp looked over him, and found that, as Hugh had said, he was bitten and cut in a dozen places. None of the wounds were very serious, but only his shaggy coat had protected him. "Do you know," said Hugh, after they were again seated in the bright moonlight, "I believe that was just a scheme of them coyotes to kill this dog. You took notice, didn't you, how close that one that howled was to us? I never saw a coyote come so close to the house before. I believe he just came up here to tole Shep down behind the blacksmith's shop, where his partners were waiting. It was a pretty sharp trick now, wasn't it?" A few days after this, Hugh and Mr. Sturgis looked at Jack's foot and pronounced it well. It no longer pained him at all, but sometimes he thought it felt a little stiff as he walked. He now resumed his riding after the saddle horses and the milk cows, and besides this, went out almost daily with Hugh or with his uncle on their excursions in one direction or another, after horses and cattle.