Now Jan had no thought of fighting when he bowled Sourdough over. His sole preoccupation had been the rescue of his little friend, Micky Doolan, from what looked like certain death. Contact with Sourdough had greatly stirred the combatant blood in him, as had also the hated smell of the husky. Even then a call from Dick Vaughan would have met with instant response from Jan. But there was no Dick Vaughan in sight. Sergeant Moore stood gazing eagerly, a little anxiously even, but with no hint of any thought of interfering with the meeting he had schemed to bring about. O'Malley, clutching his terrier in his arms, was rather distractedly calling: "Come away in, Jan! Drop it now, Jan! Come in here, come in here, Jan!" But O'Malley, after all, though an amiable person enough, and, as a friend of Dick's, a man to be obeyed cheerfully enough in the ordinary way, yet was not Dick. He was hardly a shadow of the sovereign. And then came that fiery stroke that had opened a groove down Jan's left shoulder. After that, it is a moot point whether even Dick Vaughan's voice would have served to penetrate the cloud of fury in which Jan moved. He became very terrible in his wrath. One saw less of the bloodhound and more, far more, of his sire, of royal Finn, the fighting wolfhound of the Tinnaburra ranges, in his splendid pose, in the upward, scimitar curve of his great tail, the rage in his red-hawed eyes, the vibrant defiance of his baying roar. But he lacked as yet his sire's inimitable fighting craft, just as he lacked entirely the lightning cunning of the half-wolf Sourdough. And before he had touched the husky his sound shoulder had been grooved, and one of his ears badly torn. It might have been better tactics on Sourdough's part to have made direct for some killing hold, instead of administering these instructive preliminary chastenings. Seeing clearly Jan's inferiority in wolf tactics, Sourdough underrated the forces of his size, weight, endurance, power, and quite indomitable bravery. In fact, the cunning Sourdough was very thoroughly deceived by Jan. Never having in his varied experiences encountered chivalry, nobility, nor yet much gallantry in a dog, he made no allowance for these qualities in Jan. He could not conceive that the attack which had bowled him over was no more than a generous attempt to save Micky Doolan. And so he thought it was a challenge to combat; and combat, as the husky saw it, meant an effort to kill by any and every means available. In the same way, the reckless scorn of himself and of a palpable advantage, which Jan had shown after knocking him over, was a thing not to be comprehended for what it really was by Sourdough. He thought it evidence of weakening, of sudden fear, of terror inspired in Jan by the sight of the thing he had impulsively done.