A few days later, on a hot, motionless morning when the pine-trees put out their bristles in stealthy, hard assertion; and I was not in a good temper, because Black-eyed Susan, the cow, had disappeared into the timber, and I had had to ride hunting her, so it was nearly nine o’clock before she was milked: Madame came in suddenly out of the sunlight, saying “I got such a shock! There are two strange dogs, and one of them has got the most awful beard, all round his nose.” She was frightened, like a child, at something unnatural. “Beard! Porcupine quills, probably! He’s been after a porcupine.” “Ah!” she cried in relief. “Very likely! Very likely!”--then with a change of tone; “Poor thing, will they hurt him?” “They will. I wonder when he came.” “I heard dogs bark in the night.” “Did you? Why didn’t you say so? I should have known Susan was hiding--” The ranch is lonely, there is no sound in the night, save the innumerable noises of the night, that you can’t put your finger on; cosmic noises in the far deeps of the sky, and of the earth. I went out. And in the full blaze of sunlight in the field, stood two dogs, a black-and-white, and a big, bushy, rather handsome sandy-red dog, of the collie type. And sure enough, this latter did look queer and a bit horrifying, his whole muzzle set round with white spines, like some ghastly growth; like an unnatural beard. The black-and-white dog made off as I went through the fence. But the red dog whimpered and hesitated, and moved on hot bricks. He was fat and in good condition. I thought he might belong to some shepherds herding sheep in the forest ranges, among the mountains. He waited while I went up to him, wagging his tail and whimpering, and ducking his head, and dancing. He daren’t rub his nose with his paws any more: it hurt too much. I patted his head and looked at his nose, and he whimpered loudly. He must have had thirty quills, or more, sticking out of his nose, all the way round: the white, ugly ends of the quills protruding an inch, sometimes more, sometimes less, from his already swollen, blood-puffed muzzle. The porcupines here have quills only two or three inches long. But they are devilish; and a dog will die if he does not get them pulled out. Because they work further and further in, and will sometimes emerge through the skin away in some unexpected place. Then the fun began. I got him in the yard: and he drank up the whole half-gallon of the chickens’ sour milk. Then I started pulling out the quills. He was a big, bushy, handsome dog, but his nerve was gone, and every time I got a quill out, he gave a yelp. Some long quills were fairly easy. But the shorter ones, near his lips, were deep in, and hard to get hold of, and hard to pull out when you did get hold of them. And with every one that came out, came a little spurt of blood and another yelp and writhe.