"It doesn't love back the way I thought a pup would do," said Doby next day, sucking some ugly nips on his thumb as they trailed along. "When it gets old enough to stand solid on its legs, I guess it will be about the fiercest dog of its size in the State." With this pet to care for and to teach, in addition to his chores for the wagon, Doby could bustle about with some appearance of forgetting their precarious life. For until the drought should be broken and the sky drop rain to renew the springs and cool the bottoms, each hour became more fraught with danger from the wild. From the black edges of the moonless nights green eyes glared at the fires of the emigrants. Panthers wailed from the bluff in long shrieks, like frightened children--a sound that chilled the blood of every one in the train. Wolves howled in the daytime--there is no sound more menacing--and dread hung over the travelers. So the queer little puppy, who took itself so seriously in spite of the ridiculous look of its wabbly legs and mangled ears, was a source of interest and diversion to the whole company. When it heard a wolf howl it quickly got to its feet, raised what bristles it had, and answered shrilly, pacing back and forth under the canvas top of the wagon where the boy kept it fastened. "It wants to get out and fight 'em," cried Doby, proudly. "It wants to eat 'em up. See how eager it looks!" On the second night of its stay in their wagon-bed it won their gratitude. By its yelping and its scratching at the canvas it sounded the alarm, "Wolf at the door!" Even after Mr. Holman had caught up his rifle to drive at the wolf, which was by that time quite out of range, the adopted puppy rushed about the wagon-floor in an ecstasy of usefulness and slept no more that night. Through the depressing, unfriendly land which the flames had desolated, women and children huddled timidly in the wagons, men doubly armed walked close to their domestic animals for fear of a stampede, scouts forged ahead and sentries brought up the rear. Dust, heat, distant puffs of smoke, dried-out or muddy watercourses, all told of a region suffering in an untoward season and of beasts uncomfortable and dangerous. Their train was followed, not by a pack as they sometimes feared it might be, but by one of those lone gray timber wolves, whose age or ferocity--or something--finds satisfaction in nothing but the silent stalk and the solitary kill. At last things came to such a pass, at last the lone wolf--it was a gaunt she-wolf--lurked so near, that panic seized the hearts of the emigrants. For no rifle could hit her. Like the horrid werewolf, in whom some of the superstitious travelers still believed, no bullet touched her, so uncanny was her cleverness in getting beyond range after every depredation.