"I'm glad that pa put ma in another wagon, for the wolf picks our stuff every time, probably because we are the last in the train," worried Doby, who was frankly afraid of the gleaming eyes which had twice slipped past the sentries in the darkness and appeared below him during his turn at watching at the tiny round window in the middle of the back of the wagon-top. He was not ashamed to swing his lighted pine-knot torch vigorously most of the time. "Those teeth looked as sharp as knives." To the excited puppy he promised, "When you are a little bigger I'll let you out to do battle." But the frantic puppy did not want to wait to grow bigger. It was ready at once. Its new master was full of applause for its vigilance. On the third night an awful moment came. The ready sentries patrolling near, and his father at the oxen's head, seemed far, far away when Doby turned from a moment's soothing of his growling pet to find himself face to face with the blazing eyes in a great, slavering head thrust through the little round window. He shrieked and called as he beat at the hideous, threatening thing with his burning pine knot. Men came running to help him. But in the half-light of flickering torches no one dared to fire into the group who had been surprised into a hand-to-hand fight with the wolf. From that medley of human screams and bestial growls, the flash of knives, the thump of clubbing guns, she escaped as strangely as she had done before. The puppy, licking at Doby's bitten hand, begged ferociously to be allowed to get out and get at her. His father gave his animals to the care of another and took the boy's watch at the wagon's end in the last of the train. Doby, who could not sleep on account of his pet's restlessness, sat beside his father through the long hours of that fearsome night. In the darkest time, just before the dawn, when deep sleep had finally settled upon the train, the puppy leaped up and slipped its leash and called in sharp glad barks. Without, under the doubly guarded wagon, the she-wolf crooned. The puppy capered with joy. Softly the coaxing whine was repeated. The puppy answered in baby staccato. And then they knew! Even Doby knew! Knew whence the puppy came, why it was so fierce, and why the lone wolf stalked the train! A dozen rifles cracked, but the "unerring" pioneer marksmen could not hit that sly wolf in the darkness. She was out of range again. The father and son looked at each other in consternation. There was only one thing to do. Poor Doby did it. He spoke a word to the guards. Then with his heart-strings quite torn apart he took the beloved and unloving wolf whelp from the wagon, set it upon the ground, and watched it lope away into the waiting dark. Because a wolf never returns to an uncovered trap, the siege was raised.