“I didn’t stop to notice. I was too excited and too frightened to bother myself with thinking what breed of dragon he was. I aimed the old pistol and fired. The ‘kick’ of it nearly broke my wrist. At the same instant, the dragon lifted himself heavily, dragging his hinder part, and launched full at me. I shrank back, flat against the wall of the cave, and his spring fell short. The hot froth and blood on his fangs slathered on my coat, and I knew that the monster was badly hurt. There was little room to dodge in that cave, but I jumped sideways. “He turned jerkily, and I saw that his huge tail was injured. For the first time, my spirits rose. It was his tail I had feared. I had been afraid that he would lash out with it, crushing me to pieces. If, however, he were already hurt, I might be able to dodge about him, and get the best of him yet. But he could move quicker than I thought. “Before I realized it, he was on me. Again he sprang, with that curious dragging of his hinder parts as though they were paralyzed. I had no room to dodge away, for the wall of the cave was behind me. In desperation, I pulled out my bowie knife. Before I could lunge, however, a paw with curved claws like Turkish daggers flashed out and laid my left arm open to the bone. “Reeling from pain and the loss of blood, I struck forward with the knife. I hit some kind of a bone, I remember, then felt the curious sense of the blade piercing through living flesh. Again the monster reared. I swayed back, too far gone to move my feet, which seemed fastened to the floor of the cave. But as I stared, almost fascinated, into the green light of the creature’s eyes, I saw a glaze pass over them. He reared, wavered and fell over in a heap. Almost I collapsed upon him myself, but as I tottered, one of the fellows sprang out from the mouth of the cave and caught me. He snatched the bowie to give another blow, but the dragon never moved again. My knife had reached the heart.” CHAPTER II THE MONSTERS THAT NEVER WERE “But, Father,” cried Perry, “you haven’t told me what the dragon really was!” “I didn’t know, myself, for a few minutes,” was the reply. “I dropped in my tracks, right there. A couple of the fellows picked me up, though, as soon as I began to feel a little less faint, and the three of us, waiting until we were sure that the monster was quite dead, went up close to him. I had noticed, in a dim kind of way, that the dragon’s scales looked queer and that some of them had been scraped off on the floor of the cave. But when we got right up to him, what do you suppose we found those scales were?” “I haven’t the ghost of an idea,” the boy answered expectantly. “They were made of the silver paper that comes wrapped around bars of chocolate.” “What?” “Just plain silver paper.” “It was the other gang, then—” suggested Perry, seeing a clue. “That’s just what it was, the other gang.” “Then it was a fake dragon!” cried the boy, disappointed. “You said it was alive!”