Her heart and her courage were big as her body. Following O’Donnell on a day when he fared to Stinking Water, quite by accident she roused up a loafer in the cañon. Shiela flew in pursuit, deaf to O’Donnell’s frantic commands to come back. And when the wolf turned fiercely at bay to pit her might against this daring hunter, a hundred and eighteen pounds of dauntless pluck launched itself at her neck like a bolt from a storm-cloud. “She’s a dead one now,” O’Donnell groaned, circling for a shot. “She’s a goner, sure.” Had the wolfhound been more wary, she would have fared better. She could not have slain her foe; the dog does not breathe that can go to the death-grapple with a loafer wolf in the flush of his strength; and Shiela knew neither the amazing quickness of the wild, nor how to guard against those slashing counter-attacks. The lobo could dodge and rip simultaneously, using her jaws from any direction. Even when bowled over by the hound’s unreckoning rush, she tore Shiela’s throat with a backward thrust of her muzzle and was free in a twinkling. Badly cut in several places, dazed by the speed of the combat, the wolfhound was soon forced to let her go. Shiela and Friday were fast friends, albeit the diversity of dimensions was productive of intermittent rancor. It was Friday’s wont to rush at her fiercely, to seize one powerful leg in his mouth and worry it, whereat Shiela would hit him a playful pat that sent him reeling ten yards. But Friday came of a staunch breed, and he returned to the sport again and again. Often the wolfhound would stretch herself out on the ground, and thus recumbent, the fox-terrier could almost reach her head. Over Shiela would roll, lying on her back with legs in the air, while Friday snorted and grunted valorously as he shook her by the throat or the ear. But the fun always ended in the same way: a clumsy blow would catch Friday full on the head and he would dash off to his master with cries of pain. “Steve oughtn’t for to keep her round headquarters,” the blacksmith remonstrated to Dick. “She’s shore too big. Pore li’l Friday! When she gits into my shop, Dick, I swan her ol’ tail is like to send my tools flying which-ways.” “Where’d he keep her, then? He cain’t turn her out on the range to eat grass,” sneered Dick. The blacksmith was silenced, but there was born in him a dislike of the hound. It happened that, when next the terrier came yelping from play, O’Donnell had ridden off to a tank. The blacksmith issued from the shop and hurled a bolt at Shiela. She dodged, but did not run, and the bristles on her neck stiffened in warning.