The result of this placard was an egress from Deadeye of eight ambitious hunters, who went their several ways, wishful to earn two months’ pay by a lucky shot. They straggled back empty-handed at the end of a week. While they were thus engaged, the pack ranged wide. They killed at Cedar Creek, but were compelled to abandon their prey, and slew again before daylight on a nester’s place on the outskirts of Deadeye. Here, too, they let the life out of an interfering collie. Long immunity had made them contemptuous--or was it that they gave ear to the counsels of man-raised mates? They raided the Tumbling H headquarters in quest of certain turkeys that were Mit’s solace in dark days, and from ambuscade the cook slew his finest gobbler with buckshot, in a berserker effort to shoot one lissome marauder. Shiela and Friday led uneventful lives amid all this harrying and turmoil of pursuit. They frisked and wrestled on the baked, cracked ground, or basked in the sun until it grew too hot and the flies became unbearable in attack, when they would slouch to the cool of the long bunk-room. Shiela had forgotten all about her degenerate offspring, and held herself fearlessly and with pride as an honest dog. More than once she and the terrier took jaunts over the low hills toward the cañon, in spite of the watch on her goings-out. It might be a rabbit they pursued, or the zigzagging trail of a coyote; or it might be that rare scent, the antelope’s. One afternoon they disported themselves, chasing some half-wild hogs that roamed the range. A long-snouted porker of tender years was rooting about a patch of bear-grass, when suddenly he cocked his impudent nose and appeared to listen intently. Shiela and Friday stopped short in a game of tag, to watch. The pig did not turn his head, but continued to stand at attention, his ears twitching. What could it mean? Shiela crept closer. With a speed that left her dumbfounded, the pig sprang sidewise on to a spot his glance had certainly not been regarding, and simultaneously tore with his jaws at a writhing, earth-colored coil. Shiela drew off respectfully and in trepidation, while he devoured his victim with beautiful hog voracity. It was the dreaded rattler, which he had killed with two lightning strokes of forefeet and jaws. So the days passed.