Catching up one of the chunks, he hurled it with deadly aim and intent. But even as he did this, the huge animal started to run, so that instead of striking him in the head, the chunk of wood struck his right shoulder. The dog felt quick agony that subsided to searing pain as he kept running. Twenty seconds later he heard a rifle blast, and the thump of a leaden slug that plowed into the earth six inches to one side. The rifle roared a second time, and a third. Then he was safe in the woods. He slowed to a walk, knowing that he could not be seen now and his nose informed him that there were no other men around. For the time being he was in no danger, but he was heartsick. Again he had tried, in every way he knew, to find someone whom he might love and who in turn might love him. Once more his overtures had brought him only hurt. The dog could not know that the farmer, seeing him suddenly, had been too startled to think. When he was finally capable of coherent thought, he decided that a wild, dangerous and doubtless rabid wolf had emerged from the forest and that its only intention could be to prey upon the locality's flocks and herds. Failing to bring it down with his rifle, the farmer got hastily on the phone to mobilize his neighbors. Within half an hour a posse was out. However, its members were farmers and not hunters. The only hunting dogs in the area were a few fox and coon hounds and some rabbit hounds, and they refused to interest themselves in the supposed wolf's trail. But there was also a pair of big cross-bred brindle bulls and they were urged into the woods. An hour later the dog met this pair. Coursing a little open glade, they appeared in front of him and as soon as they saw him they stopped. The bulls weighed only about fifty pounds each, but they had had many battles and they knew how to fight. Lifting their lips in anticipatory grins, they closed in. The dog waited, anger rising in his heart. He too knew how to fight. For the barest fraction of a minute he gauged the bulls' advance, then he attacked. He was not as swift as he ordinarily was because he had not eaten enough. But with his staghound and collie lineage, he had inherited all the fluid, rippling grace of such dogs. It was not his way to bore in, to seek a hold and keep it, but to slash and slice. He struck the first bull, cut it to the shoulder bone, and leaped clear over his enemy before there could be a return thrust. He whirled to face the second. It came at him with a short, choppy gait, eyes half closed and mouth open as it sought any hold at all. As soon as it was able to get one, it would clamp its jaws and grind until the piece of flesh in its mouth was torn out. Then it would get another hold, and another, and literally tear its enemy apart.