“No,” denied Wilton. “Dogs don’t hunt with wolves. Coyotes do, but not dogs. The collie was hunting the wolf. He was after him, with every ounce he had. I take it the collie had been out on an early morning stroll, not far from his own home; when he got sight or scent of the wolf as he was coming this way from a kill And the dog gave chase. The wolf was all blood; so I knew he’d been at a bunch of livestock, somewhere. The dog hadn’t a mark on him. There was light enough for me to see that.” “Good old Treve!” applauded Mack. “But, Captain, if--” “Wasn’t the dog even running on three legs?” despairingly asked Garry. “He was,” admitted Wilton; adding: “And on the fourth leg, too. No lameness, then. I wondered, at first, why a Killer, like the three-legged wolf, should run away from a dog smaller and lighter than himself. But I made a guess; and the guess was right. Dawn had come. People were likely to be astir. It was no time to be caught in the open, in a fight. The wolf was looking for cover. After he found it, there’d be time enough to dispose of the collie. That’s wolf-nature.” “He--” “The wolf got to the mouth of the coulée; where another ten steps would hide him in the undergrowth and the rock holes so safely that no hundred hunters could root him out. He was right below me. I drew a bead on him. But I didn’t shoot. Because just then, the collie overtook him. And I saw the prettiest battle ever. It would have been a crime to spoil it by a shot.” “Lord!” breathed Royce Mack. “Why wasn’t I there?” “The wolf spun around on him,” went on Wilton, “and made a dive, wolf-fashion, for the collie’s foreleg; to break it. The collie was going too fast to dodge, altogether. But he did his best. And he got off with nothing worse than a pinched left forefoot. Then the fun began. The old wolf was as quick as lightning. But the collie--well, the collie was as quick as--as a collie. I don’t know anything quicker. He got a slash or two; and once he was bowled over in the mud and the wolf got a throat grip.” “But--” “But the collie tore free, by leaving a handful of mattress-hair and skin in the wolf’s jaws. And before the wolf could spit it out and get his jaws into action again, the collie had flashed in and gotten to the jugular. He hung on, like grim death; grinding those slender jaws of his deeper and deeper; while the wolf kept thrashing about and hammering him against rocks and against the ground; to make him let go. But the collie hung on. That’s the collie of it. That’s the thoroughbred of it, too. He knew he had the one hold he could hope to win by. And he held it. At last his teeth ground their way down to the jugular and through it. That’s all there was to that fight.” “Treve!” babbled Joel. “_Trevy!_” His unconscious exclamation went unheard in the hum of excitement.