But this was not the collie’s first encounter with such opponents. Ten feet from the tensely waiting skunk, Treve leaped high in the air and far to the left. Then, before the skunk could get opportunity to brace itself a second time, he veered as rapidly to the right; and slashed as he sprang. The skunk lay lifeless at his feet, its back broken. And Treve feasted in luxurious comfort. An hour later he came to the railroad track. Here, it seemed, was surcease for his aching pads, from the teasing desert sands. Gladly he trotted along the ties, in the exact middle of the track. But after the first mile, the bite of cinders on his sore feet grew more unbearable than were the sand-grains. And he shifted from track to right-of-way. Not five minutes later, the Limited came thundering past, shaking the earth and almost knocking him down by the suction of its nearby passage. Truly, those foot-cutting cinders had done Treve a good turn, by driving him from between the steel rails and out of the path of annihilation. It was wolf instinct that guarded him from his next mortal danger. In early dusk he was padding wearily along the sage sprinkled gray plain when something buzzed like fifty windblown telegraph wires, from beneath a sagebush directly in front of him. There was no time to dodge. Without stopping to plan his own action, he gathered his tired muscles and leaped; clearing the two-foot bush with several inches to spare. So instant-quick had been the move that the rattlesnake beneath the bush missed him by a clean six inches as it struck at his approaching bulk. The great white desert stars came out in a black velvet sky. The torrid heat of day merged into a dampish chill which helped to assuage the collie’s burning thirst. On he stumbled. Then his wornout frame took a new brace. From far off, the night wind brought him the craved scent of running water--the Dos Hermanos River. It was two nights later when Joel Fenno came home to the ranch, after raking the city of La Cerra, hysterically, with a fine-tooth comb, for his lost dog;--after posting deliriously exorbitant rewards whose payment would have bankrupted him. He halted the wheezy car at the gate and stumped up the walk. The dazed old man’s spirit was dead within him. He hoped Royce Mack might not yet have gotten back from Omaha. He himself wanted to gather up some money and some clean clothes, before returning to La Cerra to continue the hopeless hunt. As he started up the walk, something furry and cyclonic burst out of the house;--dashed limpingly down the walk to meet him and flung itself at his breast, barking ecstatic welcome to the wanderer. “Treve!” gasped the unbelieving Fenno, chokingly. “Oh--oh, _Trevy_!” That was all. But he gathered the gayly dancing collie into his arms in a bear hug that well-nigh crushed the victim’s ribs.