want to read that baby talk," she cried, "and--and--I
_won't_, and I 'm going home to my mother."

The teacher swayed in his wrath like a tall cottonwood. "You don't, eh?
You won't, eh?" he bellowed, and, stooping down, plucked the little girl
by the ear.

This time it was the Swede boy who interrupted the course of events in
front. He leaned forward and whispered something into the ear of the boy
ahead, and then, with an inarticulate shout, threw himself upon the boy
and began to maul him. Instantly the teacher, yearning to use his hands
upon some one, descended upon them and wrested them apart. But they
clinched again and, continuing to fight, managed so to misdirect their
kicks that they reached, not each other, but his lanky, interfering
person.

And, while the battle raged, the little girl fled out of the
school-house toward the pinto and pulled up the picket-pin. The teacher
did not see her go, but, in retreating from an unusually vicious blow of
the Swede boy's fist, caught sight of her just as she was leading her
horse to an ant-hill to mount. With a hoarse call for her to return, he
started after her, bearing in his train the two boys, who, still
struggling, impeded his progress.

He shook them off at the door-step and broke into a run. The little girl
was vainly striving to climb to the pinto's back; but she was so
frightened that each time she made a jump for the saddle she came short
of it and fell back. And, seeing the teacher coming, her efforts were
more ineffectual than ever. But when he was scarcely a rod away, and
when escape seemed impossible, a new figure joined in the affair.

Luffree had been lying quietly beside the picket-pin until the little
girl ran out, when he got up, ready to follow her, and joyfully leaped
about the mare. Then he saw the teacher advancing, and remembered the
rough handling of the day before. So, as the Yankton man came close,
swinging his arms about like the fans of the Dutchman's windmill, the
dog went forward to meet him, his hair on end, his eyes shifting
treacherously, his teeth showing in an ugly white seam, all the wolf
blood in him roused.

The teacher halted when he saw him and called back to the scholars, now
crowding about the door. "Bring my pointer," he cried.

Not a pupil moved. The teacher, noting that no one was obeying his
order, and not daring to go forward unarmed, ran back at the top of his
speed for the stick. But he was too late; for, by the ti