t-wise over red gums, showing huge yellow fangs and an
expression of most daunting ferocity.

In the next moment he tore a groove six inches long down Jan's left
shoulder, scooping out skin and fur as a machine saw might have done it;
and in the same second he was away again, wolf-like, his steel muscles
already contracting for the next attack.

Now Jan had no thought of fighting when he bowled Sourdough over. His
sole preoccupation had been the rescue of his little friend, Micky
Doolan, from what looked like certain death. Contact with Sourdough had
greatly stirred the combatant blood in him, as had also the hated smell
of the husky. Even then a call from Dick Vaughan would have met with
instant response from Jan. But there was no Dick Vaughan in sight.
Sergeant Moore stood gazing eagerly, a little anxiously even, but with
no hint of any thought of interfering with the meeting he had schemed to
bring about. O'Malley, clutching his terrier in his arms, was rather
distractedly calling:

"Come away in, Jan! Drop it now, Jan! Come in here, come in here, Jan!"

But O'Malley, after all, though an amiable person enough, and, as a
friend of Dick's, a man to be obeyed cheerfully enough in the ordinary
way, yet was not Dick. He was hardly a shadow of the sovereign. And then
came that fiery stroke that had opened a groove down Jan's left
shoulder.

After that, it is a moot point whether even Dick Vaughan's voice would
have served to penetrate the cloud of fury in which Jan moved. He became
very terrible in his wrath. One saw less of the bloodhound and more, far
more, of his sire, of royal Finn, the fighting wolfhound of the
Tinnaburra ranges, in his splendid pose, in the upward, scimitar curve
of his great tail, the rage in his red-hawed eyes, the vibrant defiance
of his baying roar.

But he lacked as yet his sire's inimitable fighting craft, just as he
lacked entirely the lightning cunning of the half-wolf Sourdough. And
before he had touched the husky his sound shoulder had been grooved, and
one of his ears badly torn.

It might have been better tactics on Sourdough's part to have made
direct for some killing hold, instead of administering these instructive
preliminary chastenings. Seeing clearly Jan's inferiority in wolf
tactics, Sourdough underrated the forces of his size, weight, endurance,
power, and quite indomitable bravery. In fact, the cunning Sourdough was
very thoroughly deceived by Jan. Never having in his va