uick movement. Spot reeled and showed a bleeding flank. Urged on by
the men, he assaulted again, but only to get another wound that taught
him to keep off.

Now came the keeper with four more huge Dogs. They turned these loose,
and the men armed with clubs and lassos were closing to help in
finishing the Wolf, when a small boy came charging over the plain on a
Pony. He leaped to the ground and wriggling through the ring flung his
arms around the Wolf's neck. He called him his "Wolfie pet," his "dear
Wolfie"--the Wolf licked his face and wagged its tail--then the child
turned on the crowd and through his streaming tears, he--Well it would
not do to print what he said. He was only nine, but he was very
old-fashioned, as well as a rude little boy. He had been brought up in
a low saloon, and had been an apt pupil at picking up the vile talk of
the place. He cursed them one and all and for generations back; he did
not spare even his own father.

If a man had used such shocking and insulting language he might have
been lynched, but coming from a baby, the hunters did not know what to
do, so finally did the best thing. They laughed aloud--not at
themselves, that is not considered good form--but they all laughed at
the German whose wonderful Dogs had been worsted by a half-grown Wolf.

Jimmie now thrust his dirty, tear-stained little fist down into his
very-much-of-a-boy's pocket, and from among marbles and chewing-gum, as
well as tobacco, matches, pistol cartridges, and other contraband, he
fished out a flimsy bit of grocer's twine and fastened it around the
Wolf's neck. Then, still blubbering a little, he set out for home on
the Pony, leading the Wolf and hurling a final threat and anathema at
the German nobleman: "Fur two cents I'd sic him on you, gol darn ye."

IV

Early that winter Jimmie was taken down with a fever. The Wolf howled
miserably in the yard when he missed his little friend, and finally on
the boy's demand was admitted to the sick-room, and there this great
wild Dog--for that is all a Wolf is--continued faithfully watching by
his friend's bedside.

The fever had seemed slight at first, so that every one was shocked
when there came suddenly a turn for the worse, and three days before
Christmas Jimmie died. He had no more sincere mourner than his
"Wolfie." The great gray creature howled in miserable answer to the
church-bell tolling when he followed the body on Christmas Eve to the
graveyard at St. Boni