in your place,
but you'd better build a fence around the place--damn the luck!
Smotheration! I think she likes me, all right, but when it comes
to more'n that--oh, blast it, I'll just have to wait for a real
good chance; now come, old man, get four feet on the ground and
don't roll your eyes, take it easy till the chance comes."

Little he knew the chance was coming up the street at that moment.
He only saw Miss Mattie step out into the bed of flowers, her face
looking unusually pretty and youthful under the big straw hat, and
start to reduce the weeds to order. She glanced around as though
in search of some one, and Red felt intuitively that the one was
himself.

"Here's where I ought to act as if I wore long pants," said he;
"now, what's to hinder me from going out there and get a-talking?"
And then he sat down hastily, more disgusted than ever, and smote
the air with his fist. "You'd think the nicest, quietest woman
that ever lived was a wild beast, the way I act; yes sir, you
would!"

Meantime the chance drew nearer. It was not a pleasant looking
opportunity. Its eyes, full of dread and dreadful, peeped out from
beneath a brush of matted hair; a tough, ropy foam hung from its
mouth. If you put as much of that foam as would go on the point of
a pin in an open cut, you would have an end that your worst enemy
would shudder at. For this was the most horrifying of dangerous
animals--a mad dog. Poor brute! As he came shambling down the
road, he was the grisly mask of tragedy.

It was near noon, intensely hot, and the street of Fairfield was
deserted. No one saw the dog, and if his occasional rattling,
strangling howl reached any ears, they were dead to its meaning.
He was unheeded until he lurched through the gate which Lettis had
left open, as usual, and spinning around in a circle gave voice to
his cry.

It brought Miss Mattie to her feet in an unknown terror; it brought
Red from the barn in a full cognizance--he had heard that sound
before, when a mad coyote landed in a cabin-full of fairly strong
nerved cowmen, and set them screeching like hysterical women before
a chance shot ended him.

Red saw the brute jump toward Miss Mattie. Instantly his hand flew
to his hip, and as instantly he remembered there was nothing there.
Then with great, uneven leaps he sprang forward. "Keep your hands
up, Mattie, and don't move!" he screamed. "Let him chew the dress!
For God's sake, don't move!"

She turned