every bone in my body was broken
and my flesh was raw. I got gleeful gratification from Wallace's
complaints, and Jones's remark that he had a stitch in his back. So
ended the first chase after cougars.

CHAPTER 5.

OAK SPRING

Moze and Don and Sounder straggled into camp next morning, hungry,
footsore and scarred; and as they limped in, Jones met them with
characteristic speech: "Well, you decided to come in when you got
hungry and tired? Never thought of how you fooled me, did you? Now, the
first thing you get is a good licking."

He tied them in a little log pen near the cabin and whipped them
soundly. And the next few days, while Wallace and I rested, he took
them out separately and deliberately ran them over coyote and deer
trails. Sometimes we heard his stentorian yell as a forerunner to the
blast from his old shotgun. Then again we heard the shots unheralded by
the yell. Wallace and I waxed warm under the collar over this peculiar
method of training dogs, and each of us made dire threats. But in
justice to their implacable trainer, the dogs never appeared to be
hurt; never a spot of blood flecked their glossy coats, nor did they
ever come home limping. Sounder grew wise, and Don gave up, but Moze
appeared not to change.

"All hands ready to rustle," sang out Frank one morning. "Old Baldy's
got to be shod."

This brought us all, except Jones, out of the cabin, to see the object
of Frank's anxiety tied to a nearby oak. At first I failed to recognize
Old Baldy. Vanished was the slow, sleepy, apathetic manner that had
characterized him; his ears lay back on his head; fire flashed from his
eyes. When Frank threw down a kit-bag, which emitted a metallic
clanking, Old Baldy sat back on his haunches, planted his forefeet deep
in the ground and plainly as a horse could speak, said "No!"

"Sometimes he's bad, and sometimes worse," growled Frank.

"Shore he's plumb bad this mornin'," replied Jim.

Frank got the three of us to hold Baldy's head and pull him up, then he
ventured to lift a hind foot over his line. Old Baldy straightened out
his leg and sent Frank sprawling into the dirt. Twice again Frank
patiently tried to hold a hind leg, with the same result; and then he
lifted a forefoot. Baldy uttered a very intelligible snort, bit through
Wallace's glove, yanked Jim off his feet, and scared me so that I let
go his forelock. Then he broke the rope which held him to the tree.
There was a plunge, a scatterin