l following, his malignant red eyes fixed upon the
boy. The cur would not have weighed twenty cowardly pounds, but
he became a horrible obsession to Dick. He picked up a stone
again, put it down again, and for a mad instant seriously
considered the question of shooting him.

The cur seemed to become alarmed at the second threat, and broke
suddenly into a sharp, snarling, yapping bark, much like that of
a coyote. It was terribly loud in the still night, and cold
dread assailed Dick in every nerve. He picked up the stone that
he had dropped, and this time he threw it.

"You brute!" he exclaimed, as the stone whizzed by the cur's ear.

The cur returned the compliment of names with compounded many
times over. His snarling bark became almost continuous, and
although he did not come any nearer, he showed sharp white teeth.
Dick paused in doubt, but when, from a point nearer the village,
he heard a bark in reply, then another, and then a dozen, he ran
with all speed up the slope. He knew without looking back that
the cur was following, and it made him feel cold again.

Certainly Dick had good cause to run. All the world was up and
listening now, and most of it was making a noise, too. He heard
a tumult of barking, growling, and snapping toward the village,
and then above it a long, mournful cry that ended in an ominous
note. Dick knew that it was a Sioux war whoop, and that the
mean, miserable little cur had done his work. The village would
be at his heels. Seized with an unreasoning passion, he whirled
about and shot the cur dead. It was a mad act, and he instantly
repented it. Never had there been another rifle shot so loud.
It crashed like the report of a cannon. Mountain and valley gave
it back in a multitude of echoes, and on the last dying echo
came, not a single war whoop, but the shout of many, the fierce,
insistent, falsetto yell that has sounded the doom of many a
borderer.

Dick shuddered. He had been pursued once before by a single
man, but he was not afraid of a lone warrior. Now a score
would be at his heels. He might shake them off in the dark, but
the dogs would keep the scent, and his chief object was to go fast.
He ran up the slope at his utmost speed for a hundred yards or
more, and then remembering in time to nurse his strength, he
slackened his footsteps.

He had thought of turning the pursuit away from the hollow in
which Albert lay, but now that the alarm was out they would find