o could call his
leadership into question; even the young and daring members of the
pack who pretended to scoff at the traditional awe in which Tasman
was held, admitted the tyrannical mastership of Lupus as something
ever-present and unavoidable; but that by no manner of means
lessened their cordial hatred of the fierce half-breed, with his
massive neck and shoulders that fangs seemed powerless to hurt, his
jaws which were as swift as they were mighty to rend, and his claws
which were as terrible as those of an old-man kangaroo, and more
deadly in action because he had four sets of them. Black-tip
experienced a generous sensation of sympathy and pity for Finn, and
so did the two friends of his who had fed that night upon good
fresh kangaroo flesh. But they, like all the others, were keen to
see the coming fight, and--to act accordingly. The question of what
was to become of Warrigal had occurred with interest to each one of
them, for she was eminently desirable just then to all her kind.

Fierce, savage, and justly feared though he was physically, Lupus
was mentally a sluggish beast, and not over and above intelligent.
In this he favoured his sire, who was slow-moving, sluggish, and,
withal, as fierce as any weasel, and immensely powerful. When Lupus
caught his first glimpse of the creature he had come to slay, he
had a momentary thrill of uneasiness, but it was no more than
momentary. Finn's towering form stood out clearly in the moonlight,
as he stood, with tail curved upward and hackles erect, on the
stone ledge outside the den. Lupus was scaling an extremely steep
section of the trail at the moment, and, seen against the sky-line,
Finn seemed monstrous. But, in justice, one should say that Lupus
knew nothing of fear. It was only that for a moment, as he dragged
his full-fed weight upward over the stones, the thought passed
through his dull mind that this was surely a strange sort of dingo
and extraordinarily tall. Finn was, as a matter of fact, ten inches
taller than any other dingo on that range except Lupus, and four
inches taller than he. Lupus was half as heavy again as any other
dingo on the range, but, though he knew it not, Finn was twenty
pounds heavier than he. But Lupus always had killed every animal
that he had met in combat, and it did not for an instant occur to
him that he might fail to kill this new-comer. And then there was
Warrigal--he got her scent now as she emerged, crouching, from the
den--he